The Girl of Ink & Stars

by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

  He sounded just like his mother.

  ‘Didn’t you see anything when you were out with Goraz?’

  It was Pablo’s turn to snort. He started saddling up the horses, each movement smooth and well practised. ‘That was part of the problem. We couldn’t see anything. The Governor’s men sneaked up on us in the dark, surrounded us. I nearly ran off the cliff trying to escape.’ He leant his head against the mane of a bay mare, so his voice became muffled. ‘It was awful.’

  ‘What else happened? How did you get to the ship? Wasn’t it guarded?’

  He looked up sharply. ‘It wasn’t my idea. The fire drew the watch to the bay, and when we were running towards the house I almost believed we could do it.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Get the Governor.’

  ‘“Get” him?’

  ‘Look, are you going to help?’

  He began lifting the crates and strapping them to the horses. I tried to lift one. He took it from my arms with one hand, like a toy.

  ‘What would you have done? If you had “got” him.’

  ‘The Governor? I don’t know.’ Pablo shifted uneasily. ‘Everyone was so angry, so fired up… I think they would have killed him.’

  ‘But that wouldn’t have helped anything. Cata would still be dead.’

  ‘No more than she is already.’

  ‘Lupe’s gone after her,’ I said.

  Pablo nodded. ‘The guard explained. I don’t understand why you’re coming with us.’

  ‘It’s my fault.’

  ‘The argument you had?’

  ‘Yes.’ I frowned. ‘Do you think we’re going to kill the person who killed Cata if we find them?’

  ‘Yes.’ I flinched at his certainty. ‘This isn’t going to be fun, Isabella. Some of the men who saw Cata’s body reckon it was more than one person.’

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this but I didn’t want to seem scared. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They think it was a group who killed her. Sounds to me like it was an animal. It was…’ He hesitated.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Messy.’

  I willed myself not to blink.

  ‘All right.’ He shrugged. ‘Your da would never forgive you if he knew what you were doing, though.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I should tell them.’ He nodded towards the door.

  I put on my fiercest face. ‘You won’t.’

  ‘I could.’

  ‘You’d go in your ma’s place, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘It’s not the same thing—’

  ‘It is the same, same as you taking her place in the fields.’

  He paused a moment. ‘Yes. But I’m a man.’

  ‘You’re a boy. And so what? Girls can go on adventures too.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of a girl going on an adventure?’

  I flushed in the darkness. I had only heard of one. ‘Arinta.’

  ‘She wasn’t a very good heroine, though, was she? They ate her,’ Pablo said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The fire dogs, they eat her at the end.’

  ‘No, she stays down there to protect us.’

  ‘That’s working out well,’ said Pablo. ‘And anyway, it’s a story. In a story you can decide what happens at the end.’

  We stared at each other in annoyed silence until he blinked and continued lifting and strapping crates. Suddenly he gasped and sucked one of his fingers. It was bleeding.

  ‘Ouch! This chicken pecked me!’

  ‘Miss La!’ I peered through the slats of the box. A misty eye stared back. I laughed in relief. ‘Can we strap this one to my horse?’

  ‘Which horse will that be?’

  ‘The smallest one, I suppose.’

  Pablo rolled his eyes. ‘You and that chicken.’

  I opened the top of the box a little and put in some of the horse’s feed.

  An irritating grin played at the corners of Pablo’s mouth. Then he asked, ‘What do you think we’re going to find? Across the forest?’

  The Forgotten Territories. How many times had I lain awake thinking about what they might be like?

  ‘More forest. The River Arintara…’

  ‘I know the Forgotten Territories are real – I just never thought I’d actually see them,’ said Pablo. ‘Or that they’d have trees, a river. They always seemed made-up somehow.’

  I knew what he meant. Not much could have changed in the three decades since the Banishment, but the way everyone talked about the Forgotten Territories, they might as well be a different country.

  ‘What am I meant to call you?’ Pablo said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What am I meant to call you in front of the others? Isabella isn’t a very manly name.’

  ‘Gabo.’

  Pablo’s voice softened. ‘Gabo.’

  The kitchen door banged open. ‘You two done?’ called Ferdinand. ‘The Governor’s ready. Lead the horses round to the front.’

  The Governor and another five men were waiting there, with Señora Adori in her usual blue. As the Governor kissed her goodbye I noticed her face was blotchy. I dropped my head, hoping she was no more observant than her husband.

  The Governor chose a white mare and assigned the others their horses. I was right about getting the smallest horse but I was still too short to mount it, so Pablo lifted me, roughly slinging me on to the gentle bay. His hands were coarse, dry skin grating my arms.

  The horse responded to the lightest touch, which was lucky, as I had only ridden a few times. Miss La stopped squawking as we settled into a trot, and when I peeked into the box she was asleep.

  We turned our backs to the sea and cut across the empty fields straight towards the forest, which even in the slow brightness of dusk was clearly visible above us. My breath came in small, tight gasps. I tried to take deeper breaths as the waving, shifting smudge of the forest grew higher and more solid as we approached.

  The muggy night fell quickly. My back was already aching from the lilt of the horse, and my feet itched in Gabo’s boots. I longed for my light, well-worn sandals, left by our broken door.

  Pablo was riding at the back. He had not spoken at all since saddling the horses, and I did not want to risk slowing to talk to him. Marquez kept turning around in his saddle to sneer at me to keep up.

  We approached the banks of the Arintara, the river that spanned the island. I glanced back at Pablo through the shadows, but he scowled and looked away. I glowered too. Perhaps this was how boys looked at each other.

  We forded the river, and I realized this was the furthest I had ever been from home. I thought of Da, still in the Dédalo, and felt a pang of guilt, but shook it off.

  Hadn’t I always wanted this? The map of Joya lay in Da’s satchel, with its blank expanse at the centre. I was going to see what it held. Da had never bothered with his own island, too intrigued by what lay across the sea, but I knew he regretted it. Now I would draw it so he could see it too. A shiver of excitement ran up my spine until I noticed Marquez staring. I quickly adopted Pablo’s scowl again.

  Since the Banishment, the border forest had been reinforced with high thorn bushes strung with the huge warning bells. As we got closer, I noticed some of the bushes had been trampled, and the ropes connecting the giant bells had been severed. They lay on the ground like metal hillocks.

  ‘The bushes, they’re trampled in this direction,’ said Marquez. ‘I think Jorge was right about the killers being the Banished.’

  Governor Adori nodded. ‘We go through here.’

  But no one moved. I looked at the path. It looked like a herd of animals had passed through. Da had described claw marks around Cata’s body. Perhaps this was another attempt to disguise footprints?

  A chill ran through us like a gusting breeze, as if we had all realized for the first time why we were here, in the gathering darkness, about to cross into a part of Joya that had been forgotten for a generation. It was unknown, unmapped, and home to a murderer
.

  Da’s flat blade with its sharp teeth, weighted the satchel. I wondered if I would have the courage to use it. I couldn’t even throw stones at ravens. Then I thought again of Cata, and Lupe. If Lupe could go into the Forgotten Territories, I could too.

  Gesturing for the men with torches to go ahead, Governor Adori glanced back at us all with those slatted black eyes, then turned and rode into the forest.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  It was hushed in the forest. The horse-high bushes stopped sound the way water does, and the torches’ light threw everything into shadow. After a couple of the men had drawn swords on nothing more threatening than a branch, Governor Adori ordered them to put out the torches. My eyes quickly adjusted, and I felt safer knowing we could not be seen as easily.

  The route was clear – the trampled bushes, leaking pale sap, were the only break in the undergrowth. I imagined Lupe, alone and determined. I’ll show you I’m not rotten.

  I was not needed to navigate while the path was so obvious, so I took out the compass, peering at it through the gloom. Despite fearing for Lupe, I could not ignore that I was in the Forgotten Territories at last. I would make a map Da would be proud of.

  Every hundred strides the horses took, I marked a line on the soft leather pad I held in my palm, and every time the compass indicated a change in direction I scored under these lines with an arrow showing the new bearings, consulting the stars the way Da taught me. This was map-making at its most basic, but it was clear the others would not stop and wait for me to take more accurate measurements. I would just have to rely on memory when it came to drawing up the map. That was how I did it with Lupe on our treasure hunts through Gromera’s narrow streets.

  My hand was at my throat before I could stop it, feeling for the locket through my tunic. Marquez narrowed his eyes and I clasped the reins. Maybe it had not been the best idea to bring it with me.

  None of us spoke for a while. The Governor’s shoulders were set, and he hardly moved with the lilt of his horse. He obviously wanted to go faster, but the darkness and the narrow path made it impossible.

  After a few miles the horses started to move more cautiously, shaking their heads and whinnying softly. The men drove them forward, digging the spurs on their stirrups into the animals’ sides. My horse stopped completely until Pablo hit it sharply on the hindquarters.

  It was a few more miles before any of us realized what was wrong. Finally Marquez spoke up.

  ‘What’s happened to the trees?’

  We pulled our horses to a stop. The surrounding trees did not look alive. The leaves were like lace, criss-crossing blackly over tangles of dead branches. I squinted at one, holding my hand behind a leaf. My skin showed through, a lighter dark, webbed by the leaf’s veins. Up close, the trunks looked like rock. As though the forest had been fossilized.

  Forest fires were nothing new on Joya. Da said this small death was needed; that the trees grew back greener, stronger, gave more fruit. Even the scrubland that backed Gromera occasionally smoked and burnt.

  But this?

  This was different. The leaves hung on their stalks, skeletal and black, yet still attached. The broken bushes oozed black sap, as if the trees were feeding off darkness instead of water.

  A light breeze ran over my exposed neck, a smell hooking into my nostrils. Something sharper than smoke … It reminded me of the scent that had filled Pablo’s room after the fireworks.

  What was it Lupe had said? Something from Asia…

  ‘Sulphur?’ Governor Adori spoke the word quietly, almost to himself, but in the dead air of the night it reached us all.

  ‘Boy, come here.’

  I glanced across at Pablo, but he shook his head. Governor Adori was looking straight at me. I nervously nudged the mare towards his horse.

  ‘That map you have, the old one … Does it suggest this… change?’

  Without a torch nearby, the inside of the satchel should have been impossible to see, but the wood-light, the piece of Da’s broken walking stick, was shining softly through the thin fabric of my rolled-up dress. As I made to pull out the worn map of the Forgotten Territories, thick fingers closed roughly around my wrist.

  Marquez had dismounted, his face illuminated by the glow from the bag. ‘That… What’s that?’ Without waiting for an answer, he reached into the satchel. He quickly touched the fragment, as if testing it for heat, then pulled it out, sending maps and instruments falling to the forest floor.

  As he held up the glowing wood, its pale light was cast further and the men shrank back. The Governor dismounted, dropping heavily to the ground.

  Swinging my leg clumsily over the mare, I half-fell to retrieve the papers and tools before they were trampled by hooves or the Governor’s boots.

  I crouched down, silently cursing myself for allowing the fragment to be found.

  ‘Well? What is it?’ repeated Marquez, as he passed it to Governor Adori. ‘Why does it shine like this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But where did it come from?’

  ‘My father.’

  ‘Before him?’ asked Adori.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘It was passed down to him.’

  Without commenting further the Governor slipped the wood-light into his belt beside his keys. I reached out, but Marquez pulled me back by the shoulder, fingers digging hard into my shoulder. My eyes watered and, blinking rapidly, I dropped my arm.

  The Governor looked at me expectantly. I glared back.

  ‘The map.’ Pablo’s voice was quiet, but still made me jump. He had dismounted and was holding out a pile of papers.

  Mouthing thanks, I riffled through with shaking fingers and found the map scrolled in its sheath of cloth.

  ‘Well?’ The Governor was still staring. ‘The trees?’

  I examined the parchment, then shook my head. It held no clues, the key just showed the forest to be a mix of dragon and pine trees. I wondered how I would show the black trees on my map.

  Marquez tutted impatiently. ‘How much further does the forest stretch?’

  I glanced down again, checking the scale against my leather pad. It was inaccurate, but not by much.

  ‘At least twenty miles in that direction.’ I pointed west. ‘More if we go straight.’

  ‘And how far to water?’

  My fingers brushed the blue star that marked the waterfall. ‘Twelve.’

  The Governor nodded. ‘Take us there.’

  ‘The trees are starting to thin,’ said Marquez. ‘We won’t have a path to follow much longer.’

  ‘Lupe would look for water,’ said the Governor, indicating the dried-up bed of the Arintara.

  No, I thought. She’s not that sensible. She’s looking for the killer.

  ‘Sir,’ ventured Marquez, ‘don’t you think it would be better to stop for the night, and rise at first light? She’s unlikely to be far ahead, and surely she would have stopped to rest.’

  ‘If she has, it’s all the more reason to continue, Marquez,’ snapped the Governor. ‘We could catch up.’

  ‘The men are tired, sir,’ said Marquez cautiously. ‘If we encounter danger, we will need our strength.’

  ‘And what of my daughter’s safety?’

  ‘She would be better served by rested men and rested horses,’ continued Marquez. ‘We can start tomorrow at a gallop, we’ll find her by sundown.’

  I wanted to carry on, but with every blink my eyelids felt heavier.

  Finally, the Governor straightened his broad back and spoke to us all.

  ‘We continue.’ His glare cut short the murmurs of the men. ‘And I suggest we pick up the pace.’

  I carefully replaced the papers and instruments in the satchel, rolling the map back into its cloth. When I looked up the group had already moved on. Only Pablo was there, holding the reins of my horse.

  ‘Ready?’

  I nodded, grateful he’d stayed behind. Chancing a smile, I reached out for the reins. Ins
tead he handed me a bundled piece of cloth. My dress.

  ‘It fell out of your satchel. Put it away. Quickly.’

  Pablo threw me across the saddle and pushed the horse forward before I had even sat up.

  ‘Thank you—’

  ‘Just pretend a bit better,’ he snapped. ‘The only reason no one sees is because they don’t care enough to look.’

  In first hours of daylight, the landscape was even stranger. Black forests had never been mentioned by Masha or the other elders, nor in Da’s stories or on Ma’s map. What had happened here, to make the trees’ colours fade? It couldn’t be the drought that made the plants grow like this. The wheat in Gromera was still gold, not grey.

  We rode on for a couple more hours, uninterrupted and quiet except for the horses and the scratch as I marked every hundred paces on the leather pad.

  Every line brought us closer to Arintan. Butterflies swooped in my stomach as we neared the waterfall. Pablo and Da might think it was just a story, but Arinta had always given me courage, and I needed that now.

  We rounded a thick copse of trees, and my heart sank. No Lupe, and no cascading waterfall. Only the cracked bed of the River Arintara running low and sluggish.

  ‘This is the mighty Arintan?’ said the Governor, voice thick with disdain. The others dismounted but I nudged my horse forward.

  Around another bend, a rocky overhang rose above my head. A weak trickle ran over the edge, and behind it was a cupped space, a cave, which would have been hidden from view were the waterfall as full as in the stories.

  My knees jarred as I dismounted. Tethering the reins to a tree, I waded into the river, Gabo’s boots sloshing and stirring up mud, and walked into the cave.

  The space was deeper than I first thought. The entrance was small and low, but at its darkest point was a wide passage, leading to another cave where I could stand. I stumbled blindly, feeling my way forward.

  The walls were dry and oddly warm. I could feel strange horizontal lines on the back wall, as if the rocks had been laid flat together. It made me think of a game Gabo and I had played, singing and layering hands over one another faster and faster, drawing the bottom hand out and trying to be at the top when the song ended.