The Memory Palace

by Gill Alderman

  ‘Take me forward, Summer,’ he said to the horse, which broke at once into a canter and carried him to the front of the company. A murmur of voices followed him. He rode across the line into the cold and empty land. The mulberry branch in Summer’s bridle turned instantly black, and died. The voices called more loudly and he turned in the saddle to see the Ima and the people of the Goddess shouting at each other and gesticulating angrily as they rode.

  ‘He is no Redeemer!’ someone cried. They were galloping now, after him.

  ‘Let us wait for them, Summer,’ he said and the horse slowed her pace and stopped obediently, her white coat already splashed and soiled by the mud on the road. The man Polnisha had called the Finder reached him first, plucked the stricken branch roughly from Summer’s head, and flourished it. Two others seized the reins. Behind him, Nandje was shouting orders at his men and Leal had already laid an arrow in his bow and was lowering it and sighting. In the waggon, the Living Goddess screamed as if she were a mere child.

  Githon rode unhurriedly into the midst of the turmoil.

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ he said, his ungainly presence and his deep voice so arresting he had no need to shout. ‘Sirs, Masters, Lords – whatever you be: a fight will cure nothing. Let the Imandi deal with his shaman – whose capabilities are not your concern. The Goddess is your charge. Have you journeyed so far to find her and will yet desert her at the very margin of SanZu?’

  The Finder flung the dead branch into a pool, where it sank and surfaced amongst stinking bubbles of gas.

  ‘That for your Saviour!’ he said. ‘Follow us to Flaxberry if you will, but expect no welcome.’

  ‘Except from me. Let them be brought to my nunnery.’ Polnisha, small and bright, shamed them with her childish voice and smiles. Like a lark amongst vultures, like a frail hurdle holding back a flood, thought Parados. So they rode on with abashed faces, avoiding the water where they could and where they could not, when it covered the road and the sodden earth of the fields, splashing through. Summer’s head was freed but the two men still rode close by Parados and the new friendship between the Ima and the men of SanZu dissolved in mistrust. Only Githon and the Goddess herself seemed unaffected.

  The place offered no comfort to body or spirit. Every farmstead, thatched roofs black and rotten from the rains, had its grove of mulberries, many of them close by the house and all leafless and dead. Viciousness and crime were all the crops SanZu grew, evidence of their flowering unmistakable, unavoidable by the road: gallows with their swinging burdens stood beside it and, at each cross-roads, grew a forest of them, different kinds shaped like door-frames, signposts and Ts, or plain poles surmounted by old cart-wheels on which notorious thieves had been stretched to die. It was a landscape for all and every time, common throughout history, a landscape of death.

  Githon rode beside Parados.

  ‘They keep the best food for the nuns and their oxen,’ he said. ‘This may seem perverse to you, but they have still not lost their faith in Polnisha. It has been a hard race, as you see, a long and dreadful famine of rotting food, foul water and gangrenous diseases. The children die first, before the old, and those few that are reborn (as they believe) last scarcely a week. Their mothers have no milk, for the puvushi put their slimy offspring to human breasts in the night, or the cold nivashi swim into the houses and carry the babes away. I have seen the Duschma walk through Flaxberry, laden with a mighty burden of the dead – but fear not, Parados, hope and better fortune will prevail and that little mite come into her own.

  ‘The Finder and his men went to look for her more than five years since. It is a hard task, exacting. There are certain tests. She must know her rightful name as soon as the Finder addresses her and know and recite, besides this and while a dry twig burns, the nine names of Zernebock, proof she understands the power of her eternal foe. She must be able to tell him in what phase the moon is when the flax is planted and, again, harvested, how many silkworms must die to make a mile of thread and how many flax-plants, and show him the right way to wind a shuttle of silk and a shuttle of linen thread. Lastly, she must not be above seven years of age, have hair as dark or darker than her last incarnation and a violet-coloured birthmark on the left side of her body. They made two false choices (for some ambitious parents coach their children). Hope that this time they have done their work well. The truest test must be Polnisha’s infallibility.’

  ‘She is courageous and determined,’ said Parados. ‘Look at her now – staring at that spread-eagled corpse without flinching. A perspicacious child and a – what place is that?’

  He inclined his head north-east, toward the darkest part of sky where night waited to make the dismal day wholly black. A monstrous rock lay across the horizon, resting its massive weight on the gloomy land.

  ‘The Rock,’ said Githon.

  ‘I see that, a huge rock – a young mountain.’

  ‘That is its name: the Rock.’

  ‘I have seen it before.’

  ‘In your dreams?’

  ‘In reality; but I have never been here, in SanZu – in the flesh, that is.’

  Githon looked fearfully at him, as if he were a ghost or fetch from Hell.

  ‘Fear not, Githon. All I mean is that I have seen a rock like that one in my past, which you may describe as a dream if you like.’

  ‘I understand you now, Parados. It was in your other world of mystery and shadows which apes ours – but I daresay the rivers there, all sweet water the colour of bluebells as I’ve heard tell, don’t overflow like that one.’

  ‘Why not, Githon? Do you think Malthassa holds the only patent on disaster? This was once a fair land, as you told me, till Koschei made it die.’

  ‘True. Once upon a time it was paradise enough.’

  Flaxberry was isolated on its knoll above the river, the floodwater lying all around it as if it had always been there, a huge lake.

  ‘Can we get through?’ Parados asked Nandje.

  ‘The Finder says we must dismount – there comes the boat for us, now.’

  ‘It looks shallow – there is the bottom and there some tufts that were once the flax crop. Will you follow me?’

  Nandje hesitated.

  ‘It should be enough that you –’ he began while Githon, interrupting, said,

  ‘Yes! Follow Parados. He has seen such floods before.’

  Still, Nandje hesitated: ‘It is not the water I fear, but the nivashi. There must be a swarm of them out there,’ and the two, man and dwarf continued to argue as though they were alone.

  ‘Do you think they will dare touch us when Parados is with us?’ said Githon loudly.

  ‘Maybe not; maybe – they are seductive creatures. I once lost a dozen men to them.’

  ‘Parados is proof against them – “The most perfect, virtuous knight there ever was or ever will be”.’

  ‘You are very sure of him.’

  ‘We were discussing things, the world, philosophy, before you came up.’

  ‘If it were safe to ride through the water, do you think Polnisha would wait for the boat?’

  ‘Polnisha is not herself yet – she may after all be the child she appears to be.’

  While they disputed and Parados sat quiet on the white mare, staring across the floodwater to Flaxberry town, the Living Goddess jumped from her waggon and, shaking off two of her escort with little cries and blows of her small fists, ran across the mud and pulled at Summer’s mane. The horse bent down her head and Polnisha whispered in her soft ear and fed her a fragment of dry oatcake.

  ‘You are here, Polnisha,’ said Parados. ‘What do you think – Nandje and Githon argue, but is it safe to ride to Flaxberry?’

  ‘Ask them, “Is it safe to ride anywhere with me?” Or, better, I will climb up before you and show Summer where to tread.’ She reached up for the stirrup and then for his sleeve while Summer bent her foreleg backward to make a step. When she was safely up, astride the mare’s neck, she picked up and unknotted the reins a
nd, gathering them, called out ‘Off we go, Summer.’ It was only when the mare had waded a yard from the shore that her men missed her. Shouting did not bring her back. Those that had horses were forced to follow her into the flood and the rest waded, the Ima riding cautiously at the rear. Only the oxen, their waggon with its heavy stone seat, and the sheep and their boy remained behind.

  Soon, Summer was abreast of the boat, which had turned in its course to come up with her. The men rowing it shouted warnings and prayers.

  ‘I hope you are praying to Me!’ called Polnisha.

  ‘It is very deep. You will be swept away!’

  ‘We find it shallow,’ Parados replied; and indeed, it was so.

  Flaxberry had once been a pretty town, he thought, as they rode into it. The houses were decaying, stained with damp and with the water which had risen through the soil and the drains. It reminded him of somewhere; he could not place his thought and let it go, looking sadly at cold hearths and bare tables behind the townspeople gathered in their doorways. The first people had hostile expressions but, quickly, as they rode along the street, news spread and expectation, if not hope, awoke. The crowd murmured busily and many individuals cheered. Polnisha smiled at everyone. He could not. The place was still so grim, the people thin and starved and their children yellow-skinned and wasted. What dogs there were, and he supposed that many had been eaten, ranged the gutters looking vainly for scraps or a dead rat, their ribs more prominent than Famine’s skeletal horse. He heard a cry,

  ‘The blue flag!’

  ‘The Ima!’ someone else shouted in alarm.

  ‘With Polnisha!’ cried another.

  Polnisha of the Silk and Linen, the Living Goddess, was lifted carefully from her place in front of Parados. Her sudden mutinous expression was taken by the crowd to be solemnity. She allowed the Finder to carry her to the nunnery door and knocked on it with her fists, making so soft a sound that the Finder also knocked, with an empty shuttle. No doubt it was part of the Mystery. Nandje helped Parados down and they stood with Githon in front of the crowd. A long silence succeeded the knocking of the door, extending itself across the street and along it to the nearest cross-roads. This, the Finder broke with a howl. His body shook with tremor after tremor and the sullen expression of Polnisha, in his arms, turned to one of fear, then awe. She began to howl herself, in a high-pitched whine, lifting her head and thrashing her hands in the air. She could not stop. Grief, or madness, possessed her and first one and then another of the crowd imitated her while the dogs, beginning with a dirty white hound which loitered at the street corner, barked.

  The nunnery door opened suddenly. An old woman, robed like Polnisha in a mix of linen and silk but bent and almost hairless except for some white wisps on the crown of her head, stood on the top step. The Finder carried Polnisha to her and put the child in her bony arms. She was so hideous that Parados wished for the strength and means to run forward and wrest the child from her; then, carried up in the air on a magic wind, they would fly far off, beyond the crone’s reach. The door banged shut behind them. In his mind, he could hear the child’s screams – perhaps hear them in reality echoing down the cold corridors of the nunnery as she was carried to her bed of stone. When, after a short pause, the door re-opened, he was bewildered for Polnisha stood there smiling at him, bright as the Plains flowers in her rags of silk. The old Abbess loitered behind her like a fossilized thorn-branch.

  ‘You are to come as well,’ said the Living Goddess.

  He exchanged a look with Githon, but Nandje prodded him in the back and he stepped forward and up the steps. As he reached the topmost, he saw that his right sleeve was caught up and his disability on show to all. He tried to smooth the cloth down against his body but while he struggled, his stump brushed against a dead potted plant which once had graced the entrance. Something colourful, he thought, something gaudy and scented to welcome pilgrims on a sunny day; but the green plant which rapidly unfolded against his scars, all its spent life revived, its missed seasons telescoped into a single moment, was flax, the mother of linen, a crowd of blue flowers nodding on its stems. The Abbess darted out of the shadows and Polnisha jumped in the air and clapped her hands together. Both knelt down beside the flax plant and he felt obliged to kneel with them.

  The Abbess laid her claws on his stump and turned his arm back and forth. She touched the leaves of the flax plant.

  ‘You have brought us Life,’ she said.

  Something stirred in the crowding leaves and they drew back from the plant fearing that the little miracle was about to turn sour. The leaves rustled as whatever was beneath them struggled free. A yellow head showed and after it the body of the unknown creature. It pushed upwards and was free, a small yellow manikin some two inches high, which jumped from the pot-rim into Polnisha’s hands. The goddess and the Abbess sighed aloud.

  ‘You have brought us the Harvest,’ said the Abbess. ‘Hold up your hands, Polnisha. Let our people see the Thread Man.’

  As Polnisha held the manikin on high and the people cheered and wept, a ray of sunshine as thin as a silk thread pierced the dark cloud overhead. He shone and glistened in it, turning himself about in cartwheels and somersaults on her hand.

  ‘Let us give thanks,’ the Abbess said and led the people in prayer. Then she and the goddess and Parados and the Thread Man, who was the soul of SanZu’s harvest, went into the nunnery, leaving the door wide open behind them as a sign.

  In a long line of townsfolk Nandje, Githon, Leal, Thidma and the other Ima climbed the nunnery steps to see the marvel of the flax plant. It flourished even as they looked at it, growing sturdy and tall. The dusty floor inside the nunnery stretched away from Githon’s feet as he stood in the doorway, but he saw the polished boards beneath the dust and the new sunlight warming them and making them respond to its yellow touch. A breeze blew lightly past him, driving away the fevers and stenches which haunted the town. He turned about and saw the Finder of the Living Goddess nearby.

  ‘It seems to me that the fates of the people of SanZu and the Ima were never so closely bound together,’ he said loudly. ‘What do you think, sir?’

  The Finder, trapped by the surging crowd of worshippers on the steps, looked about for a means of escape and, finding none, said

  ‘It was and is an old and bitter feud.’

  ‘Did it not begin with Koschei?’

  ‘It is said he was an agent of the Imandi – who gave him orders to destroy the Goddess.’

  ‘Have you not learned, after all this –’ and Githon made a gesture which encompassed the whole of famine-stricken Malthassa ‘– that Koschei is nobody’s agent, unless his own?’

  ‘That’s as maybe. The fact is that the harvests began to fail after Koschei crossed the Plains in Nandje’s company and, pretending that he was an ambassador of the Archmage Valdine, came with his henchman into SanZu, into Flaxberry and the Nunnery itself! Nandje was not Imandi then; we have only permitted him to enter Flaxberry today because of his status.’

  ‘Ear-wax! Because the Goddess told you to. Look, Master Finder, at the blue flag of the Ima – it is the colour of a flax flower and is made of silk woven here, in the town. Let it be a symbol! I believe that Koschei stole your harvests and sent the plague amongst you. Let the blue flag be a symbol of new unity – Parados will be downhearted to see our quarrel continue.’

  ‘Well – it is no thanks to you Dwarves or the Ima that we stand here marvelling at this living plant. It is all the doing of Parados.’

  In the heart of the nunnery the same sunlight and breeze worked to clear away the ghosts and shadows the famine had left there. The Abbess showed Parados the trays of dead silkworms and the cocoons which had rotted before the silk could be taken from them. The sight of the Thread Man leaning eagerly from Polnisha’s hand to see his new home brought them comfort and they watched him run about over the idle looms and leave his footprints in the dust.

  ‘Soon,’ Polnisha warned him, ‘you must go to your rest. Then
, at harvest time, we will unwind you and the nuns will weave a square of silk from your skin and another of linen from your bones and you will be born again, good as new.’

  They sat at table in the refectory and a nun brought them oatcakes smeared with a thin coating of lard and tea without any milk.

  ‘I must also rest,’ Polnisha said. ‘I am tired, Abbess. I have had a long journey and need the quiet of my house.’ She unwound a piece of the linen which was tied about her waist and took a red box from it. ‘This is your house, Thread Man. Please step in.’ She lifted the lid and the soul of the harvest stepped lightly into the box and lay down there, still as a stone. Polnisha closed the lid on him. It was decorated with a silver bird whose tail of gold shone brilliantly in the sunlight which fell on it.

  ‘That is the Firebird,’ Polnisha said, ‘who lives in the Forest.’

  Parados was troubled once more by his past.

  ‘Where did you get the box?’ he said.

  ‘Get?’ Polnisha smiled. ‘It is mine. It has always been mine. The last one, which Koschei stole, was made of alabaster.’

  ‘I know. It had a design of fish and octopus on it and the words “Prospero’s Book”. Koschei took the Thread Man out of it and hung him in his own silk,’ said Parados miserably.

  The child reached out to him, taking hold of his two stumps as though they were not hideous incompletenesses but ordinary, workaday hands.

  ‘You will soon see, Parados, for you are as great a magician – if only you would believe it! – as Koschei, that all will and shall be well,’ she said and, turning from him, followed the Abbess from the room. They will walk along the corridor, he thought, and come to the two carved doors which the Abbess will open. Then she will lead Polnisha to her bed and help her lie down beneath her mask and her special coverlet of linen and silk, the same kind of cloth they used to shield her from view in the ox-waggon. While she lies there Polnisha will keep the box which contains the Thread Man safe and she will lie as still as he does unless the moon shines into her house – on those nights, she will rise to eat and bathe and change her clothes.