‘Saying that won’t hold it up – if it collapses at mealtimes….’
Caliper stopped fiddling. Old buildings stayed up because they copied those standing for centuries, so what had maddened the church into creating this nightmare? He’d heard rumours of larger buildings changing shape if the church willed it, but Caliper had scoffed, and this wreckage exposed the lie.
The priest rubbed his hands. ‘We finish in three days so Torzene gets its workers.’
Hadn’t he visited Torzene? A single-storey stone-built monastery capping a hill, with monks who ate nothing and bought less. Were the real builders already at Torzene, knocking up another wooden monster?
A Leester priest wandered past, and Caliper jerked away. Priests could travel but not millers, and this cleric knew him. Caliper hit the ground and scrabbled in the dirt for nails as priest feet stamped beside his hands. His pedlar disguise would only last an instant. Was the cleric waiting for him to rise? Another bunch of nails showed to his left, and Caliper picked them up and held his breath until the feet left.
Lanterns dotted the ground, so they planned on working after nightfall. Caliper knelt and rummaged out three of his special candles. He glanced around and popped off the lantern caps to swap the candles inside for his specials; the stolen candles fitted inside his apron. Focus enough, and your crimes looked like work.
Two churchmen interrogated a labourer about weights, but their questions confused the man. Another worker sneaked into the dusk, but two guards clubbed him down and screamed the other labourers back to work. Nightfall would bring the guards he’d tricked last night, and if they’d used his candles….
Workers heaved in tables and hung kettles over fire pans that sat beside stacks of firewood. Someone planned a canteen for the whole village, but why? People bought meat and vegetables to cook as they liked; you had taverns for anyone wanting to buy dinner and drink beer in the glow of a fire they’d not had to light. Would that end with everyone corralled inside this bloated pigsty? Not good, not if priests were cooking. Flagons of broth arrived, and workers dived for food as Caliper shared words with a silver-haired worker.
‘Want stew?’
‘You’re a strong one,’ the worker said.
Caliper shrugged. ‘Not as strong as I was.’
‘Pulled you off fieldwork, did they?’
Caliper nodded.
‘I’m a cooper – always have been. They come up yesterday and told me to work here, but I’ve no idea what I’m doing half the time.’
The cooper’s spindly body was hopeless for building work, but Caliper showed him how to make hoisting easier – he crouched when the Leester priest passed. The sun’s arch drifted eveward, and darkness pooled around the skewed framework. The workers above draped canvas sheets over the topmost beams, and his crew jeered as light faded.
A young clergyman lit a spill, and Caliper stared at the tampered lanterns while pretending to untangle ropes. He’d asked Christina for a delay before the candles showed their quality, and the third candle had lit when his first sprang into life. Incandescent sparks stormed from the lantern’s top to screech and cascade over a wooden trellis. The burning flecks scattered sideways before veering up again, and everyone fell silent. His second candle ignited and slammed the lantern’s cap away, and again white fire spewed upward, missing the beams to rise thirty yards. The last candle took longer to catch, but the lantern shattered; his candle toppled and skittered backwards to spray out a fan of brilliant white glitter. Several priests ran shouting and screaming, and the churchman with the glowing spill stood agape as the labourers stared, and a handful sniggered. Even chuckling at priests held danger, but he’d carved out enough distraction to let him slip into the night.
Would Christina see his candlelit signal? Tomorrow he’d reach the moor past Ferstus and wait for her image. Memories of her beautiful strangeness came unasked – her full lips and rounded eyes meant she never felt distant, though he’d never stop worrying.
No one followed. His grimy overalls merged with the twilight as his path trickled past Ferstus’s silent houses and into the deep night. Daylight’s last dregs bounced from the vault, and the dying glow should help him find another abandoned cottage or hedge: he needed to stay dry, so he’d share with the birds while waiting for Christina.
She had to come soon, or he’d wander without direction over the barren moor ahead, drift without food or clean water. Where were her words? Had she abandoned him?
Chapter 6: learning doesn’t need schooling
Dad hadn’t lit the kitchen fire, and a chill lingered in the morning air. Mum’s absence further froze the room; her bedroom door stayed closed despite the fresh day. Phos stepped onto the kitchen’s tiles but cringed at the cold and slipped on her boots.
Dad struggled through breakfast with clipped sentences; he kept his back to her as he stuffed fruit inside breakfast rolls. She ate without speaking, and words piled up inside, but she’d let them fester. The rolls vanished. She pushed her plate away, and Dad paused before drawing up his stool to perch beside her.
‘Your mother’s still upset. Take yourself to school, and we’ll talk this evening: we need extra rules.’
‘Remember Rastersen? If he hears I’ve spoken—’
‘We’ll talk this evening.’
‘You must stay quiet—’
‘This evening, Phos. Wait until evening.’
They walked outside and paused by their front door. She blinked under the hazy light. Were there extra words to seal Dad’s lips and lock her story away, or would another round of pleading help? Beyond her control; she hugged him and left.
School was a starved dog yelping in panic. Teachers rushed lessons while glancing at their doors; no food arrived for lunch, and late afternoon saw them locked inside the seniors’ class without a tutor. The same dark walls and wooden ceiling beams surrounded her, though the boys worked on new desk graffiti. Phos sat back as rumours sprouted, gossip about teachers working the fields and food turning poisonous.
Home time passed, and chatter changed into complaints. Two boys kicked at the walls to knock out an escape, but their door rattled, and a junior teacher burst inside to order them home before darting off.
Outside, and school stood empty as leaves rattled past her face. The sun’s arch slid eveward to wrap shadows around her body. Phos caught up with two girls and mentioned the windmill to them, but they said nothing. She mumbled goodbye without watching them leave.
School made a ripped storybook where only crusts of knowledge survived; scraps of learning that made no sense. Priests had stripped books from the library before her birth, and those left only held directions for becoming a wife – cooking and cleaning, or handling drunken husbands – so those whispered tales of women winning church roles must be false.
Two years ago she’d sat in her garden and gazed upward while hiding the sun’s arch behind sheets. The vault wasn’t smooth: tiny shadows shrank as the arch crept forward, and lengthened afterwards, and shadows always pointed away from the sun’s arch. Next day, she’d sculpted model hills over a plank; she’d been young enough to play with mud, and she’d brought two dolls as cover. A mirror had reflected arch light, and twisting the mirror had moved shadows enough to prove her idea of upside-down hills covering the vault. Phos had asked her teachers if anyone lived there, and she’d earned a detention. Now change had come, and questions earned a caning.
Dad had smiled at her game; he’d known her mind, and tonight she’d run through ideas for learning with him – anything to have him talk again. She might run chores for older villagers while sneaking glances at their books or rifle through teachers’ desks after they’d left.
Phos meandered home with reluctant limbs. Was Mum still angry? She wasn’t at the door to their house, and darkness veiled their windows. Inside, a silent twilight gripped the hall. Even yesterday Mum had scurried and tidied, but now Phos’s footsteps broke the stillness. Unseen hands had ripped down her granddad’s portrait. C
ooking pots and ladles dotted the kitchen table, and a potato-filled pan sat beside the range. Phos choked; the dying fire left their kitchen lifeless, and Phos rushed through her house, the lounge, her parents’ bedroom, her own room.
No sound except her own throaty gasping. Was this revenge? Mum knew how to scold, but this trick was beyond her. Explanation lurked somewhere, and Phos rifled her wardrobe and cabinets and chests of drawers, but only her parents were missing. Had Rastersen’s hands rummaged through her wardrobe? Wind rattled the shutters – shouldn’t Dad be home?
Priests knew where she lived. Her mind raced: Find light, food, warmth; keep alive; get out and hide. Her parents’ bedroom held candles, and the kitchen range might cough out an ember.
Noise, heavy thuds and splintering shook the house, and feet slammed into the front door until it crashed open. Boots rang out and jars smashed. Men ripped out drawers and snickered. Phos peeked through her door and crept downstairs, wincing at the creaking. A metal pan flew out of the kitchen and across the hallway, but she stopped herself looking into the kitchen. What if she darted through the door’s wreckage? She reached the foot of the stairs, and swear words rang out. One man shouted about searching upstairs. Phos stepped into the hallway and faced the ruined front door.
A roar burst from behind and Phos cringed, but the two invaders argued. Were others waiting beyond the door? She choked on bile, but she’d not glance back, and she wove through the door’s remains. Her head jerked as the hanging basket snared her hair, and she clamped her mouth shut – the front door was visible from the kitchen.
Phos reached back and gripped the basket before jerking her head forward. Blinding pain screwed over her scalp, but she was free. She muffled a gasp before sprinting over Dad’s garden and into a thicket of trees, and she looked back as violet-white lanterns scuttled through the kitchen.
These guards might check the forest, but her home was a certain trap. She’d idled away tens of afternoons with dreams of running away, but parents meant food and warmth. Images of playing games with dolls jostled against thoughts of begging priests for food and shelter. Phos had ignored Mum’s gentle nagging about finding a husband, but if she relied on the church for food, they’d do more than nag.
If the invaders left, she might slip inside and search for essentials and scratch out a tiny world for herself deep in the forest; a few days’ thinking time. Phos watched their lanterns, and her hand clutched a branch, but it squelched into a stinking mass of rot as flies scattered out. She fell backwards, and the soaked undergrowth drenched her trousers.
Tears came unasked; Phos needed silence, but she could only damp herself into a snivelling whine. Nothing made sense. Questions without answers thumped through her mind, and violent shudders swept her body. She threw herself onto the ground and sobbed once before falling silent. Darkness flooded through the forest, and she retched again. Tears returned as memories of Mum and Dad’s faces drifted past.
There’d been homework; perhaps she’d invent an excuse for not doing it.
***
The moor’s wiry grass snagged his feet. A horse had stamped hoofprints into the mud. Caliper trudged towards a woollen scarf, a slash of brilliant red lying on the soggy turf. The moor’s low hills looked like dollops of mud in the distance. Rain clouds brooded above his head as the damp chill seeped through his boots. Christina had said her city crowned a hill; he’d meandered up two slopes but backed down after finding barren stains of dead grass at their tops.
He’d searched an abandoned warehouse; it had been dry, but priests would scour the village, so he’d shunted his body out to scratch up a few hours of sleep under a hedge. Sure, he’d dreamed of guards and knives, nightmares to slap him from sleep and leave him gasping in the night, but he’d dodged their hunting, and he risked a smile.
Caliper had nowhere to store regrets: staying a miller after his beard had wilted into grey meant a slow death as his muscles withered, but without a home he was naked and shivering. Where was Christina? Was she repairing devices he’d never understand, fighting enemies she’d never mentioned, or had she always planned to forget him? Was the old pattern repeating?
The story repeated every year, like a cracked cartwheel thudding against mud. He’d visit a market or harvest dance and see the smiles and dancing eyes of a young woman, and they’d swap a few words, and that night he’d dream of future embraces. Plans would ferment: ideas of buying a small house in Leester village, where he’d plant crops; he’d almost hear laughing children.
Dreams would fade. Silence would come, or polite excuses for absence, and the young woman would disappear from her usual paths. Caliper’s careful letters would go unanswered, and he’d lie awake through empty nights as failure churned through his mind. New women came, but always hope faded into silence: the flower never blossomed. Changing clothes and posture made no difference, and after enough repeats, his failure felt as certain as nightfall. Rocks always fell; winter always followed summer; and he’d always stay single.
Christina was different: a splash of ice water on a sweltering day. She always returned and listened and asked questions, and hope had simmered. These last few months he’d let himself dream again, but now stillness returned.
The priest had mentioned Torzene, and he remembered a monastery perched on a hill beside the northern world wall. There’d been a henge halfway between Ferstus and Torzene, and Christina often took shape at the henges.
Caliper’s path led across a shallow ditch holding brown water. He leaped over the stream, but muck splashed his trousers. He stumbled but kept walking.
Stones nudged above the sodden horizon ahead, like an unfinished circle of teeth sunk into the grassy plain. The grass surrounding the stones made a green velvet disc in the wasteland – a splash of welcome colour. Even close up the standing stones looked like rock, but he stroked the mossless surface and warmth seeped into his fingers. They might have been solid blocks centuries ago, but time had scoured channels down their sides.
Caliper raised his hood against the rain and winced as water soaked his beard. He’d spewed last time he’d used the monoliths, and sickness had greyed his vision for days, but the standing stones let him scout the land: his body would stay here while his mind roved the hills and sought Christina’s home. Caliper placed his hands on the stone, and warmth bathed his palms as he closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the rock.
This lurch was only a gentle nudge, so maybe tiredness fended off the worst shocks. New visions flooded his mind. His body leaned against the stone as dust sleeted from the rock, and images came of blades of grass trembling as their roots stretched through soil. Caliper trickled his vision over to a small elm wood thirty feet away, and focused on a single branch, a single leaf; the greenery inhaled one kind of air and breathed out another. His vision drifted towards the ground’s moss; the plants were hungry enough to climb the trees’ knotted trunks, and worms forged themselves into tight bundles of energy to coil through the earth.
Caliper pushed his sight above the trees. Three birds plumed out red and purple trails between the topmost branches as their tiny hearts pumped blood through their veins – Christina said all bodies worked this way. He’d no time to play: pain laced through his mind despite the shimmering visions, and the trees fell back as he twisted his sight forward – this was more exploring memory than seeing. A winding track drifted through the grass, and another wood rose into view. Dried-out trees wheezed at the air as sap stuttered through their trunks. Nausea crashed over him; his sight turned black for a heartbeat, but now he moved without thought. He’d become a passenger. His vision hurtled onto a rolling grass plain, and the track passed on his left. Far ahead, the plain swept up into the northern world wall until the thin grass faded into grey rock.
Grass blurred underneath as his vision rushed past a jagged rock sticking up like a bleached tooth. Ahead, the horizon juddered, and a rip tore through his vision as the world wall behind appeared to stretch. Was this Torzene? Cal
iper heaved his mind towards the breach, and he found the gravel-covered path he’d once climbed to the monastery. Beside it ran a buttery stone wall, and the black rip fluttered above. White-hot needles of pain scraped his body, but he forced his sight on and upward – Torzene crested a hill, as did Christina’s city.
No warning. Caliper’s vision shattered into blinding shards as agony shredded his body. He fell and crashed onto rock and screamed inside as his blood choked him. Grey mist foamed before blackness swept over him – darker than any nightmare.
***
Light came to Caliper as a flickering beam the colour of daylight, but damp gnawed half his face, and a shrill ringing left him deaf. His left arm was a lump of dead flesh, and he’d spewed over the grass.
Someone called his name. Few called him anything these days, and Caliper grunted before rolling over.
Christina hovered three feet above him, lying flat in the air. Her lips moved as his name rolled through his mind, and he glimpsed the stony vault through her body. Caliper bathed in her presence as he waited for the pain to fade, but Christina’s face crawled with worry.
‘Caliper, can you still understand me?’
‘I…I wanted to see the monastery.’
‘Monastery? I don’t know that name.’ Christina’s voice sounded hollow, as if blown by wind for hundreds of yards.
‘It’s not a name, it’s a building….’ He paused: thirst burned his throat. ‘I used the henge to see you – I wanted to peek ahead.’
‘My controllers didn’t configure the surveying program for new constructions.’
New words skittered past each time he spoke with Christina, and one day he’d learn what they meant. ‘You found me. Did you catch my windmill’s light?’
Christina’s head shimmered. ‘I learned your location. Walk dawnward for three days, and we’ll meet, but angry people hunt you with dogs.’
‘You heard them chatter about me?’
‘Your brain has a unique signature, and if you raise fear in others, their minds hold traces of yours. Time is short, Caliper.’
Lightmaker Page 6