A Web of Air

by Philip Reeve

  When Ruan found his way back downstairs into Fever’s domain, the cramped space felt as hot as a smithy. She was busy fiddling with some wiring, and she had forgotten to drink anything, as usual.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, handing her a mug of water.

  Fever stopped drinking just long enough to nod. “You seem a bit…”

  “I am perfectly well, thank you,” she said, rather sharply.

  Ruan felt hurt. Fever had never been exactly warm, but he had never seen her this distant, this distracted. Watching her gulp the water down he remembered Dr Teal, and wondered. Was AP right? Was Fever in love with that London Engineer?

  “Everybody is saying that the lighting is rubbish tonight,” he said spitefully, wanting suddenly to hurt her feelings. “AP told me to say be sure you don’t forget his spotlight again.”

  Things went a little better in the second half, and there were no more disasters. But as soon as the play was over and all the lights were shut down, Fever grabbed her coat and scrambled out of the barge.

  “Where are you going?” Ruan asked.

  “I need some air. I won’t be long. You can put Fern to bed if I’m not back in time, can’t you, Ru?”

  The boy did not reply. Fern had had to grow up fast after what happened in London, but she was still only seven, and she liked Fever to be there to tuck her in. Ruan wondered what Fever had to do that could be more important than Fern’s bedtime. He followed her to the offstage hatch and watched her walk away through the Bargetown crowds, wishing that he and Fern and the Lyceum were as interesting to her as whatever it was that she had found in Mayda.

  The city grew busy after dark. People stayed in their homes during the heat of the afternoon and then came out in the cool of the night to stroll about the streets and meet their friends and eat in the open air feasteries and tavernas. Fever found the harbourside streets crammed with people. Rowdy bands of sailors barged past her, bound for the nightclubs on the Rua Cĩrculo. They called out saucily to Fever, telling her she was beautiful and asking her to come dancing with them, but she wasn’t listening. She just strode along with her head down until she reached the Southern Stair and then turned up it and started to climb. On Rua Cĩrculo the clubs and restaurants leaked light and music into the night; she crossed it and kept on climbing, the crowds thinning as she went higher and higher.

  Casas Elevado was quieter than the streets below. There were no angels roosting on the gateway of the Thursday House. She tugged on the bell pull, waited, tugged again. She waited some more, but the gate did not open, the house did not move. When she peered through the bars she could just make it out, squatting up there among the toes of the crags, the amber oblong of a window coming and going as wind-blown foliage moved in front of it. Arlo Thursday was working late. She wondered what he was doing. Building more model gliders? Or something larger?

  She rang the bell again, willing him to open the gate and let her in. She would be gone tomorrow, and she had to talk to him again before she left. She needed to know more about his ideas. But his gate stayed stubbornly shut. She considered climbing the wall, but it was high, and Casas Elevado was not entirely deserted; one of the passers-by might mistake her for a burglar.

  The trees in the garden, black as puddled ink, rustled as the breeze blew on them, and she thought she heard something else rustle too, a noise that seemed independent of the wind, as if some large creature were moving towards her through the shadows and the shrubs. A fox? A deer? Fever did not know enough about the fauna of Mayda to guess. A spider-demon? There were no such things, but there was something menacing about the noise; so stealthy and so purposeful.

  “Senhor Thursday?” she said hopefully. After a moment the movements ceased. She had the odd feeling of being watched. It made her shiver. She realized how irrational she was being, standing here in the dark, imagining things. It had been irrational to come up here in the first place. What had she been hoping for?

  She stepped back from the gate and turned away. A tall, thin scarecrow of a man was leaning against the railings on the far side of the street, his eyes glinting in the shadows under his hat-brim. Something about the way he stood made Fever think he’d been there for a while, but when he saw her look at him he turned, pulled down his hat and walked away.

  She shook herself. He had not been watching her. He had just been pausing there against the railings to admire the view down over all the moonlit rooftops to the harbour, that was all. She was letting her imagination play tricks on her.

  She walked quickly along the street to the Southern Stair, forcing herself not to look back at the Thursday house.

  Behind her, unheard, in the dark of the garden, something softly ticked.

  The party was still going on when she reached the Lyceum. Fever climbed aboard the barge and went down to the children’s cabin to check on them. Fern and Ruan were asleep, and she felt guilty suddenly that she had not been there to say goodnight to them. But doubtless someone else had done so.

  She climbed up on to the stage, thinking how tawdry and primitive the old barge looked; the ropes and cogs and mechanisms that lowered the backdrops were like things a caveman might have made. Even her electrical machines downstairs seemed crude and kludged together. It was hard to feel proud of what she had achieved here when she compared it with what Arlo Thursday was doing.

  “Fever!” called AP, breaking free of a knot of friends and admirers to come and greet her. “We don’t often have the pleasure of your company at these little gatherings of ours. It’s good to see you…”

  “AP,” she said, coming straight to the point as always, “I do not want to leave Mayda.”

  “Eh?” The old actor was not used to people who came straight to the point. He blinked at her for a moment. “But we are setting out for Meriam in the morning…”

  “I should like to stay here,” said Fever. “Ruan and Fergus are quite capable of working the electrics now, and I would only be absent for a week or two. I will come back aboard when you return.”

  AP looked concerned. “Are you not happy with us, Fever?”

  Fever hesitated. She knew it would upset him if she said “Yes,” but she hated telling lies.

  “Ah!” said AP, starting to smile. “Say no more! There is a certain gentleman in Mayda, a scientific gentleman, and you would like to stay here and help him with his work!”

  How does he know? Fever wondered. Then she realized that he was not talking about Arlo Thursday.

  AP had drunk several glasses of fine Maydan wine, and it made him forget that Fever hated being touched. He put his hands on her thin shoulders and smiled his most fatherly smile. “I am sure Dr Teal will be very glad of such an able helper as he struggles to comprehend the mysteries of Mayda’s moving houses,” the actor went on. “And if anyone has earned a holiday, Fever, it is you, after all the tireless work you’ve done for us these two years past. I was only thinking during the performance tonight, ‘Miss Crumb is tired; she works too hard; she needs a break.’”

  He was about to tell her that she must be careful, as a young person alone in such a large and colourful city, but he could not find the right way to phrase it. Fever was more sensible than anyone he had ever met. He might be old, but inside he knew he had not really changed since he was eleven or twelve. Fever, although she was just sixteen, was definitely a grown-up. It would be impertinent to lecture her.

  So he just said, “We shall all miss you most fearfully, of course. Meriam will not be the same without you. But yes, you have earned your leave of absence, and I’m sure Ruan and Fergus can manage the machines. You shall remain in Mayda my dear, while we console ourselves with the knowledge that we shall see you again on our return…”

  10

  THE BLESSING OF THE SUMMER TIDES

  e shall miss you fearfully, AP had said, and all the others had found time to say it too, while they were busy packing the stage and scenery away and making the old barge ready to depart. But as Fever stood at the causewa
y head next day to watch them go she did not really think they would. They were all too excited about the trip to Meriam, and Fern and Ruan had the added excitement of two weeks without any lessons, for the rest of the company were all far too kind-hearted to make them spend half the morning learning things. It made her feel a little sad as she stood there waving after the departing barge. She was sure that she was cleverer than anyone else on board, but she lacked something, something that even Fern and Ruan had, that made them all part of a family and not just individuals. Strangely, she felt less lonely standing there alone than she did when she was surrounded by all her friends.

  The Lyceum pulled away from her, with Max Froy in the driver’s kiosk steering it carefully along the zigzags of the causeway. A half-dozen other barges were making for Meriam too, and the dust and smoke of their going hung over the sea and made it hard for Fever to make out the faces of the actors who clustered on the sun-deck to wave goodbye to her. She waved back until she could no longer see anyone at all, then turned and picked up her bag and walked back through the shadow of Mayda’s gate-forts into the city.

  Whatever sadness she had felt at being left behind soon vanished. It felt good and grown-up to be alone, with no one to answer to but herself. It was a feeling she had had briefly once before, when she first left Godshawk’s Head to go to work for Kit Solent in London. That had not worked out very well – she had ended up being chased through the city by a crazed mob – but she was older and more rational now, and Mayda was not London; she looked forward to living here alone.

  She had some money in the leather pouch on her belt. AP had always been scrupulous about sharing out the Lyceum’s profits, and although Fever’s share was only small she seldom spent it on anything, so she had amassed quite a lot in two years. She found her way to a respectable hotel that AP had told her of on the Rua Bodrugan, and took a room. It was a narrow room, high up in the old building, with a window that looked out on nothing but roof tiles and chimney pots, but it was ten times as large as her cabin on the Lyceum, and for the next few days at least it was all hers. She arranged her things neatly in the wardrobe and along the bedside shelf, counted what was left of her cash, and went out into the city. She planned to find Dr Teal and let him know that she had not left for Meriam with the others. But first she would climb to Casas Elevado and try again to speak with Arlo Thursday.

  Surely, when he saw how persistent she was being, he would open his gate to her?

  Despite the afternoon heat the streets below Rua Bodrugan were busy, and when Fever reached the harbourside she found out why. A religious procession was making its way across the lock-gates, amid much tooting of shawms and battering of driftwood glockenspiels. Irritated, Fever tried to shove her way through the crowds of Maydans who had stopped to watch. But the crowds were too dense, and anyway, she needed to cross the lock-gates herself; it would add an hour to her walk if she avoided them by going right round the harbour. So she stopped to watch as the priests and priestesses marched slowly towards her, some holding up big blue windsock banners shaped like winged fish, others helping to support a sort of litter on which a gaudy statue of the Mãe Abaixo perched. Every now and again they would all stop while someone declaimed a prayer and handfuls of petals and coins were scattered into the harbour.

  “Senhorita Crumb?” said a voice in Fever’s ear, and she looked round into Thirza Belkin’s dizzying smile. “You have come to see our festival…”

  “I’m just waiting to cross the harbour,” said Fever.

  “Then wait with us!” said Thirza, and she took Fever’s arm and guided her to a clear place at the front of the crowd where Fat Jago was waiting with a servant holding up a parasol to shade him and two more carrying trays of iced drinks. Thirza passed a glass to Fever, and Fat Jago said, “A pleasure to see you, Miss Crumb! I thought your barge had pulled out this morning. Nothing amiss, I hope?”

  “The Lyceum has gone,” said Fever, “but I decided to stay.”

  Fat Jago nodded understandingly. “I hear there is another member of your Guild in Mayda. No doubt you will be working with him?”

  “Not exactly…” Condensation from the outside of the glass trickled coolly between Fever’s fingers. The drink was fruit juice, iced and spiced, and as she sipped it she felt a thrill of pleasure that these rich and kindly people should want her company.

  “You must think us very primitive, to have turned out to watch such a silly display,” Fat Jago said, nodding towards the priests, who had stopped to pray again.

  “It is the Blessing of the Summer Tides,” said his wife.

  “Of course, we don’t believe it,” Fat Jago went on. “We know the tides would still rise and fall and the fish would still swim into Maydan nets without all this pretty flummery. But it is a ritual; a ceremony; a tradition that links us with our ancestors and our city’s past. I do hope you understand.”

  “I have come to watch the procession every year since I was a little girl,” said Thirza, who looked as excited as a little girl still, her eyes shining and a laugh bubbling behind every word. “Do you see the statue on the litter there? That is the holy likeness of the Mãe, which is taken out of its tank at the Temple of the Sea for just this one day out of all the year. It was discovered in the long, long ago, washed up on the shore after a storm.”

  “There are educated men who claim it’s not the Mãe Abaixo at all but a likeness of some other goddess who used to be worshipped in these parts,” said Fat Jago.

  “Well, educated men do not know everything,” retorted Thirza, who seemed to take the old religion more seriously than her husband did. She shaded her eyes against the sunlight to watch as the procession reached the end of the lock-gates and stepped down on to the harbourside. Pretty young acolytes came hurrying through the crowd with fishing nets, into which people dropped fish-shaped Maydan coins. A dropped orange rolled in the dust underfoot until a small, tow-haired boy ran out of the crowd and picked it up.

  “There was a time,” said Thirza Belkin, “when the Mãe Abaixo used to appear to people. She would rise up out of the depths to speak with shipwrecked sailors and drowning fishermen. She would save them and carry them to the shore, and She gave them revelations; messages that let us know how we could best please Her. I used to love those stories when I was little… I used to hope that I might see Her for myself one day. But it doesn’t happen nowadays. I wonder why?”

  “Because people are less gullible than they used to be,” said Fat Jago. “I bet Orca Mo would love a good revelation. Look at her; she knows she’s turning into a mere party decoration! She’d love to announce some new appearance by the Mãe Abaixo to strengthen people’s faith and restore her own power. But she knows that hardly anybody would believe it.”

  The priestess passed them, with all the tentacles of her squid hat trailing in the wind. She did look a little self-conscious, thought Fever. Perhaps Fat Jago was right. Perhaps even Orca Mo knew that her religion was losing its meaning.

  “So what has kept you in Mayda?” Fat Jago asked, raising his voice above the jingle of tambourines as the statue on its litter passed them. “Would it be young Thursday, by any chance?”

  Fever looked at him in surprise. How did he know that she had been planning to see Arlo Thursday?

  Thirza laughed and touched Fever lightly on the wrist. “There is nothing that happens in Mayda that Jago doesn’t find out about. He’s incorrigibly nosey.”

  “I’m a businessman,” her husband protested. “I keep my ear to the ground, that’s all. And from the way Miss Crumb asked after Thursday the other evening, I could tell he interested her.” He looked serious for a moment, leaning close to Fever. “Be careful, my dear. What I said about Arlo Thursday was quite true. He really is mad.”

  “I did not think so,” said Fever. It unsettled her that Fat Jago knew her business, but she was not sure why. And why did she feel this sudden need to defend Arlo? “He is certainly eccentric, but he seemed perfectly rational to me.”

&nbs
p; “You’ve actually spoken with him then?” Fat Jago’s forehead crinkled like a Roman blind as he raised both eyebrows. “I didn’t think he saw anyone nowadays.”

  “Only his angels,” said Thirza softly, watching the statue go by. There was a sadness in her eyes, and Fever wondered if it was because of the Goddess or because of Arlo Thursday.

  “Thirza used to have a thing for young Thursday,” said her husband, turning jocular again.

  “Oh Jago!” laughed his wife. “Don’t be silly! He worked for a while at my father’s shipyard, that is all. We were friends…”

  “Childhood sweethearts!”

  “Not at all! Anyway, imagine if I’d married him; I would be called Thirza Thursday. Have you ever heard such a silly name, Fever?”

  “If you’d married Thursday,” said her husband, “your silly name would be the least of your worries. It’s true that I may not be as young and good-looking as him. It’s true that I haven’t seen my toes for thirty years, and I don’t expect ever to see them again, but at least I can provide for you…”

  “Of course you can,” said Thirza, reaching across Fever to take his hand.

  “Nevertheless, Fever,” said Fat Jago, “I would ask you, as a friend, not to call on Arlo Thursday any more. Who knows what he gets up to, up in that old house? I would fear for your safety if you went there again.”

  Fever felt herself bristle. What gave Fat Jago the right to tell her what she should do and who she should see? He claimed to be rational, but he was as blinded as the rest of Mayda by those foolish stories about the Thursday family. He clearly meant his warning kindly, though, so she thanked him as politely as she could. But still she wondered how he had known that she’d been calling on Arlo.

  The procession had passed. The crowd of onlookers started to break up, some following the statue of the Mãe Abaixo back towards Her temple, others drifting away along the harbourside or across the lock-gates. The Belkins were keen that Fever should go and have lunch with them, but she said no. The afternoon was wearing on, and she had the long climb to Casas Elevado ahead of her. She agreed to visit them at their villa the next day, then set out across the lock-gates alone.