And now here I was, standing at a distance and staring at a small palace, its stonework held in place by an outer layer of wooden planks and beams to prevent it from collapsing. It looked like Noah’s ark.
Oliå had told me that it was sinking into the sea, and that nobody was able to go inside any more. At the time I didn’t believe her, but now I could see she was right: the house must have sunk by two or three metres in the last few years. At water level, there was just the top of a door and some windows where the river rushed in. The upper floors were waiting their turn behind the wooden carapace.
I carried out my first check at nine o’clock in the morning. Since the night before, I’d felt a little unsettled, as though I were straddling two worlds. There was the world that existed beneath my feet and in the air around me: the cobblestones of Venice’s quaysides, the wind, the aroma of coffee and the scent of jasmine in the streets. And then there was the other one: that of the story world, the Kingdoms that the girl had granted me a glimpse of, and which appeared all the more real because it was new to me.
I felt feverish, weightless, all at sea.
Oliå’s instructions were to wait until the following night before entering Pearl’s house, but she’d also advised me to scout the premises beforehand. She went to great pains to stress the precautions I needed to take: play the tourist, don’t stop outside the palace and use the maze of streets and alleys to shake off the enemy.
The enemy. I’d quivered with pleasure on hearing that word: Oliå was putting me in the same camp as her. For the first time, we shared a common enemy. We stood together.
But after I’d left her to pace the streets by myself, and as the shutters started to bang in the evening wind, I remembered the blood-soaked arrows of the archers, and suddenly I was less keen on our enemies.
The following afternoon, I returned for one last look. She had mentioned a walkway to me, and this time I spotted it. There were some wooden beams running along the façade just below the waterline, and it looked possible to walk along them barefoot in order to reach a small square of planks nailed together that I could see higher up. Oliå had told me that this was in fact an opening which lifted up like a catflap; from time to time she would secretly leave a basket of supplies there for Pearl. She said that if a basket or a cat could fit through the gap, then so could I, which didn’t strike me as being entirely logical.
Once night had fallen, I found myself squeezed in amongst the other passengers on the boat that was bringing me closer to Pearl. I was thinking back to the fourteen-year-old boy who had followed the trail of blood into the dark woods one day. That boy was me. That trail had in fact been left by me. And perhaps today was just another instance of me inventing mysteries.
I tallied up the proof I had at my disposal. There was almost none: only a girl who resembled another girl, some photographs of a few suitcases and an epic story deep within me.
It was almost midnight, and the other passengers were returning from dinner. Their laughter filled the boat. For them, the party was still in full swing. I wasn’t the only one drifting between two worlds. Each of them had their own secrets, their own stories that nobody else believed. Was there a single being on-board who could honestly say they’d never fallen in love with a fairy or a banished prince? We were all the same. Stories create us.
But I was the only person to disembark at the next stop; the boat danced on merrily.
I often thought about the last of those hundred photographs, the one that showed the bow of a boat. I’d assumed this was a return to the source; to the house on the river. What I hadn’t realized was that the boat was bound for Venice.
I made a few obligatory detours down alleyways and over bridges, before stopping in front of the palace. With a final glance to check the dark-windowed houses, the water and quays around me, I pulled off my shoes and slid one foot onto the submerged walkway. The only lantern was a hundred metres ahead, but I could just see my feet in the inky water below. I approached the flap and immediately realized I wasn’t going to fit through.
What happened in the next few seconds meant I had no time to come up with another plan. Something fell from the sky just above me, followed by two tiny splashes at my feet. Were they tiles tumbling from the roof? Either that or they were arrows. I didn’t wait to find out, launching myself into the canal and swimming along to find another way into the building.
I groped around and soon discovered a submerged window frame: I tucked my head in, dived down and pulled my body through it. When I emerged on the other side, gasping for breath, everything was pitch black. I realized I must be inside the palace, in the middle of a room that had been flooded by the canal. I had to keep kicking so that my head stayed above water. The whole experience reminded me of my first encounter with Pearl in the rushing river: the dark, the cold, the fear.
I still didn’t know whether I had fled from arrows or roof tiles, but whatever they were, someone had been responsible for them falling. Someone was besieging the palace.
Swimming clumsily, I managed to edge my way along one of the walls. My body was stiff with exhaustion, and I couldn’t find anything to cling on to. Eventually, after fumbling just below the surface, I found an opening. I was reluctant to go any further into this crumbling wreck, but in the end I had little choice other than to dive down again and be guided by the arched ceiling of a corridor. As I pushed aside the floating chairs and other bits of scattered debris, the passage suddenly widened.
I felt as if I were suffocating, and thrust my head out of the water. That’s when I saw him.
He was standing, slingshot in hand, towards the top of a stone staircase that opened into a vast room. At his feet blazed a large pot filled with oil or pitch, that lit up his face as he stared at me floundering in the water.
Despite the inevitable signs of the passing of time, it was what hadn’t changed about him that fascinated me the most. He was the same man, with the same look in his eyes. I pulled myself up onto the steps below him.
“Don’t you recognize me?”
But Pearl didn’t answer. I could see a lead pellet the size of a fist in his slingshot.
“A long time ago, I came to your house. The photographs, the dogs… Do you remember?”
“You took back the box?”
“I was given it.”
“By whom?”
Ever since the first day, Pearl had known there was someone in his shadow. He had learnt not to be surprised by it. But why did his guardian angel insist on putting this boy in his path every twenty-five years? He crouched down to look at me.
I was cold, my clothes were clinging to my body and my shoes were nowhere to be seen. I could tell that Pearl was trying to understand, to glean some usefulness from this spluttering creature that kept on dropping into his life, like a fly in his soup.
As the wind whistled through the palace, Pearl looked up, listening to each sound in the dark.
“They’ve found me,” he murmured. “For a long time, they sent men in twos or threes. I escaped every time. But today, there’s one up there who has found me.”
He rolled the slingshot around his wrist.
“This one is taking his time. He paces across the surrounding rooftops. He’s been preparing for at least four days. He’s alone. He’s different. He means to be the last.”
Pearl carried on up the staircase and I followed him, discovering the house as I went. Burning pots marked a path between walls lined with shadowy silk. Oliå had described in great detail the summer palace where it had all begun, but this was an eternal palace. I could understand why someone would choose to shut himself in here forever. Each room opened onto the next in long vertical vistas of steep staircases and vaulted ceilings patterned with gold.
The palace was marvellous to behold: as dark and enclosed as a tomb, brimming with alcoves, upholstered seats and beds hidden away in velvet dens. I felt guilty walking around barefoot, embarrassed about my sodden clothes dripping on the carpets. I followed Pea
rl into the great hall, and it was then that I saw the suitcases.
There were far fewer than before. They formed a cube, pulled tight inside the fisherman’s net I recognized from the photographs. This was all that remained of his treasure trove; all he’d been able to salvage after so many years on the run. These were his tokens of proof from the story world. And his evidence that fairies exist.
Pearl passed behind the enormous linen curtain that divided the room in half. Behind him, two tall windows extended from floor to ceiling. Their panes, boarded up with planks on the outside, glinted in the light of the torches.
I had joined him on the other side of the curtain. From the window, he removed a triangle of glass no larger than his hand, and gently pushed one of the planks aside. A draft raised the linen curtain.
“He’s here. He’s coming in now,” Pearl said, turning round.
I took a step back, not quite understanding.
It was as if the old man were seeing a ghost as he watched the curtain flapping above the floor.
“The draft means that someone has forced an opening elsewhere in the palace.”
He turned to look at me.
“When my dogs rescued you all those years ago, I thought about telling you everything…”
His eyes seemed to fill with regret.
“I know almost everything now,” I tried to reassure him.
He hadn’t moved.
“I know about the clouds of mosquitoes on the lake, about your brother Iån, about the storm that brought you into this world, and about Maison Pearl in Paris…”
No sooner had I said the word “storm” than a first clap of thunder resounded behind the windows.
“Who sent you?”
“You need to tell me the parts I don’t know. That’s why I’ve come.”
We were back by the suitcases on the far side of the curtain. He looked at me with a weariness I had never expected to read on his face.
“It’s too late now.”
In the space of three seconds, the three torches lighting up the room were extinguished. All that remained was the glow from behind the curtain.
The fourth arrow was aimed at Joshua Pearl.
33
THE LAST ARCHER
He ducked and rolled to one side as the arrow flew just over our heads. Pearl dragged me backwards behind some paintings propped against the wall, forming a sort of makeshift tunnel at floor level. From our canvas hideout, the archer was nowhere to be seen.
“I am old,” whispered Pearl. “I won’t be able to fight for much longer. But you must stay alive.”
“I’ll help you,” I replied.
“The only way you can help me is by staying alive.”
I sensed from the desperation in Pearl’s voice that he thought nothing could return him to the Kingdoms now. When a man dies he takes with him the spells that were cast on him, unless those spells are undone beforehand. And Pearl thought he was about to die.
But he did have one hope: that this story of love and exile, this story with its unhappy ending, might one day be told. Stories can’t bring back the dead, but they can make their love immortal.
I felt his hand gripping my arm, and I realized that he was willing to risk anything.
“Don’t move,” he said.
“You must stay alive too. I know she’s waiting for you in the Kingdoms.”
He stared at me for a moment as if I were the one from another world; as if I – and not he – had fallen from the sky one stormy evening. Then he flung himself through a hail of arrows towards the suitcases.
The archer had extinguished the torches in the great hall so that we could no longer see him, but he had a clear view of his target: Pearl was silhouetted against the thin linen curtain that divided the room into two equal halves.
I wanted to go behind this screen and extinguish the last sources of light: the dark would help Pearl escape his assassin. But just as I was about to leave my hiding place, I saw the archer slide closer. He hadn’t noticed me, but I could see his silhouette on the other side of the curtain, which was glowing like a yellow screen.
The storm was rumbling outside, shaking the wooden planks which clanked against the walls of the palace. The archer scoured the room, his bow slung across his body, his sword drawn and glinting in the twilight.
Suddenly, I saw Joshua Pearl stand up behind the pile of suitcases. He was holding an altogether flimsier weapon, a sort of musketeer’s fencing foil that I remember photographing at the house by the river. The two men stared at each other. Pearl stepped forward and began to speak in a language I didn’t understand, but which sprang from his lips like a poem.
The other man remained silent. With his chest thrust forward and his blade pointing at the floor, Pearl appeared to be challenging him to a fair fight.
He uttered a few more of those strange words, while the unknown assassin had his back to the glowing curtain. Although I couldn’t see the archer’s face, he seemed to be as old as Pearl. He lowered his sword in what I thought to be a sign of peace. Then, just as calmly, he moved his bow into position, plucked an arrow from his back and fitted it on the string, which he pulled taut towards him. He took aim.
The arrow embedded itself in Pearl’s arm, and his stage sword clattered to the floor, his eyes burning with pain. He watched as the archer methodically prepared his second arrow. I was numb with horror, incapable even of crying out.
How can I describe what happened next? I can only say that it felt like divine justice.
One of the two floor-length windows suddenly shattered behind the curtain. The room filled with the sounds of thunder, splintering wood and shattered glass, as the rain came sluicing in sideways.
The archer was rooted to the spot. Behind him, the light was dancing across the screen.
I thought the whole of heaven was wreaking its vengeance, but no, it was a living shadow that entered with this hurricane: a shadow cast by the torch still blazing behind the linen curtain; the shadow of a diminutive dancer that I alone recognized.
Oliå had leapt from a rooftop on the opposite side of the canal to hurl herself against the palace’s worm-eaten exterior. Crashing through the wood and glass, she plunged into the midst of the chaos.
She was the avenging angel.
Pearl was still on his feet, his sleeve soaked in blood. He had torn the arrow from his arm, and was now watching the shadow-play projected onto the curtain.
The archer had turned to discover that the dancer’s shadow was also armed with a bow. But no sooner was he aiming to release another arrow through the fabric, than the shape dissolved on the white screen.
With a mighty kick, Oliå had knocked over the only remaining torch and sent it rolling underneath the curtain to the other side, where it came to a halt behind the assassin’s feet. The flame kept on burning, and now the archer’s shadow, not Oliå’s, was framed on the curtain like a target. His bow was still drawn back, but he no longer had any idea where to aim.
And at that very moment I saw the tip of an arrow pierce the linen from the other side, right in the middle of the shadow. It burst through the fabric with a faint ripping sound and raced towards the archer.
Oliå had aimed for the heart.
The archer remained upright for a few seconds, then collaspsed. As his body foundered, he snuffed out the last torch. A little further away I could barely make out Pearl, who had himself fallen to his knees.
But a spark from the torch had set the great linen curtain ablaze, and it was burning now from the bottom up like a sheet of paper. I felt as though I were seeing a theatre curtain rise, as the stage lights came up. In a matter of seconds, Oliå would appear before Pearl’s eyes and everything would be over. It was imperative he didn’t see her.
When the curtain had finished burning, all that could be seen was a deserted battlefield, a bow lying on the rubble and a shattered window. Ash was raining down, but the fire hadn’t spread to the wooden beams.
I ran towards the windo
w and leant out. The storm was still raging over the city. As a bolt of lightning lit up the sky, just below me I could see a tiny patch of white foam. She had dived in. I imagined her breathing hard as she swam, her body darting through the murky water.
Pearl had crawled over to the archer, and I went to join him in the flickering light of the storm. He was deep in thought next to the body, and seemed to have forgotten about his wounded arm.
I crouched beside him and whispered, “You said he was the last archer.”
“Yes.”
“So the war is over,” I said. “He’s dead.”
“Yes.”
We stayed there for several minutes with the wind and rain lashing through the window.
“How do you know he was the last?” I asked.
His hands were spread on the wooden floor next to the white hair on the dead man’s head.
“Because he was my brother.”
All of a sudden, as if in a dream, I saw a land freed from its tyrant; a realm whose ravaged people were waiting on the shoreline opposite an abandoned palace. And I could see, high up on a cliffface, a cave open to the sea, with the motionless bodies of two fifteen year olds, one beside the other. Iliån and Oliå.
As you read these words, something has moved in the windswept tomb. Their hands are not yet touching, but their lips part to let in the air. Their nostrils flare and catch the scent of the saffron that clings to the rocks. And, if you’re willing to believe me, the two bodies will soon be stretching out their stiff limbs and each will hear the sound of the other breathing.
They are about to open their eyes. He watches as she turns her whole body towards him. They bide their time a while yet. How long have they been asleep?
The prince has now reached the age when he can become king. In a moment, the girl will at last begin to grow older, in accordance with the slow passage of time in the fairytale world.
Together they will rebuild a palace of reeds by the lake, with walls of woven willow; and in winter the surface will ice over so that herds of reindeer can cross it.
In the evenings, they will tell stories to their children who have rowed home across the lake, after building dams among the irises by the source. Stories of kingdoms like their own: the tale of a cat and his boots, of a girl with a bright red hood, or a king driven mad by grief. But their favourite ones will always come from a far-off world inhabited by marshmallow-sellers, a land of wars and creaking crayfish beneath wooden pontoons.