Relic (The, Books of Eva I)

by Heather Terrell

  After Evensong bell, I retire to my bedroom, allowing Katja to disrobe me and bundle me into my bedclothes like a baby. The very tick she closes the door behind her, I slide out of bed and into my Testor uniform. I will need its warmth as I cross over into the Boundary lands.

  Creaking my bedroom door open as slowly as I dare, I pad down the corridor in my kamiks. I’ve already prepared an excuse should I get caught—I’m mourning Eamon out here on the turret, in our old place—but no one appears as I mount the icy stairs. Reaching into my Testor pack, I pull out an ice screw and carefully twist it into a crevice between the turret tower stones. Once it’s secure, I feed the line through the harness I’m wearing under my sealskin cloak and back into the hole. Then I throw the line over the turret wall and belay down.

  It’s surprisingly easy. As if I was born for this task.

  Mapping out the shadows of Her Moonlight across the Aerie, I dart from one darkened corner to the next. Not a soul appears from a home or Keep or town building, not even a Guard. The Aerie is asleep, it seems. Or following The Lex, at least.

  In two bells, I reach the base of the Ring. I still need to skirt a very exposed expanse of ice and snow to reach the tiny gap in the Ring that Lukas described. As I wait and watch for the Guards patrolling the rim of the Ring to pass, I realize this is the spot where Eamon fell to his death. I imagine that I can see the smear of blood that for so long stained this section of the Ring, although I know it’s been washed away.

  I stop. I’m not certain I can press forward. Can I really I pass directly under the place where my brother died? How can I not, after coming so far? As I debate, the shadow of a single Guard appears over the flat white surface of the Ring wall. After his lamplight flickers by, I steel myself and make a run for it.

  I count off the ticks necessary to reach the gap—ticks that Lukas painstakingly described—but I don’t see the opening. Could I have passed it? I retrace my steps, but I still can’t find it. I start to panic, and consider returning home, when I see a black fissure in the Ring’s wall of ice. I’d discounted it initially because it resembles nothing more than a springtime ice crack. But when I squint more closely, it seems wide enough to squeeze through. Lukas had mentioned that the aperture was narrow, but this is dangerously so. Pushing myself along, the gap compresses even farther. It’s tight against my chest, and I’m left gasping for air. Any sane person would abandon the attempt as futile. Maybe that’s how the Boundary people have protected this pass for so long.

  Without warning, the gap opens. There, in a sizable subterranean cave in the base of the Ring, stands Lukas. Broad shoulders and black hair—but stronger and more substantial than he ever seemed in the Aerie. He has waited for me.

  Without a single word, Lukas takes me by the hand, and we start running. It is pitch black except for Lukas’s naneq and the jerky light and shadows we cast. I should be scared, but I’m not. Finally, I feel free.

  The way is long and twisted; we follow a sinuous and interminable path through the Ring instead of over it. I should tire, but I don’t. I feel like I could run forever—until, quite suddenly, the path ends.

  This strange tunnel, bored into the Ring at what price I cannot guess, stops mid-air. Lukas and I stand on the edge of a precipice. If it weren’t for Lukas’s steadying hand, I would have tumbled straight down the face of the cliff. Like my brother.

  Down we must climb. I reach for my Testor pack, but gear isn’t necessary. Lukas motions toward the handholds and footholds that have been dug into the frozen wall. Following his lead, I scramble downward and into the Boundary lands.

  It looks nothing like I’d been told. Nestled in an outcrop of the Ring, it appears almost cozy. Snug little homes of ice and stone and wood tuck into the Ring wall and into each other, for maximum protection from the biting winds. Little roads connect the numerous structures, and a small town square—not unlike that of the Aerie, except in size—sits at the center.

  I realize I never passed the Boundary lands in the Testing, except for the few small huts near the Gate. Those tiny hovels—unkempt, almost tumble-down in appearance—don’t resemble this tidy little town at all. They bear the desperate, uncivilized look of the Boundary lands depicted in School-books, created by a people incapable of ruling themselves. A very basic people in need of the Aerie protection and help. I can’t help but wonder if maybe those poor huts had been intentionally built near the Gate to foster that exact view. I wonder if anyone lives in them at all.

  Lukas makes no effort to hide our approach. His naneq swings at his side, casting light in wide arcs. “Aren’t you worried someone will see me?” I whisper.

  “No, not now that we’ve made it. Guards never come to this side of the Ring. And no Boundary person would ever tell the Guards or anyone in the Aerie that you’re here.”

  “Even though I’m breaking The Lex?”

  “Eva, we don’t follow The Lex in the Boundary lands.”

  I stop walking and stare at him. “You don’t?”

  He flashes a smile that almost seems pitying. “The Aerie people have to let us live this way, Eva. Free to do as we please. Don’t forget—our Hunters and Fishermen supply all the food for the Aerie outside what you grow in the Ark.”

  Suddenly, I feel defensive of the Aerie. “We help the Boundary lands, too. We give you Ark food and clothes.”

  “We take your handouts. But we really don’t need them. My people have lived on this or land just like it for millennia. We know how to survive without the Ark or the Clothes Keeps, believe me.”

  “Then why don’t you live in the Aerie? With us?”

  “Why would we want to? You’re not free in there. You live by The Lex, with all those crazy rules.” He pauses before we reach the village square and touches my hand for a tick. “I know this is hard for you to understand.”

  I have so many questions. “If you don’t want any part of the Aerie, then why do your people compete for the honor of serving as Boundary Companions and Attendants?”

  He laughs. “Is that what they tell you? That we think it’s an honor? It’s a duty and an obligation that someone from each Boundary family must fulfill. We do it only to keep the peace, not because we want to serve. We might have weapons, but the Aerie people are the only ones with guns. Although I often wonder whether they’d really stand a chance against our bolas and spears and bows.”

  “Guns? Like the Relics Aleksandr and Neils found?”

  “Real guns, Eva. Not Relics. The Ring-Guards have working guns.” He pauses, as if he’s weighing how much more to tell me. How much more I can take. “Eva, we think of the Ring as a prison that locks the Aerie people inside. Not the other way around.”

  I am stunned into silence. The Boundary lands and people are nothing like I’d been told. Nor is the Aerie. At the same time I know exactly what he means. He used the same word that dominated my thoughts since I saw him last: prison.

  A few dark-haired, dark-eyed men with bolas and blades slung over their shoulders pass us in the opposite direction—obviously out for a hunt. I brace myself for stares or some sort of unusual reaction; it’s not every day that and Aerie Maiden walks through the Boundary lands. But they only nod respectfully.

  Lukas he raises an eyebrow at me. “Told you.” He points to a small thatched roof house. With a plume of smoke rising from a stone chimney, it makes me feel cold. I wonder what it would be like to be inside at its hearth. “That’s my house. What do you think?”

  “It’s nice,” I answer honestly.

  “You sound surprised.”

  “It’s not exactly as the Teachers described, is it?”

  “No,” he says, “it wouldn’t be.”

  Lukas pushes open a bright blue door, the color of the crevasse wall. Where did they get the paint to decorate the door so vividly? He calls out: “Aanak! We are here.”

  A shriveled old woman hobbles out of the solar to greet us. Her hair is almost entirely white, and she’s wrapped it into a complicated fishtail kn
ot on the top of her head—not unlike the style I wore during the Testing—and fastened it with an elaborately carved whalebone comb. I’ve never seen someone with such an abundance of wrinkles before; the Aerie people tend not to live long enough to get so many. But when she smiles at me, her whole face lights up, and she is suddenly beautiful. She reminds me of my Nurse Aga. I wonder if Aga is here, too, in this attractive little Boundary town. I’d love to see her again.

  “Eva, I am so glad to meet you. I am Lukas’s grandmother, his father’s mother,” she says.

  “Oh.” Where are my Maiden manners? I curtsy and say, “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “The pleasure is mine. Your family took good care of Lukas when he served as your brother’s Companion, and that means the world to me. You see, I’ve raised Lukas since he was a little boy when he lost his parents in a hunting accident.”

  I nod, swallowing. I didn’t know that his parents were dead, although I don’t think I ever asked about his family before. I guess it’s only one of many things I didn’t know.

  Lukas’s aanak reaches for my hands and wraps her gnarled fingers around mine. She seems to sense that I’m overwhelmed, and tries to change the course of the conversation. “I have heard many lovely things about you from Lukas. And of course, I am honored to welcome the Angakkuq into our family home.”

  “The Angakkuq?”

  “Yes, the Angakkuq. You know, the shaman.” She says, as way of explanation. As if I know.

  Yet, the word “shaman” means as little to me as the word Angakkuq, and my face must show it. Lukas’s aanak leans forward and says slowly and clearly, “The Angakkuq is the mediator between this world and the spirit world. The seeker of truth. And we’ve been waiting for a new one for a whole generation.”

  Lukas’s aanak must be confused; I’ve heard that happens to people when they age.

  I smile indulgently, and say, “The Angakkuq? Oh no, you’ve mistaken me for someone else. I’m just here to find out more about the pre-Healing person whose Relics I found during the Testing. I’m the new Archon.”

  She smiles back at me, as if she expected me to demur. “I know you’re the new Archon, Eva. I was in the town square. I didn’t mistake you for some Maiden climbing the Ring in search of her Boundary Suitor.” She laughs at the surprise that must be registering on my face. “You didn’t know that occasionally an Aerie Maiden leaves her home for a Boundary future?”

  When I shake my head no, she says, “I’m not surprised. Such departures are usually kept quiet in the Aerie. My mother was just such an Aerie Maiden before she left and became the Angakkuq.”

  So Lukas is part Founder? I reclaim my composure, and say, “Well, I’m just an Archon, not the Angakkuq.”

  “So it might seem. But often, we don’t realize our true anirniq—our spirit—until our calling is upon us. Learning the truth about Elizabet Laine and her life as part of your work as Archon is just the first step in uncovering the truth about many other mysteries in your work as Angakkuq.”

  She smiles enigmatically. What in the Gods is she talking about? I glance over at Lukas, but he shrugs his shoulders. Maybe I’m right. Maybe old age has taken her wits. It’s what my parents told me happened to my Nurse Aga when she disappeared one day.

  “I will leave you two alone to learn more about Elizabet Laine,” she says as she leaves the room.

  The fire has warmed my body. My muscles sing from the long run, but I am not tired. As if in a dream, I follow Lukas to a corner of the solar where my Apple Relic sits on a table. Bluish light emanates from the Apple symbol, and very thin, seamless skeins of black rope connect the Relic to another silver box.

  What are those for? They don’t look like the sealskin ropes to which I’m accustomed. “I’ve been able to get it to work,” he explains.

  “Thank the Gods,” I say. “I’m glad you didn’t hurt it.”

  Lukas glances over at me with an odd expression, but remains silent. He then pulls over the solar’s two chairs to the table, and we sit before the glowing surface. He taps a few of the squares on one side of it, and the face comes alive again. “I found one more post from Elizabet, and a bunch of books that she kept on the computer. I thought you’d like to see everything.”

  I nod. My throat feels very dry. “Do we have time?”

  “I think we can cram in the most important stuff before you have to go back.”

  My heart leaps at the sight of Elizabet, almost as if she’s a friend just back from a trip beyond the Ring. A friend in desperate need of help. She looks more haggard than when I saw her last, even though she’s in the same clothes and in the same room.

  Tears pour down her face, and she makes no attempt to wipe them off. She makes no effort to look pretty anymore.

  “Robert, where are you? It’s been two days since your last post, and I’ve heard nothing from you, my kultanen. Nothing.”

  She clasps a small, leather-bound book between her hands and strokes it like some kind of talisman. The book has a lower-case letter “t” on the front. I hold my breath, waiting for her to tell me her secrets again. She draws very close to the computer face and reaches out to touch it. As if she’s stroking a Betrothed’s face. “I keep praying. I keep studying the Bible, and looking for some kind of sign that you’re still out there. Alive. When so many others are dead. Are you, my kultanen? Are you still alive?”

  There’s a crash. The entire room in which Elizabet stands tilts to the left. All the objects on tables fly to the floor. Water starts pouring down the walls. And Elizabet is nowhere to be found, but I hear her screams.

  I find myself screaming, too.

  In a few ticks, Elizabet’s face reappears. Blood streams from her forehead and she’s breathing heavily, but her gaze is steady. The wound is not fatal.

  “I’m okay. The captain told me this might happen. The ship’s GPS gave out yesterday, and we are sailing blind in waters littered with icebergs. I’m pretty sure we just hit one. What else could put a huge hole in a ship this size?” She laughs crazily and wipes the blood out of her eyes. “I don’t know if I’ll have the connectivity to make another post again, Robert. But if you’re still out there, my kultanen, please know that I love you.” She places her fingers on her lips, kisses them, and reaches them toward the computer screen. “And if you can, when all this madness is over, look for me on that Arctic island I told you about. If I make it there, that is. They call it New North.”

  The computer face grows fuzzy. Elizabet fastens the amulet around her neck, straps her pink pack on her back, and closes the computer. Then the screen goes black.

  I am sobbing. Lukas reaches out and touches my arm. “I know it’s hard to watch, Eva. But remember, this happened almost two hundred and fifty years ago. Elizabet’s anirniq has long been at peace. You saw her bones.”

  He clenches my hand tightly as we stare at the black computer screen together. My face is wet with tears, just like hers. I’m not certain whether I’m crying over the loss of Elizabet’s life or my own, the life I’d always known.

  “Elizabet died right after that post,” I say. It isn’t a question. I know it for a fact.

  “Yes.”

  “The ship never made it to New North.”

  “No. Not with her alive, anyway.”

  “You didn’t find any other posts?”

  “Nope. Just this one and the other one that you saw. I wish we had her flash drive.”

  “Flash drive?”

  “It’s a file that stores things like her posts. She wore it around her neck. You saw it on in that last image. In the other post, she mentioned that she placed Robert’s last video on it.”

  “Do you mean the amulet?” I ask, even though the word sounds wrong. I pull Elizabet’s necklace out from beneath my sealskin cloak.

  Lukas’s eyes grow wide. “You’ve had it this whole time?”

  “I didn’t realize what it was. I thought she used it to offer up prayers to Apple.”

  “Even though I
told you they didn’t pray to Apple? That Apple was just some stupid symbol of the Tech?” Lukas sounds angry.

  How dare he get mad at me? After all he’s asked of me. “Why are you talking to me like that? I’m telling you what I believed at the time. What was right to believe.”

  Lukas casts a quick glance toward the shadowy hall here his aanak disappeared. Perhaps he’s worried she’ll hear us. But his eyes soften and he nods. Not deferentially—he hasn’t treated me with deference at all since he took my hand and we started running. Like an equal. “I’m sorry, Eva. You’re right.”

  He gently takes this mysterious thing and sticks the silver head into the side of the … computer. I can no longer think of it as an altar. I know that now if I am to see its truth, even though the word “computer” has no meaning.

  Just like I thought: it is a sort of a puzzle piece—only I’d never have guessed exactly what kind of puzzle. The screen brightens and comes alive again.

  This time, though, we’re not gazing at Elizabet. A handsome young man—definitely a Gallant if he’d lived in the Aerie—appears. His dark hair and fair, freckled cheeks are wet, and his bright green eyes look kind of wild. He stands on a windy, crowded dock.

  It must be Robert.

  “Elizabet, my kultanen. I’m thinking of you snug and safe on your parents’ icebreaker ship. Heading toward some polar island where your family’s set up camp—as only they could manage at the world’s end. You’ve always rejected their money and their grand designs for you and your life. Even for the sake of your trashy English boyfriend. Now I’m damned grateful for them. For the chance they’re giving you.

  “It’s madness here at the docks, but I’m determined to get on one of these ships leaving the Helsinki harbor. My brother Alex has a friend from University who’s training as a marine biologist on one of the scientific boats. He’s trying to gain us passage. The ship’s called the Kalevala. I hope the name is a good omen.”

  He looks away from the computer, toward the crowds. And then he speaks to the computer again, his voice low and quick. “Remember your debut as Juliet at the Mariinsky? You looked so exquisite on the stage, so effortless in your pirouettes and leaps. I felt I was the only one who knew how long you worked. How much you practiced to make everything appear so fluid and easy. How much you sacrificed to pursue your dream. Leaving Finland. Leaving me.