There were animals in the fields. Cows and sheep and sometimes horses, and, if you looked closely, rabbits too. And the occasional fox, of course. Giving birth, living, dying, over and over and over; Nature’s ancient order continuing on as it had for countless centuries. Seasons changed, the world turned and everything old was made new again, in spring. And everywhere you looked, there were the trees. Not as many as there once were, of course. The ancient primal forests of England’s dark green past were long gone. Felled down the years to make ships and towns and homes, or just to clear the land for crops and livestock. But still many trees survived, in woods and copses, or slender lines of windbreaks; tall dark shapes, glowering on the horizon, standing out starkly against the last light of day.
A single magpie, jet of black and pure of white, hopped across a field, and Toby tugged automatically at his forelock and muttered, “Evening, Mr. Magpie”, an old charm, to ward off bad luck. Everyone knew the old rhyme: One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy … Toby usually got lost after that, but it didn’t really matter. It was a rare day when you saw more than four magpies at once. Toby watched the countryside pass, and found what little peace of mind he ever knew in contemplating the land’s never-ending cycle. The trees and the fields and the animals had all been there before him, and would still be there long after he was gone; and some day they’d lay him to rest under the good green grass, and he’d become a part of it all. And then maybe he’d understand what it had all been for.
The train paused briefly at the request stop for Avoncliff, a very short platform with stern Do Not Alight Here signs at both ends, just in case you were too dim to notice that there was nothing there for you to step out onto. The usual few got off. There was never anyone waiting to get on, at this time of day. The train gathered up its strength and plunged on, heading for Bradford-on-Avon like a horse scenting its stables. Toby closed his paperback and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. Not long now; almost home. He felt tired and heavy and sweaty, and his feet ached inside his cheap shoes, already on their second set of heels. He looked out of the window, and there, on the very edge of town, was Blackacre. An old name and not a pleasant one, for a seventeenth-century farmhouse and surrounding lands, all set within an ancient circle of dark trees, cutting Blackacre off from the rest of the world—dead land, and dead trees.
A long time ago, something happened in that place, but few now remembered what or when or why. The old farmhouse stood empty and abandoned, in the centre of a wide circle of dead ground, on which nothing grew and in which nothing could thrive. The deep thickets of spiky trees were all dead too, never knowing leaves or bloom, scorched long ago by some terrible heat. Animals would not go near the area, and it was said and believed by many that even the birds and insects went out of their way to avoid flying over Blackacre. Local gossip had it that the house and the land had a new owner, the latest of many, probably full of big-city ideas on how to reclaim the land and make it prosper again, to succeed where so many others had failed. Toby smiled tiredly. Some things should be left alone as a bad job. Whatever poor fool had been conned into buying the place would soon discover the truth the hard way. Blackacre was a money pit, a bottomless well you threw money into. Dead was dead, and best left undisturbed.
Sometimes the local kids would venture into the dark woods on a dare, but no one ever went near the farmhouse. Local builders wouldn’t have anything to do with the place either. Everyone knew the stories, the old stories handed down from father to son, not as entertainment but as a warning. Bad things happened to those who dared disturb Blackacre’s sullen rest.
Which made it all the more surprising when Toby suddenly realised that there were lights in some of the windows of Blackacre Farm. He pressed his face close to the carriage window, and watched intently as a dull yellow glow moved steadily from one upper-floor window to the next. Some damned fool must actually be staying there, in a rotten old building without power or heat or water. Toby shivered for a moment, though he couldn’t have said why. A dark figure appeared against a lit window. It stood very still, and Toby had a sudden horrid feeling that it was watching him, just as he was watching it. And then the light went out, and the figure was gone, and Blackacre Farm was dark and still again.
Toby’s upper lip was wet with sweat, and he brushed at it with a finger before settling back into his uncomfortably hard seat. He would soon be at his stop, and he wanted one last look at the woman sitting opposite him. She was reading The Times with great concentration, the broadsheet newspaper spread wide to put a barrier between herself and the world. In all the time they’d travelled on the same train, Toby had never seen the woman speak to anyone. Most of The Times’s front page was given over to a story about unusual new conditions on the surface of the sun. Toby squinted a little so he could read the text of the story without having to lean forward. Apparently of late a series of solar flares had been detected leaping out from the sun’s surface; the largest and most powerful flares since records began. There seemed no end to these flares, which were already playing havoc with the world’s weather and communications systems. Toby smiled. If the flares hadn’t been screwing up everyone’s television reception, such a story would never have made the front page. People only ever really cared about science when it bit them on the arse.
He looked away, and surreptitiously studied the woman’s face, reflected in the carriage window beside her. She was frowning slightly as she read, her perfect mouth slightly pursed. Not for the time first, Toby thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She had a classic face, with a strong bone structure and high cheekbones, and a great mane of jet-black hair fell in waves well past her shoulders. Her eyes were dark too, under heavy eyebrows, and her nose was just prominent enough to give character to her face without being distracting. For all her serious expression, there was still a smile tucked in one corner of her perfect mouth, almost in spite of herself.
She wore a pale blue suit, expertly cut but just short of power dressing, with the kind of quiet elegance that just shrieks money. There was no jewellery, no wedding ring. Looking at her was like diving into a deep pool of cool, clear water. Hard to tell her age. She was young, but still very much a woman rather than a girl, and there was something about her eyes that suggested she’d seen a thing or two in her time. Her fingers were long and slender, crinkling the edges of her newspaper where she held it firmly. Toby wondered what it would feel like, to be held firmly by those hands.
She changed her outfits regularly, and never looked less than stunning. But no one ever hit on her. No one ever tried to chat her up, or impress her with their charm and style, the kind of stuff attractive women always had to put up with, even if they wore a large sign saying, “Go away; I have Aids, leprosy and the Venusian dick rot, and besides I’m a lesbian”. Men would always try it on. Except no one ever did, with her. Toby could understand that. He’d been secretly admiring her for months, and still hadn’t worked up the courage to talk to her.
Sometimes he thought of her as the Ice Queen, from the old children’s story. In the fairy tale, a boy looked at the distant and beautiful Ice Queen, and a sliver of her ice flew into his eye. And from that moment on, he had no choice but to love her with all his heart, come what may. Toby was pretty sure the story ended badly for both the boy and the Ice Queen, but he preferred not to think about that. What mattered was that he and she were fated to be together. He was sure of it—mostly. He turned away to look at his own reflection in the window next to him, and sighed inwardly. He was hardly worthy of a queen. Hardly worthy of anything, really.
He often wondered who she was, really. What she did for a living; where she went when she left the railway station at Bradford-on-Avon, and why he never saw her anywhere else in town. Whether there was someone else in her life … To stop himself thinking about things like that, Toby often indulged himself with harmless little fantasies. On leaving the station she’d be accosted by some mugger, and he would bravely se
e the villain off and comfort her afterwards. Or maybe she’d stumble and break the heel on her shoe, and she’d have to lean on him as he escorted her home. All the fantasies ended in the same way, of course, with the two of them having amazing sex on some huge, luxurious bed. Always her place, rather than his. His place was a tip.
The train finally pulled into Bradford-on-Avon station, the carriage jerking to a halt in a series of sudden jolts as the driver hit the brake pedal just that little bit too hard. Toby often thought that train drivers went to a special school, where they were taught how to stop a train in the most distressing way possible—there was no way you could be this annoying without practice. Finally the train stopped, and everyone surged to their feet. Toby waited until the woman with the perfect mouth had closed and neatly folded her paper and stuck it under her arm, and then he rose to his feet as she did. They stood side by side as they waited for the automatic doors to open, but she didn’t even know he was there.
The doors opened, and a rush of passengers streamed out onto the narrow platform. Toby let the flow carry him along, as the crowd headed for the black iron gate that was the only way out of the station. (Being only a small station for a small town, the station building itself always closed at midday.) The air was suddenly cool and bracing as they filed out into the car park beyond, and Toby looked up to see the last of the summer sunshine swept away by dark, lowering clouds. At once the rain fell heavily, as though someone up above had just pulled out a plug, and the commuters ran for waiting cars and buses with shocked cries of surprise.
Toby tucked himself away under a convenient railway arch, and struggled with his stubbornly awkward umbrella. No waiting wife or family for him. The umbrella was a collapsible job, just right for his coat pocket; but every now and again it would refuse to open so he wouldn’t take it for granted. He could have made a dash for one of the waiting local buses, but unfortunately he was supposed to be on a diet. Eat less and exercise more—he didn’t know which one he detested most. Either way, his waistline was still expanding, so he had no choice but to walk home, regardless of the weather. If he started allowing himself to make excuses, he’d never get any exercise. He knew himself too well.
Cars were already jostling for position as they fought their way out of the car park, as though it mattered one jot whether they got home in twenty minutes rather than fifteen. The two local buses were revving their engines impatiently as the last few commuters climbed aboard, filling the wet air with heavy exhaust fumes. It was Friday, the beginning of the weekend, and everyone was eager to start celebrating finishing the working week. They’d all survived another run of nine-to-fives, and now they couldn’t wait to forget it all in pubs and at parties, dinners and clubs, and with special treats they’d been promising themselves. Or perhaps they just wanted to get home, bury themselves in the bosom of their family and batten down the hatches for two precious days of small domestic things. Toby had no plans. He was tired of pubs, of the same conversations with the same people, and no one invited men like Toby to dinner parties. There were no clubs or parties on the horizon, and no one at home to care whether he was in or not. Toby often felt that life was passing him by, while he reached out with desperate fingers for someone to throw him a lifeline.
Soon enough all the cars and buses were gone, and a blessed peace fell over the car park as a small scatter of pedestrians trudged off homewards through the increasingly heavy downpour. There was an unseasonal chill now to the early-evening air, and overhead the sky was almost pitch-black. Toby fought his umbrella and the umbrella fought back, just to spite him. But Toby was dogged and determined and quite prepared to beat the umbrella against the nearest wall until it realised he was serious, and finally it gave in and sprang open with bad grace. Toby relaxed a little as the rain drummed loudly on the stretched black cloth over his head. The walk home was tedious enough without having to do it soaking wet. And it was only then that he noticed he wasn’t alone.
The woman with the most perfect mouth in the world was standing not ten feet away from him, holding her folded paper above her head, and glaring about her as though the rain was a personal affront. Her light blue suit was no match for a downpour, for all its expensive elegance, and it was clear she’d be soaked through before she could even get out of the car park. Toby could hardly believe his luck. It was raining, she was stranded, and he … he had an umbrella! All he had to do was walk over to her, casually offer to share his umbrella, and they could just walk off together. It would be perfectly natural for them to get talking, and maybe agree to meet later, so she could … thank him properly. He might even finally find out her name. If he could just bring himself to cross the gaping abyss of the ten feet that separated them.
Toby stepped forward into the rain, and then watched in utter amazement as the woman glanced at the station house, not even seeing him, and snapped her fingers imperiously. The sound seemed to hang on the air, impossibly loud and distinct against the din of the driving rain, as she strode towards a door in the station-house wall that Toby was sure as hell hadn’t been there the moment before. He’d been buying his ticket here for years, on and off, and there had only ever been the one door, and one way in. Only now there were two doors, side by side. The woman pushed at the second door and it swung open before her, revealing only darkness.
And all through the car park, and perhaps all through the world, everything stopped. The noise of the town and the rain was suddenly gone, as though someone had just thrown a switch. The silence was so complete that Toby could hear his breathing and his heartbeat. The rain was stopped, every drop suspended in mid-air, glistening and shining with a strange inner light. It seemed as though nothing was moving in the whole damned world but Toby and the woman before him. The air was full of anticipation, of imminence, of something vitally important balanced on the edge of becoming. There was a feeling deep in Toby’s bones and in his water that, perhaps for the first time in his life, what he did next mattered.
The woman walked through the door that shouldn’t be there, disappearing into the darkness beyond, and the door slowly began to close behind her. Toby ran forward, desperate not to lose his chance with her, and plunged through the narrowing doorway. The door closed behind him with a loud, definite sound, and in that moment, everything changed.
For ever.
Toby stepped through the door and found himself standing in the car park again, with the station building behind him. He stopped dead, and blinked a few times. The feeling that the world was holding its breath was gone, but something new and rather more frightening had taken its place. The car park looked just as it had done before, and the distant sounds of the town had returned, but it was no longer raining. It was bright and sunny, with a clear blue sky and not even a trace of dampness on the ground. Everything looked just as it normally did, but everything felt different. And the woman with the perfect mouth was standing right in front of him, studying him silently with an unreadable expression on her face.
“You really shouldn’t have done that,” she said finally, and her voice was everything he could have hoped for: deep, warm, music to the ears.
“Done what?” said Toby. “I mean … what just happened here? Where are we?”
“In the magical world. It’s all around you, all the time, but most people choose not to see it, for the sake of a sane and simple life. But sometimes people from the everyday world find their way here by accident. Go where they shouldn’t, follow someone they shouldn’t … and then nothing can ever be the same again.” She looked at him almost sadly. “You now have a foot in both worlds; in the real world of Veritie, and the magical world of Mysterie. And it’s a dangerous thing, to be a mortal man in a world of magic.”
“OK,” said Toby. “Hold everything. Let’s start with some basics. I’m Toby Dexter. Who are you?”
“I’m Gayle. I should have noticed you were here, but I was … distracted. The weather was supposed to be sunny all day. There wasn’t even a chance of rain. And I am nev
er wrong about these things. But today something changed, in your world and in mine, and it worries me that I can’t see how or why such an impossible thing should happen. Why did you follow me, Toby Dexter?”
“I wanted to talk to you. Ask you if you’d like to go out, for dinner, or something …”
Gayle smiled and shook her head. “I’m afraid that’s quite impossible.”
“Oh,” said Toby, disappointed but not incredibly surprised. “Well; I suppose I’ll see you around.”
“Yes,” said Gayle. “I’m rather afraid you will.”
She turned and walked off into the bright sunny evening, and didn’t look back once. Toby stood there, with his dripping umbrella, and there was no sign of rain anywhere at all.
TWO
THE REALITY EXPRESS
A ghost train is coming to Bradford-on-Avon, thundering down the tracks, puffing smoke and steam. It is coming in the early hours of the morning, long before the dawn, in the hour of the wolf; the hour when most babies are born and most people die, when no train is scheduled to run.
A great black iron train, with hot steam raging in its boiler, avatar of a different age, it fills the night air with dirty smoke and flying cinder flecks, pulling old-fashioned carriages that bear names from companies long since vanished into the mists of history. The heavy black iron of the train’s body is scored all over with runes and sigils and names of power. The great wheels are solid silver, striking singing sparks from the steel tracks. The smoke billowing from the tall black stack smells of brimstone, and the whistle is the cry of a damned soul. The train plunges headlong through the night, faster than any train has a right to go, ancient or modern. The carriages shake and sway, rattling along behind, the windows illuminated with the eerie blue glow of underwater grottos. The Reality Express is coming into town, right on time.