The Ice House

by Tim Clare

  Hagar navigated the warren of tunnels by means of the rough map she had sketched on her last visit. Long ago, the Calvarian monks had stored their dead with their produce, boiling the cadavers in wine to remove the flesh, and stacking the bones amongst the casks. They had believed their souls would seep into the maturing vintages, imbuing the wine with a rich, melancholy character while granting its drinkers wisdom and piety. Since the Mucorians had moved in, many of the casks had bloated and split, oozing mould studded with slender, black-capped mushrooms. Skulls of the three prime species gazed from beneath gossamer sheets of white fungus.

  The route was longer than Hagar remembered. Her water flask was empty. She stopped to study her scratchy directions, the map brittle along its folds. Had she gone wrong at the last junction? The map appeared to indicate she should continue straight ahead. She might have made a mistake when she drew it. She had not been here for decades.

  She rounded a corner and found a dead end. The tunnel wall was ridged with shelves of plate fungus. Hagar dropped to her knees and began clawing at the fungus with both hands. It came up in brittle, stinking clumps. A dust of tiny spores drifted from the broken gills. She imagined them filling her lungs with every breath, finding warm, damp nooks to land in. She burrowed at the dirt like a dog.

  Her filthy nails scraped stone. She scooped more dirt away. There it was: a long groove, filled in with mortar. Sealed.

  Hagar grasped her pick and started hacking.

  The chamber reeked of earth and time.

  A low granite ceiling, narrow walls and a dirty stone floor, markedly older than the tunnels above. The lamplight guttered, smoking blackly. She held her breath. The flame recovered.

  Hagar pushed back her hood. Most of the floor was taken up by a single slate slab coated in fine grey dust. She knelt and blew, slapping at the carved letters until they became clear:

  So quod the wyght who marke thes stowne

  The welle be depe, I dorst not drowne

  So quod the wyght who nappe withyn

  I dorst not drowne, and thus I swym

  She remembered the brief fad for epigraphs in faux-archaic English, many years back – she supposed the succession of wars had left the middle classes craving roots, however ahistorical or ersatz. A quaint pastiche of the old world, before the perpetuum declared it off-limits and closed several major thresholds permanently. The slab seemed undisturbed. She felt faint, perhaps from the foul thin air, perhaps from anticipation.

  She set the lamp on the floor, then wedged the pick into the seam surrounding the slab. She started levering it up. The slab’s underside was greasy. It slipped, nearly crushing her fingers. She braced a foot against the wall and heaved. The slab rose, resisting, then tipped. It hit the floor with a bang.

  A waft of vinegar mixed with stale pomander gusted from the gravemouth. The coffin lay just as she remembered it. It sat in a rectangular pit about half as wide again as the coffin’s widest point. An eight-pointed star was carved into the walnut lid. Either side bore two sets of brass handles with pommels shaped like sea-peonies. Hagar climbed into the hole and used the lower handles to lift the bottom half of the coffin out. It was deceptively light. It contained the only surviving parts of the harka six-ways martyr Godbless Potto: his jawbone and a disc of black meat, pickled in a clay jar – supposedly his tongue.

  There was not enough room in the chamber for the coffin to lie flat, so, grunting and trembling, she hauled it up endwise and propped it against the wall.

  She jumped back into the hole. She was sweating now, hot with work. At some point she had slit her palm; blood filled out the creases in her skin.

  Beneath her, the ground was hard-packed sandy dirt. The coffin had left a mark like a giant squared-off footprint, with evenly spaced divots made by screwheads. She twisted the candle into the ground. Gingerly, tenderly almost, she began raking at the dirt with her fingernails.

  She clawed shallow trenches. Beneath the dry surface, the earth had the consistency of putty, coming up in brown glossy rinds.

  Shouldn’t she have found something by now? Grace gave way to panic. What if she had been betrayed? What if the martyr’s coffin had already been moved and replaced? She glanced over her shoulder, expecting the Ambassador to drop into the chamber clutching a pistol.

  No. Triumphant confrontations weren’t the Mucorians’ style. Lamp oil and a match, perhaps. Or just the scrape of a heavy granite slab sliding over the opening. No explanation.

  She tore at the gluey mud. Where was her faith? Why was she so weak? Or was she destined to fail as punishment for her weakness? Had she not been punished enough?

  Her fingers snagged in a filthy webbing of lace.

  She pulled at it. Fissures forked through hidden faults in the dirt. Hagar scooped up great chunks of mud, tossing them out of the pit. More lace. Fingernails. A tarnished ring. A torso. Pale skin. Blond hair.

  Hagar heard herself crying, laughing. She blinked and her tears fell upon the bridge of a nose, white cheeks. Crumbs of dirt dropped away as the lips parted. Eyelids twitched.

  Half-buried beneath Hagar, the sleeper opened her eyes.

  She was beautiful.

  CHAPTER 7

  AN ARCH WHERE THROUGH

  GLEAMS THAT UNTRAVELLED

  WORLD

  Delphine sat between heaps of packing crates, making herself a coffee on the portable gas burner. Martha was curled up in a cubby-hole under the boat’s gun locker, her legs and arms tucked in, her eyes pulsing with rainbows as she slept. Condensation dripped off everything. It brought the smells out of fabrics and left skin puckered and sheeny.

  Delphine took her coffee up to the open bow. Slick tunnel walls rolled through the lamp beam, wet, intestinal. Without sunlight, her circadian rhythms were in bits. She smothered a yawn with her fist. She reckoned they had been navigating the Underkills for four days. She had been sleeping in feverish snaps, waking fat-headed in the humid, lamp-fogged darkness.

  She sat and sipped her coffee, which burned her mouth, and ate a packet of peanuts. Her limbs ached from days of bending, squatting and lifting, but it was a satisfying pain, not the radiating, arthritic cramps she was used to – the soreness had a heat to it, a vitality. She was getting stronger.

  Alice stood at the stern, one hand on the tiller, overlit by a swaying lantern. She had her sleeves rolled up. She waved. Inches above her head, the tunnel ceiling was covered in giant albino molluscs with translucent spiral shells big as crash helmets.

  Delphine lit a cigarette. She puffed and took a long drag and held it. When she exhaled she felt lightheaded and sick. She had never really enjoyed smoking, not the way other people seemed to, but she liked the ritual of it. It made her feel sly and self-destructive, like a private detective. She especially liked the end – the final tug, then the grinding out or the insouciant flick. Finishing a cigarette felt decisive – a little accomplishment.

  The boat shuddered as Alice accelerated into a straight. She was a good helmsman. Delphine took a last hit and flicked her cigarette into the river, an orange firefly arcing through the darkness. A wet mouth snapped it up and disappeared.

  She found Butler in the cabin with a lapful of electrical components.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she said.

  ‘The radio isn’t working.’

  ‘Perhaps if you fitted all those little pieces together.’

  He made a snarling noise at the back of his throat. An oil lamp hung from a crossbeam and he worked by its swaying light.

  ‘Maybe it’s because we’re underground,’ said Delphine.

  Butler stripped a length of wire with his fangs and sighed. ‘Radio is a misnomer. It doesn’t rely on radiowaves.’ He held up a little glass valve filled with godstuff. ‘It communicates between worlds. Location doesn’t matter.’

  ‘How long has it been broken?’

  ‘I found out shortly after we set off.’

  ‘When were you planning to tell us?’

  He tweaked one of
the leads of a capacitor and attached it to a battery. ‘When I got it working.’

  ‘So we’ve no way of checking in with base camp or contacting England?’

  ‘Not at present.’ He began picking through the mess in his lap.

  ‘Why didn’t you check it before we left?’

  ‘Ah eh.’

  ‘What?’

  Butler took the crosshead screwdriver out of his mouth. ‘I did.’

  ‘What are you implying?’

  Butler set the pieces down. He rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Look, I feel there’s been a misunderstanding. You’re here because Ms Rao needed a portal lanta after our previous one absconded. I don’t value your input and I don’t require your company.’

  ‘Well, I don’t value your comfort and I don’t require your approval. And you’re outnumbered. So that’s a bloody pickle we’re in, isn’t it?’

  Butler closed his eyes. He touched two fingertips to his brow.

  ‘This will take longer to fix if I’m forced to break it over your head.’ His noseleaf scrunched as he inhaled.

  ‘Fine.’ She marched out of the cabin, hissing arsehole under her breath. Her face felt hot. She went and sat and smoked another cigarette. Then she filled a pipe and smoked that as well.

  About a day later, she woke to silence. The engine had cut out. After almost a week of constant gruzzling, its absence felt like falling.

  She scrambled onto the foredeck. Butler stood on a bank of silt and pebbles, his arms folded. The mooring rope was knotted round a stalagmite.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she said.

  He stepped back. Behind him, in the wall of the tunnel, was the mouth of a passageway.

  ‘We need fresh water,’ he said. He tossed a bowie knife into the air and caught it, blade down. ‘Grab some gallon jugs from under the bunks.’

  She fetched three plastic jugs and her sickle. When she stepped off the boat, she had a strange, nauseous moment of transitioning to solid ground; the tunnel seemed to scroll on without her, dragging at her essence.

  She followed Butler into the passageway. He carried an electric torch, but after a few turns and a flight of steps cut into the rock, it was no longer necessary. Sunlight was leaking down towards them.

  It felt eerie, painful even. She had to shield her eyes as they neared the top. The air grew rapidly warmer. Scents wafted thickly: wet earth and heady, cloying perfume.

  Butler pushed through great serrated fronds blocking the entrance. The leaves slid back together with a slicing sound. They emerged on a steep hillside.

  Alice was standing by a stream that frothed over pink rocks. Huge ferns trailed in the water. Sunbeams punctured the canopy, lifting mist from the understorey and highlighting clouds of butterflies. Here and there lay lumps of mortar, covered in moss. Screeches echoed from the treetops, answered by croaks, knocks, rasping stridulations.

  ‘Is Martha here?’

  Alice pointed up. Martha was hovering near the canopy, beneath a cat’s cradle of thick creepers. Tangled in the centre of them was what looked like a big, rusted gate. Delphine walked underneath to get a better look. The gate had an embossed metal plaque on one edge. She could make out letters:

  esse

  t

  fice

  Butler’s ears were pricked. He nodded downhill, into the jungle.

  ‘Wine fruit grove.’

  ‘You can hear fruit?’

  He shot her a look, lips peeling back from his fangs contemptuously. ‘The dogmoths they attract have a distinctive ultrasonic call.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘If we load up while we’re here you’re more or less guaranteed fresh food all the way to Fat Maw.’ He began tramping down the hill, pumping his wings to disperse pinflies. Martha flew after him.

  ‘Well?’

  Delphine whirled round. Alice stood in the sunshine, damp white-gold hair swept down one side of her head. She was coated in sweat; her hair had corrugated in the wet heat. She wiped her palms on her vest, leaving red smears of mud. She wore a little polyester satchel at her hip, and carried a big machete. Sunlight caught the blade’s whetted edge, painted a sheen across her wet clavicles. They lifted and sank as she breathed.

  Delphine found she could not remember how to speak. Somehow she knew this person and did not know her at all. Alice threw her head back and smiled, her eyes gleaming.

  ‘Fancy a walk in the woods?’

  Even in the shade, the heat was punishing.

  Butler stopped at a cluster of trees. He click-chirruped at Martha, who took a knife and flew up into the branches. He told Delphine and Alice that he thought there would be more fruit, farther downstream.

  Delphine shadowed Alice as they stomped through mulchy leaf litter. She thumbed the catch on her sickle and hacked at lianas, the whetted blade slicing cleanly.

  They came to a deep, circular pool, surrounded by overhanging trees and crested by a low waterfall of speckled pink rock. Soft apricot light filtered down through steaming vegetation. Creepers dabbled the water, covered in orange and cyan blooms.

  Alice stopped and placed her fists on her hips. ‘This must be the place.’

  Delphine looked up at the nearest tree. A swollen trunk covered in glossy yellowy-white scales climbed unsteadily towards a rosette of huge, tongue-shaped leaves sheltering lush clusters of purple and blush-pink gourds. Sure enough, moths with curious cream-coloured segmented wings fluttered around the treetop, heat-drugged.

  ‘Right!’ Alice clapped her hands together. ‘You get ready to catch.’ She kicked off her shoes and planted a foot against the scaly bark.

  ‘Alice, don’t you dare.’

  Alice glanced back over her shoulder and stuck her tongue out. With that she was off, climbing like a cat, gripping the bark with splayed fingers. Her light cotton skirt let her move freely, sliding her soles up the bole’s smooth abdomen, pressing her arches into footholds.

  ‘Alice!’ Delphine’s chest tightened. ‘Come on now. You might fall!’

  Alice laughed. From somewhere far off to their right, some creature up in the canopy replied with a cannonade of yips.

  ‘I really might!’

  Alice clasped a rounded knot of bark. She gripped the thick of the trunk with her thighs. The slick ridge of her tricep stood out as she tensed her arm, hauled herself higher.

  She was just under the tree’s spreading crown. Beneath huge, lolling leaves, old dead leaf bases hung like lengths of dried flax. She braided several together and gripped them like a rope. With her other hand, she reached into her satchel and retrieved the cleaver.

  ‘Get ready!’ She leaned back, allowing her body to hang out over the jungle floor. Delphine felt a cold, watery vertigo. Her scalp tingled and her legs felt weak.

  ‘Alice. I’m asking for your own good. Come down.’ God, she sounded like Mother.

  Fuzzy pink wine fruit hung about Alice in plump clusters. ‘But then I won’t get to taste these amazing fruits!’

  ‘Please. I don’t want you getting hurt.’

  Alice tipped her head back and looked down, her hair dangling in wet lengths. ‘Then why did you bring me here?’

  She swung the machete. The blade made a noise like spitting. A wine fruit dropped. Delphine’s old cricketing reflexes kicked in; she stepped back and cupped her palms. It was a sitter. She caught it with a pleasing slap.

  The fruit in her hands was pink with red splashes, shaped like a cannonball and coated in downy fuzz. She hefted it. At least two pounds.

  ‘More!’ yelled Alice.

  Delphine looked up and two more fell at her. She caught one with her free hand and sidestepped as the second thumped into the leaf litter.

  ‘Oi!’ She tossed the others down beside it. Already Alice was brandishing the machete for another swing.

  ‘Look out below!’

  Chop. Thump. The blade bit through stalks. The long, dry fronds rustled. Fruit dropped. Delphine pivoted and skipped, catching them in ones and twos, falling into steady rhythm. Her body re
sponded just as she wanted. She stacked wine fruits in a bright heap. Her heart drummed keenly and her face glowed. Every time she looked up, there was Alice.

  Rain began to fall – a light, refreshing haze that trickled down the ribs of leaves and made boughs shiver. Delphine and Alice sheltered under a waxy green frond the size of a grocer’s awning. The leaf litter was soft. Delphine slipped off her bag and set it down, heavy with spoils.

  Alice took a wine fruit from the heap. She worked her flat, curved blade into the flesh, flensing it free with a twitching of the wrist. Gummy strands of red-pink pap elongated and snapped.

  The rain made a sound like ripping or frying. The pool shattered and danced. Delphine breathed in the sweet aroma of chlorophyll.

  ‘Oughtn’t we to be heading back?’ she said.

  Alice shrugged. ‘Probably.’ She carved the fruit against the flat of her thigh, using the rind as a chopping board. Juice ran down her legs. She speared a chunk with the tip of the blade and held it out for Delphine.

  Delphine took the pulpy, dripping flesh between her fingertips. She sniffed. It smelt sour, zesty.

  Alice sank her teeth into a wedge. One of her eyelids pinched; juice squirted down her chin.

  ‘Ugh.’ She put her hand to her mouth. Delphine thought she was going to spit it out, but she chewed, her eyes widening. ‘Ohhhh. Oh wow.’

  Delphine bit into the fruit. The first flavour was a fizzy, tingling bitterness. She turned the pulp on her tongue – sharp, metallic notes rose, then . . .

  ‘Mmm.’ Resolution into subtle, unexpected sweetness – oranges, plums, persimmons. She chewed the flesh down to a stringy pith, then spat the remainder into the soil.