The Wind Singer

by William Nicholson

  Kestrel heard this, and went cold inside with fury. At once, she started to walk briskly down the jetty. She looked straight ahead, fixing her gaze on the place where the far-off light streamed down on to the dark surface of the lake, and put one foot in front of the other, and walked.

  ‘Kess! Come back!’ called her father.

  He started after her, but Maslo Inch seized his arm with one hand, and held him in a grip of iron.

  ‘Let her go,’ he said. ‘She has to learn.’

  With his other hand, he operated a long lever by the jetty gate, and there came a hissing gurgling sound, as the posts supporting the far end of the jetty began to sink into the lake. The jetty sloped downwards, becoming a ramp tilting ever more steeply down into the mud. Kestrel gave a cry of alarm, and turned and tried to run back up the boards, but they were coated with slime, and she couldn’t get a grip. She started to slither backwards.

  ‘Papa!’ she cried. ‘Help me!’

  Hanno lunged towards her, pulling furiously in the Chief Examiner’s hold, but he could not free himself.

  ‘Let me go! What are you doing to her? Are you insane?’

  Maslo Inch’s eyes were locked on to Kestrel, as she tried in vain to stop her downward slide.

  ‘Slipping, slipping, slipping,’ he cried. ‘Well, Kestrel, do you care now?’

  ‘Papa! Help me!’

  ‘Get her out! She’ll drown!’

  ‘Do you care now? Will you try harder now? Tell me! I want to hear!’

  ‘Papa!’ Kestrel screamed as she slithered off the end of the sloping jetty, and into the lake. Her feet hit the brown water, and with an awful sucking sound they disappeared into liquid mud.

  ‘I’m sinking!’

  ‘Tell me you care!’ called out Maslo Inch, his hand gripping Hanno’s arm so tight his fingers had gone white. ‘I want to hear!’

  ‘You’re mad!’ said Hanno. ‘You’ve gone mad!’

  In desperation, he swung his free arm, and struck the Chief Examiner hard across the face.

  Maslo Inch turned on him, and suddenly he lost all his self-control. He shook Hanno like a doll.

  ‘Don’t you dare touch me!’ he screamed. ‘You worm! You dribble! You maggot! You failure! You fail your exams, you fail your family, you fail your country!’

  At the same time, Kestrel realised she wasn’t sinking any more. Somewhere beneath the surface there was hard ground, and she had only sunk to her knees. So she took hold of the sides of the narrow jetty with both hands, and began to claw her way back up. She didn’t call out any more. She just fixed her eyes on the Chief Examiner and willed herself up the slope.

  Maslo Inch was too absorbed in screaming at her father to notice.

  ‘What use are you? You’re a nothing! You do nothing, you make no effort, you expect others to do it all for you, all you do is read your useless books! You’re a parasite! You’re a germ! You infect everyone round you with your sick lazy failure! You disgust me!’

  Kestrel reached the top of the jetty, took a deep breath, and with a yell of blood-curdling fury, threw herself on the Chief Examiner’s back.

  ‘Pocksicker!’

  She locked her arms round his neck and her legs round his waist and squeezed with all her might, to make him let go of her father.

  ‘Sagahog! Pooa-pooa-pooa-banga-pompaprune! Pock-sicking udderbug!’

  The Chief Examiner, taken by surprise, released Hanno Hath’s arm and turned about to pull Kestrel off him. But whichever way he swung, she was always behind him, her wiry little arms throttling him, her muddy feet kicking at his ribs.

  The tussle was short but intense. During it, much of the mud on Kestrel’s legs was wiped on to the Chief Examiner’s clothing. When at last he got a grip on her and tore her off, she let go, and he threw her farther than he intended. At once she sprang to her feet and ran.

  He made no attempt to chase her. He was too shocked at the sight of his muddy clothes.

  ‘My whites!’ he said. ‘The little witch!’

  Kestrel was gone, streaking away as fast as she could, up the tunnel towards the distant door.

  Maslo Inch brushed himself down, and pulled back the lever that raised the jetty to its former position. Then he turned to Hanno Hath.

  ‘Well, old friend,’ he said, icily calm. ‘What do you have to say to that?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that to her.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  Hanno Hath was silent. He would not apologise for his daughter’s behaviour, but nor was it wise to say what he really felt, which was that he was intensely proud of her. So he kept a neutral expression on his face, and looked with inner satisfaction at the mudstains on the Chief Examiner’s once-pure robes.

  ‘I now see,’ said Maslo Inch quietly, ‘that we have a far more serious problem with the girl than I had realised.’

  6

  Special Teaching

  Kestrel ran out of the tunnel, and straight into the grey-clothed warden. He must have heard her coming, since he had dropped his broom and was waiting for her, arms spread wide. As soon as he had her tight, he picked her up and dangled her in the air, where she kicked as hard as she could, and screamed at the top of her voice. But he was a big man, bigger than he’d looked bent over his broom, and he was strong, and her screams didn’t seem to trouble him in the least.

  Maslo Inch came out into the courtyard, followed by her father, just as two more wardens came running, drawn by the noise she was making.

  ‘Papa!’ she screamed. ‘Papa-a-a!’

  ‘Put her down,’ said Hanno Hath.

  ‘Be silent!’ cried the Chief Examiner, with such terrible authority that even Kestrel stopped screaming.

  ‘Get this man out of here,’ he said more quietly, and the two wardens started to hustle Hanno Hath away. ‘Take the girl to Special Teaching.’

  ‘No!’ cried Hanno Hath. ‘I beg you, no!’

  ‘Papa!’ screamed Kestrel, kicking and struggling. ‘Papa-a-a!’

  But she was already being carried off in the opposite direction. The Chief Examiner watched them both go with a grim and unmoving look on his face.

  ‘What more can you do to me, eh?’ he said softly to himself. And he strode away to change into clean white robes.

  The separate building set aside for Special Teaching was inside the old palace compound, on one side of a small deserted square. It was a solid stone structure, much like any other in this grandest of the city’s districts, with a high handsome door at the top of three steps. This door was opened from the inside, as the warden approached with Kestrel in his arms. It was closed after them, by a doorman dressed in grey.

  ‘Referred by the Chief Examiner,’ said the warden.

  The doorman nodded, and opened an inner door. Kestrel was pushed through into a long narrow room, and left there without a word. The door closed with a click behind her.

  She was alone.

  She realised for the first time that she was shaking violently, out of a combination of fear, rage and exhaustion. She took several deep breaths to steady herself, and looked round the room. It was empty and windowless.

  She turned her attention to the door, hoping to find a way of opening it. The door had no handle. She felt all over it, and round its edges, but it was close-fitting, and there seemed to be no way to open it from the inside. So she turned back to examining the room.

  All along one wall hung a plain grey floor-length curtain. She drew the curtain back, and found there was a window behind it, looking through to a much larger inner room. Cautiously, she drew the curtain all the way back, and stared at the strange scene beyond. It was a classroom. Sitting at the rows of desks, with their backs to her, were a large number of children, perhaps as many as a hundred. They were all bent studiously over their books, working away in silence; or so she supposed, for no sound of any kind came through the glass. There was a teacher’s desk at the far end, and a blackboard, but no teacher.

  The children at the back of t
he class were quite close to the window. Perhaps they would help her. She tapped on the glass softly, just in case a teacher was nearby. The children didn’t move. She tapped more loudly, and then as loudly as she could, but they seemed to hear nothing. It began to strike her that there was something strange about them. They kept their heads so low to their books that she couldn’t see their faces, but their hands were unusually wrinkly. And their hair was grey, or white, or – she saw it now – some of them were bald. Now that she looked properly, she asked herself why she had thought they were children at all. And yet, they were the size of children, and the shape of children. And surely –

  The door opened behind her. Kestrel turned round, her heart hammering. A scarlet-robed examiner entered, a middle-aged lady, and closed the door behind her. She held a file open in her hands, and she looked from the papers in it to Kestrel and back again. She had a friendly face.

  ‘Kestrel Hath?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kestrel. ‘Ma’am.’

  She spoke quietly, clasping her hands before her and lowering her gaze to the floor. She had decided, on the spur of the moment, to be a good girl.

  The examiner looked at her in some perplexity.

  ‘What have you done, child?’

  ‘I was frightened,’ said Kestrel in a tiny voice. ‘I think I must have panicked.’

  ‘The Chief Examiner has referred you for Special Teaching.’ As she spoke, she glanced through the window at the silent class working in the room beyond, and shook her head. ‘It does seem a little extreme.’

  Kestrel said nothing, but tried very hard to look sad and good.

  ‘Special Teaching, you know,’ said the lady examiner, ‘is for the most disruptive children. The ones that are entirely out of control. And it is so very, well, permanent.’

  Kestrel went up to the lady examiner, and took her hand and held it trustingly, gazing up at her with big innocent eyes.

  ‘Do you have a little girl of your own, ma’am?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, child. Yes, I do.’

  ‘Then I know you’ll do what’s best for me, ma’am. Just as you would for your own little girl.’

  The lady examiner looked down at Kestrel, and gave a little sigh, and patted her hand.

  ‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘I think we should go and see the Chief Examiner, don’t you? Maybe there’s been a mistake.’

  She turned to the handleless door and called,

  ‘Open, please!’

  The door was opened by a warden on the far side, and the lady examiner and Kestrel, hand in hand, went out into the square.

  Now that she wasn’t being carried, Kestrel could see that one side of the square was formed by the back wall of the Great Tower, which was the building at the centre of the Imperial Palace. This tower, the highest building in Aramanth, could be seen even from Orange District. This close, it seemed immensely tall, reaching up and up even higher than the city’s encircling walls.

  As they crossed the square, a small door at the foot of the tower opened, and two white-robed men came sweeping out. Seeing the lady examiner holding Kestrel’s hand, the older of the two frowned and called out to them.

  ‘What is a child from Orange District doing here?’

  The lady examiner explained. The man in white studied the file.

  ‘So the Chief Examiner ordered Special Teaching for the girl,’ he said sharply. ‘And you have taken it upon yourself to question his judgment.’

  ‘I think there may have been a mistake.’

  ‘Do you know anything about this case?’

  ‘Well, no,’ said the lady examiner, going rather pink. ‘It’s more a kind of feeling, really.’

  ‘A kind of feeling?’ The man’s voice was cutting with contempt. ‘You propose to make a decision that affects the rest of this child’s life on a kind of feeling?’

  The rest of this child’s life! A chill ran through Kestrel. She looked round for a way of escape. Behind her stood the Special Teaching building from which they had come. Ahead, the men in white.

  ‘I meant only to speak to the Chief Examiner, to make sure I understood his wishes.’

  ‘His wishes are written here. They are perfectly clear, are they not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kestrel saw that the door into the tower had not closed all the way.

  ‘Do you suggest that when he made this order, and signed it, he didn’t know what he was doing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why do you not carry it out?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’

  Kestrel knew then that she had lost her one source of protection. The lady examiner turned distressed eyes on her, and said once again, this time to Kestrel,

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Kestrel, and gave the lady’s hand a little squeeze. ‘Thank you for trying.’

  Then she released the hand, and she ran.

  She was through the tower door and pushing it shut behind her before they realised what was happening. There was a bolt on the inside, which she drew shut. Only then, heart beating fast, did she look to see where she was.

  She was in a small lobby, with two doors, and a narrow curving flight of stairs. Both doors were locked. She heard voices shouting outside, and the outer door rattling as they tried to open it. Then she heard louder bangs, as they tried to break the bolt. Then she heard a voice call out,

  ‘You stay here. I’ll go round the other way.’

  She had no choice: so she set off up the stairs.

  Up and up she climbed, and the stairwell grew darker and darker. She thought she could hear doors opening and closing below, so she kept climbing as fast as she could. Up and up, round and round, and now there was light above. She came to a small barred window, set deep in the stonework of the tower. Through the window she could see the roofs of the palace, and a brief glimpse of the square where the statue of Emperor Creoth stood.

  Still the stairs rose above her, so breathing hard now, her legs aching, she climbed on and on, and the light from the little window dwindled away below her. Strange distorted sounds came floating up from below, the clatter of running feet, the boom of voices. Up and up she climbed, slower now, wondering where the staircase led, and whether, when at last she reached the top, there would be another locked door.

  A second window appeared. Exhausted, trembling, she allowed herself to rest a moment here, and looked out over the city. She could make out people passing in the streets, and the elegant shops and houses of Scarlet District. Then she heard a sound which was very like boots climbing the winding stairs below her, and fear gave her strength to get up and go on. Up and up, forcing her legs to push, half giddy with exhaustion, she followed the tightly winding staircase that seemed to have no end. Clop, clop, clop, went the noise of the boots below, carried up to her by the stone walls. Not far now, she said to herself, in time with her steps. Not far now, not far now. Though in truth she had no way of knowing how much farther she must climb.

  And then, just when she knew she could go no further, she came out on to a tiny landing, and there before her was a door. Her hand shook as she reached out to try the handle. Please, she said inside her head. Please don’t be locked. She turned the handle, and felt the latch open. She pushed: but the door didn’t move. At once her fear, held at bay by this last hope, broke through and overwhelmed her. Bursting into bitter tears, she crumpled up in a ball at the foot of the door. There she hugged her knees and sobbed her heart out.

  Clop, clop, clop. The boots were coming up the stairs, getting nearer all the time. Kestrel rocked and sobbed, and wished she was dead.

  Then she heard a new sound. Shuffling footsteps, close by. The slither of a bolt.

  The door opened.

  ‘Come in,’ said an impatient voice. ‘Come in quickly.’

  Kestrel looked up and saw a blotchy red face staring down at her: watery, protruding eyes, and a grizzly grey beard.

  ‘You’ve certainly taken yo
ur time,’ he said. ‘Come in, now you’re here.’

  7

  The Emperor weeps

  The bearded man closed the door and bolted it after Kestrel, and then made a sign to her to stay quiet. On the far side they could hear quite clearly now the sound of the climbing boots. Then whoever it was reached the landing at the top, and came to a stop.

  ‘Well, boggle me!’ said a surprised voice. ‘She’s not here!’

  They saw the door handle turn as he tried to open it. Then the sound of his voice shouting down the stairs.

  ‘She’s not here, you stupid pocksickers! I’ve climbed all these hogging stairs and she’s not hogging here!’

  With that, he set off back down the long winding staircase, muttering as he went. The bearded man gave a soft chortle of pleasure.

  ‘Pocksicker!’ he said. ‘I haven’t heard that for years. How reassuring to know that the old oaths are still in use.’

  Taking Kestrel’s hand, he led her into the light of one of the windows, so that he could see her better. She in her turn stared at him. His robes were blue, which astonished her. No one wore blue in Aramanth.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘You’re not what I expected, I must say. But you’ll have to do.’

  He then went to a table in the middle of the room, where there stood a glass bowl full of chocolate buttons, and ate three, one after the other. While he did this, Kestrel was gazing in wonder out of the window. The room must have been near the top of the tower, if not at the top itself, for it was higher than the city walls. In one direction, she could see over the land to the ocean; in the other, the desert plains lay before her, reaching all the way to the misty line of the northern mountains.

  ‘But it’s so big!’ she said.

  ‘Oh, it’s big all right. Bigger than you can see from here, even.’

  Kestrel looked down at the city below, laid out in its districts, the scarlet and the white, her own orange streets, the maroon and the grey, all circled by the massive city walls. For the first time, it struck her that this was an odd arrangement.