He stared at it until a baby’s scream snapped his attention back to who it was he’d come home to.
“Ilik?” he called, following the long tunnel through the hollowed bough to the nursery. There, familiar hands thrust a bundle capped with a puckered, bawling face between him and the bright portals admitting the morning sun.
“Take him,” the once-queen decreed, and Leaper lifted his son into the crook of his elbow.
If he’d expected some spark of recognition from Builder, he was disappointed. The baby screamed louder.
“What does he want?” he called after his lover’s retreating back.
“Maybe my milk!” came the ever more distant reply. “Maybe he’s wet. He could need to burp. Or fart. Maybe he’s hot. Maybe he’s cold. Or bored. I need to relieve myself, Leaper!”
“Right,” Leaper said, fixing the list she’d just given him in his head. He couldn’t feed Builder, but he methodically went through the other possibilities, patting the tiny back for burping and rubbing the tiny tummy in case of gas trapped at the other end. He changed the old swaddling for new, checked the tiny chest for sweat and the tiny limbs for cold. “Are you bored, little one? Is my little Builder bored? Father will sing you a song.”
It was what you did with babies. Sing songs. He knew that much. No appropriate songs popped into his head.
“O Oniwak of Airakland,” he warbled foolishly, “the crossbow steady in his hand—”
Ilik returned before he could reach the song’s ridiculous chorus. Her posture was straighter, her expression bemused. Builder had not stopped crying.
“He’s hungry, after all,” she said, unlacing her sash and opening her robe.
Leaper held the bundled baby out to her, and time seemed to stop. It was perfect. Everything was perfect. Builder’s hands, reaching for his mother. Ilik’s hands, reaching for the child. Builder’s warm weight in Leaper’s hands. The sunlight slanting through the room and the smell of satinwood.
They are going to the city, he thought, and Hunger will go with them, but my human body has to stay here.
Without Audblayin’s gifts, everything is undone.
Ilik lifted Builder away from him, and Leaper thought he might weep, as loudly and bitterly as Wife-of-Epatut had ever done.
“Tell me more about the city,” Ilik said, attaching Builder by the mouth to one of her swollen breasts, but as she finished the sentence, her gaze rose. Leaper turned to find Aforis, Oken, and Wife-of-Epatut crowded behind him.
“We’ll see the city soon enough,” said Oken. Her spines were wrapped, her fists on her hips. “Aunty can’t be swayed from her decision to go. Tell us more about this secret, quicker way you have of getting there.”
Leaper lifted his chin.
“It’s in the kitchen,” he said.
Leaper moved the thieves’ lantern to the top of the ti chest. The five of them stood around it, gazes fixed on it. It was more impressive than the smashed one he’d left in Bernreb’s cottage, Leaper supposed, but he couldn’t blame Oken for looking so sceptical.
“That’s going to take us to the mountains in the south?”
“Not yet,” Leaper said. “Not until I’ve taken its twin to the ruins of Time.”
“In a place of many people,” Ilik muttered to herself, “the work of survival is accomplished quickly.”
“These ruins,” Oken said. “They have running water.”
“Yes,” Leaper said.
“Where there are few people,” Ilik said, “each one must carry the rough knowledge of all, for survival.”
“The mountains have game to hunt,” Oken said, “and herbs to gather.”
“Yes,” Leaper said. At least, I assume some of the plants are edible.
“But no inhabitants?” Aforis asked ingenuously. “It’s counterintuitive that the Bird-Riders and Fig-Eaters of Floor would not have returned there, if it’s as well provisioned as you say. The new gods needed slaves, for construction and for worship. Clearly, they acquired an excess. They found themselves with too many of the pale mountain people for them to protect with the limited magic they had, and so some were released into Understorey.” His expression clouded. Then his eyebrows rose. “But of course. The winged one, who had flown freely over mountains and river, forest and sea, going by a different name in every human place where she was worshipped, was forced by the new gods’ arrival to restrict herself to the lair, where before she had only been seen once in a generation.”
“What is a winged one?” Oken asked.
Aforis did not seem to hear her.
“That winged one,” he said, “could hunt chimeras and duck-beaked water lizards no longer. She hungered for them, even as she ate her way through the remnant of the city of Time. Wept was no longer her name. Benevolence was no longer her name. Her new name was Hunger.”
“Aforis,” Leaper said, “why didn’t you tell me all that before? In the cave, when she broke my neck, when we were trying to find a way to escape from her?”
“I don’t know.” Aforis smiled and met Leaper’s eyes. He clutched his parchments, but there was nothing inked there about Hunger or Time. “You defeated her, Leapael, that’s something I do know. I don’t know how, but I know you defeated her.” Because you remember, Leaper wondered, his heart aching again, or because you heard Ulellin say so? “The ruins of the city are safe for people now. These silk makers will build it. It will be beautiful, and it will last a long time, even longer than before. Ilik and her son will raise palaces from the stone.” He turned to the once-queen, beaming. “For every one your mother-in-law took from you, you’ll make it again on a grander scale.”
But Ilik had realised something was wrong.
“Are you well, Aforis?” she asked, brow furrowed. “You’d vanished, leaving behind the strange lantern. I stayed away from it. Kept Builder away, until Ylly came.”
“He’s not well,” Leaper said abruptly. “It’s my fault. I brought the curse down on him. For every day that goes by, Aforis, instead of ageing, grows a day younger. It’s why he’s having trouble remembering things.”
“I’m fine—”
“You’re not fine! Hunger wouldn’t tell us where the valley is, but she gave us a clue. She said she sent the clockmaker there, the one from Eshland whose riddles pleased her. She said the Birdfoot Valley contained the bones of Time, the one-fourteenth of a titan whose soul never came to Canopy with the thirteen other Old Gods. At best, the bones of Time will cure you. At worst, being so distant from Canopy will break the hold that the curse has over you.”
“No,” Aforis said, lifting the thieves’ lantern resolutely by the handle. “I’ll do that after I’ve helped you to build your city.”
“Others will build the city, Aforis. You’re a Skywatcher, an adept, but not outside the forest. Out there, your labour is an ordinary man’s labour, no more.”
“I was a teacher first,” Aforis said sternly. “I have logic, mathematics, scholarship, and history in my head that remain valuable, no matter where I am. I learned them forty years ago, and so they’re safe from the curse. Leapael, I have defied the lightning god two times in my life. First for love of Edax, and second for love of you. Shall I abandon you now? You need me.”
Leaper took Ilik’s hand and drew her close.
“Ilik has logic, mathematics, scholarship, and history in her head, too. You’ve been a father to me, you helped save me from Hunger, but now I’ve got Ilik, promised by the wind goddess to build palaces with her own two hands. I’m all grown up, Skywatcher. Your duty is discharged.”
Aforis’s expression softened.
“As you say.”
Leaper rummaged among Wife-of-Epatut’s things for the bound books of empty pages she’d brought for him. He pressed them, with a roll of pigment sticks, into Aforis’s hands.
“Start by keeping notes for yourself. Every night before you fall asleep. Write down what’s happening to you, and that the Birdfoot Valley is where to go looking for the cure. Promise me
you’ll find the bones of Time.”
Aforis clutched the books to his chest.
“I promise presently to search out this valley, Leapael, but before I do, I’ll find for you, and for Ilik, and for Wife-of-Epatut, the citizens of Time. While I am here, an adept I remain. I will find your people, buy their freedom, lift sigils from their tongues, and send them through this lantern to the mountain. Unar would have done it, had she survived.”
Craggy-faced, with red-rimmed eyes, he looked like a beggar. He looked like a king.
“How will you buy their freedom?” Oken asked, with interest.
“With the valuable goods that Leaper gathered in Eshland,” Ilik suggested.
Leaper gave Ilik a look that was partly ashamed, partly approving.
“When Audblayin takes his place in the Garden and appoints a new Bodyguard,” Leaper told Aforis, “you’ll know it’s time to go. If I can find more clues in the meantime, or find the valley itself, I’ll make a map. I’ll send it back to you. The slow way. I imagine I’ll sense it, when another Bodyguard is appointed. When my sleeplessness is taken away. On that day, promise me you’ll travel through the lantern yourself. On that day, if Hunger doesn’t get hold of me, I’ll leave Canopy, too. We’ll meet again in Time. I’ll help you.”
Aforis was already taking notes.
“When Audblayin takes his place in the Garden,” the Skywatcher murmured as he wrote, “and appoints a new Bodyguard, it will be time for me to travel through the lantern. Leapael, father of Builder, is all grown up. I’m to meet him in the ruins of Time.”
THIRTY-NINE
LEAPER SAT in front of the blazing fire.
It was the evening of the day in which he’d confronted Airak. He, Ilik, and Builder had travelled instantly through the thieves’ lantern. They had gone from Unar’s farm to Bernreb’s cottage outside the Garden.
On the chairs and benches beside Leaper sat Ilik, Leaper’s sister Ylly, his fathers Bernreb and Marram, and his youngest- and middle-mothers, Oos and Sawas. Builder snuffled sleepily in Sawas’s arms.
Leaper’s oldest-mother, also called Ylly, had claimed to be too frail to climb, and stayed behind in their home further down the tallowwood tree, in Understorey. They had reactivated all of Oldest-Father’s old traps and believed the tallowwood tree to be safe from demons for now.
An advantage to the weakness in the barrier. It was the first time that Oos and Sawas had been to Canopy since before Leaper was born. Marram had never seen the Gates of the Garden before.
Bernreb, who hadn’t made the journey since vacating his post as Bodyguard ten years prior, had laughed uncontrollably at the sight of Leaper wearing his old clothes.
He and Sawas are besotted with their grandson. After listening to Leaper’s long and weary tale, they’d both swiftly declared their intent to travel with Ilik to Time.
Oos wished to stay behind in Understorey with Oldest-Mother, old Ylly, her beloved. Only Marram had yet to make a decision. It was sunset, and Leaper had a final task to carry out after dark.
Ilik’s hand lay comfortably enfolded in his own. He’d felt the impulse, earlier, to leave his Understorian family behind for an hour or two. To leave Builder with his grandmother while Leaper went with Ilik to some abandoned house, to renew his intimacy with her in what might have been their final opportunity.
But the roads to the tallowwood were cut. Already, there were dayhunter and spotted swarm droppings all over the neighbouring trees. And besides, as Sawas had taken him aside to inform him, apparently no mother was fit for lovemaking less than a month after giving birth.
“I miss Oldest-Father’s fish,” young Ylly said, smacking her lips, getting up to throw her leaf-plate of fish bones into the fire. She looked impishly over her shoulder at Middle-Father, who had both brought and prepared the meal, but his mouth was full, and he couldn’t answer.
“Is the pain fresh for you?” Youngest-Father asked Ylly. “Were you able to mourn him before, or could you not feel wholly yourself?”
“Sometimes it was like a dream,” Ylly said. She stayed by the hearth, staring into the flames. “Sometimes I was myself. Usually in the presence of one of you. Or Imeris.”
“They should have sung songs about Imeris in Wetwoodknee,” Leaper grumbled. “Instead, they sang about that fool, Oniwak.”
“I think,” Marram announced, “Instead of going to Time, I shall go to Wetwoodknee.”
Everybody looked at him.
“What?” Middle-Father exclaimed, spraying fish.
“I thought the problem with Time,” Leaper said, unable to suppress a smile, “was that there weren’t any great trees. You said your wings would be useless there. You could still sing, you said, but not fly.”
“If you will make me a map,” Marram said, “or many maps, Leaper, using the bird’s-eye view you gleaned from your experience with the winged, I shall take maps to all the villages of Understorey. I shall take them to the Bird-Riders and the Fig-Eaters of Floor. Aforis supposed that our ancestors were the original inhabitants of Time. It would be nice to give those who dwell in darkness the opportunity to return, even if slowly and by foot over the plain and plateau.”
“I’ll make maps for you, Youngest-Father. After dark.” Leaper shared a meaningful glance with Youngest-Mother. They had agreed she’d go into the Garden to search out several amulets of Bria’s bone that Ylly thought she could remember, as Audblayin, hiding in her study. Those pieces of bone might be used by adepts for healing, in the future, in the new city. Later, some other person could fetch the treasure trove left behind by the clockmaker of Eshland. “There’ll be mapmaking materials in the Garden. Youngest-Mother will bring them, and bring the finished maps to you before Ilik and the others go through the lantern to the mountains.”
Ilik stirred at his side.
“Before we go through, you mean.”
“No. Not me.”
She sat up straighter beside him.
“Why not you?”
Leaper’s grip on Ilik’s hand tightened. He couldn’t put off telling her any longer.
“My human body stays here. If I leave, the connection to Audblayin that keeps me from needing sleep will be broken. That giant, leaf-covered beast outside, that flying, human-eating demon, Hunger, would be released from my control. She’d seek revenge, on me ahead of anyone else. I’ll be with you in the new city, but not in this body, Ilik. Until Audblayin returns to the Garden, I’ll be the mind behind the monster. I’ll be the hand behind the terrible power of the last of the winged.”
Ilik was silent for a while. Everybody was, until Bernreb started choking on a fish bone, and Marram had to pound him on the back to help dislodge it.
“But it was going to be amazing,” Ilik managed to whisper at last. “After all this time. No more hiding. No more lying. You were going to be my king. I was going to be your queen.”
“The new city won’t have any kings or queens.” For as long as I can help it. Humans being humans. Thrones being made to be sat on and be grovelled before. “Only areas of expertise. Areas of responsibility. Like a guild. Like Loftfol. Nobody higher or lower. Everyone helping one another.”
Even as he said it, he knew it was a futile dream. Humans helped one another, sometimes. Other times, they stole from each other, enslaved one another, or threw each other from high places to die.
But it’s a new way, and I will try it. And Builder won’t be a slave, and he won’t be eaten by demons, or grow up pining for the sun.
“I never liked being a queen,” Ilik admitted. “Will your human body stay in this cottage? Or in Airakland?”
“Here. In hiding. Youngest-Mother will seal me in behind a wall, as the Godfinder was once sealed in our home.”
“Sealed behind a wall? How will you eat? How will you live?”
“When the Godfinder was with us,” Marram told Ilik, “she was asleep. In hibernation. She didn’t need to eat or drink. Audblayin’s power nourished her. All she did was dream.”
&n
bsp; “We should say some words for Unar,” Bernreb said gruffly. “I had not seen her for many a monsoon, but she brought Ylly the elder and Oos to our home. She brought Ylly the younger. She brought my Sawas to me and made our son’s life possible. She followed him to a monster’s lair, healed him, and brought him safely home.”
The faces around the fire grew long and sad.
“Esse,” Marram countered wryly, “would have pointed out that Unar also brought Frog into our lives. She brought Kirrik.”
“She loved Aoun,” Oos whispered. “I can’t believe that he killed her.”
“Have a happier reincarnation, Unar,” Sawas murmured to the flickering hearth. “You couldn’t sing to save your life, but if you hadn’t asked to learn to swim, I’d still be a slave in the Garden, or worse.”
“May this sleep be dreamless, Unar,” Bernreb said. “Unlike your hibernation. May you not disturb the peace of the new child that you become.”
“Leaper’s sleep will be slightly different.” Oos said to Ilik, and the others shook themselves slightly, as if coming out of a trance. “He’ll dream, but it’ll be a waking, true dream, of living with you, beside you, in Hunger’s body. I daren’t put him in as deep a sleep as Unar’s, or Hunger will break free. But he’ll be in Canopy, not Understorey. Audblayin’s power will strengthen, and as it does, it will surround him. It will keep him alive, though I suspect he’ll age at the normal rate.”
“Oh.” Ilik hugged herself.
Leaper hugged her, his arms over her folded ones, smelling snow cherry, stale whale oil, and baby sick, feeling her chest moving as she breathed, reluctant to let her go.
“If there’s anything you’re afraid of. Any detail I’ve forgotten to tell you that you’d like to know. Now is the time to ask. We won’t be able to speak once Youngest-Mother puts me into hibernation. Hunger can’t speak the language of Canopy.” Not without smashing at cave walls. “Nor the language of the Crocodile-Riders. Nor any audible language, really.”
Tides of the Titans Page 33
