Gullstruck Island

by Frances Hardinge

  But the land around the river was rich and tempting, so the Cavalcaste had ignored their advice and built a great town in the Wailing Way. Shortly afterwards its citizens started to go missing, one at a time. Only when thirty or so had disappeared without trace did the settlers discover the truth. They were being kidnapped and murdered by the politely smiling Lace themselves.

  The Lace had acted as they thought best. After all, the whole township was at risk of being trampled by angry mountains. To the Lace’s minds the only way to keep the volcanoes sleepy and happy, and so prevent this disaster destroying the town altogether, was to quietly waylay solitary settlers, spirit them to the Lace mountain shrines and jungle temples . . . and sacrifice them. But when the truth came out the Lace’s towns were burned by the enraged settlers, their temples destroyed and all of their seers and priests killed. Even the other tribes disowned them. They were pushed out to the westernmost edge of the island – the Lace coast – and left there to forage for survival as best they could.

  As the pulley-chair touched the ground at last, the front of the crowd gave a small, impatient shuffle forward.

  ‘You want stick! You want stick!’ There were about a dozen small children holding sharpened stakes twice their own height. ‘For walking!’

  ‘Hello, sir!’ called one of the girls further back. ‘You have lady wife? You have daughter? She likes jewellery! Buy jewellery for her!’

  Now the tide was upon them, and Prox felt his face growing red as he sidled through a forest of hands proffering earrings made of shell, bead-studded boxes and pictures painted on palm leaves ‘to burn for ancestors’. He was a dapper little man, but the tide of short, slightly built Lace made him feel fat and foolish. Furthermore, behind the jewelled smiles, the singsong calls and the hands slipped into his in greeting, he felt the crackle of desperation like dry weather sparks, and it made him desperate too.

  The crowd quickly realized that the strangers were not to be slowed, and simultaneously decided to lead them to the heart of their village instead, to Arilou, their own prized Lost.

  ‘This way! This way!’ The human wave that had rushed them and nearly bowled them over backwards was now bearing them along with it.

  The visitors were ‘guided’ by many companionable shoves in the back towards a cave where stalactites hung in pleats like draggled, dripping linen. Prox followed the Inspector up a rickety rope ladder to the cave entrance. A reed curtain twitched aside and strong arms reached down to pull them into a darkness full of voices and – Prox could feel them – smiles.

  Outside a girl lowered an arm decorated from wrist to shoulder in shell bracelets and laughed away her disappointment.

  ‘Did you see them, the old thunderfaces?!’ The laugh shapes hung around the women’s mouths as they stared up at the reed curtain with hard, puzzled eyes. Outsiders never seemed to smile.

  For a little while the family in the cave moved around so much that Prox could not keep track of them. The mother of the household brought straw mats, strips of dried fish and endless coconut shells full of rum.

  ‘Madam Govrie,’ the Inspector said at last in a low, patient tone, ‘I very much fear we cannot take further advantage of your hospitality if we are to return to Sweetweather town by nightfall.’ As their hostess began to protest that they could stay there overnight, or in one of the houses in the village, Prox felt a restive distrust. Accommodation would turn out to have a fee attached, no doubt. Perhaps they had already arranged to delay their guests and take a cut from whoever ended up providing lodging for the night.

  ‘Please, I must insist.’ The Inspector’s voice had no real intonation, and there was a rustle in his ‘s’ as if he spoke with a sore tongue, further signs of one not at home in his own body.

  ‘Very well, I’ll call her in. Hathin!’

  Prox was a little bewildered; he had thought the girl’s name was Arilou. A second later he realized that another member of the family must have been called to bring in the child, perhaps her nurse or older sister. And yes, now he could see two children, walking hand in hand from the darkness of a neighbouring cavern. Prox stared stupidly for a moment at the taller of the two girls, noting her face dusted ceremonial white with powdered chalk, her brows tinted gold with pollen and her hair waxed close to her head and studded with brilliant blue hummingbird feathers. This, he realized, was Arilou.

  But she must be thirteen at least, thought Prox, looking at Arilou. They told us to expect an untrained Lost, one not yet in control of her powers . . .

  She would have been a very pretty girl if there were not a certain softness in the motions of her face. Her tongue pushed her lower lip forward and glistened between her lips, and her cheeks puckered and bulged without purpose as though she was rolling invisible cherries about in her mouth.

  As her smaller sister carefully guided her to sit on a straw mat, her mother ran a fingertip down Arilou’s temple alongside one grey, unfocussed eye. ‘Pirate eyes,’ Mother Govrie said proudly. Prox never understood why the Lace seemed to regard a trace of pirate in their ancestry as a reason to boast.

  The village’s pride in this girl could be seen just by looking at her mouth. Nearly every tooth had been studded with a perfect little round of lazuli into which a spiral had been etched. In contrast the girl next to her had only a few of her front teeth studded in a cloudy quartz that was almost invisible against the enamel.

  ‘Please,’ said the Inspector, speaking over Govrie’s enthusiasm. ‘If you will let us talk to the girl in private.’

  At last the Inspector and Prox were left alone with Arilou. Alone, that is, except for the younger child, who seemed to be Arilou’s designated attendant. When asked to leave she stared at them unmoving, her smile baffled but intact, and eventually they relented and let her stay.

  ‘Miss Arilou.’ The Inspector settled himself to kneel in front of Arilou. A warm and wandering breeze crept into the cave so that the feathers in her hair trembled. She gave no other motion, nor acknowledgement of his presence. ‘My name is Raglan Skein. My body is sitting before yours at the moment. Where are you?’

  Unbidden, the younger girl took Arilou’s long, golden hand in her smaller darker one and whispered into her ear. There was a small pause, and then Arilou’s lids drooped a little, darkening her grey eyes like a sudden cloud shadowing the land. She hesitated, as though in contemplation, and then her jaw fell open and she began to speak.

  But these were not words! Prox listened dumbstruck to the sounds falling from Arilou’s drooping mouth. It was as if some words had been washed out to sea and rounded smooth and meaningless by the waves. And then he was just as startled to hear the stream of noise give way to ordinary speech, clearly spoken in a young girl’s voice.

  ‘I am running an errand for the village, Master Skein. At the moment I am storm-spotting many miles further up the coast. It would take me hours to get back.’

  It was a moment or two before Prox realized that it was not Arilou who had spoken. It was her little attendant, and now he realized why she had not left the room. However nimble her mind, it seemed that Arilou did not yet have full mastery of her tongue, a not uncommon complaint among the Lost. Her attendant was probably a younger sister, able to understand and translate Arilou’s ill-formed sounds through long practice. The words had been spoken with a clear, cold authority, and Prox wondered for a moment if Arilou’s true voice was forcing its way out through her meek little interpreter, her personality overwhelming the other like a silver river’s torrent rushing down a meagre stream bed.

  ‘Then we will not call you back immediately.’ Skein had responded to the confidence in Arilou’s voice, and now his tone was that of one addressing an adult rather than a child. ‘Do you see a storm? Where are you?’

  ‘I am watching from the Pericold Heights, and I can see storm clouds tangled in Mother Tooth’s hair,’ came the response. ‘I must watch longer to be sure, but I believe that it will reach us tomorrow night.’

  Pericold Heights was
a promontory some fifty miles up the coast from which one could look out to sea and see a great column of steam, and at its base the outline of Mother Tooth’s island like a trodden pie. Mother Tooth was the most belligerent of the volcanoes, and nobody but the birds lived in her reeking, juddering jungles. Storm clouds seemed to form around and above her, as if drawn by her ill temper.

  So much for testing the girl quickly and getting out of here, thought Prox despondently. The cliff walks that had brought them to this part of the coast were treacherous enough in the dry. In wet weather the red rock melted like chocolate, and slewed and slithered off the precipices. It was starting to sound like they might find themselves stranded in this backwater.

  ‘You understand that I have come here to test your use of your powers and all that you have learned from the Lost School?’ Skein asked. ‘I must have you ready tomorrow.’

  ‘I understand. I shall be ready.’ A big velvety-black butterfly flickered through the dim cave, and with a perverse impudence settled upon Arilou’s powdered cheek. She did not flinch, and it spread its wings below her eye, displaying bars the same lazuli blue as the feathers in her hair. Prox found himself in the grip of an awe he could not express. What could it symbolize, a marble-faced girl with a butterfly cheek? He had seen other Lost of course, but there was something mythic about this child, sitting serene as an oracle in her ocean cave.

  It was as though some divine hand had picked the very best out of the village’s mess of bloodlines for this one child – just enough strange blood for a Lost, just enough pirate blood for those grey eyes, rich tawny skin, high elegant cheekbones, just enough Lace blood to give her an eerie sense of otherness . . . you might keep her and throw away the rest of the village.

  ‘Then we shall return a little after dawn. May good fortune attend you, and spare you from mist. We shall leave you alone.’ Skein stood, and Prox did likewise. While the dust was being brushed from his knees with a long-handled switch, Prox allowed himself one more look at the Lady Lost, still staring out before her as if she held the very sea and sky, rumbling and roiling, within the compass of her gaze.

  2

  Twisted Tongues

  ‘We shall leave you alone.’ A courteous promise from Inspector Skein. It was also a lie, albeit not a deliberate one. Arilou was not alone.

  The prints of small bare feet formed in the dust of the floor and made their way to the cave entrance. The feet that made them were not invisible, but they might as well have been. So might the face that now peered nervously around the curtain down towards the beach.

  No grey eyes, no rich, strange colouring. This was a snub little Lace face of the most commonplace sort, with wide cheekbones, far apart brown eyes and not much to speak of by way of a nose. There was a nervous little ruck near one corner of the smile. In the middle of the forehead was a patch of ‘troubled water’, a little place the size of a thumbprint where anxiety showed itself in a tension and creasing of the skin.

  Her name was Hathin. While Arilou’s name was meant to sound like the call of an owl, the fluting of a bird of prophecy, Hathin’s name imitated the whisper of settling dust. Dustlike she was indeed, unremarkable, quiet, all but invisible. And right now the fate of everyone she knew rested on her all but invisible shoulders.

  The butterfly wandered further up Arilou’s cheek, dowsing with its antennae, and wafted its wings against her eyelashes. Arilou’s cheek twitched once, twice, and then the Lady Lost made a long moaning sound in her throat, like a newborn calf. Startled from her harassed contemplation, Hathin turned to her sister with a look of quiet desperation, then scampered back to her side to tease the butterfly into taking off.

  Was this the great Lady Arilou, her cheek twitching slackly, her tongue-tip licking away the powder at the corner of her mouth to leave a scoop of pink flesh?

  ‘Oh . . . no, don’t do that. Here – hold still.’ Hathin wiped the powder from Arilou’s tongue. ‘This is what you want, isn’t it?’ Hathin fetched a pot of honey and dabbed some on Arilou’s lips to quiet her. Arilou’s face cleared again, as it often did when she got her way. Hathin drew back with her knees to her chin and watched with wide, bright eyes as Arilou unthinkingly ran her tongue over her lips. Clear water, said Arilou’s beautiful grey eyes. Troubled water, said the thumbprint frown on Hathin’s forehead.

  Honey-smothered sounds emerged from Arilou’s mouth. Hums and mumbles. Where was the prophetess’s voice that had almost stirred the visitors to tears?

  That cold, clear voice of authority was now choking in Hathin’s throat as, for the thousandth time, she listened to Arilou’s sounds and tried to force them into words, sentences, some semblance of meaning.

  She failed. And the cold, unspeakable truth of it was that she had always failed. Despite all Hathin’s efforts, Arilou’s language remained a private one. The visitors who had marvelled at Lady Arilou’s wisdom and breeding over the years had never guessed for a moment that her trembling little ‘translator’ was pulling her high-sounding sentences out of the air.

  It was the village’s greatest fear and most terrible secret. They never alluded to it by word, gesture or expression. After all, in a land where the Lost wander like winds it is impossible to be sure whether somebody is watching or listening. And yet all the villagers knew that in the thirteen years since her birth Arilou, beautiful Arilou with her sea-coloured seer-ess’s eyes, had shown no more sign of controlling Lost powers than she had of taking to the winds like a gull. The tantalizing glimmer of ability that she had seemed to show as an infant had vanished without trace, like a rock that had borrowed a moment’s lustre from a wave and then given itself over to eternal dullness.

  Hathin had been born because somebody was needed to guard and guide Arilou day and night. And now, though it was never stated outright, it was clear to Hathin that she had another duty. In a thousand imperceptible ways the villagers seemed to say to her, And if . . . if Arilou really is nothing but an imbecile, it is your job to make sure that we never need to discuss it . . . and that nobody outside the village ever finds out . . .

  And so from her earliest years Hathin had learned to speak the visitors’ language fluently, to eavesdrop on their conversations, to read the hidden signals in their faces. Most visitors came to see Arilou only out of idle curiosity and were easily satisfied by Hathin’s performances. Now, for the first time, Hathin could see the enormity and danger of the game that the whole village had been playing for more than a decade. An Inspector had come, and the village’s gentle streamlet of deceit was gushing uncontrollably into wider, wilder waters.

  The village needed Arilou. Without the money and visitors she brought in, they might well have starved years before. Now it was Hathin, not Arilou, who faced the job of saving the situation.

  First things first, however. Hathin had a smaller lie to protect.

  She dropped from the cave and approached a couple of women who stood grinding corn in hollows in the rocks.

  ‘Hello, Hathin,’ one of them greeted her. ‘Where’s your lady sister?’

  ‘She’s inside, resting. She’s out at Pericold Heights, watching for storms.’ A question about the whereabouts of a Lost nearly always involved two answers. It was not this, however, that caused both women to stop grinding and peer keenly at Hathin. ‘She says there’s a storm coming tomorrow evening from Mother Tooth’s way,’ Hathin said carefully. ‘She mentioned it when she was talking to the Inspector.’

  The two women exchanged glances and put down their grinding stones.

  ‘Well, something to tell the rest of the village, I think,’ said the second woman. ‘Be sure to thank your lady sister, Hathin.’ And the two of them set off quickly to pass on word, often in a whisper that might have seemed strangely intense for a storm warning. But, as it happened, this was not exactly the message they were spreading.

  With the Lace, it was not just a matter of understanding the little that was spoken plainly, it was also a matter of reading the hidden meanings. The Lace had al
ways chosen their words carefully, for it was well known that the volcanoes understood their language and could be woken by a careless phrase. And since their fall from grace the Lace had grown ever more wary of being overheard by a hostile world, and so they had grown used to speaking as if somebody was listening in.

  For example, a stranger eavesdropping upon Hathin’s little conversation would not have guessed one important thing – that everybody in the village had known about the storm for several hours. There was a streak of tobacco yellow in the sky behind the King of Fans; there was a cold smell on the clifftops; there was the way the herring shoal had changed direction that morning. But after the word had been spread the village would be full of people who would swear blind to the Inspector that they knew of the storm only because the Lady Arilou had warned them.

  As Hathin stood alone on the beach, rubbing one sandy foot against the back of her calf and watching her whisper spread through the village, she was summoned by her mother’s voice.

  ‘Hathin!’ Mother Govrie sat cross-legged with her back to the cliffbase, twisting reed stems into a basket frame. ‘You’re going to town, aren’t you? There’s a message for you to carry. They say the Lost Inspector has been travelling with a couple of porters, and right now they’re making his lodgings ready in Sweetweather. Porters from Pearlpit.’ Pearlpit was another Lace village further up the coast. Mother Govrie gave Hathin only the briefest of keen glances, but she spoke slowly and with meaning. ‘Father Rackan has cousins in Pearlpit – you should go and ask the porters if they have any news of them.’

  Hathin understood her mother’s meaning immediately. The Lost Inspector had Lace porters who might be sympathetic enough to answer questions about the forthcoming test.

  Despite herself, Hathin hesitated briefly before departing. For a moment she wanted to throw herself down next to her mother and ask, What do I do? How can I fool a Lost Inspector? Oh, what do I do? But she said nothing. There were invisible walls around those things that could not be discussed. Sometimes Hathin could almost see these walls, shaped from clay and tears, bearing the handprints of generations of Lace. She was too young, too tired and too worried even to think of climbing them. Her mother, wrestling the reeds with her strong, calloused hands, was unreachable.