The Boat House

THIRTY-FOUR

As Pavel had been hoping, the woman had led him straight to the place where he most needed to be. He'd never have told her so much or taken so great a risk if he hadn't believed that she'd react this way; but he'd managed to alarm her, and in Alina's case there was nothing more alarming than the truth.

The woman wasn't entirely naive — she'd made at least one definite attempt to establish whether or not she was being followed, pulling off the road and waiting for no obvious reason — but then she wasn't exactly adept in the ways of subterfuge, either. Pavel had simply driven on by, backed into a blind opening that concealed him from the road, and then picked her up again when she passed. This time he followed without lights, and at more of a distance.

She made the turnoff about twenty minutes later.

He almost missed it; he'd seen her tail lights go but the entrance to the track was so hard to spot, he had to overshoot and back up. Further in, the track climbed and narrowed. There was space here for one car's width only.

The track was rough, but Pavel was floating.

The exhaustion and the adrenalin were a potent combination. The car hit a rut and bounced; Pavel lifted his hands from the wheel and the car went on, steering itself as if directed by the power of his mind alone. Tonight was a night on which he could do anything. He'd already achieved the impossible in finding her; after this he felt as if he could walk on water and raise the dead.

The car started to head off the track. He grabbed the wheel, and steered it back in.

A couple of gateposts, the overgrown remnants of what had once been a wall; at the sight of these and the hint of some kind of a destination, he ran the car off the road and into the bushes and continued on foot. Roots tripped him and branches clawed at him; he'd have to move carefully in order not to give himself away. After a dozen yards or so, he glanced back. The car was just about visible, but only if you knew where to look for it.

He climbed onward.

He could see the house through the trees. There were lights showing, and the black car was out in front. He could see the woman standing on the covered porch before the door. She was knocking.

But nobody was answering.

He stopped and watched her for a while, but nothing much seemed to be happening. He saw her glance toward the still-running car, where the boy's pale face was watching her through the glass. She looked back at the house, again at the car; she was torn.

And then the boy yawned, and that clinched it.

She stayed for long enough to write some kind of a note and stick it in the narrow gap between the house's main door and its frame, and then she got back in the car and swung it around for the descent. Pavel ducked before the headlights swept across him, and then he listened to her engine note as it faded away. Then, pushing the leaves aside, he stepped out into the open.

Slowly, wondering if somebody might be watching, he walked toward the house. He could see why somewhere like this would appeal to her; wooden, rambling, overgrown, it was almost like something out of her own past. He climbed the steps to the porch; if she was anywhere around, surely she'd be able to hear him.

He tugged the note free from where she'd left it, and opened out the paper. Peter, it said. Call me or come and see me. It's urgent. And then the woman's name.

Peter was the one that Alina was with. So any final doubts were now overcome. Unlike the woman, he tried the door without bothering to knock.

It opened.

"Anybody here?" he called, but there was no reply.

He stepped inside, into the silence.

When he pushed open the nearest door, it revealed an empty room. "Alina?" he called, and then he switched to words that only she would be able to recognise. "It's Pavel, I'm here alone. Please, Alina!"

The next room was a bathroom; but in the one after that, he found final confirmation.

It was her scrapbook, immediately recognisable even though it was propped over beyond the far side of the bed. This was her room, he knew; he could sense her presence, almost as if she'd walked out of it only seconds before and left some trace — her scent, her body heat, her aura — that had yet to disperse. He was the one bought the scrapbook for her, to replace the box in which she'd kept all of her old photographs and clippings; they'd been her only link with the life that she'd been forced to leave behind when she'd finally moved into his apartment. That was when he'd felt that Beauty had fallen into the arms of the Beast and that the Beast, for a while, had prevented her from falling any further.

How could she have ended it as she did? He'd genuinely come to believe that she had some affection for him. He couldn't hope for love, that would be asking for too much, but surely he'd deserved better than such an abrupt desertion. Pavel would have run with her, if she'd wanted him to. He'd have done anything for her, and she'd known it. He'd been there all through her nightmares, sometimes reporting for work and going out on the road with no more than a couple of hours' sleep behind him. He'd concealed her, protected her, supported her. He'd understood her, as far as it was possible.

But she'd taken her book, and she'd left him.

He'd bought it for her because she'd almost worn out the box with use by constantly going through its contents, taking out each item and staring at it, sometimes for an hour or more. It was as if, with everything else lost or otherwise taken away, this was the only means by which she could hold onto her old sense of self. Now it seemed that she'd almost worn out the album, as well; he could see that she'd taken some of the pages that had come loose, and she'd arranged them around the dressing table in a kind of display.

And then he heard a noise.

It was almost nothing, but he knew immediately that someone was leaving the house. He turned and raced back out of the room toward the entranceway, but he was too late. He stood on the porch in a circle of light that spread some distance before the house, leaving the trees beyond in darkness.

"Please, Alina," he called out to the darkness. "At least talk to me. You know I'm not here to hurt you, I couldn't."

Nothing but silence, and a sense of being watched.

So he went back inside. A couple of minutes later he came out again, carrying her album and a lit candle stuck onto a plate by a pool of its own melted wax. He'd found it in the kitchen, on a shelf above the stove. He set it on the square post at the end of the porch rail.

"Don't make me do this," he said, and he waited.

But nothing happened.

So then he took one of the loose pages, held it up high for her to see, and then brought it down and touched its corner to the flame.

An inhuman sound echoed through the forest. It might have been an animal in deep pain and some distance away, but Pavel doubted it. He dropped the burning paper and it hit the ground before the porch, turning over a couple of times and shedding sparks and ash.

The sound died, and nothing else happened; so he prepared to burn a second page.

And that, at last, brought her out.

"No!" she said, and she stepped into the light.

He almost couldn't believe that the moment had finally come. He'd thrown away everything, stripped his life right down to nothing, and all of it had been for this. She'd all but destroyed him and he knew it, just as he knew that if he could have returned to the beginning he'd have made all the same choices over again. That, he'd long ago come to understand, was the penalty of loving the Rusalka; it was to embrace your own destruction, and embrace it willingly.

And now, here it stood.

Pavel was so relieved that he almost wanted to weep. He stared at her, drank her in; but he didn't dare to move toward her in case she should turn and leave him again.

"Why did you follow me?" she said.

"You know why," he said. "I never had a choice."

"Are you alone?"

"Since the summer began. They sent me over to find you, but I ran away. They never knew about us."

Alina moved to the steps now, but she didn't climb them to him.

"Oh, Pavel," she said, sadly.

He could read her. The signs that would have been invisible to others were plain to the eyes of one who knew her so well.

He said, "She's stronger, isn't she?"

"She's stronger. There's no difference between us any more. I thought that if I left the land, I could break the spell. But it didn't work. Wherever I am, becomes the land again. Pavel, why did you come? You were safe from me back there."

"Because there's no life for me without you," Pavel said, and it was no less than the truth. She looked up at him for a while and he fed upon that look, on its affection and its apprehension and its regret.

And then, without meeting his eyes any more, Alina climbed the steps and took the scrapbook from his hands.

"Come with me," she said, and she placed the book safely in the shelter of the porch. "There's something I want you to see."

Pavel was on edge, sensing the moment that was coming even though its details had yet to become clear.

He said, "Is it far?"

"It's no distance at all," Alina said, and she took his arm to guide him down.

"Wake up, Jed," Diane whispered gently. After parking the Zodiac on the gravel by the side entrance to Liston Hall, she'd said Home at last in what she'd hoped was a confident, untroubled voice, and she'd turned around to find him with his eyes closed and his mouth open and his comics still held close to his chest. His eyes fluttered now as she spoke. She knew that she could probably walk him up to his bedroom and undress him and put him into bed, and he wouldn't remember anything about it in the morning. He'd say that he did, but he wouldn't.

"Come on," she said as she slipped her hand behind his head, and she supported him as he groped and fumbled his way out onto the gravel. There he winced, and peered around, but already his eyelids were drooping again. One of his comics fell, and she picked it up as she began to guide him toward the house.

The stranger had followed her for some of the way, of that much she was certain. There had been far off headlights in her rearview mirror for some considerable distance. She'd cut the Zodiac's own lights and pulled into an off the road layby which consisted of a picnic area and a screen of trees with a No Camping sign, and she was pretty sure that she'd managed to lose him; she heard him pass and saw his lights as a flicker through the bushes, and then she'd waited another ten minutes in case he came back. He hadn't. She'd inadvertently led him toward the valley and the lake (She'll be somewhere close to water, he'd said) but at least she would take him no further.

Jed thought it was all some kind of big adventure. Tomorrow, he'd probably think it had been some kind of a dream. She'd let him go on thinking so. She wondered if Pete would see her note and call her tonight, or if his interpretation of the word urgent meant that sometime in the morning would do. Would that matter? Surely nothing was going to happen before morning.

Jed came first. Always. Every time. That was the principle she believed in, anyway, even if she sometimes found her behaviour drifting away from the ideal.

First thing tomorrow, if he hadn't been in touch, she'd go down to the yard and tell Pete about everything that had happened. He could decide how much of it to believe, if anything.

A few hours couldn't make any difference.

So now, with her hand gently cradling the back of his head, she steered Jed onward in the direction of his room.

Alina has stayed a few paces before him on the descent to the shore. Pavel has been stumbling in the darkness and having trouble keeping up; she seems to move with hardly any effort, and she never puts a foot wrong.

Finally, they reach the water's edge. There hasn't been any rainfall in a while and the level has dropped, making a narrow strip of shoreline which ends at the high water point like a bite taken out of the turf. This small, temporary beach is covered in twigs and straw debris that has dried out in the heat of the days and which now crunches underfoot like the bones of mice. Alina draws him across, and turns him to face the valley; the vestigial light of the long day is enough to block in the shape of its immense sides, even now.

She says, "This is it. What do you see?"

"Water," he says. "Mountains. Stars."

"Does it remind you of anywhere?"

"Home," he says, even though it doesn't. The mountains are too high and the stars are all wrong, but he knows that this will be what she's expecting to hear. She sees it differently, and he hasn't sought her out to argue.

"It is my home now," she says. "Stand at the edge. Don't turn around."

Nervously, he does as he's been told.

From behind him, she says, "Do you know what you're asking?"

"I think I do."

"Watch, then. Watch the water. But I have to warn you, it's already too late for me to let you go."

So he watches the lake as it catches whatever faint lights are available to it; close inshore, it seems to be stirring as the unseen rocks just below its surface warp and change the patterns with their mass. It flexes and shines like enchanted oil, a magic mirror onto a world of madness.

Exhaustion, he tells himself. Exhilaration. That's all it is.

She says, "Who sent you to me?"

"Nobody. I followed a woman who said she knew you."

"How did you meet?"

"What?" He hasn't fully understood the question, simple though it is; he's being distracted by shapes and shadows that seem to be forming under the water.

"Can you see anything in the lake?"

"No. Just reflections."

"Try for a little longer. And then I'll tell you what I can see, How did you come to be talking about me?"

"I put out a message for you, on the radio. She heard it and called in."

"What did she look like?"

"Taller than you, dark…"

His voice trails away.

"You've seen something?

"No."

"Then close your eyes, and just listen. I'll describe it for you."

He closes his eyes, and she begins to tell him; she begins to show him her world through the eyes of the Rusalka.

She describes how the first of the figures rises from the water and stands a little way offshore, starlit and cadaverous and with water sluicing from it. The second rises as a dark female form beside this. Both are like thin shells of hard matter around an infinity of darkness and stars; there's no glint or glow to suggest whether they have eyes, or pearls for eyes, or anything at all.

Pavel's eyes flicker open for a moment. He sees only the surface of the water, undisturbed.

"Did she drive a big car?" Alina says. "A car like a truck?"

"No… I don't…"

He screws his eyes shut again. Against all reason he wishes that he could see what she's describing, because to see would be to enter her world completely.

Others rising from the water; an old man, three young, straight wraiths, a couple of children, a carpenter… and then from out beyond them come a number of stags, a few cats and dogs, birds popping up and trying to unfold their sodden wings without success and without any kind of sound at all. They face inward in a half circle, an audience of the dead summoned for a performance of the living.

And of all this, Pavel sees nothing.

"You've made such a long journey," she says. "Now there's only one last step to take. Can you manage it alone?"

He opens his eyes, then, and looks down at her. The face that he knows so well is now just angles and planes in darkness, all expression lost; there's little to tell between the girl on the shore and the creatures that she imagines to be in the lake. He tries to read sympathy there, he tries to read encouragement; but these are hopes rather than solid certainties, where the only real certainty is that she's probably much too far-gone in her madness for him ever to be able to carry her home.

He'd hoped that he might somehow be able to take her back. Or at the very least, for the two of them to find some corner where they could build a kind of happiness. But he knows now that this can never be.

She pushes him, taking him by surprise, and he stumbles and loses his footing on the bank. When he hits the water he almost falls, but then he manages to get his balance on the lakebed. The water is surprisingly cold, soaking into his clothes and making them heavy. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and turns back to face Alina; she hasn't moved.

"What was that for?" he says.

"You want to be with me," she says. "I'm showing you the way."

He takes a step toward the shore, but something catches at him under the waterline and he falls. plunging face first into the water, For a moment he's completely submerged, and as the water closes over his head the cold penetrates the rest of his clothes with a shock that feels as if it will stop his heart.

There are weeds down here, and he's tangled in amongst them. They waft at him, they stroke him, they hold him in a grip like a dead man's hands. Now he's afraid. He pulls at the weeds and feels some of them tearing, but others are tightening in the same move.

Already, the breath is beginning to leave him.

It's strange; he finds that he's starting to experience flash-memories and scenes from his childhood as he tries to fight his way back to the surface. It's only inches away, but even inches can be fatal. The dizziness and the agony in his lungs begin to recede as the memories become more and more clear, until he's being hoisted up onto his father's shoulder as they walk along the sands…

Which coincides with him coming up out of the water, ripping free and gasping for air.

Alina is still waiting on the shore.

He'd hoped they could be together. But he's lost her finally now, and he knows it. He'd even have entered her insanity, if he could have done it and there had been no other way… but even this has been barred to him.

"Help him, children," Alina says.

And suddenly there are hands on him, instantly plunging him back under so that the next breath that he takes is no breath at all.