4.

Elsie carried the tray back down to the kitchen with her lips pressed together and too many thoughts running through her mind. She'd marked that room – the guest room, as such – for the baby when it came. If a baby ever came. That was seeming less likely day by day, no matter how much she wheedled to Jim that the house had been empty long enough. She'd never imagined having a guest like this in it, though. She couldn't work him out – who he was, what he was. She'd seen a lot of things when she'd been training for a nurse. Men half out of their minds with shell-shock, men with arms and legs blown off, eyes blinded or chests torn open. But she'd never seen anything like that. There was something odd about him, besides the blood. Something unearthly...

She looked up to see Jim stamping in over the sill, knocking dust of the sides of his boots before unlacing them and throwing them into a corner.

'There's a tray for you there,' she said, nodding towards the uneaten potted meat sandwiches, which she had covered with a cloth. 'Shall I put the kettle on?'

'He's still up there, then?' Jim asked, lifting the cloth on the tray and picking up one of the sandwiches. 'Thanks, love. Tea'll do nicely.'

'Yes, he's still up there,' she nodded, coming over to touch his arm. 'He will be for a while, I think. That head injury's going to keep him flat out for some time. You're going to have to get over the sight of that blood.'

'Well, it weren't that exactly,' he said, suddenly awkward. 'It's just – it's not right, Else. You know that as well as I do. There's something not right about him.'

'We both know that,' she nodded. 'But it's our duty to play the good Samaritan, isn't it, Jim? To help the traveller that no one else would? Who else does he have?'

Jim glanced up at the ceiling. The room above was quiet, and Elsie hoped that the man up there was asleep. She blew more life into the fire and put the kettle on to heat, and Jim came close to her as she clattered the metal on the stove.

'Else, what if he's a spy or summat?' he asked in a low tone.

Elsie laughed at that. 'That war's been over long enough now – and why do you think they'd send spies so obviously different as that? He's not a spy. He's a stranger, true. He's strange enough – but he's a good man – I can see that much.'

Jim smiled. 'You were always a good judge of character,' he said. 'Well, mebbe not such a good judge, seeing as you took me on, but with other folk, like.'

'You were the one who came back to help him,' she reminded him. 'The one who brought me up to the shepherd's hut to take care of him. You said we couldn't leave him.'

'No more we can,' Jim said stolidly, 'but I'd like to know what it is we've got up there. Wouldn't you?'

'That makes three of us,' Elsie reminded him. 'As soon as he knows, he'll tell us, I'm sure. And the best way to do that is to nurse him back to health. To treat him kindly and look after him. And speaking of that, I need to think what to cook him for dinner. He doesn't eat meat – did you know that? Not milk or eggs, either. I wonder if I could persuade him to an egg or two, though? He needs something nourishing. Something more than bread and cucumbers.'

'He doesn't eat meat?' Jim echoed in astonishment, and she laughed.

'Just because you can eat half a cow of an evening doesn't mean all folks are like that. There's lots of benefits been shown of not eating meat. It's supposed to be very healthy.'

'Else, I've been wondering if he's – well – ' Jim looked up at the ceiling again. 'If he's from – somewhere else. I mean – not of this earth.'

Elsie laughed at him again. 'You're a caution, Jim. You've been reading a sight too much H. G. Wells. Those things aren't real, you know. Just an author's mind working too hard. That's all.'

'Well,' Jim said. He picked up another couple of sandwiches from the tray and went to sit down in the wing-backed armchair furthest from the stove. It was hot in the room. 'Well, it's a thought,' he said, slightly defensively. 'Unless you can think of another way to explain blood that colour and a face like he's got.'

Elsie turned back to the kettle, jiggling it a little impatiently on the stove top, willing it to boil. She'd take another cup of tea up to their guest, quietly, just in case he was asleep. She could take a look at his injuries if he'd let her. Or perhaps, if he were asleep, she could just stand and take a look at him, and try to work out where he might have sprung from.

'I don't know how to explain that,' she said. 'But who knows what diabolical things they got up to in that last war. I mean, tanks and mustard gas and all that. Maybe there's something can change the colour of blood.'

'And the look of ears and eyebrows?' Jim asked pointedly.

Elsie shrugged, feeling uncomfortable. She never had believed in fairies – especially not real, six foot fairies who were solid and dense as any human being – but those she had seen in books always had ears like that. But then, they didn't have strange black objects that looked like that. Diadems and jewelled swords, maybe. Not odd black things like that.

She went to look at the pile of clothes she had taken from the man with the intention of washing them and mending them where she could. The boots perhaps could be mended by the cobbler in town, and the rips in the trousers might not be beyond her skill. But the fabric was strange. It didn't feel like cotton or linen or wool. It was smoother than that, almost slippery. There was that badge on his chest, some kind of symbol, like an arrow pointing to heaven with two loops entwined. That was fairy-like. But the same symbol was repeated on a label in his boots, in his trousers, even on the waistband of his underpants – and in all those places it had a star on it, not those circles. She ran her finger over one of those symbols – then became aware of the inappropriateness of fondling this strange man's underwear, and flushed red.

The kettle started spitting and she put the clothes down and turned to make the tea. She could wash them later, when the fire was hot for cooking dinner and she'd got Jim to bring more water in from the pump. She dreamed of getting taps fitted up in the house. Now, that would be wonderful.

'There you are, love,' she said, handing Jim his tea.

'You're not having a cuppa?' he asked.

'I'll come back down for it,' she said brightly, pouring another cup for the stranger and diluting it with a little cool water. 'I'll just see if Grayson's awake and if he wants this.'

'Aye, all right,' Jim nodded, looking up at the ceiling again with that slightly distrustful look. She hoped he wouldn't end up causing trouble. It was like Jim to get scared and back out of things.

When she entered his room Grayson was sleeping peacefully. His face looked different in sleep – far less severe, more childlike. She put the cup down quietly on the chair beside the bed, thinking it would be good to find a little table to put there. She touched his forehead very lightly with her hand and felt that he was hot. He had been since they had found him and he had said he thought it was natural, but it just didn't seem right. But what did seem right about him?

She saw the black object beside him in the bed and very quietly and carefully she picked it up. It was strange. Heavier than it should be by its size. As unnatural as his temperature. The black stuff looked like shellac or that strange new Bakelite she'd seen on show in town. But it wasn't. It was harder. It looked stronger. When she tapped her fingernail on it it felt – different. Just different. And those coloured bits that were set under something clear that couldn't be glass. It just couldn't be. She turned it in her hands and turned it again. There was a raw bit where it looked as if it had been torn from something else. What was it? It was the only important thing that Grayson had, it seemed. It was no fairy thing.

She nestled the object back beside his arm and stepped back to lean against the wall by the door, smoothing down her apron with her hands and watching that long, lean, sleeping man. There was nothing right about him. Nothing at all.

''''''

Grayson's eyes flickered open as Elsie exited the room. He felt that black object in between his arm and his body. He had felt her take it but had sensed who it was in the room and had had the presence of mind to stay still and quiet. He could feel her studying it, studying him. It seemed natural to be able to pick up her feelings and thoughts at a muted level, as if he were some kind of empath.

He lifted that black thing up again, studying it again as she had, as if he could somehow pick up her impressions just from touching it. He had sensed her confusion at it. He was just as confused. He closed his eyes, trying to remember. Trying hard.

Threat. Standing somewhere, under shelter. His hands closed around that thing. Uncertainty. Wondering what was right to do. Then ripping it out with his hands and running, running. Threat. Shouts. Pain and running and falling and running again. The cold and the rain drenching over him. Trying to get to the gate. The gate the only option. The only option...

He set the object down and just looked at it. It was familiar, yet unfamiliar. Very unfamiliar. But it had more relevance to him, it seemed, than the objects around him here – the turned wood and woven linen and the glass-paned windows. He felt odd in this white-cream shirt with its fussy white buttons. He wasn't used to wearing such things. He wasn't used to any of this, he was sure.

He picked up the cup and drank the tea that had been left for him. It was cooler this time, less bitter and altogether more palatable. Now that was familiar. That taste. It wasn't coffee, but it was something that he knew.

He touched a hand to the wound on his head, wondering if it was that that had stolen so many things about himself. Perhaps if he focussed, perhaps if he meditated, perhaps he could glean something back out of the cavern of his mind.

He set the cup down and steepled his fingers instinctively in front of his face. The shape that they made was as familiar as his reflection, as familiar as strange things like that name, Jim, and the Grayson that he had clung to. He stared at that steepled shape, trying to lose himself in it, to exclude all the small noises from downstairs and try to retreat into only that which was within his own mind.

Again he was lost in that strange place. People chasing him. People, strangers, armoured things. Pain. Pain that he tried to push away. Run. The need to run. That object hard in his hand, ripped from something bigger. That all important part, the controller, the thing that explained it all...

Again he was lost. Rings arcing up across the sky and scudding clouds and rain hitting him. Other men in clothes like his, red and yellow and blue, running. All running.

Make for the gate. Get to the gate, Spock. You must get to the gate. The only escape. Get to the gate...

He opened his eyes, startled by that one blank fact. Spock. That was a name. That had been a man shouting at him, calling out that name. He had run, faster than the others, away from their shouts and towards that strange metal structure, that oddly ethereal thing that sat on the landscape like a sculpture and showed him his escape from pain and capture and death and – something worse...