The Islands of Chaldea

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “The Dominie told us all about it,” he said excitedly to Aunt Beck. “He found a carved comb and most of a fine vase. Can we go and look, do you think?”

  “Oh, shut up! Who cares?” Ivar said.

  “But I always wondered—” Ogo started again.

  By this time, Seamus Hamish was bawling for us all to climb off on to the rocks to lighten the ship, so that he could get us afloat again and see what the damage was. The poor ship was grinding back and forth, back and forth, which sounded very dangerous, and sailors were already ducking under the clotheslines with boxes and bundles of cargo, to lower them carefully overboard. Some of them stopped and helped us down too. Ogo was so eager that he jumped down by himself in a great floundering leap.

  “And the sea all around the lost land is always brown with its earth,” I heard him saying, while the cook was passing me down into someone’s big tattooed arms.

  Ivar of course could not be outdone by Ogo. He leapt by himself too, and landed with a clatter and twisted his ankle and complained about it for the next hour. And Aunt Beck went down as she had come aboard, peacefully riding another sailor.

  “There will be no damage,” she said to me as she was carried past me. “Can they not trust me to protect the ship I sail in?”

  Her sailor dumped her up beyond the rocks in a very expressive ‘no comment’ way. I ambled along to where she was and found that the place we had run into was really quite a large island, sandy and rocky and desolate under the queer, hazy lilac sky. There was a bit of cliff ahead about as tall as Ogo and, above that, there seemed to be some trees.

  “Can we explore?” Ogo was asking eagerly. “How long do we have?”

  “I’ll see,” said Aunt Beck.

  I looked back at the poor ship as Aunt Beck called over to the Captain. There it was, lying sideways and grinding, grinding, between two prongs of rock, and hung all over with coloured clothing. Very undignified. Seamus Hamish was busy getting the sails in, but he yelled back that we could have an hour. And he told the cook and another sailor to go with us.

  “I shall stay here,” Ivar said. “My ankle really hurts.”

  We left him sitting on a rock surrounded in yellow sea foam while we made for the cliffs. I was quite as eager as Ogo was. The Dominie had said that the earthquake had happened over a thousand years ago and, as far as I knew, I had never seen anywhere that old. Aunt Beck was, as always, demure and restrained, but she seemed to me to be springing up the cliff as eagerly as any of us. It was one of the easiest climbs I have ever made, although I must confess that my good dress suffered a little on the way.

  Halfway up, Ogo said, “Hey! What’s this?” and picked up something that looked like a big broken saucepan lid. It seemed to be made of very old black leather. We all gathered on a crumbly ledge to examine it. You could still see that there had been patterns stamped on it.

  Aunt Beck had just taken the thing to hold the patterns to the light, when Ivar came scrambling limpingly up beside us.

  “Ogo,” he said. “You’re supposed to be my servant. You’re supposed to stay with me. You know I’ve hurt my ankle. What are you doing going off and picking up rubbishy old shields for?”

  “It was a shield, I think,” Aunt Beck said, turning the thing around. She has beautifully-shaped, artistic fingers. I am always impressed when she handles things. “These patterns—” she began.

  “Throw it away,” said Ivar.

  “No, don’t,” said the cook. “I can sell it on Bernica. They like old things there.”

  “These patterns,” Aunt Beck said loudly, “are the symbols of the Guardian of the North. Put it back where you found it, Ogo. It is something none of us should meddle with.”

  She was probably right. I had last seen symbols like that embroidered on High King Farlane’s robe. Everyone watched, rather chastened, while Ogo carefully put the broken shield back on the ledge where he had found it. “I could have got a hundred silver for that,” the cook remarked as we all went on up the cliff.

  The cook looked very glum at that and said nothing more until we arrived among the trees at the top. There it was as if the whole ground ran away from us. Tiny creatures – mice, rats, voles – sped and scuttled out of our way. I saw rabbits, squirrels, a weasel and even a beast like a small deer running from us among the trees. Small birds and large ones clapped out of the tops of the wood. None of the trees were tall. They were all bent and bowed in the sea wind, but I could see they were trees that were very rare on Skarr, like elders and hazels, and were just coming into leaf. Aunt Beck put up an elegant hand to old dusty catkins and then to the light green beginnings of elderflowers.

  The other sailor said, “I wish I’d brought my crossbow! Fat pigeons. That deer.”

  “Fine rabbits,” agreed the cook and Ivar said, “Let’s go back. There’s nothing here. My ankle hurts.”

  “We shall go on,” Aunt Beck decreed. “I want to see how big this place is.”

  “I want to know how all these animals got here,” I said.

  “Well, you won’t find that out by walking about,” Ivar said. “My ankle—”

  “The animals,” Aunt Beck said, “undoubtedly descend from creatures that fled from the earthquake. Ah, we’re getting somewhere.”

  The trees gave way to big rocks and fluttering grass. I saw harebells there. We went around the largest boulder and saw the sea again beyond us, angrily crashing below on whole piles of rocks. In the distance you could actually see the barrier, like a band of white mist that stretched away in both directions as far as anyone could see. Nobody looked at it though, because there were the remains of buildings in front of us. The walls were not quite as high as my head and made of blocks of sandy-coloured stone. There were beautifully chiselled patterns on them.

  “Oh good!” I said. Now we were definitely one up on the Dominie. He had only heard of buildings: we were actually looking at some.

  Ogo led the way in through the nearest broken opening. Aunt Beck and I followed quite as eagerly, and the sailors plunged in after us, staring around in a mixture of interest and hope that there might be something they could sell on Bernica. Ivar limped behind, complaining about his ankle.

  It was like a labyrinth. We went this way and that into square spaces and oblong ones, where it was almost impossible to tell whether we were going through rooms or across courtyards. In one space there was a definite fireplace in the wall. It was surrounded with beautiful, broken green and blue tiles, and carving outside those. There were even traces of soot on the piece of chimney that was left. The tiles had the same symbols on them that we had seen on the broken shield.

  “This was a room then!” Ogo said.

  The cook slyly tried to prise a piece of tile away. Aunt Beck turned and looked at him and he hastily took his hand away. He followed us, muttering about damn witches, and Ivar followed him, muttering about his ankle.

  We went through spaces with mysterious pits in the ground and a square with a round pool of water in the middle and another with a regular, round hillock in the centre. Ogo chattered to Aunt Beck the whole way, trying to work out what the spaces had once been. To my disappointment, Aunt Beck had no more idea than the rest of us. And Ivar never stopped complaining.

  I got really annoyed with him. “Ivar,” I said, “just shut up, will you! You sound utterly ignoble!”

  “But my ankle hurts,” he said.

  “Then bear it. Behave like a prince should,” I said.

  “I—” he began. Then he shut his mouth with a gulp. He stopped complaining, but he hobbled worse than ever and glowered at me whenever I looked at him.

  He’s been spoilt all his life, I thought. I must start training him to be a good husband while he’s away from Mevenne. She can’t have been a good influence.

  This was just before we came out into a flat, round space with the broken remains of pillars regularly around it. The pillars were taller than any of us, but they did not look so tall because they were surrounded by bushes o
f a kind I had never seen before: glossy-leaved and laden with small white flowers. A gust of fine, sweet scent blew in the wind from them.

  “Ah, I have it,” Aunt Beck said to Ogo. “This was once a temple. Those are kemmle bushes. They grow them in the great fane at Dromray too.”

  “What are the rest of the buildings then?” Ogo wanted to know, as we threaded our way through the bushes.

  As we came out into open pavement in the middle of the circle, Aunt Beck said, “How am I to tell? The priests needed somewhere to live, I suppose.”

  There was a cry from above us. We all looked upwards. The ugliest cat I had ever beheld was bounding gladly from pillar to pillar towards us. It was pale-furred and marked in grey stripes and splotches, and all legs and angles, with a long skinny tail like a snake. Its ears were too big for its flat, triangular face. Its eyes were huge and green-blue like the tiles on the broken fireplace. But it growled with pleasure at the sight of us and, when it came to the nearest pillar, it jumped down – the way that cats do, reaching with its forepaws first, as far down as it could, and then risking a leap – and crashed in among the bushes. As it came crashing out and trotted towards us, we saw it was huge for a cat, at least as big as King Kenig’s deerhounds.

  The sailor said, “Why didn’t I bring my bow?” and backed away. Ivar hid behind Ogo, which meant that Ogo couldn’t back away, though I could see he wanted to.

  He said in a shaky voice, “What a plug-ugly creature!”

  “True,” said Aunt Beck. “But not fierce, I think.”

  The cat came trotting straight up to me, for some reason, and I could hear him purring as he came, like someone rasping a file on a stone. I bent down and rubbed his ears and face, just the way I would have rubbed one of the castle wolfhounds. The cat loved it. His purr became a rumble. He pushed himself against me and wrapped his tail around my legs. Close to, his coat had a sort of pink look, as if his skin were showing through. “You are a plug-ugly,” I said to him, “but you must be awfully lonely here.”

  “Oh, he’s bound to have a mate somewhere,” Aunt Beck said and went to have a closer look at the pillars. They didn’t seem to tell her much.

  “Let’s go,” Ivar said. “This place is boring.”

  Aunt Beck looked around for the sun, which was quite high, beaming through the strange lilac haze. “Yes,” she said. “I wouldn’t put it past Seamus Hamish to leave without us.” She turned to go, and stopped, quite unusually unsure. “Do you remember where we came in?” she said to Ogo.

  At that, they all milled about, bewildered, except for me. I was kneeling down by then with my arms around Plug-Ugly. He was so sturdy and soft and warm, and he had so obviously taken to me that I didn’t care how ugly he was. “Do you know the way out of here?” I asked him.

  And he did. He turned and trotted between two of the pillars, where there was a gap in the bushes and a faint, narrow path beyond that. I think he must have made that path himself, going hunting over the years.

  “This way!” I called to the others. “The Lone Cat knows.” I don’t know why I called him that, except that it seemed right for his official name. Plug-Ugly was his private name, between him and me.

  They all followed us rather dubiously, Ivar saying we could hardly be lost on such a small island and sounding as if he thought we were. The path took us out to a rocky shoulder on the other side of the temple-place and then down and around, until we could see the ship below us. It looked far more normal now. They had taken Aunt Beck’s clotheslines down, as well as the sails, and launched the rowing boat. A team of oarsmen was in the rowing boat, towing the ship backwards out of the rocks.

  Ivar at once forgot all about his ankle and went racing down the hill, shouting to the sailors to wait. The cook and our sailor pelted after him, bellowing that we were ready to come aboard now. Aunt Beck came stepping neatly down among the rocks, looking ominous. Ogo sort of hovered in front of her. I could see Seamus Hamish glowering up at us from the stern of the ship.

  When Plug-Ugly and I arrived, Aunt Beck was saying, “You’ll not have thrown those good garments in the sea, I trust.”

  Seamus Hamish dourly pointed to where the clotheslines and the clothes lay in a jumbled heap by the forward mast. “Make haste aboard,” he said. “We’ll not be waiting for you.”

  Everyone scrambled up into the ship, so quickly that I can’t remember how Aunt Beck arrived there. The oarsmen went on rowing all the while, so that when it came to my turn to get aboard, there was quite a wide, seething gap between rocks and ship. Plug-Ugly roved up and down in front of it, uttering long, dismal mewings.

  “He wants to come with us,” I called to Aunt Beck. “Could he?”

  “No way am I having an ill-fated creature like that on my ship,” Seamus Hamish shouted, storming across the deck. “Get gone, creature! Shoo!” And he waved menacingly at Plug-Ugly, who was looking miserable.

  Aunt Beck shrugged. “I’m sorry, my good beast,” she said. “The Captain has spoken. Catch hold of my hand, Aileen, and I’ll pull you over.” She held out her hand and I just managed to catch hold of it and just managed a long, long stride to get one foot aboard. Aunt Beck pulled me the rest of the way. I turned around and watched Plug-Ugly sitting there, growing smaller as the sailors rowed us triumphantly out to sea.

  I wept. “Oh, sorry, sorry!” I called out to Plug-Ugly. He looked a Lone Cat indeed sitting there in the distance.

  “Pull yourself together,” Aunt Beck said to me. “He’s lived in that temple for years, perfectly happily. He’ll soon forget you. Come and help me untangle this mess the sailors have made of our clothing.”

  Seamus Hamish would not allow us to do this on deck. He said the sailors needed to get the rowing boat in and hoist the sails, and he made us take the whole bundle downstairs into the breakfast cubbyhole. He sent Ivar and Ogo down there with us to get them out of the way too. They sat and watched while we disentangled a fine, warm-looking green dress.

  “That looks to be about your size,” Ivar remarked to me. “I wonder where Mother got it?”

  “Can I wear it now?” I asked Aunt Beck.

  She looked from the dress to me. My best dress was torn and stained with tar from the deckboards and seawater, and in addition Plug-Ugly had smeared it all over with his long pinkish hairs. “Hm,” she said. She turned the green dress this way and that, sniffed it and finally passed it to me. “Go and put it on in our cabin,” she told me. “Tidy your hair while you’re at it.”

  I went off almost cheerfully. It was not often I got a fine new dress like this one. It almost made up for having to leave Plug-Ugly, I thought as I opened the cabin door.

  The first thing I saw there was Plug-Ugly himself. He was stretched out along my bunk, pretty well filling it, busy eating a fat, dead rat. He looked up and burst out purring when he saw me.

  “How did you— No, I won’t ask,” I said. “It has to be magic. Plug-Ugly, I’m really happy to see you, but do you mind eating that rat on the floor?”

  Plug-Ugly gave me a wide sea-green stare. I had resigned myself to a ratty bed that night, when he tossed the rat playfully over his shoulder, the way cats do. It flew across the cabin and landed on Aunt Beck’s bunk.

  “Oh well,” I said. I took off my spoilt dress and gave it to him to lie on. He liked that. He lay on it and purred, while I hooked myself into the pretty green one. “Move that rat,” I told him as I left. “You don’t know Aunt Beck. She’ll give you what for if you leave it there!”

  “Hey, that looks good!” Ogo said shyly. He was coming along the corridor with his arms full of our inside-out bags. “The Captain was going to keep these,” he told me. “He was really annoyed when I asked for them.”

  All I could think of to say was “Hm,” like Aunt Beck does. I was glad the dress looked good, but what was going on with this voyage? We had been given contaminated clothes and poisonous medicine and a Captain who would happily have left us stranded on that island. But surely Kenig and Mevenne didn�
��t want to lose their own son. Did they? But Donal would love to be rid of his brother, I thought. He had never liked Ivar. And Donal had definitely been plotting something, back on Skarr.

  Aunt Beck was certainly thinking along the same lines. When we returned to the cubbyhole, she looked up from precisely folding underclothes to say, “Thank you, Ogo. Aileen, you forgot to tidy your hair.” And then, after a pause, “Ivar, Ogo, do either of you have any money?”

  They both looked alarmed. Ogo patted his pockets and found a copper penny. Ivar dug around in his pockets and found two silvers and three coppers.

  “And I have precisely one half-silver,” Aunt Beck said.

  “What do you need it for?” Ivar asked. “I thought King Farlane’s chancellor gave you a purse.”

  “It is full of nothing but stones, with a few coppers on top to conceal the trick, and someone,” said Aunt Beck, “has to pay Seamus Hamish for this voyage. Even if your father has already done so, we shall still need to buy food and pay for lodging when we get to Bernica. I must think what to do.”

  The fine clothes, still smelling of not-quite-honey and camomile, were neatly packed back in the bags. I was just buckling them up when the cook arrived with our lunch. It was pickled herrings and soda bread.

  “I can’t give you more or better,” he said in his gruff way. “Captain’s found his temper again, seeing as we have the barrier in view and can follow it south to Bernica, but says we’ll be another day on the way. We didn’t load food enough for all this voyaging.”

  “I see,” Aunt Beck said calmly. “This will do well enough for now.” And, as the cook was leaving, she asked, even more calmly, “I suppose poor Seamus Hamish gets little or no payment for carrying us all to Dunberin this way?”