“But did you learn anything ... from Lord Nephril that is? You said you might have something to tell me after seeing him.”
“No, Stella. No, nothing that bears on what we were talking about.”
“So he’s like everyone else then: doesn’t see beyond the walls?”
“Well, yes, he does actually, but for a wholly different reason, one to do with his old duties in Galgaverre.”
“So there are three of us that we know of then,” Stella quietly said, more to herself, “and all for completely different reasons.”
Mirabel had stood, settling her skirt. “I do know there aren’t any more of us, though, not that I think it helps.” She waited. “Stella? You alright?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes, fine, Mirabel, thanks. I’m fine,” but something from her starmaker training days had drifted into her mind as the crow had cackled above them, lofted and flown beyond the cliff top, crumbs drifting down from the bedroom windowsill.
“You sure?”
“I just had a thought, that’s all. Remembered something that might be of use.”
Mirabel eyed her closely, but Stella only looked through her. “Well, whatever it is, it’s clearly got you thinking.”
The silence hung between them like a velvet curtain.
“Penny for them?” and Mirabel was about to sit back down when Stella flashed her a broad smile.
“I’ll have to think it through first. Bit of a longshot. I’ll tell you more when I see you again.” Her face dulled a little. “I can still come and visit, though, can’t I, Mirabel?”
“Of course, but only when you’re well enough. I’d love to see you again, and soon. See how you get on, but the next time might be me coming back here to see you. I don’t want you overdoing it, do you hear?”
Stella nodded. “I’ll look forward to it then. Don’t leave it too long, though,” and Mirabel promised she wouldn’t.
She leant over Stella, “And don’t you go stirring now. Enjoy a bit more of this lovely sun,” then bent and wrapped her arms around her.
“Remember,” Stella said, muffled close to Mirabel’s ear. “Don’t leave it too long. You don’t want me staggering over Mount Esnadac to come and find out why, now do you?” and she blinked to clear her eyes before burying them in Mirabel’s neck.
“I won’t, my petal. Trust me.”
Stella nodded, breathing in Mirabel’s intoxicating scent before her lips tasted those of her friend.
All too brief, Mirabel slipped from Stella’s embrace and straightened. “Your mother said she’d be down with the pigs. I’ll pop in there on my way and say goodbye,” and without another word, she swept through the backdoor and into the house, a quick smile turned Stella’s way as she slipped from sight.
That last look stayed with Stella, stemmed the tears that had begun to flow. She sniffed, the icy hollow in her heart now slowly thawing in the warm breeze left by Mirabel’s smile.
15 Marginalia
The sunshine didn’t last long, maybe a half hour or so before the sun slipped behind the cliff. Stella soon felt the chill. She bent to gather their mugs but lurched dizzily when she stood, steadying herself against the back of one of the recliners.
By the time she’d crossed the small yard and into the kitchen, she’d begun shivering. The mugs clinked as she dropped them beside the sink before she slumped down onto the settle, black dots dancing before her eyes.
The farmhouse seemed hollow somehow, still enough to hear the faint flutter of birds on the chimney pot at the top of the hearth’s flue. She closed her eyes but it only made her feel sick.
Bed seemed the best place, so she prised herself up and staggered upstairs. She didn’t bother undressing, just removed her boots and climbed in beside a lukewarm hot water bottle.
When Stella awoke sometime later, she felt a lot better but didn’t at first risk finding out by how much, and so lay, listening to the silence. It didn’t last long. The faint chink of mugs in the kitchen, followed by the water pipes knocking, suggested her mother had finally finished the pigs. The familiar clatter of the poker against the hearth’s grate said her mother would soon be doing the washing up Stella had promised to do.
Just when she’d finally summoned enough energy, and was beginning to sit up, Geran cautiously cracked open the door and popped her head around.
“Ah. Thought you’d be here.” She slipped in. “Now don’t you go getting up. I thought you were being a bit previous seeing Mirabel off.”
“But I said I’d wash up after us.”
“I’ve some other washing to do, so a few dishes are neither here nor there.”
Stella dropped back against her pillow. Although she did in fact feel much better, she knew her mother would have none of it. “Are you sure?” to which Geran gave her one of her looks.
“I’ll do a new bottle for you and get us a drink while I’m waiting for the water to heat. What would you like?”
Her mother was soon back in the kitchen, the clatter of the kettle and the dull ring of the teapot faintly reaching Stella’s ears well before she again sat up. She leant over to get Melkin’s dictionary from where she’d put it on a shelf beneath her bedside table, although the effort forced her to lie back and close her eyes for a while. The book’s supple leather binding relaxed all the while against the heat of her hand, its promise of revelation seeming to nudge insistently at her fingertips.
She was about to give in when a creak of floorboards drew her eyes to the door and she watched Geran come in with her tea and a fresh bottle.
“Now don’t tire yourself out reading.”
Stella smiled as her mother put the mug on the table and pushed the bottle beneath the sheets, towards Stella’s feet.
“I’m going to be up to my armpits in washing, so, do you need anything else before I get stuck in?” Stella didn’t and was soon left on her own.
Carefully, she slid out of bed, and a bit unsteadily, knelt at the loose floorboard, levering it out with her fingers.
Dust slid from the metal box as she lifted it clear and placed it on her desk before clicking it open and taking out its hoard of papers. She put them on her eiderdown and quietly replaced the box before climbing back into bed.
“Right. Let’s have another look at them then.”
She flicked through, trying to decide where to start, but something caught her eye – an entry in a list of what appeared to be names had been underlined in pencil. She peered closely and gasped.
“Sodbuster?” She turned back to the start of the list and there found the heading, “Folces tarbweyn Saawaned,” which only brought her a frown.
Melkin’s dictionary soon delivered “Family” for “Folc”, and she immediately recognised its plural. “Tarbweyn”, however, eluded it, although “Saawan” meant “Seed”.
She kicked herself. “Of course, ‘sown’. So, ‘Families something sown’.” She wished she’d dug out pencil and paper to make the task easier. I’ll do it properly when I feel up to sitting at my desk, she thought.
The dictionary slipped from her hand and knocked some of the sheets aside, revealing a short scrawled note in one of the margins.
“Ah, the same pencil as underlines our family name.” She angled her head and squinted. “And I’m sure this is dad’s handwriting,” but as usual, she couldn’t decipher his scrawl.
Smudged and faded, it slanted against the end of a paragraph which finished with the words “...niman targeador nerungainesten againes Anasci”. Stella’s head began to hurt, like it always had at the end of every classics tutorial.
“Damn, I’m just not cut out for this,” but then her jaw dropped. “Just a minute. This has to mean that dad himself knows ... or at least once knew the old tongue.”
She stared at the note he’d made. “He’s never ever mentioned it,” but now she remembered his glance towards the cold store when she’d tried to discuss her concerns with him after she’d first come home.
“If something I said then made him recall
this text, well, then he must also still remember how to read it.”
Now, though, convinced the note was indeed in her father’s hand, she persevered with the text beside it. By the time she’d got a rough idea of its meaning, her eyes had begun to feel heavy. The last thing she wanted was to fall asleep with all this on show and so gathered everything together, to hide it this time beneath the eiderdown.
Stella paused and stared at the sheet she’d left on top, at Falmeard’s tell-tale scribble, and sighed. “What’s so important about ‘...hold together protection against Anasci’? whatever that is, that dad should want to mark it?” Her eyes widened when a name leapt out from her father’s scrawl.
“It can’t be. It is you know, I’m sure of it - ‘Prescinda’? What’s Aunt Prescinda got to do with it?”
She angled the sheet until she’d teased more from the pencil strokes. It seemed her dad had wanted to record that her aunt was the only one who’d seen ... yes, she was sure it said, “the black silhouette,” but what on earth did it mean?
She jumped at a tap on the window, and saw her friend the crow’s head once more cocked, staring in at her from the windowsill.
“What’s ‘Anasci’, Mr. Crow?” but the bird only tapped again before crowing and flying away.
16 Stimulating Company
Come evening, Stella had badgered her mother into granting her a reprieve from eating alone in bed. A place had been set for her at the kitchen table, near the warmth of the fire where Aunt Prescinda normally sat. In fact, Prescinda’s late arrival had only just brought with it a cold, dark cloud.”
“I think he’s going downhill rapidly,” she was saying to Geran as she took off her coat, throwing it on the settle. Grog put the coal scuttle down he’d just been out to refill, picked her coat up and went to hang it in the passageway.
“Well, it is certainly sad, but he is getting on,” Geran said. “Dad’s been gone more than forty years now, so the old man has to be knocking on for a couple of hundred, probably more when I come to think on it.”
Grog squeezed past with the scuttle, Prescinda’s face lighting up when she turned to make way. “Oh, hello, Stella. Didn’t see you there. You’re looking much better. Are you eating with us tonight?”
“I’ve put her in your seat,” Geran hastened to say, “so she’s...”
“That’s fine, Sis. I would have suggested it myself.” She went to warm her backside by the fire as Stella heard the outer door open and her father’s boots drop to the floor.
“I’ve missed you all,” Stella told Prescinda. “It’s not the same eating on my own,” and she watched Falmeard come in and make his way to the sink.
“Dobbin’s standing now,” he said as he turned the tap on and lathered his hands. “The rub down seems to have done the trick.”
Wherever did he get that daft name from? Stella wondered for the umpteenth time.
“You eating with us, Stella?” her father said over his shoulder, briskly rubbing his hands together, the smell of coal tar cutting through the cloying smell of cabbage.
“It’ll be good to have her at the table again, Falmeard,” Prescinda said, turning to Stella. “I’ve missed your company,” and she smiled.
“Is it ready yet?” Grog piped up, to which Geran wagged her finger at his chair. “Oh good. I’m starving.”
Stella watched them all as they settled in to their seats, in particular her father, now seeing him with fresh eyes. Why should an everyday farmer be able to read ancient Bazarran? she wondered. It didn’t make sense, but she knew she couldn’t ask. How could she? guilty as she was at having interfered with something he’d clearly purposely hidden.
Prescinda sat beside Stella and leaned in. “If you start feeling tired, you just take yourself off up to bed, eh? We’ll understand.”
Stella smiled and nodded. It frustrated her to think she’d not get answers from her aunt either, especially about her father’s scribbled note, for she’d certainly not remember. That had been made all too clear when she’d failed to recognise Mirabel.
“So how’s the old man?” Falmeard said as he drew his chair up opposite.
“His daughter arrived today. She’ll be staying with him until ... well, I don’t think he’s got much longer,” and Prescinda’s face dropped.
“Well, we don’t all live forever. Can you pass the potatoes, Grog?”
There he goes again, Stella thought, that odd way he has with phrases. Nobody else seemed to notice, but she wondered why he hadn’t just said, “No one lives forever.”
He looked across at her. “Well, lass, how do you feel now you’re up and about again?” but the glint in his eyes distracted her. She looked over at Grog, busy piling carrots onto his plate, but his own seemed dull in comparison.
She turned back to her father. “It feels a bit overwhelming actually, but I do feel stronger.”
“Overwhelming?” He narrowed his eyes for a moment. “Well, a good meal will do you no end of good,” and nodded at her empty plate.
She passed it into Geran’s already outstretched hand and glanced at the others of her family, of her seemingly average folc. All but her father’s eyes looked misty somehow, as though none was wholly here. How odd she’d never noticed before.
Despite her mind largely being elsewhere, the bustle of their company steadily lifted Stella’s spirits. They’d finished the main course, and Geran was announcing toad-in-the-hole for afters, when an idea struck Stella like a bolt from the blue.
“You alright?” Prescinda quietly asked.
Stella peered into her aunt’s eyes, hopeful but ultimately disappointed. “Yes. Just getting a bit tired, that’s all. I’ll be alright, but I think I might just go on up if you don’t mind?”
The press of conversation quickly turned to reassurances, all agreeing it was probably for the best. She rose, feigning weariness, and quietly took her leave.
Stella closed her bedroom door behind her and turned up the wick on the lamp beside her bed, carried it to the desk and placed it beside the dictionary. The metal box soon yielded its contents again, Stella carefully stacking the papers in the middle of the desk.
The hubbub of her family drifted reassuringly from the kitchen, Grog’s voice rising above it all in appreciation of his pudding.
Drawing her chair up, Stella sat down and pulled out the sheets of family names, laying them side by side across the desk. “Right. Belinda Brushboiler?” she whispered, remembering the girl who’d been the nearest to a best friend she’d had at college, Stella’s finger all the while running down the list.
“Here we are, ‘Brushboiler’.”
She peered through the window, out into the inky night.
“Gainspittle, yes, that skinny lad in my mechanicking class?” and her finger moved further down the list. “Here it is.”
When she recalled the name of the rather uncouth lass who’d dropped out in her second year, she failed to find Botherin. The same with Awlshank, Scuttledown and Dullinger, but not so Studleaker, Greywainer and Tundish, who were all present.
From the desk drawer, she took out a fresh sheet of paper and a pencil, and began listing the names she could remember, placing them in groups based on their origin and where she knew them from. She ticked each one if they were listed as one of the Folces. When she’d amassed some thirty or forty, Stella sat back and stared at the sheet, slack-mouthed.
“This is weird,” and again she stared out through the window. “All those listed in the Folces tarbweyn Saawaned are Dican, not a Bazarran or Galgaverran amongst them, not even a High Dican. Not a one, not that I can find.”
She looked again at her groups of names. “And almost all my fellow students were Dican, just a handful of Bazarran,” and she marvelled at how it had never struck her before.
“The fascinating thing, though,” and her brows knitted, “is that every starmaker I know - those in the post already or training for it - are all Dican, and all on this list,” which she tapped as she stared at the hea
ding now above her finger.
The word “tarbweyn” held her gaze as she slowly shook her head. “Why can’t I find you in the dictionary, eh?”
A clear memory of Chancellor Mudark arose in her mind, sitting across his office desk from her. He shook his head, clearly exasperated. “The ganannon form, my dear,” he laboured. “How many times do I have to tell you? The ganannon,” and she kicked herself.
Opening the dictionary, she flicked through until finding the page, where her finger traced down its columns. “Ah, got you; ‘Bweyn’, ‘is’, ‘irregular verb’,” and she spoke aloud its ganannon form, “To be.”
At the top of her sheet of notes, Stella neatly printed, “Families to be sown,” before staring across at the list which only stared back.
“Dican families,” she muttered, “exclusively Dican, and from whom all starmakers seem to be drawn.”
Placing her elbows on the desk, Stella rested her chin on her hands. “What’s so special about Dicans that we seem to be the only ones who create stars? Why us and nobody else?” but she frowned and looked up at the heading again. “And are we the seed to be sown ... or the furrows to receive it?”
17 An Idea Comes Together
For the next few days, on and off when no one was about, Stella laboured over the text as her strength steadily returned. It didn’t seem to get her that far, though.
Her pages of notes now consisted of a spattering of translated words – or stabs at them – amidst a sea of stubbornly recalcitrant sentences. She’d followed Melkin’s advice, to break the longer words into parts, but it had largely got her nowhere.
She had managed to translate another heading, however, turning “Eynstaelleten af plaeceden-aneowe Buinnstrang” into “In-stabling of placement-anew Certain-Power”, thanks to a couple of Melkin’s neatly penned additions to the dictionary. Although she didn’t understand it, it did seem to be important, given the heavy type it was printed in. Unfortunately, the meaning of the body text below largely refused to be teased out.
Starmaker Stella (Dica Series Book 6) Page 7
