Somewhere Warm to Sleep (Margaret #2)

4

The dead must be cold

But spring is mine.

- Dulce Maria Loynaz

Look at you, now. Collapsed in the street, your best suit ruined. Blubbering over four people whom you barely knew, who barely knew you. Four strangers. Four Tories, for God's sake.

Don't worry, dear brother. You couldn't save them. You could never have saved them. Margaret would know that, wouldn't she?

Margaret, spurring her horse on. Margaret, a second too late. Margaret, at the gallows, just in time to scream--

When we were small, you never told me that part. In the story you told me, the road to Avalon stretched on as far as the eye could see, and Margaret herself was as good as immortal--forever frozen in motion, Avalon forever just beyond the bend, William forever trapped in the tower.

Do you remember that lazy summer afternoon at the Keeper and Tiller, a tape-recorder whirring on the table between you and Alex? Pushing up his glasses, he'd asked you: Why did you decide to end the story the way you did?

I didn't see that there was any other way it could've ended, you said. I intended it from the start. There wasn't anything Margaret could have possibly done to save William.

The story of Margaret isn't something you can confine between two covers, something you can trap in a page. Her story has always been inextricably ours. Like how Margaret fought so hard, for so long, and still wasn't able to save William--no matter how much you beat the walls and gasp for air, no one's coming to save you. In this university, in this city, you'll always be alone. So you can do only what Arthur Millwood would do: open your eyes, pick yourself up and begin the long walk to the station. If you're lucky, you can catch the last train home tonight.

—

Upon disembarking, Arthur's struck by how different the air is. Although it's wet and weighted down with soot and car exhaust, he's never tasted anything quite so clear. This, after all, was the scent of his childhood, wasn't it? The long winter night's not yet over, and the suburban streets are still near-deserted. Yellowed streetlamps shine upon nothing but empty pavements, crushed beer cans, and knocked-over skips. Here's the spot of patchy grass where he used to make witches' cauldrons out of sticks. There's the red-brick library he used to hide in when being at home was particularly bad—seems they still haven't gotten around to fixing the roof.

In university, this place was nothing but a dream, but now that he's back here, it's those two years spent amongst the spires that are now half-formed, hardly real. When he tries to recall the people he knew and loved there, he can only see them as inscrutable strangers, as those storybook villains in monocles and tweed that he'd envied and detested in equal parts in his youth. It seems so stupid that he'd ever thought he could belong amongst them, that he could claw his way into love and acceptance. He grew up in this town, and he'll die here, too. That much he's sure of.

His legs move of their own volition, sweeping him down familiar crossings. He doesn't panic, doesn't protest. It's not like last night, not really—more like one of the ancient rituals he'd spent those lost years poring over. He's written his own fate. All that's left to do is carry it out.

Eventually, he arrives at a narrow cul-de-sac. Not for the first time, he wonders what gave this place its name. There's nothing green to be seen here, not except for the moss creeping up the fences. The boxy terraced houses stretch upwards and inwards, pressing into the street. As he walks between them, the windows glare down at him over their half-moon glasses. The starless sky shrinks back. It's just like how he remembers it, except for one thing: in his childhood, the street was always level, but he notices now that it's actually built on a gradual slope. He's never been a scientist, but he's reminded of his seventh-year Physics tutor's lessons on black holes, how they're so large and heavy that they dent the fabric of the universe, dragging any unfortunate comet or asteroid into their embrace through the unthinking, unstoppable pull of gravity.