by Philip Reeve
“I’ll ask,” she said doubtfully.
“Thank you!” Gargle took her hands in his. His hands were warm, and his eyes were rather lovely. Wren thought how nice it would be to tell Tildy that she’d spent the small hours of the night drinking cocoa in the cabin of a dashing underwater pirate, and then remembered that she would never be able to tell Tildy or anybody else about Gargle and the Autolycus. That made it even nicer somehow. She had never had a proper secret before.
“I’ll meet you up in the trees on the hilltop around six tomorrow,” Gargle said. “Is that all right? You can get away?”
“That’s supper time. I’d be missed. My mum…”
“Noon, then. Noon, or just after.”
“All right…”
“And for now – would you like Remora to walk you home?”
“I’ll find my way,” said Wren. “I often walk about in the dark.”
“We’ll make a Lost Girl of you yet,” said Gargle, and laughed to show her he was only joking. He stood up, and she stood up too, and they moved through the limpet’s passageways towards the exit ramp, the newbie Fishcake peeking out at them from the control cabin. Outside, the night was cold and the moon shone and the water was lapping against the shore as if nothing had happened. Wren waved and said goodbye and waved again and then walked quickly up the beach and through the trees.
Gargle watched until she was out of sight. The girl Remora came and stood beside him, and slipped her hand into his. “You trust her?” she asked.
“Don’t know. Maybe. It’s worth a try. We haven’t time to hang about here searching for the thing ourselves, and we can’t do much with the crab-cams in this dump. These Drys remember us. They’ll soon put two and two together if they start hearing the patter of tiny magnetic feet inside their air-ducts. But don’t worry – I’ll tell Fishcake to set a couple on watch around Wren’s house, so we’ll know if she squeals to her people about us.”
“And what if she does?”
“Then we’ll kill them all,” said Gargle. “And I’ll let you do Wren yourself, with your pretty little knife.” And he kissed her, and they turned and went back aboard.
But Wren, knowing none of this, walked home with a giddy tumble of thoughts inside her head, half guilt, half pleasure, feeling as if she’d grown up more in the past few hours than in all the fifteen years that had gone before.
4
THE LEGEND OF THE TIN BOOK
The next day dawned fair, the sky above the lake harebell blue, the water clear as glass, each of the islands of Vineland sitting neat and still upon its own reflection. Wren, exhausted by her adventures in the night, slept late, but outside her window, Anchorage was waking up. Woodsmoke rose from the chimneys of the city’s thirty inhabited houses, and fishermen called out good morning to each other as they made their way down the stairways to the mooring beach.
On the north side of the lake rose a brindled mountain, far higher than the Dead Hills to the south. Its lower slopes were green with scrub and stands of pine and steep meadows where wild flowers grew, and in one of these meadows a group of deer was grazing. There were many deer in the woods on the green shore, and a few had even swum across to set up home upon the wilder islands. People had spent a lot of time debating how they had come here; whether they had survived since the fall of the old American Empire, or come down from the frozen country to the north, or made their way here from some larger pocket of green much further west. But all Hester Natsworthy cared about, as she drew back her bow-string in the shelter of the trees down-wind, was how much meat was on them.
The bow made a quick, soft sound. The deer leaped into the air and came down running, bounding uphill into the shelter of the scrub, all except the largest doe, who fell dead with Hester’s arrow in her heart and her thin legs kicking and kicking. Hester walked up the hill and pulled the arrow free, cleaning the point on a handful of dry grass before she replaced it in the quiver on her back. The blood was very bright in the sunlight. She dipped her finger in the wound and smeared some on her forehead, muttering her prayer to the Goddess of the Hunt so that the doe’s ghost would not come bothering her. Then she heaved the carcass on to her shoulder and started back down the hill to her boat.
Her fellow Vinelanders seldom hunted deer. They said it was because the fish and birds of the lake were meat enough, but Hester suspected it was because the deer’s pretty fur coats and big, dark eyes touched their soft hearts and spoiled their aim. Hester’s heart was not soft, and hunting was what she was best at. She enjoyed the stillness and solitude that she found in the morning woods, and sometimes she enjoyed being away from Wren.
Wistfully, Hester remembered the little laughing girl that Wren had once been, playing splish-splash on the lake-shore or snuggling on Hester’s lap while Hester sang to her. As Wren looked lovingly up at her, and ran her chubby fingers over the old scar that split Hester’s face in half, Hester had thought that here at last was someone who could love her for what she was, and not care what she looked like. Because although Tom always said he didn’t care, Hester had never shaken off the faint fear that he must, deep down, want someone prettier than her.
But Wren had grown up, and there had come a day, when she was eight or nine, when she started to see Hester the same way everyone else did. She didn’t have to say anything; Hester knew that pitying, embarrassed look well enough, and she could sense Wren’s awkwardness when they were out together and met her friends. Her daughter was ashamed of her.
“It’s just a phase,” said Tom, when she complained of it to him. Tom adored Wren, and it seemed to Hester that he always took Wren’s side. “She’ll soon be over it. You know what children are like.”
But Hester didn’t know what children are like. Her own childhood had ended when she was very young, when her mother and the man she thought was her father had both been murdered by her real father, Thaddeus Valentine. She had no idea what it was like to be a normal girl. As Wren grew, and became more wilful, and her grandfather’s long, curved nose stuck out of her face like a knife pushed through a portrait, Hester found it harder and harder to be patient with her. Once or twice, guiltily, she had caught herself wishing that Wren had never been born and that it was just her and Tom again, the way it had been in the old days, on the Bird Roads.
When Wren awoke at last, the sun was high. Through her open window came the calls of the fishermen down at the mooring beach, the laughter of children, the steady thud of an axe as Dad chopped wood in the yard outside. There was still a faint taste of chocolate in her mouth. She lay for a moment enjoying the thought that none of the people she could hear, nobody else in all of Vineland, knew the things she knew. Then she scrambled out of bed and ran to the bathroom to wash. Her reflection peered out at her from the speckled mirror above the sink; a long, narrow, clever face. She hated her beaky nose and the scattering of spots around her too-small mouth, but she liked her eyes; large, wide-set eyes, the irises deep grey. Mariner’s eyes, Dad had called them once, and even though Wren wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, she liked the sound of it. She tied back her coppery hair and remembered Gargle calling her pretty. She’d never thought herself pretty before, but she saw now that he was right.
Running downstairs she found the kitchen empty, Mum’s shirts hanging white on the line outside the window. Mum was oddly vain about her clothes. She dressed like a man, in outfits she had taken from the abandoned shops on Boreal Arcade, and she was fussy about keeping things washed and ironed and safe from moth, as if wearing good clothes would make people forget her horrible scarred ruin of a face. It was just another example of how sad she was, thought Wren, pouring herself a glass of milk from the jug in the cold-store, smearing honey on one of yesterday’s oatcakes. It was all very well, but it made life difficult for Wren, having a mum who looked so weird. Tildy’s dad, old Mr Smew, was only about three feet tall, but he was an Anchorage man through and through, so nobody really noticed his height any more. Mum was different. She was unfriendly, s
o nobody ever forgot that she was hideous, and an outsider, and that sometimes made Wren feel like an outsider, too.
Maybe that was why she felt so drawn to the Lost Boys. Maybe Gargle had seen the outsideriness in her, and that was what had made him confide in her.
She went out into the yard, eating the oatcake, careful not to get honey on Mum’s shirts. Dad was setting small logs one by one on the chopping-block and cutting them in half with the wood-axe. He had his old straw hat on, because his brown hair didn’t quite cover the top of his head any more, and his bald patch sometimes caught the sun. He stopped work when he saw Wren, and sat down, putting one hand to his chest. Wren thought he looked as if he was glad of an excuse for a rest, and wondered if his old wound was hurting him again, but all he said was, “So you’re up at last?”
“No, I’m just sleep-walking,” she said, kicking a few cords of wood out of her way and sitting down beside him. She kissed his cheek and rested her head on his shoulder. Bees buzzed around the hives at the end of the yard, and Wren sat and listened to them and wondered how to broach the subject of the Tin Book of Anchorage. Then she decided to ask him something else instead.
“Dad,” she said, “you remember the Lost Boys?”
Dad looked uneasy, as he always did when she asked him about the old days. He fiddled with the bracelet on his wrist; the broad, red-gold wedding bracelet on which his initials were entwined with Mum’s. “Lost Boys,” he said. “Yes, I’m not likely to forget them…”
“I was wondering about them,” she said. “Were they very wicked?”
“Well, you know Caul,” said Dad. “He’s not wicked, is he?”
“He’s a bit weird.”
“Well maybe, but he’s a good man. If you were in trouble, you could turn to Caul. It’s thanks to him we found this place, you know. If he hadn’t escaped from Grimsby and brought us Snøri Ulvaeusson’s map…”
“Oh, I know that story,” said Wren. “Anyway, it’s not Caul I was wondering about. I was thinking of the others, back in Grimsby. They were pretty bad, weren’t they?”
Tom shook his head. “Their leader, Uncle, was a nasty bit of work. He made them do bad things. But I think the Lost Boys themselves were a mix of good and bad, just like you’d find anywhere. There was a little chap called Gargle, I remember. He’s the one who saved Caul when Uncle tried to kill him, and gave Caul the map to bring to us.”
“So he was as brave as Caul?”
“In a way, yes.”
“And you met him? How old was he?”
“Oh, only a youngster, as I say,” said her father, thinking back to his brief, frightening time with the Lost Boys. “Nine or ten. Maybe younger.”
Wren felt pleased. If Gargle had been nine when Dad met him he couldn’t be more than twenty-five now, which wasn’t so very much older than herself. And he was a good person, who had helped save Anchorage.
“Why this sudden interest?” her father asked.
“Oh, no reason,” said Wren casually. It felt strange, lying to Dad. He was the person she loved the most in the whole world. He had always treated Wren like a friend, not a child, and she had always told him everything before. She suddenly wanted very much to tell him what had happened on the north shore and ask him what to do. But she couldn’t, could she? It would not be fair to Gargle.
Dad was still looking at her in a puzzled way, so she said, “I just got thinking about them, that’s all.”
“Because they’re Lost?” asked Dad. “Or because they’re Boys?”
“Guess,” said Wren. She finished her oatcake and planted a sticky kiss on his cheek. “I’m going to see Tildy. Bye!”
She went out through the gate at the side of the yard and off down Dog Star Court with the sunlight shining on her hair, and Tom stood watching her until she turned the corner, feeling proud of his tall, beautiful daughter, and still amazed, even after all these years, that he and Hester had made this new person.
In the shadows beneath the woodpile a wireless crab-cam trained its lens on him. In an underwater cave on one of the smaller islets his image fluttered on a round, blue screen.
“She nearly gave us away!” said the boy called Fishcake. “He’ll guess!”
Gargle patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry. Natsworthy’s as dim as the others. He doesn’t suspect a thing.”
Wren walked briskly towards the Smew house, but did not turn in through the gate. She knew full well that Tildy and her family would all be up in their orchard this morning, picking apples. She had even promised to go and help. How could she have imagined that she would find something so much more important to do?
She cut through Boreal Arcade, glancing at her reflection in the dusty windows of the old shops, then ran along Rasmussen Prospekt and up the ramp that led to the Winter Palace. The big front doors were always open in summer. Wren ran in and shouted, “Miss Freya?” but the only answers were the echoes of her own voice bouncing back at her from the high ceilings. She went back outside and followed the gravelled path around the foot of the palace, and there was Miss Freya in her garden, picking beans and putting them in a basket.
“Wren!” she said happily.
“Hello, Miss Freya!”
“Oh, just Freya, please,” said Miss Freya, stooping to set her basket down. It seemed to be the main purpose of Miss Freya’s life to persuade everybody to call her simply “Freya”, but she had never had much success with it. The older people all remembered that she was the last of the House of Rasmussen and still liked to call her “Margravine” or “Your Radiance” or “Light of the Ice Fields”. The younger ones knew her as their teacher, so to them she was always “Miss Freya”.
“After all,” she said, smiling at Wren as she dabbed the perspiration from her round face with a handkerchief, “you’re not a schoolgirl any more. We might soon be colleagues. Have you thought any more about coming to help me with the little ones, once apple harvest’s over?”
Wren tried to look as if she liked the idea, without actually promising she’d do it. She was afraid that if she agreed to come and help run the school she might end up like Miss Freya, large and kindly and unmarried. Changing the subject as swiftly as she could she asked, “Can I have a look in the library?”
“Of course!” said Miss Freya, as Wren had known she would. “You don’t need to ask! Was there a particular book…?”
“Just something Daddy mentioned once. The Tin Book.”
Wren blushed as she said it, for she wasn’t used to telling lies, but Miss Freya didn’t notice. “That old thing?” she said. “Oh, it’s hardly a book, Wren. More of a curio. Another of the House of Rasmussen’s many hand-me-downs.”
They went together to the library. It was small wonder, Wren thought, that the Lost Boys needed her help. This huge room was crammed with books from floor to ceiling, arranged according to some private system of Miss Freya’s. Tatty old paperbacks by Chung-Mai Spofforth and Rifka Boogie sat side-by-side with the wooden caskets containing precious old scrolls and grimoires. The caskets had the names of the books they held written on the back in small, gold letters, but many were too worn or faded to read, and Lost Boys probably weren’t very good readers anyway. How would a poor burglar know where to start?
Miss Freya used a set of steps to reach one of the upper shelves. She was really much too plump to go clambering about on spindly ladders, and Wren felt guilty and afraid that she might fall, but Miss Freya knew exactly what she was looking for, and she was soon down again, flushed from her exertions and holding a casket with the arms of the House of Rasmussen inlaid in narwhal-ivory.
“Have a look,” she said, unlocking it with a key that she took from a hook on a nearby wall.
Inside, on a lining of silicon-silk, lay the thing which Gargle had described. It was a book about eight inches high by six across, made from twenty sheets of tin bound with a rusty twirl of wire. The sheets were thick and dull and patched with rust, folded over at the edges to stop readers cutting their fingers on the
jagged metal. On the topmost sheet someone had scratched a circle with a crudely drawn eagle inside it; there was lettering around the edge of the circle and more below, but all too worn for Wren to make out any words. The other sheets had aged better and the long rows of letters, numbers and symbols which had been laboriously scratched into their surfaces were still faintly legible. What they meant, Wren could not say. The faded paper label on the back cover, stamped with the arms of Anchorage and the words Ex Libris Rasmussen, was the only thing that made any sense at all.
“It’s not very impressive, is it?” asked Miss Freya. “It’s supposed to be very old, though. There’s a legend about it, which the historian Wormwold quotes in his Historia Anchoragia. Long ago, in the terrible aftermath of the Sixty Minute War, the people of Anchorage were refugees, sailing a fleet of leaky boats across the northern seas in search of an island where they could rebuild their city. Along the way they encountered a wrecked submarine. The plagues and radiation-storms had killed off all her crew, except for one man, who was dying. He gave a document to my ancestor, Dolly Rasmussen, and told her to preserve it at all costs. So she kept it, and it was handed down from mother to daughter through the House of Rasmussen, until the paper crumbled. Then a copy was made, but because paper was scarce in those years, it was written on old food tins, hammered flat. Of course, the people who did the copying probably had no more idea what it all meant than you or I. The mere fact that it came from the lost world before the war was enough to make it sacred.”
Wren turned the metal pages, and the wire that bound them scratched and squeaked. She tried to imagine the long-ago scribe who had so painstakingly engraved these symbols, working by the light of a seal-fat lamp in the dark of that centuries-long winter, copying out each wavering column in a desperate attempt to salvage something from the world the war had destroyed. “What was it for?” she wondered. “Why did the submarine man think it was so important?”