“No,” said Marsh, shaking his head. “Let's not split up. Not yet.”
“It's only temporary,” she said, repeating their mantra of recent days. By repeating it constantly, Marsh could almost convince himself it was true, as though he could sculpt reality with the force of his belief.
“She'll be safer out of the city.” Another mantra.
Agnes mewled. Marsh bounced her in his arms. “Liv,” he said. “Maybe you should get on the train, too. Margaret will have no choice but to find space if you show up on her doorstep. She's a billeting officer, after all.”
“Oh, heavens, no. No, no, my dears,” said a voice in the crowd.
Marsh and Liv turned to face a wizened little woman. She carried a clipboard in one hand and an infant on her hip. Wisps of graying hair waved under the brim of her hat and from where they had worked loose from her bun. She wore wool socks that had fallen down below the hem of her dress, one higher than the other. Her mouth was full of crooked yellow teeth that looked ready to tumble over, like gravestones in an untended churchyard.
Were they expected to entrust their daughter's well-being to this harridan?
Marsh squeezed his daughter as tightly as he dared without rousing her. This lady from the WVS wouldn't be inclined to do them any more favors if Agnes got cranky even before the ride to Williton.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked.
The woman clucked her tongue. “Terrible, what Hitler's done, making parents say good-bye to their little ones like this.” She shook her head. “But there's no room.”
“Room?” Marsh tensed. Heat flushed through his face. The entire situation was fucking ridiculous. “Sod the room. My girl is only four months old!” The woman's mouth formed a little O as she stepped back.
Liv laid her hand on Marsh's arm. She gave him a reassuring squeeze. More quietly, she said, “You're from WVS? Agnes is going to stay with my aunt in Williton.”
“Yes.” The lady peered at Agnes's tag, then consulted a list, deftly handling the yearling on her hip and the clipboard at the same time. “21417 ... 21417 ... Agnes Marsh?”
Liv nodded.
The woman checked something off on the clipboard. “Don't you worry yourselves one jot. I'll personally deliver little Agnes safe and sound to the waiting arms of your auntie. And what a doll she is, too.”
Reluctantly, Marsh gave one last squeeze and kiss to the bundle in his arms. “I love you, Agnes,” he whispered. He held her close, filling his awareness with her scent, where he intended to hold it until his daughter came home again. Then he handed Agnes to his wife. He asked, “Isn't there any chance at all you could let Liv go along, too?”
“Raybould, we've been through this—”
“I'd feel immeasurably better if I knew she were safe.”
The WVS harridan clucked her tongue. “Oh, my dears, I'm so sorry.”
Marsh pressed the issue while Liv said her own good-bye to Agnes. “You clearly need the help.” He nodded at the yearling on the woman's hip. “How will you care for him
The woman laughed. “Oh, my. It's more than just these two.” She pointed across the platform to where a group of children ranging from toddlers to perhaps ten years old received hugs and kisses from weeping parents. A train porter and three more ladies from the WVS watched uncomfortably over the good-byes.
“But there's enough of us to make do,” the WVS woman continued. She smiled, again revealing those graveyard teeth. “Haven't lost one yet.”
“I should bloody well hope not.” The Stukas had been known to strafe trains now and then. Every parent knew it.
The WVS woman's lips moved silently for a moment while she studied Marsh's face, as though searching for some way to reassure him or deflect his irritation. Part of him felt badly. She probably received a great deal of abuse. The billeting officers had it worst, but anybody working in the evacuation program was bound to become the focus of strangers' frustration. Before he could assume a softer tone and apologize, she shrugged slightly and held her free arm out to Liv and Agnes.
“Come, dear, let's introduce Agnes to the rest. And perhaps while we're doing that, your husband can help the porter load little Agnes's things on the train.”
Marsh pushed the pram behind the trio to the group of young evacuees and distraught parents. With a bit of shoving and cursing, he and the porter managed to make room in the luggage car for the pram, helmet, and a suitcase of clothing and diapers for Agnes.
The whistle blew. After a final kiss and hug, Liv handed their one and only daughter over to this group of strangers. The runny-nosed evacuees and their meager group of escorts boarded the train. The WVS lady took a window seat and held Agnes up for Marsh and Liv to see as the engine chuffed away down the tracks.
He put his arm around Liv. She rested her head on his shoulder. They watched the tracks until the train whistle faded in the distance.
The first thing Will noticed was the sunlight. It moved like a living thing.
He stood with Stephenson at the coast, not a dozen strides from where the earth plunged straight down along the famous chalk cliffs of Dover. A gust of wind eddied around Will's legs, rippling the hem of his topcoat, snapping it like a flag. The wind smelled of brine and, impossibly, Mr. Malcolm's shaving lotion.
Will shivered. The stump of his missing finger throbbed with pain. He paced, fidgeting to ward off the chill. Something grabbed his attention, a sense of something odd glimpsed in the corner of his eye. He looked at the long shadow his body carved from the sunrise.
It hadn't moved.
The edges of his shadow rippled, oozed into tendrils of light that choked off the darkness. Will's new shadow grew via the same process in reverse. Repulsion flooded through him while the darkness spread out from his shoes, slithering across the grass before settling into a natural shape.
He shivered again and looked at the sea. The sun hung low in the southeast, round and red like a bullet hole in the sky. The light shone through the English Channel. The Channel was filled with Eidolons. Something unnatural happened to the light inside that non-euclidean fog.
Will glanced at Stephenson. The old man either hadn't noticed the strange light, or somehow managed to not care. His attention was entirely on the Channel, which he studied with binoculars. Weather spotters had reported the disturbance moving closer to shore every day.
Wind hummed through the barricades, pulled a per sis tent thrum from the coils of razor wire. Barricades like these lined the coast from Ramsgate to Plymouth. But this fence wasn't intended for keeping the Germans out. If invasion happened, no fleet would land here; the cliffs were far too high. No. This barricade had been built to keep people in. To prevent them from hurling themselves into the sea.
Three months had passed since the tragedy at Dunkirk. Two months since Milkweed's warlocks had first invoked the Eidolons to warp the weather in the Channel. And a fortnight had passed since the local police lost count of the suicides along the coast.
A uniformed constable waved at Will from up by the road. He didn't approach. The locals kept as far from the shoreline as they could. Will waved back.
“Sir,” he said. Stephenson let the binoculars hang on a leather strap around his neck. The interplay of sunlight and shadow trickled through the grass when he turned to look at Will. Will said, “Our bobby is hailing us.”
“Don't forget,” said Stephenson from the corner of his mouth as they ambled up the gentle slope to the road. “Should anybody ask, we're from the War Office. Got it?”
“War Office. Check.” Will hadn't the slightest idea how to portray himself that way. What did folks from the War Office talk about? Not bloody demons and supermen, that much was certain.
The bobby, a ruddy man with a pug nose, nodded to them as they approached his car. “You see, sirs? Just like I told you. Something strange going on out there.”
“Hmmm,” said Stephenson.
“Do you think it's the Jerries doing this?”
“Hmmm,” said Will. It seemed the safest thing to say. Better than the truth:
