aware not merely of the idea of them but their reality, their complexity – as though he has only ever been the soloist in the music of his life, supported upon the harmonies of others.
He’s aware also that though the candles in the workshop illuminate small areas, there are patches of darkness too, and parts that are neither one thing nor the other. That his entire life has been this way, not forever pulled between two poles but borne instead along far more complex currents, of which ticks and tocks are merely the extremes.
How did he come to be standing here on this cold afternoon? he wonders. What innumerable events led to this?
And why?
He shakes his head, frowning. This is not the kind of thought that usually occupies his mind. He is not normally prey, either, to a feeling of dread – though that is what is creeping up on him now. Something bad is about to happen.
Something wicked this way comes.
He hears footsteps in the street outside. He half turns, but cannot see who is approaching. The windows are grimy. He has not cleaned them in many years. Nobody needs to see inside. His venerable name on the sign is advertisement enough, and as he has gradually withdrawn from the world so he has come to value the privacy the windows’ opaqueness confers.
But now suddenly he wishes he could see who’s coming. And he wonders whether his life is over after all.
He waits, turning back to the bench, busying his hands.
And the door opens.
No, no, no. Sorry. Stop imagining things.
I’ve got this completely wrong. I’ve tried to tell the story from the beginning.
That’s always a mistake. I’ve learned my lesson since, and have even come to wonder if this is what I was dimly starting to comprehend on that cold, long-ago afternoon. Life is not like a watch or clock, something that can be constructed and then wound for the first time, set in motion.
There is no beginning. We are always in the middle.
OK, look. I’m going to start again.
A story is a spirit being, not a repertoire,
allegory or form of psychology.
Martin Shaw
Snowy Tower
So. This is a story, as I’ve said. And stories are skittish, like cats. You need to approach calmly and respectfully or they’ll run away and you’ll never see them again. People have been spinning tales for as long as we’ve been on this planet, perhaps even longer. There are stories that are so ancient, in fact, that they come from a time before words – tales conjured in gestures and grunts, movement of the eyes; stories that live in the rustling of leaves and lapping of waves, and whose ghosts hide in the tales we tell each other now.
Be good, and be careful.
Beware of that cave; that forest; that man.
Some day the sun will go dark, and then we will hide.
But all stories – and I’m talking about proper ones here, not stories about sassy teens becoming ninja spies or needy middle-agers overturning their lives in a fit of First World pique and finding true love running a funky little bookshop in Barcelona – need us to survive. Humans are the clouds from which stories rain, but we are also shards of glass that channel their light, focusing them so sharply that they burn.
Humans and stories need each other. We tell them, but they tell us too – reaching with soft hands and wide arms to pull us into their embrace. They do this especially when we have become mired in lives of which we can make no sense. We all need a path, and stories can sometimes usher us back to it.
That’s what happened to Hannah Green. She got caught up in a story.
And this is what it is.
Hannah lives in a place called Santa Cruz, on the coast of Northern California. It has a nice downtown with organic grocery stores and a Safeway and coffee shops and movie theatres and a library and all the things you need if you want other towns to take you seriously. It is home to a well-regarded branch of the University of California and also to a famous boardwalk, where you can go on fairground rides and scare yourself witless should you be so inclined. The boardwalk features a house of horrors and a carousel and shooting galleries and the fifth-oldest rollercoaster in America (the famed Giant Dipper, which Hannah had ridden only once, with her grandfather: both emerged shaken from the experience, and he later described the contraption as ‘potentially evil’) and places to buy corn dogs and garlic fries and Dippin’ Dots. It is a matter of lasting chagrin to the childfolk of Santa Cruz that they’re not allowed to go to the boardwalk every single day.
Though outsiders have been visiting for many years to walk on the beaches or surf or eat seafood, the town – as Hannah’s mother sometimes observed – is rather like an island. Behind it stand the sturdy Santa Cruz Mountains, covered in redwoods and pines, cradling the town and providing a barrier between it and Silicon Valley and San Jose. Once these mountains were home to wolves and bears but the humans got rid of them to make the place tidier, and for the convenience of those who wish to hike. South lies the sweeping bay, where not much happens except for the cultivation of artichokes and garlic and other unappealing grown-up foodstuffs, until you get to Monterey, and then Carmel, and finally the craggy wilderness of Big Sur. On the northern side of town there’s mainly emptiness along seventy miles of beautiful coast until you reach San Francisco, or ‘the city’, as everyone calls it in these parts. Santa Cruz could therefore seem somewhat cut off from the rest of California (and indeed the world), but luckily almost everyone who lives there is content with this arrangement. So Hannah’s mother sometimes said, without much of a smile.
Hannah hadn’t heard her mother say much recently, however. Before Hannah became embroiled in the story I’m about to tell, she was already a participant in several others, starring in The Tale of Being an Eleven-Year-Old Girl, The Story of Having Annoyingly Straight Brown Hair, The Chronicles of My Friend Ellie Being Mean to Me for No Reason, and The Saga of It Being Completely Unfair that I’m Not Allowed to Have a Kitten. One story had come to dominate her life recently, however, looming so large and changing so many things in such enormous ways that it drowned out all the rest.
It’s an old and sad and confusing tale, called Mom and Dad Don’t Live Together Any More.
Hannah knew the exact moment when this story began, the point at which some malign spirit had furrowed its brow and wondered ‘What if?’ and started messing around with her life.
It was a Saturday, and they were in Los Gatos. Hannah’s mom liked Los Gatos. It’s neat and tidy and has stores they didn’t have in Santa Cruz. Hannah’s dad was never as keen to make the half-hour journey over the mountains (the most doom-laden highway in the world, according to him, attractive but luridly prone to accident, and it’s hard to be completely sanguine about the fact it actually crosses the San Andreas Fault) but between the Apple Store and a coffee shop and the nice square outside their favourite restaurant he seemed able to pass the morning pleasantly enough while Hannah and her mother shopped.
Lunch afterwards was always fun. The restaurant they visited was bright and airy and the waiters were friendly and wore smart uniforms and before you got your food they brought baskets of miniature breads and pastries which Hannah’s parents would try to stop her eating. Meanwhile they’d talk and sip wine and Hannah’s mom would show her dad some of the things she’d bought (though never, Hannah noticed, absolutely