The Wind of Southmore Page 5

  “Really?”

  “Of course,” Arlen laughed. “You’re my sister, aren’t you?” She leapt up and grasped a shell that lay on a seat-shaped stone by the miniature waterfall. “I hereby grant you half of everything in this palace,” she declared, her voice almost singing in the shimmering halls of the room. “All its wonders and belongings – from now to forevermore,” and she gently dubbed her sister’s head and shoulders with its spiralled point.

  “I thank you, kind lady,” Alice rose and bowed in appreciation. It all seemed so unreal, so like a book, that she burst out laughing. Arlen stared at her for a few moments, unsure as to whether the laughter was directed at her, and then, seemingly satisfied, began to laugh herself, until the pair finally collapsed on two rock benches in the streaming glow of the skylight.

  As Alice gazed around her, something suddenly struck her as odd. “Why is this underground lake fresh?” she asked, curiously. “I would have thought it would be salt water in here.”

  “I know,” Arlen answered, sobering immediately. “I don’t know what causes it. But it certainly didn’t come from this ocean.” She shivered. “I’m glad. I wouldn’t want it to. I wouldn’t want to be a part of it if it had.”

  “I know what you mean,” Alice agreed. “I’ve only been here a few days, but there’s something – forbidding – about it, isn’t there? It’s so calm and glassy on the surface, and yet you can just imagine the – darkness underneath. The trouble.” Arlen agreed silently, as a cold breeze seemed to infiltrate and float around them. It was out there, waiting, somewhere beneath that surface. She didn’t know why she hadn’t mentioned the dancers, or the girl, who looked so like them both. Perhaps Alice would think she was crazy, a result of her isolated upbringing and an overactive imagination. She bit her lip, wondering what to say, when three sharp cracks sounded like knocks against the wall. Both girls, jumped, startled, and Alice reached for her sister in a panic. But nothing followed the harsh raps. The breeze died down, and the scene grew silent once more. Yet the spell was broken.

  “I think it’s gone.” Arlen rose and faced the doorway.

  “It?” Alice questioned, her throat growing dry. “What was it?”

  “I don’t know,” Arlen seemed confused. She reached up and automatically flicked away the long dark fringe from her eyes. “Maybe it was just the wind.”

  “Yes, I hope so,” Alice murmured, but she didn’t feel so sure. It hadn’t sounded like the wind to her.

  “Did you go to the beach often when you were in London?” Arlen asked suddenly, turning and reclaiming her position on the wide, flat piece of rock.

  “No,” Alice replied, shivering. She wondered that Arlen seemed so easily calmed. “But then, come to think of it, I never went anywhere much. Other than flats and hotel rooms and school.” She paused for a few moments, meditating. “Don’t you go to school?” The thought had struck her suddenly. The village seemed so isolated, a good distance away from any of the Cornish cities and towns.

  “No,” Arlen answered and shrugged. “There isn’t a school here and nobody was ever willing to take me to one of the towns. I was the only child in the village, you see. Too much trouble, I guess.”

  “The only child in the village,” Alice repeated to herself. It seemed strange, to be the only one. The only one – until now. She remembered the birds watching her that first night, the small, boring eyes and the telltale screams, and the mysterious driver’s comment seemed to sound again in her ears. “Aye, the birds know.” “Know what?” she muttered to herself. And who were they telling?

  “What?” Arlen asked.

  “Nothing,” Alice shook herself and looked at the other girl, so like her, sitting on the rock. “You must have led an awfully enclosed life here,” she said softly.

  “Well, yes, in most ways, I guess,” Arlen murmured. “I’ve never been away from here. But then, neither have most of the other villagers.” She laughed wryly. “The glorious attractions of Southmore! Once you’re here, you can never get away.” Alice looked away, not really liking the sound of her words. “I’ve wanted to leave,” Arlen said then. She raised her eyes to the glowing crystal patch of light above them, and her voice became longing. “For so long. I want to start again somewhere else. Somewhere that’s alive.” She rose, walking towards a thick chunk of gleaming stalactite and resting her dark head against its glittering brilliance. “We’re so isolated here. I feel like I’ve grown up in a separate world. A lost world. A whole forgotten part of the country. The only person here who has travelled is Mr MacKenzie. Most of the others have never even been to St Ives. Can you believe it? Not even to St Ives. I so want to get out. Our grandmother got out. So did our mother. I don’t know why Aunt Maud stayed.” She stopped suddenly, and turned to face her twin, her face an anguished mix of anger and pain. “You know, I’ve blamed her and blamed her. For leaving me, for dumping me here – and now, for separating us. Although I wouldn’t have wished this existence on you,” she said quickly.

  “But it would have been better if we had been together,” Alice murmured. “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know,” Arlen replied shortly, staring hard at the shimmering froth of bubbles rolling into the lake. The rainbow beams flowed from the skylight, bathing the great natural hall in a glowing fountain of colour. She shrugged. “She’s not interested in me, anyway. What about your life? You basically know about me. When the folks split up, Mum copped me and dumped me on Aunt Maud the first chance she had.” She glanced around her and sighed. “So I’ve been here all my life,” and the laugh that accompanied the statement was very half hearted.

  “My father didn’t exactly lose sleep over me either,” Alice confessed softly, staring at her shoes. “He was always off somewhere on business.”

  “What did he do?”

  “I’m not sure. But it was something shady. It’s true!” she cried, as Arlen burst out laughing. “He used to go off and meet these people in pubs and things. We used to travel around a lot, although we always stayed in the big cities, mainly London. I’ve always suspected he was on the run from the police. I remember he used to have his ‘business partners’, as he used to call them, over for card nights and things, and I would never be able to go to sleep because the cigarette smoke would come drifting through into my room, and I could smell stale beer and hear them all yelling loudly at each other, half drunk, and telling dirty jokes. And sometimes I’d creep out of bed and watch them through the cracks in the door.

  “A couple of times, the ‘partners’ weren’t his usual crowd, but really dodgy looking men, and he always used to tell me to be quiet because he was discussing business. But I listened, and I could hear them talking about cargoes and valuable jewellery and some sort of antique items he’d been holding onto. And he always seemed to be trying to make a deal with them.

  “He used to go off sometimes and leave me alone at nights, even when I was quite small, saying he had to meet someone at some port somewhere. Mrs Landers, the lady who ran the B&B where we were staying one time, used to come upstairs and play Cluedo with me, and she used to say it was a disgrace that a man like that should have custody of a child.”

  “Was she nice?” Arlen asked.

  “Oh, she was lovely. I used to wish and wish that she was my mother,” Alice half laughed, raising her face and looking towards the skylight. The beams of radiance illuminated her features, and Arlen wasn’t sure for a moment whether she was crying. “Sometimes I used to pretend – that she was my mother, I mean. I used to imagine and imagine what my real one was like.” She looked over at Arlen, unable to keep the sarcasm from her voice. “It doesn’t sound like she was much.”

  “I’m sorry,” Arlen whispered.

  “Oh, it’s not your fault,” Alice told her, and resumed her story quickly. “We didn’t stay there long though. Some policemen came round on an investigation – he was often being questioned. And we moved that night without telling anybody, although somebody must have found out because
we were shot at.”

  “You’re joking!” Arlen gasped, her eyes wide.

  “No,” Alice assured her. “And the next thing I knew, he was on his way to the airport and I was on my way to Aunt Maud’s. That’s as much as I know about it.” She gazed around her, cynically. “He’d probably have been safer here!” and the laugh was bitter, its brittle sound echoing around the room like a staccato waterfall.

  A shadow dimmed the sparkling colours around them. Arlen twisted sharply, and Alice jumped. A pebble moved, and the girls watched, hardly breathing, as it slowly rolled from the small, tunnel-like opening of the cave into the room, and dropped with a sharp pistol-crack into the cool, clear waters of the underground lake. A dark shape emerged from the entrance, transforming before their terrified eyes into the tall, blue-eyed figure of Robbie MacKenzie.

  Arlen just gazed at him, disbelief visible on every inch of her face as he lowered his long frame into the hole and stared around him with wonder in his expression.

  “Hey, this is great!” he said as a greeting, his voice loud and alien in the large room. The sound seemed to bounce in rejected echoes off the glistening spears that hung from the roof, lost and whirling around the walls and the twins until it was sucked into nothing by the huge bright skylight above. “What is this place?”

  Alice bit her lip nervously. Arlen’s first reaction had been stunned disbelief, but now she was angry. Cold and fierce, her face was as hard as the rocks surrounding them, her eyes stony and strangely glittering in the reflected, dancing light of her beloved granite icicles.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded, and her tone was unforgiving.

  “I – I don’t know,” he seemed a little taken aback. “I was just exploring the beach, looking for caves. You know, just regular holiday stuff. You don’t get too many caves in London.” He sounded almost apologetic. Alice couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

  “But what brought you here?” she asked gently, painfully aware of Arlen’s furious look.

  “I’m not sure,” he shrugged. “I was just walking down the beach – you know, looking around – and then I saw a light in the cliff. And when I climbed up to examine it, I found this crevice in the wall and I crawled through and – here I am,” he finished, a little lamely. He didn’t know why Arlen seemed so upset. Anyone would think he had committed a crime.

  Arlen was silent and stiff, although her heart bled with an intense, savage fury. How dare he. How dare he. This was her place. Hers. No one had set foot here but she for who knew how many years. She had found it, she had claimed it, she had invited Alice to it, and now –

  The red waves rose and bubbled before her eyes and she shot forward suddenly with a strange, bitter cry, until Robbie thought that she would run full tilt into him. But she swerved as she reached him, and disappeared through the small hole as though she had been sucked through it.

  “What’s with her?” Robbie asked, confused. “Do I look that bad?”

  But Alice, with a fleeting, exasperated glance at him, was gone.

  “Hey, it was a joke!” Robbie called back, racing after her. He slipped through the crevice as quickly as was possible for his long, lanky frame, and followed Alice’s path up the shadowy cliff.

  The scene outside had darkened considerably, and the sky was the thick, soupy colour of oil. Robbie looked up, disturbed. Heavy and brooding, it seemed to be waiting for something, secretly watching from beneath its forbidding brow of black clouds.

  Arlen was stalking steadily ahead of them, her footsteps firm and determined on the wet, sandy rock. She did not notice the path her feet took, or the way the soft tongues of water lapped seductively at the shore below her. All she could think about was the intrusion. “How dare he,” she muttered again to herself, savagely.

  Her anger swelled as Robbie’s cheerful voice echoed in her mind like a broken record, and the wind seemed to hear her rage and chuckled delightedly, surging around her as if singing the sound of her fury.

  “Arlen, wait!”

  The voices came from behind her, and she whipped around suddenly, her hair flying in the gale, dark strands biting at her face and her eyes black with the glare of her anger. She could see Alice, moving as fast as she dared along the narrow channel of stone, and Robbie behind her – Robbie, who had invaded.

  Around her the winds soared and sang in a mighty crescendo, and the waves rose and roared as if in chorus, and all she could remember were Robbie’s blue eyes as he had entered the cave.

  “What is she doing?” Alice cried, terrified, as she watched Arlen stand still and upright on the edge of the cliff, the gale sweeping around her in a scream, although she seemed not to notice it. The waves below were growing more and more agitated in the storm, hurling against the cliffside, higher and higher, and the rain spattered in stinging pellets on their faces. Alice was speeding, half sliding as she scrambled up the cliff path, which shone in the dark damp like polished marble, her sandy footsteps swallowed quickly by the tongues of cold, white foam that steadily rose as the waves grew higher. She had to reach Arlen before – before –

  Try as he might, Robbie could not keep up with her, and he had to – he had to catch her before all her traces were gone, licked clean by the dark, possessive waters. But his athletic skills were of no help here, and the fronds of seaweed rocking in the violent wind seemed to grasp his ankles like slimy fingers.

  “Arlen!” he cried helplessly, as he watched her cold, white face, stark against the black backdrop of ocean and sky, and he heard the call echoed by Alice, who had almost reached her, her hand outstretched as if her sister were going to fall. Yet the wind showed no mercy and instead surged up before him like some horrific beast, a solid wall that buffeted against him like an actual blow. For one second he almost thought he saw a shape in the swelling air, and two glowing eyes, sharp and deadly, on the rock above him. But his fingers grasped the wind, and he heard the laugh, ringing endlessly in his ears as the seaweed bonds released him, and he fell, bloody and limp, dropping heavily onto the waiting sand below.

  Alice stopped as if frozen. Arlen didn’t even look like herself, her hair flying madly in the storm, her body still and unmoving as she watched Robbie thrown from the cliff.

  “Arlen!” she cried, but her words were swallowed in the force of the wind, and she felt as though her voice had been ripped from her throat. Arlen! She fought again desperately, this time with her mind. What was the use of being twins if her sister couldn’t hear her? Her fear tore at her, and she struggled furiously in the cruel arms of the gale that pinned her back.

  Arlen did not move.

  Something stirred in the depths of the ocean, something large and dark. A curved muzzle rose from the waters like the sea monsters of legend, and Alice felt the silent scream torn from her lips as the thing lurched forward with a roar and rammed full onto the jagged rocks, crashing and sticking fast with a groan and a creak as it wedged itself firmly into the stone.

  Arlen turned and stared, dropping quietly onto the rock as the wind lulled and the waves calmed and died, silently smoothing themselves into a glossy black carpet, deceptively still.

  It was a ship. An ancient, rotting thing of gleaming, sodden wood, shining and bejewelled with slimy seaweed and the patterned shells of tiny sea creatures.

  Alice, finding herself suddenly able to move, slid across the stone in shaking footsteps and threw her arms around her sister.

  Arlen turned and looked at her blankly. “Robbie,” she said softly.

  They found him at the bottom of the cliff, barely conscious, his head bruised and sticky with blood.

  “You could have been killed,” Alice whispered. “We all could have been killed.” She didn’t know what was real anymore. Arlen seemed to be handling it better – silent but steady, as they aided the stumbling Robbie back to his grandfather’s house.

  “I’ll be alright now,” he had said bravely at the doorway, his knees shaking. Yet Arlen hadn’t even complained when Alice ins
isted on staying to see that the doctor was called and that Robbie would survive.

  “A slight concussion. Bruising. No broken bones. It’s remarkable, really. A wonder he wasn’t killed.”

  “Ah, it’s the MacKenzie constitution, doctor,” Mac said jokingly, but Alice noticed that his face was very pale, and that his eyes seemed even more fiercely blue in contrast. She could not shake the memory of the lonely cart driver from her mind, somehow, when she looked at him. But that was ridiculous, she told herself firmly, and looked away just as firmly, refusing to think of it.

  The doctor gave the twins a lift back to the castle, a silent, uncomfortable trip, the copper red underbelly of the sky beneath the clouds reflecting on Arlen’s face in an almost unearthly glow. The doctor seemed very glad once they were dropped off, and didn’t even say goodbye as he turned the car quickly around, its wheels crunching the gravel like gunshots in the stillness, and drove back into the village.

  Aunt Maud let them in, angry and impatient, and seeming to know all about it. “I’ve told you before, Arlen, to stay away from that beach. What were you doing scrambling about on the cliff anyway?” she asked, giving her niece a sharp look, almost as if she were hunting for something, Alice thought.

  But Arlen just sighed wearily and shook her head. “Nothing, Auntie,” she replied, dully.

  “Well, we’ll see,” Aunt Maud said threateningly. “You’ll get yourself into trouble out there some day, my girl, mark my words, and there’ll be nobody to save you from yourself. And I want you to stay away from that boy, do you hear me? Running about the cliffside in the middle of a storm, no less. A city brat I’d expect it from, but I would have thought you’d have had more sense. What will Alice think?”