by Jeannette Ng
The rich scent of hare and juniper stew drew my attention back to the meal itself, reminding me how hungry I was. It was still steaming and the copper jug that held it was almost scalding to touch. A heap of breaded asparagus fenced in lightly charred mushrooms. Half a loaf of crusty bread sat in a basket. I sniffed at a small jug to discover it was full of blood, presumably hare, to go with the stew. Usually, though, it was stirred in before serving rather than after.
There was a salt shaker on the tray, but I found the grinder at the bottom of my carpet bag and ground salt onto a side plate. I threw the salt onto the stew, then upon the mushrooms, the asparagus and lastly, the bread. Hands pressed together, I murmured an Amen.
Some would dismiss this as superstition, but salt protected humans from the food of the Faelands. Captain Cook and his crew, the first British explorers to reach Arcadia, were said to have perished because of their misdealings with salt.
I thickened the stew with blood and started eating. I had missed such food on my weeks on The Quiet and it was a while before I saw that the mushrooms were an odd shade of purple in the middle.
It was then I noticed that the narrow door to empty air was unbolted. I frowned to myself, got up and bolted it tight. I had thought I had left it bolted shut after I had accidentally opened it.
A light rapping on the door signalled the entrance of Miss Davenport, who announced that we “simply must” watch the sunset from the roof. She had a bright, mischievous grin on her face and jangled a great ring of keys at me triumphantly.
“Oh, your dinner,” she said, lingering by the great vat of uneaten stew on the tray. She breathed in deeply, entranced by the aroma. “Are you finished with that?”
I nodded.
“It’s a little forward, I know, but may I?”
“If you want,” I said, hesitantly. “I thought we were in a hurry…”
“You remembered to salt, didn’t you?”
I nodded and watched her simply inhale my leftovers. She stopped short of licking the plate, drinking down the stew in large gulps and picking up the mushrooms with her hands. She mopped up the dregs of stew with bread.
Tucking the last sprig of asparagus into her mouth, she grinned at my appalled face. She brought a handkerchief to her lips with a dainty flourish. “I do apologise about my manners.”
“It’s quite alright,” I said. Idly, I wondered if this would be the greatest affront to my sense of civilisation.
“Now, to the sunset,” she beamed. “I ate quickly, so we shouldn’t be too late. And sunsets last so long in Arcadia. No horizon, after all.”
Throwing a shawl around myself, I eagerly followed her.
I had thought my room the highest in Gethsemane, but we ascended another flight of stairs and raised a trap door into an attic. Phantom relics of a bygone time rested under dust-laden sheets. Rolls of carpet and tapestry nestled against large trunks. I held the lantern as Miss Davenport struggled with the lock.
“When your brother returns, you should ask to stand atop the gatehouse at sunset,” she said. “It is rather different there.”
“How so?” I asked, trying to angle the lantern so that she could better sort through her collection. Key after key scraped against the unyielding lock.
“Only he could really force the Salamander to give up that set of keys… Aha!” she exclaimed, as the key finally turned.
The door opened onto the parapets of what she had called the north tower, leaning into the innermost of the castle’s curtain walls. There was a palpable chill in the air and I shrugged my shawl a little tighter around my shoulders.
The sky was awash with hazy greys, and beneath it, Arcadia was swaddled in mists and mystery. I could imagine fields and forests, but I did not think them true. A halo of golden light surrounded the pinpoint that was the sun, cast upon the clouds that enfolded it. It was now notably smaller than at midday and smaller than I had ever seen our earthly sun.
“What is Arcadia?” I muttered, half to myself. “How could this place truly be?”
There were no answers as we watched the sun recede further. There was no dramatic change in the light, as it did not set behind land or dip into the sea. It was far higher in the sky than it was at midday when it burned overhead.
“I asked myself that too,” said Miss Davenport. “And you won’t like the answers any more than I did.”
“What do you mean–?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly, glancing away.
I watched that strange, false light slowly dim and the darkness thicken upon the landscape. There have been some whose faith was challenged by the very discovery of Arcadia, a realm which the scriptures spoke barely of. Yet the Good Book made no reference to English shores. Our clouded hills and green mountains are no more false for that silence than the landscape before me. How could I limit an infinite God with finite words?
“And now the moon,” said Miss Davenport.
My eyes followed her pointing and turned to where the darkness had already fallen. The landscape seemed dark and hard, like charcoal, and the clouds were but a softer reflection of that harsh, brittle heap.
The moon was, at first, but a luminous shadow behind a mist, flashing for a moment before disappearing again behind the burnt-scone clouds.
Then suddenly, a bright silver shape swam out. Clouds clung to the arc of its gleaming fins, trailing thin wisps of seeming light.
I gasped in wonder, and rather secretly, chided my younger self for the limits of her imagination. More than being on the moors of home, more than standing on the docks of London, more than being lost on the North Sea, this reminded me of how limited my twenty-five years has been. All the restlessness that I thought I had buried alongside my sister, returned with a passion that left me breathless.
The moon was a fish.
Or rather, the moon dangled from a pole in front of a wide-jawed piscine. As it swam closer, I saw the light gleaming off its long, long teeth that curved from its lips. Its eyes bulged from its face, white, lidless and staring. Tail whipping back and forth, its scales shimmered, iridescent in its own light.
I cast my eyes to the limits of my vision, where unfocused sight made my eyes water. I hungered to know what lay beyond. A medieval heretic once wrote of standing on the encircling walls of the universe and shooting arrows ever outward. Would there not always be more walls and more arrows? There were more suns and more worlds than I could dream. My mind would always be more finite than that of God. And still, I wanted to behold greater, to become greater than my frail bones could hold. With each laboured breath I felt as though I would tear the papery skin that held the coals of my soul in check. Glimmering embers had lain hidden among those ashes, and now these alien climes had breathed upon them and nurtured new flame.
The moon grew hazy as it swam behind a cloud and the body of the fish was obscured from sight. For a moment, it seemed like an earthly moon, suspended in the air through divine Providence rather than a sea monster that dwelt not in the sea.
“We should go inside.”
Miss Davenport’s voice was a surprise. I turned to her, unclenching my fists and wincing at the painful imprint my fingernails had bitten into my palms. I had tensed without thought.
“It gets cold very quickly out here.”
I nodded, and Miss Davenport led the way back into the keep. Casting a backward glance at the moon, I thought of Laon and the passions he had sought to burn and bury. I wondered what he had thought when he first saw the Arcadian moon, if it too stirred in him such restlessness and if he knew how to quench it.
It was written that in Arcadia, everything – even your eyes – would lie after dark and thus it was perhaps unsurprising that I would get lost the moment Miss Davenport left me. She had assured me that my room was at the end of the corridor, but somehow, without turning, the walls were no longer lined in portraits and instead were starkly whitewashed and draped with faded tapestries.
I retrace
d my steps but could not find the stairs that led into the attic, nor the gimlet-eyed portraits, nor the corridor of bare stone. I must have taken a wrong turn; corridors don’t change for no reason.
A breeze from a loosely latched window danced over the back of my neck. My lantern jerked in my hand, and the glass door swung open. The flame within flickered. Panic welling up inside me, I fumbled to close the lantern.
My fingers slipped.
The lantern clattered to the floor, smashing against the stone and spilling wax and glass. The soft glow of the guttering wick extinguished. I was plunged into darkness.
The cold felt keener in the dark and I could hear my heart beating, steady but fierce. I glanced up to the inky blackness of the corridor, hoping to catch a glimpse of light to guide me. Seeing little, I closed my eyes, knowing I needed to adjust to the dark. Another snarl of cold air painted gooseflesh down my spine. Fear flickered in me. I drew a steadying breath and reminded myself that night would not last forever.
When I opened my eyes again, everything was still bathed in shadow. Resolving to simply wander until I found somewhere bright and recognisable, I walked forwards, hand trailing on the wall to guide me.
Ahead, I noticed a half-open door behind one of the tapestries. Imagining a glimmer of light, I ventured within.
I was in a study, of sorts. It had a bookcase and bureau. White sheets shrouded most of the furnishings, transforming them into childish phantoms.
Laon and I used to play games, scaring each other under the sheets. We had no words for what we felt then, but the very idea of ghosts both enthralled and repulsed us. We had buried so many in our youth. I still remember huddling against him, hooking our fingers together and promising under every token that we held sacred that if one of us were to die, we would come back and haunt the other.
The light scattered into glowing pinpoints of pale red. Squinting, I could just about make out the flutter of insectoid wings furling around each tiny glow as they settled again on the far side of the study. Fireflies.
The moon swam from behind a cloud and silver shone in through the window. The stained glass gave the light a shimmering, underwater quality. That light guided my gaze to a bureau.
Despite being half closed, frost-like dust clung to every item within it. The icicles of cobwebs dripped from the end of the birdlike claw of the letter opener, the edges of the half-open drawers, the mouth of the bottle of desiccated ink, the leaning pens.
Spindly, long-legged shadows flickered at the edge of my vision. Startled, I spun around, startling again the red fireflies, but there was nothing.
My eyes scanned the loose pages, each crowded with a scrawl. I traced a finger against the filigree of dust, squinting to make out the faded words. Easing myself into the creaking chair, I leafed through the spread of documents.
A shiver spidered up my spine.
I did not recognise the script as from any mundane language. It was angular, full of squares and dots. Many of the symbols were scratched out. Others appeared in lists. Others still curled around strange spirals, wide-eyed, coiling creatures and crude charcoal sketches of moths.
Then, a line of Latin: In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum.
It took me a moment to recognise it, having spent so long staring at the unknown symbols. I mouthed the words to myself.
In the beginning there was the Word and the Word was God and the Word was with God.
Not so much a translation as a memory of the line within my Bible.
Fleetingly, I wondered if these could be the missing diaries of Rev Jacob Roche, but why would he write these strange symbols? Rev Hale had warned me that I should not read them, but surely these ancient papers could not be those journals. Every stone in this castle alluded to a long history, surely it must have been one of its previous inhabitants?
Yet such assumptions rendered me no answers.
I smoothed open crumpled papers, each speckled with holes. My eyes followed each dot and flourish of their meaningless words. I sorted through page after page of arcane nonsense. As I leafed through, more and more pages were riddled with holes. Some were so fragmentary that they fell apart at my touch into a dusting of inky snowflakes.
Attempting gentleness, my hands trembled. I swallowed. Recognisable English words roamed on the edges of the broken pages, but few of them were informative.
My breath was heavy, though I did not know if it was excitement or the dust. The final layer in my excavation was a worn leatherbound notebook. Its gilded spine was cold to the touch. Coughing at the dust that swirled up as I turned the page, I read: Translation of the Bible into Enochian.
My brow furrowed. Enochian. I had heard that word before, but I could not recall where. It tugged at the edges of my memory.
A tuneless humming roused me from my excavation. Leaping to the conclusion that the owner of the voice would be able to help me, I called out.
“Hello? A little help, if you please, my lantern was broken–” I rolled up the scattered pages and bundled them into a writing case that rested against the bureau. I wanted to keep studying the pages.
The humming seemed to grow fainter. I latched shut the writing case and gathered up my skirts, stumbling towards the sound.
“Hello? Is there anyone there?”
There was a faint tinkling sound, somewhere between bells and laughter. I felt warmth flutter against my neck, like a candle going out.
Once out of the study, everything was but shades of shadow. Half blind and hand reaching out before me, I followed. Making out the edge of a wall and the faint lines of a silver mirror upon it, I felt around the corner.
My eyes stung.
After a moment of furious blinking, I saw that in the middle of the floor there was a lit lantern. The bright, painful light was itself a relief. Beside it was the arch that opened onto the stairs of worn stone, the top of which was my room.
I spun around, trying to catch a glimpse of who could have left it here, but I heard no footsteps.
I noticed a smudge of coal on my fingers when I put down the lantern in my room and I wondered at who could have left it for me.
Chapter 4
The Bird in the Cage
The deliberations of the Royal Society in 1767 and the beginning of 1768, seconded by the liberality of the government, produced a result highly interesting to our navigator, opening to his genius new and extensive spheres where he was destined to shine. At this period, and for some years before, the British government had the honour of instituting voyages of discovery very different from those early navigators. Expeditions of this kind were formally set on foot for the purpose of conquest, the acquisition of territory and of wealth. But now commenced a new era in the annals of navigation, when the voyages of discovery were undertaken for the interests of science; for acquiring a knowledge of the different seas, continents, and islands on the face of our globe; and for ameliorating the condition of the savage tribes that might be discovered.
From the triumph in observing the Transit of Venus over the sun’s disc in June 1769 to his meticulous mapping of the South Sea, to his crossing of the Antarctic Circle and the further mapping of the Northwest Passage, Cook proved an unparalleled navigator and was celebrated throughout the Empire.
Yet still beyond the calculations and projections of any of these involved parties was the fourth and most fantastical voyage of our captain, when the greatest navigational mind became impossibly lost and thus impossibly discovered a different realm. Many have no doubt gotten lost on high seas and brought their ships to the coast of Arcadia but it is only Cook who could have realised that getting lost is intrinsic to journey.
Rev George Young, The Life and Voyages of Captain James Cook, drawn
from his journals and other authentic documents; and comprising much original information
I did not get lost again after that first night in Gethsemane.
Life at my brother’s castle �
� strange as it still is to even think of it as such – settled into a rhythm, of sorts. Laon hadn’t returned yet from whatever mysterious errand he was on and neither Mr Benjamin nor Miss Davenport were much help in working out where he had gone.
“He’ll return when he returns,” said Miss Davenport with half a shrug, pausing in her knitting.
“Doesn’t he need to be here?” I said.
“I suppose he would run out of salt eventually,” she said thoughtfully.
I suppressed the flutter of panic at the thought. Folktales warned of the claim Arcadia had on any who consumed its food, that one would be forever trapped under its unearthly sun. I pressed on: “I meant the mission. Doesn’t he have a congregation?”
She laughed, an airy sound, breathier and more high pitched than her speaking voice. “Heavens, Miss Helstone. There isn’t a congregation.”
“I thought–”
“The Mission to Arcadia has, at present, met with little success. We urge you, dear reader, to open up your purses and pray harder so as to sway the soulless to turn their godless minds heavenward,” she said, over-enunciating in the manner of mocking quotation.
“Miss Davenport!” I said, quite appalled. Though my weeks on The Quiet had taught me to hold my tongue at little blasphemies, Miss Davenport’s teasing touched a raw nerve.
“Aside from Mr Benjamin, of course,” she added. The wide, flat grin that spread over her face showed that she was clearly taking inappropriate pleasure at my distress. “That is one resounding success. Even if it isn’t your brother’s.”
In that, she was indeed correct. Though the gnome proved to be an odd character, he had a fervour for the faith that was rivalled only by the ancients who hunched over their Bibles and loved nothing more than to snarl quotations at the curate whenever he saw fit to paraphrase.