A Map of the Sky

by Claire Wong

  “I liked how he was clever – he was good at fixing problems. And I liked that he got back to his family in the end and they were all together. But I felt bad for the Cyclops. I don’t think they needed to go and blind him when he hadn’t done anything to hurt them.”

  He had raced through that part of the book, gripped by it but horrified at the same time. It was only after the excitement faded that he began to wish the story had been different. You weren’t supposed to feel sorry for the monster, but somehow he did.

  “Oh yes, that bit is pretty gory, isn’t it?”

  “But I’m reading the King Arthur book now and that’s really good. I like all the stories where the knights go off on journeys to find something like the Grail. Are there any castles near here?”

  Beth tilted her head upwards as she thought about this. “Not a lot. I think the nearest one is at Scarborough. Our history is more Vikings and monasteries than knights and castles.”

  “We did the Vikings in Year Four. They were really violent, weren’t they?”

  “Well, yes. They did raid and destroy a lot of villages round here. But some of them were also good farmers and poets. Lots of our place names were first used by Vikings. So in a way we’re still speaking their language.”

  “Like Askfeld? Is that a Viking name?”

  “Probably. It sounds pretty Viking-ish, doesn’t it? But I couldn’t tell you what it means; you’ll have to ask Sean. He’s good on local history.”

  Kit did not like to tell Beth that he was growing reluctant to speak to her husband about anything.

  “Your mum said Sean does rock climbing.” That sounded like the kind of cliff-side activity that could feature on the map.

  “Yes. Well, he used to, back when there was more free time. I don’t think he’s been out climbing in over a year now, but all the gear’s still in the cupboard in case one day he magically gets a free afternoon.” With a sigh, she looked down and twisted the gingham blanket around her fingers.

  Kit tried to bring the conversation back round to the reason he had come here again. “How is your map going? Have you drawn any more of it?”

  Beth glanced over to the table and Kit followed her gaze. The sketches lay untouched and the easel had been moved to a corner.

  “Not lately.”

  “Why not? Shall I bring them over to you?” Perhaps she could not reach them, being ill and confined to her chair.

  “Thank you, but no. I’m beginning to think it’s a bit of a hopeless case, to be honest. I hadn’t reckoned on how big a task it would be. It’s not like an ordinary map, where you just plot the roads and houses. It’d be easy enough to buy that sort of thing in a shop. When I had the idea for this, I wanted it to show experiences and memories, so how you use it will depend on a lot of things. It’s about the changing moods of the land, the places where storms are at their angriest over the sea, where the kittiwakes come and nest each spring, or where you’re far enough from the glow of town lights to stargaze. It’s about the sky and all its different complexions, layered over the sea and the land. When I think about trying to chart all of that, it’s overwhelming.” Beth seemed to catch herself, and her demeanour changed. “Sorry, Kit. I didn’t mean to get all gloomy and poetic on you. It was nice of you to ask about the map.”

  “You’re not giving up on it, are you?” Kit bypassed the sketches and ran over to the map on the easel. He spotted the small town of Utterscar, just up the coast from Askfeld. One of the houses there would soon be his new home. Close by, there was a portion of the land’s edge labelled Scar Bay. He liked the sound of that: it had a dramatic, piratical feel to it.

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “Well, if it helps, I’ve got something for the map. I found your lookout point.”

  Beth pulled a quizzical face. “You did?”

  “Yes!” Kit pointed. “It’s here, just off the cliff path. It’s four hundred and twenty-three steps from the front door. I counted on the way back.”

  She grinned. “Four hundred and twenty-three exactly? Well, I can’t let that level of research go to waste.” Sitting forward, she reached for the pencil on the small table beside her. “Could you bring me those sketches?”

  He gathered up the papers and planted them in front of Beth. “Here,” he pointed again. She chewed the top of the pencil.

  “Let’s mark it in then. And how many steps did you say it was? We’ll draw the path, maybe a line of tiny footprints showing the way.”

  She circled the spot that Kit had indicated and began to draw the steps between Askfeld and the lookout point.

  “What did it look like? How would you find it again?”

  “It’s just a gap in the spiky yellow bushes on the left. It looks a bit like a tunnel. Too small for an adult.”

  “The gorse must have become overgrown since I was last there. You used to be able to walk through most of the way, and only crouch for the last part.” Beth jotted some notes next to the trail of footprints. “It’s a wonderful spot, isn’t it? I’m glad someone else knows about it now. If you were a bird on that lookout point, and you flew out in a straight line over the sea, like this,” she drew an arrow eastward from the shore, “you could keep going and not see any land until you reached… Denmark, I think. Somewhere snowy, anyway. Thank you, Kit. Why don’t you add it to the main map, since you found it?”

  She handed him a broad-nibbed ink pen. Kit hesitated as he looked from it to her. His first thought was, What if my hand slips and I ruin the map? But the excitement of being allowed to take part in its creation was too much for him, so he stepped up to the easel.

  “Just here?” he asked, and Beth nodded. He drew a small cross at the lookout point, an X to mark the spot. One day he would tell Beth’s child how he helped to make this map.

  “Perfect. A talented map-maker already.”

  “They’re called cartographers, the people who draw maps.” He had read about this for some geography homework last year, and had liked the sound of the word. It had an earnest, studied feel to it.

  “Are they? Looks like we’ll both end up teaching each other new words at this rate.”

  Kit looked over the sketches and scribbles, trying to decide which part of the map he would find for Beth next. In places her handwriting was not the easiest to decipher.

  “I thought the North was full of hills,” he said, looking at the blank terrain that surrounded Askfeld. “Why’s it so flat here?”

  “You’re thinking of the Yorkshire Dales or the Lake District. Over here, we’re on the edge of the moors, so it doesn’t look the same. It’s not all wool mills, sheep farms, and flat caps either.”

  He asked her what she meant.

  “Well, if I came to the street where you used to live in London, would I find it full of cockney-speaking chimney sweeps and beefeaters marching on royal parades?”

  He laughed. “No, of course not!”

  “There you are then. Things don’t always match their reputation.”

  Maps never told you that kind of thing, but maybe they should. Instead of county borders, they could show you where a word changed meaning, or an accent became hard to decipher. Landmarks would be replaced by local foods, and helpful labels could advise on common misunderstandings for visitors.

  “Your map’s going to be so much more useful than normal ones.”

  It would be full of the things that actually mattered.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE BIRDWATCHER AND THE PILGRIM

  GLOSSARY OF NEW WORDS (PART ONE)

  Askfeld – a Viking name, from Ask (ash trees) and feld (field). So it means “field of ash trees”.

  “Ugh!” Juliet eyed the torrent of rain that cascaded out of the gutter. She and Kit had spent the whole morning indoors, watching as the weather turned worse and worse.

  “I guess Mum’ll work all day, since we can’t go outside,” Kit said, wiping the mist of condensation from the window. He traced a smiling face on the glass with his index finger and
then erased it.

  Catherine was upstairs, absorbed in a set of minutes for a meeting she had not attended. When Kit had complained to her that the rain would mean they’d be stuck indoors all day, she had only muttered under her breath, “Don’t blame me. Moving up North was your father’s bright idea.” It felt like a clue to the mysteries in his red exercise book, so Kit promptly went next door to write it down. He had made no headway in deciphering the comment, though. His mind was half on the map and all the places he needed to explore and discover if he was going to help Beth complete it before her child was born. There was no chance of any of that today, so he and Juliet resigned themselves to staying indoors. They had brought books and games down to the guests’ lounge. The basket of firewood beside the hearth had been refilled since yesterday, yet neither could bring themselves to ask Sean to light the fire on what was technically a summer’s day. Instead, Kit had pulled one of the blue gingham blankets around his shoulders like a cloak and buried himself in a book. Juliet, however, was less content to entertain herself.

  “I’m so bored. There’s been no signal or wifi all morning, and I think I’m going mad just sitting here watching you read. Tell me about one of your books.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know. Whichever one’s most interesting.”

  ‘The challenge would be picking something she didn’t dismiss as childish nonsense. Kit ruled out the superheroes as too farfetched for Juliet’s tastes, and thought instead about the stories he had borrowed from Beth.

  “Well, there’s this one here about a witch called Morgan le Fay. I kind of thought Morgan was a boy’s name, but she’s a woman anyway. She hates King Arthur and plots to kill him quite a bit in the stories. But one day she sends a messenger to Camelot saying she wants to be friends instead, and she sends a gift of a really fancy cloak, all covered in jewels.”

  Juliet arched a single eyebrow. “It’s a trick, right?”

  “Exactly! Merlin sees through it straight away, ’cause he’s super clever, and tells Arthur not to try on the cloak just yet, in case there’s some dangerous magic involved. He tells the messenger to put it on first, so they can see that it’s not enchanted. The messenger’s one of Morgan le Fay’s maids – I forgot to say that – and she does as Merlin says, but as soon as the material touches her shoulders, it catches fire and she’s burned to a crisp right in front of them!”

  “That’s so unfair to the maid. She wasn’t the one who cast the spell on the cloak. Why did she have to die?”

  “No, but she was in on the plot to kill Arthur,” Kit explained. Juliet had misunderstood and was siding with the enemy. This was part of the problem with telling her stories; she tended to confuse or overcomplicate the division between good and evil.

  “Why did Morgan whatshername even want to kill the king in the first place?”

  “Um…” Kit paused and thought. It had all made sense when he was reading the story, but now he was less sure. “I think so she can be queen once he’s dead. She’s Arthur’s stepsister, so maybe she thinks it’s not fair she can’t inherit the crown.”

  “Well,” Juliet continued, folding her arms to underline her verdict, “I’m not sure it’s a great story, but it’s better than all the drama going on with everyone from school at least. Amy and Seb split up and keep writing awful things about each other online. Serves them right, really. No, I don’t mean that. It’s just that – well – maybe an evil sorceress is easier to face than them.” She frowned. Her eyes were full of uncertainty, in a way that was quite un-Juliet-ish. She looked as if she was about to say something more, but at that moment Bert entered the room in a flurry of noise.

  “Hullo there, Kit! Being kept indoors by this miserable weather, are we? Same here. No sense going out and getting drenched, is there? This must be your sister, I expect.”

  Juliet snapped back to her usual self and confidently introduced herself to Bert. There was no trace of the strange fragile shadow that had passed over her face a moment ago. They exchanged names and shook hands in a way that made Kit feel as if he were the only child present in a meeting of adults. He scowled and hid his face behind the book of Arthurian adventures. His hair fell into his eyes when he hunched over, which made reading harder. Recently, his mother had been complaining about it as though he made his hair grow too long on purpose.

  “So what do you young folk do for entertainment on a dull day like this? I thought it was all tablets and smart phones and ignoring each other.”

  Kit lowered the book. “Juliet’s phone won’t work today. So I’m telling her a story.”

  “Storytelling, eh? Very good. One of the oldest pastimes in the world, that. And you’ve got a fireplace to sit round here, quite proper. Is it a good one – your story? Lots of excitement?” Bert sat down in the blue armchair he had previously recommended to Kit.

  “It was all right, in spite of some plotholes. But he’s got to the end of it now.”

  “Ah, that’s a pity. I’ve come in at the wrong time, clearly. Unless it’s your turn to tell us a tale next?”

  Juliet looked startled at the suggestion. “No, I don’t think I know any good stories. Just the books I was studying for GCSE English, and I don’t want to have to read them again any time soon.”

  She might have been cleverer than him, Kit thought, but she certainly didn’t have anywhere near his imagination. Juliet’s mind was a set of filing cabinets, ordered and labelled clearly. But here was a more pressing issue. Juliet had mentioned her GCSEs, and Kit knew that if he did not change the subject immediately, she would start to sink into worrying about the exam results that she would not receive until mid-August, and it would be almost impossible to cheer her up then.

  “What about you, Bert?” he asked, moving the conversation swiftly on.

  “Well…” Bert stretched out his legs, and as he spoke, the syllables came out sounding stretched too. “Stories – words – that’s never really been my thing. I’m a scientist at heart, even if I do have to do an inordinate amount of writing as part of my job.”

  “What is it that you do?” Juliet asked, with a show of polite interest. Everything about her demeanour, from the way she leaned forward with the question, to her hands folded neatly in her lap, was a perfect imitation of their mother. It wasn’t the way she did everything just right that annoyed Kit; it was that he could tell she was thinking more about the “just rightness” of it than anything else. But Bert was not to know this, and took her question in good faith.

  “I work at a university. A lot of the time I teach biology undergraduates. The good bits of biology, you understand – animals and plants – not any of this human anatomy stuff. Though it’s not too long now until I can retire.” The thought seemed to fill him with relief and dread all at once. “Still, you get good summer holidays, which is why I’m able to come and stay here for a few weeks. You can find marvellous seabird nesting colonies at Flamborough, not too far down the coast from us, and of course we’re right on the edge of the moors too – splendid for all kinds of plovers and larks and grouse.”

  “You’re a birdwatcher?”

  Bert was distracted from answering by the sound of someone else entering the room. Kit’s heart sank when he turned to see who it was. Maddie Morley had appeared in the doorway.

  “Maddie, come and join us!” Bert called her over with a cheery wave in her direction. Kit wondered if Bert suffered from memory loss and had forgotten how this woman had shouted at them both in the corridor just a few days ago. Today he seemed under the impression that they were all good friends.

  Maddie hesitated before replying, as if she also felt that Bert’s greeting was much too cordial, and when she agreed, it was with little enthusiasm. She sat down with the group, avoiding any chair that was directly next to someone else. As she sank into the seat, her walking clothes made a rustling sound. She was quite stocky in build, not elegant and willowy like Juliet or Kit’s mother, and her hair was scraped back in a haphazard manner, as if
she had wanted it away from her face by any means necessary.

  “Maddie, this is Kit and Juliet. We were just talking about… what was it that I was saying?”

  “That you’re a birdwatcher,” Kit reminded him. Bert took a moment to remember.

  “Mmm. Yes, just about. I used to be quite well regarded for my knowledge on the subject, actually.” He scratched his head, moving the unkempt tufts of grey hair into an even more irregular arrangement.

  “Used to be?” Kit repeated.

  “Well, I suppose there’s no harm in you knowing the truth. It’s not as if you’re going to tell any of the chaps at the university where to find me. You see, the last couple of papers I wrote weren’t well received by the rest of the ornithological world. In fact, that’s an understatement: one of them was widely ridiculed. And now the British Ornithologists’ Union are rethinking their invitation for me to speak at their next conference. If I’m being honest, I’m here to hide away from my colleagues for as long as possible over the summer before the new academic year.” He gave a rueful smile at this admission.

  “That wasn’t kind of people, to laugh at your work,” Juliet protested, her brow furrowing at the injustice, just as it had at the thought of Morgan le Fay’s maid meeting a gruesome and fiery end.

  “Well, in fairness, I did make some wild assertions that I couldn’t back up. Just got carried away with the idea of writing something remarkable for once. Didn’t verify all my data thoroughly before publishing. I should have known better; it’s precisely the kind of thing I teach my students not to do. Let that be a lesson to you all” – he eyed them with mock-sternness – “when you have homework to do: always check your facts!”

  “How wonderful, to work with young minds.” Maddie spoke at last, and it sounded rather wistful. Kit was surprised to hear her approve of Bert’s work, since he had got the impression earlier that she disliked everyone at Askfeld Farm Guest House. Her eyes, however, were not on the others present, but gazing up into nothing, as if she were already lost in her own thoughts.