Angel Isle

by Peter Dickinson

It was—tragic, appalling, filling the mind, leaving no room for thoughts of the Watchers, or what might lie beyond Zara’s cell. The strange, menacing buzz lost its intensity and died away. When the story ended they sat in silence, letting it find its place in their minds, unforgettable.

  “You can never tell what people will do,” said Saranja at last, “however well you think you know them. One of my warlord’s other women…”

  The story wasn’t tragic, just extremely strange, with a sad ending. Maja found herself on the edge of tears for two people she would never know, but who were probably still alive, somewhere on the other side of the great desert.

  “Better, Maja?” said Ribek when the story ended.

  Maja probed cautiously southward, and withdrew the moment she felt the buzzy sensation starting to wake.

  “I think so,” she said. “It’s like…my uncle’s old dog. She’d be lying in her kennel, fast asleep, not taking any notice of anything, but the moment she heard a stranger’s footstep she’d be up and barking.”

  “Is it just what we were talking about?” said Saranja. “I mean can we talk about where we’re going, and what we’re hoping to find there?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, yes, I suppose so, if we’re careful. But not now, not here.”

  Ribek chuckled.

  “So we continue to pass the time,” he said. “Lighter fare, do you think? This might be a good moment to tell you about the miller’s daughter,” he said. “There was a young mill hand whose wife bore him a son. Being an honest and thoughtful man, he determined to toil night and day at his craft until he had enough put aside to buy the mill he worked in, in order that he could leave it to his son. But a year had barely gone by before his wife bore him a second son.

  “‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I must buy or build another mill.’

  “But another year brought another son, a fourth year a fourth, until he had six sons…”

  This wasn’t one of the stories her mother told, so Maja hadn’t heard it before and was already enthralled. Despite that her head began to droop. She was cross about it. She wanted to listen to the story. It struck her that she fell asleep far too easily these days, but it was hot, and the night had been endless and her stomach was full of good food. She half woke a couple of times and heard another snatch of the adventure, but by the next time it was over and Ribek and Saranja were sitting on the far side of the gully talking in low voices. It wasn’t about Larg, or anything magical. But it was something that mattered, something serious.

  When she finally woke Ribek was gone. No, there he was, standing at the other end of the gully, silhouetted against the sunset glare beyond him. The tribespeople were laughing at him as he swung something vertically beside him. He turned, laughing too, and offered the object to them. Now Maja could see that it was a little triangular charm made of three sticks like the one the old woman had used to summon the water-spirit, but a bit smaller. Of course he’d wanted to try her water-magic, so he’d made himself a charm.

  Someone took it and passed it to the old woman, who bent over it, then rose and hobbled forward. Her spidery arm reached up and plucked at his beard. He didn’t back away or resist. She bent over the charm, peering at it and fiddling with it, then took his hand and pushed it close to his mouth. She spat into her palm to show what she wanted. Obediently he spat, and waited while she smeared his spittle carefully into the corners of the triangle and then handed it back to him. He turned to the desert and tried again.

  This time Maja sensed the flow of the magic and the snarl of the water-spirit’s response. Ribek let the swinging slow and cease, and the spirit subsided. The old woman clapped her hands together and hooted and the others responded with a rhythmic outburst of clapping and hooting. One by one they rose and touched Ribek on the cheek and returned to their places and fell silent. Ribek bowed to them, making a wide gesture with his arms to tell them how deeply he was honored. One of the men rose and made signs to him, pointing at the old woman and a boy who shyly held up his own water-charm, and then at Ribek, and finally made a sweeping, dismissive gesture at the rest of the group. They murmured quietly for a little while, then rose and began to gather up their things.

  Maja was still sulky with sleep when Ribek lifted her onto Levanter’s rump.

  “I want to know what happened in the story,” she said. “It wasn’t my fault I fell asleep.”

  “You were tired, and no wonder, all you’ve been doing. My turn for a nap now. You’ll have to take the reins.”

  He knotted the reins and laid them on Levanter’s neck, bowed his head and in a very few strides was asleep, swaying gently in the saddle to Levanter’s movement. He started to snore, rather more musically than he sang. Maja huddled against him, arms round his waist, enjoying the pleasant fantasy that she was protecting him, holding him steady, keeping him from falling, while he sat there helpless and vulnerable.

  Sometimes she wondered what he thought about her. She was fairly sure he was fond of her, loved her, even, but it wasn’t the same kind of love that she felt for him. Not that she really understood her own feelings for him. They were love all right, but they weren’t the sort of consuming, world-altering passion you hear about in stories. Dimly she could feel stirrings of that kind of love, the love whose language was glance and caress and close embrace, but she pushed them away. Not yet, she told herself, not yet. Not until he can feel the same about me. Till then she wasn’t going to think about it. It would be a nuisance, coming between them, an embarrassment to them both. They were much more comfortable as they were. Why spoil it?

  Ribek woke when they stopped at midnight to rest and eat and water the horses. The old woman summoned another underground stream to the surface, while Ribek watched and listened, fascinated.

  “Are you still all right?” he said as he lifted her back into the saddle.

  “I’m fine. I’ve been getting a story ready to tell you. It’s going to be better than yours.”

  He didn’t answer until they were on their way, and he had, deliberately, she thought, dropped Levanter back behind Rocky.

  “Can we leave the story for another time, Maja? I’d rather you told me about ‘Cherry Pits.’ It’s something that happened at Woodbourne, isn’t it? Saranja’s told me a bit about Woodbourne. You’ve never said a word. No, Maja, tell me. I’ve told you almost everything I know about Northbeck. It’s your turn now. Come on, Maja. You need to tell someone. Please.”

  She shook her head. He waited. Levanter plodded on. As if from a long way off she saw a girl standing in an empty room. No, only one corner of a room and part of the two walls that made it. The scene was lit by moonlight and starlight, and the floor was desert. A door shaped itself in the corner, but the girl had lost the key. Now Ribek’s figure—Maja would know it anywhere—appeared beside her and put something into her hand. A key. The girl stepped forward.

  He’s right, she thought. I can tell him because I love him.

  “My uncle…,” she began. “My aunt…”

  She stopped. It was too difficult. Even those five syllables.

  “I know about them,” said Ribek quietly. “Saranja’s told me. She told me roughly what happened. Your uncle had had one of his rages and stormed out, and after a bit your aunt sent you out to fetch him in….”

  “Yes. He was in the barn. I’d done it before. I never knew if he’d just snarl at me, or be nice to me. It was all right that morning. He told me to come and sit beside him and he’d teach me a song called ‘Cherry Pits.’ He put his arm round me and I put mine round him and we started. I was comfortable, happy…”

  He waited in silence while she fought for control.

  “And then my aunt came in. She didn’t say anything. She picked up an old halter and snatched me away from him and tied it round my wrists and then tied it to a ring in the wall so that my arms were high above my head with my face against the wall and she gave him a riding stock and said, ‘Whip her.’

  “He whipped me once. ‘You are nev
er to do that again,’ she told me. ‘Whip her again. Harder. And again.’ Each time he whipped me she said, ‘Never.’ He did it ten times. I was sobbing and screaming.

  “Then she untied me and took me into the kitchen and told me to strip off my top and lie face down on the floor. She rubbed some salve into my back and told me to dress again and took me out to the old dog-kennel and put a collar round my neck and chained it to a ring in the floor so I couldn’t stand up. She brought me scraps of meat and bread in a dog bowl and gave me a bowl of water to lap. She didn’t say anything till she let me out next evening. ‘You are less than a dog in this house,’ she told me. ‘Remember that. Now go and get the hens in and look for the eggs.’

  “That night Saranja came to my room and whispered to me that she was going away. She asked if I wanted to come too, but I was too afraid.

  “That’s all.”

  Ribek rode on in silence. Maja waited. She felt as she had back then, spoiled, loathsome…

  “Thank you for telling me,” he said gently, at last. “It must have been hard for you. Did that sort of thing happen often?”

  “That was the only time. She never hit me herself.”

  “And your father? You haven’t said anything about him.”

  “I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know who he was, or where he’s gone to, if he’s still alive. I think he must have done something too dreadful to talk about. I wasn’t allowed to ask. My mother only cried when I did, and my aunt found out and tied me to my bed for a day and a night.”

  “Mm. You haven’t asked Saranja, she says. She thought you knew.”

  “Oh! Does she…? Can she…?”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  He pushed Levanter forward till they were alongside Rocky. Maja could tell Saranja had been waiting for them from the way she looked down at her and smiled.

  “My…Ribek says you…my father…?”

  Still smiling, Saranja reached out and touched her cheek.

  “I’m your half-sister, Maja,” she said gently. “I thought you knew, but they’d made you too afraid to talk about it. I hope that’s good news.”

  She didn’t understand for a moment. Then she did. Her body went stiff. She gripped Ribek as hard as she could and gulped for breath.

  “My uncle…,” she croaked. “And my mother…That’s why it was all my fault!”

  Ribek snorted. Saranja pulled Rocky to a halt, and Levanter automatically stopped too. She let go of the reins, leaned across and took Maja’s hand between both of hers.

  “No, Maja,” she said. “You must stop thinking like that. You’re the only person whose fault it wasn’t. My parents never loved each other. She loved somebody else but he didn’t want to live at Woodbourne. She married my father because she wanted a daughter who could hear the cedars. He was a poor man and he married her for the farm, but it was never his. It was hers, and she didn’t let him forget it. She gave him two sons to go with it, but they weren’t what she wanted and he knew they could never inherit the farm. Then she had me. After that she wouldn’t let him touch her.

  “Something like that has happened again and again in our family, a woman forsaking love and wasting life trapped at Woodbourne for the sake of the story, but it’s never turned out so bad. Ever since I was small I’ve known I wasn’t going to let it happen to me, though she was determined that it should. I think I knew in my heart that if it did I would end up like her. Anyway, I believe that by the time I was born she already hated my father. That’s why she gave her sister a home when their parents died, though she treated her more as a maidservant than a sister. She must have known what would happen, and known that your mother was too great a ninny to say no. You were born so that she could hate him properly, and punish him by punishing you. That’s their fault, all three of them. Not yours.

  “And you still haven’t told me if you’re happy about being my sister. Because I am. Very.”

  “Oh, yes! Yes! But everything else…”

  She still couldn’t take it in. It couldn’t change anything. It had all happened. But it wasn’t her fault, and that changed everything. It even seemed to change how she thought about Ribek. If her father had never been allowed to love her, and she’d never been given a chance to love him…And what had her aunt done, to make her mother so hopeless…?

  “Ribek?”

  “Hm?”

  “Can we sing ‘Cherry Pits’ now?”

  He still couldn’t sing in tune. But they were lovers in the song, weren’t they? She loved him for that, and found herself singing the song as if it were true. He laughed and did the same, but it wasn’t Ribek singing, of course, it was the lover in the song. He couldn’t sing in tune either.

  When they’d finished all the verses they knew they invented some new ones until Maja couldn’t think of any more. Then she told him “The Owl-Witch” and he told her “The Miller’s Daughter” all over again, which lasted until, just as the eastern stars grew faint with daybreak, something changed. She knew what it was at once.

  “Benayu’s awake,” she said, whispering as if she’d been in a sickroom.

  Ribek leaned over and murmured the news to Saranja.

  “I’ll tell him what Zara said,” she answered, and reined Rocky back.

  Behind them Maja sensed the contact of two hands and heard the mutter of Saranja’s voice. She could feel Benayu’s almost overwhelming listlessness.

  “Good moment for him to wake,” said Ribek. “Looks as if we’re here.”

  Concentrating on events behind her Maja hadn’t noticed what was happening ahead. The sudden change made it a bit like coming to Larg all over again. They must have been climbing for some while back, but on a slope too gentle for her to be aware of it. Now they had reached the summit and were looking down a rather steeper slope into a world where it was already day.

  The sun was not yet risen. Below the pale dawn sky lay a level plain, blazing with color, sheets of scarlet, purple, yellow and clear bright blue, spreading between barren outcrops of rock. Through this glory ran the Imperial Highway, with a way station immediately below them. The amazing dazzle of colors was—she concentrated—flowers!

  “What…what…why…?” she stammered. “It isn’t magic, or I’d feel it.”

  “Rain,” said Ribek. “Fellow at Larg told me about it. It happens for about three weeks this time of year almost every year. Rainstorms sweep up the coastal plain and last year’s seeds germinate and grow, and the eggs of several sorts of moth which have been lying there all through the dry season hatch and pupate and turn into moths just in time to pollinate the flowers so that they can produce a fresh lot of seeds, and the moths mate and lay their eggs ready for next year, and die. It may not be magic, but it’s magical.”

  This was as far as the tribespeople would go. Ribek doled out chunks of salt to each of them, which was all they wanted by way of payment. As he did so they touched his cheek and he raised his hand in blessing.

  “We’d better do that to the old lady,” he muttered. “There’s not a lot of them can talk to the water-spirit, just her and that lad there in this group. The ones who can—me too now, I suppose—are kind of special.”

  He led the way, and Saranja and Maja copied him. The tribespeople responded with a few pleased hoots. The old woman hobbled to the litter, raised Benayu’s limp arm and touched his hand against her cheek. He stirred and muttered as if he’d been still asleep. Then they went their separate ways, the tribespeople back to their desert home and the travelers down to the Highway.

  CHAPTER

  11

  Emissaries from Larg had come up the North Highway and were waiting for them at the way station with more provisions. They’d also brought fresh ponies, but Saranja insisted that the horses needed a rest. This allowed Benayu to sleep most of the day, so that by nightfall he was sitting up and talking cheerfully, and helping himself generously to the good Larg food. To Ribek and Saranja he must have seemed almost himself again, but to Maja he w
as deeply changed.

  Before Larg, even when he wasn’t using them, to Maja’s extra sense he had tingled all the time with his magical powers. Now she was barely aware of them. But if she concentrated she could feel them, still there, deep down inside himself.

  And alongside them, something else, very old, very powerful, much more than a great tool, a marvelous machine, for him to use when he had learned how. Something that seemed almost alive in its own right. She remembered Benayu explaining that for a magician to make the change from the third to the fourth level was like learning to breathe water. It was as if this thing, this power had come the other way. It couldn’t breathe our air on its own. It could only exist inside a magician, breathing with human lungs, seeing with human eyes. It had lived inside Zara for most of her long life, but during that night when Benayu had lain on the hill above Larg it had left her and come to him. Zara must have known that this would happen, but for the sake of Larg she had let the power go. Now Benayu must learn to live with it, and it with him.

  The Imperial Highway stretched before them. Even on the cooler coastal plain it was still roastingly hot at noon, but the mornings and evenings were bearable enough to let them travel by day. They would set out at sunrise with the astonishing fields of flowers around them, sparkling with the morning dew. Well before noon that freshness would be gone, sucked away by the overbearing sun, and by midafternoon the desert would be desert as far as the eye could see. But as the air began to cool another batch of flowers would be opening and by sunset competing with the golds and crimsons of the western sky. To Maja’s extra sense their magic was like a song of exultation in their short, glorious moment of existence, and at night as she lay in the way station under the amazing desert stars she could sense the soft moths gliding over the fields of flowers, and settling to suck their nectar and at the same time smear themselves with the pollen that would produce fresh seeds to lie another year in the parched earth until next year’s rains woke them for another burst of glory.