He walked on into Church Street and it seemed to him that there were a lot of people around, even for a Saturday morning. What was more, quite a few of them seemed to be looking at him strangely. Which was odd, because this was, after all, his home town, he a Bradfordian born and bred, and he was, if nothing else, a familiar face to most people. He checked himself unobtrusively, for spilled food or undone flies, but all seemed to be in order. He lifted his chin a little and stared back, and everyone looked away again.
It occurred to him that he was a bit short of money, so he stopped at the cash machine in the wall outside his bank. But even as he was fumbling in his coat pocket for his cash card and mentally rehearsing his pin number, the cash machine suddenly spoke to him.
“Oh, you needn’t bother with that, dear. It’s only money. How much do you want?”
Toby froze with his hand still in his pocket, and then looked quickly about him. There was no one else anywhere nearby. He looked reluctantly back at the glowing computer screen before him. Instead of the usual green lettering, there were two yellow circles that might have been eyes, and a wide curve for a smile. As he watched, the smile widened, and one of the eyes winked at him. Toby cleared his throat.
“Uh … hello?”
“Hello there! Isn’t it a simply super morning?”
“Am I speaking to a machine … or something?”
“Oh, something, dear, definitely something. You just tell me how much you need, and I will shower you with largesse.”
“Is this some kind of joke?” said Toby, after a pause. “One of those hidden camera jobs? Because I never thought they were funny, even when I was just watching them.”
“No joke, sweetie,” said the cash machine briskly. “You can have as much as you can carry away, and do you know why? Because I like your face!”
“Maybe I didn’t get up this morning,” Toby said wistfully. “Maybe I’m still in bed, and dreaming all this. It would explain a lot.”
“Oh no, this isn’t The Dreaming. That’s next door but one.”
“And you … want to give me money?”
“Of course! Have as much as you want! I’ve got lots!”
And the cash machine sprayed banknotes into the air, tens and twenties shooting out in a great stream of multicoloured paper, fluttering to the ground like so many leaves in autumn. Toby stood there gaping. He’d never seen so much money in one place in his life, and there seemed no end to it. He finally grabbed a few handfuls in self-defence, and then decided that this was just too damned weird, and quite likely to get him arrested as well. He stuffed the notes in his pocket without even looking at them, and hurried off down the street, not looking back once. Behind him, banknotes slowly gathered in a pile on the pavement as the cash machine sang mournfully to itself.
Toby decided very firmly that he needed a drink. In fact, he quite probably needed several drinks, one after the other, and perhaps a swift slap to the side of the head while he was at it. He hadn’t been so confused since that gorgeous blonde in the wine bar turned out to have a flat male chest under the padded bra. He headed straight for the Dandy Lion, in many ways his second home. He waited agitatedly at the pedestrian crossing, and nearly lost it again when a shocking-pink Rolls-Royce cruised past, and a strangely familiar aristocratic female face looked out of the window and smiled sweetly at him. Toby averted his eyes. Maybe if he just refused to accept all this weirdness, it would go away and bother someone else.
He dived across the road at the first chance he got, and hurried into the pub. Once again, everything looked the same, but the place was full of people he didn’t recognise, many of whom stopped talking to stare at him as he paused in the doorway. Toby squared his shoulders and headed determinedly for the bar. This was getting ridiculous. People slowly started talking again as he ordered his usual pint of bitter from the familiar face behind the bar. For once, wonder of wonders, the jukebox was actually playing something worth listening to. But as Toby listened, he felt the strangeness creeping over him again. It was quite definitely a Beatles song, but not one he’d ever heard before. And Toby was a Beatles fanatic. He had everything they’d ever done, including quite a few of the bootlegs. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he realised that this was no early Hamburg tape; this was Lennon and McCartney at the height of their songwriting powers. Singing a song he’d never heard before …
His pint arrived. He paid for it automatically and took a good hard drink. And then he stopped, considered, and took another, slower drink. It was good. Damn, it was good, the best bitter beer he’d ever tasted. And most especially one hell of a lot better than the stuff he usually drank. Must be a new brand. He was about to ask the barmaid when someone called his name in a sharp, commanding voice.
He looked around and there was Carys Galloway, sitting tucked away in her usual corner, underneath the stairs leading up to the restaurant floor. Toby smiled, relief washing over him. It was good to see that some things hadn’t changed, on this most unusual of days. Carys spent more time in the Dandy Lion than he did. She was the foremost gossip of the whole town, a title not easily gained, and if anyone knew why today was acting as if it had got its medication mixed up, it would be Carys Galloway. She knew everything. Or at least, the few things she didn’t know weren’t usually worth the knowing.
Toby hurried over to join her at her usual table, and for the first time ever it occurred to him to wonder about Carys. It seemed as though she had always been around, sitting in her gloomy corner, always ready to lend an ear, to sort out a problem, or just to swap gossip about everyone and everything. There was no malice in Carys. She just liked to know things, and she liked to share what she knew with people she felt she could trust. Always cheerful, always smiling … That was it. Toby’s pace slowed as he realised what it was that looked different about Carys this morning. For the first time in all the years Toby had known her, Carys wasn’t smiling. In fact, Toby thought, as he sat gingerly down opposite her, Carys looked very different today.
It was the same familiar face, with its sharp chin and prominent cheekbones, and more than a hint of ethnic gypsy. Dark russet hair fell in thick ringlets to her shoulders and beyond, and her eyes were so dark and huge you felt you could fall into them and drown for ever. Her long bony hands, the fingers heavily knuckled, were weighed down with rings of gold and silver set with unfamiliar gems. She had an unconventionally pretty face, that of a woman who could have been anything from her twenties to her forties. She always wore traditional Romany clothes, gypsy chic, complete with necklaces and bangles. Quite a romantic figure, usually.
But today she looked … harsher. Brighter. More intense. Almost overpoweringly there, as though she was the only thing, the only person that mattered in the whole place.
Toby tried to say something, but his mouth was suddenly dry. Up close, Carys actually looked forbidding; like one of the Fates, the Norns of Scandinavian lore, the wise women who measure out the threads of our lives and cut them off when they reach their end. But as Toby settled himself opposite her, he realised suddenly that the restlessness, the pressure, the need that had driven him from his bed and from his house, was gone. Finally he felt that he was where he was supposed to be. Toby put his pint glass down on the table top with unnecessary force and looked hard at Carys Galloway.
Even though he was quaking inside, because some part of him didn’t want to hear what he knew she was going to tell him.
“All right, Carys; what’s gone on? Why is everything in the town so … different? The whole place is like Bradford-on-Crack. And why is everybody looking at me? Am I paranoid, or did the whole damned world change overnight while I was asleep?”
“No,” said Carys, her voice only a little amused. “You aren’t being paranoid.”
“Oh, shit,” said Toby, slumping in his seat. “I could have coped with being paranoid. OK; hit me with it, whatever it is.”
“You have become part of the magical world,” said Carys, her dark eyes holding his. “
You have left Veritie and now you are in Mysterie, a place of marvels and wonders, banes and malignancies. You are living in a much larger world now, Toby Dexter, by your own choice, and you must widen your mind to accept it.”
“Is everyone here magical?” said Toby. “Are you?”
“I’m more than magical. I’m older than the town. They call me the Waking Beauty, because I never sleep. Ever.”
“Ah. So … am I magical now?”
Carys looked at him hard. “No.”
Toby nodded glumly. “I thought not.”
“But you’re not entirely real any more, either.” Carys frowned. “You have a foot in both worlds. You could stay human, by returning to Veritie, or you could stay here and become magical. You must make your own choice. But beware; whatever choice you eventually make will have consequences: for you, for everyone. For all the worlds that be. You have become important, you poor bastard! You met someone yesterday, someone of great significance. Because of her, you are now aware of the magical world, and it is becoming aware of you.”
“It was her,” said Toby. “Gayle. I should never have followed her through that door.”
“But you did, and that changed everything. You must pursue Gayle, for your destiny and hers are now irrevocably linked. She won’t like that any more than you, but destiny’s often funny that way. Gayle lives close by. I will give you directions. What happens next is up to you.”
“I don’t believe in destiny,” Toby said flatly.
“Tough. It believes in you.”
“OK,” said Toby. “I’ll go and talk to her. What’s her other name?”
“She is only what she is, whatever name she might be using. Hers is a most singular nature.”
“Ah. Am I supposed to understand any of that?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, what makes her so important?” said Toby, almost desperately. “And what on earth makes you think I might be important? I’ve never mattered much to anyone, not even myself.”
“Self-pity suits you,” said Carys. “But you’ll have to put it aside. It’s too small an emotion for what you are now.”
“What am I?”
Carys leaned forward, fixing Toby with her dark, bottomless gaze. “You are a focal point, Toby Dexter. The patterns of fate surround you. Your role in things has been decided where everything that matters is decided, in the Courts of the Immaterial. And neither you nor anyone else has any say in the matter. The decisions you make in the next few days will be vital, for all of us … though I cannot see what or when or why. Which is in itself almost unprecedented. Whatever’s coming must be momentous indeed, if it is hidden even from me.”
“Is this … going to be dangerous? For me?”
“Very.”
“And there’s no way out of it?”
Carys leaned back in her chair, her face suddenly guarded. Her bangles made soft, eerie clanking sounds as she crossed her arms. “You could try to walk away from your fate; insist on your humanity, at the cost of everything else. Few things are set in stone. But to walk away from the role chosen for you would mean walking away from Gayle. You could never see her, never speak to her again. Only you can decide how much that matters.”
Toby nodded slowly. “Give me the directions. I’ll go and talk to her. And then I’ll decide … what I’ll decide.”
Carys smiled. Gayle turned out to be living almost literally just around the corner from the Dandy Lion. Somehow Toby wasn’t entirely surprised. He got to his feet, looked briefly at his pint glass and then left it standing on the table. At the thought of meeting Gayle again, his stomach was suddenly full of butterflies. Dancing. With clogs on.
“One last word of advice,” said Carys. “You be careful around Gayle. She’s more than she appears. Hell; she’s more than anyone appears.”
“But you’re not going to tell me what,” said Toby. “I’m getting really tired of mysteries, Carys. It was only by accident that I followed Gayle through that magic door of hers last evening.”
“There are no accidents,” said Carys Galloway, the Waking Beauty.
“Some things are just meant to be. Now get out of here, and let the rest of us drink in peace.”
Meanwhile, back in the real world, in Veritie, where she lived entirely by choice, Gayle was reluctantly getting out of her very comfortable bed. Thank the good Lord for snooze alarms. She could sleep through or ignore one alarm, but half a dozen in a row would have had Lazarus himself stomping out of his tomb to complain about the noise. Gayle stood naked before her full-length bedroom mirror and thought, not for the first time, that she looked pretty good, all things considered. Bit of a tummy, and the breasts weren’t everything they once were, but you could say that about a lot of things these days. The world turns, and we all get just that little bit older. She pulled on a white silk wraparound, made a few half-hearted stabs at doing something with her hair, and then decided it was far too early for shit like that. She padded downstairs, stifling a yawn behind one elegant hand, and picked up the post and the morning papers from the welcome mat.
The post was the usual junk mail and a handful of bills. Didn’t these people have anything better to do than pester her for the few paltry sums she owed them? Wasn’t there a law against demanding money with menaces? She’d get round to them. Eventually. When she damned well felt like it. And as for the entirely unsolicited junk mail: You may already have won a major prize! How about: You may already have felled irreplaceable rain forests, just to make the paper this crap is printed on, dickhead? God help you if the South American Indians ever discover voodoo. Maybe she should send them a few useful instructional books on the subject … They really liked the last one, on how to make explosives out of everyday kitchen products. She still got letters. Gayle sighed, and dropped the lot into a nearby waste-basket.
She took a quick look at the main headlines in the morning papers. Gayle took The Times, the Guardian, and the Independent, covering the main political positions. She had no use for tabloids. She wanted information, not gossip. If she really wanted to know who was sleeping with whom, she’d ask Carys Galloway. The headlines were surprisingly quiet for once. Most of them were still wittering on about the continuing weird weather, that might or might not be the result of disturbances on the sun’s surface. Gayle folded the Independent and tucked it under her arm, and laid the others on the side table for later.
First things first. She went into the downstairs toilet, undid her wrap and settled herself comfortably on the porcelain throne. (One good thing about not living with a man; you didn’t have to keep checking whether he’d left the seat up.) She opened the newspaper to the political pages, supported the weight of the paper on her thighs, and sighed contentedly as she felt the first stirrings in her bowels. Ah … Quality Time.
Afterwards, she considered breakfast. Normally all her meals were lengthy affairs. Gayle liked to cook and she liked to eat, and breakfast was, after all, one of the most important meals of the day. Everyone said that. Maybe sausage, bacon and eggs; a cholesterol special. But the more she thought about it, the more she thought she’d better get dressed first. She wasn’t expecting anyone, but she had a strong feeling company was coming.
So, back to the bedroom. Gayle chose a long, dark green dress with a white leather belt; comfortable, but still presentable. Flat shoes, no tights. It was Saturday, after all. Slap on some basic make-up (heavy make-up was for women with no faces of their own), and then attack her hair with a hairbrush until it sulkily assumed some shape and sense. She looked in the mirror. She looked good. In fact, for this early on a Saturday morning, she looked damned good. Relaxed, informal, chic. Heartbreaker, even. She laughed, blew a kiss at the mirror and went downstairs again, humming an old Jacobean protest song. Whoever was coming to see her, they’d better be worth it. By her own choice, Gayle didn’t get many visitors. If she needed to see someone, she paid them a visit, whether they wanted to see her or not. Humming quite loudly now, she floated around her kitchen put
ting together a hearty, organic, free-range breakfast. She laid the table for two, using the good crockery, and remembered to put the milk in the milk jug. She made a good strong pot of tea, and stirred it briskly with the end of a spoon. (Stir with a knife, stir in strife.) She stood back to take a look, and the doorbell rang, right on cue. Gayle went to answer the door. Whoever it was, they’d better have a really good reason for needing to see her.
Outside the front door, Toby was in serious danger of hyperventilating. His heart was hammering in his chest, his breathing was short and rapid, and the butterflies in his stomach were kicking the hell out of each other. He just hoped he wasn’t sweating as well. Toby always found meeting new people socially rather difficult. Especially if they were women. Really attractive women he’d only worked up the courage to talk to yesterday. It didn’t help that she was, apparently, a for-real magical creature of great significance to one and all, and that he and she were destined or fated or cursed to become involved with each other. Toby wasn’t at all sure how he felt about that. His life might not be much, but he liked to believe he was in charge of it. He’d stopped along the way to buy half a dozen long-stemmed roses, for a frankly extortionate price, and hoped they’d serve as a peace offering, at least to show that his heart was in the right place.
How much longer before she was going to answer the bell? It had taken him ages to work up the courage to press the bloody thing, and now she was taking for ever to answer it. He debated whether to ring the bell again, but decided against it. It might make him seem impatient, even aggressive. Not a good first impression. There was always the chance she wasn’t in. Who said Carys had to be infallible? Toby was almost relieved at the thought that Gayle might be out. Then he wouldn’t have to go through with … this. But all he had to do was remember all those times he’d sat opposite her on the train … and the thought of meeting her again brought a daft, happy smile to his lips and a spring to his heart.