The Shifu Cloth (The Chronicles of Eirie 4)

by Prue Batten

‘Kitsune?’

  ‘I am here.’

  But she was drenched in dark shadow and Isabella stayed with her eyes cast over the bobbing boats.

  ‘Something is wrong, Fox Lady. Ming Xao knows.’

  ‘Perhaps he does. But you must not worry. Tonight you will move forward, Ibo. Tonight is the night your plan begins to unfold. Have strength.’

  The woman’s hands slid up Isabella’s sleeve and the calm that Others can engender flooded her and she heaved a relieved sigh.

  ‘I am trying, but I find all this…’ defeated, she gestured with her hand toward the Court and the nobility. ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘But you like being a princess, don’t you? Isn’t that what you craved back in your home? To be the centre of everyone’s attention, the princess that all kowtowed to?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘No? Think on it, Ibo. And trust me when I say, tonight is the night.’

  *

  Isabella sensed Kitsune had gone, vanished, and she noticed her hands had relaxed on the balustrade overlooking the water.

  A princess at home? No, it’s not true. I did not want that.

  But an image of her retinue of admirers sprang up and she shook her head angrily, focussing on the armada of paper-craft drifting past, their little lights flickering. She thought of where she had seen this same spring event and tears came to her eyes.

  ‘You cry.’

  She started as Ming Xao’s hand proffered a silk kerchief. She took it and her muffled words ventured forth.

  ‘Yes I cry, Ming Xao, and before you ask, I cry because we have the same festival at my home. We place boats and lights on the ocean. I miss walking barefoot through the sea to place my light on the water. But more than anything,’ she turned fully toward him, ‘I miss my family – my mother, my father and my step-brother. I miss them so that my heart feels cleft in two and I can only think they must be disembowelled with the pain of my vanishing. What you have done, Ming Xao, what your slave-masters have done is criminal.’

  She scrabbled with the kerchief, wiping her copious tears and turned back to watch the boats and lights floating by like strange butterflies on the water.

  Ming Xao’s robes swished as he moved to stand by her, saying nothing. The air shifted around them and every now and then, as her sobs broke out, she knew she sounded like a child.

  ‘I don’t want to be here, Ming Xao.’

  The strange man to whom she would be married in a few days, turned her to face him, covering her hand with his own.

  ‘Isabella, I know. I know you don’t want to be here. And I shall tell you something.’

  He pressed her hand and she was struck by the softness of his skin, its warmth. Looking into his eyes, she noticed a glint and he smiled at her.

  ‘Yes, Ibo, I shall tell you something…I don’t want to be here either.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Nicholas

  As the four men walked through the pearly dawn light, the view of the lake receded behind leaf and tree and Nicholas began to assume some vestige of control over his mind. What had happened had seemed an insane dream, a confusion of feelings and thoughts that ended with he and Poli back in front of the campfire, necessitating a burst of hysterics for the same reason that a lid might be lifted from a boiling kettle.

  Phelim, now awake, peppered them with questions, Gallivant adding his own as Poli answered. Finally Phelim spoke unequivocally.

  ‘We will search the library and search again, and find this clue to where Isabella might be, then we must travel with you. It’s unthinkable that you go alone.’

  ‘No,’ answered Poli. ‘What’s unthinkable is you leaving Adelina behind, mesmered or no. It is your duty to stay here and care for her.’

  Nicholas nodded in agreement and for the first time for a year he felt he had a mouthpiece and relief lifted him, a brief happiness that warmed. His doubts and dislikes over Poli began to crumble. Was this man some sort of kindred spirit? He looked sideways at him as he continued to belabour Phelim.

  ‘It’s been said that it is Nicholas’s fate to find Isabella, that it may be the secret to breaking the curse and thereby regaining his voice. It has also been said that I must be his companion and I can tell you, that has put a whole new complexion on my journey to date. Something bigger than my own private desires motivated me to make the journey from Veniche to Trevallyn, that is certain.’

  He was silent for a moment, shaking his head in disbelief and neither Phelim nor Gallivant gainsaid him.

  The only sound was the crunching of leaves and twigs underfoot and the men’s steady breath as they reached an incline towards the manor-house gardens. But then Poli spoke, turning round and walking backward so that he could more easily confront Phelim in the soft gloaming.

  ‘I wish you hadn’t mesmered Adelina to sleep, Phelim. It was so important she worked through what has happened, especially this latest. It may seem cruel to have her continuing to hope but she would have been stronger because of it.’

  ‘You think?’ Phelim spoke as if he were hollow – a voice utterly devoid of the hope so readily spoken of by Poli. ‘For a year she has worked through her pain and it has got her nowhere.’

  ‘Ah, you are wrong. She is alive, she dared to ask her friends for help, she focused on some enigma in a piece of cloth. They were good signs. Yes, she is thin, she is tired but between you, Gallivant, Margriet and Folko, she could have been nurtured. And we would have time…’

  Nicholas listened and knew then what it was that finally made this man acceptable. His was the voice of reason – clear objective reason and something they had not had the benefit of for a year. It was like candle flame in a dark space.

  ‘Ah,’ said Phelim, his voice a little ragged. ‘You are sorely right, Poli. But it is the nature of the mesmer that she must sleep for a month. You know the rest. It is the way of it and cannot be undone.’

  They had reached the house and leaving their boots at the door they pushed on down the hall.

  ‘Good stars above,’ Poli fretted. ‘Was there not another sleep mesmer you could have used?’

  ‘None that would have removed every taint, every mood, every moment that has dragged her into the abyss over the past year. This is the true healing sleep if it is handled as it should be.’

  ‘So what you are saying is that we have exactly a month to return your daughter to her mother. No more. Irrefutable.’

  Phelim nodded and added.

  ‘Too late for her mother, but perhaps not for Nicholas. It is a risk. I am fully aware of that. But sometimes in dire situations, risks must be taken. This is one such terrible situation. It places abominable pressure on both of you, but in all honesty what was I to do? Allow the woman of my life to disintegrate before my eyes?’ He aged in a moment it seemed and Nico would swear he fought against tears. ‘I could not do that. Not Adelina…’

  ‘A glass of brandy before breakfast? I think we need it.’ Gallivant looked around and Nicholas was glad everyone acquiesced for his bones rattled with the cold of the unknown. He pushed open the door into the library where although the lamps had burned low, they cast a flickering light over the floor. He stopped dead and the others crowded behind.

  The shifu cloth had been shredded and lay in front of them. Now it consisted of coils of burnished silk fibre.

  Lying solitary next to it and making the most emphatic statement was a single sheet of paper.

  Nico bent down and with his thumb and forefinger, he carefully picked it up. It had fine indents in it where at some time previously it had been scored and torn into the shreds that wove the cloth into shifu.

  Poli looked over his shoulder.

  ‘Nico,’ he read. ‘North by northwest.’ He laughed, an ingenuous sound. ‘I think we have our answer!’

  *

  High-pitched voices chimed from behind and they jumped, so lost in the magnitude of the message on the paper.

  ‘You like what we have done to help?’

  In the r
apidly lightening room as sunbeams began to etch across the floors and the lacy shadows of leaves began a morning dance across the walls, the men swung around.

  Three Siofra sat almost primly on the chaise, their hands clasped on their knees, smiles on their faces.

  ‘Why?’ The word burst from Gallivant, everyone else too stunned to speak as the enormity of the words on the paper sank in.

  ‘Why should you like what we have done?’

  The speaker was a middle-aged woman, smallish like all Siofra and dressed in forest colours, a laced tunic and slim trousers that gripped her legs and which were tucked into fawn boots.

  ‘No,’ Gallivant pointed at the paper. ‘Why should you help?’

  ‘This is a good house, a kind house. Siofra have ever been welcome. We disliked the pain you felt and we watched you quail at the work ahead of you with the shifu. Siofra have quick fingers that can weave and unweave cobwebs.’ She flicked her hand. ‘It was a matter of moments.’

  But Gallivant worried away.

  ‘Did you know the message was there?’

  ‘Not that message, no,’ the woman stood. ‘But shifu always contains some sort of hidden message, something of great import, so we just trusted to Fate it was one that would help you.’

  ‘Fate?’ Gallivant raced across the room and grabbed the little woman and hugged her. ‘You are blessed.’

  Phelim spoke then.

  ‘Blessed beyond belief. We can never repay you.’

  He took the paper from Nicholas.

  ‘I know what you are thinking, Phelim Half-time Mortal. You are wondering if you could have mesmered the fabric yourself so that the Needle Lady could read it.’ The Siofra freed herself from Gallivant’s clasp as Phelim nodded.

  ‘Yes. But I thought she imagined things.’

  The woman pushed Gallivant gently aside and walked over to Phelim to glance at the paper.

  ‘Perhaps you could have mesmered the weave, who knows? It’s done now. Immaterial.’ She clicked her fingers and laughed and it filled the room with the sounds of delicate bird trill.

  Phelim grinned at the pun.

  ‘You must stay and eat with us,’ he offered.

  ‘No,’ the woman said. ‘Thank you, but Siofra must join their friends elsewhere.’ She held out her hand. ‘Sometimes, Phelim, just the simple knowledge that one can help in a crisis is all the thanks one needs.’

  The three Siofra, a diminutive and proud little group, slid past the men and out the heavily carved entrance door, leaving nothing but potential in their wake.

  Gallivant rushed to pour brandies and Nicholas took his gratefully, relishing the punishing warmth as the alcohol slid down his gullet.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Gallivant’s voice prompted him to turn and he noticed Poli subsiding into a chair, a look of bemusement on his face. His eyebrows met as he frowned and he sucked such a vast draught of brandy, he coughed.

  ‘I think I may be a little disconcerted.’ He took another sip. ‘Discombobulated. I am the only mortal here. I am in some Other place. I am surrounded by Others of all kinds and not to put too fine a point on it, have just spent an hour with dead people. I feel a little faint.’

  Gallivant passed him another brandy as Phelim spoke.

  ‘Just take some deep breaths and remember you are not alone. Nicholas is half mortal and I have lived as a mortal for most of my life.’

  As Phelim spoke, Nicholas had scrawled a note.

  Have been with dead people too. My parents. Takes swallowing.

  Poli read it, shaking his head and then gulping the rest of his brandy added, ‘Too true, but we will cope.’ And then in a mutter, ‘We have to.’ He puffed out a breath, still muttering. ‘Fate? Fate? Ye Gods.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Gallivant before lapsing into unusual silence, his hands clasped around the goblet which sat on his belly as he lay back in a corner of the chaise.

  Nicholas glanced at the man in the other corner. His stepfather’s head was thrown back, resting on the padded roll of the chaise, the early light catching the silver-grey wings at his temples. His eyes were closed and Nicholas could see his chest rising and falling with slow, steady breaths.

  Ah stepfather, so deep is your relief at this latest that you allow yourself the luxury of unguarded sleep just for a moment. Are you then so positive that Poli and I can find her?

  *

  ‘It’s possible, you know.’

  Poli’s voice filled the library with a gentle rumble.

  Nicholas jerked his eyes open, he’d almost succumbed and Gallivant’s hand tightened around his brandy.

  ‘What say you?’ the Hob’s voice croaked with tiredness.

  ‘That we can find her.’

  Nicholas sat forward.

  ‘North by northwest, it said. So let’s assume Isabella wove the fabric. She would expect you’d read it at Merricks on the island, wouldn’t she?’

  Nicholas nodded.

  ‘Then if we plot north by northwest from the island? Well?’

  Gallivant yawned. ‘Can we talk after sleep? I’m following your words haphazardly, I’m afraid. Help me wake Phelim. He needs to sleep next to Adelina.’

  Between the three, they woke the man and he and Gallivant beat a sleepy retreat out the door.

  *

  ‘Nico,’ Poli said softly. ‘Now they have gone, we need to find a map and leave.’

  And right then, as one of Margriet’s roosters crowed and the sun finally lifted itself onto the roof of the stables, Nicholas knew sleep was lost and that Poli had a plan.

  ‘As soon as we find a map, Nico, we go. Before the inevitable hoo-ha of Gallivant’s and Phelim’s clucking.’ He was already walking back and forth along the shelves, pulling books out and pushing them back. ‘Map, map, map,’ he muttered. ‘Come on,’ he chided. ‘Help me.’

  The two worked steadily along the walls, every likely folio pulled out and examined. Their fingers became dust-covered and papery and their stomachs rumbled but they worked with a feverishness brought on by the fact that everyone slept and they were free to handle whatever eventuated however they wished.

  But the lack of success began to take its toll and Nico heard many expletives issue from the other side of the library. In the past, he would have laughed at such a raw sailor’s tongue, but a map was all-important it seemed and who, if not Jasper, would have one?

  ‘By the mouths of mermaids, Nicholas, this is hopeless. I have checked every shelf on those two walls.’

  Nicholas nodded. He had almost finished the shelves on his side. They worked together. It should not have been this hard, but Poli felt maps would be small, maybe octavo, and being small, could be hidden behind other books, thus the need to look at everything.

  Finally all that was left was a set of narrow cedar shelves standing between the windows. Nicholas started on the top shelf, working his way down until he was on the second last shelf. A small book, octavo, sat behind two quartos, secret, unobserved. He drew it out carefully and they looked at it as it lay in his palm.

  Dark grey and mildewed, the cover was blotched like an old woman’s face. Age marks dotted front and back and Nico took out a kerchief and rubbed. The mould spread a little and then with pressure, vanished and the book itself gave a curious shuffle of its pages to settle in Nicholas’s grasp, flipping open to map upon map.

  Poli’s mouth turned down at the oddness of it.

  ‘Huh. Good man. Don’t read it yet. We’ll take it with us. Small enough for a saddlebag. Let’s go. We’ve little time.’ He was heading to the door as he spoke.

  As they reached the stables and the stalls with their horses, Nico realised Poli had vocalised his own feelings. He wanted to get well away. He couldn’t bear the atmosphere of the house, everyone’s subtle desperation. This was his journey not theirs, and he suspected Poli understood.

  Now that was Fate.

  He tucked in the straps of his girth and slid the stirrups down their leathers with a crack.

 
‘Shh,’ said Poli. ‘Folko’s likely to be about any minute.’

  They led their horses out the stable door and onto the green sward of the pathway, bypassing the crunchy gravel forecourt. They wound through shrubs and around the potager, curling ever outward until they stood in the first row of the pleached trees of the Ymp Tree Orchard.

  ‘Nicholas? I’ve heard tell of Færan gates that open in different parts of Eirie. Do you know about them?’

  Ah yes, Nicholas knew of them: one in each of the provinces and through which the Færan could step from the mortal world to their own as if they stepped through a tunnel.

  He knew of his father, who had left the mortal world in Veniche through a mirror, entered the world of Færan on the other side and had travelled by water to the Raj, stepping through another portal into the mortal world of Fahsi.

  Then there was the other story of his father and mother as they escaped Fahsi in a boat, sailing through a portal and ending in Trevallyn in the…

  ‘There is one here, isn’t there? In the Ymp Tree Orchard?’

  Poli’s voice broke into his thoughts.

  Nicholas shifted uneasily. No one but the Færan knew.

  ‘Nico, please trust me. It might help us.’

  Poli’s fair hair gleamed and his face revealed nothing of self-interest nor arrogance.

  Nicholas thought for a moment and then nodded, waiting for a bolt of lightning to shoot him down. But the breeze continued to shake the petals loose on the fruit trees and the bees and butterflies flitted from flower to flower. Nothing more apocalyptic happened and Poli grasped his shoulder.

  ‘Good man. Now,’ he hitched up his horse’s girth and placing his foot in the stirrup, swung up with a creak of leather. Gathering the reins, he continued. ‘North by northwest is a long way from here, many hundreds of leagues, perhaps a thousand. We could be travelling for months. By sea to Veniche, then overland and all the while, Isabella may be in danger and Adelina will be depending on us. I had thought that if we could use a portal, we could cover much territory and very quickly.’

  True, thought Nico. He leaped aboard his own horse and moved it up to Poli’s. He wanted to ask how far North by Northwest was but knew he would have to wait until they were far away, when they could sit with the maps between them, debating the journey.