Gullstruck Island

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘You know, you really didn’t have to step between us,’ Tomki remarked mildly.

  ‘Yes, Tomki, I did. Well, at dawn Arilou woke up and started moaning and roaring, so we had to head away from the crowds. We found that if we went one way she quietened, if we didn’t she started shrieking. In the end, we gave up and put our faith in her. We’ve been following her for hours, hoping there was method in her meanderings – even when she started leading us this way, through Crackgem’s playground.’

  ‘She found me.’ Hathin curled one of Arilou’s long paws into a loose fist and wrapped it in both of hers. ‘I told you she was a Lost . . .’

  ‘Yes.’ Jaze squatted beside her. ‘Yes, Doctor Hathin, you did.’

  Hathin and Therrot in turn recounted their own adventures, and told of the bargain concerning the Superior’s soap.

  ‘So, do you think the Lady Arilou can lead us safely through this steam-pit?’ finished Therrot.

  The Lady Arilou was certainly intent on leading them somewhere. Her face was set towards the mountain, and any attempt to draw her in any other direction for any reason was met with hoarse squawks of frustration. With some qualms Hathin took her hand and let her lead them across the ominous, multicoloured plain. Behind trooped the others with the elephant bird and the barrow, all following Arilou’s path as closely as possible, wincing with each crackle of stones beneath the barrow wheel in case it was the sound of the crust of rock giving way.

  On either side of the valley were great splatters of cream and yellow stone that seemed to drip and bubble, as if Crackgem had been poaching vast eggs on the hot rocks but had abandoned them to bleach, harden and stink.

  After a while, to the revengers’ relief, the fragile plain gave way to solid-looking ground and they found themselves wrestling the barrow between stone ancestors squinting with moss, their tall hats laden with creepers. These could only be the Ashlands of Crackgem. No wooden spirit houses here – they would have vanished before Crackgem’s White Tides like cobwebs in a strong wind.

  The Ashlands proved to be vast, just as the Superior had warned, far bigger than Jealousy itself. It took some time before they found a tiny stone figure set apart from the other ancestral memorials. Little circles were etched into its teeth, so this was evidently the dead Lace bodyguard that the Superior had described.

  The revengers unloaded the barrowful of kindling and soap, piled them high on a slab and nursed them into flame. A greasy smoke smelling of mutton sweat charged the air.

  Jaze took Therrot aside, and the two held a muted conference. Then they returned to the little Lace burial stone and began to dig. Only when they had unearthed the Lace’s cremation urn did Hathin guess what they were doing.

  ‘No Lace should be trapped in a pot,’ was all Therrot said, as he scattered the dank ashes to the winds.

  Hathin looked across at Arilou’s pale but serene face and felt a swell of pride. Arilou had found her. Arilou had led them safely to the Ashlands. Even as she reached for her sister’s hand, however, Arilou lurched to her feet, turned her face back towards the mountain and resumed tottering up the slope.

  Hathin was, as usual, a little winded by the impact with Arilou’s will. A sudden collision with a stranger, in a pitch-dark room which had seemed empty.

  Tomki turned away from the flame to see Hathin setting off in pursuit of Arilou. ‘Not again! Take your eyes off our Lady Lost for a moment and she’s away like a slingshot!’

  But Hathin could only think of one place that a young Lost might be heading with such furious determination. The Beacon School. What else was to be found on this desolate and dangerous mountainside? Arilou’s urgency infected Hathin. This landscape did mean something to her. Perhaps this adventure really would allow Hathin to glimpse something through a chink in the hard shell of Arilou’s strangeness.

  At last, just as the sun was dropping out of sight, Arilou’s chosen path became a recognizable trail, the rain-moistened earth marked here and there by recent-looking footprints. Hathin’s heart rose. Dance’s hopes had been justified after all then – there were still people at the Beacon School, people who might help them.

  Another zig, a zag, a short boulder scramble . . . and suddenly Hathin could make out the faint amber glow of a fire further down the path. She could hear the trill of a pipe and the rumble of voices. Clay pots flanked the path ahead, each spewing stunted yellow flames and vast flowers of sooty smoke. Above an unruly cairn an enormous deep-blue flag roused itself slightly in the wind, then fell back against its pole with a sullen slap.

  Hathin turned in delight to her companions, only to find that Jaze’s smile was thin and joyless.

  ‘Here.’ Jaze gently took Hathin by the shoulder and drew her to stand beside him. ‘Do you see that? Silhouetted against the moon?’

  Obediently Hathin stared out in the direction of his pointing finger, back the way they had come and upwards. Thrown into relief against the moon was a tapering shape too tall and regular to be a tree.

  ‘The school’s beacon tower,’ said Jaze.

  ‘But . . . it’s so far away!’

  ‘Yes,’ Jaze replied under his breath, ‘too far away. Whatever it is we’ve found, I don’t think it’s the school.’

  Has it occurred to you that somebody might be a Lost and be an imbecile as well? Hathin bit her lip hard as she remembered Therrot’s words.

  She turned back to Arilou just in time to see her break into a stumbling run down the path. Hathin followed with the others in her wake. On either side of the path, crevices in the rocks seemed to deepen and become doorways. A tiny dog ran out and bit red pieces from the night air with its warning barks. People poured from the rock-mounds. The green of their clothes was dulled in the firelight, but Hathin heard the bubble of their anxious, angry speech, and knew that they were Sours.

  Oblivious to the dangerous murmurs all around her, Arilou made straight for a little family group near the village’s central bonfire. There was a father with a worn, surly face, a wife, an adult son and daughter and two younger children.

  Arilou made a trilling, happy sound in her throat, and staggered towards them, her face radiant with recognition, her arms stretched forward. Her tottering steps carried her right up to the mother of the mountain family.

  An inexpert pat at the woman’s face resounded as the heel of her hand struck the jaw. The woman recoiled from the apparent attack. Arilou crumpled to her knees, took hold of the smallest girl’s arm and tugged her into a clumsy embrace. The mother pounced and snatched the screaming child free, then backed behind her husband, face dark with hostility and fear. The family were now in uproar, and as they raised their voices Hathin knew at last why the Sour language sounded so familiar. She had heard words flow in this liquid way a thousand times – from the lips of Arilou.

  As the little family backed away from her, Arilou reached trembling arms towards them and her wail rose into a screech of utter desolation. Hathin watched her, feeling a sadness that seemed to belong to someone older.

  You didn’t come to the orchid lakes to find me at all, did you, Arilou? And you weren’t trying to lead us to the Ashlands, or to the Beacon School. No, you were coming here.

  The light of the Beacon School drew your mind in, like all the other Lost children, didn’t it? And the teachers tried to teach you and the others to go home and practise using your bodies. But when your mind wandered away from your classes, you didn’t come back to the coast, did you? No, you didn’t go far at all. You found a little village on Crackgem and you watched a family there until it felt like your family. That’s why you hardly ever came home to us. That’s why you spoke a language none of us could understand. You were trying to speak their language.

  You were never an imbecile. You’ve just been busy elsewhere all these years . . . with this family.

  ‘But they don’t know you,’ Hathin said aloud. ‘You loved them and they never noticed you – any more than you really noticed me.’

  Arilou’s face was a p
icture of hurt, incomprehension and betrayal, and Hathin could only feel pity for her.

  Arilou’s wail and the dogs’ yaps had summoned the rest of the village out of their stone houses and filled the darkness with hostile, uncertain faces. Hathin and the other intruders crouched next to Arilou, sensing that their fate was being discussed all around them.

  ‘Should we try to talk to them?’ whispered Hathin. ‘I mean, if just one of them can speak Nundestruth, maybe we can persuade someone to show us the way to the Beacon School, and then we can leave here . . . before . . .’

  ‘. . . Before they decide to stone us out of the village,’ finished Therrot under his breath. Tomki’s face brightened immeasurably, but Jaze slowly shook his head.

  ‘It’s worse than that. Right now I think they’re deciding whether they can let us leave. Look around. Look at those pots, the ones with the burning fat in them.’

  The pots were made of clay, and as Hathin stared their bumps resolved themselves into blobbed faces . . .

  ‘Oh no! They haven’t!’

  Jaze nodded grimly. ‘Cremation urns. They’re using them as candle-holders.’

  ‘But then . . .’ Hathin was still struggling with her own horror at the blasphemy, ‘what happened to the ash from the . . . oh.’

  Their eyes all strayed unwillingly to the great blue flag as it shrugged apathetically in the breeze.

  ‘They can’t have done!’ gasped Therrot.

  Jaze shrugged. ‘I’ve seen green cloths hung at the threshold to ward off demons, and yellow cloths to ward off Lace sorcery – and Ashwalkers say they can make themselves invisible to volcanoes if they dye with the right human ash. So maybe if you wanted to make a whole village invisible to the volcano . . .’

  ‘. . . Then you’d need a really big cloth, which probably means . . . an awful lot of ash. In this case, I guess, a lot of Counts of Sun and Dukes of Sedrollo,’ Hathin finished in a small voice.

  ‘We could pretend we haven’t noticed the flag or the urns,’ whispered Tomki. With difficulty, the Lace contingent tore their eyes from the incriminating evidence. ‘I can try talking to the Sours,’ Tomki continued in a scared, hopeful voice. ‘I can mime.’

  ‘Arilou might be able to talk to them,’ Hathin said softly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I – I think so, anyway. But . . . But she’s a bit too upset right now.’

  ‘Then cheer her up quickly!’ hissed Therrot. ‘They’re holding rocks!’

  ‘Arilou.’ Hathin stroked Arilou’s face to get her attention. Arilou gave a soft, disconsolate squawk.

  Tomki was on his feet, both hands raised in a gesture of surrender.

  ‘Friendly!’ he was exclaiming in Nundestruth. He illustrated this with a smile, but panic stretched it to alarming dimensions. Two small children wailed and ran off to hide behind a vat of indigo dye.

  ‘Friendly, Arilou . . .’ Come on, Arilou, you spent a little time with us, you checked on your body, you must know a few words of Lace. Please tell me you listened to us sometimes, please tell me we meant something to you. ‘Say “friendly” to them.’

  An old man squatted beside them and spilled a gargling question. Arilou gaped silently, eyes bulging with effort, then managed a few soft sounds. He looked over his shoulder at his fellows, and shrugged.

  Despite herself, Hathin felt a pang. He asked Arilou a question, and she tried to answer it. And to him that means nothing.

  But now Arilou’s mouth had started to soften into a loose pansy-shape. Behind her grey eyes a crystalline dream had softly shattered into fragments.

  What was I expecting? She’s never had a conversation in her life. Maybe she’s learned to understand the Sours’ speech, and maybe she’s practised making the same mouth shapes, the same sounds. But words are like toy bricks you learn to pick up and put together over years. Did I think she’d just know how to do it?

  Poor Arilou. It never crossed your mind that you wouldn’t be able to, did it?

  ‘There’s something ugly about this whole village,’ muttered Therrot, ‘something dangerous in the mood here.’

  ‘Of course there is,’ said Hathin sadly. ‘They’re like us. They’re so used to protecting themselves and their secret by shutting everybody else out, they can’t see how dangerous it is to be so alone.’

  Even as Hathin spoke, the village became real to her, became a place where people actually lived. She suddenly noticed the thinness of the villagers’ faces, the empty baskets that should have held dried beans, the scarcity of chickens and pigs.

  ‘They’re alone up here, and they’re running out of food,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why – maybe it’s something to do with the school beacon not being lit – but it’s true. Look around! Oh, if only Arilou could tell us why . . . Tomki, do you think you can bargain with them? Persuade them to take us to the Beacon School? There’s the Superior’s barrow back down in the Ashlands – perhaps we could give that to them to sell?’

  ‘I can try.’ Tomki steepled his fingers over his head to make himself into a tower, then pointed in the direction of the distant beacon tower. ‘We . . .’ he pointed at himself and each of his Lace companions, ‘want to go there.’ He pointed towards the school again, and mimed walking.

  This did not seem to improve the atmosphere at all. Many of the Sours exchanged dark looks.

  ‘We pay!’ Tomki rummaged in his belt pouch and produced a single coin. ‘Pay! Well, sort of. Pay you to come with us.’ He took a companionable hold on the arm of one Sour woman, who hastily tugged it free. ‘Protect us from geysers.’ He crouched down and then leaped to his feet, waving his arms. ‘Whoosh! Geysers!’

  There were noises of confused amusement. Various children pushed forward, apparently hoping that Tomki would do it again. When he did, there was a small but noticeable ease in the tension.

  ‘Whoooooosh! Yes! Protect us from geysers! And . . . and rock falls!’

  Unfortunately, Tomki decided to mime ‘rock falls’ by snatching up two fist-sized rocks and tossing them against the chest of a tree trunk of a man. A leathery thump, and Tomki was on the ground clutching his jaw.

  ‘Did you see that?’ His delighted squeal was cut short by a brisk foot to the ribs, followed by one to the head. ‘Look! Look! I’m being wronged!’

  ‘Wonderful,’ snarled Therrot as he scrambled to his feet. ‘Now we’re all in for a good wronging.’

  Jaze did not look towards his belt, but his fingers made idle flicks at the hilt, and the thongs keeping his dagger in its sheath fell loose. Then suddenly the hilt was in his hand, the blade lying hidden flush against his forearm, making Hathin think of a scorpion with its sting folded down under its tail.

  Hathin felt sick and dizzy as the crowd surged forward. She could talk to people, but this was Mob. Mob wasn’t people. It took people and folded their faces like paper, leaving hard lines of anger and fear that didn’t belong to them.

  And then without warning a silvery undulation of sound flowed free on the air, and Mob stood amazed. Arilou was speaking, and suddenly the green-clad strangers around them were listening, were people again.

  ‘I don’t know what your sister just said,’ Therrot muttered out of the corner of his mouth, ‘but I’m very glad she said it.’

  Whatever it was, it appeared to be enough. No more kicks were aimed at Tomki, and the expression of the old man who seemed to be the Sours’ leader grew warmer, more humane. For decades language had been the way that the Sours knew their own and shut out everybody else. By using their words, however clumsily, it seemed that Arilou had broken through their shell and become one of them.

  Gingerly, Hathin scratched a rough picture of a barrow into the dust, and this time heads clustered round her to observe. At least now the Sours seemed interested in trying to understand.

  ‘Barrow.’ Hathin pointed down towards the Ashlands. ‘Barrow down there.' To make it clearer what the barrow was, Hathin added some blobs inside it, then mimed gripping two handles. 'We give to you.
’ She grasped a large piece of air and presented it ceremoniously to the Sours’ chief.

  The old man looked quizzically at Arilou, who supplied a single word. Brows cleared, and the word was repeated with expressions of revelation. The Sours seemed happy, and there was a good deal of nodding.

  The old man then performed a dumb show of moving something to his mouth and biting down on it. Wondering if she and her friends were being invited to dinner, Hathin pointed to the cauldron of bean soup over the fire with a questioning look and was rewarded with a nod.

  ‘I think we’d better accept,’ she said under her breath.

  And so the painful conversation went on, even after the sky darkened and soup was served to everyone in hollowed gourds. Using Arilou as translator was rather like trying to sew using a pinecone instead of a needle, forcing big, fat meanings through the tiny aperture that was Arilou’s ability to communicate. Hathin was able to pick out one word that occurred again and again amid the flowing Sour sentences. It sounded like ‘jeljech’, the last consonant a soft hiss at the back of the throat, like the ‘ch’ in ‘loch’.

  At last the Sours’ leader reached out, took Arilou’s hand and clasped it. Bargain sealed.

  ‘Good,’ muttered Jaze as he got to his feet. ‘Now we’ll get out of here . . .’

  A chorus of protests. Gentle but insistent hands guiding Jaze to sit back down. Gestures towards one of the rock-pile huts, where clean bedding mats were being unrolled. A stream of Sour words . . . something something something jeljech . . .

  ‘. . . or perhaps we won’t,’ Jaze finished darkly. ‘It looks like we are going nowhere.’

  Hathin fidgeted and thought of the Superior, waiting for word from his soap-deliverers. What would he do when the stars came out and they had not returned? Would he change his mind and send for the Ashwalker after all?

  21

  Lesson’s End

  The next morning, the visiting Lace were woken by the mysterious ‘Jeljech’, who proved to be a seventeen-year-old Sour girl with deep-set eyes and a guarded, self-possessed air. She startled them awake a little after dawn by putting her head through the door of the rock hut that had been allocated to them, and laying down bowls of something hot and herbal.