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with their flaring lights.
Electricity, Robert! It's the way of the future!
And he was right. It is. But all I see are ghosts.
Then the final turn which leads me to the place to which it seems
I've always been heading. To the house at the end of the cul-de-sac with its
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dark clouds of privet still in the same need of trimming as they were all
those years ago. There are a couple of carriages and a car parked outside, but
the place seems scarcely lit. My shadow sweeps over the door and I bang long
and hard until I get a reply.
`We're closed. It's . . .' A young face peers through the crack in the chained
door. But she takes in who and what I am, and cranks back the bolts. Yawning
in a sliding dressing gown, she leads me up far more stairs than there ever
used to be to the final room on the top floor.
`Master Robert . . .' By slow increments, Marm gets herself up from the divan
by the window and stoops towards me. From her, the loss of the grand part of
my title is a blessed relief. It takes me back, and
I love the sour buttery scent of her old woman's flesh as she leans against
me, and the bitter tang of smoke which lies beyond. She's taken to wearing a
curly wig now, over what remains of her hair, and her hands, as I ease myself
from her and settle into my accustomed chair, are even more bulged and
arthritic than those of the son who never visits her. Yet still she manages to
maintain a semblance of a guildswoman's grace as she shambles across the
rucked carpet and flicks open the catches of her marquetry cabinet with her
brown nails and extracts the seeds and boxes. She and I, we're like two
elderly actors reprising the characters which we once did so much better in
another
Age. But they're the only roles we have left to play.
`It's been such a long time since I've seen you. Why downstairs, they've
almost forgotten your name ..
I settle back into the straps and cushions as the small pot bubbles and the
blue flame glows, soothed as I always am by her croaky patter, which never
changes, and is designed to make me imagine I come here far less often than I
do, or should. Then the glow of aether and the hatpin's swirl. I could do all
this myself; but I never would. I love being here too much, and her presence,
and the flood of anticipatory saliva and the thickening of my tongue which
comes with that first glowing waft of smoke. Her guild, at least, hasn't
changed. It never will. Ages might crumble, heroes die, the greatest love
might fade, and we could remain forever in this room. But then, even as she
wrinkles her mouth around the long pipe, there's the final and most important
exchange. I
reach into my pockets. I give her the money, Niana. All of it. Marm lifts it
to her face and inhales the crumpled flower of notes before she stuffs it into
her special jar. And she smiles.
`You're most generous tonight, Master Robert. We'll have to see what we can
do. Where we can take you to that's special ..
`But you already know.'
`Yes.' She studies me, her face quivering, her eyes dulled and alight. `I
suppose I do.'
Then, finally, finally, she puts the pipe back to her lips and inhales the
glowing spell, and then leans forward, one arm trembling to support the weight
of the other until she can place her dry lips against mine. She kisses me. And
I kiss her. I breathe in. And I'm flying.
Floating.
The Ages drop away until the time and the place which will always be more real
to me than any other swarms back into view. I'm sitting on a small train
heading on a single track line out of Bracebridge on a day at the last edge of
summer, and my mother smiles back at me as the great hills slide by beyond the
rippled glass and we rock to and fro.
Rainharrow, then Scarside, Fareden and Hallowfell. I know we only have tickets
for some obscure local station, but in my mind we're leaving
Bracebridge forever, heading together into incredible adventures which will
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take us to the deeper truth on which I have always felt my life to be
teetering.
I still don't know what that truth is, but I'm sure that, when I find it, it
will be marvellous.
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