Bone, Fog, Ash & Star

by Catherine Egan

  Mala raised her eyebrows. “We’re nearly there. Put it away.”

  Nell slipped the folder reluctantly into a pocket. The morrapus dropped down into a courtyard whose outlying pillars were garlanded in flowers. Charlie and Nell slipped out of the morrapus after Mala, suddenly terribly conscious of how solid, awkward and un-Faery-like their every movement was.

  The streets and buildings gleamed, opalescent, like the insides of seashells. Faeries massed about in bright, simple robes. The street moved with them, elaborately carved doorways and shining alleys multiplying all around them.

  “Does it nay get confusing?” asked Nell, trying to keep her voice to a whisper and hurrying after Mala. “I mean, if the city is Illusion and it keeps changing, what happens if two Faeries try to make an Illusion in the same place or something? What if you’re on a street that disappears? And how do you know where anything is?”

  “The Architects create the City. There are regulations, a system,” said Mala. “Don’t talk anymore.”

  They came to a river as clear as glass. Mala handed a rose-coloured gem to a Faery with long flowing hair and the three of them boarded one of the narrow boats that plied the river. The long-haired Faery stood at the prow and used a pole to punt them along. In spite of the traffic, they moved very swiftly through the water. Charlie and Nell looked around them in undisguised amazement, taking in the fabulous sights and smells and sounds of the city. After an hour they disembarked and Mala led them up a winding staircase lined on both sides with stalls of fruit, silk and jewels. Faeries browsed and bartered noisily.

  “This is the Marketplace Liathin,” said Mala softly. “Do not speak. Do not look anyone in the eye. Do not draw attention to yourselves.”

  The staircase wound up and up over the city, the market bustling alongside. It came abruptly to an end facing a pale green marble door. The door was not attached to a building of any kind. It stood alone, framed by the bright sky over the city, which twisted and changed far below. Mala swung the door open. Although there was nothing but sky around the door frame, through it they saw a field of blossoming cherry trees surrounding a shining lake. Blossoms tumbled through the air like snowflakes and banners hung from the trees, each one depicting a different bird. A few blossoms blew out through the door and vanished.

  They stepped through the doorway and Mala closed it behind them. At once the city was gone. The doorway stood alone in the middle of the field. Well-dressed Faeries lounged in little groups around the banners, talking and laughing. Mala looked around quickly and then led Nell and Charlie straight to a banner displaying a stylized rendition of a hawk. Three Faeries were chatting and sipping from little jeweled cups. One of them had a gold band around his arm and it was this Faery that Mala addressed in the language of the Faeries, holding out a clear, slender crystal the size of a finger.

  The Faery replied in a lazy voice, glancing over the three of them briefly before taking the crystal and examining it. He handed it back to Mala and gave what seemed to be a command. Mala nodded and put her hands behind her back. She shot Nell and Charlie a look out of the corner of her eye. They were standing behind her, arms dangling, mouths slightly open, utterly confused. Her look was enough. They shut their mouths and put their hands behind their backs. Nell felt a mounting hilarity pressing against her chest. She didn’t dare look at Charlie or she was sure she would burst out laughing. They stood absolutely still and silent for the best part of an hour while the Faery with the armband sipped at his drink and stared at everything and everyone but them. Then all at once he tossed his cup aside (it disappeared before hitting the ground) and stood up. He gave Mala a curt nod and the three of them followed him to the lake. The shore was lined with waiting morrapi. Two Faeries were struggling to put a large, familiar looking basket into the nearest one. Nell smelled the apricots as she approached but she didn’t dare ask Mala about it. Unfortunately, the Faery with the armband got into the morrapus with them, so they couldn’t talk at all. Nell glanced at Charlie and looked away again quickly with a flutter of trepidation. The myrkestra pulled the morappus into the air.

  Chapter

  ~11~

  Rain pounded against the windows and the flash of lightning illuminated the little room at the top of the lighthouse. In that second of bright whiteness, Eliza and Foss saw a most extraordinary-looking man. He sat leaning against one wall with his legs splayed. His arms and legs were very long and his clothes looked as if they had not been washed in weeks. He had a shock of dirty yellow-white hair springing out around a deeply lined, sunburned face. Several days worth of white stubble covered the lower half of his face and his mouth hung open in an almost comical grimace, revealing a few long yellow teeth. A gleam from somewhere deep among the pouchy wrinkles around his eyes told Eliza that he was awake and had seen them too. A rat ran across the room between them and all was black again. Thunder crashed overhead as if the sky was splitting open. Eliza cringed. Perhaps it was unwise to be in a lighthouse in a lightning storm.

  Nobody spoke. The rain roared down. Another flash, and the figure was no longer against the wall. Eliza’s heart began to race. She muttered a spell and a ball like a bright lightbulb lit the room. The huge gangling figure was creeping towards the orange glow of Foss’s eyes with a brick in his hand.

  “Stop!” she cried.

  He froze. Foss looked up at the man with a faint chuckle but did not get up.

  “Who are you?” Eliza demanded. Her ball of light swooped right in front of the man’s face, blinding him. He squinted and turned his face away. The hand holding the brick was enormous and bristled with white hair.

  “Ferghal!” he said, in a voice rich and coarse with decades of whisky. “My name is Ferghal Murtagh! What in the name of the Ancients are you?”

  His accent was unfamiliar. He used the rough dialect of the eastern coast but there was a lilting cadence to the way he spoke that she had never heard before.

  “Drop that brick,” said Eliza.

  Ferghal laughed a throaty laugh and squinted at her through the light. “Make me!” he said.

  “Oh dear,” sighed Foss.

  Eliza fixed her will on the brick and it flew from his hand across the room, smashing into the wall. Ferghal stared at it and then at her. He broke into another gravelly laugh.

  “As the Ancients would have it, am I to be murdered by a young mite of a witch and her wizardish companion?” asked Ferghal. “If it is to be so, well then by all that’s mighty, I should like to have a cigarette first.”

  “Nobody is going to murder anybody,” said Eliza, annoyed but beginning to relax. He was no threat to them. “We just need shelter for the night.”

  “Ah! Then we’ve a thing or two in common. A need of shelter and no murderous intentions.”

  This was a bit rich, Eliza thought, given that he’d been creeping up on Foss with a brick in his hand, but she could see how, from his perspective, they might seem rather frightening.

  Ferghal reached into his pocket and drew out a pack of cigarettes. “I will celebrate with a cigarette after all.”

  Eliza settled down on the floor next to Foss. Ferghal hunted in his pockets and then swore.

  “No matches.” He looked over at them hopefully. “I don’t suppose…?”

  “We don’t have any matches,” said Eliza. Of course she could light his cigarette for him, and knew he suspected as much, but she didn’t really want to sleep in a room stinking of cigarette smoke if she didn’t have to. Every now and then another flash of lightning lit the room and a great clap of thunder made them all jump. She let her light go out and imagined the huge waves pounding against the flood-gates across the harbour.

  “And what brings such beings as you to humble Elmount?” Ferghal’s voice rumbled in the dark.

  “We need a boat,” Foss replied.

  “Now suppose I knew where you could get a boat,” said Ferghal in a sort of drawl. “Suppose I did! What would two such as you do for one such as me if I were to find you a boat?
Perhaps even take you where you’re going?”

  “Naturally we would find some way to repay you for your help,” said Foss. “Is this mere speculation, Mister Ferghal, or do you in fact have a boat?”

  “Just Ferghal,” he said. “Never met a mister I could stomach and I’ve no desire to pose as one myself! And have is a tricky word, a slippery sort of a word, don’t you find? I couldn’t rightly say that I have a boat, I don’t think I could say that, no. But that’s not to say I won’t have one tomorrow, is it? Indeed, I think it quite likely I might have a boat tomorrow.”

  “Oh, I see.” Foss sounded sad. “Do you mean you will steal a boat? Eliza, I do not like the direction we are going in. There must be another way.”

  “We dinnay have any money,” said Eliza wearily. “And the volcano is way out at sea. What other way is there?”

  “Eliza! A fine name!” Ferghal exclaimed. “I had an aunt named Eliza, you know. A hideous spinster and a poisonous cook with a temper like nothing you could imagine. Oh, what a terrible woman she was! Oh, how glad we all were when she gave up her last gasp and ceased to plague the world with her existence. Still, a fine name, a fine name.” He crossed the room and sat himself down near Foss. “A volcano is where you’re headed then? Not the archipelago?”

  Eliza thought longingly of Holburg. “There’s a volcanic chain south of the archipelago,” she said. “That’s where we’re going.”

  “Yes, yes, yes indeed, and why shouldn’t you? Peculiar, no doubt, but then it would be even more peculiar if you were doing something ordinary, since as far as I can tell you are both of a peculiar nature. Is that not right? I knew a man once who realized at the age of thirty-five that he couldn’t be burned. Have you heard of such a thing? Couldn’t be burned! Joined the circus and lit himself on fire for a living after that and drank himself to death with his earnings in under five years. Peculiar, isn’t that right? Must have had a bit of mixed blood and never knew it. So long as you mean me no harm then I’m comfortable as can be with your kind, pleased in fact to make your acquaintance. So many folks one encounters these days are the same as the folks one has encountered in days gone by and it all begins to feel a bit repetitive, if you know what I mean. Sleeping in a lighthouse in a storm, I can’t help feeling that something just like this has happened before and my life isn’t taking me anywhere new, or I’m not taking it anywhere new, but in any case I see the two of you and my first thought is, by the Ancients I am going to be murdered by demons! And then we get to talking and instead I feel that here is something that has never happened to me before. And that’s a rare treat, at my age, a rare treat, for I sometimes fear that everything has already happened to me that possibly could and it’s going to be repeats ’til the day I die, getting less amusing every time.”

  Eliza heard a strange low sound and then realized that Foss was chuckling.

  “Are you a literate man?” Foss asked Ferghal.

  “A what kind of man?” Ferghal sounded wary.

  “Can you read?”

  “Oh, I can read a bit, yes. I can read the labels on bottles!” he cackled wildly at this joke and in a flash of lightning Eliza caught a gleam of wet tooth in his gaping mouth.

  “It seems to me impossible to ever grow bored or to feel that life has run out of surprises if one is literate,” explained Foss. “A being of learning, even an Immortal one, could never grow weary of the wealth of wonder, mystery and beauty offered by books.” His eyes grew a little brighter, so that Eliza could make out the outline of his face and Ferghal leaning in close. He looked set to continue but for perhaps the first time had encountered someone more talkative than himself.

  “Books, you are talking about books!” cried Ferghal. “But I have no fondness for books! When I was just a child my father used the only book in our home to beat me with, and in my nightmares still a big book chases me around an empty house with the intention of doing me harm! No, spare me your books, my good fellow, I will have none of them! All full of wriggly little words that will tie your tongue and brain in knots trying to work them out, and terrible for the eyesight, they can make you blind in under a week, books can!”

  “That is preposterous! Nothing could be more edifying than a book! A life without books is simply unimaginable. My poor man, you have much deprived yourself out of ignorance as to the true and wonderful nature of books!” Foss was most impassioned.

  “I say life experienced first-hand is a far superior thing to any kind of story or lie cooked up in a book to fuddle a man and tell him what to do. Why read when one can live? A waste of precious seconds, your books.”

  “But you are contradicting yourself. Just moments ago…”

  “A man’s right, self-contradictoriness! Why must I agree with myself all the time? Where is the harm in holding two opposing opinions at the same time? It shows my breadth of mind.”

  “It shows nothing of the kind. It shows you to be a confused fellow whose intellect has suffered from a lack of books.”

  “Books! Spare me your books! My father used to beat me with the only book in our house…”

  “Yes, you’ve said that already.”

  “A man’s right, self-repetitiveness! Why must I say something new every time? Where is the harm in repeating the same story twice?”

  As the two of them went back and forth like this and the storm raged outside, Eliza drifted off to sleep.

  ~~~

  The sun rose over the Citadel and the bare room at the top of the lighthouse in Elmount grew bright. Still Eliza slept. She felt herself on weary wings descending towards the familiar grounds. The powerful barriers around the Citadel were a mere whisper rustling through her feathers. She flew straight into the south wing, soared over two startled Mancers and through the wall into Kyreth’s study. She dropped the little roll of paper on the Supreme Mancer’s desk; it landed just inches from his large gold hand. If he was surprised at a raven flying into his study, he did not show it. He unrolled the page of newspaper and read what Eliza had scrawled on the back.

  “Have you and Foss neglected your research?” He looked straight into the raven’s little black eyes. Eliza felt herself boiling with flame, tossing and turning in the lighthouse. “The Thanatosi, once called, will never rest until their task is completed. They cannot be called off. There are a great many stories of beings calling upon them in a fit of passion and then seeking desperately to call them off, only to fail, every time. Surely you read these tales in the History. There is nothing I nor anyone else can do for your friend, Eliza.” He looked calmly at the raven for a few moments. “I will not ask you to come back. The Emmisariae will bring you back and we will speak further then. Do not seek me out in this form again.”

  Some force blasted against the raven. It opened its beak in a shriek of pain and flew pell-mell straight up through the ceiling, through floor after floor, out the top of the Citadel and into the dawn sky. Eliza sat upright in the lighthouse, her bones aching with the blow. She spat out a singed black feather. She was alone.

  She leaped to her feet and ran to the windows. Her ankle was feeling much sturdier today. Foss was down on the bluff with Ferghal. A light rain was still falling but the storm had subsided. Ferghal was a giant of a man, only a few inches shorter than Foss himself. He was pointing down towards the harbour with one of his long arms. Eliza snatched up her backpack and hurried down the stairs and outside to see what they were talking about. By the time she reached Foss, Ferghal was already loping off in the direction of the town.

  “He assures me he will not steal a boat,” said Foss, smiling down at Eliza. “He will merely borrow one from a friend and return it after our journey. He is a fine sort of man, in spite of his inexplicable abhorrence of books, from which I simply could not sway him. We shall have to think of some form of payment. He seems happy to accept a spell, but of what kind? Whatever it is, you will have to work it, Eliza. I am feeling rather weak.”

  She looked at him with concern. He was looking grayer and frailer eve
ry day.

  “Are you going to be all right?” she asked. “Is this…lah, is it because of being separated from the Mancers?”

  “A brief separation is harmless for an Emmisarius,” said Foss with a sigh. “But I am no longer an Emmisarius. I am like a leaf, Eliza, that has been cut from the plant. I can no longer feed the plant with the natural powers I possess, but the plant will survive for it has many leaves. However, without a connection to the life-giving roots of the plant, I will wither rather quickly, I’m afraid.”

  Eliza felt her heart plummeting as he spoke. “There must be some kind of cure, something we can do,” she said, struggling to keep her voice calm.

  “While Kyreth is in power, I will not be welcomed back,” said Foss. “There is no cure but that. But do not worry so, Eliza. I have power in me still, and enough to sustain me for a time. I should like to conserve it, however, so if you would be so kind, I will leave the working of Magic to you except in an emergency.”

  “Of course,” she said, trying not to cry. She squeezed his big hand. It was cold.

  ~~~

  The rain stopped and they sat on the bluff looking out over the harbour and the sea, grey under the overcast sky. A few hours later, Ferghal returned, looking immensely pleased with himself. He was carrying a canvas bag.

  “Friends!” he beamed, waving at them with a big, hairy hand. “I have secured us a vessel and victuals too! Do you eat the same food as we mortal humans do?”

  “I do,” said Eliza eagerly. Foss declined with a graceful nod.

  “I should have guessed, for you look almost human, though not quite, obviously, to a trained eye,” said Ferghal cheerfully. He sat down on the grass with them and emptied out the bag of odds and ends he had clearly swiped from grocery stalls: honey rolls, pears, a bunch of carrots, a bag of salted nuts.

  “Almost human?” said Eliza indignantly. Foss chuckled.

  “Well, except for the nose and the eyes,” Ferghal said. “In point of fact, you look like one of those warrior women from Boqua, you know, the ones who walk on hot coals all day long to get used to pain. I had a girlfriend like that once, she couldn’t bear to wear shoes or walk on the pavement, she had to sprinkle coals ahead of her just so she could walk on the ground. Life was terribly hard for her up north. But my, what a cook! Phenomenal meals she used to prepare! We’d eat a whole pig, buttered and roasted, between the two of us! Daily! Ah, those were the days. But alas, poor thing, she drowned trying to harpoon a giant porpoise. The beast pulled her beneath the waves and I never saw her again, nor tasted one bite of that porpoise. Well, such is life, by all that’s mighty! The Ancients have their game with us and then we disappear, is that not so?”