The girl was standing at the very edge of the cliff. Silver understood, with a sudden lurch, one way a child from a seaside town might make sense of a shining road. The moon above was high and full and very bright; and Maud’s lanky figure swayed a little.
“Miss Lindhurst!” Silver cried, and then remembered. “Maud—wait!”
Tobias was a coiled spring at his side, readying himself to tackle her, which struck Silver as a very bad idea. Maud had gone still. Mazed, fairy-mad, whatever that meant; he felt a flicker of irritation—how many things must Tobias know that he had never yet mentioned?—but Silver schooled his face to calm and went a little closer.
When her figure stiffened he stopped. Tobias was lurking in his shadow. Silver prayed that he would have the sense not to interfere. From here he could see past the cliff’s edge to the murmuring shadows below. By daylight it would be a beautiful sea view. The full moon was painting the caps of little waves with pale light. “You must be very sure of your road, Miss Lindhurst,” Silver managed, with an approximation of good cheer.
Maud cast him an icy impatient look, just visible in the gloom. “I am,” she said. Silver put out a hand towards Tobias to hold him back from any foolish heroics. Heaven alone knew what the footing was like. The odds were good that any man trying to grab Maud away from that deadly edge would only go over the cliff with her, and the two of them would be swallowed together by the water below—no, Silver recalled his glimpse of the bay that afternoon; the water gave way to stark black knife-edges of rock below the abbey.
His hand collided with Tobias’s chest, nearer than he’d thought. Tobias was still in just his shirtsleeves; Silver could feel the warmth of him. And he could hear the big man’s breathing, slow and measured; the breaths of a frightened man calming himself. Not now, he chided his own skittering thoughts, and snatched his hand away.
“Well?” said Maud.
Silver had not really had a plan after wait. He improvised. “I believe you were right,” he said. About what? The girl clearly longed to be right; she had read Silver’s father’s work, she corresponded with experts under an assumed name— “About the chicken-and-egg problem,” he said. “You were quite right.”
Maud half-turned towards him, frowning. Little black pebbles skidded away from under her feet.
“It could be that supernatural places give rise to magical beings, but it could just as easily be the case that the presence of a supernatural being effects a—a transformation of place,” Silver said. He was making it up as he went along. “You must grant, therefore, that it is entirely possible that with the death of the, er, tenant, Rothling Abbey has already reverted to being an ordinary romantic ruin, rather than a place of power—”
“You won’t stop me,” said Maud.
“I only think,” said Silver, “that you ought to have some insurance. What a waste of your plans and preparation it would be if you hurled yourself to an untimely death instead of onto your road just now, all because you lacked—”
He stopped.
Maud’s long face and small mouth lent themselves well to sneering. “Lacked a suitably magical companion?”
The shape of what Silver had just talked himself into unfolded before him, alarming and wonderful. A scientific expedition to Fairyland; what an absurd, brilliant idea. It was just the sort of thing a former version of Henry Silver would have hurled himself into without a second thought. It was just the sort of thing he had always loved. And on that clifftop, with Tobias Finch big and solid and utterly untouchable standing a foot away, nothing waiting for him but the loneliness of Greenhollow, his ruined house, an angry dryad—oh, the joy Silver felt, all at once, at the thought of something positively mad to do.
“Yes,” he said, and smiled at her, unforced. “May I offer myself?”
“You,” she said, with obvious disbelief. Her eyes flicked sideways to his companion.
“Mr Finch is what you might call a retired supernatural being,” said Silver, feeling the words on his tongue coming light as quicksilver. “I, on the other hand—”
The Wood was not here on the height; this place had been wind-scoured for millennia. But as Silver very carefully took another pace towards Maud on the cliff edge, as he swallowed back a gulp of hysterical laughter, he thought of that drowned forest he had sensed earlier. It was there, just at the softening edge of the world, under the vast darkness of the ocean. Silver rather theatrically lifted a hand, and as he did, there was a change in the quality of the sound which murmured and murmured below the cliff. The wind soughed in the branches of trees that were not there. Maud had turned all the way towards him now, her eyes wide, and Silver smiled at her and plucked from the creeper that had just twined its way up the ruined black wall closest to him a handful of pink and white blossoms. He held it out to the girl.
With a rather good charming air—if he said so himself—he added, “You read my article, I believe you said.”
“The Hallow Wood,” said Maud. She looked at the posy of flowers uncertainly, and then met Silver’s eyes. Her slim shoulders squared.
“My name first,” she said. “When we publish. This is my expedition.”
“Alphabetically, of course,” said Silver. “It’s a privilege even to be invited, Miss Lindhurst.” And before she could correct him, he corrected himself: “Maud.” He was still awkwardly holding the posy. Maud had not taken it. He tossed it carelessly aside as he added, “I hope you will consider me in the light of a brother—a brother in scholarly inquiry, if nothing else.”
After a long pause Maud said, “Very well.”
Silver took another step closer. There was now so little distance between them that he could offer her his arm. The black pebbles were falling away into darkness under his feet as well as hers. Behind them the ruins of the abbey were rain-slick, shining faintly under the moon; and as Silver glanced back, he saw Tobias bend and pick up the silly little posy of pink and white flowers. They looked small and foolish in his big hands, and they were wilting already. It was too dark to make out Tobias’s expression. Not that it mattered, because the days when Silver had exerted his utmost powers to decoding Tobias’s small changes of expression, his rare frowns, his rarer smiles—those days were over. An expedition to Fairyland, Silver told himself; an opportunity, a delight. Something mad and wonderful to do, because the world was not devoid of marvels after all.
Maud’s right hand settled carefully on Silver’s left forearm.
That meant her right hand was an instant or two further away from the damn revolver in her pocket.
This was the moment when Silver had intended to use what little force he could bring to bear—he was not a Tobias Finch, but for all her height, Maud was a slim young woman—to drag her backwards while she least expected it. This was the moment he had meant to remind himself and Tobias and his bloody mother too that he was not a nonentity and not a fool either. He had let the picture lurk quietly under the surface of his thoughts, knowing very well that the best way to tell a lie was to believe it entirely in the moment, but it had been there: Miss Lindhurst escorted safely home, to grieving mother and pompous father. Tobias impressed. Mrs Silver impressed. After which Silver himself would—would turn to Tobias and say with a charming air—