Advent Read Online Free PDF

come.’
      Oh God, he thought. Not now, not here. Don’t look up, he told himself, clenching his teeth. Just don’t look.
      ‘The feasters gather.’
      He didn’t dare move or scream. He was sitting at one end of a train carriage with people all around him, ordinary people, the other kind. There was nothing he could do.
      ‘The destroyer and his gift. It has begun.’ The words sounded like they were being spat out of her throat. As the train picked up speed, they seemed to rhyme with the clackety-clack of the rails, insistent drumming gibberish. ‘An open door. A closed circle. The sky is open. Drop down, drop down. His mother’s sister is flown. His mother’s sister is gone. His father is named destroyer. He will bear no child. He will bear my burden. It hurts. It hurts! Otototoi ! ’ Now it was not a rattling scream, but part of the babble. ‘He comes, he comes. The gift, the burden. Truth hurts. Iew, iew, ohh ohh kakka. Come. Come.’
      There was a clumsy rustle opposite. The irritating woman was getting up. Gavin stole a look to be sure and out of the corner of his eye saw her squeezing past the seat in which Miss Grey had appeared. Miss Grey pulled her knees up out of the way, under her cloak. No one was looking at him. Gav raised his eyes cautiously and saw that the woman’s eyes were red and her face drained of colour. She stumbled past the luggage racks and out of the carriage.
      Miss Grey stared at him, arms round her shins, mouth open but emptied of its freight of meaningless words.
      ‘Come,’ she said.
      He couldn’t make himself accept that he was seeing her here, under bland electric light, her calloused and filthy bare feet perched on the edge of an upholstered seat. She looked like an escaped extra from a mediaeval costume drama. Under her dark grey cloak she wore shapeless rags. Her bird’s-nest hair was grimy, soot-black. Only in her face was there something vividly, terribly actual, something unfeigned.
      ‘Come,’ she said again.
      Gav glanced around. No one seemed to be looking his way. The couple across the aisle were absorbed in a crossword. He leaned across the table.
      ‘Go away,’ he said, between his teeth. His cheeks were burning.
      ‘Come,’ she repeated. She was like a bird. Her eyes had that opaque glitter. The word sounded meaningless when she uttered it: just a squawk.
      ‘Please,’ he said. He stared into her face, between the shrouding curtains of her hair. He was afraid he was going to cry. ‘Leave me alone. I can’t take it.’
      Her head jutted forward. ‘You must take it,’ she said. ‘You must take it. Come to me. Take it.’
      The sliding door hissed. Without taking her eyes off him, Miss Grey leaned right back and pulled her knees tight, and the nosy woman wriggled back across in front of her to the window seat.
      Gavin didn’t know where to look. For a moment he’d been sure Miss Grey really had been talking to him, telling him something, when he’d least expected it. In his turmoil of stifled misery he’d barely taken in the words. He turned to the window, cradling his head in his hands, and saw dismal terraced suburbs beginning to appear on the lower slopes of the hills. Get a grip, he told himself. Get a grip.
      The train was slowing again, coming into a larger town. A few people stood up and began putting on coats, gathering by the end of the carriage. Their chatter and commotion made him feel fractionally safer and he risked a glance around. To his surprise and relief, he saw Miss Grey getting up from her seat.
      ‘He comes,’ he heard her murmur. ‘He comes. They gather. This night you go free.’
      She eased among the small crowd waiting to get off. The train pulled in. He watched as the press of people carried her out of the carriage. No one was aware of her; she slipped like water into the spaces among them. He pressed his face to the glass to see if he could spot her coming out onto the platform, but