by Ana Salote
One sound sleep and the news of Oy gave Linnet’s blood the will to move again. Linnet wished aloud that Lil would stay. Lil had a mind that was not swayed by others. The Felluns had prised her from a crack in the chasm where she was born. They had bound her and taken her away in the bottom of a cart. She was determined to return home but she did not know the way. Emberd said that he would find some maps. So Lil stayed, and because Nondula did not need tuning she didn’t mind the wait.
Emberd produced maps of the lands around Fellund. They were very old, made at a time when all the peoples could move freely. When the maps were drawn Fellund was spelled Offaland, and it was a small settlement in the crook of the mountains. The Felluns had long since altered the courses of the rivers, making deserts out of grassland and marshes out of meadows. Lil looked at the maps carefully. There was a large area of valleys and canyons. She ran her finger around and beyond it. ‘There,’ she said, pointing to a blank space. ‘Craicanmar is there.’
‘But that’s where everything runs out,’ said Gertie.
‘That will be it then,’ said Lil.
‘How do you know?’ said Gertie.
‘As I lay blind and bound in the cart, this is what I heard. I heard mountains, I heard water, I heard trees, I heard the wind stop here and go separate ways, I heard birds launching from high places, I heard cliffs throw back their cries.’ For each sound Lil pointed to a feature on the map. ‘Now I run it all backwards and that is where I end up.’ She pointed to the uncharted space at the map’s edge. ‘And over here,’ her long finger traced a line on the table top, ‘would be the storm wall. I was born to the sound of storms, and the best place to be in a storm is a crack. I shall go home and find one so deep that no storm and no Fellun shall ever root me out again.’
Some quiet days followed. The fighting in Fellund continued. Bagla brought a message from Scriberd who was back in the fort. He reassured them that Oy and Alas had not yet been caught. While the hunters were fighting each other the boys were safe, unless of course they were already drowned. Bagla flew daily after that. Scriberd reported that the fighting had slowed but nothing came from the marshes except mist and a bad smell.
23 Lellick Airyfluss
The boys did not drown. The kingfishers had led the boys safely through the marshes; now they led them out again. They passed abandoned bridges, and tried not to look at what lay bloating in the water. As they neared the edge of the marshes they grew tired and careless. Oy slipped and sank to his waist in mud. Alas hauled him out.
In failing light they sluiced themselves in Nondulan streams and ate the good herbs they found there. At last in the deepest part of the night Oy and Alas came home. The stairways and bridge were blued by moonlight. Silently they climbed the crest, the stony goat track and the steps to the retreat. Their beds drew them down and floated them into sleep.
Before long, bars of daylight showed around the shutters. Gertie sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand till her mind caught up with her eyes. Then she screamed: ‘They’re back!’
‘What?’ Gritty woke, swung her legs out of bed and crossed the room pushing tangles of hair behind her ears. She stood next to the boys’ beds and made funny sounds and funnier faces.
Alas half opened his eyes and stretched lazily. The girls had questions, questions, questions. He lay with his hands behind his head, and answered.
Oy did not move. He lay on his back with his mouth open and slept. Gertie leaned over him with a worried look. ‘Is he alright?’
‘He’s been through a lot,’ said Alas. ‘He’s been tormented, tortured, thrown off a cliff and sent to the dogs.’
All through the day people came to look at him as he slept. Gritty and Gertie barely moved from his side. They began to fear that he would sleep right through another night. Ede said it was not the sleep of sickness. They should let him rest.
‘I can’t bear to wait another night to talk to him,’ said Gertie.
‘And to tell Linnet,’ said Gritty.
That name. It reminded Oy’s sleeping brain that there was something very important to do. He woke up. Gertie and Gritty were right in front of him, jostling for attention. Just behind them was Alas. Ede brought him water and food.
Oy ate and drank, washed and put on fresh clothes, then they all set off to see Linnet. The girls almost carried Oy along in their excitement. As they neared the bridge, Gritty pointed to the long figure of Lil in the distance.
The girls showed Oy to Linnet and Linnet to Oy. Oy and Linnet allowed themselves to be showed. They talked to each other with show words. Neither asked questions because they could see the answers. Linnet could see Oy had lived in fear and danger. It was gone now. Let it stay far off. And she needed her breath to keep sitting up and smiling. Oy could see that Linnet breathed by willpower alone. So they let the others talk around and over them. They sat quietly holding hands. After a time Linnet leaned close and spoke to Oy under the chatter.
‘We found my yellow. It’s in a book.’ She stretched out and touched Gertie’s arm. ‘Gert, can you get the book?’ Gertie fetched the book and found the page. ‘Look,’ said Linnet. ‘It’s here, in a story about kingfishers; and there’s this rhyme, see.’
‘Where fisher feathers fall...’ Oy read on to the end, ‘I been there, Linnet, to the groves of blue, and I brought something back. It’s here in my pocket. There wasn’t much of it so I could only take the littlest bit.’ In his hand was the limp and browning cap of fungus. ‘It’s not so bright now.’ Linnet cupped her hands around Oy’s and bent her head. Around them was another circle of heads.
‘Lellick airyfluss – my yellow,’ said Linnet.
Oy turned it with his finger so she could see the pretty gills and the fuzzy halo round the stem. Linnet said just looking at it made her feel better. Oy patted her arm.
He had high hopes for the fungus, but there was so little of it. He had found two small frills at the foot of the oldest tree, and taken one. He couldn’t afford to waste any and he had no idea how to dose. He thought it best if he made a start straight away.
‘Tomorrow’s soon enough,’ said Linnet. ‘I’ve been like this for weeks; one more day won’t make a difference.’
‘That’s not what I see, Linn. I won’t be gone longer than I need. You just breathe steady till I get back.’
Once outside he stood for a minute with his hand over his eyes. Gertie came out and put her arm round his shoulder. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Yes. The blues are taking her fast; it feels like she’s made of water and I can’t hold it. I got to get on, Gert.’
Gertie let him go. He hurried to the Sanctry and laid the fungus on the prepping board. There were no books to tell him what to do. He asked his jenie but there was no answer. Sometimes it helped to walk. He walked around the base of the Sajistry but he couldn’t relax into that clear space where his jenie arrived unbidden. He leaned against the quarry wall with his forehead on his arm and closed his eyes. When he opened them another pair of eyes looked back at him. It was Lil, standing in a crevice.
‘Of all the places to stop,’ she said, sliding out. Her tone was pure displeasure.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Oy. Her voice made him very sorry indeed.
‘No matter. It won’t do. Too narrow at the back and shallow at the front. I shall never find a crack that fits. You must be Oy.’
‘And you must be Lil. I’m pleased to meet you. I’d like to help you search, only I need to find my jenie, quick. I can’t make Linnet’s medicine without it.’
‘It’s retuning you want. Fellund has turned you into a fiddle with all the strings bust and tangled like briars.’ Lil fished the black fork out of her bodice, tapped it against the rock, and ran it around Oy, hovering over his head and heart listening carefully. Her face was intent. ‘Every creature and every thing has got a song, all its own. Tis a pretty song you’ve got, though still half made.’
She hummed and ah-ed and lah-ed. He could feel the vi
brations between his teeth. She made him hum and ah. She told him go higher and lower, go with the sound of the fork. At last she held the fork above his crown and said, ‘There, you’re tuned. Not perfect but near as I can get with my fork as it is.’
Oy thanked Lil and they parted. As he walked away he recited the kingfisher rhyme to himself and his jenie came back with force. ‘Where fisher feathers fall... We drink the dew.’ He would extract into dew, dew from the river bank. The sun was already sinking. He sat under the deepening sky and watched for the first drops to form. It wouldn’t be rushed. He must breathe deeply and wait. The waiting had a good effect. This medicine needed a delicate touch, not the touch of agitation. Later his jenie whispered over the dew: ‘The night air has touched the grass; the grass has warmed the dews out of the night air.’ It was gentle water; he had to treat it gently. By the light of candles he broke the fungus cap into the water. The colour wept. He drew a feather lightly through the water. It warmed to orange and then, like a sunrise, brightened to yellow.
He dare not wait till morning. He took it straight to Linnet and woke her. ‘Sip it slow.’
Linnet lifted the cup to the lamplight and drank. ‘Oh, that’s good.’ She took another swallow, waited, put the cup down and covered her eyes with her hands.
‘What is it? It’s alright now. Don’t... don’t cry.’
‘I’m not.’ Linnet dropped her hand and gave him a clear, direct look. ‘It’s the hanging on and hanging on. Some days I wake up and think, today’s the day I let go, and it’s such a relief, but something stops me.’
‘You mustn’t ever let go. I’m sorry I left you to fight on your own.’
‘You had to do it. And there’s something I got to do, or we got to do. I don’t know what it is but it keeps me going.’
‘I know. Let the medicine do the work now. You give the orders but you don’t have to fight no more.’
‘Yes,’ she sighed and rested her face on her hands.
‘Shall I read you back to sleep?’
‘Yes.’
Oy began to read, all the time wondering what would happen when the medicine ran out.
24 The Book Tree
The Chee were escaping. The fighting continued in Fellund while serfs and animals leaked from the camps and pits. The Chee began drifting over the border into Nondula. At first there were many. Then the influx stopped. The remaining Chee suffered mass whippings. Order was more orderly than ever before. A few stragglers brought the latest news. Bominata lived. Her throat hole was stoppered. Ijaw’s sister, Guerm, had taken power. Rigaw had snatched it back on Bominata’s behalf. He had earned himself another spell as husbind but his position was shaky. It was said that whoever brought in the hare-boy would be the next husbind. There was a huge bounty on Alas’s head.
News reached Nondula that the first bounty-hunters had picked up Alas’s scent in the Scrubluns and were heading for the forest border. The Nonduls did their best to confuse the sniffers. They used Alas’s shirt to lay a false trail which ended at the foot of a tree. The dogs ringed the tree. The Felluns shook it and finally chopped it down, but there was no hare-boy among the broken branches. Then the Felluns were angry. They made their usual threats of whipping, fire and terrorgation. The Nonduls looked at them as though they were misguided children. When questioned directly they used evasion and wordplay to avoid lying but they gave nothing away. Every day more husbeaus arrived with their men and their dogs. The Sajistry seemed specifically designed to thwart them. It was riddled with caves and cracks and blind ends, and always there was a sense that everything of importance was hidden. They sent their dogs through every slit and down every hole. Sometimes the dogs came out so far away they did not return for days, if at all.
The discovery of the basin caused another hunting frenzy. One lucky hunter had arrived there via a high pass east of the Sajistry. Within days the basin was swarming with Felluns. The bridge was rebuilt. Alas’s scent was everywhere, but there was no Alas.
The waifs dare not return to the basin. A spare somin was found for them in the Paxa, a small hidden wing of the Sajistry where some of the oldest scholars ended their days in contemplation, away from any possible disturbance by the Felluns. I It was reached by a secret passage from the second floor. Everyone urged Linnet to join them but she was stubborn. She loved her yellow somin and would not be chased out of it by Felluns. She wanted to play her vapids trick again but no one would hear of it. Alas needed a separate somin so that he would not contaminate the others with his scent. Many of the old scholars offered to give up their rooms for him but he refused to disturb them. Anyway, since the Felluns had found the basin, they might also find the Paxa.There was another option. A trapdoor led from the Paxa into a chimney-like crack fitted with ladders which ran down to a cave beneath the Sajistry. The Nonduls fitted it out with every comfort. Alas could hide there in safety till the Felluns gave up their search.
Meanwhile there was nothing for Alas to do but think. He thought for ten days. He thought as he paced. He thought as he lay on the lumoss not knowing if it was night or day. He thought as he watched the play of lamplight on the walls of the cave. He thought as he listened to his visitors who stood near the entrance behind a chalk line so as to stay clear of his scent. When he was done thinking he called the other waifs to him. He wasn’t willing to live in hiding he said. He didn’t want to bring any more trouble to Nondula. He was going back to Affland. The cave had unlocked his memories. Now he couldn’t get the other waifs out of his head, the ones left behind; the way they had straggled up the beach defeated, and Lucinda’s goodbye face. What if Jeopardine had bribed his way out of trouble? What if nothing had changed at Duldred? What if Lucinda and the others were still being worked to death? And then to be locked in that dark, windowless basement every night, with the hunger gnawing.
‘Oh, Lor’,’ said Gritty. ‘I’d told myself Molly and the doctor would see to things.’
Gertie nodded agreement.
‘Because it was easier that way,’ said Alas. ‘Our lives here have been better than we could ever have dreamed.’
‘Till all this kicked up,’ said Gritty.
‘But we always meant to go back didn’t we?’ Alas asked them. ‘Didn’t we?’
‘I guess,’ said Gritty.
‘I been thinking, too,’ said Oy. ‘Linnet’s medicine will only last a few months. I need to get more.’
‘You can’t go back to the marshes,’ said Gritty.
‘There isn’t enough fungus in the marshes,’ said Oy. ‘There’s more than enough in Affland. I’m going with you, Alas.’
‘What about you two?’ Alas asked the sisters.
‘We should stay here with Linnet,’ said Gertie.
Oy patted her arm thankfully.
‘There’s Ede,’ said Gritty.
‘It’s not the same. She needs her own folk around her,’ said Gertie.
Gritty chewed her lip and stared at the floor. ‘How’re you going to get there when there’s a storm wall in the way?’
Short of waiting for another tornado, no one seemed to know.
A route had to be planned. The map was spread on Emberd’s desk. Lil said she would go with the boys as far as Craicanmar.
‘It looks an awful long way,’ said Gertie. ‘Fastest and straightest would be over the plain.’
‘We’ll go where there are rocks and trees,’ said Lil. ‘I won’t spend a night on open ground.’
‘Roughly northeast would be best,’ said Emberd. ‘There’s more water and you can trade for supplies in the villages.’
‘Once we’re past the mud flats I will sound the way to Craicanmar,’ said Lil. ‘From there you must go on alone.’
‘Which way?’ said Oy.
Lil traced a line west of a small desert. Beyond that the route left the map and dropped off the edge of the table.
Gertie said the boys should think again. What if they couldn’t find a way around the storm wall? The long and dangerous trek would be f
or nothing. Lil said she didn’t see how you could go around something that didn’t have ends. She had heard of a passage underneath the storm wall; where it was she didn’t know. Emberd said there may be some mention of it in the archives. He would ask the scholars to help them look. Oy said they would find a way when they got there. He took the map to show to Alas. Alas admitted that the storm wall was a mighty problem.
Then, as if to remind them how mighty, the wind came like a messenger from the storm wall. It was a warning, a mere wisp of the power that churned beyond the maps. First came the change in the light and the air. The trees grew restless. Everything looked to the sky afflicted. The animals withdrew who knew where. The first thunder sounded just above their heads. The lightning glared on the world as though uncovering a shame. The sky emptied and the wind followed. The storm seized Nondula in its mouth and shook it like a hound with a rabbit. The waifs lay awake listening. Only Alas, in his cave, heard nothing.
The morning was bright, wet and still. The trees formed odd angles; the ground was covered in branches. The arablan gathered fire wood and made the tilting trees safe. The scholars studied. In the late morning news came in of a tree cache. Emberd went to see, taking Gertie with him. A wooded hillside close to the Sajistry had taken the brunt of the wind. A number of ancient trees had fallen offering their roots to the air. Gertie was amazed to see books wedged among bearded roots and clods of reddish soil.
‘This is an exciting find,’ said Emberd. ‘Tree caches are very rare. Ease them out as carefully as you can.’
‘This one’s hardly damaged,’ said Gertie, holding the first book in her hand. ‘Why isn’t it all rotted away?’
‘A lost art of paper making,’ said Emberd, ‘though it doesn’t keep the damp and the mould out completely. I’ll need to stop further deterioration, and then it’s back to the fire damage. My poor moth books will have to wait again.’