Weaveworld

London. She was exhausted; she needed to rest her head awhile.

After two weeks back at home, however, she discovered that attempting to restore her energies by doing nothing was a sure route to lunacy, and instead returned to work at the studio. It proved a wise move. The problems of re-establishing a working rhythm distracted her from dwelling too much on the losses and failures of recent times; and the very fact of making something – even if it was only pots and plates – answered the need she had to begin again. She’d never been so aware of day’s mythic associations as now, of its reputation as the first stuff, the base matter from which story-book nations had taken shape. Her skill could only manage pots not people, but worlds had to begin somewhere. She worked long hours, with just the radio and the smell of the day for company, her thoughts never completely free of melancholy, but lighter than she’d dared hope.

Hearing that she was back in town, Finnegan appeared on her doorstep one afternoon, spruce as ever, to invite her out to dinner. It was strange to think of his waiting for her while she’d been adventuring; and touching too. She accepted his invitation, and was more thoroughly charmed by his company than she ever remembered being. He, forthright as ever, said that they were made for each other, and should marry immediately. She told him she made a rule of never marrying bankers. The next day he sent flowers, and a note saying that he’d relinquish his profession. They saw each other regularly thereafter. His warmth and easy manner were the perfect diversion from the darker thoughts that still threatened to intrude when she had time to think.

Every now and then, through the summer months and into the early autumn, she had some brief contact with members of the Kind, though they were kept to the minimum, for safety’s sake. The news seemed to be good. Many of the survivors had returned to the vicinity of their ancestors’ homes, and found niches there.

Better news still, there was no sign of either Shadwell or Hobart. There were rumours that Hamel had instigated a search for the Salesman, and had given up after failing to uncover a single clue as to the enemy’s whereabouts. As for the remnants of his army – those Seerkind who’d embraced the Prophet’s visions – they’d been the authors of their own punishment, waking from their evangelical nightmare to find it had destroyed all they held dear.

Some had sought forgiveness from their fellows, and had arrived, shamefaced and despairing, at that controversial meeting. Others, the grapevine confirmed, had been overcome by remorse, and had spiralled into dereliction. Some had even taken their own lives. There were yet others, she’d heard – the born blood-letters amongst the Kind – who’d left the battlefield regretting nothing, and gone out into the Kingdom in search of further violence. They would not have to look far.

But rumour and supposition apart, there was little to report. She got on with trying to make sense of her old life, while they made new lives for themselves. As to Cal, she followed his rehabilitation through Kind who’d gone to ground in Liverpool, but made no direct contact This was in part a practical decision: it was wiser that they kept their distance from each other until they were certain the enemy had disappeared. But it was also an emotional consideration. They had shared much, in the Fugue and out. Too much to be lovers. The Weaveworld occupied the space between them – it had from the beginning. That fact made a nonsense of any thought of a domestic or romantic arrangement. They’d seen Hell and Heaven together. After that, surely everything else was bathos.

Presumably Cal felt the same, because he made no attempt at contacting her. Not that it was necessary. Though they neither saw nor spoke to each other she felt his constant presence. She had been the one to nip in the bud any possibility of physical love between them, and she had sometimes regretted that; but what they shared now was perhaps the highest aspiration of all lovers: between them they held a world.

3

In the middle of October her work started to take a new and completely uncharacteristic turn. For no particular reason she forsook her plates and bowls and began to work figuratively. The results gained her few admirers, but they satisfied some inner imperative which would not be gainsaid.

Meanwhile, Finnegan pressed his suit with dinners and flowers, his attentions redoubling each time she politely rejected him. She began to think there was more than a streak of the masochist in his nature, coming back as he did each time she sent him on his way.

Of all the extraordinary times she’d had since she’d first become part of the Fugue’s story, these were in their way the strangest, as her experience of the Weaveworld and that of her present life did battle in her head for the right to be called real. She knew this was Cuckoo thinking; that they were both real. But her mind would not marry them – nor her place in them. What did the woman Finnegan proclaimed his love for – the smiling, day beneath the fingers Suzanna – have to do with the woman who’d stood face to face with dragons? She came to wish she couldn’t evoke those mythic times as well as she could, because afterwards she’d feel sick with the triviality of being herself.

For that reason she kept a rein on the menstruum, which was not difficult to do. Its once unpredictable nature was much tamed now; a consequence of the Fugue’s demise, she assumed. It hadn’t foresaken her entirely. Sometimes it seemed to get restless, and decided to stretch itself, usually – though it took her a little time to realize this – in response to some environmental cue. There were places in the Kingdom that were charged up; places where she sensed a spring beneath the earth, aching to fountain. The menstruum knew them. So, in some cases, did the Cuckoos, sanctifying the spots as best their myopia knew how: with steeples and monuments. Just as many of these territories remained unrecognized, however, and passing through some unremarkable street she’d feel a surge in her belly, and know power was buried there.

Most of her life she’d associated power with politics or money, but her secret self had learned better. Imagination was true power: it worked transformations wealth and influence never could. She saw its processes even in Finnegan. On the few occasions she coaxed him to talk about his past, particularly his childhood, she saw the colours around his head strengthen and ripen, as in the act of imagining he was reunited with himself; made a continuum. At those moments she’d remember the line from Mimi’s book:

That which is imagined need never be lost.

And on those days she was even happy.

4

Then, early in the third week of December, any fragile hope of good times abruptly came to an end.

The weather turned icy that week. Not just bitter, but arctic. There was no snow as yet, just a cold so profound the nerve-endings couldn’t tell it from fire. She still worked on in the studio, unwilling to give up her creating, though her paraffin heater could barely raise the temperature above zero, and she was obliged to wear two sweaters and three pairs of socks. She scarcely noticed. She’d never been so preoccupied with making as she was now, bullying the day into the shapes in her mind’s eye.

Then, on the seventeenth, completely without warning, Apolline came calling. The eternal widow, she was swathed in black from head to foot.

‘We have to speak,’ she said, as soon as the door was closed.

Suzanna escorted her through to the studio, and cleared a seat for her amid the chaos. She didn’t want to sit, however, but wandered around the room, eventually ending up at the frost-scoured windows, peering out of them while Suzanna rinsed the day from her hands.

‘Are you bang followed?’ Suzanna asked her.

‘I don’t know,’ came the reply. ‘Maybe.’

‘Do you want some coffee?’

‘I’d prefer something stronger. What have you got?’

‘Just brandy.’

‘Just brandy will do.’

She sat. Suzanna located the bottle she kept for her occasional one-woman parties, and put an ample measure in a cup. Apolline drained it, filled it a second time, then said:

‘Have you had the dreams?’

‘What dreams?’

‘We’ve all been having them,’ Apolline said.

The way she looked – face sallow despite the cold, eyes ringed with darkness – Suzanna wondered that she’d