The Absolute Book

by Elizabeth Knox

  It had begun with there being no immediate remedy for the pain that came on him in the canoe, and which took a harder grip after Shift abandoned him in the market. The abandonment had seemed like the problem, prompted as it was by Shift’s anger or hurt feelings or whatever. Jacob remembered being distressed about it. Now he was severed from all troubles. He was in clover. In paradise.

  When the party reached Quarry House, Jacob had collapsed. He was down, but couldn’t stop moving, because it was only movement that gave him relief. He was carried off to a firm bed in a quiet cavernous room, where he lay stretching his legs, cracking his tendons, rolling from side to side, his eyes wet with tears of pain.

  A man came into the room with their host, Aeng.

  Aeng. Smooth Aeng; herbs and honey.

  The man was Petrus. Middle-aged and grizzled, Petrus smelled of chemicals, and his clothes were spotted with acid burns. Petrus had tincture of opium. The colony grew opium poppies, the plants imported from Earth. Apparently the sidhe liked the look of poppies but were immune to opiates.

  The tincture helped, and Aeng undertook to replace the Hands bracing Jacob’s spine. And Aeng didn’t suffer from the scruples or indifference Shift felt. Touching Jacob had meant something to Aeng. Aeng, laughing and affectionate Aeng. Aeng was more frank and open than anyone Jacob had ever met; he was without embarrassment or hesitation, and his hands and Hands had healed Jacob.

  Aeng was infinitely reassuring. He told Jacob that he was bound to no one. ‘Only to the Sidh itself, and you can choose to live anywhere in the Sidh. You can live with me, above the human colony, where you’ll never want for the company of free people of your own kind.’

  And so Jacob would. It was decided. There were only a few formalities.

  ‘Simple politeness,’ Aeng said. ‘You will have gathered already how much we treasure good manners.’

  ‘And condemn ill manners.’

  Aeng had laughed and reassured Jacob that he, Aeng, wasn’t one to condemn anything. ‘But we must mind our manners, so as soon as we can we will tell the people you travelled with that you have chosen to remain here with me.’

  Now it was morning and they’d showered. When Jacob stepped out of the waterfall, one of Taryn’s shining, fiery hairs was wrapped around the long second toe of his left foot. Jacob realised he’d completely forgotten Taryn through all the hours of the night; first in pain, and then in joy. The light stricture of the hair felt like someone trying to lay a rope on him and lead him away to somewhere he didn’t want to go. He sat on the warm rock and picked the hair from his toe. And while he and Aeng dried, sitting hip to hip, fully conscious of each other and, at the same time, unselfconscious, Jacob told him about Taryn and the Muleskinner, and how he was suffering now because Taryn had ruined a man’s life in the course of seeking revenge. Revenge that she hadn’t had the honesty or moral courage to take herself.

  Aeng listened, then kissed Jacob’s shoulder and said, ‘But you’re not suffering now, Jacob. So you can forgive your friend. Forgive her, but keep your distance.’

  ‘Is she my friend?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Aeng said. Then he said it was nearly midday and they should eat and dress. The Moot commenced at sundown. There was much to discuss. There always was at the Moot, which was held every ten years, but in the year of the Tithe there were accounts to be drawn up, trades to make, a final tally and, as usual, as much justice done as it was possible to do. Then Aeng said, smiling, ‘Would you like to wear something beautiful? This is the very first time we’ll be seen together.’

  In the late afternoon, Taryn stood on the platform at the entrance of Quarry House—a hill of limestone with cavities originally formed by the removal of the marble-veined limestone from which the tombs of the Tacit were built. Taryn watched crowds gather on the seaward shore of the spit. The silk screens had been reconfigured to form a vast semi-circular shelter on the sloped beach. As seating, smooth driftwood logs were apparently rolling themselves into place. Each log was followed by three or more sidhe, and Taryn guessed that what she was watching was the work of forcebeasts. She didn’t for a minute imagine that the invisible, collaboratively created monsters had been made that day simply to perform heavy lifting. She could tell from the palpable tension everywhere on the rivermouth—the beach, flotilla, colony, Quarry House—that the sidhe were about to discuss contentious matters; that they weren’t all in accord, and each had a reason to protect his or her own. And that when it came to surrendering Taken, even the practical measure of Taking people en masse hadn’t completely done away with the need for some sidhe to make sacrifices as a peace-keeping gesture.

  Jane, Blanche, Susan and Henriette were grimly quiet. They had dressed carefully, and all had new haircuts. They looked wholesome and tidy. Once they joined that crowd on the beach they’d be exceptional—healthy and full of purpose, but not dewy fresh and beautiful, or ablaze with sinister intelligence, as Petrus was.

  Petrus had dressed and perfumed his brown beard. Diamonds were winking in the lacquered hair at his ears. His robe was richly embroidered and his hands crowded with rings of gold and precious stones.

  Jacob was all in white and fawn and burnt orange. Each item of clothing—his loose trousers, shirt, and long light coat—was covered in finely stitched embroidery in a yarn the same colour as the cloth, the effect being that he somehow looked more densely present and three-dimensional than the rest of them. Them. The humans. He looked handsome. He also looked whole and healed, and very happy.

  Taryn went to his side and took his hand. He held hers for a moment then let it go to caress his closely cropped hair.

  ‘That suits you,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How are you?’

  He looked at her, his eyes no longer cold. ‘I’m happier than I’ve ever been.’

  Her heart rose right out of her body. She was very relieved. ‘You’re not in pain?’

  ‘No. I’m cured. Aeng cured me.’

  ‘I’m so pleased. I like Aeng.’

  Aeng joined them then. ‘We must be on our way. I sent someone ahead to secure us enough boats. We’re on the wrong side of the river, and there’s always a run on boats.’

  Aeng waved everyone towards the steps. And then he wrapped a hand around the back of Jacob’s neck. They walked away like that, Jacob in calm bliss because of that proprietary touch.

  Taryn’s heart dropped like a shot bird, passed right down through her body, and vanished through the soles of her feet.

  She joined the women and Kernow and, as soon as they were on the track down to the Human Colony, she herded everyone into a faster walk. Kernow complained, but fell quiet when Taryn said, ‘We must prevent Shift from seeing that Aeng has Jacob. I don’t know how it happened, but it has happened.’

  Jane and Kernow glanced back, then turned to face the path again. Jane looked stricken. Kernow darkened and hardened.

  ‘This Moot is absolutely vital for Shift. And all of us,’ Taryn said.

  ‘We should run ahead, take the first boat, and have Shift ride with us,’ Jane said. ‘You and me and Henriette. You can run, can’t you, Hen, dear?’

  Henriette nodded.

  Jane said, ‘I did wonder why Aeng said to your friend that he’d sent “someone” to secure the boats, when he sent Shift. He’s making Shift disappear from Jacob’s mind by not-naming him.’

  ‘Is that possible?’ Taryn said.

  ‘Possible, but extremely difficult.’ Jane looked uneasy.

  ‘Take Shift to Neve,’ Kernow told them. ‘Aeng will never voluntarily put himself near Neve.’

  It was then that Taryn remembered she’d heard of Aeng before, though not by name. In her first hours in the Sidh, when Shift was stricken with iron sickness, Jane had suggested to Neve that they take him to Quarry House. Without pause, he and Neve had answered, ‘No.’

  ‘What is Aeng doing?’ Taryn asked Kernow. She was desperate to understand.

  Kernow only said, ‘Hard t
o say.’

  Jane turned around and called out to Jacob and Aeng, ‘We’re going to scamper.’ She waved cheerfully, grabbed Taryn’s and Henriette’s hands, and broke into a trot. Taryn tried to ask another question, but was told to save her breath.

  Shift was waiting by the last three canoes. The churned-up turf around them clearly showed the prints of clawed bear paws. He was mud-splashed and underdressed, still in his homespun. He had no shoes.

  Jane, puffing, said, ‘What happened here?’

  ‘I saved some boats.’

  ‘Aeng says we should go ahead. He’s taking care with Kernow.’

  Together they flipped a canoe over and ran it into the water. Henriette took one paddle and Jane insisted on taking the other. ‘You have to attend to all the talk,’ she explained to Shift. ‘And you have to speak. You need to be fresh.’

  Taryn sat with her knees pressed to Shift’s back. She curled over him and rested her chin on his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry if I upset you yesterday.’

  ‘It wasn’t you who spoke,’ he said.

  ‘Still.’

  ‘I have only four more years. Sometimes I panic. I don’t want to be any younger.’

  ‘Is that something you can change?’

  He shook his head. ‘There are things I thought were unchanging that I can see a way to change now. But not that. I asked for that.’

  Taryn nodded. Her cheek brushed his ear.

  ‘I’m not prepared for this Moot,’ he said. ‘They made sure I couldn’t ask the question I needed an answer to before the meeting.’

  ‘They can’t make you give anyone up.’

  ‘They can hurt me in ways I can’t anticipate.’

  Taryn felt heart-wrung, so she just kissed his damp, musky shoulder and said, ‘I love you.’

  He was quiet through the watery percussion of a dozen strokes, then he said, ‘But you can’t see me.’

  ‘That’s true. But the world wakes up when you’re there. Especially my world. And that I can see.’

  He turned to look at her. They were inches apart and she could clearly see his beautiful hazel eyes. ‘Thank you, Taryn,’ he said.

  Part Six

  Uncaring

  And he who was lost like a dog

  will be found like a human being

  and brought back home again.

  Love is not the last room: there are others

  after it, the whole length of the corridor

  that has no end.

  —Yehuda Amichai, ‘Near the Wall of a House’

  27

  The Moot

  Jane spotted Neve’s banner near the apex of the half-circle, and took the most direct route there, along the waterline where shoals of small silver fish billowed in the low waves. They passed behind a hillock of mounded sand. ‘Speakers address the assembly from that,’ Jane told Taryn. ‘The meeting can go on for a long time, but once the mound is trampled down, or surrounded by the tide, the Moot must come to an end. Even with business unfinished.’

  Taryn thought this was a recipe for filibusters. But she had never known the sidhe to talk at length.

  Neve frowned at their approach, but greeted each of them by name. Her small party of humans made room. Introductions were exchanged and Taryn found herself sitting one place along from Franz Schubert.

  It was a good half an hour before she managed to quiet the clamour in her brain. A sidhe with teak-coloured skin and curling waist-length blue-black hair was pacing in front of the mound, gesturing for the gathering to quieten down. The hush came with a ragged edge, but was absolute. Taryn heard oystercatchers crying, and the long, soft collapse of a wave clearly running from her left ear to her right, like one of those old test-your-stereo-system recordings that people used to put on ironically at the end of her student parties, as an alternative to compilations of horror movie creaks, screams and fiendish laughter.

  A sense of the concentration of the present moment filled the beach. So many sidhe. Such dense life-force.

  The first speaker proceeded in sidhe, and with the usual fluent coolness of manner. Taryn had no idea what was happening. Most of the other humans seemed to be following him, since they had the language. When he concluded Taryn was horrified to see a delegation of young Africans on the far westward arm of the gathering simultaneously pull their scarves up over their heads and against their faces to stifle tears. The sidhe with them lowered their faces also.

  Behind Taryn, in the thick of the crowd, someone swore. ‘Merde.’ Taryn hoped it wasn’t—and believed it was—one of the men Taken from Verdun, a hundred years ago now, cursing because he had been brought along to witness what was in store for him a hundred years hence. The Africans must be representative of the people ‘rescued’ from ships in the Middle Passage after 1800. If they had been left where they were, on the slave ships, in the early nineteenth century, they’d have maybe made it to miserable lives on plantations, or maybe drowned and gone to whatever heaven was waiting for them. Instead, they had two centuries in the beautiful Sidh, in the superb company of their rescuers, and then were sold for those rescuers’ wellbeing.

  Taryn realised that Jane, Blanche, Susan and Henriette were a delegation representative of the Island of Women. The realisation made her want to stand up, take the mound, and shout at the crowd. But it wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference. She understood that the sidhe knew they were doing wrong, but their habit of living meant they just kept on living with it.

  Jane gave Taryn a sharp look, and clutched her hand. Hard. She said, ‘They are our betters.’

  ‘No one is anyone’s better,’ Taryn said. But who was she to talk? She had used the Muleskinner as if she were the person in their relationship while he was only her instrument.

  Several other sidhe got up to argue for or against something. Maybe the fate of their dependents. Questions were put by people who came to stand at the foot of the mound to interrogate the speakers. This went on for some time—arguments, with small deadly ripples of feeling in their wake.

  Just when Taryn had decided that no humans would speak, there was a kind of gear change in the mood of the meeting. Petrus appeared from the westward end of the gathering. He climbed the mound and gave a demonstration of an invention, a vast chandelier of mirrors and floating, fuel-less flames, which he sent up into the air above the mound, and which lit the dusky beach and sent swarms of warm colour over the assembled faces.

  Applause. Sighs of pleasure.

  A woman took the mound and sang, her voice eerie and pure. It brought tears to Taryn’s eyes.

  Schubert played a composition on his viola, something new, Taryn imagined.

  Human after human got up and gave something.

  ‘The treasured Taken,’ Jane whispered. ‘Making their argument. I made mine ten years ago with a book of sidhe botany. It took an artist friend and me fifty years to produce. I’m afraid the sidhe won’t remember it, though those with houses will all have a copy. But of course I shouldn’t worry, because none of them need to be reminded of a thing that happened only ten years ago.’

  ‘Are these treasured people earning their keep?’

  ‘They’re just ensuring for their patrons that there will be no argument about their remaining here. They’re demonstrating why they should be permitted to continue their work.’

  Lamps were illuminated behind the crowd. Taryn expected any moment to catch a whiff of cooking smells, because surely the Moot must conclude with a shared meal. Even funerals ended with meals. But the air remained empty of anything but sea salt and the heart-shredding perfume of many sidhe.

  The treasured ones concluded their pitches for continued existence and the meeting returned—so far as Taryn could tell—to its combination of negotiation, concession, tally. The tally she understood. As each sacrifice was agreed on—this sidhe promising this human, or group of humans—a list was being compiled. She got the sense that the process wasn’t going completely to plan and some sidhe were digging in either to refuse this Ta
ken or that, or to shame someone else who was refusing to give up what they must know they should give up.

  Taryn had sometimes watched her friends’ families trying to get one up on each other in a moral or emotional accounting. Who did what for Mother when she was dying. How much money was borrowed. Who took time to attend all the school plays. Who remembered birthdays. Taryn couldn’t understand the language in which the sidhe spoke, but she understood the character of the interactions. Sidhe were saying to other sidhe, ‘I’ve done my bit. It’s your turn.’

  Inevitably Shift’s name was mentioned. Taryn heard it once or twice. Many looked his way. They might be looking at him or Neve. It was hard to say. Taryn had the impression Neve was being urged to get up and speak her piece.

  Shift just listened, his face set. Petrus’s chandelier illuminated the faces around his, but its light seemed to be pulling his face apart. It was as if he had three panes of glass in front of him and the splashes of magnified candlelight were refracted and couldn’t fully reach and reveal him. Everyone on the beach was determined to pay attention to him, and the spell, instead of making him inconsiderable, was trying to make it look as if he wasn’t present in the same space as everyone else. It was resorting to camouflage—and was making itself visible.

  Neve got up. She faced her nephew and asked him to follow her. Taryn heard him say, ‘Do you want me on the mound or at its foot?’

  She didn’t answer, only gave him her hand, pulled him up, and led him down the beach. Her bare feet seemed to glide over the swarm of lights. He trailed after her, a dim little figure.

  She took his hand again at the mound, walked him up onto it, and left him there. She positioned herself at its foot, there to examine him, like the lead prosecutor representing the crown, the crowd.

  Shift lifted his chin, raised his voice, and declared that this part of the discussion would be conducted in English, in deference to the majority of those of his people present, the Women of the Island, Petrus, and his two new Taken. He paused and scanned the gathering. Taryn knew he was looking for Jacob. She saw him locate Jacob, the bright pleasure that appeared and disappeared a second later. A shadow fell over his face, then made a kind of halo around him. The spell seemed to double its efforts, as if it thought he was in danger. Even the glancing, reflected flames that streamed over him seemed to reach his form dimmed and greyish.