Gullstruck Island

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘Last, there’s hearing.’ The porter gave her another look, and Hathin blushed. Lace or no, he was from another village, and by now he must be wondering if a test cheat was on the cards. She could only hope that his loyalty to his fellow Lace was stronger than his loyalty to his employer. ‘He sends somebody – usually Mr Prox – off where he can’t be overheard, and Mr Prox whispers the same word again and again, and the Lost has to mind-drift to him and hear what he is saying.’

  ‘Not so very terrible then,’ Hathin whispered faintly.

  ‘No. Nothing for your mother to worry about.’

  ‘And how many does my sister need to pass?’

  ‘For full grading? All of them. To qualify for a retest – at least three.’

  They were back in front of the inn. Hathin bowed her head to her chest, smiling hard to hide the fact that her eyes were filling with tears of panic.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ The smaller and slighter of the porters slipped into the inn, and returned a little later with a bundle of cloth. ‘It’s just odds and throwaways, but maybe you’ll find something of use to you in it.’

  Hathin scampered back towards her village with the bundle under her arm, her steps winged by worry about Arilou. However free she felt after leaving her sister’s presence, after a short while her conscience became unbearable, as if a string that connected them was tug-tug-tugging at her. Everyone else was so busy – would anyone notice if Arilou needed anything?

  Hathin scrambled down the cliff slope and was making her way back to her cave-home when she suddenly noticed a familiar figure seated in the middle of the beach, streamers of her hair fondling her face. Arilou stared blindly out to sea, paying no heed to Hathin’s approach, or to Eiven, who was dragging her canoe up the beach.

  ‘What’s she doing out here?’ For once Hathin’s voice was almost shrill with outrage.

  ‘Mother’s busy, and I’ve got boats to mend so I brought her out where we could keep an eye on her. She’s fine.’

  ‘She’s been sitting here in the high sun?’ Hathin did not dare say more. She manoeuvred one of Arilou’s arms over her shoulder, lifted her gently and supported her into the cave to survey the damage. Sure enough, Arilou had suffered for the touch of fairness in her skin, and there were ruddy bands of sunburn blooming across her forehead and cheeks.

  ‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t here, Arilou,’ Hathin whispered as she rubbed crushed flowers against the glowing patches. ‘Eiven didn’t mean any harm, she just . . . doesn’t know how to do it.’ Even as she spoke, however, Hathin suddenly realized that she was feeling angry not for Arilou, but for herself. Sunburn would mean sleeplessness for both of them. And ultimately it would be Hathin and not Eiven that everybody would blame.

  Hathin dusted the sand out of Arilou’s clothes, settled her down again, brought more water and then hesitated with the bowl in her hands, still feeling a mixture of annoyance and remorse.

  ‘Arilou –’ she leaned forward on an impulse born of desperation – ‘there’s a bundle in front of me – can you see what’s inside it? Tell me, and you can have a drink of water.’

  How could you judge or calculate Arilou? How could you say that you knew her? Now and then Hathin seemed to get a sense of her, like knocking heads with someone in the dark. Perhaps it was Hathin’s frustration, but it seemed to her sometimes that Arilou was not oblivious to her but stubborn, not helpless but sly.

  One thing was certain: if Arilou was Lost, she never sent away her sense of touch or taste. Every other moment you could count on Arilou to be thirsty, or hungry, or too hot, or too cold. She was a knot of blind and naked need, like a baby bird.

  ‘What’s in the bundle?’ Hathin withheld the bowl for a few seconds more.

  Arilou had turned her head. Perhaps she had heard the water slopping in the bowl. Her lower lip looked a little burnt, and trembled slightly. Hathin’s resolve crumbled, and she lifted the bowl to let Arilou drink, before opening the bundle herself.

  As she undid it, a strange mixture of aromas filled the cavern. A cinnamon stick lay beside a fish-head and some white orchid blooms that seemed to have been crushed.

  Doctor Skein’s first test is always smell.

  Thanks to the kind-hearted porter Hathin could now guess what would be the scents in the three jars. She just needed some miracle to help her work out which would be in which.

  A beautiful twilit world was reflected in Arilou’s eyes. A single drop of water sat like a pearl in the corner of her mouth. No miracles were forthcoming.

  Who else could she ask for a miracle? Only one name came to Hathin’s mind. It was the name of a person almost as invisible as herself.

  3

  Farsight Flesh

  Hathin could think of only one sure way of cheating the Lost test, and that was the farsight fish. This fish was found nowhere but deep among the reefs along the Coast of the Lace. Beautifully sleek and iridescent as it was, the farsight fish’s true claim to fame was that eating its flesh temporarily let your senses wander, a bit like those of a Lost.

  Of course the fish was a very poor substitute for Lost fish-users often spent time throwing up through giddiness, and there was even a story of one fish-addict who had to carry a small rock around in a pouch hung from his neck, because during one fish session his sense of hearing had somehow become inextricably lodged in it.

  The farsight fish was notoriously difficult to catch because it was almost impossible to take by surprise. Only the Lace had mastered the art of doing so, and their methods were a closely guarded secret. Many little Lace communities had been saved from starvation by selling the much-prized fish to rich connoisseurs in the inland towns. However, over the last ten years it had become necessary for the Lace to hide another secret – the fact that the farsight fish were becoming increasingly scarce.

  Hathin knew of only one man who might have access to farsight-fish flesh, and she had a shrewd suspicion where he hid himself at night. And so, a little after dusk, she went in search of him.

  Usually at night Hathin spent an hour busy at the ‘doll game’. Parents of Lost babies would often light lots of candles around their child’s hammock to gain or keep the Lost child’s attention, particularly on moonlit nights, for fear that the little mind would fly up and up towards the moon and never find its way back again. Parents would also perform the ‘doll game’, holding up a wicker doll from which stretched a string that was tied to some bauble or a bright piece of shell. Again and again the parent would pull on the string, hauling the glittering object back to the doll. It was the oldest and surest way of making a young Lost aware of the idea of its body and persuading it to reel itself back into it.

  It was a forlorn little enterprise, but Hathin still performed it religiously. Once upon a time she had had a recurring dream in which she had looked up from the doll game to see Arilou waking into herself, turning a radiant smile upon her. But she had not had that dream for many years.

  Tonight, however, she did not go through the doll game’s fruitless motions for she had other plans. A mist had descended at nightfall, which meant that no outsider Lost like Milady Page could witness Hathin’s stealthy departure from her cave-home.

  Such misty nights demanded careful walking, for fear of treading on gulls. Nobody talked about it, but everybody knew that the gull problem was also a result of the disappearance of the farsight fish. Once the seagulls had eaten the starfish that had eaten the remains of dead farsight fish and had been able to cast their sight ahead of them when visibility was poor. The unfortunate birds still seemed to think that they were able to do this, so whenever a mist settled they had a tendency to fly headfirst into cliffs.

  Most of the gulls she chanced upon were recovering from their stun, and groggily bad-tempered. However, one of them had folded over on itself like a fan, in a way that was only possible because its neck was broken. Its head rested on its smooth freckled back as if sleeping. Unfortunately Hathin discovered it by putting her hand on it in the dark, and she recoil
ed from the terrible softness of its plumage feeling as through red ants were crawling over her hand and arm.

  She had never told anyone of her prickling helplessness in the face of death. Eiven didn’t have this problem. Like the other girls of the village, she trapped birds with twine and thrust spears through fish as blithely as she would snick a needle through a shirt. But Hathin’s attendance upon Arilou had protected her from such duties, and even her own family never guessed at her shameful weakness.

  At last Hathin reached the Scorpion’s Tail, a fissure in the cliff so named because at the top the narrowing crack curled over like a giant sting. Hathin scrambled through the narrow crevice and found that the darkness was not absolute. Beside a lantern a man sat cross-legged, a tray of tools in his lap and a glass in his eye.

  ‘Uncle Larsh.’ He was not really her uncle, but it was a courtesy term for any man older than her father would have been but younger than her grandfather. His name, Larsh, was taken from the sound that withdrawing waves made as they clutched at weed. She felt a little shy at approaching him, for they had barely ever exchanged words.

  ‘Doctor Hathin.’ This was a strange title to use to a girl her age and made Hathin blush a little. Its literal meaning was not quite doctor, rather it was a title occasionally given to unmarried women who nonetheless had a significant role in the tribe, such as doctor, scribe or Lost. ‘I rather thought I’d be seeing you.’ He took the glass out of his eye and peered across at her. His eyelids always flickered helplessly when he was not staring at something an inch away, as if he only had so much sight left and was trying to ration it. If he always worked in this dim light, Hathin was not surprised that he was going blind. Larsh looked about fifty, but Hathin sometimes wondered if he was younger. His hair was still fiercely thick, but touched with grey. Perhaps if a person went unnoticed for a long time the colour bled out of them, and they sank into greyness. Perhaps she herself would have a shock of grey hair by the time she was twenty.

  ‘Uncle Larsh, I . . . I need to . . . ask for something.’

  ‘I know. You want a piece of the farsight fish. For the test tomorrow.’ Larsh smiled a little grimly as Hathin flinched violently. ‘Don’t worry, nobody will hear us. I always come here to be alone. It seems the decent thing to do. That way everybody else has an excuse not to know what I am doing. You see, like you, Doctor, I have a job that must be done but cannot be seen to be done. You and I are the invisible.’

  It was true, she realized. Aside from herself, Larsh was the least remarked individual in the village, despite the fact that he was easily the most gifted craftsman. There was nothing pointed about it, nothing dismissive or unkind. It was just that nobody ever seemed to notice him.

  The reason for this was currently lying on the tray before him. Half covered by an oilskin cloth lay what looked a great deal like a farsight fish, one with a few scales missing. In tweezers Larsh held a tiny, delicate oval piece of iridescent shell, which had been polished to a translucent thinness. As she watched, Larsh dabbed one of the bare patches with a brush dipped in resin, and then carefully positioned the tiny iridescent scale which he had been fashioning so that it lay flush with its fellows. The workmanship was exquisite – it had to be if this ordinary fish were to be passed off and sold as a farsight fish.

  ‘It’s really safe to talk? What about the Lost? Don’t they follow candles?’ Hathin pointed at the lantern.

  ‘They’re unlikely to see it from outside. And, even if they did, most Lost would not venture in here – it is a place of blood and secrets. Oh, and I would not sit there if I were you, Doctor.’

  Hathin glanced down at the stone slab behind her and realized that it was carved. For a moment the angular shapes across it made no sense; then she identified the outline of a foot, a clutching hand, a grimacing face . . .

  ‘A sacrifice,’ Larsh remarked as Hathin peered. ‘Our ancestors would have tumbled the man down from a clifftop altar so that his limbs broke, and then laid him out upon that stone in the same position as the carving. You see that channel in the centre? That’s where the blood ran into the earth so that the mountain could drink.’

  Hathin felt the same tingle that the dead gull had given her, but now the red ants were running everywhere, through her clothes and in her hair.

  ‘This . . . This is a temple, Uncle Larsh!’

  There was a twist in Hathin’s stomach that was only partly fear. The mention of the old Lace sacrifices filled her with the shame of the Lace, but the shame of her people seemed as complex as their smiles. It tugged at the root of her Laceness with a power that was almost pride.

  It was a splintered root though, frayed and incomplete. Two hundred years ago all the priests had been murdered in the purge. Centuries of memory had been lost in that one great cull and now even the Lace’s own holy places were mysterious and a little alien to them.

  ‘Oh – but we shouldn’t be here!’

  ‘I honestly cannot think of a better place for us. Nowadays the village need not shed blood every month to ensure its survival. Now you and I are the offerings, sacrificed day after day for the good of the village. But I suppose we give ourselves up willingly enough, don’t we?’

  ‘What else can we do?’

  ‘Well . . . we could leave.’ Larsh gave Hathin an acute look, and for a moment his eyelids ceased to flicker. ‘People do, you know. They change their names and their tooth plaques and live where nobody knows they’re Lace.’

  He sighed. ‘It’s too late for me. Too many years gone. I thought about it though. Many times.’

  Hathin came to sit next to him and watch him work, sensing that Larsh would not mind. ‘Uncle Larsh – you have the village’s store of dried farsight fish, don’t you? You sprinkle it in those.’ She gestured towards the fake fish on the tray.

  ‘Doctor Hathin –’ Larsh sighed again – ‘I really wish I could help you. It’s true, I used to add a tiny salting of dried farsight fish to each of these, but it ran out a year ago. See here?’ He indicated the brown flecks with the tip of his chisel. ‘Special spices and dried mushroom. Enough to cause a little hallucination – enough to satisfy a towner who knows no better.’

  Hathin bit her lip to hold in her disappointment.

  He went on. ‘I’m sorry. I suppose there’s no chance that your sister . . . ?’

  Your sister. Not ‘your lady sister’ or even ‘Doctor Arilou’. The villagers were always so careful to give Arilou her due title, as if it might fall off if not held firmly in place. It was the first time Hathin had ever heard someone talk as though Arilou was just a young girl, and she felt as if Larsh had shouted aloud what the whole village had tried not to say for thirteen years. The shock was icy and liberating.

  Hathin shook her head, and felt that she had shouted back a confirmation accompanied by trumpets.

  ‘Say it,’ muttered Larsh as Hathin stood to leave. ‘Just once.’

  Hathin hesitated. ‘Arilou has never spoken to us,’ she said eventually.

  ‘The fish are all dead,’ said Larsh.

  Hathin turned and padded swiftly from the reaches of the lantern’s halo, then squeezed out through the fissure. And so ended the conference of the invisible, in the cavern of blood and secrets, on the night of the mist.

  4

  Trial and Trickery

  Ever since leaving his town lodgings at sunrise, Minchard Prox had been suffering from the feeling that he was being watched.

  There were the two little Lace boys that tag-teamed alongside him, offering to polish his boots or carry his bags.

  As he reached the clifftop path the convoy was joined by an old woman with her head wrapped in the voluminous, turban-like shawl that most Lace grandmothers wore. The slow, mincing gait of the elephant bird, whose leash he held, was already causing Prox to lag behind Skein, and this woman seemed determined to delay him further.

  She told him that the pale pink eggs she carried in her basket were almost as cheap as raindrops, and that he should go no further b
ecause his ancestors were skulking in the undergrowth, waiting to pelt him with rocks. The conversation made Prox uncomfortable, not least because some of his ancestors really were located in these Ashlands.

  ‘Look,’ he said, trying to make light of it as sweat trickled into his eye, ‘I hardly think my ancestors are going to be crouching in the undergrowth like schoolboys with their pockets full of pebbles.’

  ‘Of course no crouch, little lord,’ she said in a soothing mixture of Nundestruth and Doorsy. ‘Sit up in grave like gentlefolk in bed, and earth fall from them like blanket . . . and then they throw stone at you.’

  She kept pace with him, all the while her head a-tilt, watching the underside of his chin with good-humoured cunning. Despite her frailty she started to unnerve him, so keen was she to point out the crags and hollows where she said the unseen dead watched them.

  He was so distracted by this that he walked straight into a large mist of tiny flies that shrouded a low bush of rotting berries. The flies sought out his eyes and mouth and pores without hesitation and tickled their way into his collar. For a moment he had a maddened, unreasonable belief that the old witch had led him there on purpose.

  While he was flailing, the leash tugged free from his hand and, twitching with fly-bites, the elephant bird discovered a new turn of speed. Panniers bouncing and rocks crackling under its long-taloned toes, it sped away and the boys broke into a sprint to flank it, as if the three of them had run off to join in a game. He lost sight of them almost immediately.

  The Lace always made him feel out of control. The current of circumstances was sweeping him helplessly headlong, and suddenly his education and breeding were the flimsiest of paddles in his hands.

  He looked desperately ahead for Skein, but the Inspector had not waited for him. Skein’s plan had been to make for the pulley-chair and attract the villagers’ attention while Prox made his way unnoticed down the zigzag paths with the bird and prepared some locations for the first test.