Celandine (6 page)

Celandine waited for the footsteps to die away, her heart beating faster at the opportunity that now lay before her: Miss Bell’s summer gloves were lying neatly folded on the little table that held the classroom globe.

When all was silent, Celandine jumped up and quickly crossed the room. She picked up one of the long cotton gloves and half-fitted it over the lid of the Bovril jar. Then she unscrewed the lid and shook the massive spider down into the glove, instantly folding the end of the material over a couple of times so that there could be no escape. She gently placed the glove on the table once more, tried to make everything look as it had been, and scuttled back to her seat.

It was agony having to wait until lunchtime. Every once in a while Celandine saw the glove give a little twitch, and her stifled sniggers continually threatened to give her away. Miss Bell watched her suspiciously. But at
last
the hands of the clock reached twelve-thirty and Miss Bell said, ‘Very well. You may put down your pen.’

Celandine was in no hurry, for once, to leave the classroom. She took her time organizing her exercise books, and was rewarded by seeing Miss Bell walk over to the globe and reach for her gloves.

Miss Bell picked up the top glove and thrust her hand into it. She jumped backwards with a loud shriek, vigorously shaking her arm. It was clear that she dared not touch her gloved hand with the other one, and so was unable to rid herself of the horror of whatever was wriggling about next to her skin.

Celandine could not have hoped for more, but when she saw the spider appear and run straight up Miss Bell’s arm, she thought she would collapse from laughing so much. Miss Bell scrunched her head down to her shoulder and spun round, banging against the desk as she tried to knock the spider off her. She grabbed wildly for her ruler but missed her grip, and the thing clattered across the room. Even when she had managed to shake the creature from her – a dark scurry across the lid of the desk and down to the floor – Miss Bell continued to screech in panic and disgust. She leaned against the chalky blackboard for support, her gloved hand clutching at her unpinned hair, until gradually she was able to calm herself.

An entire morning’s worth of bottled-up anticipation exploded from Celandine and she hugged her ribs, exhausted with laughter but unable to stop.

Miss Bell, her terror suddenly converted to fury,
strode
across the schoolroom with her arm raised to strike. Celandine lifted her own arm in defence, and for a moment the two of them remained motionless, glaring at one another.

Miss Bell finally lowered her shaking arm. She turned and walked over to her desk once more. Celandine stared at the smudge of pink chalk dust that stained the back of the retreating white blouse. Miss Bell stood at her desk and slowly removed her glove. Her breathing was still heavy and her neck still very red, but she was back in control. There was a look of triumph almost about the pursed lips, the upright bearing.

‘Right, Miss
Howard
, that is the final straw.’ The words hissed out of her. ‘Now let me tell you something in private, whilst there is no one else to hear it. I don’t like you, and I never have. I believe you to be an entirely wicked, spoilt, and sinful child – an ugly little farm urchin who will never come to the slightest good. You have no ability whatsoever. Your only talent is for mischief, lies, and tittle-tattle. Oh yes, I know all about your complaints to your mother. Fortunately, Mrs Howard is more inclined to believe my story than she is yours – and this is hardly surprising when you are known to be such a liar. Do you see, Celandine? This is why you will never win. I have your parents’ full support. It doesn’t matter how many times you dip the chalk in the glue-pot, or put spiders in my desk. Your silly crimes will always bring you more pain than pleasure – I can promise you that – and it will do you no good to complain.’

Miss Bell drew the long cotton glove across her palm, smoothing it out between her finger and thumb.

‘No doubt you are hoping to get rid of me, Celandine, but I have every intention of remaining here for several more years yet – certainly until something better comes along. My salary is generous enough, and I shall not be driven away by
your
antics – in fact I enjoy a challenge. I shall report this morning’s little episode to your mother, of course. I’m sure she’ll understand why I’ve kept you from your lunch, and why I’m now going to give you an extra music lesson. You may pick up my ruler and then follow me.’

Miss Bell threw her glove down onto the desk and strode out of the room. Open war was finally declared.

Chapter Three

A BITTER HIGHLAND
wind rattled through the pines, scattering the rooks and jackdaws and flinging them to the skies like bits of rag. Summer was barely gone, yet here in these northern woods the days already grew bleak.

The two Ickri guards turned their backs to the weather, their wings tight-folded against the buffeting squalls. They huffed into cupped hands and drew their hoods close about their stubbled faces.

Peck glanced behind him, at the covered entrance to Avlon’s shelter. The oilskin flap had worked loose, so he laid his spear aside and stooped to peg the material down once more, pushing the forked stick into the damp earth with fingers too numb to properly grip.

‘Talk talk talk,’ he muttered. ‘How much more o’ this?’

Rafe said nothing, but slapped his arms and jigged from one foot to the other.

Occasionally the murmur of voices inside the brushwood shelter rose above the gusting wind as
Avlon
and the Elders talked on. Warm it would be in there, huddled around the charcoal embers, and there would be a stoup of hot tansy to pass from hand to hand.

Rafe looked up at the darkening sky. Their watch was nearly over. Soon Ibru and Acer would come to relieve them.

Beneath the dome of woven saplings, Avlon poked at the charcoal fire with his stick, gently tapping one of the surrounding pebbles back into place. The Elders sat cross-legged in a circle and stared into the amber glow. All were silent now, their shadowed faces solemn and thoughtful as they considered what Avlon was proposing.

Haima, the eldest of the Elders, shook his head at last.

‘’Tis safer to bide here,’ he said. ‘The lands to the south be thick with giants. How shall we be guided through such dangers?’

‘I cannot tell,’ said Avlon. ‘Yet I know that we shall.’

‘Thee knowst more than we, then.’ Haima sounded unconvinced.

‘Aye,’ said Avlon. ‘Perhaps I do.’ He continued to prod at the lumps of glowing charcoal, and the silence grew.

The legend of the Touchstone had long been on Avlon’s mind, and in the vivid dreams that came to him each night. As ruler of the Ickri, their king, and Keeper of the Stone, he had long been aware of the
old
tale – how the two tribes, Ickri and Naiad, had travelled across the span of time from Elysse to Lys-Gorji, the land of the giants, with the Touchstone as their guide. The tribes had eventually quarrelled, so the story went, and the Touchstone had been split. The wingless Naiad tribe had kept the Orbis – the metal device wherein the Stone revolved – and the Ickri had kept the jasper globe itself. Then the Ickri had journeyed into the deep forests of the north, where they now dwelt, whilst the Naiad remained upon the wetlands far away to the south, and were perhaps no more.

‘Again.’ Avlon spoke to the Elders. ‘Let us gather all that we have, and lay it out before us, the better to decide. Come, Haima, tell us what were told to thee, and to those that came before thee.’

Haima sighed, and raised his palms towards the warmth of the fire. ‘When the travelling tribes, Ickri and Naiad, were first come to Lys-Gorji, the giants were few. By the waters these ogres lived, in dwellings raised upon poles. Slow they were, and easy tricked. There was little danger from them, then. The Naiad were a water tribe, and so were content to remain. But we, the Ickri, were true travellers. We wished for deeper forests, and richer game. We wouldst not bide upon the wetlands, nor wouldst the Naiad leave. The tribes did quarrel then, and there was blood. Each tribe laid hold to the Touchstone and could not agree, so ’twere split – the Stone to the Ickri, the Orbis to the Naiad.’

‘The Naiad robbed us.’ Corben, the King’s younger brother, spoke. ‘As should never have been.’

‘Aye,’ said Haima. ‘The Naiad were many, and the Ickri were few. They robbed us of the Orbis and drove us out. Away to the north our fathers travelled, carrying the Stone with them, but it could guide them no longer. Without the Orbis the Stone has no power. Our fathers marked their journey upon the mapskins that we yet hold, perhaps to show a path if the Ickri should someday return, but none can divine these markings now. Then the Gorji giants became many, and the danger greater, and so the Ickri were driven yet higher into these cold lands, season upon season as the Gorji grew. So here we be.’

‘And we can travel no further from the Gorji without we freeze or starve,’ said Avlon. ‘Yet if we could hold the Orbis once more . . .’ He was talking more to himself than to the gathering of Elders that squatted in the draughty shelter about him.

‘If we could hold the Orbis once more,’ said Haima, ‘then we might return to Elysse itself. But these be
old
tales, Avlon, and the Naiad be long gone – slain by the Gorji as we must reckon. And if they live still, where should us seek for them in a land so great? We should never find them, and ’tis folly to talk of it.’

Avlon felt differently. He did not accept that the Ickri were destined to dwindle and die in these frozen forests. He knew that his tribe had not always been so earthbound. Stories he remembered of how the Ickri had once been able to appear and disappear at will, to become other creatures, to cross over into their very dreamings, and these stories were always connected to the Touchstone and the Orbis.

He believed in such things. In his own slumbers Avlon saw that he had walked this earth before, and would do so again. He dreamed that he could truly fly – not the short hunting swoop of his kind, but with beating wings that might carry him beyond the stars. His visions grew stronger, like plants that unfurled and blossomed in the night. He saw the Orbis held aloft, the revolving jasper globe within, and he awoke each morning in the certainty that he had truly been there. This he would truly see. A restored Touchstone would transport his people from a hostile world, and so it was his duty, and his destiny, to make it so.

Avlon had already spoken to the tribe of his visions, and he believed that they would follow him southwards if he commanded it, but the Elders were wavering, still unwilling to leave the safety of these highland woods. The land to the south was overrun with giants, they said, and there was no way of telling where these Naiad might be, or whether they still held the Orbis – or if indeed they still existed.

‘The mapskins,’ said Avlon. ‘Let us look at them once more.’

Haima was beginning to lose patience. ‘They be but markings on ancient squirrel pelts,’ he said. ‘If they would lead us anywhere, they would lead us into the arms of the Gorji. And none can find any meaning to them.’

‘I would see Una try.’

‘Una?’ The Elders glanced at one another, and Corben snorted with contempt.

‘We be brothers, Avlon,’ he said. ‘And I would follow thee in this, but what can your daughter see that we may not?’

‘The child is witchi.’

Corben grunted, but said no more.

‘Haima?’ Avlon appealed to the white bearded Elder.

Haima thought about it for a few moments. Una was known among the Ickri to be a wise-child – or ‘witchi’. Una could find water without the need of an amulet or a forked stick, could foretell the weather, could smell the very moment when the seasons turned. With thin hands laid upon the swollen wrists of her elders, Una drew away the pains that plagued them, and so was treated with regard. She was the king’s daughter, the child of Avlon, and would have been given due respect for this fact alone, but she also was said to have been ‘born afore’. She had the Touch.

‘’Tis true that the maid be witchi,’ said Haima, ‘but ’twill do us no good in this matter.’ He shrugged. ‘Ach. Let her try, then, if she will.’

Avlon turned and called out to the Guard.

‘Rafe, be you still out there? Go and seek for the child – Una. Bring her to me.’

Una ducked into the entrance of the brushwood shelter where her father sat with the grey-haired Elders. The circle of serious faces turned to look at her – although Corben’s head remained lowered in a scowl of irritation.

‘Come, child,’ Haima beckoned her in, ‘and sit with us.’

Her father, at least, was smiling. He lifted a dried-out squirrel skin from the pile in front of him, and offered it to her.

‘Una,’ he said, ‘let us see if ye can be of help to us.’

Haima grunted and Corben’s frown deepened.

‘These mapskins would tell us of a journey our fathers made, long ago,’ said Avlon. ‘But we have forgotten how to listen to such things. Now we hope to make this journey again. We would know if ye can find some meaning here that we cannot.’