Then I heard the sound of whistles and running feet. A loud voice cried.

'0i! You with the pistol! Put it down at once! This is the police! Fire one more shot and we'll skin you alive!'

The red-haired man caught my eye and dived into the water amid a volley of pistol fire. I saw him swimming strongly away from the dock, bullets peppering the water all around him. I thought I heard a yell of pain, then the fog closed in, hiding everything from view.

The Doctor said, 'You're welcome. Do you think you can hold on to this rope while I climb up and pull you aboard?'

I grabbed the rope with my good hand. A moment later I was being hoisted over the stern rail.

'Where is Stockwood? Why did he not try to help us?' I was angry. And my arm hung uselessly at my side, the skin running with blood. I was in severe pain and I wanted to kill something - anything - very badly.

The Doctor said quietly. 'I think you'll find they didn't have any choice.' I looked up from the deck - to face Stockwood and Royston, both being held at gunpoint by a cloaked figure, flanked by several seamen.

'It seems very much,' the Doctor said, 'as if our nemesis has beaten us to the ship.'

'And hijacked it.'

Part Two

Across the Sea of Night

December 1872

'I approached that island in my fancy from every possible direction; but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange and tragic as our actual adventures.'

Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

15.

Vortex.

I first experienced the power of the Xaust Xaust wind when I was eight summers old. I remember how it moved through the jungle, disturbing the web-tree spinners in their high nests, pushing between branches and undergrowth, unrolling the ground in thin strips of earth and leaves and small animals. I had been practising with father's crossbow near the edge of the village, the common land between the furthest huts and bordering the nearest edge of the Beyond. Now I dropped the weapon, laughing and clapping, jumping into the air and clutching at the whirling stuff, feeling the p.r.i.c.kle of webs brushing against my hands and face, the spindly jab of wriggling spinner limbs. Then I saw a medium-sized webspinner whirl up into the sky trailing webstuff and the unravelling skin of a bark-skipper which it had caught only moments before and was in the process of disembowelling. I remember being amazed that such a vast change could happen so quickly. It was as if the world had changed for my amus.e.m.e.nt. wind when I was eight summers old. I remember how it moved through the jungle, disturbing the web-tree spinners in their high nests, pushing between branches and undergrowth, unrolling the ground in thin strips of earth and leaves and small animals. I had been practising with father's crossbow near the edge of the village, the common land between the furthest huts and bordering the nearest edge of the Beyond. Now I dropped the weapon, laughing and clapping, jumping into the air and clutching at the whirling stuff, feeling the p.r.i.c.kle of webs brushing against my hands and face, the spindly jab of wriggling spinner limbs. Then I saw a medium-sized webspinner whirl up into the sky trailing webstuff and the unravelling skin of a bark-skipper which it had caught only moments before and was in the process of disembowelling. I remember being amazed that such a vast change could happen so quickly. It was as if the world had changed for my amus.e.m.e.nt.

At first the Xaust Xaust wind was gentle. It played with me, whirling branches and the lighter web-tree spinners into the air, peeling them away from the jungle like pollen, a gossamer rain that fell upwards into the darkening sky. The loose webs caught the darkening sun, casting a red rainbow across the black hills surrounding the village. The air darkened even further with the tiny wriggling specks that were the spinners. The world turned red and black in moments. wind was gentle. It played with me, whirling branches and the lighter web-tree spinners into the air, peeling them away from the jungle like pollen, a gossamer rain that fell upwards into the darkening sky. The loose webs caught the darkening sun, casting a red rainbow across the black hills surrounding the village. The air darkened even further with the tiny wriggling specks that were the spinners. The world turned red and black in moments.

Then the wind took one of the children I had been practising with.

Sooly was smaller than I was, one of the smallest children in the village for his age. I watched him go into the air, wrapped in webstuff so that he looked like a seed trailing its wind-catchers. I grabbed for his foot as he pa.s.sed, clutched nothing but web, fell back as the wind grew around me.

I called out a warning to the other children. It was then that I realised the wind was louder than my voice, louder than I could shout. And its fingers, which only moments before had been playfully tugging at the ground, were now ripping large chunks of undergrowth into the air along with the walls and roofs of the nearby huts. A branch tore loose from the ground beside me and snapped upward. I fell aside, blood streaming from a leg sc.r.a.ped raw by its pa.s.sing. The blood was caught up in the wind and whirled skyward. I fought to get closer to the ground, grabbing handfuls of dirt that crumbled between my fingers and was sucked away, trying to pull myself further down into the ground, trying to burrow into the ground the way the bark-skippers burrowed into trees.

I was big for my age, and heavy. Our family had eaten well because we were good hunters. And I was very strong. But there was nothing I could hold on to. The summer had been long this year, the ground was parched, the undergrowth stringy and easily broken.

Everything went up into the steadily darkening sky. And then so did I.

It happened suddenly. One moment I was clinging to the ground, the next moment the ground had gone out from under me and I was holding nothing but crumbling dirt. In seconds even that was gone. I had a brief sensation of movement. I got dizzy and tried not to be sick. I stopped screaming when the air was sucked out of my lungs and I could no longer breathe. I struggled, kicking out against the sky that had eaten me, but struck nothing. Clinging folds of webstuff wrapped around me.

Wriggling spinners scrabbled through the web, crawling over me and biting me in the red-hazed darkness. My eyes were already shut. I felt the sting of poison run in my blood. I was hot and cold at once. My eyes pressed against the inside of my eyelids. I opened my mouth to scream for Father and a web-tree spinner crawled in and bit my tongue.

That spinner saved my life.

The inside of my cheek already swelling from the poison, my jaws clamped shut on the spinner, crushing it instantly. I felt sticky juices in my mouth. I was frantically tearing at the webstuff sealing my face when the poison made me go to sleep and darkness took me away.

I awoke in agony, hours later, I supposed. Something hard and jagged pressed into my back told me I was on the ground. I couldn't move. Or rather I couldn't control my body, which was jerking as the web-tree spinner's poison ran in my blood. Then I felt sudden coldness grip me.

My body jerked upward, as panic set in. Cryuni. Cryuni had come for me!

I was not ready for the Sleep of Death. I remember screaming. I remember coughing up chunks of mashed web-tree spinner. I remember the crack of muscles only eight summers old as my arms and legs split the clinging webstuff around me. I remember the searing flush of poison, the agony as sunlight sought out my eyes like a hunter's blade and sank what felt like slivers of holy metal into my head.

And then I was crying screaming breathing.

And darkness took me away again.

The next time I awoke I did not hurt so much. But I was very cold and very hungry. I was frightened to open my eyes so I felt around me with my arms and legs. I hurt wherever I touched the ground. My skin was sore and my chest hurt and my arm tingled strangely. I felt smashed branches, dusty webstuff, crushed animal bodies, jagged pieces of wood and stone.

That was all.

I opened my eyes.

Blinking away tears, I looked around me. I was lying head downward in a depression in the ground. A ruined landscape surrounded me, upside down. I tried to move. I managed to roll over on to my stomach. I was shaking. I tried to stand up, but wasn't strong enough. The sun, above me now, where it should be, was the same hot summer sun it had been - how long ago? Maybe a whole day. I didn't know and couldn't judge.

I grabbed the first thing I found that was solid enough to support me and pulled myself upright. I was in the jungle. Or, rather, I was where the jungle should have been.

The world had changed.

My life so far had been very well defined. The village was in the valley, the common land bordered the Beyond and the jungle surrounded everything. Beyond the jungle was the Black Wall and beyond that the Place of Tesh. Now most of the trees were gone. The landscape seemed to be made entirely of the smashed ruins of the very largest trees. I was clinging to the stump of one of these. I had struggled out of a deep bed of webstuff and dead animals. At the very limits of my shattered world was the endless Black Wall of the Tesh. My eyes couldn't look away from it.

Light sank into it. It was nothing and everything.

I sank to my knees. I would never have looked away from the Wall if my head had not simply sunk downward through sheer exhaustion.

All around me not a living thing was moving. No people. No animals.

Not even a web-tree spinner or bark-skipper.

Just me.

I fell against the tree, and even it was dead. I wanted to sleep. I think I cried out for Cryuni to take me but even the Guardian of the Sleep of Death ignored me. I wanted to sleep. I was too hungry. My belly ached and my back and my skin were covered in sores from the poisonous spinner bites.

I probably should have died then. But as I sank down into the soft bed of web my hand touched the furry body of a bark-skipper.

I had just enough strength to grasp the legs, tearing the body along its vulnerable underbelly. The meat was raw and tasted foul but I did not care. I ate until I was sick, then ate another. This one stayed down and I slept.

When I awoke I felt better. My head did not ache, my skin was not so sore, although my arm had swollen considerably, and I realised it must be if not broken, then badly sprained.

I stood, picking bark-skipper fur from my teeth, and began to walk back to the village.

I did not know where the village was, so I simply walked in the opposite direction to the Black Wall.

I walked for three days, eating dead animals and drinking their body fluids. Then it rained and the ground turned to slush. I drank rainwater and continued walking. When the water turned to flood I clung to a log and drifted with the current. A day later the floodwater was gone and I walked again, this time through mud. Finding food was harder now, but I managed it somehow, digging into the bark of trees for insects, ignoring the dead animals beached all around me. Their flesh was rank, the stench foul.

On the fifth day, I saw the mud in the middle distance explode outwards, splashed aside by invisible feet. As I watched, a tree stump was wrenched from the mud and held invisibly in midair, turned, examined, tossed carelessly aside. I crouched in the mud, just my nose and eyes showing, and watched the trail made by the Things from the Beyond pa.s.s within a man's height from me before moving away towards the Black Wall.

Touching my neck, left hip and left knee as I had been taught, I clambered from the mud and moved on.

Two days later I found some men and women from the village. They told me that the Black Wall had opened for a moment, long enough to emit the Xaust Xaust wind, which had destroyed a large portion of the jungle. wind, which had destroyed a large portion of the jungle.

They told me this was something that happened infrequently, about once in every generation. n.o.body knew why, but some thought it was to keep the jungle clear of the Black Wall.

Eight days after the Xaust Xaust wind took me I was back with my parents and helping to rebuild the village in a new location several days, travel towards sunset. wind took me I was back with my parents and helping to rebuild the village in a new location several days, travel towards sunset.

The first thing my father did when he saw me was hug me. The second thing he did was cuff me around the face for losing his crossbow.

16.

Landfall

I had not envisaged our arrival at Rapa Nui to be the most joyful of occasions. In truth it was a frightening thought to me. I would be going back to the past. I knew it would bring back pain - the pain of my abandonment of Alexander Richards - but I did not expect that it would also bring the pain of abandoning Leela and James Royston to the merciless clutches of the Pacific Ocean.

I stood at the bowsprit and watched the island glide closer to us across the water. At least, that was the illusion. The twist of rock and scattered vegetation curled up from the water towards a perfect sky. Cliffs. Waves.

Bay. Nothing, it seemed, had changed in the three decades since I had last been here.

I found myself scanning the rocky skyline for indications of movement.

Movement by objects that could not possibly move. I remembered that night so clearly. It had haunted my dreams and waking thoughts for thirty years, and it had not faded. I remembered the rongo-rongo. rongo-rongo. The chase. Seeing Tortorro succ.u.mb to madness and the stone The chase. Seeing Tortorro succ.u.mb to madness and the stone moai moai walking. Now there was nothing. No sound to break the voice of waves and gulls, and no movement. Not even the movement of curious islanders watching us drop anchor in Anakena Bay. walking. Now there was nothing. No sound to break the voice of waves and gulls, and no movement. Not even the movement of curious islanders watching us drop anchor in Anakena Bay.

I sensed a presence beside me at the cathead. Richards. Not the man I had abandoned. His sister. My nemesis. It was by no means the first time I had seen her on the voyage, but it was the first time she had deigned to engage me in conversation.

'A homecoming.' Her voice was quiet but emotion ran in deep currents within it.

'Hardly.' I did not want to speak to her. She stirred too many feelings within me I would rather have forgotten.

'Such a desolate rock, alone in all this wilderness of water. So silent and remote. Surely you feel something. I do and I have never been here before.'

She wanted the truth? Very well, she could have it. 'I feel... afraid.'

Her voice hardened. 'Imagine how my brother felt when you left him here.'

'That has been my cross to bear for three decades.'

'It's not enough!' A moment, then her temper pa.s.sed, though her anger did not. 'Not nearly enough.'

She was right. A lifetime would not be enough to a.s.suage the guilt I felt. It hadn't hadn't been. been.

I felt the ship rock beneath me as waves made shallow by reefs slapped against her storm-damaged hull. Richards moved aside to allow the men to take depth soundings as Tweed Tweed eased into the bay. I caught a glimpse of her face beneath the hood she wore with her cloak. Her face, lean and tanned by our pa.s.sage, was expressionless. eased into the bay. I caught a glimpse of her face beneath the hood she wore with her cloak. Her face, lean and tanned by our pa.s.sage, was expressionless.

'I remember your report to the Geographical Society. I have the last remaining transcript. It has been bedside reading for me for thirty years.

I remember how you described that islander - Tortorro - I remember how you described his death. Speaking in tongues. Convulsing in madness on the ground, at the touch, no doubt, of some native poison administered by blowpipe in the darkness. I remember your fanciful stories of thirty-ton statues walking the length and breadth of the island. Of them chasing you.' I did not need to look to see her face twist with contempt. 'There's one part I shall never forget. The part where you describe my brother, Alexander, as your best friend, almost in the same breath as you describe abandoning him to his fate. The same fate as Tortorro. Do you remember that part, Horace?'

In truth I remembered every word of my report. 'If you seek to hurt me, you are wasting your time. Nothing can be as painful to me as the guilt I have suffered. Every night for the last thirty years I have lain awake, racked by dreams of him. I have cried out his name in the night.

I have awoken sobbing and close to madness. I have driven more than twenty household staff from me in my guilt and madness.'

Now Richards turned on me, pulling back her hood to better view the man who had shaped her adult life. 'If you seek my sympathy you you are wasting are wasting your your time. My brother is dead. If it were not for the Doctor and his friendship with Captain Stuart you would be dead also. As it is, I live only to see your face at his grave, to see your madness grow and consume you. And then to kill you, if I can. I desire your death, Horace Stockwood, I desire it as some desire perfume or sweet appointments or love or life itself! Think on that as you conduct your studies and catalogue your artefacts. And think on this also: my time is time. My brother is dead. If it were not for the Doctor and his friendship with Captain Stuart you would be dead also. As it is, I live only to see your face at his grave, to see your madness grow and consume you. And then to kill you, if I can. I desire your death, Horace Stockwood, I desire it as some desire perfume or sweet appointments or love or life itself! Think on that as you conduct your studies and catalogue your artefacts. And think on this also: my time is now. now. Your time is done.' Your time is done.'