He woke before anyone came to rouse him.
The house still held the particular stillness that exists only just before dawn, when the night has already begun to withdraw but the day has not yet properly claimed a single room. Through the window a dull grey light seeped. Beyond the wall someone turned heavily in sleep. The board at the threshold shifted faintly in the wind.
Today.
Tom sat up and for a few seconds simply stayed as he was, not moving.
His pack was where he had left it the evening before.
His clothes were laid out neatly.
Everything was ready.
And still there was a strange feeling that he had forgotten something. Not a thing. Not a word. More the part of himself that in the original story had left here more easily — because it had not known what it was losing.
He dressed quickly and came downstairs before his father had gone into the yard.
One candle burned in the kitchen. His mother was at the table wrapping warm bread and a piece of cheese in cloth. Ellie was quietly pouring milk into a cup. Both of them, it seemed, had been waiting for him.
— Early, said Ellie, without looking up.
— Couldn't sleep, Tom answered.
It sounded too simple for such a morning.
His mother held out the package.
— Take this for the road.
Tom took it.
Their fingers touched for a moment, and that was enough to feel everything at once: the warmth of the cloth, the smell of bread, the living hand of his mother, the narrow kitchen not yet surrendered to the day.
— Thank you, he said.
His mother nodded.
Ellie, still standing at the table, suddenly wiped her palms on her apron and made the sign of the cross over him — clumsily, as though she did it almost against habit.
— Come back with your hands and feet on you, she muttered.
Tom nearly smiled.
— I'll do my best.
— See that you do, she muttered, and turned back to the hearth, evidently displeased at having said so much.
When his father came in, the kitchen felt at once smaller.
Not cramped in the ordinary sense — more gathered.
He was already dressed for the road and looked as though he had deliberately occupied his face with business to avoid thinking about anything else.
— Eat while there's time, he said.
Plain words.
All the heavier for it.
They ate almost in silence. Jack came down later, sat at the edge of the table, drank his milk and started no unnecessary conversation either. Michael and William appeared sleepy and unusually quiet. Only William asked how long Tom would be away, but his father's glance was enough to end that.
Tom himself tasted almost nothing.
He looked at his bowl, at his father's hands, at the edge of his mother's shawl, at Jack's stubble, at the smoke rising from the hearth, and thought only one thing: a little more of this, and all of it would remain behind like a living painting, one he could not step back into simply because he wanted to.
After the meal his father went out first.
Tom picked up his pack.
That was when it hit.
Not pain.
Not fear.
More the weight of the movement itself: lifting your burden and knowing it had changed from a house-thing into a road-thing.
He turned to his mother.
She was standing at the table, looking at him steadily — too steadily.
— Go, she said.
Not be careful.
Not come back.
Just that one short word, as if everything else had already been said before.
Tom went to her and held her himself.
Not with a boy's abruptness.
And not as a man who had too complete a command of himself.
Just firmly.
For a moment she pressed him to her as well. He felt the cloth, the smell of bread, smoke and something else, always barely there, undetectable to anyone else. The closeness of it made his throat ache.
— I remember, he whispered, before he could stop himself.
His mother drew back slightly.
Not enough for anyone watching to see.
But enough.
— Then don't let it scatter on the road, she said so quietly that no one but him could have heard.
Tom nodded.
There was nothing more to say.
Outside, the Spook was waiting.
He stood at the gate, as he had the day before, as if he had spent the night there and felt no weariness. Staff in hand, pack at his shoulder, hat pulled low. Beside him the road already looked different — narrower, colder, more real.
His father shook hands with him briefly and drily.
Jack simply nodded.
The younger boys held back against the house wall.
Tom went out into the yard with his pack and stopped beside the gate.
The Spook looked him over.
— Not late getting up, he said.
Not praise.
Not a dig.
Just a note.
— No, Mr Gregory.
He nodded.
— Right then. Come on, lad.
And that was everything.
Simply a step, the gate, the road.
Tom went through and heard the gate close behind him.
He did not turn back immediately.
He walked a few more paces beside the Spook, feeling the wet earth under his boots and the morning cold on his face. Only then did he look back.
The house was in its place.
His mother — on the porch.
His father — a step below, at the yard's edge.
Jack — against the wall.
The others blurred into darker shapes, but that was enough.
He looked for no more than a second.
Then turned away.
Otherwise it would only get worse.
The road went familiar at first: past the low fence, past the wet pen, past the ditch where not long ago there had still been the smell of the grey creature. Morning rose slowly. Somewhere in the field a bird called. Pale wet light spread along the ground in strips.
The Spook spoke little.
Barely at all.
That too was familiar.
After a time he only asked:
— Got sore feet?
— No, Mr Gregory.
— Don't hurry yourself then. And don't drag your pack like a dead sheep. It rides on your back, not your neck.
Tom adjusted the strap slightly.
— Yes, Mr Gregory.
The Spook gave a sound.
— Remarkably biddable today, aren't you.
Tom said nothing.
His Master walked beside him, and the very fact of that presence already did too much to the air, to the memory, to the heart. Tom was afraid of every extra word — not because he might give away the whole secret at once, but because he might give it away in pieces: in a tone, in a knowing he should not have had, in a too-exact question, in a silence too weighted.
They climbed a low ridge from which the Ward farm could still be seen. Beyond it the road dipped between two rows of old hedgerows and drew the eye away.
It was there that Tom felt it again.
Not a voice.
Not the cold of the crossroads.
Just a slight shift in the world, as though one of the familiar folds of the road lay not quite as it should.
He slowed his step.
The Spook noticed immediately.
— What?
Tom looked down.
At the very edge of the verge, where there should have been only wet grass, there was a narrow dark mark.
Not an animal track.
Not a human one.
Too regular for a chance groove, and too short for a cart-rut.
As though someone had drawn a thin blunt blade through the wet earth.
The mark ran across the road and ended at an old boundary stone.
Tom felt something gather inside him to a point.
— Nothing, he said, after a pause too long. — Slipped.
The Spook looked at him in a way that made clear he had understood it wasn't that. But he said nothing.
Only muttered:
— Mind where you put your feet, lad.
And walked on.
Tom moved after him.
When they came level with the stone, he did not turn his head.
Did not even break his step.
And yet from the corner of his eye he caught one more small thing: along the lichen on the top of the stone ran a fresh thin cut, too even for a random crack.
Three lines.
Short.
Converging to a single point.
The road went on, and he went on with it.
This was no longer a return to what it had been.
And not even the beginning of the old life over again.
Something else: a step onto a path that on the surface matched the old one only until you looked at it properly.
The Spook walked ahead.
The damp light lay along the road.
The County was waking slowly and sourly.
Tom felt the house behind him, Chipenden ahead, and somewhere to the side — deeper and older than either — one more line, invisible to an ordinary eye.
The Last Reach had not been left behind.
It had simply stopped being an ending and become part of the road.
Tom raised his head and walked on steadily.
No better outcome had been promised to him.
All the more reason to fight for one himself.