Gullstruck Island (9 page)

Hathin found Inspector Skein on the beach, apparently unperturbed by the rising wind that flicked at his pigtail and billowed the skirts of his coat.

‘Miss Arilou,’ he said without preamble, ‘we must complete this test quickly. I am sure that you wish to return to your dwelling before the rain comes, and Mr Prox should be brought back before the worst of the storm.’ Hathin’s eyes burned with wind-whipped sand. As usual she did not experience it as her own pain, but she felt the sting for Arilou, who did not know to blink.

‘We should find shelter from the wind,’ Hathin declared in her Arilou voice.

‘Very well.’

Just within the Lacery, tall fingers of rock enclosed a space like the fingers of a half-closed hand surrounding an upturned palm. Two soap-smooth rocky protuberances offered themselves as seats, and Hathin gently lowered Arilou to sit on one. Skein took the other.

Hathin took Arilou’s hand in both of hers and chafed it gently. There was nothing she could do now but hope for her miracle.

‘If you will then, Miss Arilou.’

And Arilou raised her head. A faint, trilling bird-like sound escaped her lips, and her hands moved gently as if stroking something soft. Her eyes widened and lightened, seemed to fix upon something. Could it be . . . ? Yes, it really
did
look like she was focusing, her brow furrowing as if in concentration. What did that starry gaze mean?

Please, Arilou, please
. . .

Arilou’s lips trembled, and parted. Hathin leaned her ear to Arilou’s mouth . . . and heard only the usual stream of molten words.

‘It is very difficult to hear over the crash of the waves,’ Hathin announced in cool Doorsy, while her heart plunged. She had no more plans, there was nothing she could think to do but play for time and pray. ‘And your friend has a strange accent . . .’ For about ten minutes she continued in this vein, sensing that the ice beneath her was becoming increasingly thin. At last Skein took out his pocket watch.

‘We must bring this test to an end soon. Miss Arilou, I shall leave for an interval to see if a letter has been left for me, but when I return you must have an answer ready.’

Hathin waited for him to rise, and only when he settled himself back against the rock did she realize that he was leaving in spirit only. Of course, he had sent his mind to look for a note earlier – presumably he had not found it. A small part of Hathin’s mind wondered what message could be so important that he would flit off like this mid-test. But what did it matter? It bought her more time.

When he had remained motionless for about a minute, she dared to scramble to her feet. She had to know whether Eiven had been found. Not knowing was unbearable. But at the same time she knew that she was secretly, guiltily hoping that Eiven, with her barracuda speed, had defied the current and made it to the boat where Prox sat. If she could only find her, there might still be a chance of passing the test.

Hathin took one of the leather laces adorning Arilou’s wrist and tied it to a nearby pillar of rock to stop her wandering, then slipped away through the rocky labyrinth.

At the water’s edge she found several searchers from the village. She could tell from one look at their faces that nothing had been seen of Eiven.

‘We’ll keep looking,’ Hathin was told. ‘Now . . . you go back and do the best you can.’

The shadowed stone was clammy under Hathin’s hands and feet as she faced the possibility of a world robbed of Eiven by Hathin’s own failure.

She thought of Mother Govrie’s eye hardening as Eiven’s had done, she imagined standing before the whole village drenched in failure . . . she saw the entire reason for her existence dropping away from her like rain into a dark shaft.

By the time she returned to the place where she had left Arilou and the Inspector, the sky was metal and an orchestra of hollow fluting noises sounded throughout the Lacery as the wind found out needle-holes and crevices.

Skein still sat motionless, his expression serene. Was he ‘back’? Had he noticed her absence? He said nothing to remark on her arrival. It seemed that he was still away from his body.

Arilou, on the other hand, seemed restless. She still wore a starry, rapt expression, and had almost tugged her tether free. Occasionally she gave a bird-like twitch of her head, and her hands made soft clutching motions. She was murmuring under her breath, and as Hathin drew closer she realized that for once it was a single word, spoken over and over again.

Could it be? Could the miracle have arrived? Arilou was staring out to sea, roughly towards where Prox’s boat would be bobbing on the restless water.

‘Kaiethemin . . .’ That seemed to be what she was saying. Hathin listened to it a few more times, but she could make no more sense of it than that. Still, what if this really was Prox’s whisper, mangled by Arilou’s soft mouth? Hathin had no choice but to pray that it was. Her time had run out.

‘I believe I know the word.’ Hathin marvelled at her own voice, clear and composed.

Skein continued to stare out into some private sky. After a few seconds Hathin could only conclude that she had not been heard, that his mind was still far from his body. She reached out gently and touched his hand.

For a second the world inhaled soundlessly. Then thunder rolled unseen cannonballs across the sky above. There was a downward rush of air, and raindrops struck all around like metal pellets, making the dust jump.

Hathin withdrew her hand from the Inspector’s, pinching at her fingers and palm to rid them of their pins and needles. Invisible red ants were seething up her arm and surging forth to run over every inch of her skin.

The Inspector’s hand was cold, and his chest no longer rose and fell. Skein, who had never been comfortable with his body, had left it forever.

6

Going through the Gongs

Hathin untied Arilou, keeping her own manner as calm as possible, and led her back to the beach. Arilou was docile, but her hand kept twitching restlessly in Hathin’s grasp, and her gaze still held an eerie brilliance.

Everybody on the beach was bedraggling with the rain, but Hathin could not believe that they felt the chill of it as she did. She recognized Larsh’s shambling shuffle and made for him.

‘Is the test finished?’ Larsh’s eye passed over Hathin’s rigid, desperate features, over Arilou’s rain-streaked powder mask.

Hathin swallowed, and nodded.

‘So? What did Inspector Skein say?’

Hathin bit her lips together and met his eye. ‘He does not have the name Skein.’ She spoke slowly and with all the diamond-cold resonance she could conjure. And she watched Larsh’s eyes widen and darken as her meaning hit him in the marrow.

According to the old Lace stories, after you died and went to the Cave of Caves, you had to pay the Old Woman before she would let you pass. In the first cave you had to hand over your name
. . .

The dead had no names.

‘How . . . ?’ Larsh trailed off.

Hathin raised her eyebrows and gave a little shake of her head.

‘Where?’

‘In the Lacery. In the Gripping Bird’s hand.’

Larsh blinked and blinked, his eyebrows twitching as if to shrug off the rain’s attentions.

‘Get your lady sister inside,’ he said at last.

Even when Hathin had manoeuvred Arilou back into their cave-home, her mind and heart were painfully full of Skein and Eiven and the storm. And so she took particular care as she washed Arilou’s face clean of powder. She used little shell crescents to scrape the dirt out from under Arilou’s nails until the louring of the sky outside made the work too difficult to see, and when Arilou moaned and flinched Hathin realized that she was scratching her.

The reed curtain flip-flapped and spat a figure inwards. Leaden criss-cross light filtered through the weave and patterned a lean, fierce face, a scar like a bird’s footprint. It was Eiven. She did not respond to Hathin’s incoherent gasp of relief and surprise.

‘Leave her with me,’ was all Eiven said. ‘You’re wanted in the Scorpion’s Tail.’

The cavern where Hathin had found Larsh alone in the mists the previous night was now full of people. It looked as though everybody in the village but Eiven, Arilou and the youngest children was there.

On a slab of rock lay the Lost Inspector, Skein. Somebody had placed his hands over his stomach as if he had enjoyed a good meal and settled down to sleep it off. This might have been more convincing if the same person had thought to close his eyes, but Hathin guessed that a superstitious frisson had prevented the Lace from doing so.

. . .
and when your dead soul had left your name in the first cave, you passed to a second cave, where you had to hand over your eyes before moving on
. . .

With a shock she realized that Skein had been laid on the altar slab that bore the carving of the sacrifice. She wondered if it had been an accident, or whether there had been the unspoken thought:
Well, we need the favour of the divine, and it would be a pity for the body to go to waste
. . .

‘We can’t talk here.’ Mother Govrie, practical as ever. ‘Our voices will wander to the entrance if we do. We’ll take the Gong Path.’

Skein was draped with Whish’s canvas cloak, and then the villagers trooped deeper into the cavern to a place where the water pooled into a black mirror.

There, without a word, everybody took off their outer garments. They all took rapid but measured breaths, stealing as much goodness from the air as they could. Then Whish knelt by the edge of the black pool, drew in one last deep breath and cleaved the water. A few minutes later, her face broke the surface again, with a little whale huff of gasped spray.

‘The path is clear,’ she said, once she had her breath. The best diver was always sent ahead to check the Path of the Gongs, and in the absence of Eiven this was Whish. A few more deep breaths and Whish plunged again, her back curling above the surface for an instant like that of a dolphin.

Next followed Mother Govrie, and then every other member of the village, one by one. Hathin was among the last, and as she stepped up to the pool her face was buzzing and tingling with her hastily drawn breaths. She had only swum the Gong Path a few times. She took her last, deepest breath, and then the cold water received her.

It was just a matter of holding herself together through the shock of the cold, and then her eyes were open and suddenly she was her underwater self, slippery and unaccountable as an eel.

Hathin found familiar flint handholds and pulled her way downward to where the underwater tunnel began. She flipped herself face up as she entered the tunnel so that she could push with her hands and feet against the roof. Almost immediately the meagre light abandoned her, and she was reliant on touch and memory.

There were no voices here. But the water was not silent. No, it whispered of every darkened drop that rang into it along the dark stream’s seeping, secret length. This strange music had given the Path of the Gongs its name.

And somewhere inside her there was still the land-walking Hathin in her world of worry, clutching herself with fear of fear itself, terrified that she might panic and have nowhere to flee for air. But the underwater Hathin, the mermaid-minded Hathin, knew a strange peace in the blackness, despite the risks.

Anyone swimming blind would have followed the tunnel to its finish and found themselves at a dead end, but Hathin had been taught where to find the low side passage and twisted her way sideways and down to pass through it. Then she let herself rise, bubbles beading their way out of her mouth as her lungs expanded. She broke the surface, and gasped the world and its worries back into herself. Ready hands pulled her out of the pool to clear the way for the next swimmer.

This cavern was one of the many secrets of the village. Every child was taught to swim the Path of the Gongs so that if the village was attacked everybody could flee into the Scorpion’s Tail and through the tunnel without fear of pursuit. This cave was linked by a series of tunnels to the great sinkhole near Sweetweather and beyond but here the only light was provided by a galaxy of glow-worms. Then flint clicked, a wick hissed, a tiny flame tugged timorously in unfelt draughts, and Hathin could see that she was standing in a cavern full of teeth.

. . .
and in the third cave of the dead you had to hand over your mouth
. . .

Row upon row of ghostly teeth, many the height of a man, jutting from the floor, tapering from the ceiling. Stalagmites, stalactites. The cave was agape with them, and beyond their bite was nothing but dark throat.

Around her, the villagers that peopled Hathin’s world were almost unrecognizable. The turbans of the old women, the embroidered aprons of the young wives, the young men’s belts of tools and tricks, everything that let you know them at a glance had been left behind. In the near darkness, their eyes were yellow stars in hollows, their faces swathed in wet hair.

And yet Hathin knew each of them, even in the darkness. She knew them by their teeth.

Nearly every Lace with their adult teeth had them ornamented in traditional ways, with tiny plaques of turquoise, mother-of-pearl, greenstone, agate or pink quartz. Now the lantern’s light played over each wide, hard, frightened smile and winked in the little gems.