Spindlefish and Stars

by Christiane M. Andrews

  The woods gave way to nothingness—no, not nothingness, pale blue sky and pale blue water on and on and on. Water that has no edge. Clo stared. She could not see where water or sky ended; each simply seemed to become the other. When she finally lowered her gaze from the horizon, she saw she was on a ridge, high above a town. Little houses perched alongside the water, and boats floated near the shore. Small figures, men with buckets and nets, moved between the boats and the buildings in a steady, busy pattern.

  Cautiously, Clo followed the cart path down to the village. Harbor, she murmured. Having always skulked in the shadows, she found it easy now to slip into the town’s darker spaces, just out of sight of the figures carrying salt-stinking buckets and barrels and sacks from the boats to the shore. If any of the men, men as thick and sturdy and opaque as the barrels they carried, saw her, they saw only a disheveled boy, dirty and burdened, no different than any of the guttersnipes and urchins who scrounged in the town.

  Clo, disheveled guttersnipe, slunk to the water’s edge. From here, the water was not a pale, flat expanse, but dark green with ripples and flecks of foam. It curled up the rocks, broke, retreated, curled again. Kneeling, Clo placed her fingers in a little pool at her feet and then touched her fingers to her tongue: full of salt. She dropped her bags and sat, feeling exhaustion settle over her limbs.

  The sound of the water, its steady roaring, surprised her. It seemed to echo the sound inside her head now that she had done what her father’s letter asked her to do. She had reached the sea, she had reached the harbor: What was she meant to do here?

  Pulling her father’s cloak-wrapped parcel onto her lap, she tried to undo the knots again. But the wool, damp from the night of walking and the salty air, seemed even tighter. If only she had a knife. She ran her hands along the rocks where she sat until she felt a sharp edge: a white shard, like a crescent moon. She pressed it into the fabric below one of the knots, pulling, sawing. The fabric split and came away.

  Clo felt a pang of regret for having cut her father’s cloak, but she reassured herself: it was only a small corner, part of the bottom edge. She could repair it for him later. She pushed aside the bundled fabric; it opened and opened. To something orange. Something rank. A wheel of cheese.

  A wheel of cheese?

  Clo pulled the gap wider and raised out of the cut folds an enormous golden round. Its rind was dark and mottled, almost marbled, and its pungent smell cut through even the briny air.

  Clo put the cheese down carefully on the rock beside her and stared at it, frowning. It was not unusual for her father to sneak provisions from the kitchens or the storerooms, and they had carried such wheels with them on their journeys before. But why would he send her this? How long would she be alone? How far was she meant to travel? How much cheese could she, Clo, spindle-shanked guttersnipe, eat?

  The cheese smelled like despair.

  Hoping this could not be all her father had sent, Clo reached again into the folds. She found a small square wound all about with rags, as though it were bandaged.

  With growing dread, she unwound the scraps of cloth.

  No. She pulled the wrappings over the object again.

  Had anyone seen?

  She looked around. Satisfied that the barrel-men were concerned only with their barrels, she lifted the rags once more just enough to see the object beneath.

  It was a painting. Of course it was a painting. Fruit. A cluster of grapes, their dark skin marked with silver bloom and water drops.

  It was not, as far as her father’s usual thievery went, a terribly remarkable painting. Usually, he took pieces that were obvious in their value. Look, Clo, he’d say, his fingers hovering reverently over a newly pilfered prize. The brushwork. The use of color. Masterful. The value would be obvious enough that the painting fetched a good trade or a handful of coins when he was finally ready to sell it. Though these grapes were well painted, beautiful even, the painting seemed too small to earn much—it was scarcely larger than her hand.

  But its frame…

  Usually he only took the canvas.

  And this frame…

  Her stomach turned.

  Clo had never seen what might be called a jewel; she had never known ruby or emerald or pearl beyond their names, but here, she was sure, decorating the flowers carved in the wood, were rubies and emeralds and pearls, deep red and green and silvery gems glinting even in the slanting morning light.

  Don’t worry, Clo, her father always said to her when he unrolled his stolen canvases. They won’t even notice it’s gone. He would reassure her: It was hanging in a forgotten corner. It was tucked in the shadows. It was stowed alongside a nest of mice in a cupboard. Don’t worry; it won’t be missed at all.

  But this… surely this would be noticed. Surely this was the swineherd’s jewels missing out of th’ lady’s chamber.

  What was she meant to do with this? She looked back at the barrel-shaped men. Was she meant to sell it? To them? She felt ill. She rewrapped the rags around it.

  One last object remained in the cloak. Reaching into the wool again, she felt a leather corner, a soft edge. “Oh… oh, no…,” she whispered. She knew what this was even without seeing it, and she withdrew it with trembling hands. Her father’s notebook.

  This book was part of his very person: he never parted from it. And here it was, tucked beneath a wheel of reeking cheese.

  No, my lambkin. She could almost hear her father’s voice in the leather. You mustn’t touch this.

  No, my dove. No, no. This is not for you.

  The simple leather book—the only thing her father had ever kept from her. She ran her hand over its cover, thinking again of the rage that had come when, once, as a small child, she had crept up behind her father with the book open on the table in front of him.

  He had been drawing, or trying to draw. Clo, silent, hardly breathing, had watched him try to outline the profile of a woman. His gestures were awkward, hesitant; the drawing, too, was awkward, hesitant—more a lopsided collection of angles and corners than a woman. But Clo, a child, had been delighted.

  She had reached over him to touch the lines of the sketch. Is that my mother?

  Why she had asked this, she did not know. Even then, small as she was, she knew it was the wrong question.

  He had snatched the book away.

  Clo, confused, had asked again. Is that—

  But white, red, trembling with a rage that seemed to overwhelm his small frame, her father had not answered.

  This is all I ask of you, he had finally said. All I ask, Clo. This is not for you. I forbid it.

  The depth of his fury—his widened eyes, his shaking voice—was enough that she never touched the book again.

  Even now, feeling the book still forbidden, she held it gingerly in her fingertips.

  This was all. A wheel of cheese. Her father’s notebook. And a stolen painting that was surely the reason her father had been crouchin’ in th’ pens.

  Clo felt the earth tilt a little under her.

  Hesitantly, she turned over the notebook. It was tied, as her father kept it, with a band of leather. A slip of paper had been tucked under the band. Clo, it read, and then, in smaller letters beneath, be brave.

  She worked the paper out from under the leather and unfolded it. Heart sinking, she saw at once it was not a letter from her father. She saw nothing familiar or expected at all.

  What was this? How could she even begin to understand this? Her head swam. She felt as though something were unspooling deep within her.

  The writing was strange, stretched, not her father’s dense, neat script.

  1/2 paffage only! was scrawled and underlined in the corner, next to a wavery signature, CMDRE Haros, and a thick gob of red wax with an imprint of an oar. Clo ran her thumb over the raised impression on the wax.

  Haros? Haros? The words of her father’s ink-splattered letter came back to her: travel alone. Passage? Passage where? Or half paffage where? What, who was Haros? Where was
her father sending her?

  Clo felt something tighten on her shoulder. “Girly,” said a voice next to her ear.

  Clo jumped. Startled, confused, she could only think that the sea must have grabbed her.

  “Girly,” said the voice again. “Yer wit’ me.”

  CHAPTER THE FOURTH

  RELATING CHIEFLY TO A SLIP OF HALF PAFFAGE

  IT WAS NOT THE SEA THAT HAD GRABBED HER. CLO TURNED to find a man—not one of the barrel-shaped men moving between the ships and shore, but a bony, sallow, decrepit figure with fingers sunk deep in her shoulder. He was grinning, if it could be called grinning, with teeth—a few—stained and pebble-like, and when he spoke again, “Girly,” all the stench of things that rotted on the shore followed on his words.

  Pulling from his grasp, Clo scrambled to her feet. She clutched her turnip bag, the slip of paffage, her father’s cloak, the stolen painting, and the notebook to her chest. The wheel of cheese sat on the rock beside their feet, its sunny orangeness far out of place.

  “Ah, now, girly.” A laugh rattled from the man. “No need to take fright. ’Tis the way of things. Yer t’ come wit’ me.”

  Clo shook her head, backing away. “No.”

  “It is, it is.” The man laughed or coughed again. He paused to spit, half turning away. A gray line of phlegm remained dangling from his lip. He lifted and flicked it away with a knuckly finger.

  Clo raised her eyes from the phlegm shimmering on the rock. “No,” she repeated. “I’m here… I’m here with my father. He’s coming. To meet me.” She glanced toward the town. She knew she could outrun this fellow; surely he could not keep his footing on the slick rocks for long. Still, the lingering impression of his bony grip on her shoulder unnerved her. She stepped farther away.

  “No, no, girly. You’ve got it wrong. See there”—he nodded at the bundle she was clutching—“you’ve got passage on my ship. I see the ticket there in yer little fingers. That’s the seal—I see it. The oar, it is, no? It is. Yer t’ come wit’ me.”

  Clo looked from the paffage paper to the pebble-toothed man. “Your ship?”

  Pinched and weather-beaten as it was, the man’s face did not hold much room for anything besides its lines and crags, but still it seemed to Clo that, at her question, a kind of sadness shifted over it.

  “To which I’m bosun.” He spat again. “An’ you’ll not get on without a hurry. Departure’s now—t’other passengers are filing on already. An’ if you miss th’ boarding, well, you’ll not enjoy th’ wait for our next docking. Why, I’ve got a family now”—he jerked his thumb toward the ships—“that’s been resting here for months waiting for Cap’n Haros. So, girly”—he nodded at the wheel of cheese—“gather yer things and follow.”

  Clo, who had begun to back away, started at the name. “Haros?”

  “Ay, Cap’n Haros, girly. An’ he’s not much for waiting, bein’ as it is what it is an’ he is what he is. You’d best come along now.”

  A knobby finger was beckoning her forward. Clo did not want to follow this man, this stringy, sea-rot-smelling bosun-man, but he had said the name Haros, the word from the letter, and Clo, as adept as she was at staying in the shadows, at seeing her way through a forest at night, could not think how else she was to find Haros in this town filled with boats and barrel-shaped men.

  With the man watching, with her hands trembling, Clo wrapped her belongings in her father’s cloak: the wheel of cheese, the sack of turnips, the painting, the notebook. She kept the odd slip of paffage in her hand.

  The man’s little line of pebbles grinned again. “That’s good.” He nodded approvingly. “An’ come along.”

  Scrawny and bent as he was, the man moved with surprising grace over the rocks. Hugging her cheese-shaped bundle, Clo followed uneasily as they made their way through the boats. The vessels loomed over them. The barrel-men, shouting, stomping, lugging their goods, took no notice of the two figures. Even when the bosun, pausing, sank his hand deep into one of the casks and pulled out a briny pig’s hoof, which he popped into his mouth with a wink at Clo, no one so much as blinked at them. Clo felt the men might have walked straight into her if the old man had not taken her by the shoulder and guided her through the crowds.

  “Here, here, girly,” he said, by turns pushing and pulling her. “Here, here.” He led her past fluyts and schooners and sloops and clippers—though to Clo they were only boats and boats and boats, some larger, some smaller—to the far end, where a small dinghy bobbed and pulled against its rope. Rowboat, thought Clo, taking comfort in at last knowing the name of something.

  “I’ve got one for you.” The man pushed Clo ahead. “She’s got passage an’ everything. All formal-like.”

  Stumbling forward, Clo found herself staring up at a wild, tangled gray mass—something like the nets the barrel-men pulled and carried, something that might have been dragged along the shore. It was matted and damp and flecked here and there with bits of sea-things. It was attached to a chin. A man. The shape of his face hidden beneath the hairiness, he looked down at Clo with eyes that seemed far too bright. Clo lowered her gaze.

  “Passage?” The beard waggled in disbelief. “Let’s see, then.”

  Clo felt the slip of paper pulled from her hand.

  The bearded man grunted. “Half. Half.” Reaching over Clo, he slapped a thick palm against the bosun’s forehead. “Half passage. You should have left her, you boil-brained limpet. Half. You brought me a half passage. Half.” Each utterance of the word half sounded like bellows at a fire. He glowered at Clo. “How’s that, then? How came you by half passage?”

  “I…”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t… I’m not…” Clo could not seem to form sensible words in the presence of this greasy-bearded figure. “It’s… my father, he…”

  “Never mind. However you came by it, you have it, and we shall have to accommodate it. Take her.” He waved at the dinghy. “Row her out. Put her… put her in the locker. We cannot have the others with a half passage. But bring them, too.” He gestured over his shoulder at a small family huddled by a stack of ropes and barrels. “Our departure is already too much delayed.”

  The pebble-toothed man took Clo by her shoulder again. “Come on then, girly.” He pushed her toward the dinghy. “An’ come on, you lot,” he called to the huddling family. “It’s yer time, too.”

  “Are you Haros?” Finally finding her tongue, Clo turned back to the bearded figure. “Do you know my father?”

  “Girly.” Pebble-mouth pushed her again. “He knows everyone.”

  “But”—twisting in desperation, she wrenched herself free of the bosun’s fingers—“are you Haros? Do you know my father?”

  Haros, if he was Haros, gave a slow nod.

  “Yes, you are Haros? Or yes, you know my father?”

  “Girly—” Clo felt herself gripped again, but the Haros-figure held up his hand and stepped forward. He loomed over Clo, his gaze lingering over her shorn hair, her leggings, her boots. Again, his eyes seemed too bright.

  “I know the knave,” he said finally.

  Clo felt her cheeks grow hot. “Not—” she began, but the man nodded firmly.

  “Knave,” he repeated. “I know his tricks. His thievery.”

  The bundle under Clo’s arm felt suddenly heavy. She flushed again. “Well,” she said. “Well. It may be…” She hesitated, unsure. “It may be he has something for you.” She made her words firmer. She raised her eyes. She had seen her father sell stolen paintings before. “Something he wants to trade with you. Or sell to you. It’s valuable.”

  She removed the rag-wrapped painting from her bundle and peeled back a corner. The frame glimmered in the light.

  The beard cracked widely at the mouth. Plucking the object out of Clo’s fingers, the Haros-figure lifted the rags and guffawed loudly. “I see it! The thievery! Hah-hah! Haw-haw!” He twisted a pearl deftly from the frame and held it to the light. “Hah-haaa!” he laughed again, flipping the
pearl into the ocean. He returned the rags and frame to Clo. “Worthless.”

  Clo’s cheeks burned. “But—”

  “Worthless!”

  “But perhaps he means to buy passage on your boat with it!”

  The Haros-figure gestured at the bosun and turned his back to Clo. “The knave has been on my manifest these many years.”

  Clo felt herself propelled along the dock. She turned, struggling.

  “Your manifest? Is he a passenger on the boat? Is he to come on the boat?”

  “Of course yer father’ll come, too, girly,” the bosun said, pushing her onto the rocking dinghy. “You’ve no need to worry on that.”

  Clo allowed herself to be guided onto one of the rowboat’s low benches. Her mind worked feverishly as the bosun began to row them out into the open water. Manifest. She repeated the official-sounding word. He was on the manifest. He would meet her. She was meant to meet him on the boat. Certainly. Always.

  Across from her, gray-faced and mute, sat the little family the bosun had been instructed to take aboard. A boy, a girl, a mother, a father. They stared at Clo, expressionless.

  The sounds of the shore died away as they pulled farther into the water; after a time, it was just the echoes of shouts and the sound of the oars in the waves, a gentle splashing. The little boy coughed, a sad, empty-sounding hee.

  “No more o’ that,” said the bosun with a phlegmy grunt of his own. “Jus’ habit now.”

  A pale something dangled from the little boy’s fingertips. Clo watched the wind tug it away so that it fell on the damp floor of the boat. She picked it up. A lacy handkerchief. She held it out to the boy. “Here,” she said.