Twelve Nights

by Andrew Zurcher

  The pocket of air (she found by a little more groping with her hand) came from a tear in the balloon fabric. Releasing Ell, she reached for the tear, pulling it as close as she could amid the folds and tangled mass of the material. Then, latching her sister close, she heaved the two of them up towards it. With some struggling they got their faces free, then out into the night air. She could see almost nothing past a couple of metres. The moon was hidden and there was no sign of Will or Flip.

  ‘Ell, are you okay?’ Kay relaxed her arm a little, but the slight body of her sister remained firmly pressed to her side.

  The voice might have been muffled, but it come out strong. ‘I can’t get my legs free.’ Eloise sounded as if she were trying to solve a puzzle – rather than extricating herself from the aftermath of a terrifying crash. Kay felt her heart loosen at the simple, courageous statement.

  After some pushing and wriggling, Kay disentangled them both from the heavy swaddle of the cloth. They found themselves standing on it, unsteadily attempting to cross its still billowing surface towards the edge, and firmer ground. The thick-draped darkness around them ruffled with the breeze. Under Kay’s hand, where the sleeve of her coat had hiked up in the crash, the skin of Ell’s arm suddenly broke out in goose pimples.

  ‘Kay,’ she said, her little voice still resonant with innocent courage, ‘what’s happened? I thought we were going to find Dad.’

  Even if there had been time to answer, Kay wouldn’t have known what to say. She didn’t, and there wasn’t.

  ‘Jump off. Quickly,’ said Will, his face looming out of the darkness, weirdly lit by the raking light of a bright lantern. ‘It’s not safe. Grab on. Now.’

  Kay hauled at Ell and tried to fling her forward. She herself only just had time to lurch and then topple on to Will as a piece of the tackle and rigging sprang airwards, lashing into the place where she had been standing the instant before. At last she saw Flip, with a long knife in his hand, sawing at something. He was cutting a cable.

  ‘We came down on a cliff,’ Will said in a low voice. He was just audible over the rising wind. ‘I tried to get an anchor in, but it won’t hold the basket if the sailcloth goes over and catches the wind. And it is. Going over. Flip’s trying to save the basket. What’s left of it.’

  Flip was moving around the now nearly upended basket, working his way through the ropes and cables, which snapped as he sheared them, and flung away with the tension of the cloth that was still dragging at them. He had four or five to go when he called out to Will, ‘Move the girls back in case anything gets fouled.’

  Will pulled Kay, and Kay reached out to take Ell’s hand. She grasped it and started to pull her towards the shelter of a cluster of large stones. But Ell wasn’t coming. Kay tugged.

  ‘Kay,’ said the little voice behind her. ‘Kay, I think I’m stuck.’

  Everything seemed to happen in a slow rush. She turned, and by Will’s light immediately saw that her sister’s leg had become snagged in a mass of halyards, guy ropes, tethers, sailcloth and other debris from the balloon’s crash. But no sooner had she turned than Ell’s hand was wrenched from her own, and her tiny form dragged two or three metres across the hard ground. The movement of the fabric in the wind, billowing in places like a sail, twisted and flipped her little body as it dragged her, with each turn, with every metre tangling her further in a tight knot of cords and fabric. She was screaming.

  Flip had sprung clear the instant the balloon shifted. At first he was watching only his own feet, keeping himself free, while Kay stood stunned, paralysed, staring into him, willing him to help. And Will – she felt like the three of them were standing deep underwater; for a moment everything seemed so heavy, even thinking.

  Then Ell began sliding again.

  They all reached her at about the same time – Flip bounding across the dancing ropes like some sort of deranged and acrobatic snake-charmer, Will loping low along the ground, grabbing at the ropes where he could, trying to get purchase on something – anything – to stop the balloon’s relentless drag towards the cliff’s edge. But Kay had eyes only for Ell, and it was to her outstretched arms that she ran, without any thought that her own feet might become snared as the tackle lashed and swirled around her ankles like so many vicious and venomous jaws.

  ‘Kay, help me! Help!’ cried Ell. She was sobbing with frustration, pushing and squirming against the ropes binding her. Kay hooked her fingers around one fragile wrist, then the other. She held, fighting Ell to be quiet, to stay put. Will had his hands on something – a section of fabric – and had dug his heels against the loose stones lying all around; with a heaving effort he was holding back the weight of the cloth, buying the little girl time.

  ‘Just hold it, Will,’ called Flip. He was near. He had Ell’s leg in his hands. It was wrapped in cords and leather straps. The leg of her trousers had been pulled up and her calf was starting to turn purple. Kay stared at it. There were so many, many knots, so many different strands and threads and turns and twists. Her eyes ached to see it, and the blood in her chest crawled against her ribs like ants.

  ‘Use your knife, Flip – I can’t hold it.’

  Flip was still staring at Ell’s leg, at the mass of knots and tangles. ‘I can’t – there’s too much. I’d cut her. Wait.’

  ‘I can’t wait, Flip. If the wind rises –’

  Flip dropped Ell’s leg and stood up. A mass of fury screamed in Kay’s head. How dare he give up! How dare he walk away!

  ‘Kay. Kay. Kay.’

  Flip’s hands were dancing before his face, writhing with his fingers extended, looking intently at Ell, then at his hands, then at Ell. Kay thought at first that he was going to cast some sort of spell, that he thought he was some kind of sorcerer – but that wasn’t it. He was moving his hands in the way Will had earlier over the plotting board.

  ‘Three more seconds, Flip,’ said Will. He spat every word through a separate surge of exhausted effort.

  Flip’s hands danced. He seemed mesmerized now, as if he had entranced himself, as if he were watching the most important thing in the world, as if he had become so engaged and enthralled with it that he had fallen out of time, as if he were deep in a kind of intent love with the movement of his hands in the air before him. He seemed as tangled as Ell.

  And then, suddenly, he snapped clear of it. With a fluid motion he reached to the knife at his belt, drew it, dropped to his knees and sliced a single cord at the top left of the mass of knots that were still tightening around Ell’s knee and thigh. At the same moment Will, exhausted, let slip the cloth from his fists and fell backwards, toppling across Flip’s shoulder and knocking him flat on the ground.

  But Kay hardly noticed.

  She had eyes only for the cords around Ell’s leg. They seemed to recoil, as if they were living things, from the place where Flip had cut. Some spun and whipped away; others swirled and untwisted like water pouring down a drain; others again seemed to untie themselves from complex knots and vanish like steam on a breeze – but one way or another, as if a key had turned with a click in its lock, they all sped disentangled off, yawning open, and Ell scrambled to her feet and launched her body into Kay’s arms. Kay just held her.

  How did he do that?

  By the time she opened her eyes again and looked around, the two wraiths had already set about sorting the salvage. Flip was hauling carefully at the basket – upended a few metres away – and, with a tottering crash, had it settled again. Kay scrutinized him over Ell’s huddled shoulder. The thought flashed through her mind that he was dangerous; a thought that made her feel guilty when he looked up, catching her in it.

  ‘Sometimes you just need to know which thread to cut,’ he said. He held her eyes the space of a long breath, shrugged and then clambered into the basket, checking for damage. ‘Not bad!’ he called out.

  Kay and Ell, after some hesitation and on unsteady legs, followed Will over.

  ‘Instruments? Gear?’ Will was asking. ‘Can you get our
position?’

  ‘The good news,’ Flip said, practically beaming, ‘is that we’re pretty much there. An hour’s walk or less, I’d say. And the way the balloon collapsed on to the basket as we fell seems to have kept most of the gear in.’

  ‘Is there bad news?’ asked Kay. She felt blank, as stunned as her sister’s gaping eyes.

  Flip was crouched and clattering in the bottom of the basket. ‘The bad news is that we’re going to have to carry whatever we want to keep. And if we want to have any hope of … that is –’

  ‘We’ll run,’ said Will. ‘Can you girls run?’

  Ell was still rubbing her leg where the ropes had strangled it. Of course they were not going to run, Kay thought; but they both nodded.

  They each took something: Will and Flip a few brown hessian sacks, which looked heavy; Kay a bag that Flip had filled hastily with a pile of instruments, the plotting board and the stones the girls had found scattered on the floor; and Ell a small pile of blankets. Flip had some flares in the basket, and he lit one immediately, hoping that someone might see it and come for them, but also because, he said, the light it shed as it went up would give them a good sense of the landscape around them. They had fallen on a flat sort of plain high in the mountains; to one side there was a cliff, to the other a gentle slope arcing up towards a high peak. By means of a gentle descent to its left, they could get into a higher valley full of scrub and low trees, Will thought. There the two wraiths figured they might get their bearings. The cloud, too, had started to break up above, and the light of the stars and, before long, the moon gave them surer footing as they carefully picked out a way down. By the time they were properly among the low bushes, they could see each other and the land around them much more easily. Kay held on to Ell at a little distance as Flip put up another flare, and in its showering light they thought they briefly saw movement across the valley.

  ‘That’ll be Sprite and Jack –’ Will grinned at Flip – ‘or I’m not a phantasm.’

  Flip went on ahead, bounding in spite of his heavy sack, and Will nudged the girls along. Kay shifted her bag back and forth from her right side to her left, shouldering the burn and the ache of it. She shuffled her feet a little faster so it might seem like she was in fact running. It wasn’t long before they could hear animated voices ahead, growing louder, and then, all of a sudden, in an orange glow that popped – like a water-light – from behind a bush, Kay and Ell saw Flip. He was with two other wraiths, like Will tall, gaunt and tapered. They were sharing out the contents of Flip’s sack into two others. Will immediately stopped, too, and offered his arm to his friends.

  ‘Sprite,’ he said, beaming. The wraith took his arm in a two-handed, crossed grip, and briefly bound it to him hard, like a spar being lashed to a mast. Will turned to the other wraith, who was standing expectantly to greet him. ‘Jack of the Lantern,’ he cried. ‘We’ll need your light tonight, my friend.’

  Jack took Will’s arm in the same curious two-handed hold. All four wraiths then stood quietly, a kind of hum hanging between them, an energy, until they bent again to work. Kay knew that stillness, that taking pleasure in the moment, in silence, before allowing it to pass – for she had longed for it, imagined it, and tried herself to create it so many, many times. Looking at the wraiths, she realized with surprise that it was love.

  Will stooped, and began to divide up some of his own load. Kay was thinking how heavy their sacks must have been, and how resolute they had been, carrying them, when she saw what they contained.

  ‘Those are my father’s things,’ she stated. She was angry, and knew she had been too blunt.

  Will’s hands stopped moving, and the other wraiths – she could see them very clearly now that they inclined to her, with their round eyes, elegantly angular noses, high cheeks and feathery silvered hair – loomed inquisitively over their sacks.

  It was Will who spoke, and he was awkwardly formal. ‘I explained to you – ma’am – that we are removers, and we remove. We came to your house with our inventory, and we removed what we were instructed to remove. Down to the last tooth.’ He looked up at her slowly, and they both smiled, Kay grudgingly. ‘Whether we like it or not – and I promise you that we don’t – these days this is our job.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ said Flip with a sarcastically exaggerated bow. He rolled his eyes. Will had an impressively long and spiky elbow, and Kay reckoned it probably hurt Flip a lot when it was jabbed into his side.

  But the others – Will had called them Sprite and Jack – were whispering to each other now, out of the glow of the torch they had brought. Will, like Kay, had seen their curiosity and, holding Kay’s gaze, he added loudly, commanding their attention, ‘Yes, you heard me. We’ve got two little girls here who are more than they seem. And one of them –’ now suppressing a smile, or a look of pride, beneath the serious, level intensity of the announcement – ‘is an author.’

  The others were as dumbfounded as Will and Flip had been and, though they said nothing, they shared furtive looks from time to time as Kay and Ell helped distribute the clothes and papers and books, and the other tiny familiar objects from sack to sack. And when they set off, surrounded by the four looming figures, the wraiths kept looking. Ell flagged quickly, and Sprite had to take the blankets over his shoulders, but Kay drew her on, encouraging and cajoling, at times pleading with her, at times roughly dragging at her arm. Once, when her exhausted body had become nothing but a dead and sagging weight, Kay stopped and clasped her sister’s pale face to her chest, willing the warmth to flood out of her and into the shivering, tiny form.

  ‘Kay,’ said Ell, pushing back with surprising force, ‘I thought we were coming to find Dad. Instead all we’re doing is helping to get rid of him.’ She dropped her last remaining little sack on the ground and began to sob.

  It was all Kay could do to calm her sister’s tears; after that she had no strength left to try to answer the questions that still whirled in the windy air around them: What are they doing? Where is our father? What is all this for? Jack took Ell on his back, and bore her cheerfully enough, but Kay carried on her shoulders only questions.

  In less than an hour, having climbed out of the valley, then skidded down a loose scree of heavy rounded rocks and pebbles, they all put down their things outside what seemed to Kay an intolerably forbidding cave.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Will, squatting down again to talk to the girls. Seeing Kay’s tension, he added, ‘Don’t be afraid. It’s not like any cave you’ve imagined being in before.’

  And it wasn’t: as Sprite and Jack breached the opening, their torch held aloft, a thousand other similar staffs fixed to the walls around a broad interior hall began to glow. Nor was it really a cave in anything but name: the walls of the cavernous domed room had been polished to a gleaming, and around it hung tapestries woven of the most extraordinary threads: golds, deep purples, crimsons, blues and yellows as striking as sharp notes, whites more brilliant than the walls themselves. Kay had seen medieval tapestries in old chapels and museums – not only at home, but also in the countless smaller towns and villages through which her father, with his endless itineraries (and notebooks, and cameras), had thought to drag them. Those tapestries had always seemed washed out, mostly a greyish blue or green, and while sometimes of enormous size, invariably they depicted the most boring subjects: victories in forgotten battles, a forest scene, another Madonna and child. But these tapestries were of another kind entirely – luminous, richly vibrant hangings, portraits that fascinated the eye with pictures of passion, danger, suffering, triumph and joy. Kay’s eyes roved hungrily. In one scene she saw a hero plunging into a live volcano; next to it two friends lying in a sea of sunflowers; in another three nymphs emerging from a huge and flooding river, chased by porpoises; in others, angry or cheering faces; a choir of boys processing down a yawning Gothic nave; pirates in a slowly capsizing ship; and of course wraiths and gods and dwarfs and fairies, elves, satyrs, giants and monsters. Everywhere Kay looked these almos
t moving images abutted one on the other, and seemed to create a static dance of texture, of colour, of story, around the walls.

  Ell, too, was clearly stirred to wonder by the tapestries. All evidence of her exhaustion had vanished: though her arms hung limp at her sides, her face – angled up to the walls above – danced with excitement, interest and recognition. She turned, and turned. Her eyes floated over the pictures. Kay studied her for a moment, surprised at her concentration and the sudden bravery of her gaze after so much timid clinging through the last day. She stood alone in the long vaulted room, having stepped away from the others – Will and Flip, talking in low excitement with two other wraiths who had just come through from a far door, and Kay herself. Her red hair hung wispily, at last fully unravelled from the tight plait that Kay had woven in her curls the day before. The crash of the balloon had torn the hem of her blue duffel coat, something like grease had stained the leg of her trousers; but otherwise she seemed remarkably unmarked by the day’s frenetic events – even her face, seen in profile as she turned, seemed to Kay relaxed, rested. She had an air of composure that Kay had never before seen in her, not even in sleep. It was as if Ell felt for the first time in her life completely at home.

  ‘Kay,’ she said, turning, ‘I’ve dreamed about this place, I think. I know these pictures. I know these colours.’

  ‘That’s impossible, Ell. You’ve never been here before, so you couldn’t know anything about them.’ Kay was surprised to find herself speaking in an impatient tone.

  ‘I know that. But what I mean is, I feel like I do.’ Ell pointed to a long, low tapestry hanging on the left wall, in which an old man, wizened with age but still brawny and somehow full of majesty, sat enthroned on a ledge. He was looking out on a small group of men who were approaching, bareheaded and in rags, from a shadowy corner in a great grey hall, so dimly lit that Kay thought it looked like granite, like the inside of a mountain. ‘I think I know – or I feel, anyway,’ Ell said, ‘what is happening in that one over there. That old man is a judge, the judge of people’s lives, their whole lives, after death. And the men coming to him are people who have just died. And they are going to their life after death, and the judge will tell them where to go – to heaven or else to hell. Kay, they’re all like that. They just seem familiar, like they’re pictures from a book we have at home. Or like I made them up myself.’