Gullstruck Island (32 page)

Even as Hathin spoke, the village became real to her, became a place where people actually lived. She suddenly noticed the thinness of the villagers’ faces, the empty baskets that should have held dried beans, the scarcity of chickens and pigs.

‘They’re alone up here, and they’re running out of food,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why – maybe it’s something to do with the school beacon not being lit – but it’s true. Look around! Oh, if only Arilou could tell us why . . . Tomki, do you think you can bargain with them? Persuade them to take us to the Beacon School? There’s the Superior’s barrow back down in the Ashlands – perhaps we could give that to them to sell?’

‘I can try.’ Tomki steepled his fingers over his head to make himself into a tower, then pointed in the direction of the distant beacon tower. ‘
We
. . .’ he pointed at himself and each of his Lace companions, ‘want to go
there
.’ He pointed towards the school again, and mimed walking.

This did not seem to improve the atmosphere at all. Many of the Sours exchanged dark looks.

‘We pay!’ Tomki rummaged in his belt pouch and produced a single coin. ‘Pay! Well, sort of. Pay you to come with us.’ He took a companionable hold on the arm of one Sour woman, who hastily tugged it free. ‘Protect us from geysers.’ He crouched down and then leaped to his feet, waving his arms. ‘Whoosh! Geysers!’

There were noises of confused amusement. Various children pushed forward, apparently hoping that Tomki would do it again. When he did, there was a small but noticeable ease in the tension.

‘Whoooooosh! Yes! Protect us from geysers! And . . . and rock falls!’

Unfortunately, Tomki decided to mime ‘rock falls’ by snatching up two fist-sized rocks and tossing them against the chest of a tree trunk of a man. A leathery thump, and Tomki was on the ground clutching his jaw.

‘Did you see that?’ His delighted squeal was cut short by a brisk foot to the ribs, followed by one to the head. ‘Look! Look! I’m being wronged!’

‘Wonderful,’ snarled Therrot as he scrambled to his feet. ‘Now we’re all in for a good wronging.’

Jaze did not look towards his belt, but his fingers made idle flicks at the hilt, and the thongs keeping his dagger in its sheath fell loose. Then suddenly the hilt was in his hand, the blade lying hidden flush against his forearm, making Hathin think of a scorpion with its sting folded down under its tail.

Hathin felt sick and dizzy as the crowd surged forward. She could talk to people, but this was Mob. Mob wasn’t people. It took people and folded their faces like paper, leaving hard lines of anger and fear that didn’t belong to them.

And then without warning a silvery undulation of sound flowed free on the air, and Mob stood amazed. Arilou was speaking, and suddenly the green-clad strangers around them were listening, were people again.

‘I don’t know what your sister just said,’ Therrot muttered out of the corner of his mouth, ‘but I’m very glad she said it.’

Whatever it was, it appeared to be enough. No more kicks were aimed at Tomki, and the expression of the old man who seemed to be the Sours’ leader grew warmer, more humane. For decades language had been the way that the Sours knew their own and shut out everybody else. By using their words, however clumsily, it seemed that Arilou had broken through their shell and become one of them.

Gingerly, Hathin scratched a rough picture of a barrow into the dust, and this time heads clustered round her to observe. At least now the Sours seemed interested in trying to understand.

‘Barrow.’ Hathin pointed down towards the Ashlands. ‘Barrow down
there
.' To make it clearer what the barrow was, Hathin added some blobs inside it, then mimed gripping two handles. 'We
give
to you.’ She grasped a large piece of air and presented it ceremoniously to the Sours’ chief.

The old man looked quizzically at Arilou, who supplied a single word. Brows cleared, and the word was repeated with expressions of revelation. The Sours seemed happy, and there was a good deal of nodding.

The old man then performed a dumb show of moving something to his mouth and biting down on it. Wondering if she and her friends were being invited to dinner, Hathin pointed to the cauldron of bean soup over the fire with a questioning look and was rewarded with a nod.

‘I think we’d better accept,’ she said under her breath.

And so the painful conversation went on, even after the sky darkened and soup was served to everyone in hollowed gourds. Using Arilou as translator was rather like trying to sew using a pinecone instead of a needle, forcing big, fat meanings through the tiny aperture that was Arilou’s ability to communicate. Hathin was able to pick out one word that occurred again and again amid the flowing Sour sentences. It sounded like ‘jeljech’, the last consonant a soft hiss at the back of the throat, like the ‘ch’ in ‘loch’.

At last the Sours’ leader reached out, took Arilou’s hand and clasped it. Bargain sealed.

‘Good,’ muttered Jaze as he got to his feet. ‘Now we’ll get out of here . . .’

A chorus of protests. Gentle but insistent hands guiding Jaze to sit back down. Gestures towards one of the rock-pile huts, where clean bedding mats were being unrolled. A stream of Sour words . . .
something something something jeljech
. . .

‘. . . or perhaps we won’t,’ Jaze finished darkly. ‘It looks like we are going nowhere.’

Hathin fidgeted and thought of the Superior, waiting for word from his soap-deliverers. What would he do when the stars came out and they had not returned? Would he change his mind and send for the Ashwalker after all?

21

Lesson’s End

The next morning, the visiting Lace were woken by the mysterious ‘Jeljech’, who proved to be a seventeen-year-old Sour girl with deep-set eyes and a guarded, self-possessed air. She startled them awake a little after dawn by putting her head through the door of the rock hut that had been allocated to them, and laying down bowls of something hot and herbal.

‘Friendly.’ It was the gruffest, unfriendliest-sounding ‘friendly’ Hathin had ever heard, but it was a relief to hear Nundestruth at last. ‘Want . . . go . . . tower way?’ It soon became clear that the girl’s Nundestruth was not good, and that the frown on her face was partly due to concentration and uncertainty.

Jeljech was evidently to be their guide to the Beacon School. Her green leggings were already spattered with mud, and Hathin guessed that she had arrived back in the village only that morning. Evidently the other Sours had decided to delay everything until the return of their only Nundestruth speaker.

As the Lace prepared to quit the village, two things became clear. The first was that Arilou had no intention of leaving. Attempts to lead her to the edge of the village were rewarded by a ragged screech so very like a bird of prey that several villagers ducked and looked about for the great eagle they assumed to be swooping down on them. The second was that the Sours had no intention of letting Arilou leave.

Jeljech hurried to translate.

‘
Her
stay here.
We
go tower.
You
go city. You comeback village.’ She tapped the slightly trodden sketch of the barrow with her foot. ‘Food. You comeback here.
All
you go
after
.’

‘That conversation we had yesterday wasn’t the one we thought we were having, was it?’ Tomki managed a wincing smile despite the swelling of his left eye.

As far as the Sours were concerned, their visitors had agreed to bring them a barrowful of food and other useful supplies in exchange for a guide to the Beacon School. And to make sure that the Lace carried out their part of the bargain, Arilou would stay with them. The Sours were adamant that she had agreed to it.

‘But . . . we can’t leave her behind!’ Hathin felt a surge of panic. ‘She can’t defend herself! And the Sours don’t know how to look after her!’

‘I’ll stay with Arilou,’ declared Jaze. ‘And I’ll keep Tomki by my side – if there’s any trouble or treachery he can get Arilou to safety while I make life unpleasant for people. Therrot, you look after Hathin.’

Still full of anxiety and reluctance, Hathin finally consented to join Therrot in following Jeljech up a pitted, zigzag path. Their route made no sense to her. Sometimes they seemed to be travelling directly away from the beacon tower, and twice they ducked into narrow caves and crawled out through sinkholes. After an hour of this mad weaving, the beacon tower suddenly reared up behind the approaching ridge, so close that they could see the charred timbers jutting from the dead pyre at its summit.

Jeljech abruptly sat down and refused to go further, her face tense and wary. She would say nothing more, but waved towards the tower beyond the ridge, then absorbed herself with plucking leaves and tearing them into strips. Hathin and Therrot took the hint and trudged on without her.

Beyond the ridge, they found themselves on a broad, grass-covered shelf of land strewn with blackened wood stubs from the pyre. All around were little stone huts perched on high granite pedestals, presumably to keep them safe from sudden rushes of lava or hot mud.

Therrot pursed his lips and gave a curling whistle. There was no answer. No sound at all, Hathin realized suddenly, except for the stutter of distant geysers.

‘There should be insect sounds,’ she whispered. ‘There should be birds . . .’

Therrot suddenly stooped to peer between his feet.

‘There are,’ he muttered under his breath. The burrowing bird that lay in front of him looked unharmed, but was quite dead.

They advanced cautiously to the base of the nearest pedestal, where a few reddish-brown rounds bulged above the grass like oversized mushroom heads. Therrot turned one over with his foot.

‘Clay pots,’ he said, bemused. ‘Look, the cork stoppers are lying on the ground next to them.’ He straightened and stared across at similar terracotta bumps scattered around the other pedestals. ‘There’s dozens of them. They’re everywhere.’ He lifted one, upended it and shook it. ‘Seems empty.’

‘Therrot can you give me a hand with this?’ There was a heavy wooden ladder lying on the grass. Therrot helped Hathin raise it to lean against the pedestal, then held it steady as she climbed up. Clambering on to the stone ‘sill’ before the hut, she put her head in through the open door.

‘I think it’s some kind of storeroom,’ she called down.

She picked up a wooden doll with a long string stretching from its belly button. There was a finger-ring at the back, and when she pulled it the string drew back into the doll, pulling towards it a shiny piece of shell attached to the other end of the string. The doll game. The old way of training Lost children to find themselves.

There were wooden blocks painted in different colours, some with symbols raised in ridges on their surfaces. Candles were stacked next to bundles of pink and yellow incense sticks. Against the walls rested paintings of faces with different mouth shapes, musical instruments. All of these must have been used for the lessons of the Lost children, helping them to master their different senses.

A quick search revealed that there were no less than seventeen of these raised huts. Some were storerooms, some tiny studies, some appeared to be living quarters. In one a set of wooden bowls sat upon a wooden board, and beside them a dried-out cauldron of unserved soup. In another of the otherwise tidy little huts two green glass bottles had been smashed and left.

‘Everybody’s gone,’ said Hathin as she picked up a single ivory hoop earring from the floor. ‘It looks like they all just suddenly . . . left.’

‘Left, did they?’ Therrot stooped to peer at the damp ash that covered the ground around the tower. ‘If they left, I don’t think they did so willingly. Someone’s been dragging something heavy through the ash – dragging it that way, towards the orchid lakes. Yes, here’s another trail. And . . . wait.’ He stooped and picked up something tiny and metal. ‘A crossbow bolt.’

‘You think the people here were attacked? And then . . .’

Neither needed to complete the sentence. Hathin knew that, like her, Therrot was visualizing a dozen or so bodies being dragged downhill and dropped into one of Crackgem’s seething multicoloured lakes.

While she was thinking about this, a droplet of something hit her above the eyebrow and ran into her eye, making it burn. Shielding her face, she looked up, in time to see another drop swell beneath a crack in the roof and fall gleaming past her vision. She wiped at her brow, and when she examined her wet fingertips they were tinged with red.

The outer walls were rough granite, offering lots of toeholds to Hathin as she clambered to the roof.

‘Therrot . . .’ Hathin crawled gingerly over the broad, fragile slabs. ‘Somebody’s spilt something up here on the roof. Something red.’

‘Is it . . .?’

‘Not blood. No. It’s some sort of crumbly powder. The rain’s washed away a lot of it, but there’s still traces clinging. And somebody spread it deliberately. It’s like they drew a big circle or something. No . . . a crescent.’

Hathin sat on the roof, feeling as she had when staring at the Doorsy writing in Skein’s journal. She tried to imagine the people who had lived in these tower-like huts, spending their days piling timber for the pyre or painting the strange lesson toys. She thought of them standing every night amid rings of incense, calling lessons aloud, giving their lives to the vapour-like congregation of invisible Lost children who floated around them. Were they like the strange old woman back at the tidings hut? Did they sense the cold touch of hundreds of youthful eyes – brown, black, green, grey – or did they just speak their lines to the empty sky and weird spitting hillside?