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The Book of Koli

Page 26

by M. R. Carey


  “He ain’t an altar boy unless Senlas says he’s good enough, Cup,” the other woman said coldly, holding my two hands together at the wrists so Mole could tie another knot around them. “Most like he’ll just get hung up and bled out alongside of the other one.”

  41

  The older woman was named Sky. It seemed like she was the leader out of the three of them.

  She had red hair like rust on a pipe, and her face was painted with a sun on one side and a sickle moon on the other. She was as big as a bear, with muscles bunched all the way up her arms. She didn’t wear no shirt, but only a leather jacket sewed shut, and trousers of rough cloth that had not been dyed ever, and leather boots with the fur still on them. The boots had a sour smell to them, like the leather had not been proper cured. My face was close enough to her feet for long enough that I come to mislike that smell a great deal. Molo Tanhide would never of let a pair of boots go out of his hands in any such condition.

  The younger woman, Cup, would not of gone Waiting yet if we was in Mythen Rood. I judged she was maybe thirteen or fourteen years old. Her hair was light brown and her shirt and trousers was various shades of the same colour, but her shoes was black and green snakeskin. There was lots of sores on her pale skin, some red and fresh, others scabbed over with a dark crust. Her face was painted too, but it was just a line that went from under one eye, round her chin and up to the other eye. I guess it was meant to be a cup, kind of, the same way the sun and moon made Sky’s face be a kind of a picture of the real sky.

  All three of them was pale, now I come to see them properly. It was what made me think they might be family, even when they all looked so different. Mole was slight, like Cup was, but stood real tall. His elbows and his knees – which I could see because he wore a kind of kirtle on his nethers instead of trousers – was big and white like you could see the bones through the skin. It seemed to me at first that he didn’t have no painting on his face, but he did: it was a spot on either side of his nose, and a line over the top. Judging by the other two, it might of been supposed to make his nose look like a mole’s snout, so his face matched his name the way theirs did.

  I can remember all this pretty clear because I didn’t have nothing to do but look at the three of them while they was making a splint for my leg and tying it on. This was after they dragged me up on my feet a few times, and I just fell down again crying with the pain each time because my leg wouldn’t take no more weight than a feather before it folded.

  “Okay then,” Sky said. “We got two choices. Either we kill him here, or we fix him good enough to walk.”

  Mole give his opinion that I was faking that my leg was bad, so I could run away when their backs was turned.

  “That’s really good faking,” Sky said. “His knee’s swole up like a gourd, and red as blood. Let’s see you fake that, Mole. Go ahead. Or else shut your stupid mouth and cut me some straight branches.”

  She had a kind of a knife that was a sword, almost, with a curved blade that got thicker towards the end and bent back a little. It was a fearsome thing to look at. Mole and Cup brung her branches, and she cut them straight as a ruled line, her arm rising and falling almost too quick to see. Then she cut what was left of Catrin’s rope into five lengths that was about the same, and tied the branches to my leg to keep it straight.

  “Okay, shit-brain,” she said to me. “You think you can walk? Try it so I can see.”

  I made shift to do it, swinging my stiff leg out in front of me at each step like I was doing a cast in the stone game, then bringing the rest of me along after it. It still hurt somewhat, but I didn’t like the other idea, which was to kill me, so I thought I had got to make this work.

  “I can zap them with the alarm any time you like, Koli,” Monono said. “Just say the word and I’ll mush their brains into jelly.” But I didn’t do it, for it wouldn’t of been no good. I couldn’t get away from Sky and them with my leg the way it was and my hands tied, and if I tried they was like as not to strike me down as I was running. There was nothing for it but to go along with them for now and to do what they said, hoping that a chance would come along later for me to slip away from them and hide.

  Sky watched my stiff-leg walk with her lips all narrow. “We got five miles or more to go, runt,” she said. “You better tell me right now if you’re gonna be able to keep that up.”

  “Runt,” Monono repeated with sourness in her voice. “What a nasty piece of work. You know something, Koli? I’m starting to wish I was a laser beam after all.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said to Sky. “It doesn’t hurt so much now.” I had got to say it, for Sky’s hand was on the handle of that sword thing when she asked. If I said I couldn’t do it, I don’t think she would of offered to carry me.

  “Okay then,” she told me. “You sit there. We got to collect a few things. Cup, you take this, and watch him.” The younger one nodded. “Oh, and in case that limp of his is just make-believe,” Sky said, “show him how you shoot.”

  Cup unhitched a bow from off her back, and put an arrow to it. She turned in a slow circle, looking for a target. There was a knifestrike nest in a tree about a hundred yards away from us – last year’s, or the year before’s. Cup closed one eye, sighting on it, then let fly. The arrow went right through the middle of it.

  “We’ll get that arrow back on the way out,” Sky said. “You watch him close, now. I know he looks like a long streak of piss, but he killed his friend back there, then tried to cook him and eat him. Stick him if he moves.”

  “I didn’t do that!” I cried out, for them words was too much to bear. “That’s a lie!”

  Sky give a kind of a smirk. “How’d he die then? Sliced his leg open, then burned off his own arm?” She turned back to Cup. “Watch him close,” she said again.

  She and Mole went off towards the nearest houses. It seemed to me they was headed more or less to the place where I had left Mardew, but everything looked different to me now and I couldn’t be sure.

  I sat down in the weeds with my splinted leg stuck out in front of me. Cup sit on a rock a little ways off. She took a knife from off her belt, left-handed. She still was holding the bow in her right.

  “My name’s Koli,” I says.

  She didn’t answer. Her face was all blank.

  “From Mythen Rood.”

  That didn’t get nothing neither. I thought I would try one more time, and then give it up. “Cup’s a funny name,” I says. “How’d you come by it?”

  Cup give me a fierce look and jabbed the air with the knife. “You’d better shut up,” she said, “or I’ll stick you.”

  “Sky said you could only do that if I tried to run.”

  “She said if you moved. I just seen you move.”

  “It’s true,” I said. “I did move.”

  “Well, don’t you be doing it again!”

  “I promise I won’t.”

  She relaxed a mite now, having showed me she was fairly on top of my tricks, so I went about again to make friends with her. I done it with a mind on what might happen later if I tried to get away and was catched doing it. But I was also trying to get an idea of who these three was and where they come from.

  “Cup,” I said, “I got to ask, for I’m sore puzzled. What happened to all the people here. I bet you know, don’t you?”

  “They died,” Cup said. “Ages ago.”

  “But there’s no bodies.”

  “I don’t mean people come and killed them. Why, did you think it was us? Everyone always thinks it was us, but it wasn’t. Senlas says they died the best way there is. They just stopped being born.”

  I tried to figure what that meant. I didn’t ask who Senlas was, not being sure I heard the name correct. “Stopped being born,” I said. “Like, with their babies not coming, or not thriving when they come?” For that was a trouble we had in Mythen Rood too, and was why we valued Ursala so much.

  “Yeah. Like that.”

  “Why is that the best way?” />
  “Dandrake! How stupid are you? All your kind is going to go down to death anyway. Our kind gets to ride in the wagon; yours don’t. So them that don’t get born at all has got it best.”

  That give me to wonder a little. “Why, you’re the same kind I am,” I said. “There ain’t a spot of difference between—”

  I didn’t get no further than that. Cup jumped up and come over to where I was in three quick strides. She shoved her knife into my chest, about an inch from where the DreamSleeve was tied. “Don’t say that!” she says, all fierce. “Don’t you say that! You see my face? You hear my name? I’m nothing like you, you dumb bastard! I’m gonna go up to glory, and get made again all out of Heaven stuff. You’re bound for Hell, and you’ll go there right now if you don’t shut up.”

  I shut up. I didn’t even say I was sorry, for that knife had a wicked sharp point to it, and it was nearer my heart than I was happy with. I just stayed there, as still as still could be, until by and by Cup pulled it back an inch or so.

  “Are you done now?” she asked me. “With the questions?”

  “I’m done now,” I says.

  “Cos you go ahead and spit out another one, if you’re not done, and see what comes of it.”

  She went back to her stone. There wasn’t no more words between us, though I watched her close and she done me the same favour. I seen after a while she was crying, real quiet, not making a sound as the tears went down her face. I seen one other thing besides. There was scars on the insides of her wrists, and I thought I knowed what they might mean.

  Sky and Mole come back shortly after. They was carrying leather bags I didn’t see before, and from the way they hefted them I guessed them bags was full and heavy.

  “Okay then,” Sky says. “Clouds are thick as porridge and dark as ditchwater. We’re moving.”

  We went back to the gate. I was trying to match their speed, but the best I could do was to swing my stiff leg out wide and bump along behind in a kind of a dance, with them stopping one in a way to let me catch up.

  Going back through the ropeknot and bramble was harder than coming in by it, for I was sore cumbered. Sky helped me though. She held her big, curved knife up over me and fended off the worst of the weeds, scooping her free hand like a shovel besides to push some of the brambles out of my face. She didn’t seem to get stabbed or scratched in doing it, or if she did I never seen.

  We come back out onto the path. It was only a half of a day, more or less, since I went into Ludden, but I felt like I was ten years older than when I went in. I wished there was some way I could tell Catrin and them where Mardew was to be found, but my wits was not up to it. I just stood there at the gate, looking back inside, until Sky pushed me between the shoulders and pointed the way, which I guessed was to the south and west.

  I thought at first we was walking right off the path into the thick of the green, but there was a little track there, that I didn’t even see until we was on it. Sky walked ahead now, and it was as if the weeds and undergrowth opened like a curtain in front of her. Mole come next, then me, with Cup walking along behind me. She had slung her bow across her back and sheathed her knife so she could take up a spear that Sky had give her.

  The way was pretty narrow, but that didn’t slow them none. Mole had got one of those big curved knives, just like Sky’s, and between the two of them they cut away any reaching branches or creepers on either side, so we was mostly not tripped or troubled.

  I’m shamed to say it but I was as skittish as a hare. I had had a close call with the chokers the day before, and if they waked up again now I was not going to last no longer than a count of three, being unable to run or even to walk fast. But there wasn’t no arguing with Cup’s spear, which poked me in the back whenever I slowed.

  The track went on a long way, and mostly it went straight except where it had to bend around some giant tree. Sometimes, instead of bending round, it bent under, where the tree roots stood up into the air like the arches on a tabernac. That didn’t help my jangled-up nerves any, for I knowed that them arches, thick and heavy though they was, could close like loops in a thread when the ground shaked underneath them. Rampart Remember said the mashed-down bodies made the soil richer.

  But Sky didn’t have no fear. She walked under the arches without giving them so much as a look, and I didn’t have no choice but to follow. After the second or third time we done it, I seen that the trees was dead, though they still stood as high as ever. Their trunks was hollowed out partly, and they didn’t have no leaves on their branches, while all the other trees still had a few reds and yellows left to fall.

  I marvelled at this. What could kill a tree? Trees lived for ever, to my thinking, which was one reason why they was free to spread theirselves over the whole wide world while we had got to live behind a fence and burn out the seeds whenever they come.

  So I had got to ask, even with Cup’s spear at my back, even with most of my breath spent on hopping and bouncing along with my bound leg, that was aching something sore now. “Sky, how did the trees come to be dead?”

  “They ain’t,” Sky grunted. “They’re still dying. We mixed up a strong poison and dumped it in among the roots years back. The roots sucked it up like they’ll suck up anything. Like they’d suck up your blood if you was to die here. And when the poison took, the trees commenced to die. But it’s a long work to kill one of these bastards. Come Spring there’ll be a few new leaves still, and some sap in the trunk if you tap it. Though if you drink the sap, you’ll die.”

  “But how did—?”

  “Be quiet now, runt. We don’t talk when we’re traversing. Cup, you give him a whack with the blunt end of that spear if he speaks up again.”

  “I will, Sky,” says Cup from behind me, and she poked me in the side to show she meant it.

  But they couldn’t make Monono be quiet. “I’m keeping count, Koli,” she said. “Anyone who’s mean to my dopey boy is going to get a reckoning on their big fat backside. In the meantime, I’ve made up a heavy metal mix based on your giant-robot-death-monster walk, which is kind of adorable.”

  She gun to play me music, and I got to say it helped. It was stuff with a big, insistent rhythm to it, and by matching my pace to it I managed not to slow down the march too much. Mole was still not happy though. He complained oftentimes about the time we was making, and by and by Sky called a stop.

  “Is that really the best you can do?” she asks me.

  I give her a nod, not having no breath left to answer her. It was not just the walking that was tiring me out; it was the pain too. My leg was throbbing from toe to hip like it meant to burst. That made the walking harder, for the leg was heavier to lift and jolted when it come down. I was sweating bad, and they had took my waterskin from me so I hadn’t had nothing to drink since we walked out of Ludden.

  “Let’s take a rest,” Sky said.

  Mole throwed up his hands, pointing at the trees all around. “What?” he says. “Here?”

  “No, numbskull. The next way-space.”

  We walked on for a long while. The music was less of a help now, for I was so tired I couldn’t keep to the beat, and the being behind it all the time kept making me stumble. I was near to falling down and lying where I fell when of a sudden the trail opened up into a clearing. It was not much of a clearing, being just big enough for the four of us to sit down in it without the nearest brambles spiking our shoulders. Narrow as it was though, I seen right away it was a made thing. Made, and kept up, most likely by Sky’s and Mole’s and Cup’s people, whoever they was. Them curved knives was perfect for cutting back the weeds and making some room in among the green, if you was brave enough to do it.

  That thought brung some other thoughts. These three was not just faceless people, like me. They had a village near at hand, and kin that lived there. They had a Rampart, kind of, whose name was Senlas, and rules they cleaved to, and their own ways of living. I had been looking for a way to slip off into the woods and escape, but maybe i
t would be better to stay and see if I could join with them, at least for a time.

  Maybe not, though. At Ludden, Sky had talked about people being hung up and bled out. They was a fierce folk, judging by that custom. I might not be happy among them.

  The three of them et and drunk in silence pretty much, though Sky said some words over the dried meat before she shared it out between the three of them. “By his grace, and in his name,” I think it was. They didn’t have no bread or oatcake with the meat, just chewed it and swallowed it down. They didn’t give me a share, but Sky saved the last little bit of hers and shoved it in my mouth without a word when she was done. I would rather of had some water, but that they saved for theirselves. I choked down the meat the best I could, my throat being so dry and the taste of it both salt and somewhat bitter. I would not of et it at all, save I thought Sky would be angry if I spit it out.

  “Okay then,” Sky says then. “Mole, you get to carry the bigger pack now. Cup, look you take up the small one.”

  “What about you?” Mole asks, all sullen.

  “I’m carrying him,” Sky says, nodding her head at me. “We got to whip up the pace some.”

  She took me on her back the way you would do with a child, my arms around her neck and my legs under her hooked arms. They had got to untie my hands to do it, but then Mole tied them up again, a mite looser, out in front of me. I was hung over Sky’s wide shoulders like a rabbit being brung back from a hunt.

  We set off again, faster than before. Sky’s big strides took in a lot of ground, and she didn’t tire. The other two was running almost, to keep up with her. As for me, it was a relief not having to walk no more, though my leg was jarred again and again as we went. The heat from Sky’s back was like the heat off of a fire when you sit too close. She smelled of earth and sourness, and something else that was almost like a spice. Cicely maybe, or water pepper.

  “Koli,” Monono said. “I’m worried about my battery. I’m dropping into the red, dopey boy, and I know you can’t charge me up until you get to where you’re going. So I’m going to go lie down in my coffin like a sexy vampire for a while. I want to have enough power left for a big blast on the alarm if you need it. If you don’t… Well, better not switch me on until you’ve got some sunbeams for me to eat. Be careful, and stay alive. I’ll see you soon.”

 

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