Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

We could start here.

“I will do this for you,” said the tall man, whose eyes were fully as disturbing as Crowley’s own and whose throne looked no more comfortable. “There is… diplomacy between that realm and mine, but strained. Nor is this the first time she has taken someone… I could send him kindly dreams, but I could not stop the weeping. She owes me a favor and I will collect. I ask only a small price.”

“Any price,” said Crowley.

“Have a care how you say that here.”

Perhaps here.

“Aaaahh – no – on the left! Oh, ducks, you put the wind up me, there.”

“Sorry. Still takes getting used to. Newt usually drives.”

“I’m still fluttering. Let’s put on a little music.”

“I already tried the radio. He doesn’t have one. Just the deck.”

“Ohh, quite a collection here. Let’s try this one, Percy Grainger. I love that Country Gardens one.”

“How far is the turnoff? I thought it was going to be after that last circle.”

“Yes, dear, but we took the detour.”

“Aaaagh! Turn that down!”

“Well, that certainly isn’t Grainger.”

“All right in the back, there?”

This is probably confusing. We need to go back a bit.

“You can take those off, you know,” said Anathema. “I don’t need them.”

The demon raised a hand to his face, hesitated, drew off the almost opaque black lenses that covered his eyes wherever he went. They looked oddly naked, and a little red where they weren’t sulfur-yellow.

“What brings you up to Tadfield? How’s Mr. Fell?”

“I thought maybe you would already know.”

“Agnes was the one who did prophecy, not me. I map ley lines and read Ogham letters. And blend herbs. Kettle’s boiling, ginger-anise or rosemary-comfrey?”

He looked at her almost uncomprehendingly. In his world, these were not the names of beverages.

“Or May wine. I laid some down.” It was just gone ten, but she detected the aura of someone who really, really needed a drink. She might not have been a prophetess like her forebear, but then, she knew Crowley, at least a little bit. She rummaged in the fridge, poured. The early summer sun slanted into the kitchen of Jasmine Cottage, laid bands of light across her sleeve as she passed him the cup, which was silver and chased with a design of Celtic crosses. “Anyway, as I was saying, how’s your angel?” They’d explained to her, eventually, once they decided to make a rather solemn request of her. He was about to make another one.

“Champion – last I saw him. ‘S’why I’m here.”

The demon reached into his jacket pocket for his phone; she saw then that his hands were trembling a little. He flicked his fingers over the screen, cuing up a text message, and handed it to her.

         Darling – something’s happened with Warlock. I need to sort it. Don’t  worry, home by tea. Xox, followed by a little angel emoji.

“At least he learned how to use the damn thing. But if he could have just called – “

“When was this?” Anathema peered. It looked as if she were due for new glasses.

“A week tomorrow.” There was barely controlled desperation in his voice.

“You told me you used to go off for years at a time. And that he could lose track – “

“That was then, Ana. We’re married now, you ought to know, you married us. He’s never done something like this.”

“Who’s the warlock? You don’t meet many.”

“Not a warlock, Warlock Dowling. He was the boy we mistook for Adam. American diplomat’s son. I nannied him for six years – it’s not funny, Ana.”

She lowered the hand with which she’d tried unsuccessfully to stifle a giggle. “I’m sorry. I know it isn’t, but – you –”

“We both looked after him. He was a right little shit most of the time, but you get attached.”

“Why hasn’t it been in the news? You’d think we’d hear something.”

“They’re trying to keep it quiet. Diplomatic incident and all that. Dad’s still in the legation, big whoop about him maybe being next American Secretary of State. They’ve been going through ’em. S’pose no one wants this headlining. And he’s gone off a couple times before, three nights the last time, so…”

“How do you know all this?”

“There may have been, erm, a Scotland Yard plainclothesman in dark glasses who showed up to do some follow-up questioning.”

“You didn’t tell anyone about him calling Mr. Fell? Or however they knew him.”

“Oh, like that would help. They’d all be barking up wrong trees about some old fruit of a family retainer grooming the kid who used to hang out with him all the time and running off to someplace tacky like Brighton.” Anathema’s eyes widened a bit at ‘fruit.’ “Look, Ana, you know that’s where it’d go soon as they started asking questions. Aziraphale practically catches the curtains on fire.”

“Okay.” Looking as if she were deciding whether to approve or not, finally smiling quietly, she returned the phone, resettled herself in the kitchen chair, back straight, eyes questioning. “You think I can help,” she said.

“I’m out of ideas, Ana. I can’t exactly file a missing-angel report. But back at the airbase, back when it all happened, it took all of us but you were the one with the prophecies, you knew what was going to stop the missiles,  you were the coolest head there – “

“I don’t know things like that any more. The book’s burned, I live here with Newt and my garden, and I give the good people of Tadfield a thrill because they can gossip about the American woman who tramps through all the hedgerows trying to figure out a mapping app and dances naked under the full moon. I don’t, by the way. The dancing part.”

“You’re a witch. That’s something that stands apart from Heaven and Hell. Don’t think either of 'em are involved this time... Just a feeling.”

He’d emptied the cup. She poured another, and he looked down into it for  a long moment before he drank.

“I used to show up sometimes when some clutch of housewifey birds would butter themselves with aconite and go for a fly. Big theatrical hit, gave ’em a Satanic blessing, told ’em they had powers, but it was all rubbish. You, you’re real. Cast runes, look in a crystal, cards, whatever it is you do.” He stood and leaned toward her, one hand on the table, one still gripping the cup.  “I’ve tried everything I can think of on my own. I’ve lost two people I lo –  I don’t know who else to ask. Help me.”

She saw his fingertips white on the metal cup, was glad it wasn’t glass, took in how tightly he was keeping himself under control.

In the Symposium of Plato there is a quaint little fable about original human pairs, bonded together as one, then divided in two by the Olympian deities out of envy for their perfect happiness, wandering the earth in search of their lost other halves. Plato doesn’t mention Celestial beings, but if  Anathema had been more of a Classical scholar, she would have noted the omission. Crowley was a being who had lost half of himself.

She decided that if it were humanly possible, she was going to get it back.

“You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find just a bottle of ink,” she said, snipping the end off the third Waterman cartridge and emptying it into a silver bowl that matched Crowley’s cup, then trickling a stream of water after it. The climbing sunlight shot blazing holographs off the bowl as she swirled it; bees were starting to buzz in profusion in the kitchen-garden outside, a sleepy, hypnotic sound. “Even when I was a kid. And I’ve never really been that good at this, but I’ll try.”

The surface of the water in the bowl, now resting atop a stoneware plate on the butcher-block table, was a black, glinting mirror.

She took off her glasses, folded them neatly; everything about her was organized, prim, except for the dark waterfall of her hair. She pulled it back, tied the length of it in a loose knot, laid her arms on either side of the bowl and hitched herself forward to the edge of the table, dropping her head to gaze into the shifting surface.

“Agh – ckkkk – fff! Let go!”

“Breathe!!!”

“I’m fucking breathing! Crap, my head – “

“You weren’t, there for a moment. Thought you’d swallowed your tongue.”

“That’s only in books. Read a real first aid manual sometime. Or try it.”

“Um, I sort of could.”

“Shit, this’ll never come out of the table.”

“”’Fraid that was you. You keeled right into it. Okay? Tracking?”

Crowley was standing in front of her chair, which he’d pulled away from the table with her still in it, in order to hoist her up for a roundhouse smack on her back that got her sucking air into her lungs again (he’d have done the Kiss Of Life thing if he’d had to, though a crazed image of Newt walking in on them at that precise moment wouldn’t leave his imagination). “Look at me,” he said, moving his hand toward her face and away until he could see her eyes tracking it. “Good. Got anything stronger than that herby plonk? I think you need it.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“Nope. Booze. Or coffee. Whichever sorts you. ‘Cos we might need to go for a walk soon’s you get yourself back.”

“I don’t drink coffee.”

“Start,” said Crowley, and snapped his fingers, extending a large cup of java with an espresso shot.

She started.

“ I didn’t expect it to work.”

“I didn’t expect it to – ah, do that to you. Ssssorry.”

“Don’t be,” she said after a pause.

It was a brisk day even for early English summer, and Crowley pulled his jacket around him, hunched against the chill that she didn’t seem to feel. The path through the Hogback Wood was well beaten by childish feet.

“I think it’s up here,” said Anathema. “Read that off to me again.”

Crowley had transcribed what she’d said, as best he recalled it once she’d revived, on the back of her grocery list. “ ‘Go to the high place, walk the circle where the roads cross.’ Doesn’t seem very definite.”

“Unless you’re me, and you’ve been to Green Mountain, and you’d been lugging that theodolite all around Tadfield for weeks before you two showed up to knock me off my bike.”

“Ah, you ran into us."

She looked at him more affectionately then he would have expected. “You two.”

For a moment he could almost forget that he hadn’t seen Aziraphale in a week and that was why they were picking their way up this increasingly steep path.

“The kids have always been interested in this, but they like that hideout we passed. Better tree cover. So I never had to warn them about much.”

“Warn?”

“Some nights of the year you don’t want to be at a place like this. What’s the next bit?”

“ ‘Seek the ruby and the sands that blow away at dawn.’ Well, that’s a bit bollocks.”

“I nearly barfed my breakfast for it.”

“All right, all right, sorry.” They were coming out now onto a little clear table of land that looked down over the Hogback treetops behind them and the nearby valley, with a single, broken-looking standing stone in the middle, only a little larger than a tall man. The path ran directly up to it; traces of a more overgrown, almost illusory track crossed at a right angle, meeting at the stone, disappearing in the direction of the downslope to the east.

“Look around you, there and there.” Anathema pointed out irregular teeth of stone that thrust up lower than knee height in the scrub; a rough, broken circle around the standing, stunted megalith. “Been here forever. Saw something like it in Vermont, when I was studying. The letters are here too.” She ran fingertips over a weathered, barely visible series of scratches on the tall stone. “Too worn to read. But it’s the old script.”

“Walk the circle?”

“It was a circle once.”

Crowley put a hand on the standing stone, looked up at its top; trailed his fingers as he stepped clockwise around it. “Just looks like a big rock. More Zira’s line than mine, he has all the spooky books – “

“You’re a demon. At least that’s what you said – “

He rounded behind the megalith.

“Don’t demons – “

She stopped. There was a sudden absence on the table of land, a faint sound of sheep bleating a long way below, brought by the wind.

She waited for Crowley to round the stone on the other side.  He didn’t.

She dashed widdershins around it – uttering a protective spell as she remembered you don’t do that – sure he’d be leaning against it, touching it, studying it.

No one and nothing there. No, not quite nothing. The grocery list, inscribed on the back with the words she’d spoken in trance, fluttered in the grass at the base of the dolmen.

She was alone at the roof of the Hogback Wood.

                       …leave me alone now
While I murmur a little and ponder
The history here in the stone now;
Then away and away I will wander.

          – W. B. Yeats, The Fairy Pendant

Chapter Text

“Hey. Nice to see a brother."

The voice came from over Crowley's head. He found he was half leaning, half fallen against a signpost at a crossroads in a bleak landscape, under a sky that shed light but seemed never to have seen the sun. A hundred or so paces away the land rose gently, outcroppings of rock breaking through the turf between twisted bushes; a dark slot in the hillside yawned at him like a bad memory. Further up the road he could discern the shape of a ramshackle little bungalow, no, two. No other work of hands was to be seen, unless the mirage in the middle distance was actually a castle.

His wings were out. Shock did it sometimes. He tried to furl them in again, but they stubbornly refused to go.

Concentrate. He rubbed his eyes, shoving the glasses up on his forehead, beat the wings once. It felt good to have them out, but not to know they wouldn’t obey him and go back in.

“You okay there? Don’t puke. I hate it when they do that.”

He looked up. There was a raven perched on top of the signpost, which was lettered in a language like nothing he’d seen in six thousand years on Earth. The bird stretched blue-black wings as glossy as his own, snapped them back, preened one a few strokes.

“Hm. You’re not dreaming either.”

It had an American accent.

“Could’ve fooled me,” said Crowley.

“Anyway, pleased t’meetcha. Name’s Matthew.”

“Crowley.”

“Kinda unimaginative. This some sorta convention no one told me about?”

The bird spoke well even if it didn’t make sense. Crowley settled for folding his wings as closely around him as he could; it helped keep him warm. There was a damp cold in the air here.

“Well, let’s get on with it,” said the raven. “Follow me. I’m a psycho-frickin-pomp, might as well do my job. Wanna meet the boss? Don’t know what else’d bring you here when you’re not sleeping.”

Crowley wished he was. Sleep was the only constant comfort in his life, or had been before there was Aziraphale. He was a little ashamed at how often he’d retreated into it during the past week.

The raven launched from the signpost, flapping ahead in an easy cruise, leading him past the two little houses with smoke threading from their gimcrack chimneys. A small, golden, large-eyed creature stared from one porch, uttering a soft meep as they passed. The structure in the distance became more distinct.

It was a building whose shape shifted a little with every step; arches disappearing, re-forming, a moat there one moment and not the next, a turret moving from one corner to the other as he blinked. “You can wait in the library,” said the raven. “Lucien hasn’t had this much traffic in a while.”

A courtyard and a gateway, guarded by every chimerical beast ever imagined; a long corridor and a spiral stair – the sense-memory of climbing the stair in the bookshop,  now so familiar, tugged at his heart – and the raven rapped at one of a pair of double doors with its beak. A small creature, with mudbrown hair straggling over the shoulders of a pink tunic, pointed fox-ears flicking, opened the door a crack.

“Tell Loosh we got more company,” said the raven. “Found him at the crossroads down by Eve’s cave.” Crowley startled at the name. “You know Eve? Shoulda said. I’d’a brought you by, she gets lonely.”

“Eve? That Eve…?”

“At least on Tuesdays.”

He gave up on the bird. The little entryway opened out into a vast, airy, brilliantly lit chamber, lined with books, rows of shelves receding to the vanishing point, like Fell’s with delusions of grandeur. Broad cherrywood tables fit into alcoves around the floor level, rolling ladders were scattered here and there along the stacks, overhead a railed mezzanine stretched the length of the place. Crowley picked up a book from the pile on the nearest table: The Further Voyages of the Dawn Treader. Kids’ book illustrations. Beside it lay Sir Thomas Malory’s  Le Revenir d’Arthur.

The bird flapped up to the mezzanine railing. “Hey, Loosh. Brought you another one.” There was no answer. The small pink scruffy creature was dusting the tops of rows of books, systematically. “Wherever he gets off to. I’ll go tell Himself."

Crowley turned in a circle. A soft but intense light that seemed unrelated to the skies he’d seen outside sifted in through high windows; there was a smell of wood polish, glue, and centuries, that felt poignantly llke home. There was a silence that swallowed up words. There was…

There was a pair of wings arching over the railing three stacks ahead. A white pair.

He stumbled over a chair, knocked over the pile of books, a gunshot sound in the stillness. The figure above him turned, wings flaring, and it was Aziraphale, his completely collected, maddeningly tranquil angel, reading glasses perched on his nose, holding one of the volumes open in one hand, a handkerchief protecting it from Celestial fingerprints. Crowley went airborne, dropped onto the mezzanine’s parquet, seized the angel in a crushing hug. It went on long enough, tightening once and again, that Aziraphale gave his wings, the only part of him that could still move freely, a  desperate flap. “Crowley,” he mushmouthed into the demon’s lapels, “I can’t breathe.”

“You don’t need to breathe. Not letting you go.” But he relented.

“Whatever – “ he saw tear tracks below the sunglasses as Crowley stepped back. “Whatever is wrong?”
 
“Wrong? Angel, you’ve been gone for a week.–”

“A week – ? I only texted you an hour ago –  Oh, dear. I know I lose time when there are books, but I didn’t imagine – “

“I don’t think it was that,” said Crowley. “I think it’s something about here. Wherever here is.”

“I’m not altogether sure myself. But I had the loveliest chat with the librarian before he stepped out, he doesn’t usually get guests, but that sweet little creature found me in the corridor outside – I admit I have no idea how I got here – “ Aziraphale was almost babbling, eyes alight with both bibliophilia and slightly sappy affection. Crowley tried to pretend that he wasn’t basking in it.

“And it doesn’t matter as long as the place is full of books. I love you, you daft git.” They embraced, rather less frantically this time.

“I was right gutted. Not the first time, y’know.”

“Don’t worry, dear. I’m fine, and I gather there’s someone here who can help us about Warlock.”

“What happened?”

Aziraphale carefully closed the book – it was the Chronicle of the Great Fire, by Daniel Defoe – and pulled out his phone to scroll through the calls. “I still can’t quite figure this thing out, Crowley. Oh, here – there it is.” The log did indeed show a call from Warlock Dowling less than two hours ago.

“Just out of the blue?”

He handed the phone to Crowley, who thumbed the screen.

One agitated wail. “Brother Francis – “ then a clatter and a hiss and dead air.

“Fuck.” I used to tie the little twit’s shoelaces. “How’d he know to – “

“Well. When I left him – as Brother Francis, that is – I gave him the bookshop number, but you did show me how to forward calls… I suppose I‘m a bit touched that he still had it.”

“Should be. I nannied the little toerag, he forgot everything but his head.”

“And I didn’t get to it in time – you know I still can’t sort out how to answer it – “

“Swipe. Don’t just pick it up.”

“Yes, yes, I remember, But it went to voice mail, and here we are.”

Crowley played the few seconds’ call over. There was a tinny sound of laughter, many voices, not entirely pleasant, like the sniggering of playground bullies.

“I admit I did suggest that I was the one to call if anything – uncanny seemed to be threatening him… Well, you know his parents wouldn’t have been much use in any case.”

“Yeah. I know,” said Crowley sourly. He’d spent long enough in the household. Spoil the kid with too many things, see him on holidays when there were photographers around, leave him to the staff the rest of the time.

“I suppose I was thinking more of the Four Horsemen, or someone else from that general quarter. But this afternoon – “

“You mean last week, angel.”

“ – I couldn’t begin to think, so I just tried the – well, open-ended miracle, I suppose, of asking to be brought where I could find him. It always worked with you, dear. I was sure I could handle the rest myself – “

“Oh, you idiot angel.”

“And I ended up here, and here you are, rescuing me again, you dear thing – “

The doors of the library opened. The raven coasted in, followed by a slight, small man in huge spectacles and a tailcoat as antique as one of Aziraphale’s. His hair swept up and back like wings, though he was the one person in the room who didn’t sport a pair; even the small scruffy creature was followed by the suggestion of movement behind her shoulders.

“He’ll see you now.”

Aziraphale extended a hand as they reached the main level..

“A privilege. Perhaps I’ll find my way back another time.”

“I don’t believe you sleep enough,” said the librarian inscrutably. Crowley was seizing the moment to furtively pile the overset books back on the table.

“Nuala, no, please: stay here with me. I have work for you. Take them, Matthew.”

“It’s been three days, Newt, I don’t know what to do. The car’s still out there.”

“Do you want me to come home early?”

“Nothing you can do. You said your Mom can’t get help in till tomorrow. It’s only fair, it was all your computer junk she tripped over.”

“I told her to stay out of my room and I’d be down to pack it up.”

“When was that?”

He elided the question. “She’s just sitting all day in front of the telly with her jelly cast up on the hassock, asking me to bring her things. I’m going mental. Are you sure –?”

“No, it’s all right. I think I need the space. I’m still trying to figure it out – it’s like the Bathurst case, he just walked around the Tor…”

“Can’t they both do that miracle thingy where they just snap out of sight? Like happened at the airfield?”

“I don’t think he’d have done it without telling me, Newt. I called your friend the Sergeant to ask if he’d seen or heard anything, but no. Maybe I need to go back up there.”

There was a lot of Be careful and I love you (until, if she’d admitted it, she was becoming impatient to ring off), and the clunk of Jasmine Cottage’s old-style phone in its cradle coincided with a spray of gravel outside. Anathema’s heart bounced. News, something. “Right there!” she called before anyone had a chance even to knock, covering the distance to the door in three strides and pulling it open.

A gust of Dior’s Poison nearly blew her over as a slight figure in front of her unstrapped an antique safety helmet, melon-colored coils of mussed hair spilling out. “Oh, I’m so glad I caught you at home. The motorway was a nightmare, lane closings half way up to Didcot. I had to ask where you lived in the village, it seemed to cause quite the sensation. Have you got any tea, love? or maybe some Lucozade? I’m parched.”

Anathema frankly gawped.

“You remember me from the airbase, dear? And the wedding? It was lovely, you know. Tracy Shadwell. The Sergeant told me you called, and I thought I should just get on the road as soon as it was light. Don’t leave me standing on the mat, it’s been a long ride and I dearly need the little girls’ room.”

“Bit heavy on the drama, this lot,” Crowley said in an undertone at the beginning of the audience,  as they stepped into what could only be called a throne room. He’d caught Aziraphale’s hand as they followed the raven, which told the angel he wasn’t as cocky as he was trying to sound.

“You’d never do anything like that.”

Crowley merely growled a little, deep in his throat.

Braziers bracketed a low dais. The slouched figure seated there was almost enveloped in robes as blue-black as the raven’s wings, the shock of midnight hair stiff and unruly, the spidery fingers that dandled a wine-red stone paperwhite. The other hand supported his chin as he gazed at them, without expression.

“Mortals do not enter waking into the Dreaming. What are you?” he said finally.

“Might ask you that,” Crowley answered, His remaining patience with this was dropping into the single digits. Warlock. Wailing. He’d never heard the kid wail like that, even when he was throwing a first-rate tantrum.

“Morpheus. Or Dream, if you prefer. I am the lord of this realm.”

“I don’t do Lords,” said Crowley, despite the angel’s warning tug at his hand.

“Ahhh… I see, old serpent. How does Hell these days?”

“ ‘Fraid we don’t speak.”

“And an angel. That’s queer.”

“If you say so, sire,” answered Aziraphale, a little more willing to be conciliatory. “We’re both a bit… extracurricular.”

“You share a dream.” The ghost-white fingers turned the ruby over and over. “How have you come here?”

“Bugger if I – “

“My dear.”

Aziraphale explained. The dark man barely shifted on his throne, but became somehow more focused, alert.

“I can protect… some who are foolishly seeking to enter – one of the other realms,” he said. “That is what you encountered. As payment for an old guilt. A mortal would only wake from a fading dream, certain that he’d passed the time in the Blessed Realm. You, on the other hand… Some, though not all. A boy, you say.”

“Around twelve. We need to go there, sire. He called on me for help.”

“You would be powerless.”

“Bit more dangerous than we look.” Crowley’s eyebrows lifted.

“You would be powerless,” Dream repeated. “But I am not.” He rose. “I will do this for you. There is… diplomacy between that realm and mine, but strained. Nor is this the first time she has taken someone so young, nor the hundredth. She broke the heart of someone I was close to, and the guilt is on my head. I could send him kindly dreams, but I could not stop the weeping. She owes me for that and I will collect. I ask you only a small price.”

“Any price,” said Crowley.

“Have a care how you say that, here."

“If we can just get on with it and not faff about here all day? He’s been gone a week.”

"He has not been harmed.”

“Bloody confident, aren’t you?”

The nebulas of eyes bore steadily on Crowley. Aziraphale felt the demon slew a little, as if his long legs had almost given out

“Matthew,” said the tall man, stepping down from the dais. “I saw the fashion thing on the eastern stair, looking for something to do. Ask it to bring a brazier to me here, and a vessel. I will be away from the Dreaming for a while. The kitchen staff can bring refreshments. Whatever pleases them. I must speak to Lucien.” He turned and began to retreat; surprising the angel, Crowley called after him.

“My – “ his throat was dry; it came out as a croak. “My Lord.”

The man turned. “Yes?”

“If we’re waiting… s’pose I could visit – the cave beyond the crossroads? Where the bird found me?”

“The bird,” echoed the raven sourly. “See’f I bother to remember your name.”

“Never mind, Matthew. Take him.”

“D’ye mind, angel? You could come.”

“It’s all right, Crowley. I can wait in the library. Might I pass the time there, Lord Morpheus?”

And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams.

 – W. B. Yeats, The Stolen Child

Chapter Text

Go to the high place,
Walk the circle
Where the roads cross.

Seek the ruby
and the sands
that blow away at dawn,

Seek the silent prattler
Who holds the key.

Pay your passage
in the moon’s coin,

let the long man  
open the door..

When the third speaks,
all home, all safe.

“Oh, that place. I think I passed it coming in. Pretty old house, but they’d rather spoilt the grounds. Thank you, dear, I will have another. Milk, no sugar… Can they put us onto her? I’m sure that’s who was meant. I do have a bit of the Sight, you know.”

She does, thought Anathema, cradling the phone, just enough to get into trouble, and that’s where it’s probably going to get us, but I’m out of ideas now too. “Problem is, she doesn’t work there any more.  Apparently she got an awful shock last year, and she’s returned to Holy Orders. Not the same one.”

“They sounded a bit dodgy anyway.”

“So she’s Sister plain Mary Hodges now, not that other thing.”

“Let me look at that again. Seek the silent prattler. He told me at the wedding – didn’t they both look good enough to eat? – that you couldn’t get any of those women to shut up, and then when he really needed her to tell him something, she hardly had a thing to say….”

“They gave me an address just outside the village, where they’ve been forwarding things. We could go and ask – ah, I forgot. Newt’s got the car.”

“No problem, ducks, you can ride behind me.  Just hang on tight. I’d rather you had a helmet, but if it’s only a short way.”

“I’ve got a hard hat from Newt’s last job.”

“Onsite work?”

“No, his workstation was under a conduit. He kept banging his head.”

“Just give me another moment with this. You went up the Tor, so that’s that part. Seek the ruby… I don’t know why, but that gives me a flutter. Like when you dreamed something and you almost remember?… Pay your passage in the moon’s coin, Let the long man open the door. Well, dear Anthony is quite the tall drink of water. But he seems to have gone through the door and not held it open.”

“Wait. No.”

Anathema pulled down a book. Lost Gods of Albion wasn’t as well-thumbed as a lot of her occult library, but she found the page on the first riffle. Tracy took the book, open to the chapter on the Long Man of Wilmington, showing a photo of a chalk carving, a human outline appearing to hold a stave in each hand.

“Oh this! I saw it when the Sergeant and I were looking for just the right place. We’re moving next month – you must come down sometime, you know, it’s lovely when everything starts blooming. Do you suppose those are meant to be spears, or what exactly?”

“Not spears,” said Anathema. “He’s guarding a doorway.”

Tracy looked up. It sank in.

“I think we have to go through it.”

They took the road crossing the one from the palace – the raven was perched on the signpost the one time that Aziraphale looked back – and as they descended a slope the land became greener, less bleak, the soft light coaxing a glow from small flowers that peppered the grass. He laced fingers with Crowley, who had been all but silent since returning from the cave and granting his share of the tall man’s request. Their host, muffled in a long cloak, walked ahead. He hadn’t spoken since warning them not to stray off the path.

The grass became scrub, the scrub became trees, the trees became a wood. The path narrowed, branches and fronds brushing their clothes as they went forward, sometimes in single file. What at first seemed like a breeze became a susurrus of whispers. Long minutes passed while they grew louder, teasing words at the edge of hearing. The canopy grew thicker. There were giggles and titters.

“Look, my dearie, an angel. Great blessed wings. We could pluck a feather.”

“And a demon. Hand in hand, so sweet, my loves.”

 “We could tease them, dears.”

“We could poke and pester them.”

“We could lead them a chase. Catch us, angel. We’ll grant a wish. We know you have a wish.”

“Wouldn’t come this road otherwise, dearies.”

“Catch us, demon. We can give you heart’s-ease. Oh, the burn in that dark heart.”

“We’re over here.”

“No, over here.”

Aziraphale kept his eyes locked straight ahead, resisting the pull, though something in him longed to catch just one of the taunters; show it who he was, the Guardian of the Gate, the soldier of Heaven.

Crowley smoldered. Heaven had damned him, Hell had spat him out. He had one thought and one hand to cling to, and the teasing voices were like an itch. He tightened his hand around Aziraphale’s, then paused – they could show what the strength of an angel and a demon could do –

“SILENCE,” came their guide’s voice. He had turned around on the path, thrown back his hood. Eyes, like blue-white stars sunk in the firmament, blazed in the dimness.

The leaves rustled.

“Shaper.”

“Master.”

“Him.”

“We meant nothing, Lord Shaper.”

“Just our game.”

“Our welcome to the Land.”

“We’ll go tell her.”

“Tell her you’re coming.”

“Make you welcome.”

“And your friends.”

The rustles died into silence.

“She can see you in here. Maybe you know, she won’t be able to talk.”

Tracy and Anathema exchanged glances.

“Vow of silence?”

The nun who’d received them – a genial, mundane-looking person wearing a white habit that just escaped being a blouse and skirt, with a short haircut under a perfunctory wimple – shook her head. “We don’t do those, you know. Not nowadays. No, something traumatic that happened last – you must remember that firearms incident at the Centre, you’d think we were in the States – she’s been mute since then. I gather it wasn't the first serious trauma in her life. But she can write. We can set up a laptop, faster than handwriting. Just sit down in the families’ room here, I’ll go for her. She never gets any visitors, did you know her from her old job?”

“”A friend asked us to look her up,” said Tracy.

“Well, lucky you came today. People join us to retire from the world. Visitors only on Tuesdays and Fridays.”

The little reception room contained only two chairs, a worn but clean couch, a table, and a selection of edifying books of spiritual exercises. There was a portrait of the order’s founder, looking remarkably like Lord Snowden. “We must be the most thrilling things this place has seen in a while, don’t you imagine?” said Tracy. “I don’t think they get many witches, or women of my sort.”

Footsteps approached. Sister Mary Hodges was dressed in the same knee-length, no-nonsense white habit, and yet managed to look sharp, except for the lace-up shoes. She glanced back and forth between them, quizzically.

“Mary?”

She nodded. Introductions. The senior nun came back with a slim Apple Notebook, set it up on the table in front of the couch.

“Mary, why don’t you sit between them so you can talk. They’ve come from a friend.”

She clopped away. Mary sat, opened the laptop, and typed as soon as a screen came up:

Friend?

“Mr. Crowley,” said Tracy. Mary started.

“No, it’s all right, ducks. He doesn’t work for – them any more. And nor do we.”

“It’s about the boy,” said Anathema. “The baby who was born that night -- ”

Gave it to the Dowlings, Mary typed. She looked frankly scared.

“Actually, you didn’t,” said Anathema. “The other family got him. But the boy the Dowlings got  –  he’s gone missing. And we’re trying to help Mr. Crowley look for him. Everyone thought he was the boy. Can you think of anyone who might have – wanted that boy? Someone who – ” Someone who would be able to make an angel and a demon disappear too. She looked over Mary’s head at Tracy. What are we doing here?

All past. Order disbanded, typed Mary. Over. We wanted the last battle. I didn’t know.

“Didn’t know what, dear?”

What it’s like when, she typed, then backspaced, started over. End of the World. Like it was a game. I was a fool. Sister Theresa died. Everything burnt in the fire. They were shooting each other that night at the Centre. Still in my head.

Tracy patted her knee. “Dreadful things do happen, ducks. I’m sorry.”

No last battle. Someone must have stopped it. Second chance. I wanted one too.

Anathema’s glance said Should we tell her? and Tracy’s answered better not, dear.

Third baby, Mary was typing. Before the fire. Mother Superior gave me the third baby.

“That would have been the real Dowling baby. I think.” Tracy had heard the story from Crowley only the once, after quite a lot of champagne had already flowed at the wedding, and they’d tried to puzzle out what happened, using three different-coloured petits fours switched this way and that on the tablecloth, but it only made their heads hurt.

Told me to take him up to the Tor. Outside of Tadfield. He had the sweetest little toes too.

Anathema’s eyebrows shot up past her glasses, something of a feat considering the size of the frames she favored.

Left him there. She said good folk would come for him. That I wasn’t to worry. I left a baby on a hilltop.

She began to cry – silently, slow tears trickling down over her lashes and across her coffee-cream cheeks. Tracy dug out a Dior-saturated handkerchief.

“I’m sorry we’ve upset you. We’ll go if you like. We already think we know where to look, we shouldn’t have troubled you.”

Sister Mary shook her head urgently. Leaned forward to type again.

Take me with you. Help.

“Do you need help, dear? Is everything all right here?”

Help you, she typed. Took a baby away from its parents. Left a baby to be taken. Still see his face. Now another one’s gone. Take me with you.

“Oh ducks, it’s kind of you. But all we’ve got’s a motorbike.”

“No,” Anathema said. Mary looked at her, beseeching, typed Please.

“I mean, no, a motorbike isn’t all we’ve got.” Anathema stood. “I can drive, I’m from America, everybody drives. If I can figure out how to start it. We’ve got a car.”

“He just snaps his fingers,” said Tracy. “I saw him do it when they left the wedding.”

“I tried that. It seems to know I’m not a six-thousand-year-old demon.”

“Do you suppose he’s having us on about that? He doesn’t look a bit of it.”

She’d had time to make one phone call, and pocket a few supplies from the kitchen, before Tracy returned with Sister Mary on the pillion seat, wearing the hard hat over her wimple in a way that guaranteed the villagers would have a night’s worth of conversation in the pub. She was seated behind the wheel, trying one cantrip after another, as they debouched from the Vespa.

“There has to be a way. I feel it.” She didn’t mention how disorienting, distressing it was to feel her way into things, after a lifetime of knowing to the minute what would happen and when. And yet she was filled with certainty that this was what she had to do. She laid a hand on the dash,  closed her eyes. There was a prickle under her fingers, no more. Perhaps she was imagining it.

Tracy rested her hand on the fender, nails lacquered in Carnal Red showing up against the tenderly curated, glossy black finish. “He loves you, dear. Don’t you want to find him? We’re trying to help.”

That was a lurch – the small flutter of a battery not quite engaging the engine. Anathema’s eyes widened. She gave it the gas; the near-catch died back. She dropped her forehead to the wheel, then felt the car shift on its springs as Mary slid into the back seat. The nun put a surprisingly warm hand over hers, looked in her eyes as she turned, held her other hand up to mime snapping.

Anathema did.

The engine roared into life.

“Get in,” she said to Tracy.

“Oh dear, we ought to pack a hamper – “

“Get in,”  Anathema repeated.

The trees began to thin. The light ahead was no brighter than in Dream’s realm, but gentler, more delicate, a suggestion of a sinking sun’s slanted rays in the feathery golden clouds etched over a pale blue-violet sky. Scents of flowers exhaled from the turf, as when a long, still summer’s day ends. The chuckle of a stream sounded in the distance.

“Let me speak, when we come to her,” said Dream as the sounds grew nearer. “The folk of this land care nothing for Heaven or Hell. The stream is the last border. Here.”

He led the way down a slow slope of bank, treading in marsh grasses. Stones made a crude ford; Dream trod them surely, the demon and angel less so. Aziraphale heard voices in the burble of the water as it rushed foam-streaked between the rocks; kinder than the forest voices, singing of peace and desire granted,  of eternity without care. There had been so many cares. For a moment he lingered on a flat boulder in the middle of the stream, trying to pick out the words.

“Angel?”

That voice. The only one that mattered.

Dream handed them up onto the far bank, and the touch of his hand was cold, dry. As his feet met the ground of Faerie, Crowley felt his wings furl in with a snap.

“They do not like the splendours of other realms here,” said Dream.

The road led through trees again, tamer this time, boughs bending under the weight of exotic flowers, bursting fruit. Small jeweled birds flitted in the leaves. The path opened into a glade, where the air seemed to ripple like a heat-mirage though the breezes were soft and laden, and in the glade was a pergola laced with vines, and under it was a scrolled bench. A slight, pale woman sat there, with slanting eyes and an impossible fall of golden hair, woven with pearls, licking bare shoulders above a gown that played up over her small breasts like green flames. She was stroking the head of a boy in jeans and trainers, whose eyes were downcast over a permanent pout. Crowley had spent six years of his six thousand, every night after singing his lullabies,  venting to Brother Francis about that pout.

Dream stepped forward into the shimmering glade.

“Ill met by twilight, proud Titania.”

O see ye not that narrow road,
So thick beset with thorns and briers?
That is the path of righteousness,
Tho after it but few enquires.

And see not ye that braid braid road,
That lies across that lily leven?
That is the path to wickedness,
Tho some call it the road to heaven.

And see not ye that bonny road,
That winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Where thou and I this night maun gae.

        –The Ballad of Thomas The Rhymer

Chapter Text

“Aaaahh – no – on the left! Oh, ducks, you put the wind up me, there.”

“Sorry. Still takes getting used to. Newt usually drives.”

“I’m still fluttering. Let’s put on a little music.”

“I already tried the radio. He doesn’t have one. Just the deck.”

“Ohh, quite a collection here. Let’s try this one, Percy Grainger. I love that Country Gardens one.”

“How far is the turnoff? I thought it was going to be after that last circle.”

“Yes, dear, but we took the detour.”

“Aaaagh! Turn that down!”

“Well, that certainly isn’t Grainger.”

“All right in the back, there?”

Sister Mary leaned forward and nodded, squeezing Tracy’s shoulder tentatively with her left hand. Her wimple was a bit askew, but her eyes in the rearview mirror were oddly bright.

Anathema coasted into a lay-by, leaving the engine running, to regroup with her Google Map. She still was a little afraid the car would buck her off, like a horse sensing an unsure rider. The hours on the road down from Tadfield had felt oddly safe, a journey calls on you only to continue it, and its imminent end would require something of her. She wished she knew what. Agnes, where are you when I need you?

“Almost there,” she said aloud. “We overshot our junction. We should be on the A27. If I double back that way I think it’s the first left – “ She threw the car back into gear, feeling it lurch as the too-powerful engine kicked in, slewed out further than she’d meant to, narrowly missing a Ford Fiesta; wheeled in a U-turn (which the signage on this winding stretch of road clearly proscribed). and straightened out, relieved until she realized she was driving on the right again. Damn.

A siren cut in behind them. Police out this far in the boondocks of Britain? Double damn. She floored it, remembering only after the engine surged to slide into the left lane. The siren came a little closer, despite the burst of speed, and the wind carried away whatever was being called out on a loud-hailer. 

A few cars clustered ahead. She banked the wheel with her whole body, feeling as if someone else were guiding it, the Bentley sliding preposterously through a narrow gap between the car ahead of her and another one oncoming, one that shouldn’t have even admitted a cyclist. The siren faded back behind them, and she felt a laugh bubbling up. Thrusting her arm out the window, she shot a middle finger upward, then remembered to turn it into a two-fingered jab. “Wahooooo!” she howled, wind whipping her hair over her eyes, though it didn’t seem to matter if she could see the road or not, the car simply hugged its lane and found its way through the curves as if it didn’t need her.

An intersection with a narrow B-road came up, and without thinking what she was doing she found herself swerving into it, coming so close to a hedgerow that branches slapped the fender. She caught a glimpse of Tracy’s face, bone white. The road narrowed further, one tyre somehow magically skated over a big pothole without going in, a clutch of sheep moved out of the way faster than sheep ever could, another roundabout full of signage loomed ahead. She realized she'd just let out another yell, the wind carrying most of it away, as the car went round it like a tetherball around a pole, straightening into the crossroad without time for Anathema to read the signs, and arrowed off between vividly green fields and slopes thick with yellow brassica. At some point, without anyone touching the dash, the sound system had kicked in with I’m In Love With My Car.

Without Anathema braking, the Bentley slowed, rounding a last turn at an almost sedate pace. They passed through a string of buildings, the South Downs' excuse for a high street, and coasted to a stop beside a sign informing them that they had reached the Wilmington Priory Car Park, free, no overnight caravans.

“Well,” said Madame Tracy, shakily. Sister Mary burped audibly in the back seat, but seemed in no immediate danger of serious indignity.

Anathema fell weakly back against the upholstery, laughing.

“Love, I wish you’d warned us.”

She slotted the car into a space, swung the door open, and stepped out to gaze at the gigantic figure whose blank face seemed nonetheless to gaze back. The dropping sun picked out whitewashed outlines, and the distant  shape of a dog gambolling over the lower parts of the slope ahead of a figure in an anorak.

“We’ll wait till sunset,” said Anathema.

“I heard of your coming, Lord Shaper. Why do you grace my realm? It has been so long.”

“You know the reason, Majesty. He sits beside you.”

Warlock gazed steadily at Crowley for a long moment, glanced over at Aziraphale, back to the demon, only his eyes moving. There was an urgency about his posture, as though he were trying to break bonds, and a tremor came and went in his jaw as if he were struggling to speak and couldn’t. There was a rip in his summer jumper and a smudge on his cheek.

“Is he not beautiful? Almost the face of a man, the limbs of a boy. Scented with the breath of both Heaven and Hell. How glorious you will look when you accept my livery, poppet.” She lifted Warlock’s chin with delicate, beringed fingers. “No lovelier boy has ever been mine.”

“He is not yours, Queen, and we are here for him.”

She laughed, a glass harmonica, a silver chime. “Such as he are my rightful due.” She turned to him, stroking his arm. “I will cosset you, and feed you sweetmeats, my treasure, and you will never grow old and never die.”

“He never really liked sweet things,” Crowley found himself saying without thinking. “It was always the crisps he was getting into. Walker’s deliver here? Thought not."

Titania tilted a look up at the demon, sly, coquettish. “Oh, he will learn the joys here. What does he go back to? Bleakness. His fellows court him for his father’s station. His praeceptors tiptoe around the family’s rank. And all the time his parents care nothing for him.” Aziraphale’s lips tightened, because she hit close to the mark. “Why are you here, and not they? We know you, fallen angel. We know you, Principality. Faerie cares nothing for your sword or flame. Or will you come for him? Take him.”

Aziraphale tried to step forward. He could move, but it was like pressing his way into a hurricane gale, though no wind blew; the air of Faerie fought him like a giant’s hand.

“Surrender him,” said Dream. “You owe a debt.”

“What would that be, Lord Shaper? I recall no bargain.”

“Have you forgotten, Majesty? I brought them to you, to do their mummery by the Doorkeeper; to give you always a foothold in that mortal world. You are remembered and your revels relived, long after folk have ceased to believe. Robin Goodfellow, King Oberon, your waiting women dance and dwell in every corner of the mortal globe, because I gave Will the dream of you. You made me regret it.”

“What is there to regret? That a thing of beauty was made? That the gross mortal world shared in our magic?”

“You took young Hamnet. Poor guerdon for Will’s labor, to steal his son. And where is he now?  You cast them off.”

“I gave him to Peaseblossom. She liked his eyes.” She turned Warlock’s head to her, bent so that their foreheads touched. “He has lovely eyes too, and I saw sweet Nerissa look at him. But no, he is mine.” She lifted the boy’s hand. “He ate our fruit, and drank our wine, and he belongs to us. Go empty-handed to your palace, Lord Shaper. Brood in your corridors. Go back to your drab human world while you can, rebellious angels. Clank your cups and trade your honey kisses and wonder when they will come for you, each forfeit to his kind because of the other. You tire me.”

A hard edge had stolen into her voice, and Aziraphale wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light, or if he could really see a tear stealing down Warlock’s cheek.

“I am done. Depart.”

She turned away, as if to say This audience is at an end, when Crowley found his voice.

“Don’t be so quick.”

The shadows were dropping around Windover Hill. They had walked back into the village for tea and a few biscuits; they were humming like plucked strings and nothing else would have even gone down. Even chocolate digestives tasted like road dust.

“I can’t see my watch, dear.” Tracy had left her handbag under the front seat, retaining only a tasseled keyfob from which dangled a little pendant timepiece. Like everything of hers, it was frilly and girly, and Anathema suddenly brimmed with love for her.

She flicked her phone screen. “Long twilight. Astronomical sunset in about another three minutes.”

“You know so many clever things, Ana.”

“I’m not sure that I know anything,” said Anathema. “I know what’s in books. I can use surveying tools. But I don’t know… even the things you seem to know. Life. Wisdom.”

“Well, now, that’s silly. Who stopped all those bombs from going off? It wasn’t us out there on the macadam.”

“That was Agnes. The book was always there, the footsteps were painted in front of me, I just had to put my feet in them. I knew when everything was going to happen, but now – even that prophecy wasn’t me. I wanted to change, to live the way everyone else does, but right now I’d rather have a book, not a hole in my life like a piece of dead air on the radio. I could be wrong about everything. I feel so powerless.”

Tracy’s hand was warm in hers. ‘You don’t give yourself enough credit, my dove. You found Mary, you got us here – you’re doing a brave thing, and I’m with you, and we’re going to sort this.”

Sister Mary lifted a hand, pointed at the horizon. Time. The whitewashed outline above them seemed to glow a little in the dimness. Anathema flicked on a pocket torch, lifted the latch of the stile, and they stepped through.

“Drab mortal world, you said.”

Crowley still couldn’t approach any closer, but he could speak and gesture, and pace from side to side; fists thrust in his jacket pockets, long legs swaying, seizing the moment to squeeze Aziraphale’s hand as he passed behind him. Got this. “Drab? Must be something about it y’like, or why d’ye keep taking the kids? Job and a half just being in the same room with ’em sometimes, I ought to know, I nannied this one.”

She laughed, then, the glass tinkle coming back. “Oh, so pretty you must have been. Were your petticoats silken? Did you let down your hair at night? Did you wear dainty slippers?”

“Sensible shoes, Majesty. All the rage now… see, the mortal world, gets short shrift sometimes. It’s like the sensible shoes of the cosmos. Fit you like an old friend, always there for you. You know Heaven thinks it’s the Alpha and the Omega – “

“That was just one of the angels on a day trip, Crowley,” murmured Aziraphale. Crowley hissed a shushing sound. “But it’s nothing to a night in Soho, have y’seen it recently? Either of ’em? And Hell thinks it has all the power and then some, but we sorted ‘em both with an old book and four kids from up the M-way.” Her eyes glimmered interest, or amusement, it was hard to tell. He felt the resistance ebb a bit; he could get closer. “You should come there sometime, I mean to spend time, get to know it. Like we did. You wouldn’t need to keep taking them away.” He inclined his head toward Warlock. “It takes a while, but you get attached.” Her head was tilted now, considering; one finger curled under her pointed chin.

“What d’ye say, your majesty? Shall I show you all the kingdoms of the world?”

The ground rose as they approached the looming white figure, and their steps began to drag. The air that had only minutes before been crisp and clean was a chore to draw into their chests; the grass seemed to tangle them.

Daughter of daughter of daughters, nothing of yourself, hollowed out before your birth for others to fill. What do you hope to gain here?

The wind picked up as they drew far above the level of the road. Old and used, tale-spinner to fools, paint as thick as you like, we see you plain. Who will you hope to help here?

A single rook passed overhead, a flourish of deeper darkness against the jeweled sky.  Sister of follies, chatter on the wind, idiots’ babble with no substance, who do you hope to save here? You left the child, he came with us, he plays at hoops while your tongue is mute.

Anathema tottered to the ground as she reached the base of the easternmost stave, the stave that was not a stave but a doorjamb. A sheep bleated. She reached into her pocket.

Titania clapped her hands. “You would show me all this? If I return him, you would set me loose upon their world by day, to seed it with my glamour, to sample all its follies?” She rose, pirouetted. “It has been many a year and long…” Translucent, slender fingers danced over her head as she raised her arms, the pearls glinting in her hair. “We are unwelcome guests, they leave their dishes by the door and call us Good Folk, but we know it is to drive us forth. And you would hand me over the threshold, all for him?” She nodded toward  Warlock, stepped forward until she and Crowley were almost breast to breast. Her heart-shaped face tilted up toward him. For a long moment her smile was like a girl’s; then it became something hard, sly, heartless.

“I see your game, old Tempter. You lured Her to eat, and Creation stood on its head. But there are no apples like my apples, no gardens like mine. No, nor no wine, either. Tempt me with the coarse and common? When I can pluck the jewels up from the shambles?”

The green gown swirled and lifted as she turned to face Dream.

“You know of old that I keep my bargains. But I struck no bargain with you. I owe you nothing,” she said. “They go under your protection here, and that is stretched to its last strength. Shall there be a trade? one of them for the boy?” She circled the three of them, a cat pacing. “The foolish angel? The lovesick devil? What an ornament either would be to my realm, would they not, Lord Shaper?”

She rubbed fingertips against her flawless cheek, thoughtfully.

“But one would perish without the other, yes? Oh, it would be so sad, my turtledoves, but what a tale; we should sing of it at our feasts. Or… perhaps not…you, my love?” She approached Aziraphale, stroking the cornsilk curls with a single finger; Crowley saw the flinch go through his whole body. “I would clothe you in silks and velvet and silver tissue, and you would taste dainties of which you’ve never dreamed. Perhaps beautiful fairy youths to hold them to those bow-curved lips. Heaven would never seek you out; it has no power here.”

Mary clambered up last, perspiring, staggering. Tracy caught her as she dropped to her knees and leaned her head forward; the wimple, held on only by pins, dropped to the turf. After a moment she lifted her eyes. Tracy reached for Anathema’s hand. Mary clasped Tracy’s.

“Or you, my lovely?  You could coil around my arms, nest on my bosom, jeweled scales for my necklace. Or walk as a man, drinking wines like none of theirs, no one to fear your golden eyes.” The glasses left Crowley’s face; she tossed them over her shoulder without looking to see where they went. “Hell would never come for you, and the boy would go free. Which of you, which of you shall it be?”

Anathema could rise only to her knees, and she raised into the starlight the silver cup she’d drawn from her pocket, with the quartered cross of the old magic chased around its sides. Once, twice, three times she dashed it on the whitewashed stone, with a strength she couldn’t have imagined having, till it bent and split, the sound ringing across the vale, not as the dull smack it should have been, but like the knell of a gong.

The upright line began to glow with sunset light.

The Queen smiled at Dream with merry eyes; his gaze was impassive, expressionless. “Shall we see now, which loves him most?”

Aziraphale’s eyes met Crowley’s. Let it be me. Crowley gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head. I’ll think of something. But if I can’t, not you, never you.

Sound filled the air, massive as the fall of a tower, someone ringing the earth from inside, like a bell. It came again, and again; and where the path led onward out of the glade into Faerie, a door opened. Darkness filled it at first, showing as it widened the stars of an English summer night – the Serpent, the Crown.

She was Three.

She was a slight figure dressed in white, la vierge noire, dark and beautiful as the Eve Crowley remembered, before she took the apple and the thunder sounded. …She was a strength in midnight blue, with eyes that saw through hearts, a broken cup in one hand, a firefly glow playing around the other. …She was a power and a majesty standing between the other two, clothed with clinging light, hair blazing, old wise face bent on the Queen’s, a flail in her right hand. As Titania staggered under her gaze she slapped it, once, twice against her palm.

“I believe you’ve been very naughty, ducks,” said Madame Tracy. “Let him go now.”

Dream stepped forward.

“The Three,” he said. “Maid, Bride, Crone. I knew I would see you soon.”

“Well, you’re a caution,” said Tracy. “Do you want a lick of this? Out of practice, but if it helps things along.” She turned back toward Titania without waiting for an answer. “That nice young man there. I think he wants to come home. You’ve done something to him, haven’t you?”

“He has eaten my fruits. He has drunk from my cups.”

“I like to go to the local tea room for the scones and Lady Grey, dear, but they do let me leave when I’m done.”

“A bluff,” said Dream. “She answers only to the Three. When they speak, she must yield.”

“So you heard that,” came Anathema’s flat American accent. “I threw over a whole week’s working to come here, we’re not leaving without him. Without all three of them. Let the kid go.”

Warlock seemed to be struggling to rise, as if whatever held him was weakening, but his legs were still rooted.. Everyone’s eyes turned on Mary, Titania’s most of all, and as the silence drew out a laugh rose to her eyes. “The Three? Mortals in masquerade, lips bound by fear – “

Mary bent her head, her face working, bit her lip; gasped in a huge breath, another. A croaking sound in her throat, a rusty cry, and then like a church bell: “Let him go, you BITCH!”

Warlock fell forward to the turf, scrabbled at it as if seeking something lost; scrambled up. “Come here, dear!” called Tracy, but the boy arrowed across the grass to nearly knock Crowley down, eyes streaming, his voice like a boy’s of six rather than the tall sapling he’d become: “Nanny Ashtoreth!!!!”

Titania’s face was a Greek mask of rage, the golden curls fading to pale dull strands, her graceful form dwindling. Aziraphale pulled at the demon’s hand: Hurry. The meadow of stars outside was dimming, fading already into pale dawnlight. Dream trod forward to face the Three, looked from one to the other.

“You made dreams live,” he said, then glanced from Tracy to Anathema.

“You lived others’ dreams.”

Dark vastnesses full of starlight turned on Mary. “Your life was stolen by a dream. ...Walk safely in my realm henceforward. We will meet again.”

He raised a hand. The turf of Faerie seemed to hurl them, backwards through the closing door, onto a dew-sodden hillside in the first glow of an English dawn, tumbling till they came to rest.

Warlock sobbed against Crowley’s shoulder. Crowley was trying to pretend he wasn’t almost as undone (despite having arms locked around the boy tight enough to cut off circulation) and succeeded only in looking acutely mortified.

A limb of the sun touched the eastern horizon. Aziraphale got to his feet, brushing at his waistcoat. “My dears. How did you know what to do?”

“I don’t know,” said Anathema. “I’m not sure I have to.”

Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

 – John Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Chapter Text

“You were gone three days,” said Anathema. “It took that long to figure it out. Or it kind of figured itself out.”

They picked their way down the slippery, damp grass of Windover Hill toward the stile. Warlock, walking ahead, opened it; he was looking around him as if everything was new.

“Owe you, for the record. For everything. Still not sure how, exactly, but you three got us out.”

“Um, well you should know, I had to borrow your car. Ah – ? Mr. Crowley?”

The slitted pupils widened until they nearly filled his golden eyes. “You – “

“Oh, it’s all right, dear. She was very careful with it.”

He struck out toward the car park, the snake coming out in his gait, legs swerving through several non-Euclidean dimensions. His hand was on the fender when they caught up.

“Daddy’s here now. Did you miss me? Thank you. Thank you. I knew you loved me – “

He stumbled against a clamp on the front tyre, swore, hopped up and down a moment; paused and saw a flimsy tucked under the wiper on the driver’s side. Anathema felt her feet leave the ground. The East Sussex constabulary had clearly caught up. Well, it was a distinctive car.

“Speeding, reckless driving, failure to yield, evading pursuit, illegal U-turn – wrong lane – “ The demon’s voice found a second octave.

“Crowley. You can see it’s all right. Here, my treat?”

Aziraphale flicked finger against thumb, and the clamp disappeared. The flimsy went up in a brief blaze. “Sorted at the station,”  he said.

Tracy and Mary were talking animatedly in the lane, Tracy holding her shoes with two fingers, bunioned feet on the macadam. Crowley slid behind the wheel, snugging his arms around it, patting it. "It's all right now, sweetheart. Daddy's back." Anathema leaned on the angel, looking as if only habit was keeping her from fainting with relief.

“Nanny?”

Warlock extended Crowley’s glasses. “Saw where she threw them. What a rad car. Is it yours? Can I ride in it?”

Aziraphale was fidgeting with, of all things, the phone that Crowley had given him and despaired of his using. After a moment he seemed to as well.

“Does anyone know how to use one of these things to find someplace to eat?” he said. “I think we’re all due a bit of breakfast. A full English, for preference.”

Warlock asked for beans, kippers, eggs, and a double rack of toast, and settled down to go through it like someone digging sod. “I didn’t eat after she told me,” he said. “But it didn’t help. Anyway it didn’t fill you up. Like meringuey thingys.”

He’d been through enough that they thought he deserved the whole story.

“So all the time you thought it was me who was the Anti-Christy-Whatsit? That was the only reason?”

“Aaah, we got to like you.”

“I’m glad I wasn’t. I’m tired of being that special kid who gets paraded around. You know no one likes you really. Can I have coffee?”

“It’s not good for someone your age – “ began Aziraphale, before Crowley said “Yes,” and waved a hand at the waiter.

“It was this end of term trip to see Windsor Great Park,” Warlock explained as he tried the burnt-smelling cup he’d been brought. “I just wanted to be on my own for a bit, in the trees, and they started up, one of them pinched me, and there were voices and lights, and it wasn’t right, so I called you, but they knocked my phone away…”

“Wondered if they had cell service in the Land of Summer’s Bloody Twilight.”

“Talk of that, we ought to call his parents, dears,” said Tracy. She had just rung off with the Sergeant, and was trying to search on the name Dowling, but all that came up were news items. "You make the call, dear. Remember, it only seemed like an afternoon to you, but here you've been gone a week. She'll be frantic."

Warlock tapped out the number reluctantly, stealing a hand into the angel’s under the tablecloth as he waited through the rings.

“H'lo? Mom? It’s me, I’m okay.”

A brief silence. “Yeah, I know. I’m with okay people. Somewhere in – “ He looked up, shook his head. Aziraphale mouthed the words.

“Sussex. Wilmington. Yeah, Mom… Yeah, I’m glad you could keep it out of the papers. Sure. They can – yeah, you can talk to them.”

He handed the phone back.

“Oh, Mrs. Dowling. You must have been so worried. I – oh, of course. My name’s Tracy Shadwell? I'm here touring with a friend from the States and your son was in a car park when we went for breakfast? He was looking a bit rough so we – No, he seems to have gotten on a bus. I don’t know. Give us an address and we’ll bring him back, I’m sure he’ll be so relieved to get home… Shall I put him back on?”

A moment’s silence.

“All right then. Well, we’re well outside London and he needed a good breakfast… We’ll be here for a bit. You can call this number.”

She thumbed off the connection.

“She didn’t really care, did she,” said Warlock, breaking a piece of toast into two, and one of the pieces into two again.

“We do,” said Crowley, and then tried to look in twelve different directions at once as if searching for whoever'd actually said it.

“Have to go home now?”

His eyes were downcast.

“Hm… you know, young lad, I think first there’s some people your own age you ought to meet. One who’s the same age to the day, in fact. It's scandalously out of the way, but I believe I can help your mother forget how long you've been gone, and I think it'll be worth it.”

Aziraphale was beaming at him sunnily when his eyes lifted. “And they won’t know who your father is."

“Anathema asked me to come over for a while and make sure there are still female energies on her landbase. That does not mean I’m doing the dishes.”

Newt had pulled up in the Wasabi an hour before, spiked his traveler’s hunger with a biscuit of Weetabix, and left the bowl on the counter without rinsing. Pepper, who had been taking a martial-arts class at the community centre, was practicing kata moves in the middle of the big cottage kitchen, and paused long enough to point at him and then at the sink. He washed up meekly.

Gravel crunched outside. The chunk of a car door, lively voices, one a high child’s voice that he didn’t know. Pepper dashed out, almost colliding with Anathema, turning it into a hug on the fly.

“Put on a kettle,” said Anathema, “and I’ll tell you. All home. All safe.”

“You brought me here to play with girls?” came Warlock’s voice, because he really could be a little shit. A huff and thud a moment later suggested a body hitting the turf of Anathema’s front garden. Both heads swiveled in alarm. Silence for two beats.

“Wizard!!!!… Can you show me how to do that?"

They barely fit around Anathema’s kitchen table, but since the front room was cluttered with the computer gear Newt had brought back from London, they made do. It was a bit like cramming into the Bentley, even though Crowley had miracled an extra bench seat. “See if I ever turn my car into a bloody sport ute again,” he said.

Pepper had got hold of the rest of the Them, and the conversation was punctuated by shouts and calls from outside as she coached the boys on throws and punches.

“We’ll have to go pretty soon,” said Madame Tracy. “I'm perishing  to see how you can possibly get my Vespa into the boot."

"Doddle," said Crowley, who was looking out the window at what appeared to be a rout, Pepper 4, boys 0.

"You just let me talk to the Dowlings when we get there. They might recognize you.”

“Doubt it.”

Mary was silent, but only because she chose to be. They knew she was still thinking about the other baby, the one she’d left on the Tor; she’d told the angel the tale on the road back. He’d managed a little blessing, and she seemed more calm.

He did wish he knew, too.

Titania’s glamour was back, and a waiting-woman in a silver gown, with the head of a water-rat, poured restorative wine.

“Thank you, Campaspe. Bring some seed-cakes for my sweeting here, and a summer poppering for me.”

Her fingers trailed lazily in the hair of a boy whose head leaned against her knee, dressed in velvet and gold thread, with a toy hoop dangling from one hand. He looked about Warlock’s age. In fact, he was Warlock’s age to the day, and now would never get any older.

“I did not mean to cast you off, sweet. Only Fiametta fancied you so, and she is dear to me. But you see, I could not do without you. I have loved you since they brought you to me, scarce one day old.”

She sipped and handed him the cup.

“Drink now, and sing for me.”

“It’s good to have you back, my Lord. Did they find what they wanted?”

“Does anyone find what they want, Lucien? But yes, the boy is home. Soon it will be no more than a dream to him. Still, I made an enemy today.”

The ruby glinted in the light of a brazier set below the two that already flanked Dream’s throne. The flame was harsh and leaping, and threw reflections only a little less vivid than the ruby's off a stoppered glass bottle that the Shaper cradled in his other hand.

“Why did you ask these things of them, sire?”

“I am not loved by either Heaven or Hell, Lucien. My path is growing more dangerous with every day that passes. And I saw the Three again today; that presages eddies in the Dreaming. Shall we say… insurance.”

The angel found Crowley leaning on the fender of the Bentley, watching the children, who had progressed from tag-and-wrestle games to what looked like a potted cricket match in the middle of the lane. They’d be grown soon, all this behind them, swimming through their too-short human lives.

The Them seemed to have completely accepted Warlock.

“Didn’t turn out so badly, did he?” said Crowley as the angel approached. “ ‘d like to think it was us.”

“It’s sweet that he still calls you Nanny.”

“Don’t know what I’m going to do about that. How'd you get him to stop calling you Brother Francis?”

"I told him I'd, ah, left Holy Orders."

The demon snorted.

"Nice country down that way. Maybe we should do like the Shadwells. Get a little cottage."

They stood a while in the silence of people who share everything and don’t need to say anything. Until they do.

“What did you talk about?” asked Aziraphale quietly. “That is, if you want to tell me. Down at the cave.”

Crowley hesitated long enough that the angel was about to tell him Not my business, it doesn’t matter, but the demon tilted his head back to gaze into the empty sky and said, “She forgave me.”

Aziraphale took his hand, pressed it.

“Would have been all right if she hadn’t, y’know. I have you. We have the world. That’s enough.”

In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.

 – Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market