Salt (11 page)

‘I can’t . . .’

‘You can. Tarl the Hunter. Gather your strength. We’ve got a boat.’

‘And the sea is waiting,’ Danatok said. ‘We’ll wash you clean.’

He led the way, holding the torch high. Hari brought Tarl, making him walk, hauling him up when he stumbled, making him half run when the way was smooth. The torch grew dim. There were hundreds of red eyes in the dark, and a chittering of hundreds of rat voices. They’ll have the flesh off us before we can scream, Hari thought, and he cried at Danatok and Tarl to go faster. But the sound of rats, a sound he knew, seemed to revive Tarl, and he moved more surely, with greater strength.

‘I need my knife,’ he said.

‘Here, Tarl.’ Hari drew it from its sheath and forced it into his father’s hand. Tarl’s fingers closed on the hilt, and he stood straighter, and Hari felt him turn into Tarl the hunter again.

‘How big are these rats?’

‘As big as Hari’s dog, some of them,’ Danatok said.

‘King rats,’ said Tarl. ‘Stop when you get to a narrow place.’

‘They’ll kill us.’

‘Do what he says,’ Hari said.

They reached an opening where only one could pass at a time. Danatok stopped and let the others through, then ran after them in the dying light.

‘Now let my father stand in the opening,’ Hari said.

‘And take the light away, but not too far,’ Tarl said. ‘Just enough for me to see their eyes.’

Danatok and Hari went another half dozen steps, and the rats beyond the gap slid at Tarl in a shallow wave of black and brown fur and purple eyes and yellow teeth. His knife moved too fast for Hari to see, and a spray of blood shot up his arm. Rats screamed, but one, a giant, hairless and pink, slid past Tarl’s legs and sank its teeth into his calf muscle. Hari jumped forward and broke its back with a heel kick.

‘Tarl, enough. Come on.’

Danatok thrust the torch into the gap, making enough light to push the rats back.

‘Seven,’ Tarl said, ‘and one to you, Hari. They’ll feed on the bodies and not follow for a while. How far?’

‘Close enough. Smell the sea,’ Danatok said.

‘I smell only blood and that filthy stuff in the mine. Hurry, boy. I’ve got no more strength.’

Hari supported him again and found that Tarl had spoken the truth, his strength was gone, and it was only the knife, clasped in his hand, that told him who he was – the knife and me, Hari thought, Hari, his son. The knowledge that they would come out of Deep Salt elated him. Then he thought: Safe except for the sickness, and he supported his father anxiously, feeling Tarl weaken with every step.

The torch died with a sputter, and the scraping of rat claws, the rushing of rat bodies, grew again. Hari tried to force them back with his mind, but they were too many. Danatok plunged on, running, swimming cave mouths, finding his way from memory, and at last Hari saw a point of light in the blackness – a star shining in the sky, a star in the world outside Deep Salt.

‘Tarl, we’re nearly there. The rats won’t follow. We’re out of Deep Salt.’

Hari half threw, half lifted Tarl into the sea, dragged him out from the rocks, with Danatok swimming at his side. The rat squeals faded. The gentle slap of water and the whisper of a breeze took their place. Hari and Danatok swam, floating Tarl between them on his back. They rounded the bulge in the cliff and came to the beach, where they washed Tarl in the shallows, scrubbing him with pebbles and sand. They scrubbed themselves, trying to get rid of the itching that had crept on their skin since they had stood at the edge of the green light. The dog ran back and forth on the beach, whimpering.

‘Tarl, let me take the knife.’

‘No. It remembers me. I’ll hold it.’

They sat him in water up to his waist, pulled the boat beside him, heaved him in, threw in the dog. Dawn was in the sky, making the clouds bleed. Everything is blood, Hari thought. He felt sick.

‘Let’s get out of this place.’

They sailed straight out to sea, then tacked north. Tarl lay shivering in the bow. He could scarcely speak. ‘Cold. Cold,’ he mumbled.

‘He has the sickness,’ Danatok said.

‘How long were you in Deep Salt, Tarl?’ Hari said.

‘There’s no time there.’ He leaned over the side, retching, but nothing came from his mouth.

Hari pulled blankets from the locker. He wrapped them round Tarl, then tried to make him drink and eat, but Tarl could not.

‘Cold,’ he whispered.

‘Come here, dog,’ Hari said. He lifted the animal on top of Tarl. ‘Lie there. Keep him warm.’

‘The dog will get sick too,’ Danatok said.

Hari took no notice, and the dog appeared happy enough, seeming to find comfort in Tarl.

They sailed all that day, turned into a creek mouth at nightfall, made a fire, and all that time Tarl slept, and dreamed, and woke and cried out hoarsely, hugging the dog to his chest. Hari and Danatok spent the night by the fire, sleeping as well as they could without blankets. In the morning they went on. Tarl stayed the same, and the dog did not need to be told to curl against him. He lay with his head on Tarl’s chest, and Hari thought: Tarl has him now. He’s Tarl’s dog. The knife was Tarl’s too, held in his fist.

With the wind behind them they reached the village at nightfall; and Hari saw, as Danatok steered the boat to the beach, that the boy had hardly any strength left. He too was sick, though not as badly as Tarl. For himself, Hari was tired from lack of sleep and hard sailing. The itch was gone from his body. It was as if the wind and sea had washed him clean.

Pearl and Tealeaf and half a dozen Dwellers waited on the beach. Men lifted Tarl onto a stretcher. The dog snapped at their hands when they tried to lift him clear, so they let him stay. They carried the stretcher up the beach.

‘Where are they taking him?’ Hari said.

‘To the sickhouse. They’ll nurse him,’ Tealeaf said. ‘No, Hari, don’t go. You can see him in a few days. We’ve seen men from Deep Salt worse than your father.’

‘Danatok?’ He looked for the boy, and saw his mother helping him towards the village.

‘He’s all right. We’ve seen him worse too.’

‘I wouldn’t have found Tarl without him.’

Danatok, he called.

The boy turned.

Thank you.

Danatok smiled, raised his hand, and his mother led him away.

Hari, Pearl said, what’s Deep Salt?

‘I don’t want to talk about it. It’s sick. A sick place. I’ll –’ He looked in her face, saw her concern and, with wonder, realised it was for him. He felt as if he had stepped off a ledge and was falling. Tarl had been concerned for him. And Lo. But no one else, ever.

I’ll tell you, he said. But now I need to sleep. I’ll tell you tomorrow.

Yes. Tomorrow, Pearl said.

NINE

Dweller children were teaching her to swim. There had been perfumed baths at home, with maids soaping her. That had been the only touch of water she had known. It was not thought proper for Company women to swim. But with naked children frolicking around her in the creek, Pearl learned quickly and soon was jumping from the bank and turning and twisting in the depths, picking coloured stones from the bottom. She made little mounds of them on the grass and thought they were prettier than the necklaces and rings in the jewel box she had left behind in her dressing room. And all the time she swam, or walked by herself on the beach, or lay in bed waiting for sleep, there seemed to be a soft voice at her ear whispering: Pearl.

Who are you? she wondered. What do you want me to do?

She asked Tealeaf, who smiled and touched her on the forehead: There’s nothing to do, Pearl, except wait.

I heard it say my name when we were in the jungle.

Yes, I know.

Do you hear it?

It speaks to me, but not as clearly as to you. And saying your name might be all it will ever do.

Pearl seemed to understand that in a way it was enough, this breathing of her name. It soon became as natural as the beating of her heart, and although it was always there she was rarely conscious of it. She wondered if Hari heard it too – his name – and thought, a little smugly, that he did not, that he would always be too busy to listen.

She had missed him while he was away. She had worried about him. It was not that she liked him; she did not, because he was too rough and too ugly, with his scars and red-black skin and hair hanging matted down his back, but they spoke to each other, in their minds, and seemed to touch as naturally as breathing, even when he was angry and hating her – as naturally as this new voice whispering in her ear. So when he was gone it was like feeling a cold patch on her skin.

Hari, she said, sitting by the creek alone, come and tell me about Deep Salt.

There was no answer, and she supposed that although it was late in the morning he was still sleeping off his tiredness.

She had not liked the look of Tarl as he had been lifted onto the stretcher: his face was even more scarred than Hari’s, from rat bites, she supposed, and disfigured by the number burned on his forehead. He held Hari’s knife as though he meant never to let it go. She had a sick realisation of the life they must have led, Tarl and Hari, in the ruined city, in Blood Burrow, fighting, killing, living on what they could scavenge, while she . . . Pearl did not want to think about it. She stood up and stripped off her clothes and dived into the creek. Deep down, she hunted for coloured stones. If her mother could see her now, and her sister . . . She almost laughed, and lost half her air and scrambled for the surface, where she thought: My mother and sister are murdered by Ottmar. All my family are dead.

She sat on the bank, thinking about them. There had been no love – no one had ever said ‘love’ – so she did not cry, but she felt a deep sorrow for them. It was as though only part of them had been alive – her father’s eyes, judging and cold; her mother’s tongue, scolding; her sister’s laugh, always scornful or dissatisfied; her brothers’ . . . She thought of Hubert, killed by Hari. The knife that Tarl held so tightly now had gone into his throat. She was glad that Hari no longer had it.

Heard you calling, Hari’s voice said in her head.

He was standing behind her.

She grabbed her clothes and pulled them on, while he watched, grinning.

You’re white like those muggy grubs, he said.

She did not think he meant it as an insult. He was simply stating a fact.

And you’re brown, she said. The first time I saw you I thought it was dirt. And she thought: Some of it was. But he had never had servants washing him. Or dressing him and serving him with food. Had he even known each morning when he woke if he would eat anything that day?

Tell me about Deep Salt, she said.

Surprisingly, he shivered, and a look of fear crossed his face.

I’m trying to forget that place.

I heard my brothers talking about it once. They said Ottmar mines it for jewels that explode in the sun, so he can never bring them out, it’s too dangerous. But one day he’ll find a way. Did you see the jewels?

I didn’t see anything. It was dark. Then we came to the light and we stopped . . .

Tell me.

She sat down, inviting him to sit beside her. He squatted instead and took stones from one of her mounds and lobbed them one by one into the creek. She saw how accurately he threw, with each stone following the curve of the one before and hitting the water in the same place. She would not have been surprised if they made another neat pile on the bottom.

Tell me about how you sailed there, for a start.

With Danatok. I wouldn’t have found my father without him.

He began to describe it, haltingly at first, then in a voice that sounded hushed and horrified: sailing down the coast, the three hills with a dead one in the middle, the port and the salt mine, the iron door. And the caverns after that, endless and black, with Danatok’s torch making a pool of light that shrank and shrank. He told her about the skeletons and the rats.

Then my skin started to itch. And we saw the green light, and Danatok said we couldn’t go any further.

He told her how he had called his father and how Tarl had come, and they had run, while the rats that had followed them parted and let them through, held off by the torchlight, and then began to follow again, coming closer as the light began to fade, until they were nipping at their heels.

Giant rats, he said. One with two heads and one with tails growing out of its back, and some with long white hair and some with no hair at all.

Pearl saw tears running down his face.

Rats shouldn’t be like that, he said.

Why are they? What does it?

It must be what they mine in Deep Salt. The thing that makes you sick and makes you die. The rats can live with it if they don’t go too close, but it changes them . . .

And kills the men? But Hari, you could have stopped the rats. You can do it with horses and the dog. With people too. You could have told them to stay back.

‘Do you think I didn’t try?’ he cried, hurting her ears. Then more softly, and silently: I tried. But I was helping Tarl and I couldn’t concentrate; I couldn’t speak to more than one at a time and they kept on coming. So I tried to make a wall they couldn’t get through; I thought that would stop them, but it was full of holes and they came wriggling . . . So we ran. They would have got us if Tarl hadn’t killed some with my knife. His knife. They stopped to feed on the dead ones, and then they came again, and the torch went out. But we got to the entrance and saw the stars, and it was the starlight that stopped them. I’ve never seen anything so . . . Does Tealeaf know about stars? I want to know. What are they? What are their names?

Tealeaf knows everything. But I can tell you, Hari. She taught me.

Danatok uses the stars when he’s sailing the boat.

Hari wiped the tears from his face.

We washed my father. We tried to wash the sickness off. We used the dog to keep him warm. The dog is his now. He’s called Dog. We brought him home. You know the rest. He’s in the sickhouse. They won’t let me in but they say he’ll be all right. Two days. Three. Then he can come out.

And he’ll tell us what they do in Deep Salt, Pearl said. Tealeaf says none of the men they’ve brought out before have been able to talk about it. They just kept quiet and then they died. But Tarl was only there for a day or two, Tealeaf thinks.

It made him sick, like a starving dog. I thought he was dying. First he was cold, then he was hot, he shivered all over and said his skin was coming off . . .

But he’s all right, Pearl said. Hari, he’ll live.

Yes, he’ll live. I did what I promised. I saved Tarl.

He sat brooding on the bank, then suddenly jumped up, stripped off his clothes and dived into the creek. She saw him swimming deep down, undulating like the animal that had swum off the beach yesterday – a seal. She wondered if her voice would reach him underwater.

Hari, she said.

He surfaced: What?

Just trying it out.

He sank to the bottom: Pearl.

Yes, it works. Hari, will you teach me to sail the boat?

When?

Now.

He came to the surface and dressed on the bank, turning his back when he saw her watching. She had never seen a naked man before, or a naked person of any sort, except for herself in mirrors, until those Dweller children yesterday. She thought Hari was not so ugly without his clothes, and those parts she had never seen before, but sometimes imagined, were curious and interesting.

They went down to the beach and launched the boat Danatok and he had used, and for two days he taught her to sail, and learned to sail better himself. On the second afternoon the breeze died. They drifted off the beach, watching people walking in the village and working in the gardens further back, on the gentle slopes. The blue hills rose beyond, range on range, and far-away mountains with snowy peaks shone in the sun.

Trees, Hari said. I never saw trees in Blood Burrow. When I saw one for the first time, in your garden . . .

Spying on me.

. . . I was afraid. I didn’t know what it was or what it might do. It might walk. It might pick me up in its branches and tear me open.

Was everything killing and blood?

Yes, everything. But when I was sure, I climbed into it and felt it growing inside itself. It was just being quiet and being itself. So I sat there with my arms around it, feeling it grow.

Hari, be quiet.

Why?

Be quiet a moment.

The boat rocked gently as the breeze came back and puffed the sail.

Do you hear anything? she said.

The mast creaking.

No. Something else.

What?

I hear something saying my name.

They waited, and she heard it – what was it? Did it matter? – say Pearl silently inside her, deep inside, in the folding places of her mind, and it was more than a name, and less than a welcome; it was a shifting over to make room for her, in the hills, in the trees, in the sea, and a shifting inside her, an exchange, to give room – and all as natural as breathing.

Hari?

Yes.

He felt it too. His name. His eyes went far away, into the hills, and darkened and grew deep as he made room.

They said nothing more. There was nothing to say. They sailed for the beach and hauled the boat onto the sand and walked to Sartok’s house, where Tealeaf was waiting. She did not need to be told what had happened to them. But a look of deep contentment showed on her face, making her younger. She led them inside to the evening meal.

You can sail now, Pearl?

Yes. Hari showed me.

Why are you learning?

So that if we go back to City we can go that way and be quicker than going over the mountains.

Are you going back to City?

I don’t know.

I’m going if Tarl wants to, Hari said.

Tarl will be out of the sickhouse tomorrow, Tealeaf said. He’ll tell us what he wants to do.

And what he saw in Deep Salt, Pearl said.

Yes, what he saw there.

They ate their meal. Pearl and Hari were quiet. Deep Salt still made them afraid, but they were less afraid than before.