The Islanders (4 page)

The second painting is no less epic and is held by some critics to be the greater of the two.
Final Hour of the Relief Ship
depicts a storm at sea: a sailing vessel is foundering amid gigantic waves, her sails torn into ribbons and two of her masts broken. A huge sea-serpent is apparently about to consume the passengers and crew leaping from the decks into the sea. Both of these major works are in the permanent collection of the Covenant Maritime Gallery, on the island of Muriseay.

The third painting from Bathurst’s Aay period was a portrait of Esphoven Muy herself, and its whereabouts is unknown to this day.

Although the original painting was never exhibited on Aay, colour reproductions based on Bathurst’s own print of it are familiar. It is on a significantly smaller scale than the massive oil paintings which were Bathurst’s usual stock in trade. The painting of Muy was executed in tempera, the subtle colours employed to render her as a stunningly attractive woman, her light clothes in suggestive disarray while a mocking wind teases at her hair. Her smile, and the expression in her eyes, leaves little doubt in the mind of the viewer about what her relationship with the painter must have been. The painting, called
E. M. The Singer of Airs
, is unique in Bathurst’s body of work: no other picture of his is so intimate, so sensual, so revealing of his love and passion.

Esphoven Muy is believed to have left Aay at around the same time as Bathurst moved on. She was popularly assumed to have followed him, and that her absence would therefore be short-lived.

Even as early as this in Bathurst’s career, he was renowned not just for his fickle attachments to islands, but also to women. Work at the Academy continued but for the first two or three years after Muy departed the Academy seemed to lose a sense of direction. It was later reorganized when senior members of the academic body created a new managing foundation, and the Academy in its modern form started to take shape.

Muy herself, though, was never seen again on Aay and she had no further contact with the Academy.

She died some fifty years later. Her body was discovered in the tiny cottage in which she had been living, in a remote part of the island of Piqay. The people who lived near her had known her by another name, but when the authorities cleared her house they found many papers and books, and these identified her. She had kept a journal for all the years she lived on Piqay, and although most of the material has never been published the journals themselves are now kept in a closed case within the Academy Library, on Aay.

From the sole published section of her journal, which describes a period of roughly a year in length, a decade after she had arrived on Piqay, and from other papers which were found in the house and are available for inspection in the Academy, as well as certain artefacts discovered in the grounds of her house, it has become possible to gain a glimpse of the life she led in her self-imposed seclusion.

The journal describes her decision to plant trees on the hillside behind her home. For much of the year she writes about she is concentrating on this. Not every kind of tree was suitable to be grown in the Piqay soil, and she chose the hillside site because it was exposed to the wind, and this further restricted her choice of trees. However, the planting went on throughout the period of the journal, and quite clearly for some time afterwards. There is now a whole arboretum, mostly mature, on the Piqay headland where she lived. It has become a protected zone administered by the Piqay Seigniory on behalf of the Academy of the Four Winds.

Muy believed that each different species of tree responded to the pressure of wind in a unique way: the density and grain of the bark, the number of branches and the spread of them, the shape of the leaves on deciduous trees, the resonant qualities of the timber itself, the time of year that buds would appear or leaves would fall, the fineness and length of needles on evergreens, even the kinds of wildlife that might be attracted to inhabit the trees with their nests. All these would have an influence on the way the wind was received and responded to by the tree, and Muy believed she could identify many trees solely from the soughing they made.

She described the sound of a cypress as similar to the mild harmonies of a harp, a tall pine in full finery of needle as an ecstatic clarinet solo, an apple tree in blossom as a frivolous dance of clashing cymbals, an oak as a baritone voice, a narrow poplar bending to a gale as a coloratura.

The yard at the rear of her cottage was also put to use in the strong winds that flew across her headland. She hung one side of the yard with wind-chimes: wooden, glass, crystal, plastic, metal. They were rarely silent. More scientifically, Muy erected a number of wind measurement instruments. Five masts of different heights stood at the upper end of the yard, each bearing different types of anemometers and wind-pressure gauges. She analysed the results on data logging equipment in a specially built cabin, together with the readings from rainfall, humidity and temperature gauges. A tall lightning protector stood above everything.

Although this laboratory has since been dismantled, visitors may experience something of its unique concentration on the winds, because a reconstruction of it is in the Academy Museum in Aay Port. Normal opening hours apply.

Towards the end of the published section of the journals, Muy recorded a declaration that she wished to become a native Piqayean. According to the tradition of the island she said that she intended never to leave it again. She abided by that intent until the end.

In the light of her scientific discoveries the role played by Dryd Bathurst in this long final sequence of Esphoven Muy’s life is now trivial. However, it seems that Muy did fall victim to an enigma of the heart. Although Dryd Bathurst never worked or set up a studio on Piqay, it is known that he arrived there not long after leaving Aay, and left again soon after. No one was believed to be accompanying him at the time, but the dates roughly coincide with Muy’s arrival on the island.

The standard biography of the artist,
The Epic Canvas of Dryd Bathurst
by Chaster Kammeston, lists an astonishing number of women with whom the artist is known or believed to have had affairs. Esphoven Muy’s name is among them, but Kammeston does not go into details.

Although Muy lived and worked on Piqay for much of her life, it is with Aay that she will always be firmly associated.

A springtime breeze that Muy often noticed during the years she was living and working on Aay, now bears her name. The V
ENTO
M
UYO
is a light, warm zephyr, scented with the fragrance of the wild flowers that grow on the shallow cliffs to the south of Aay Port.

Aay is regularly served by inter-island ferries, but there is no direct link with the mainland. Standards of cuisine and visitor accommodation throughout the island are reportedly excellent. Seafood is a speciality. Daily guided tours of the Academy are available. Visitors require a visa and all normal inoculations – check with your personal physician before travelling. There are liberal shelterate laws, but property is expensive. Visitors should avoid the weeks of late spring as the föhn wind is most likely to be active then.

Currency: Archipelagian simoleon; Muriseayan thaler.

Annadac

CALM PLACE

One of the remotest islands in the Swirl, A
NNADAC
is situated close to the tidal anomaly that millions of years ago helped form the Swirl.

For the most part, continental Sudmaieure is an icy, snowbound waste, with only a few coastal strips adjacent to sea that melts for part of the year. There is, however, one peninsula, long and narrow, steep with mountains of volcanic origin, that extends to the north. This is the Qataari Peninsula, in the coldest part of which there are several glaciers, and these calve to the eastern side into the stormy Southern Midway. The turbulent combination of warm salty seawater from the Southern Oscillating Stream and the cold fresh meltwater from the drifting icebergs creates a churning and treacherous stretch of ocean, with a multitude of different currents. These, together with several thousand years of volcanism, threw up the hundreds of small islands that are now known as the Swirl. Annadac is one of these Swirl islands, far to the south and close to the continental mass.

With the coming of spring, a huge tidal bulge of water forms in the sea to the south of Annadac, every day, twice a day. This moves rapidly around the island. Over the centuries the phenomenon has caused serious coastal erosion and unpredictable weather patterns. The Annadacians are legendary for their forbearing and stoical nature.

Perhaps the most celebrated Annadacian of her era was the conceptual and installation artist named J
ORDENN
Y
O
.

From an early age Yo became enthralled by the rock and beach formations that had been created all around her island by tidal movements and gale-force winds. Yo came to believe that the island was in essence a permeable being, that it was alive in some mystical sense, and that it could be moulded to react to the elements. She became fascinated by this idea, latterly obsessed by it.

Some of her first installations were cairns or dolmens built on exposed hillsides, carefully situated to catch the light of sunset or sunrise, or to present thrilling silhouettes against the sky, when seen from the most commonly used roads.

Many of these cairns still stand today and are in the care of the Annadac Seigniory offices. Three in particular are of interest to visitors, because Yo set them up in a configuration that would modify the pressure and direction of the wind, and set up a series of dust-filled twisters to march and scatter across the flat land around.

The site is open all year round, but the best time to visit the cairns is in the early fall. Then the prevailing C
HOUSTER
wind from the south-west, famous for its gusts and sudden changes of direction, will produce the wind funnels for about seven days and nights. Twisters appear other times of the year, but they are randomly produced and therefore the casual visitor cannot be guaranteed to see them.

Then as now, many young people on Annadac enjoyed the sport of tunnelling, and Yo was one of them. It was prohibited on many islands, but Annadac was still tolerant of the activity. Yo soon realized that tunnelling was a pastime that could lend itself to serious artistic activity. Her cairns had brought her work to the attention of the Covenant Foundation on Muriseay, and she was able to raise a small grant to drill some experimental tunnels.

The first one she completed ran from the south side of the island to the north, with a shallow turn at the midway point and a gradual narrowing throughout the length of the tunnel. The southern entrance was built below the tide line. When the tunnel was completed, and the buffer dam opened, the tidal waters began to flow through, twice a day. As the tunnel was opened in midsummer, the tidal effects were at first unexceptional, giving Yo extra time to run flow tests and make suitable modifications and improvements. A few months later, with the tumultuous rising of the spring tide, Annadac experienced for the first time the fantastic rush of water now known as the Y
O
T
ORRENT
.

The Torrent pours through the tunnel at a terrifying velocity, emitting a thunderous roar that can be heard in most parts of the island. On the northern side, the flowing water bursts out into the rock-filled open sea in a great foaming sluice of ice-cold water.

Within a couple of years Annadac had become the destination of choice for thrill-seekers, as it remains today. Every year, in the three months of the highest tides, these people board rafts or don inflatable jackets, allowing themselves to be thrust excitingly and dangerously through the Torrent. Although the Annadac Seigniory imposes a number of safety regulations, every year brings an inevitable death toll.

Yo herself is not known to have ridden the Torrent. She left Annadac soon after the first of the spring tides, and is thought to have returned to her home island only once more, to attend the funeral of her father.

Out of season Annadac is a quiet island, dependent on farming and fishing, and offers few facilities for the casual tourist. Because of the proximity of Annadac to Sudmaieure, many of the young soldiers who become deserters pass through the island on their way north. However, there are strict havenic laws and most of the soldiers do not stay long. Ordinary visitors to the island will be unaware of them.

For those who intend to visit Annadac for the sport, the peak period is also the most expensive, and is usually fully booked by regular users. However, good torrenting is possible in the first two weeks of summer, the weather is warmer and the prices are lower. The authorities have ruled that visitors must carry full insurance and a cash deposit is demanded in case funeral arrangements become necessary. No vaccinations are required, but random medical checks are performed on all who use the Torrent. Some operators offer inclusive tours.

Currency: Aubracian talent; Muriseayan thaler.

Aubrac Grande
or
Aubrac Chain

The A
UBRAC
C
HAIN
is unusual in the Dream Archipelago, in that it has no discernible patois name, but instead is named after the scientist who discovered the true nature of the islands. His name was J
AEM
A
UBRAC
, an entomologist at Tumo University, who had taken on the field trip to replace an indisposed colleague. Aubrac left unfinished a laboratory research project on which he had been working, believing that it would be only a matter of a few weeks before he returned.