Debris (45 page)

  He gripped a large iron ring and hauled the door open. The room below was small, walls cut from earth, ceiling low and supported by wooden beams.

  "Down you get."

  I stared at him in sudden panic. What was he about to do? Lock me in this hidden cell?

  But he shook his head. "I'm not about to hurt you, my dear. If I wanted to, which I don't, it wouldn't be worth crossing Valya. She's a good woman, like I said, but Other's little curlies, she can be frightening. I'll hand you the light."

  I gripped the edge of the trapdoor and climbed down. It wasn't much of a descent. Standing in the room, my head peeked out of the trapdoor and was about level with Yicor's shins.

  Yicor said, "Here."

  I accepted the lamp.

  "You call when you've found what you were after, and I'll come get you. Coffee drinker?"

  I nodded, still not sure what to say.

  "I'll boil us a pot." Then Yicor left me, wandering into the darkness. It seemed he did not need the light to find his way.

  Crouching, one hand braced on the floor and the other holding up the lamp, I turned into the room. It was longer than it had looked, although narrow and low. And it was full of books. They were stored on metal shelves, behind glass that reflected the lamp if I brought it too close. There was nowhere to sit, no room for a desk or a chair. Only books.

  I shuffled further into the room, placed the lamp in an indent on the floor of packed earth so it would stay upright, and approached one of the cabinets. With a little effort the doors slid open. The books inside were clean, free of dust, earth, or damp. They felt new, leather soft, paper crinkly. How old were they, how precious, considering Yicor's rather extreme methods of keeping them?

  And what could they tell me?

  None of the spines were labelled. I drew one out, and the cover too was blank. I sat, conscious that the dirt would mark my jacket. I shivered. The earth was cold.

  When I opened the cover I did not find words. Symbols rose at me from the page. Not imprinted in ink and applied with pressure on the vellum, they floated from the paper, hooked somehow into the weave but struggling always to escape. Like bubbles in black.

  I shut the book with a snap that echoed through the room.

  A breath and I opened it again. The symbols were still there, flattened by the board and leather, but rising gradually as though filling with air.

  One symbol caught my attention. Smaller than the others, down at the very bottom of the right-hand corner. But I had seen it before. I had, I realised with a chill that had nothing to do with the cold, followed it. An eye stuck in a gate.

  Lad's symbol.

  What was Lad's symbol doing written in a strange bubbly–

  I lost all feeling in my fingers and watched the book as it fell. It dropped gradually, like a feather, spreading over the packed earth in a smooth motion.

  "Worked it out, have you?" Yicor was peering from the trapdoor, one hand holding onto the floor, the other gripping a steaming mug. I hadn't heard him approach, hadn't noticed footfalls on the wood above me.

  "How?" I swallowed a multitude of questions that struggled in my throat; they fought each other to be voiced and choked me. "It's written in debris, isn't it?"

  "Yes. Here–" he wiggled the mug "–you'll need it."

  I crawled to the door and took the drink. "But how?"

  "I don't know." His face was a mask. Impossible to tell if he was lying, if he was sincere. If he cared, or had any opinion at all. "That art is lost. Long gone. And so much else with it."

  A viciously strong coffee smell smacked into my nose. It cleared my head. "What about the symbols?" I lifted my wrist. I had followed them, read them like a map. But if books were written using the things, then perhaps they meant more.

  "No." Yicor, however, did not look at my suit. "I cannot read them. Another art lost with the revolution. Taken with our history, our dignity."

  Then why was I inscribed with them? If none of us could read them, if even the technicians didn't know what they were for, then who had decided to use these symbols? And why?

  "Our history?"

  Yicor gave me a sad smile. "We did not always collect debris. And we had a language in those symbols, a language just for us. Traditions and ceremonies and more, gone from memory, lost from history. Before the revolution came. Before it brought the technicians, the national veche, and their twisted men."

  "What good are the books, then?"

  "Not all of them are written in cipher, my dear. Persevere." Yicor left. This time, his feet were heavy above me. They sent trickles of dust through the wooden ceiling.

  Coffee in one hand, I crawled back awkwardly to the book. I dusted dirt from the cover. I flicked through more pages and found nothing but more bulging symbols. So I replaced the book and began my hunt.

  The first book I found that I could read sent quivers into my stomach so fierce I had to swallow deep mouth fuls of coffee. The liquid was thick, so strong my head buzzed with each sip. The book was a long description of a ritual that, while I could understand the words themselves, made no sense to me. It ranted about invisible body parts – hands that were not, mouths that were not – and a way to connect with them that seemed to involve a barbaric level of violence. It sickened me to see something so brutal written about debris. I felt culpable, somehow. Because only collectors could have read those words, so only collectors had wanted to do the things they described. Collectors just like me, although I could never imagine myself driving a metal skewer into the head of a friend.

  I was halfway through the shelves by the time I found it. The coffee was long gone, although its scent remained, keeping with it that tingling buzz. Yicor had not returned and I couldn't begin to guess how late the bell was. I had no thoughts of giving up, however. The symbols alone, that impenetrability alone, was enough to keep me looking. Even if I ran out of books.

  I knew the text was different the moment I drew it from the shelf. Where the others had been plain, covers unadorned, this had a single symbol in embossed silver pressed into the bottom right corner.

  The gate and the eye.

  Lad's symbol.

  My hands shook as I opened the book. I had wished for few things with the fervour I now wished that the book contained words – legible, readable words.

  
What may look like childishness at first is but an eye divided.
In experiencing both worlds one cannot truly live in either. Dis
traction is not distraction: it is looking at things we cannot see.
Talking to oneself is not talking to oneself: it is conversing with
those who we cannot hear. Idiocy is not idiocy: it is understand
ing a world beyond ours.

 

  I sat so hard it was almost falling. This was it, it had to be it. Distraction, hearing voices, a degree of idiocy. There was Lad, spelled out in rising black. And there was his symbol, cool against my fingers as I held the book open.

  Shuffling, I sat up straight to ease a crook in my upper back. The desire to read quickly, to turn chunks of pages and hope I landed on the right one was so tempting I ached to deny it. But I kept reading, moving through the text slowly.

 

  Halves? Uzdal and Mizra immediately came to mind.

  
Half in this place, half in the world beyond. No ritual can
create them, no blade or blow. The Keeper calls them for his
purposes. Who are we to second-guess him?

 

  I glanced up, though I could not see the Keeper Mountain though floor, shelves, wall and buildings. I scanned the words again to make sure I had read them properly.
The Keeper.
Our Keeper, weeping over Movoc? Or the mountain's namesake. A guardian against the Other and his darkness. In myths he was a kind guide, an unseen presence who heard pleas for help and protected us from nothingness and death.

  But he was a myth, an ancient deity no longer needed in this pion-bright world. Now, he was just a mountain.

 

  
So look for them within the first years of life. Halves will not
learn speech easily. They will not take to play as other children
do. They are slow to understand, slower to obey. Walking may
be difficult, games even harder.

 

  I did not know about Lad's childhood. This wasn't helping.

  I gave in and flicked through further. How would this help Lad? How could it help Kichlan? What did he want, what had he always wanted for Lad? An end to it all. A normal life that did not involve hiding and random acts of violence he could not control.

  I stopped, frowned at the end of a sentence and scanned to find its beginning.

 

  
A Half within the family is a blessing. Do not send them
away. Do not lock them behind walls. Do not wish they had
been born other than they are. Each Half is more precious than
gold, because without them we are surely lost.

  
Halves will hear the words of the Keeper.

  
When the Keeper comes to close the Gate, who will hear him
if the Halves are gone? And fear for the worlds, both Dark and
Bright, if the Gate is opened and he is not there to close it.

  
Fear for everything.

 

  Fear for everything?

  I continued to skim, and the book gave up more of the same. Tales of a Half who had heard the words of the Keeper and not understood him. He had thought the Gate would open in the heart of a girl he loved, and had opened her body instead. But mostly it was full of warnings against the very thing Kichlan was trying to do. To rid Lad of his affliction. To make him – to use a term too close to the book to make me comfortable – whole.

  But how could I tell Kichlan any of that? To let Lad hear his voices, to pay attention to them, to try to make sense of what they were–

  I closed the book with a loud, echoing snap. I had heard his voices. What was more, I had spoken to them, communicated with them. With an unseen presence. Was that the Keeper, talking to me from the debris? The Keeper warning me about the puppet men, about debris he could not control?

  
Fear for everything?
What did that mean? And why could I talk to the Keeper? I was not a Half like Lad.

  
Fear for everything.
I thought of the puppet men, and shuddered.

  I replaced the book, closed the cases, collected the lamp and the mug. At the trapdoor I stood, placed both on the floor and called Yicor before climbing out. He meandered out of his maze as though he had been waiting only a few shelves away. I wondered how late it was as I rubbed redness from my eyes and suppressed a yawn. The old man didn't look tired.

  "Did you find your answers?" Yicor asked. He retrieved the lamp. I carried the empty mug and followed close.

  "Only more questions," I replied.

  "The books are like that." The light bobbed as he watched me over his shoulder, feet finding their way with surprising surety and steadiness. "No matter how many times you bring them out, they fill only the gaps they want to fill, and leave too many spaces."

  I tapped earthenware against my fingernails. "There's lots of knowledge that has been lost, isn't there? About us, I mean. And the debris."

  "Yes," Yicor said. "Lost, and taken away. I don't like it. It frightens me."

  "I know what you mean."
Fear for everything
. Yes, I understood him well.

  Yicor took me to his front door. He opened it to an icy, black night, pierced with lamplight like icicles. "It is not a nice night for walking," he said. "I can offer you a bed."

  I shook my head. "I don't think Valya would approve." And that was not an excuse. That was the Other's own truth.

  He grinned. "Yes, you're right about that. Will you be safe?"

  The streets were empty. I didn't think anyone would brave that cold to wait for me to wander by, unaccompanied. "I will." And I had my suit, didn't I? If such a person did exist, now I knew how to use it. If I was given no option.

  "I'll trust you then, to know your own mind."

  I stepped into iciness, and hugged my arms to my chest. "Thank you, Yicor."

  "I doubt I was much help," he said.

  "Some pieces are better than none," I replied.

  "If you insist, my dear. But the whole is our right. When I read the pieces, when I realise how broken they are, it angers me. And it frightens me. Oh yes, it frightens me."

  I plunged into the night as the door closed with a soft, well-carried click. I hurried, walking as fast as I could, to get the blood flowing and because the allure of a warm bed pulled me like a rope tied around my waist. A large growth of debris hung springy and well hidden between a set of flickering lampposts near Yicor's shop.

  I considered what I'd read as I strode along and every twist of thought, like the turns of the street, led to the same place. The same realisation. One I could never tell Kichlan, even if it was the truth.

  I didn't wake Valya, but went straight to my upstairs room. The door caught in the cold and I was forced to shove it open. "Other," I hissed under my breath as I stepped inside, hoping I had not woken Valya. I had started tugging my boots off before I realised a gas lamp was lit in the sitting room, and Kichlan sat at my table, light and shadow draping him in layers.