The Girl of Ink & Stars

by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

  I knew what she was really asking.

  ‘I suppose it must, if it’s made by melting.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t seem fair, does it? To be so close to the sea and not reach it.’

  ‘A bit like being back in Gromera,’ I said.

  Her grin faded. ‘I suppose.’

  We watched the glass. Not long left now. Soon it would shatter, or melt, and there would be nothing between us and Yote’s flames.

  ‘What happened, then?’ Lupe asked, in that way she had of picking up a conversation long dropped. ‘Did you fall, or…’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said quietly. I was sure I had heard Yote, sure I had left my body, but it wasn’t possible. It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered, nothing would matter ever again. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  Lupe took my hand. ‘How about I tell you a story?’

  ‘A story or a myth?’ I asked slyly.

  But she only put on a serious face and said, ‘Definitely a story.’

  ‘All right.’

  She cleared her throat theatrically.

  ‘Once there was a girl. This girl was a map-maker’s daughter, but she insisted on everyone calling it cartography or something, and she thought her stories were the best and didn’t want anyone else to tell them—’

  I jabbed her hard in the side.

  ‘That wasn’t really the story!’ she spluttered.

  ‘I guessed.’

  The glass made a grinding sound, and we jumped. There was no crack yet, but the shift and slide was more obvious now.

  ‘Better hurry,’ I said.

  We sat cross-legged in front of each other. Lupe began again.

  ‘Once there was a country where a kind king and queen reigned. One day, the queen decided to go on a tour of her lands. She set off alone on a horse, for she was a strong rider. But a couple of days later, the king received a message from the village she was expected at first. She had never arrived.

  ‘The king rode for days, visiting village after village, enlisting more people to help him search for her. A week passed, and the king collapsed, exhausted. They could not find his wife.

  ‘The loss turned the king mad. The trees stopped bearing fruit, and the rivers turned brown in their beds. The people wilted, grey as the sky. But this was not enough suffering for the king. He ordered higher taxes, and organized troops of soldiers to visit other nearby lands and bring back map-makers. He became obsessed with charting his country.

  ‘Map-maker after map-maker came, but they were never good enough. The king wanted the maps to be bigger, more detailed. Then his men brought him a cartographer from the East, a clever, kind man, who realized how much pain the king was in and vowed to do his best to help him. The cartographer came up with an idea. He proposed making a map without a scale, or rather, a map to the exact scale of the land—’

  ‘How do you know what a scale is?’ I couldn’t help myself.

  Lupe regarded me wearily. ‘I do listen, you know.’

  As if on cue, the glass creaked. I spun around, but before I could look, Lupe grabbed my arms.

  ‘It’s better not to look. Trust me.’

  I nodded, holding her gaze. She took my hand again, and continued, talking faster.

  ‘The first things a map-maker needs are paper and ink, and to read the stars. While the cartographer made star charts, great nets were set out across the forest to catch each insect. They were crushed to make different colours, and soon the cartographer had a hundred vats of ink to use. Then the forests were felled to clear the view of the sky. Tree after tree was mashed with gallons of river water to make the paper. All the animals died, and people began to be poisoned by the soiled river water, but the king did not care. He only wanted to find his wife.

  ‘The cartographer began. He started at the western shore, laying down the paper and marking it with where the houses and roads and rivers were. When he covered the crops with paper, they died from lack of sun, but still the king did not care. His subjects began to leave the land and sailed to other countries, to be ruled by men less mad and cruel.

  ‘Soon only the king and his cartographer remained. The map was almost done when the cartographer found the skeletons of the queen and her horse on a remote stretch of coast. He rode across the paper miles to tell the king.

  ‘The king was so overcome with grief that his heart began to burst. The doctor had fled the place long ago, so there was nothing to be done. He died in the cartographer’s arms.’

  She stopped. I shuddered.

  ‘What happened to the map?’

  Lupe let out a bark of laughter. ‘Only you would ask, “What happened to the map?”.’

  I waited. ‘But what did?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The rain broke it to pieces, or the cartographer made it into a paper ship and sailed out to sea.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You know it’s just a story?’

  ‘Yes,’ I paused. ‘It was the best story I’ve ever heard. Who told you it?’

  She grinned broadly. ‘You did.’

  ‘No, really.’

  ‘You,’ she repeated, softer this time.

  My smile faded. ‘What?’

  ‘You made it up for my birthday. Three years ago, when we first became friends. You made me a map to the rabbit warren and we sat by it while you told me. I liked it so much I wrote it down when I got home. You really don’t remember?’

  I shook my head slowly. I only remembered realizing too late that I didn’t have a present for Lupe, and telling her the first thing that came into my mind. I had no idea she liked it enough to memorize it, let alone write it down.

  ‘I read it all the time at home. It has your favourite things. Adventure, maps…’

  ‘And a sad ending,’ I added.

  ‘And that.’

  The glass creaked, and this time Lupe was too slow to stop me looking. Near the top, where the glass was thickest, a crack had split the pane like a fissure in rock. A flame licked the centre of the line and the glass bubbled.

  We broke away from each other, throwing ourselves backwards. The flames had not yet come through, but whole swathes of the surface were sliding down, bubbling into a threatening pool at the bottom.

  I backed right up against the opposite wall of the glass-fronted cave. Something jabbed into my head.

  ‘Ouch!’ My fingers came away sticky with blood.

  Lupe staunched the flow with her raggedy dress.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I hit my head.’

  ‘What on?’

  I snatched the wood-light from my belt and held it up to the wall.

  Jutting from the surface was a shadowy shape. It looked like an irregular piece of rock, only lighter. But when I held the wood-light closer, it glinted.

  It was not rock at all. It was metal.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY~THREE

  ‘It can’t be …’ I murmured. ‘Arinta’s sword?’

  But it had to be. The shape was rusted with age but if I squinted I could change the indentations on its surface into engravings. And if it was, and if I was right about the sea being the other side of this rock …

  Only the sea can defeat a fire demon.

  This was our final chance, a gift passed down through a thousand years. I had said it myself, that glass was molten sand. That meant we were beneath a beach – maybe even the beach near Gromera. And that roaring, the roaring that sounded so much like wind and fire and, most of all, water…

  I brushed my fingers against the sword. It was hot, the metal dull and unpolished, but I felt a surge of energy rush though my skin. My heart threw itself against my chest. I tried to grasp the hilt, but the metal was too hot. I bunched my tunic in my hand and tried again, but it was stuck fast. I wrenched and wrenched until Lupe placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

  The fight went out of me like air. I felt tears starting in my eyes, gritty and hot. ‘You’re right,’ I said bitterly. ‘
I’m not her.’

  ‘But the sword’s here!’ Lupe pulled me into a hug. ‘It’s real, Isa. It’s not a story.’

  I sniffed. I had been so sure the sword would turn for me.

  Behind us, the glass gave another crack. An intense heat flooded the cave and I looked around in time to see the cracks open into a hole, small but filling rapidly with flame. The air seemed to suck itself through, draining the cavern and filling it with heat. As we watched, the glass dripped down, widening the crack, letting a thin stream of molten rock thread its way through.

  I turned to Lupe, but she had already placed her hand on the hilt. I saw it blister and smelt burnt skin.

  ‘Lupe, stop!’ I tried to pull her scorched hand away but she pushed me back, eyes wild.

  ‘I have to, Isa! I have to make amends—’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘My father.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ I reached out to her but she stepped back, shaking, blazing with anger.

  ‘My father knew. He didn’t believe it, but he knew about Yote.’

  I gaped at her.

  ‘The letter said so.’ Lupe dug her fingernails into her palms and I could see the skin peeling. ‘That’s why he came here. He killed his father and was sent here as punishment.’

  ‘For redemption,’ I murmured, but Lupe had not heard me.

  ‘He was meant to help everyone leave, help them escape Yote, but he took over instead. He was rotten, like you said.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ I said carefully, trying to make sense of what she was saying. The Governor had known Yote wasn’t a myth? But before I could ask more she gripped the hilt again. The metal fizzed against her palms.

  ‘Lupe, don’t!’

  I started towards her but suddenly—

  ‘It’s working!’

  The sword began to move, to turn.

  A thousand years of pressure seemed to release in an instant, though this instant separated itself into distinct moments that would burn in my mind for ever.

  First, another hiss rose to join the one from Lupe’s palms. The second moment, a thin stream of water began to spurt out. The third moment, it grew into a torrent.

  Just as the fire broke through the glass with a deafening crash, the water threw itself towards it. We collapsed under the weight of the sea.

  Somehow, we found each other’s hands.

  The world turned, not only upside-down, but side to side. The ground was ripped again and again. I held on to Lupe in the tumult – or was it that she held on to me? – though her fingers had to be painful from turning the sword. I was pressed down, ears popping as the force of the ocean pinned us in its grasp, thrusting us deeper.

  We were drowning. Pressure roared through my head. My eyes bulged, breath forced from my chest.

  The water smashed through Yote’s thousand-year labyrinth as though it were paper, buffeting us along its relearnt currents, its power finally released. All I could do was hold fast to Lupe’s hand. It was the only thing anchoring me.

  As suddenly as the world had turned inside out, it righted.

  My head surfaced, hitting solid rock. I spluttered, spitting out water and blood. My tongue throbbed where I’d bitten it. Lupe surfaced beside me. My arm was being pulled to the surface too and then I realized why: I was still holding the wood-light. It was bobbing on the rushing water, steadfast as Great-Great-Grandfather Riosse’s boat.

  I pulled Lupe forward, and she grasped the wood-light too. Gripping on to it and each other, we rode the steaming sea through what I could only guess was one of the tunnels that made up the maze. There was no sign of Tibicenas, nor of Yote or his flames. He was gone, swallowed by the ocean.

  Our legs were being snatched at and wrenched down, even as the wood-light kept us afloat. I clenched my teeth as my feet were swirled and pulled until I felt sure my ankles would break.

  We were swept into a high cave. My feet scraped painfully along the submerged rock, caught between the current and the stone. I cried out, and felt Lupe kick my feet out of the way. There was a strange feeling of resistance, and a dull thunk, like a clay pot breaking. Then the current released us slightly.

  I coughed up water. ‘Are you all right?’

  Lupe turned her exhausted gaze upon me, bringing up a lungful of water so violently she almost lost her grip on the wood-light. She was hurt.

  ‘Hold on!’ I clamped my hand over hers, looking around frantically. A few metres away, a fainter patch of dark caught my eye.

  There was an opening.

  I shouted for joy and instantly swallowed a mouthful of salty water.

  ‘Look!’

  Lupe’s eyes lifted, and she nodded. But there was something wrong. Her pupils were huge, as if night had slid beneath them. I kicked her, my movements slowed by the sea, tried to keep her awake. She must have hit her head.

  I brought my mouth close to her ear and shouted, ‘It’s all right. I’ll get us home.’

  The water was rising quickly, and we tilted our heads back to keep our mouths in the pocket of air. I wrapped my spare hand around Lupe’s waist, and began to kick towards the opening.

  The hole was perfectly round; it looked almost man-made. Objects were bobbing on the water – bits of cloth, and something that looked very much like bone. One nudged at my face and I pushed it away, fighting to swim closer to the light. It would all be worth it if I could only get us to the surface.

  Just as the water started to close over our heads, I reached the mouth of the opening. I pulled Lupe beside me, and together we gulped in air. Above us the tunnel seemed to stretch for ever. Perhaps it would take us to a way out.

  But it was narrowing. I could barely squeeze through. Suddenly, we stopped rising. My hand was wrenched upwards as the wood-light tried to stay with the surge.

  I looked down, eyes stinging, trying to pull Lupe with me, but instead saw her dress tugging at her shoulders. It was caught on something. I tried to tear her free but her body was already wedged in the thinning gap. She was stuck.

  We were running out of time. The water was high over our heads. My body convulsed, desperate for air. Lupe pushed at me. I saw her mouth working and shook my head. I couldn’t tell what she was saying.

  She tried again, smiling sadly, bubbles spiralling: Still the smallest in the class . . .

  Then she tried to let go of the wood-light.

  I clenched my hand around hers. No.

  Time suspended itself like a stopped clock as we gazed at each other’s blurred faces through the whirling water. My head felt full and empty at the same time, aching. The bright stars were back, my chest screaming.

  Lupe squeezed my hand softly, and rammed the sharp point of the wood-light into my shoulder.

  I gasped and rose, fast as a bubble, Lupe slipping through my fingers.

  The pain of my shoulder wrapped itself around me. I tried to pull the wood-light out, but could not. I looked down through the reddening water, and saw that Lupe’s arm was raised, the bracelet glinting on her wrist, her face calm, the last circles of air leaving her mouth.

  Then she was gone.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY~FOUR

  The water spat me into more dark.

  I landed, hard, not on earth, but on rock. It forced the wood-light out of my shoulder, and agony rolled across my body. Blood spread warmly over my tunic as voices broke over me like a wave.

  ‘It’s a child!’

  ‘What’s happening?

  ‘Where’s the water coming from?’

  I vomited seawater, skin stinging with salt. More water was rushing from the circular hole by my head. Many sets of hands were pulling me away.

  I was lifted beneath my armpits, made to stand. I swayed, feeling water rushing over my ankles. Voices reverberated all around, and a horrid stench of mould and rot reached my nostrils. I knew this smell. I opened my eyes.

  Uncomprehending faces stared back, blinking in the glow from the wood-light.

  I was in t
he middle of the Dédalo.

  ‘The underworld is emptying!’ shrieked a man excitably.

  ‘It’s Isabella!’ said another voice. My eyes darted around. That voice…

  Pablo loomed over me, Masha at his side, more hunched than ever. How was he here? His face was stitched roughly at the forehead and chin, but he was smiling. The old woman unwrapped her shawl and tied it tightly around the bleeding wound in my shoulder.

  ‘Are you all right, child? How did you—’

  ‘Look!’ said the excitable man, pointing down.

  The water was still rising. The wood-light bobbed by my calves and I picked it up with my good hand. Everyone began running in the same direction. Pablo threw a kicking Masha over his shoulder, and grasped me.

  ‘Come!’

  It was too much, all of it. I tried to wrench my hand from his but then in the silvery light I saw a familiar face. The figure came limping up to me and hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe.

  Da.

  I held him with my good arm until I was sure he was really there. Until I was sure I was really there. There was so much I wanted to say, but my throat was closed tight. He released me and took the wood-light so he could hold my hand.

  Together we followed the fleeing crowds. Da leant heavily on me, but he was moving more swiftly than I thought possible. The passages were nearly as narrow as the labyrinth. From the left and right came shouts of confusion, and more and more people flooded from the darkness to join the stampede upwards.

  The water was sucking at my hips now, and I felt a fresh wave of panic as I looked up. A vast set of narrow stairs stretched before us, seething with people. From high above came cries for help, and hammering. We were not yet safe.

  ‘What’s happening?’ shouted the woman in front.

  The question went echoing upwards. A few seconds later, the answer was passed down the staircase.

  ‘It’s locked! The trapdoor is locked!’

  Desperate shouts rose. The people behind were pushing forward, away from the swirling seawater, crushing us. Those already on the staircase clung white-knuckled to the thin rope that served as a banister. If the people behind kept pushing, others were going to be forced off the edge.