Aurora

by Julie Bertagna

  Now Rodenglaw pushes her towards the tall man with sunlit hair. The light is behind him and Candle can’t see his face. He leans forward and gives her a cold kiss on the cheek. Candle feels numb. Is that it? Is it done? Is she married now?

  The shaman is already striding up the rocky steps to the palace. She must be.

  ‘There was a fleet in the sky, Pontifix – did you see?’ blurts her father. As soon as he has spoken Rodenglaw looks as if he’d like to bite off his own tongue. The Pontifix is said to be proud and unpredictable. Drawing attention to the weakness of his eyes is rash. ‘I – I mean, your lookouts, did they spy them? Maybe you saw through your eyebox . . .’

  Rodenglaw glances nervously at the slim silver box that hangs on a chain from the Pontifix’s belt and helps him see the world. The old seafarers say people once captured pictures of the world in such boxes, though Candle can’t imagine how.

  ‘Not the first fleets we’ve seen,’ her new husband cuts in, his voice as cold as his kiss.

  ‘Ah,’ nods Rodenglaw. ‘But these planes – where do they go?’

  ‘Ships,’ the Pontifix corrects him. ‘Sky ships. Planes have wings, like birds. These look like whales in the sky. They fly northward from the South.’

  His demeanour is calm but Candle senses he is deeply rattled, as is Rodenglaw, by these alien presences in then skies.

  She looks towards the chink of open sea. Beyond the last bend of the fjord are the armed ships that guard Ilira. Unarmed boats from other ports are given safe passage once they’ve been searched by the Pontifix’s guards. Armed ships are made to surrender or are wrecked by lethal rocks and man-made traps in the sea. The Pontifix is revered for his power to keep their fjord safe from the pirates the city so greatly fears but even he, thinks Candle, cannot rule Ilira’s skies as he does its seas.

  Rodenglaw gives a gruff goodbye, anxious to leave now that he’s traded his daughter, insulted the Pontifix’s one weakness and shown his ignorance over sky ships. A father should surely embrace his newly married daughter at such a moment, thinks Candle, but Rodenglaw is already in the gondola. Yet as it puffs away he glances over his shoulder and the strange, shamed expression Candle saw after his earlier brutality flits across his weathered face. She raises a hand, expecting nothing in return for her bare little wave. But slowly her father lifts his own hand and dips his head in the slightest of bows. Candle could not have been more amazed if he’d blown her a kiss.

  Rodenglaw’s gondola disappears behind a ridge of rock, leaving a ghostly drift of steam.

  The tall man beside her speaks and she jumps. What did he say? The wind has snatched his words away.

  Her stomach feels like a basketful of needles as she follows her new husband up the rocky pathway to his palace. Candle panics as she realizes she can’t see the city from here. The fat rump of Bear Mountain blocks it out. The doorway of her new home faces away from Ilira, towards the open sea.

  The glass palace seems to sizzle. Steam rises from its domed roof. Sunlight sparkles on curving, mottled walls made of cemented fragments of bottle glass. It’s said that a million broken bottles were scavenged from seabed and shore to build the Pontifix’s dream. Candle shades her eyes against the glare to snatch glances at her new husband.

  His long hair is the colour of a winter moon and his beard barely frosts his face. The crinkles around his eyes are not caused by age, Candle realizes with huge relief, because he’s not old at all. It’s because he peers at the world with piercing eyes that don’t, she thinks, look weak to her.

  Until now, Tuck Culpy has been a godlike presence on a bridge or sailing the fjord in a gondola his hair and bright windwrap streaming in the wind. No ordinary man could create wonders like a palace made of glass and such majestic bridges, or could scare away the marauding pirates that ransack the rest of the North.

  Candle feels dazed. Is it really possible that she is married to this man?

  The silks of his windwrap ripple around him as he walks, the colours as vivid as the aurora storm Candle watched cascade across the sky last night, too nervous to sleep. She limps to keep up, feet blistered by the red shoes, as he leads her into the palace through a whalebone arch. Once inside, the Pontifix stumbles slightly, his movements suddenly uncertain as if his natural element is under the wide sky riven by the wind.

  A guard leads the way through a maze of corridors. Now Candle sees why the palace seems to sizzle. Hot geysers hiss within alcoves of rock. Like steamy fireplaces, they warm the air. The mottled walls fill the palace with a dappled, watery light. Mysterious objects – sea scavenges, she guesses – are shelved in the glass.

  When they reach what must be the heart of the palace, the Pontifix gestures for her to enter a curtained doorway. Through the sealskin curtain is a large, round room with a wide stone table in the centre. More sea junk clutters the rocks that are scattered like small tables across the fur-carpeted floor. A geyser gurgles lazily at the far end of the room. A rack of cutlasses hang on the wall, the curving blades like the talons of a grant bird.

  ‘Tartoq.’

  She jumps. Only her father calls her Tartoq, if he calls her anything at all.

  ‘Don’t be scared,’ says the Pontifix. ‘Sit down.’

  Candle looks around and sees she must sit beside him on a huge bed of furs. He blinks as she moves and her necklace catches the light. How much can he see? His eyes seem to follow the bright glitter of the necklace. Maybe that’s why she was to wear it, so that he knows where she is.

  ‘You have your own room and your slave,’ he says in the kindly voice of an adult to a child ‘Everything you need. It is Tartoq, eh?’

  He’s not even sure of her name. Candle hesitates. Broom has urged her to be careful, but also to begin as a human being.

  ‘My own name is Candle,’ she says. ‘I have a wedding gift for you.’

  She takes the crescent-shaped halo from the goose-feather bag. The Pontifix frowns as she places it in his hand.

  ‘My eye,’ he mutters, lifting the small silver box that hangs from his belt. A snout shoots out as the Pontifix puts the box to his eyes. He seems to use the silver snout to see, like an eye on a stalk, pointing it at the gift as he peers through the box.

  ‘Urth,’ he exclaims. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘I – I found it.’

  She hopes he can’t hear the lie in her voice. Slaves are not supposed to keep scavenges so she can’t risk saying it was Clay.

  ‘You found it? Where?’

  Candle casts around for an answer she should have prepared. Gulls shriek and she sees a flock of fluttering shadows in the spangled dome above her head.

  ‘A bird,’ she lies again. ‘An eagle! It flew into my cave and dropped it.’

  ‘An eagle?’ The Pontifix weighs the halo in his hand like a marketeer on the bridges with a handful of pearls.

  ‘A golden eagle from the mountains. They steal things.’ Candle dares a question. ‘Do you know what it is?’

  But the Pontifix has forgotten her. He strides to the stone table in the centre of the room and opens up a jewelled casket. A gasp escapes Candle as he takes out something that looks like a small moon. The moon-like object begins to glow in his hand.

  The globe! It must be.

  People say he sees visions in his magic globe. Tuck Culpy arrived one day out of nowhere, it’s said with the magic globe in his hands. He was the Pontifix, he claimed, and his globe held visions of the future. He would build magnificent bridges and fleets of ships and make the pirate-ravaged bay strong again.

  In the time it took Candle to grow from a squalling baby to a young woman, Tuck Culpy had stirred up the people of Ilira to transform then bleak frightened city into a hub of trade and industry, famed all over the North.

  Open-mouthed, Candle watches as colours swirl around the globe like a tiny aurora storm.

  The Pontifix holds the globe in one hand, the halo in his other. He presses the globe with his thumb and a finger. It opens up, as if an invi
sible knife has sliced it down the middle into two smooth round halves.

  ‘Take her away,’ he orders, and a guard appears.

  Candle dares not argue. Prickling with hurt at his curt dismissal, she is also relieved that her ordeal with her strange new husband is over, at least for today. She follows the guard through the palace where the scavenged mysteries shelved in the walls remind her of the insects trapped forever in her amber necklace.

  All imprisoned in glass, she thinks. Just like me.

  THE EAGLE, THE SLAVE AND THE STORYBOX

  Darkness drizzles through the palace walls. From her bed, Candle watches miserably as a hundred shades of evening drown the last lights of day.

  A slave arrives with food. Feigning sleep, Candle watches through half-closed eyes as the woman rolls down the sealskin wall blinds, shutting out the dark and the cold. Heat builds in the room now from the gurgling steam geyser in the alcove.

  The aroma of smoked seafood turns her stomach though she should be hungry, she’s barely eaten all day.

  ‘Go away,’ she mutters, and pulls the bear-fur quilt over her head.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ says the slave.

  ‘Broom!’ Candle flings off the quilt and rushes over to bury herself in the familiar hug of her beloved slave. ‘Where have you been? He’s horrible. I hate him. I can’t stay here forever!’

  There’s a strange, excited light in Broom’s eyes. Years seem to have dropped from the slave’s soft face.

  Broom pulls her close and whispers in her ear. ‘Candle, what if you could escape from this place?’

  ‘Escape? On a ship? With Clay?

  ‘Shh!’

  Broom nods towards the doorway where there must be a palace guard. She begins tidying Candle, tucking away unruly strands of hair and fixing her face, her voice as dry as the pearl dust she dabs on to the girl’s blotchy face, but Candle hears Broom’s quickened breath and wonders at her glowing cheeks.

  ‘The Pontifix has much more important things on his mind than some silly girl he just married,’ Broom says loudly, for the benefit of the guard outside. ‘Eat up your supper!’ Then in a murmur: ‘We’ll speak later.’

  Candle imagines a lifetime of unhappiness in this palace. Can Broom help her escape? But how? Her imagination spins and Candle pulls the plate of smoked seafood towards her, suddenly hungry, and begins stuffing delicacies into her mouth.

  ‘I saw the globe,’ she whispers, through a mouthful of seafood. ‘But he sent me away.’

  ‘Well, he wants to see you again now you’re fed,’ says Broom, as Candle clears her plate.

  The seafood churns in Candle’s stomach as if the creatures have slithered back to life. Broom pulls her to her feet.

  ‘Be brave,’ she tells the girl, and gently pushes her to the curtained doorway, but Broom’s words and her strange excitement have given Candle heart.

  She follows the waiting guard back through the palace. In his room her new husband lounges on a bed of furs. Candle empties herself of all feeling, as she has learned to do many times. Nothing and no one can be worse than her father’s brutal temper, she tells herself.

  The Pontifix looks up as she creeps into the room. His hearing, Candle notes, is sharp as a bird’s.

  ‘Your gift was a shock,’ he says bluntly.

  Candle wonders what to say. ‘Sorry,’ she murmurs.

  He gets up from the bed and makes his way to the wide stone table in the centre of the room, motioning her to follow.

  ‘But the best of gifts!’ He breaks into a smile and Candle loses some of her nervousness as the face of her peculiar new husband is suddenly young, bright and handsome.

  ‘Do I,’ she dares, ‘call you Pontifix? Or can I call you Tuck?’

  There is a pause, then he smiles again.

  ‘Tuck’s my name.’

  If you calf something by its real name, Broom always says, you draw the fear from it.

  ‘Tuck,’she says firmly.

  Amusement flickers in his eyes and once again Candle feels unnerved at not knowing how much he can see. He is far from blind, she has decided, but without his silver eyebox he would be lost.

  Now Tuck takes another silver box, squat and bashed, from a rock shelf and sets it on the table. This one is bigger than his eyebox, with a face full of buttons and a stem sticking from its top.

  ‘All this strangeness will pass,’ he tells Candle, and she hears the lilt of the ocean in his voice. ‘I found a new life here when I was young.’ He pauses. ‘No one will harm you now – not unless you deserve it.’

  Candle absorbs the warning.

  ‘You are kind,’ she murmurs. And maybe he is, she hopes.

  ‘The wedding gift you brought me,’ he sits down beside her, ‘is a treasure I’ve searched for all across the Arctic ports. I picked a good wife.’ He smiles again and taps the box ‘So this is a gift for you.’

  ‘What is it?’ asks Candle, watching him pull on the box’s stem until it’s almost as long as his arm.

  ‘A storybox.’ Tuck begins to wind a small handle on the side of the box. ‘One of my Sea Lords found it in a new port on the north-west coast’

  His fingers fiddle with the buttons on the box. He twitches the long stem. Candle jumps with fright as the buzz of angry insects bursts out. Tuck seems unworried and carries on tending to the buttons and stem, listening closely, waiting patiently until a voice, so crackly and buzzy it might be a giant honey bee, cuts through the noisy swarm.

  ‘This is the Midnight Storyteller,’ says the voice in the box.

  Candle has gripped Tuck’s arm in fright. She draws back.

  ‘The storyteller,’ she gasps, ‘is trapped in the box?’

  ‘His voice sails in on the winds,’ says Tuck, ‘and then harbours in the storybox.’

  ‘I send this story out to you,’ continues the voice, ‘wherever you are in the world. In all the forgotten corners of the Earth and its oceans . . .’

  ‘Where is he?’ Candle whispers. ‘Who is he?’

  Tuck’s brow furrows. He hates not knowing things, Candle sees, yet he has surrounded himself with a palace full of mysteries.

  ‘He tells tales to the world,’ says Tuck. ‘That’s all I know.’

  ‘Over the years I’ve read you all so many stories from the books of the drowned world. My next is the most extraordinary of all. It’s a tale of the sea-broken people,’ says the storyteller, and Candle hears a tremble in Ms voice. ‘A story called Exodus. And it begins with The Old Woman Who Lived in a Tree . . .’

  ‘I know that one!’ Candle exclaims.

  She sinks into the deep pile of furs and feels all the tension of this strange day easing from her as she listens to the heartrending tale.

  Now the voice is so clear and strong that the storyteller might be right there in the room. Husky and warm, his voice wraps around her and she sinks into the story of the old woman who was thrown out of a tower in the sky to live in a tree in a flooded world. There is a crackly pause at the end of the tale. The sound of a hissing sea seeps from the storybox.

  ‘Tomorrow night,’ says the storyteller, ‘in the next part of the tale, I’ll tell how the old woman in the tree meets a girl from a drowned island.’

  ‘Mara!’ says Candle. ‘That’s when she finds the Treenesters in the netherworld.’

  Candle is suddenly wide awake, her small eyes almost as round as the buttons on the storybox. The storyteller knows about Mara?

  The storybox is silenced with a click.

  ‘Mara?’

  Tuck’s voice is incredulous. The look on his face makes Candle want to run.

  ‘How do you,’ he demands, ‘know about Mara?’

  ‘I – I don’t remember.’ The back of Candle’s neck feels icy even though the room is snug.

  Tuck pulls her upright on the bed. ‘I want you to remember.’

  ‘My old slave,’ says Candle, slowly, so that she can think fast. ‘She told me lots of stories. She – she once came across the oceans on a ship
with a girl called Mara. But – but that slave died years ago,’ she adds hastily.

  ‘Not the Slave you brought with you?’ he asks, all suspicion now.

  ‘Oh no.’ Candle is adamant. ‘Broom was old, like the woman in the tree. She’s long dead.’

  Candle has no idea what is wrong, what the truth might mean for Broom with such an unpredictable man. It’s safer to lie. Too late, she realizes she should have used another name, just in case, but a great man like the Pontifix will surely not seek out a lowly slave?

  Tuck has cocked his head to the side, listening hard. She meets his cold blue stare with her arrow-sharp one.

  ‘But how do you know about Mara?’ she asks.

  What can Broom’s Mara mean to Tuck?

  He seems overwhelmed by some memory or emotion. A chink appears in the aura he wears like an invisible windwrap. Candle peers through the chink and glimpses a man much younger and less certain of the world than he pretends to be. He is as unnerved by the mention of Mara as if he were standing on one of his great bridges and spied a lethal crack at his feet.

  ‘And you said an eagle brought you the halo?’ Tuck persists. ‘Not this slave of yours? The one you say is dead?’

  Candle recalls Broom’s strange insistence earlier that the halo Clay scavenged was Mara’s. Is that what Tuck thinks? Candle cannot work it all out but she feels the danger in the air. She must deflect Tuck somehow.

  ‘It’s all just as I told you!’ she says, pretending to be piqued at his doubt. ‘But never mind that. This is a much more curious mystery!’

  She dares to pick up the storybox and peers into the regiment of tiny holes that perforate its silver front, half expecting to see a pair of eyes winking back at her. There is only darkness inside. She clicks the button and the storyteller has gone. All she hears is a storm of empty noise.

  ‘The Midnight Storyteller,’ urges Candle. ‘Who is he? How does he know Mara’s tale?’