The Book of Koli

by M. R. Carey

  “Did I hear a pretty please?”

  “Pretty please,” I said. Everyone was looking at me a lot harder now. They couldn’t hear what I was saying, but it was a rude and wrong thing for me to be talking at all.

  “Induction field?”

  “Out loud. As loud as you can go.”

  I got up on my feet, at the same time sliding the DreamSleeve from out of my belt and holding it up in the air. A tune blasted out, filling the gather-ground with its sound. There was words to it: a man telling a woman that he was never going to give her up, or let her down, or run around, or hurt her.

  People nearby gun to shout, and to jump up on their feet. Them that was further away didn’t see, at first, that it was tech. They just looked to see who it was that had set in to sing and play when the bride and groom hadn’t even stepped down out of the tabernac. Then when they seen no singer and no players they stood up too, until everyone was upright and almost nobody knowed what for.

  Catrin knowed though, right away. And her eyes was on me as I stepped away from my mother and my sisters, still holding the DreamSleeve up high as if it was a torch and I needed it to see my way.

  “Shut that down,” she shouted over the heads of the crowd. “Shut it down right now.”

  There was a button that you could use to make the DreamSleeve go back to sleep. Monono called it the stand-by, though it didn’t stand by nothing except the other buttons. I didn’t hardly ever use it, for it seemed a kind of disrespect, like turning away from someone without a word instead of bidding them a proper goodbye. Right then, when she was only just come back after being away so long, it felt much worse. But I pressed the button just the same. The tune and the words was gone of a sudden, though the air still rang like they was only hid somewhere and might come out again.

  “What is that you got there, Koli Woodsmith?” Catrin says. “And how did you come by it?”

  “It’s Rampart, Catrin,” I says back to her, and to everyone. “I’m Koli Rampart now.”

  29

  There was shouts from every side. What I thought would happen, which was cheers and smiles and clapping hands and such, didn’t happen at all. Most of the faces I was seeing was shocked and nervous, as though this didn’t have to be a good thing necessarily, but just a surprise that could be good or bad depending.

  I looked back at my mother and sisters. Athen and Mull was just as taken aback as anyone, but what I seen in Jemiu’s face was different. It was more like grief, as if I’d said I had a sickness and might die. Her eyes was filled with tears.

  I turned my head, only to find something else to look at, and found Haijon and Spinner, up on the tabernac. Haijon’s eyes was all for Catrin, as if he wouldn’t know what to think of this until he found out what she was thinking, but Spinner was looking at me. And she seen me looking at her too, so for a moment all the other people that was there wasn’t there so much at all. It was just her and me for the first time since way back before Molo died.

  I seen hurt in her face, and then I seen coldness come in there and carry the hurt away. And I guess that was when I realised what it was I had done, not so much in saying myself a Rampart but in saying it, and showing it, at this moment that was meant to carry her into her future life and self.

  I would of said sorry if I could, but it was already too late for that.

  “Bring him here,” Catrin said in her Rampart voice. “Bring him to me now.”

  The crowds of people parted in front of me, clearing a path all the way from me to Catrin. There being nothing else to do, I walked that path. She come to meet me, jumping down right off the platform. To let me go up on the tabernac would of been turning it away from its purpose.

  She held out her hand for the DreamSleeve. I give it to her, though my hand didn’t want to let go of it.

  Catrin turned the DreamSleeve over and over. She stared at it for the longest time, and there was no sound at all on the gather-ground. Nobody talked or even moved. They was all waiting for Catrin’s verdict.

  “This is old tech, for sure,” she says at last, loud enough for everyone to hear. “It’s of a type I met before, oftentimes, but never seen working. Does it do anything else, Koli Woodsmith, besides sing to you?”

  “No,” I said. “Nothing else.” The words come out quick as anything, before I even had a chance to think of them. I knowed they wasn’t true, but I didn’t want to tell Catrin about Monono right then. I don’t know why. I guess I just felt too naked and on my own, standing there for the second time in my life with everyone I ever knowed watching me. Them that hold to the dead god sometimes have got to tell him the wrong things they done to see if he forgives them. I felt like I was being brung to do that, or something like it, and I pulled back from it in a kind of a panic.

  Catrin give the DreamSleeve back to me. “Make it wake,” she said. “Show me. Show everyone.”

  Of course she was going to say that, and I ought to of expected it. The tech was tech, as anyone could see, but I was only a Rampart if the tech waked for me and done what I told it to. I had made it do that lots of times, but the days and days of silence was still fresh in my mind. Monono had only just come back, and I had sent her away again. What’s more, I had done it with the stand-by, swatting her away like she was a fly right after she had journeyed so far to find the one thing I needed. What if she didn’t answer? What if she decided she had had enough of me at last, which I would not of blamed her for?

  A lump had come into my mouth that was made of pure fear. I swallowed it down and spoke up, for there wasn’t nothing else to be done. “Play ‘Enter Sandman’,” I said.

  There was a moment when nothing happened. Then that one guitar started up, and then the drums, building and building, until the sound filled the gather-ground from end to end and bounced off the inside of the fence like something solid. Just before James Hetfield tells the little boy to say his prayers, I said, “Stop.” And then, because Monono always chided me when I was rude to her, “Please.”

  Silence come again, sudden and shocking after all that noise.

  “Well then,” Catrin said. “I’d say that settles it, apart from one thing. Where did you get this, Koli Woodsmith? How did it come into your hand?”

  That lie was easy. I had told it a thousand times inside my head, practising for this moment. “I found it,” I said. “Over by the far lookout, where the earth was turned when we was building up the walls.”

  “That work was finished months ago.” It wasn’t Catrin that said this, but Fer. She was still up on the tabernac. She had been standing at the back behind the pledged couples, but now she pushed her way through, shouldering Issi Tiller aside without so much as a scuse-me. She stood glaring down at me like Dandrake’s vengeance. “Months ago,” she says again. “What call had you to be there?”

  “I go up there to be alone sometimes,” I said. “To think.”

  “And that thing was just lying on the ground?” Fer pointed at the DreamSleeve. “Yet nobody else seen it? Only you?”

  “It was half in and half out of the ground,” I said. “Mostly buried.”

  “Then why is it not covered in moss and mould?”

  “I cleaned it,” I said. “With a cloth.” I could play this game as well as Fer Vennastin could, and I liked it better than Catrin’s searching eyes and more mannerly questioning.

  But Dam Catrin didn’t like it at all. She lifted up her hand. I seen a lot more questions trembling on Fer’s lips, but she held them in. Though they was sisters and equals in most things, Catrin was Rampart Fire and her word carried. It carried even when she didn’t bother to speak it. That was why nobody else had spoke up all this time. They was waiting to be told what was what, just like I seen Haijon doing.

  “I don’t think there’s any more that needs to be said,” Catrin told them – told everyone, including Fer. “What I just done here was a testing, the same as if this was the Count and Seal. All of you witnessed it, and there isn’t any doubt. That tech woke to Koli Wood
smith, and it worked when he bespoke it. He’s a Rampart. We don’t know what name to give him yet, but that will come. In the meantime, you should rejoice. This was already a day of celebration, and now it’s even more so. Salt Feast, wedding day and testing day all in one.”

  That much was said to all. Then turning to me she said, “That name of Woodsmith I take from you, Koli, and give you a new one. Rampart of Mythen Rood you are, and will be. Wait no more.”

  Well, that was what it took in the end. Cheers and yells went up from everyone. Jugs and wineskins was opened, and what was in them splashed into cups and into mouths. Some people gun to dance, and Jil and Mordy took their cue from that to start playing.

  In the middle of all of this, the last part of the wedding service, which was when Haijon and Spinner was to kiss, got more or less forgot. Nobody was looking at them any more. But nor was they looking at me and Catrin. The dancing and the drinking had taken over as the thing to do and to think about.

  Catrin was still looking at me though. She give me a nod like you would give to someone in the stone game if they worked a clever move on you. “You’d better go and get your things,” she said.

  I didn’t see what she meant at first. “My things?” I said like an echo bird.

  “Your clothes. Razor and comb. Any belongings you want to bring. You live in Rampart Hold now. I’ll have Ban and Gilly prepare a room for you. Hurry now, Koli. There’s more to being a Rampart than what’s seen in the village. We got lots of things to do before lock-tide.”

  I didn’t dare ask what them things might be. I looked around for my mother, for Athen and Mull, but I couldn’t see them in the singing, drinking, jostling crowd. “I got to—” I gun to say.

  “Fer,” Catrin said. Her sister was at her side in a second. “You and Mardew take Koli to the mill and help him find and bring whatever he needs. Let’s get this done now, before the feast starts.”

  “Yes, Cat,” Fer said. “Come you, Koli.”

  She set off at a fast walk, the people standing aside for her as you would expect for a Rampart. Two Ramparts, for Mardew come running alongside us, summoned by a snap of Catrin’s fingers and a wave of her hand. No, three Ramparts, for wasn’t I one too now?

  They bustled me away from the gather-ground. There was some eyes that followed us, and some people that shouted joy and luck to me, but we was moving too fast to exchange more than a word. Fer and Mardew didn’t even give me that much: just marched at my left hand and my right hand like the angel and the devil did for Dandrake. The Middle and the Span was so quiet and so still, our footsteps come back to us from all the walls. We sounded like an army.

  We got to the mill and went inside, for though the workshop was kept locked the door of our house was only ever on a latch. “I can keep a hold of that tech for you,” Mardew said, “while you grab your stuff.” Them being the first words he said to me since we left the gather-ground.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll keep it by me.”

  “It’s best if you give it to him,” Fer says to me. “For safekeeping.” She put her hand on the bolt gun that she was wearing in the holster across her shoulder to make it clear she meant to be obeyed. Mardew done likewise, touching the cutter where it sit on his belt. He must of grabbed it out of Veso Shepherd’s hands right after Haijon said his promises, though I didn’t see him do it.

  It seemed like I hadn’t got any choosing. But still my thoughts rebelled at handing Monono over into Mardew Vennastin’s hand. I stood there, looking from one of them to the other, until finally Fer run out of patience. “It’s your tech,” she said. “Nobody’s going to steal it from you. But it’s valuable and it’s dangerous, and you’re not to be trusted running around with it until we figure out what it can do.”

  You seen that already, I thought, but I had took this as far as I could. With a heavy heart, I drawed the DreamSleeve out of my belt and give it to Mardew.

  “How do you get it to work?” he asked me.

  “Hush, Mardew,” Fer said. “That’s not a thing to be talked about here.” I wasn’t meaning to tell him in any case, but Fer coming in so fast on my side, as I thought, surprised me. Then I thought about what Ursala had said. The way the tech could be waked, by a word or a switch or what Monono called an axes code, was the Vennastins’ biggest secret. They was used to holding their tongues on that score.

  “Go on,” Fer said to me. “Get what you need. We’ll wait here.”

  Well, it was a five minutes’ task, or less than that. Outside of what I was already wearing, there was maybe a dozen things to gather up. I wrapped them in the sheet from my bed, and as I did it my stomach give a kind of a stretch and a heave. I seen for the first time, deadly clear, what I had done. This was my home that I was leaving. My room. My family. My life from when I was born right up to that moment. That thin, sharp moment, as it felt to me then: as though I’d climbed up onto the blade of a knife and was balanced there, puzzled whether to go forward or back but feeling the blade bite into my feet and knowing I had got to jump.

  “Are you done?” Mardew said. He had come up the stairs and was standing in the doorway of my room.

  “Yeah,” I said, my heart as heavy as a stone. “I guess I am.”

  “Then let’s get out of this stinkhole.”

  I followed him downstairs again. Fer was holding the door open. I stepped out and she shut it behind us.

  We walked the long way around, not by the Span but by the Yard. That took us to the gather-ground by the gate side, and first of all to the west wall of Rampart Hold. I could hear the singing and the dancing, but I couldn’t see nobody.

  “Might as well drop them things off inside the Hold,” Fer said. “You don’t want to be holding onto an old bedsheet while you’re at the feast.”

  There was a side door I had never seen opened before. She unlocked it with a key she took from off her belt. Mardew was standing between me and the angle of the house. He had got the cutter on his hand now, and the bar of it was shining bright. If I decided to make a run for it, he could bring me down before I went three steps.

  “Get inside,” Fer said. “I won’t tell you again.”

  I never seen that part of Rampart Hold before, but by and by we come to a staircase I knowed well enough. They took me down into the Underhold and left me there in one of the rooms where we used to play hide and go seek and blind man’s touch when we was children. After they went out, I heard a bolt shoot home.

  If this was hide and go seek, I was not like to be found soon.

  30

  I sit there for a good long time in the dark. There was a candle in a sconce on the wall, but Fer hadn’t troubled to light it.

  I was all in a spin over what had happened to me. I turned it over and over in my head, the way Catrin had turned the DreamSleeve over in her hands, but I couldn’t make no sense of it.

  Fer and Mardew had took me away from the wedding feast, and they hadn’t brung me back. Wasn’t anyone asking them about that? Wasn’t my mother demanding she be let to see me? You couldn’t just up and take someone and make them disappear, especially when so many people seen me leave the wedding along with Fer and Mardew. They couldn’t pretend they’d lost me between the gather-ground and the mill.

  So that was some of my worry, and the rest was for Monono. I was glad now she bid me make up an axes code. I was pretty sure Mardew wasn’t going to say them particular words unless someone dragged them out of his mouth with ropes and horses, nor Monono wasn’t like to play for him without them. But I knowed his temper, and I was afraid he might get angry and break the DreamSleeve, not on purpose but just in trying to make it work.

  It gun to get cold, which I guess meant that night was coming on. But Fer had left me my bundle with all my clothes in it. I put on another shirt, then I lay my head down on the bundle and tried to sleep. I knowed someone was going to come for me sooner or later, and there wasn’t nothing I could do until they come, so I done the right thing for once and made the best of it.


  And I did sleep, at least a little. I drifted in and out of it, waking up each time cold and cramped. Sometimes I thought I was in my bed and reached for covers that wasn’t there, then come to myself again on the stone floor in the dark.

  When Catrin come at last, I was roused out of that fitful slumber. She wasn’t alone. There was a lot of steps on the stairs, and muttered voices that stilled when they got close to the door.

  Then the bolt was drawn back, and Catrin come in by herself. The others – I seen Fer and Perliu and one more that I think was Mardew – stayed outside. Fer handed a footstool to Catrin, who took it and set it down. Perliu give her a lit candle. She dripped some wax on a shelf by the door, and planted the candle in the dripped wax to fix it there. Then she closed the door, shutting them all out. She was still in her wedding suit, and I believe the others was too. They must of come straight from the feast.

  Catrin pushed the footstool towards me with her foot. “Sit,” she said.

  I got up and walked over to her, slow as an old man on account of all the cramps in my legs and my back. I sit down where she said.

  “Now,” Catrin said. “I’ll tell you the start of a story, and by and by I’ll tell you the end of it. You just got to give me what’s in the middle. But you make sure to tell it true. If you lie to me, Koli, it’s like to go bad for you. You understand me?”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t nod your head. Say the words.”

  “I understand, Dam Catrin.”

  She didn’t say nothing for a few moments after that, but stared at me in hard thought. “Are you hungry?” she says at last. “Thirsty?”

  “I’m both of them,” I said. I needed to piss too, which I think was mostly from being afraid, but I didn’t think to say it.

  Catrin opened the door, give some words to the others there and shut it again. “Some food is going to come,” she said. “Pork from the feast. But you can eat it after. Right now, we need to settle this thing.”