Mrmrmrmrmrmrmrmrmrmrmrmrmrmrmrm.
Clo closed her eyes. She held her breath. She rapped once, twice, three times.
The door swung open.
An old woman, her face shriveled and shapeless as a dried apple, her eyes nearly lost in the rumpled cheeks and brows, her mouth chewing and chewing and chewing, peered up at her.
Something like a smile half lifted the blousy cheeks. She raised her hands to Clo’s shoulders.
“Emoclew, rethguaddnarg,” she said.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH
IN WHICH SOME FISH SLIP FROM A BASKET
HEART GUTTERING IN THE HOLLOW OF HER CHEST, Clo felt herself guided into the little hut.
“Emoclew, emoclew,” the old woman murmured as she pulled Clo forward. In the dim rooms, it took Clo—bewildered, trembling—a moment to make out the sparse furnishings: a narrow table, three chairs, a small fireplace with a handful of glowing coals.
“Emoclew.”
“I’m… I don’t…” Clo, who had spent all her years journeying from village to village, who had on her tongue and in her ears the rudiments of a half dozen languages—dobrý den, namaskar, ghoeie middagh, habari ya mchana—could make nothing of this speech. She struggled to find her own voice.
“Emoclew.” The apple face crinkled and sighed. “Ah…” She reached and pulled Clo nearer to her and touched her shorn lamb’s hair. “Rethguaddnarg, emoclew.”
Clo, feeling the woman’s hands move gently over her head, recoiled. “I don’t…,” she said again as the woman placed her palm against Clo’s cheek. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to be here. There was a boat, a half passage.… I’m supposed to meet my father, I think.… Do you know… have you seen a man… he looks like me, a little.…”
The crinkles fell away, and the woman’s mouth gave over to its empty chewing again. The beads of her eyes, deep in the creases of brow and cheek, flickered over Clo. “Emoc, rethguaddnarg. Ew evah neeb gnitiaw.” She pulled Clo, not ungently, across the room and through another doorway.
“Ruoy moordeb, ruoy rebmahc top.” She gestured around the chamber. Here were a low bed, a small table, a jug, a bowl, a window cut into the stone of the wall. The woman spread open her hands and held them, palm up and empty, at Clo. “Rethguaddnarg, emoclew.” Chew, chew, went her lips and cheeks.
“Is my father—” Clo tried again, feeling she must make this strange woman understand, but the old woman gestured impatiently.
“Uoy tsum tser retfa gnol slevart.” Nodding, she stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her.
For a few moments after the woman left, Clo stood quietly, not moving, not exactly thinking. She sat on the bed and placed her cheese and things beside her.
Her mind buzzed uncomfortably. Was this to be her room? Did her father know this woman? Would her father come for her here?
In the past, when she and her father had traveled from village to village, the finding of a home had always been the last of their tasks. There would be the arrival, the inquiry, the securing of service. Often they would sleep at the edge of town, on pine boughs in the woods or hayricks in the fields, until her father had found a little hut that had been abandoned or that he arranged as payment for his work. And it would be left to Clo, after the hut was theirs, to gather straw and leaves and to stuff and shape their mattresses.
This bed, the fact of this bed, seemed to offer some reassurance. Perhaps this was what her father had meant for her. He had sent her on ahead. He had made sure she would have a place of comfort. He would be following later.
And the mattress… it was softer than anything she had ever slept on. She reached under its covering. It was stuffed with a fine, silvery fleece, almost more light and air than wool. She rubbed a shimmering tuft between her fingers and leaned back into the cushion.
A mattress and a bed. She had never slept in a bed. Not really. Once or twice, when their walls were too thin to keep out the damp, or when the rats woke them one too many times from their sleep, her father had lifted her little mattress from the floor and set it on the table so she could sleep dry and rat-free while he was away at night. And her father had told her of beds—beds fine and elaborate and curtained and gilded, with cushions plush with thousands upon thousands of feathers.
This was neither a table transformed into a bed nor a gilded masterpiece, but, thought Clo, she would be glad not to be tucked up against the stone walls and floor and the cold that would surely creep along them. At least, while she was here. For however long that would be.
Standing, Clo crossed to the window. The opening was thick, carved out of the stone that shaped everything. Through its glass panes, she could see pale gray sky and pale gray sea, stretching on and on into the distance. No boats, no birds interrupted the expanse; only there, far into the gray water, she could see the line of crashing waves the bosun had rowed her through—a rim of white. It was eerily quiet: in this little room, she could hear nothing—no wind or wave or bird or voice—nothing but the shuffling footsteps of the woman behind the closed door.
Leaning closer to the glass, Clo looked straight down as far as she was able and realized, with a dizzying start, that this little home was part of the cliff walls; it had simply been carved into them. This must be, she thought, the back of the island, not the side she had climbed.
She scanned the sky for sun or moon, wondering if evening was approaching. The light from the sky was a dull and steady gray—flat, with no glimmer behind the clouds to give a hint of time. She sat back down on the bed. It could be morning, or afternoon, or evening, but her eyes felt heavy, and her body, after the waves and the climbing and the fear and the uncertainty, felt heavier. She would close her eyes, just for a moment.… She removed her father’s cloak and pulled it over her like a blanket. She listened to the pulse of her heartbeat against the softness of the mattress. Clothilde, it said. Clothilde.
Clo awoke in the terror that something was consuming her: something was sitting on her, something was pushing sharp teeth or claws into her shoulders again and again. It was dark and heavy and furry and piggish… an animal… there was an animal on her, an animal eating her… Clo screamed and pushed the thing; it dug into her, and Clo grasped the thick bulk of the beast and threw it off. It backed into a corner of the room, hissing and snarling. Scrambling to sit up—What was that thing?—Clo grabbed the first thing she could reach—the bag of turnips—and, still staring at the hissing thing, groped blindly with her fingers for a turnip globe. She hurled it, and the animal made noises more horrible still, rowling, howling, beastly noises. Clo took aim with a second turnip.
Before she could throw, the door burst open, and the little apple-faced woman entered in a flurry. “Feihcsim, feihcsim,” she said, rushing to the beast.
“No!” Clo waved at her to move. “It’s dangerous! It’s wild!”
But the woman knelt over the beast and raised it maternally in her arms. “Feihcsim,” she soothed. She turned to Clo, still poised to chuck her turnip, and wagged a crooked finger at her. “Feihcsim.” She patted the thing gently, and it let out a rumbling.
Clo stared at the animal—its fat paws, its long tail, its dark mottled fur—with horror. The noise it was making—it was purring—suggested it was a cat, but if it was a cat, it was the largest, most beastly cat she had ever seen. It looked more boarish than cattish, thick and rough with a squished bristly face.
The woman released the beasty-cat, which hissed again at Clo before slipping from the room. The woman gestured to Clo that they should follow.
Standing, folding her father’s cloak, glancing out the window, Clo could not tell how long she had slept. Her body felt old, immensely old, as though it were a thread that had been stretched so tight it had begun to unravel. But the light was the same outside as when she had arrived: no sun rising or setting, no moon anywhere in the sky—just the same grayness.
Waiting next to her, the woman made a little clicking noise of disapproval. She pinched at the fabric of Clo’s tun
ic, and the lines of her face creased into deeper displeasure. Clo looked down: her tunic and leggings were dirty, perhaps, but not much dirtier than usual. Cheeks burning, Clo tugged at her tunic hem, but the woman merely shook her head and guided Clo into the front room.
The table had been set with three bowls and three spoons, and the coals in the fireplace had been coaxed into a brighter flame. A large kettle hanging over the fire billowed out small clouds of steam. Clo watched the little woman shuffle around the hissing, burbling pot, stirring and muttering to herself, while the beast-cat sat in the corner swishing its tail and licking its hoofish paws. From time to time, the woman would lift a slippery piece of something from the pot and toss it at the animal, and it would crouch over the food, devouring it in violent, growling, squelching bites.
“Can you tell me,” Clo finally said, “when the next boat is arriving?”
The woman lifted a ladle from the pot and took a small sip. She gave no sign she had heard Clo.
“The boat? The next boat?”
The woman flipped another slippery morsel out of the pot and onto the floor for the cat.
“I think… my father, he sent me here. He gave me a ticket. A half passage. He must be coming. I know he’ll come. My father? Do you know him? My father? Mon père? Moi otets? Vater? Pabbi? Baba? Papa?” Clo pronounced the word slowly, loudly, in all the languages she knew, hoping one might catch the woman’s understanding.
But at this final repetition of father, the ladle hit the pot with an angry clang, and the woman flapped her hand dismissively at Clo.
Clo sighed in exasperation. How could she make this woman understand?
Whatever was in the pot did not smell of any kind of stew Clo knew—no pungent herbs or meat or roots. If she had to say, she’d say it smelled like cold, but with the red coals and boiling broth, she knew it was anything but cold. Still, the air seemed to smell and taste like snow, like ice or wind, empty and stark. Though she knew she ought to be hungry, she felt nothing for whatever was bubbling in the kettle.
A knock on the door set the apple-faced woman into a flurry again. She tossed the cat another slippery morsel, wiped her hands on her shift, ushered Clo into a chair, and crossed to open her front door. A figure—as tall as the apple-faced woman was short—ducked inside. He was as old as the little woman, but where her skin rucked and rumpled, his was stretched as thin and translucent as vellum. He almost seemed to crackle as he walked. The man lowered the basket he was carrying. It was, Clo saw, full of fish: hundreds and hundreds of black-eyed, silver, shimmering fish. One or two, slipping out and skidding across the floor, were quickly captured and devoured by the cat.
“Rethguaddnarg.” The old woman’s face crinkled as she lifted a palm toward Clo.
Placing his fingers under Clo’s chin, the man raised her face to look at his. Up close, she could see a pulse flickering under his skin at the edges and hollows of his bones; with each little flicker came a rustling sound, like the whispering of dried husks. Let go, she thought, shrinking from his touch. Let go! She tried again to pull away, but the man’s leathery grip held her. His eyes darted over her hair, her tunic, her leggings. “Ah.” He nodded, releasing her. He sat in the chair next to Clo’s while the woman brought the steaming pot from the fire.
She ladled the stew first into the old man’s bowl, then into Clo’s, then into her own. The stew—the soup—was thin and gray. The man slurped his eagerly; the woman, too, after sitting down, ate quickly. Clo looked into the gray soup. Lowering her spoon, she watched the liquid shimmer and shift. She thought she saw the flash of fish scale, the sliding of fish eye. The liquid moved like clouds. And there was the smell, the smell of ice and wind and cold. No. She could not eat this.
She pushed the bowl away.
The woman pushed the bowl back toward Clo. “Rethguaddnarg.” The word carried a note of anger.
“No.” Clo’s stomach turned. She nudged the bowl away again. “No, thank you.”
The little woman and the tall man glanced at her and then at each other over their spoons. Their gaze was full of the shimmering movement of the soup. Light and shadow swam in their eyes.
Their spoons clinked against their bowls. Between bites, their voices rose.
“Era uoy erus siht si ruoy dlihcdnarg—” the man began, before Clo lost track of his garbled speech.
“Fo esruoc siht si ehs ohw esle dluoc ti eb—” the woman began her reply. Their gibberish was animated, almost angry. They gestured at Clo with their soup spoons.
In the avalanche of unfamiliar words, Clo stared at the table, at the floor. She had never, she thought, felt so alone. The beastly cat sidled alongside her chair. It flicked its tail. It fixed its piggish eyes on her.
Clo felt the animal’s hunger.
CHAPTER THE NINTH
REVEALING THE CONTENTS OF A FORBIDDEN NOTEBOOK
AFTER THE OLD MAN AND WOMAN HAD SCRAPED THE last silvery pools from the bottoms of their bowls, and after the old man, seeing Clo’s still full and shimmering bowl, had emptied it into his own and eaten it in quick, slippery bites, and after the table had been cleared and the dishes licked clean by the cat, and after the old man had departed with a small nod of his head, Clo walked back into the little chamber that was—she guessed—her own.
Outside, the gray was the same gray it had been when she arrived, the same gray it had been when she woke with the cat kneading her. In the next room, she could hear a steady tapping, hushing noise—the old woman shuffling about. Had she just served dinner? Breakfast? The sky offered no answers.
She sat on the bed. There were the sack of turnips, her father’s notebook, the wheel of cheese. Its smell had grown ranker, even more despairing. Digging her fingers into the rind, she pulled away a hunk of its odorous flesh and chewed slowly, staring at the notebook.
The book her father always carried with him. The book he never let from his sight. The book he forbade her to touch.
Forbidden. The forbidden notebook.
She rubbed her cheese-rimmed fingernails on her tunic and picked up the book.
How many times as a small child had she taken hold of the cover, run her fingers over it, entranced by its softness?
Father, may I see?
No, my lambkin. Even now she could almost hear her father’s patient voice. This is not for you.
May I hold it? May I carry it for you? I’ll keep it safe, I promise.
No, daughter. You mustn’t touch this.
How many times had she seen him, when he thought she was asleep, turning its pages in the firelight? How many times had she ruffled the leaves with her little fingertips or pulled at the knot, wondering what her father kept inside?
Father, would you show me the pages?
Taking the book away, he would move it always out of reach. No, my dove. No. This is not for you.
And the terrible time she had come upon him drawing in it—his unbearable fury: All I ask, Clo. This is not for you. I forbid it.
She remembered the awkward image of the woman, the lopsided jumble of angles her father had sketched. In memory, the woman had grown even more angular, more lopsided, a grotesque scratch to which she had given the name Mother.
Clo fingered the knot on the leather band. She did not want to disobey him.
Still… he had given it to her.
Perhaps he had left something inside to tell her why she was here. When he would come.
Taking a deep breath, she eased away the knot and opened the cover.
For a long moment, Clo stared at the pages in confusion. Then she flipped them, quickly, frantically. Nothing here made sense.
Across the first pages were scattered small sketches—parts of things, of people: a hand, a nose, a garden wall, a horse’s mane and bridle, a bit of lace. Here and there, a whole person would appear: a lady before her looking glass, a hunter with his hounds at heel, a cook with his arms about a kettle, a musician with a lute cradled to her chest. But these images were not lopsided scratches of chalk
: their lines were light, fluid. Full of confidence and grace. Even unfinished, incomplete, these drawings… the people… they almost seemed to breathe.
Clo’s head swam. The images showed a talent her father did not possess. A life that could not have been his.
At least, she did not know him this way.
She tried to imagine him living among these people, surrounded by flowers and music and feasting. She tried to imagine him sitting, sketching, capturing the musician, the cook, the lady, the hunter. The drawings were warm, intimate, unhurried: her father had shared his days with the people he had drawn. Could these really be the work of his hand?
Disconcerted, Clo turned the pages more slowly. The father she knew had trekked with her across wasteland and wilderness, had called a crust of bread and turnip dinner, had shooed the rats from his pallet of straw before sleep. What did he know of feasting and finery?
She missed him, she desperately missed him, but did she know him? Know him at all?
Her father was a cleaner. A restorer of all decorative arts. But he was not himself an artist.
Of course he loved art, Clo thought reluctantly. That she knew. She glanced at the rag-wrapped painting. He loved it too much. Far too much.
She continued flipping through the notebook. Whole years passed in the sketches. She saw her father’s life open up before her—a life that, if not of leisure, was of a comfort she had never known with him.
Clo had loved their life in the shadows, had loved their life of tramping through fields and forests. But this had always seemed to her a life of necessity. Why would her father have left a world of comfort behind? To live a life of… cleaning? And chiseling… thievery?
“Father,” she murmured. “Where are you?”
The door opened, and Clo, startled, slapped the notebook shut and tucked it behind her back. She looked up to see the old woman in the doorway, the basket of slippery fish in her arms. The cat wound around the woman’s legs, watching the basket greedily.
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