Skyborn

by Sinéad O'Hart

  “Dr Bauer, I don’t know what this box is, or where it is, but I can tell you that boy has nothing to do with anyone on Melita. I don’t even know if he has any relatives there. Not living ones, at least. Why’s it so important, anyway?”

  Bauer descended one step, putting him face to face with the ringmaster. “It is not important, Mr Quinn. Not to anyone else, at least. It is simply something I would have liked and I felt sure it would be here. But it is of no consequence.” He tucked his handkerchief back into his pocket. “If it turns up, please keep it for me. I shall hope to collect it in a month, when I am back in Britain.”

  “And if it doesn’t turn up?”

  “You shall be generously compensated for your time and effort in looking for it, Mr Quinn,” Bauer said. “Perhaps that will help it to turn up.”

  Bauer descended another step, forcing Quinn to stand back to let him pass. The ringmaster’s eyes were unsettled and thoughtful, like a stirred-up riverbed, suddenly full of things long-buried. Alice frowned at him, wondering what he was remembering, but then he blinked and the strange look disappeared. “How about the rest of that tour now, then?” he said, to Bauer’s back. The other man turned.

  “I’m afraid I must return to London immediately,” he said, bowing very slightly as though in apology. “My airship leaves from there at eight this evening, bound for the Americas. I have associates in Antarctica at present, conducting research into one of my other business interests, and I am to meet them in the Argentine Republic in a little under a fortnight’s time. But I shall be back, as I say, in one month, and I am already looking forward to a return visit to your circus.”

  Quinn raised an eyebrow. “The feeling’s mutual, I’m sure. Well. The tour can wait until next time, then.”

  “Exactly so. I hope to find your circus in rude health, and the box waiting for me, when I return.” Bauer gave a courteous nod. “And perhaps I will have the honour of meeting young Bastjan in person when I come for the box. Please extend my best wishes to the boy in the meantime.”

  The pale stranger turned and walked away, and Alice lay trembling in her hiding place. She squeezed her eyes tight, wrapping her fingers round the box. He’ll pay you for it! said a voice inside her head. You heard him – he’s willing to pay anything. Enough for you to disappear completely and never be found. She opened her eyes again. The ringmaster was still at Crake and Bastjan’s wagon, looking troubled and thoughtful, and as he turned, making for his own wagon, Alice knew this was her chance to follow Bauer, box in hand. If she didn’t go now, the chance would be lost.

  Your firemark, Crake’s gentle voice whispered in her memory. A mark of power. Given to the best among us… Alice wiped away a tear, her heart slowing. Crake and Bastjan hadn’t cared about her face. They’d been kind – kinder than anyone had ever been. They trust me. I can’t let them down. She took a deep breath and slowly released it, waiting to feel steady again. I have to find Crake and Bastjan and tell them what I’ve seen, she told herself. And Quinn’s got something on his mind too – something that could be important.

  Once she was sure the coast was clear, Alice wriggled out and got to her feet, making straight for the big top, the box safely tucked inside her coat.

  “Bastjan!” Alice sounded out of breath. He looked up at her, scrubbing away his tears with the heels of his hands. His chin and jaw still ached from where the ringmaster had grabbed him, and his breath sounded like molasses in his lungs.

  Alice’s thoughts about what she’d just witnessed vanished as she stared at him. “Bastjan, are you all right?” She dropped to her knees, reaching out her arm to help him.

  “Fine,” he managed. “Whoop. Jus’ need a minute.”

  As Alice hauled him up, they were joined by a woman dressed in a performance costume. The woman walked with Bastjan and Alice to the ringside barrier and helped Bastjan on to it, where he sat with his body slumped and his sweaty hair stuck to his forehead. Alice was bursting to tell Bastjan her news, but didn’t want to while someone else was listening.

  “Nanette van Hemel,” the woman said, reaching over to shake Alice’s hand. “At least, that’s what they call me here.” She smiled. Alice recognized her from the Grand Parade as the lady in the ring. She took in Alice’s face with interest and the girl shrugged her birthmark into her hair. “Are you new around here?”

  “I’m a … a friend of Bastjan’s,” Alice said.

  “Righto,” said Nanette, when it became clear Alice didn’t want to say anything more. “I’m glad someone’s here to keep an eye on the boy. I’d better go and track down Mr Quinn, see what’s going on with tonight’s show.” Nanette gave Bastjan one last pat on the shoulder and then she was gone.

  Alice watched until Nanette was out of earshot and then she turned back to Bastjan. He looked washed-out and weary, his face clammy and his eyes downcast. “Hey!” Alice said. “The stranger – the sponsor. He’s been in your wagon!”

  Bastjan turned to her. “What?”

  “He’s looking for your mum’s box, as a souvenir. Though he didn’t say why it had to be the box and nothing else,” Alice said. “I heard him talking to the ringmaster about it.”

  “Quinn?” Bastjan coughed thickly. “So now ’e knows too?”

  “That’s not all,” Alice continued. “When he was talking to the sponsor about it, Quinn started to look strange – like he was remembering something. I’m not sure what. He took off for his own wagon straight afterwards.”

  Bastjan breathed slowly for a moment as he thought. “Lookin’ for Mum’s chest, maybe,” he said. “Checkin’ it for the box. Only he won’t find it there.”

  Voices outside the tent drew their attention and daylight pooled in the entrance. Two silhouettes became visible – a woman’s and a man’s. Nanette and the ringmaster, on their way back to the ring. Alice’s heart began to pound. So much for staying out of sight, you idiot! she berated herself, but it was too late to hide now.

  “Whatever you want, Mr Quinn,” Nanette was saying as they walked into the tent. “The sooner we get practising the better. I’m sure we can have an act in place before Dr Bauer’s return.”

  “Just do your best,” Quinn said. He looked away from his aerialist and his eyes fell on Alice. “And here she is, then – the girl you were telling me about?”

  “That’s her,” Nanette said, smiling down at Alice. “Her firemark, sir. Remarkable, isn’t it?”

  “Just as you described,” Quinn agreed. He bent forwards, tilting his head slightly. “Hello, there,” he said, falsely bright. “I’m Cyrus Quinn. And you are?”

  “A friend of Bastjan’s,” Alice replied. “Passing through.”

  Quinn straightened up. “I’m sure.” Then he looked at Bastjan. “You’ll get back to work, boy. Dr Bauer was inspecting the circus’s assets just now.” Quinn paused as he cast his gaze around the big top, before fixing Bastjan with a stare. “The last thing I want is to hear of him selling my property off, bit by bit. So if you want a home to call your own, you’d better start to fly. We have one month, tops.”

  Bastjan swallowed hard. “Yessir,” he muttered.

  Quinn gave a sharp nod. “Now. If you’ll all excuse me, I’m sure you have work to do.” With that, he turned and made his way out of the ring.

  Nanette heaved a deep breath. “Right, then,” she said, giving Bastjan a fleeting smile. “Will we get started?”

  Flames danced against the night, crackling like laughing tongues, spitting out sparks. Everywhere was noise; voices shouting, words rattling and clattering like stones, like bones, and the sound of breaths tearing through pained lungs somewhere close by. Eyes, wide with terror, reflecting the fire. The terror of being found. We must not be found!

  And then an explosion, louder than the end of the world…

  Bastjan jolted awake, sitting straight up. His heart was racing painfully fast and his chest felt tighter than a clenched fist. His breaths squeaked, in and out. He placed his hand against the wall, his finge
rs rasping against the paper glued there, the pictures of his mother. Moonlight shone on the rim of the washstand mirror and on the fittings of the quenched oil lamp. Crake, safe in his bunk, snored lightly. And overhead, slung in a spare bedsheet, hammock-like, slept Alice, with Wares tucked in at her feet. Everythin’s fine, he told himself. A dream, that’s all it was.

  Slowly, Bastjan’s pulse returned to normal and his breaths began to fill his chest.

  “Are you all right?” Alice’s whisper made Bastjan jump. He blinked into the darkness.

  “Did you hear it?” he asked. “The screamin’. An’ the bang.”

  “All I heard was you, whimpering.”

  “A dream, then, for sure,” Bastjan said. “Din’t feel like it, though.” He reached to pull the box out from beneath his pillow. It was unlocked and he popped it open, drawing out his mother’s notebook. It sat on his knee like a rectangle of night, dark against the white of his bedsheets.

  “Do you want to read some?” Alice whispered.

  Before he could answer, Alice had already slid out of her precarious hammock and landed on the floor. Barefoot, she was clad in one of Crake’s old shirts as a nightgown. She clambered on to Bastjan’s bed, wrapping herself in a blanket while he lit a candle and set it in a nook on the wall.

  The children blinked as they got used to the glow. Bastjan tried to drive the images from his dream out of his head, but they stubbornly refused to move. They seemed planted in his brain, like a memory. But not one o’ mine, he thought. One o’ Mum’s. His thoughts turned to the creature his mother had drawn. Or maybe one o’ theirs, instead.

  “We should probably start at the beginning,” Alice said as Bastjan handed her the notebook. “Or the beginning of the entries written in English, at least.” She began to flick through the pages of his mother’s sketches, pausing for a moment at the one of the strange half-human creature.

  “Wish I knew what that was,” Bastjan said, leaning in.

  “The bracelet in the box,” Alice said. “This is it, isn’t it?” She pointed at the creature’s arm.

  Bastjan nodded. “Think so,” he said, frowning. He wanted to tell her how the bracelet made him feel, every time it touched his skin, but he couldn’t get the words past his tongue.

  “And there’s this,” Alice continued, taking the torn-off page out of the back of the notebook and unfolding it. “I wonder if these creatures have anything to do with the one your mum drew?”

  Bastjan shrugged. “Must ’ave,” he said. “Why would she ’ave kept this page otherwise?”

  “They’re shapeshifters,” Alice said thoughtfully. “All different sorts. So I wonder if your mum’s creature is too.”

  Bastjan stiffened. “Shapeshifters? ’Ow d’you figure that out?”

  “It’s in French,” she said. “I know a bit. I had a tutor, for a while, when I was younger.” She coughed, hurrying on. “And I know this word.” She pointed at the writing beneath one of the drawings which, to Bastjan, looked the same as all the other black squiggles. “Le métamorphe. The shapeshifter.”

  “Shapeshifter,” Bastjan repeated, feeling a chill run through him.

  Alice slid it back into the notebook and continued to flick through the pages. “Ah – here we go.” She stopped and folded the notebook flat, running her fingers along its spine. Bastjan drew his knees up to his chest as she began to read.

  “June 6th. The weather was cruel hot today. Baba felt it too. He was quite out of sorts. Q would not excuse us from duty. I am too tired to write more.” Alice looked at Bastjan, but he kept his eyes firmly on the page.

  “June 15th. I had a tincture from Carmen tonight to help my aches. I have been working hard. She also gave me an oil to add to warm water, for soothing sore feet, and she and Ana watched Baba for me while I bathed. Cornelius returned from town with extra milk (for Baba) and some roses (for me). I think they dislike Q as much as I have grown to. He pushes me too hard and I have no choice but to allow it.”

  Alice scanned the page, turning to the next one. “It goes on like that for a while,” she said. “Short entries, mostly about tiredness and working too much.”

  “What about the last thing she wrote?” Bastjan said. “Can you find that?”

  Alice nodded and turned over one final page. The writing stopped midway down, leaving all the other pages blank.

  “August 7th. I thought a lot about Bastjan today,” Alice began, “and Mama’s face when they told us about him and Papa, and how they were gone. I remember their boat and its colours. I remember our house and Mama in the door. I remember Bastjan—”

  Alice paused, confused. “She’s not talking about you here, is she?”

  Bastjan shook his head. “Her brother,” he whispered. “He was Bastjan too. She named me after ’im.”

  Alice took in a deep, sympathetic breath and then began to read again.

  “I remember Bastjan, and his hair which was always too long, and his crooked tooth in front. Going home … it’s a dream. Would Mama be there? Would she welcome me? I hope she would understand. I had to leave, because she wouldn’t let me fly. I had to fly. Bastjan understood. He knew. He sent me to the wall. He gave me the wings I needed and I flew.”

  Alice paused again. “What wall?” she whispered.

  Bastjan sat forwards suddenly. Wide-eyed, he rummaged through the box until he found a smaller piece of paper – a piece of paper which had once been neatly folded around a key. The drawings on it hadn’t made sense the first time he’d seen them, but now, like a coin dropping into the right slot inside his mind, they suddenly did.

  “How ’bout these?” he whispered, showing the paper to Alice. Between blocks of the same looping handwriting, the letters tiny, were drawings of what looked like walls, towering high above a stick-figure person. They were drawn again and again, from every angle, and on the paper’s other side, there was a large ‘O’ mostly filled in with dark ink scratchings, enclosed within a carefully drawn outer circle. At the centre of the ‘O’ was an irregular shape, drawn with waves across its surface, like it was a pool. Along one side of the outer circle were more scribbled wavy lines, some curled at the top like sea foam.

  “But what is it?” Alice said.

  “A map,” Bastjan replied. He pulled the loose sheet from inside his mother’s notebook once again. The picture of the lizard-lady glowered up at him, but he ignored her. “Look,” he whispered, jabbing at the drawing in the corner of the page, the one which, he now saw, looked just like the map his mother had made. “This is on Melita, in’t it? The same place Mum was from?”

  Alice nodded. “La Cité du Silence,” she read, running a finger under some tiny words printed beneath the image, above the word ‘Melita’. “It means the Silent City.” She met his eye. “And your mum drew it too.”

  “So she must be talkin’ about these walls,” Bastjan said. “The walls of this place. The Silent City.”

  Alice ran her hand over the page with the creatures on it. “And look,” she said, pointing at the half human, half fish inside the walled space of the Silent City. “Here’s something, inside the city. Something not fully human.”

  The children looked at one another.

  “So behind the wall – inside this Silent City. That’s where it is – the creature Mum drew.” Bastjan swallowed hard.

  “Let’s read the rest,” Alice suggested, picking up the notebook once again. She took a breath and began. “I dream that Mama is there, in our house, and that when I put the key into her door – the key I took the night I ran, the key I keep always to remind me where my home is – that she will hear me and open before I turn it, and that she will kiss my cheeks and call me darling, as she always did. And that I can explain, and she will understand, how I needed to be free – but not free of her. Then together we can walk to the walls and I will climb one last time, and I will leave the bracelet there. I hope the Slipskin will find it and then I can be at peace. The bracelet is not mine. It helped me to fly, but it is not mine
, and I have kept it for too long.”

  “She wanted to give it back,” Bastjan said, blinking hard. “That’s why she was goin’ home. An’ bringin’ me with ’er. She was goin’ back to her mum, an’ goin’ to make things right. But she never got the chance.”

  “What’s a Slipskin?” Alice frowned at the page and then her expression cleared. “Le métamorphe,” she said.

  “Eh?” Bastjan muttered.

  “The Slipskin,” Alice said, turning to Bastjan, “must be the creature your mum drew. Maybe it’s a shapeshifter too, like the others on that bit of paper. And somehow she had its bracelet.”

  “An’ now I have it,” Bastjan said slowly. “So it’s up to me to get it back where it belongs.”

  “How are you going to do that?” Alice said. “Melita’s in the middle of the Midsea, somewhere north of Afrik. It’s miles from here!”

  “Has to be a way,” Bastjan said.

  “But this creature – this Slipskin – mightn’t even be there. Maybe it’s dead.” Alice peered at Bastjan in the gloom.

  “Even so, I got to get the bracelet back,” he replied. “No matter how long it takes. Mum din’t make it, but I will.”

  “I believe you,” Alice whispered. Then Bauer’s oddly pale face floated in her memory and she remembered the cold gleam in his eyes as he’d described the box. She glanced down at it and carefully began to replace its contents. “We’ve got to keep this stuff out of Quinn’s hands, and away from that Bauer person too. I don’t believe his story for a minute – he’s not just some fan of your mother’s. He wants this box, which means he knows something about it – probably more than we do. Maybe he even knows about the Slipskins.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. Whatever ’e might want Mum’s things for, chances are it’s nothin’ good,” Bastjan whispered as Alice closed the lid. His eyes were gritty with tiredness and his limbs ached. It had been a busy day of rehearsals and performance, and he knew tomorrow, and the day after, and every day as far as he could see, would be just the same. He needed to sleep, but he was afraid to in case the dream-memories, the ones not his own, wrapped themselves around him again.