The Absolute Book

by Elizabeth Knox

  Shift came to her, set his hands on her hips and held her steady.

  It took her a minute, then she caught her breath and shouted it at him. The simple question. The obvious one. Birds burst from the hedge, and a weasel appeared from a gap in the wall and gazed at them solemnly for a moment before looping away into the pasture. And all the time Taryn kept shouting. ‘What is in the box?’ she shouted. ‘What the bloody hell is in the box?’

  Shift pushed them hard and they traversed the Summer Road from its nearest point, near the Island of Apples, to where it intersected the Horse Road at the Island of Women. Seven days altogether. They were going too fast to travel on with Jane, Kernow and the few other women who’d chosen to accompany Shift to the Moot. Shift promised them that the moment he had the glove he’d stop and wait for them to catch up.

  Taryn and Shift walked every day from an hour after sunup to noon, when they rested for two hours, then continued till sundown. It was the height of summer. Most of the trees were in fruit, and Taryn learned to follow Shift’s example and eat as she walked, pausing to pull broad beans from the masses of tall feathery plants, or snap off gritty asparagus, or swing up into the branches of the plum tree to reach the higher, riper fruit. Now and then they’d come upon a covered basket fastened to the trunk of a tree, and someone’s stash of hazelnuts, or windfall walnuts already stripped of their oily black skins. Once or twice the basket had run low and Shift would find the fruiting nut tree and pick up more windfall walnuts, or shake the hazel so that he and Taryn could gather up the fruit. They’d take a few meals with them in the felt sling-bags they carried, and stow the rest in the baskets for the next party that came along.

  At pond or lakeside encampments, Shift would pick his way through the reeds and return with the eggs of ducks or blue-backed swamphens. He’d set a fish or eel trap in the stream or lake before they lay down to sleep on their beds of cut ferns, and they’d have a good meal of fish in the morning before setting out.

  As they walked, Shift taught Taryn sidhe—a few polite phrases, and many nouns. He taught her the names of animals and trees and types of cloud and the times of the day. And while they sat warming their hands on their copper cups of lemon balm or chrysanthemum tea he taught her the names of various celestial bodies—planets and the larger stars.

  How far away I am, Taryn would think—with a kind of transparent happiness, looking up at the strange constellations. Sometimes she worried she wouldn’t see her father again, or her grandmother, who had a few more good years in her. But Taryn had been pierced and punctured and leaking life away into another universe since Beatrice was killed, and her sister was still the furthest thing from her.

  Taryn tried asking questions. Like: Were they somewhere else in the galaxy? Did Shift know?

  ‘Sidhe gates are made to find certain kinds of places. The worlds are a network of places possible for such as us to live. The gates work by quantum entanglement. I’ve gathered that much, thanks to twentieth- and twenty-first-century physics. One day I was reading about quantum entanglement and thought, “Oh, yes, of course.” I never had to learn that about gates, as I learned magic lore. The gates and glove speak to my bones. Like being an owl or a fox or a fish, my feeling for gates is a potential of my body.’

  Taryn made a little hollow in the grit by her bed and set her cup in it, the few mouthfuls left in case she was thirsty in the night. She sat up to fold the sleeping blanket over her feet and knot its ties to keep it in place. The sleeping blankets weren’t designed for anyone wanting to get up in a hurry. Which spoke volumes. The sidhe weren’t taken by sudden sickness in the night. They weren’t called to the bedsides of crying children, and no one crept up to attack them.

  She lay down and tucked her hands under the covers. She’d never felt so safe. On the last journey she’d been lonely on this road—even as part of a bigger group. Shift might have something dangerous planned for her, but that was later. Now, with the lakewater lapping, the coals tinkling in the stone fireplace, and the distant chorus of frogs that Shift had persuaded to move to the far side of the lake, she was safe and happy. Now partook of forever. No matter what came, this was the Sidh—the same as ever.

  They caught up with Neve at a landing where the Horse Road looped down to the Senisteingh, a very deep river with transparent turquoise water and a swift current. The landing was on a shingle beach, below a vast water meadow. The meadow was scattered with tents, campfires and palanquins like the one Taryn had been carried in when she was injured. A group of these were set under a wide shade tree, separated from the rest of the meadow by a low fence. This encampment within the camp had no fireplace, though threads of bluish smoke came up from several palanquins and—when the wind swung from that quarter—the scent of spicy smoke, cleaner and more astringent than any incense Taryn had encountered. The other fires had a mix of sidhe and human sitting at them. Horses were grazing farther up the meadow, wandering untethered. There were a number of boats at moorings in the shelter of the landing, or farther along the stream, bound by strong ropes to the trunks of riverside trees, or to boulders with holes drilled all the way through them. The boats had oiled timber hulls, the oil so fresh that Taryn could see the water beading at the waterline. They had simple rudders for a helmsman, or wheel houses. They had masts and furled sails. Some looked big enough to transport the palanquins and horses; some were more suited to taking only a few people. In any other place Taryn wouldn’t call it a crowd—but it was as many people as she’d seen since the Island of Women, and many more sidhe than she had ever encountered. Both sidhe and human travellers were building fires, gathering firewood, washing root vegetables, picking over bowls of seeds and nuts. The only purely sidhe task belonged to a dozen or so men and women, who were standing thigh-deep in the river, feet planted against the current, long fishing spears in hand. These dozen were all on a narrow beach across the river—and all were damp, so had swum across carrying their spears. Taryn guessed they’d chosen the far bank because the water there was in the shadow of a cliff, just as transparent, but easier to peer into.

  Shift didn’t join any group, only cast his eyes about. Once he’d spotted what he wanted he retired under a tree near the fenced encampment.

  Taryn followed him, slow and footsore.

  The tree Shift sheltered under was an olive. The ground under it was littered with slippery dried olive pits.

  ‘Not here,’ Taryn said, glaring at the top of Shift’s head. ‘I’m not lying down on this.’

  He had dropped his sleeping roll and was fossicking in his sling bag.

  ‘If you want to avoid these people we could just rent a boat,’ Taryn suggested. ‘Rent. Buy. Or barter.’

  ‘Barter with what, Taryn?’ He didn’t sound irritated, just resolutely educational, which made her want to kick him.

  He’d found what he was after. He produced several sealed packets of dressings. He got up and waved them at her. ‘I swiped these from a cart on Jacob’s ward. You are going to affix them to my chest.’ He handed her the pads, pulled off his lumpy vest and loosened the ribbon lacing on his shirt. There was no sign at all of his former injuries, no scarring or discolouration. ‘I’m going to tell Neve that I finally had all the iron removed.’

  ‘Right.’ She opened a package and got him to point to where he wanted the square of gauze. He of course chose a spot where the dressing would be visible in the open neck of the shirt.

  Taryn’s smoothed her fingers over the tape. ‘I think that’ll do,’ she said, and put the rest of the dressings back in his bag. ‘We should grubby it up a bit.’ She rubbed some dust into the gauze and a little around the edges of the adhesive until it darkened. The bandage now looked as though he’d been wearing it for days.

  ‘Now Neve can’t say the glove is no use to me.’

  ‘Isn’t it yours?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s too precious to be merely ornamental. And Neve’s the only other person who can use it.’

  ‘Did you give it to her to
lull her into a false sense of security?’

  ‘To lull everyone. I’d love to be able to say I gave it to her to see what she’d do with it. But I had no idea she’d throw in with the sisters and try to trick a demon into revealing things. I love your father’s story. I love it that the sisters went around Odin, and that Neve infringed on her own dignity. That it happened at all makes me think all sorts of things are possible.’ He was smiling, stuffing his unattractive hippy vest into his unmanly hippy bag. He had burrs in this hair. Taryn removed them and he froze starkly still and stared at her.

  ‘Don’t look so nervous,’ she said.

  ‘No one grooms me,’ he said.

  ‘Is Neve here?’

  ‘She’s under the giant fig with the royalty.’

  ‘You people do have hierarchies.’

  ‘“Royalty” is respectful. They’re older than everyone else. They don’t travel regularly.’ He moved off, said over his shoulder, ‘You can wait for me at the fence.’

  Taryn did. The fence was at the limit of the thicker shade. The ground had been swept and, as she peered into the cool, scented, silent zone, she understood that it had been cleared so that there was no chance anyone would step on a stick or send one stone knocking against another. The only royal personage Taryn could see from where she stood was sitting cross-legged on cushions, young and limber, his hair thickly curled, his black skin smooth. But he also had charcoal silk gauze tied around his eyes and gold ear ornaments that were in fact earplugs. He was stooped over a brazier of scented smoke, protected by it from the wild and various scents of the water meadow, as he was from the afternoon’s unmitigated sights and sounds by his veil and earplugs.

  Shift had instructed Taryn to stand completely motion-less, and make no sound. She was doing that, and could hear the tiny clicks that one of her eyes made when she moved them. Her eyes were dry. She needed tea. She needed to sit down and be fed.

  Shift stepped over the fence and glided up to the palanquins. He was intercepted by a dark-skinned woman with sleek mahogany-brown hair. A woman so covered in mendings that Taryn could actually see them at work, tiny volumes like glass beads moving to dislodge a sprinkling of dried herbs on the woman’s sleeve and brush grass from the tops of her naked feet. It made Taryn’s skin crawl.

  The woman wrapped her hand around Shift’s upper arm and marched him back to the fence. She was hissing at him in sidhe, then glanced at Taryn and swapped to English. How did the woman know that it should be English rather than French or German or Danish? As it turned out, the woman’s change in language was the opposite of politeness, because she wasn’t being firm, but rude.

  ‘No one here wants to speak to you,’ she said to Shift. ‘And you haven’t even washed. You stink. Your woman is worse. Sour.’

  ‘Send Neve out to me,’ Shift whispered.

  ‘Leave. Wash.’

  ‘Get Neve for me now, or I’ll go and stand upwind.’

  The woman reared back, her eyes shining with wrath.

  ‘You’re moving too precipitously,’ Shift said. ‘You’re shaking the air.’

  The man at the brazier had gently averted his face, as if from something he couldn’t bear to watch.

  The woman released her grip and slowly, gracefully, turned herself around and went to the farthest of the palanquins. She stood at its open trellis doors and spoke in sign language, the motion of her fingers restrained and at half the speed Taryn expected.

  Neve climbed down from the interior of the palanquin and drifted across the grass, gleaming, barefoot. When she came close, Taryn smelled the perfume of the smoke on her. Neve pressed them to move farther off, and followed. When they had reached enough of a distance she asked, ‘Why are you being so insistent? None of us will strike camp before sunup.’

  ‘Hello, Neve,’ Taryn whispered.

  ‘Hello, Taryn Cornick,’ Neve replied.

  ‘I’m all better,’ Shift said, and yanked his shirt aside and tilted his collarbones to Neve’s face.

  ‘I believe it has been conveyed to you that you are odoriferous?’ Neve said.

  ‘I never stink. I smell like what I am.’

  ‘What you are isn’t appetising to us. And therefore must be offensive to the old ones.’

  ‘The baggage. The dead wood, husks and cobwebs,’ Shift said.

  Neve looked at him silently for a minute then took his hand, lifted it to her lips, and closed her teeth on the pad of his thumb. She bore down. They had a strange silent tussle. Neither of them wanted to make any noise. Even their feet remained planted. Taryn was debating whether to intervene when Neve let him go.

  Shift reeled back, then froze and glanced sidelong at the man by the brazier. His hand dripped blood onto the ground. ‘Why did you do that?’ he whispered. He cradled his hand.

  Neve drew her hand slowly across her lips, leaving a red smear on her cheek. ‘Because you’re alive. It’s always been the same reason. You’re alive.’

  She lifted the thong of the Gatemaker’s glove over her head and put the glove into Taryn’s hands. She stepped back over the fence and returned to the palanquin, moving as smoothly as a camera on a dolly.

  Shift turned and walked off upriver. Taryn hurried after him. The Gatemaker’s glove was warm from Neve’s skin, but as Taryn carried it it lost its warmth. It cooled and then wouldn’t take up the heat of her hands.

  Taryn caught up with Shift beyond a turn in the river. She got him to stand still and used the remaining dressings on his bite.

  ‘Couldn’t you just turn yourself into an owl or eel or something so the bite will be gone?’ she asked, then muttered, ‘You and your fucking “I got the last of the iron out”. As if I haven’t swapped notes with Jacob.’

  His flesh was puffing up around the puncture marks.

  Taryn said, ‘Why doesn’t Neve want you alive?’

  ‘Whenever anyone says something like that, it always means someone else is dead. There is always an equivalent someone.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s Neve’s story to tell.’

  ‘But is it one of the stories you count as yours?’

  ‘It won’t be if I’m not in it. But I can’t see why my life would be counted against the life of someone else in a story I’m not part of.’

  The table of water meadow had lifted beside them and was now a tree-covered escarpment. They were out of the sun and it was chilly. Taryn looked at the shaded green water and told Shift she wasn’t going to wash there.

  ‘There are gardens and orchards all around the landing. You’ll have no trouble collecting food. And you can find a place at one of the campfires.’ He passed her his bedroll and hers, but kept his bag. ‘The encampment will thin out in the morning when the flotilla embarks. Some will stay waiting for people they mean to join up with. You wait for Jane, Kernow and the others. Be led by them. They have done the voyage before. Kernow many times. It’s over a thousand miles, but the river is easy the whole way.’

  Taryn seized his arm. He had the glove and he was just going to rush off. ‘You won’t change yourself for five seconds to rid yourself of the inconvenience of an injury, but you’ll spend days running us skinny just to get your glove, and then suddenly I’m an encumbrance?’

  Shift gently laid a hand over hers. ‘Right now you should go downriver to the sunny swimming hole. The water looks inviting and I would love to slip into a fish and swim for a time and listen to the water brush the boulders. Every time I’m an animal, I’m just one thing. This’—he used his free hand to indicate himself—‘this is never settled. My bones and nerves can feel the gates. Whenever I’m tired or discouraged I want to bind my eyes and stop my ears and live in the smoke, or just climb inside a tree and go to sleep for decades, as I’ve done before. And the godly part of me is pressed to become what its worshippers want. And the human part of me wants a hearth and friends and a rational, progressive, day-bound existence. I don’t become a fish or a horse or a dragon to shed a small injury, but
because I’m happier as a fish or a horse or a dragon. I’m happier being any decided thing. As for abandoning you—’

  ‘You have worshippers?’

  ‘Not here.’ He laughed. ‘And “worshippers” isn’t quite the right word. That’s me trying to think how the attention and appeal work on me. What I have is the trees saying, “Save us.” I’m surprised you can’t feel it. The trees, the marsh, the hedgerow where we left your car, the dune grass outside your former husband’s house. The mass of things that know without thinking what they want me to be.’

  ‘The little god of the marshlands.’

  ‘That’s right. And Taryn, I’m not abandoning you. You’re necessary to me. I can’t find the Firestarter without you, because without you I have no hope of finding your mother, who it seems might be the only one with any clue to its whereabouts.’

  ‘So we’re really doing that? Going to Purgatory?’

  ‘We’ve gone through your grandfather’s papers. We have no other leads. The thing isn’t going to stop hiding itself just because we understand more about it. I mean, it isn’t as if you can see me more clearly just because you understand me better.’

  Taryn peered at him—his dusky face. Life was full of people who weren’t particularly captivating or interesting to look at. She wanted to look at him, not just listen to his gentle, unexceptional voice and have him falling back into obscurity minute by minute, and more so if she tried to penetrate the obscurity.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Jane will be along shortly. And I’m only leaving you because I think it might be logistically difficult to find Jacob. He won’t be in Norfolk anymore. I don’t want even a short delay for you anywhere DS Hemms can find you.’