The Stone Mage & the Sea (Books of the Change Book 1)

by Sean Williams

  “Look, Lodo,” said Shilly, “if anyone’s at fault, it’s me--”

  “I agree, but that doesn’t mean you’re to blame. You didn’t know that what you were doing was dangerous.” Lodo thought for a second, then asked: “What did you do, exactly?”

  “Just illusions.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I swear.”

  “Good were they?”

  She nodded.

  “I thought they might be. Ah.” They stopped, having reached the rear of the hostel, where Lodo finally let go of their arms. “Now, Shilly, I want you to go back to the workshop and continue with your exercises.” He raised a hand as she started to protest. “I know you think you’ve already done enough for today, but don’t argue. I’ll tell you what happens here when I get back.”

  The struggle was plain on her face, but in the end she did as she was told. With a silent glance at Sal, she turned and hurried back towards the dunes.

  “You, Sal,” Lodo said, “are going inside to talk to your father.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll wait out here.”

  “No.” Sal shook his head. “I want you to meet him, properly, to see if you’re the man he’s been looking for.”

  “Why?”

  “Because…” He hesitated, having no good reason to think that putting Lodo and his father together would actually be for the best. He simply wanted to do it to get rid of that part of the puzzle.

  “Because,” he said instead, “you’ve been checking him out without him knowing, and he deserves the chance to return the favor.”

  Lodo nodded slowly. “I suppose that’s fair. You go in first, though, and I’ll join you later. When the light appears in your room I’ll know it’s safe to talk in private.” He indicated the setting sun. “I have work to do.”

  Sal glanced at the reddening sky--remembering the globes and the light Lodo called forth from them at the end of every day. That it could be nightfall already struck him as ridiculous. It seemed only an hour had passed since he had woken on the beach, choking for air, and he wondered where the afternoon had gone. In dreams, he told himself.

  Taking a deep breath, he walked around the corner of the hostel and up to the front door.

  “Sal!” His father was out of the kitchen before the door had shut with a gentle click behind him. “You’re finally back! Where have you been?”

  Sal stopped in the hallway as his father approached. There was a look in his eyes he hadn’t seen before: part fear, part anger, part something Sal couldn’t immediately identify. It threw him.

  “I wasn’t feeling well, so--so a friend took me for a walk.”

  “A friend? Who?”

  “It’s okay,” Sal said, hoping it was. “She’s just someone from School. I left you a note--”

  “You did, but you didn’t say where you were going or who you were with.”

  “We didn’t go anywhere much. Just around.” Von had followed Sal’s father and stood leaning in the kitchen doorway. Her face was expressionless. “I’m feeling better now, anyway.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Dad, really.”

  “I hope so.” His father looked like he didn’t know whether to come closer or move away. “I was mending a fence out of town when I heard you’d fallen off the jetty. I came as soon as I could, but you weren’t here and no one knew where you’d got to. I thought--well, I didn’t know what to think. I was worried.”

  Another emotion took the dominant place in his father’s expression: concern, deep and overriding.

  “Don’t do this again, son.”

  Sal was already regretting everything he had done that day. He didn’t need to be asked. “I won’t, Dad, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to--”

  “You don’t have to apologize, Sal.” His father approached, put both hands on his shoulders and squeezed. Although there was a difference in their heights, Sal felt as though they were looking eye to eye. “It’s not your fault. I trust you. And you did leave a note. It’s just…” A flicker of pain passed through his father’s brown eyes. “I’m over-reacting, I guess. That you’re safe is the main thing.”

  Sal didn’t know what to say. There was more than just concern of his near-drowning behind his father’s reaction, he was sure of it. But if there was more to worry about--if he was in any danger--why didn’t his father just say?

  But rather than pursuing the subject, his father let him go and turned away. “So, you’ve made a friend.”

  “Kind of. I think.”

  “Good, good. Are you hungry? I’ve paid for a meal. You can tell us where you went while you eat.”

  Sal hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but Von’s expressionless eyes were watching him. “I’m tired more than anything.”

  His father shrugged. “Then we can put it on credit for tomorrow. You’ll wake up hungry, I’ll bet.” He turned to Von. “Is that okay?”

  “Fine.” The manager of the hostel turned her back on them and disappeared into the kitchen.

  His father’s palm between his shoulders guided Sal up the stairs, to their room. The hand was large and strong, and had always seemed to Sal to be as steady as a rock, but now, for the first time, he thought he felt it tremble.

  “Are you okay, Dad?”

  The slight pressure disappeared. “Yes, of course. I had a shock when I heard about you. You won’t go near the sea again, will you? You don’t know how to swim. It can be dangerous.”

  Sal remembered the insistent tug of the current around his body and the burning in his lungs. He heard again the ghostly call of a woman who, in his dreams, he imagined might be his mother. “Wild camels couldn’t drag me back.”

  “Good.”

  Sal opened the door of the room, noting that there was still no sign of the other tenant in the long, narrow hallway. An oil lamp was already burning low on the chest holding most of their belongings. Sal walked into the room and increased the flame from a yellow flicker to a steady, white column. Through the window he caught a glimpse of one of Lodo’s glass globes shining in the night--its light as white and pure as that which Shilly had called forth in the cave--but no sign of the old man himself.

  Dark shapes wheeled across the sky: a flock of seagulls heading to a nesting ground.

  Shivering, Sal pulled the blind down, confident that the lamp’s light would shine through it. Lodo would know it was safe to come, if he was as good as his word and watching from somewhere out of sight.

  Then he sat on his bed and took off his shoes. His feet were aching and his skin stung as though burned. He wanted to lie back on the bed and shut his eyes, to rest, just for a moment, but he forced himself not to. If Lodo did show up, he wasn’t going to miss it.

  On the other side of the room, his father was doing exactly what Sal wanted to do. Never one to delay sleep, if possible, for long after sunset, he had already slipped out of his shoes and work-shirt and put his feet up on the bed.

  “I don’t think Von likes me very much,” said Sal. Anything to keep his father awake.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Maybe she’s a little cautious, but you know what small towns are like. Everyone’s suspicious of strangers at first. That’s the way it goes.”

  Sal remembered the pronouncement made by Alder Sproule, Kemp’s father, at the fair and the look of suspicion he had cast upon them. “Have there been any more thefts?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.” His father looked at him from under a raised eyebrow. “Why? Have you got a guilty conscience?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.” He relaxed against the wall and closed his eyes. “And I know you’ll keep it that way. Remember what happened to Polain the butterfly merchant.”

  Sal leaned forward. “Tell me again.”

  “You’ve heard it a million times.�
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  “But not for ages. Please, Dad?”

  “Well…” He opened his eyes and sighed in resignation. “All right. But you let me get some rest afterwards, okay? I’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow.”

  Sal nodded and sat cross-legged on the bed to hear the story. Although he knew it by heart, he was glad for the opportunity to keep sleep at bay.

  “In the times before the Change,” his father began, “there was a man who sold butterflies. His name was Polain--Polain the butterfly merchant. He lived in a metal and glass city that was larger than any built before or since, and beautiful in a way we don’t see any more. There were many things to do and see in the city, but the butterflies bred and sold by Polain were numbered among the greatest. Buyers came from all around the world to purchase eggs and larvae, confident that each caterpillar and butterfly would be unique. For that was Polain’s Guarantee: never once did any of his creatures repeat a pattern, no matter how fervently some of his competitors hoped that they might. And hope they did, for if it happened even once, Polain’s reputation would be tarnished forever.

  “Needless to say, it was difficult to maintain such a Guarantee. The harder Polain worked and the more years went by, the more butterflies he sold and so the more difficult it became to be absolutely certain that each was a true individual. In order to do so, he kept a record--detailing the number of spots, the shading and hue of the colors, the precise shape of the wings and antennae, and the total mass at maturity--of each one, and the number of records mounted rapidly. As his popularity grew, people came in boats and cars and flying carriages to purchase his wares, some intending to breed from them or keep them as specimens, but most sporting them as badges of wealth--trifles to flitter about the house until the butterfly died, giving delight for a short time only, and quickly forgotten.

  “Ten years into Polain’s career--after beginning with a single, humble stall and a small stack of notebooks--he had three separate rooms full of records. At the time of this story, he had rented a small warehouse and employed five clerks to maintain and conduct searches through the catalogues. Sometimes it took more than a day to ascertain that a single promising butterfly was indeed one of a kind. Literally one in a million.

  “With no understanding of or concern for their patron’s situation, his insects bred without check. In vast glasshouses next to the warehouse full of records--with temperature and humidity kept constant by machines the like of which we have long lost--eggs were laid, caterpillars hatched, pupae were woven and butterflies emerged, limp and fragile, into their new world. Many were redundant, repetitions of ones that had existed before; many might have been new, but time didn’t allow a thorough search through all the minuscule nuances on file. Only the most dramatically different were chosen, the ones that stood out as being brilliant in some novel and pleasing way. Only these were sold.

  “Naturally, Polain’s output dropped steadily through this time. Demand had not fallen, however, for butterflies live far shorter lives than their fanciers, and in the city of glass and steel little true color remained. Also, as word spread that Polain’s handiwork was becoming scarce, it increasingly became a sign of prestige that one should possess an example of it. Polain could ask more and more money for each creation and people would still buy. As his clientele became richer and more discerning, his sales dropped to a handful a month, then a handful a year. Long gone were the days when he would sell butterflies by the jarful on a street corner to anyone who passed.

  “All in all, Polain was proud of his achievements, even though he knew it couldn’t last. The demand for butterflies would drop in time, to be replaced by some other fancy requiring a fortune. This thought didn’t bother him. He was becoming tired of the endless checking and re-checking. He wanted to retire. One of his competitors could take his place, and he would go back to breeding butterflies for fun, not profit.

  “Now, it happened that in a matter of weeks of him arriving at this decision, the queen of a distant and powerful country was due to visit the city. He publicly announced his impending retirement with a promise to present this queen with the last truly unique Polain butterfly in the world. It would be his masterpiece, and he would devote all his efforts to its creation. She would take it home confident in the knowledge that she was carrying a piece of history. Nothing like it would have existed before. That, after all, was his Guarantee.

  “And so he set to work, mingling strains in time-proven ways in some glasshouses, and cross-breeding new strains in others. Hungry caterpillars devoured leaves by the million, swarming in green and brown tides across veritable forests. Thousands of butterflies were born and died with a shiver of wings, their individually inaudible rustlings adding up to a cacophony, deafening the feeders who tended them and the clerks who studied them. It was a symphony to Polain’s ears. He would make a butterfly fit for a queen, no matter what it took. All he needed was one to put into the special bell-shaped jar he had constructed for it.

  “Just one.”

  Sal’s father paused in the telling of the ancient tale in the same place he always did. For him, Sal knew, the pleasure lay in building the world, setting the scene, rather than the story itself. “You know what happens.”

  “Yes.” Sal nodded, feeling as though he was out on the road and much younger, listening to the tale by the light of a camp fire. It was a great relief to return to a world where Sky Wardens didn’t exist, even if it was an imaginary one. “It’s not as easy to find the one butterfly as he’d thought it would be.”

  “No. In all the millions he breeds, beautiful though they are, the last unique one eludes him. Too many have matches in the catalogues. Some are beautiful in ways that excite the eye. Others are flawed, or do not mate well, or die too young, sickly and weak from inbreeding. As time passes, Polain becomes anxious. He stays longer and longer in the glasshouses with the feeders and clerks, pacing up and down through the feather-soft fluttering, and seeking, always seeking, for the one he knows must come. It has to. If it doesn’t, he will be humiliated in front of everyone--the queen, the people of the city, his competitors.

  “As the deadline approaches, the fear of failure mounts in him as it never has before. What if the right butterfly doesn’t come in time? What if he has exhausted every possible variety and no new ones remain? What will he do? He wouldn’t dream of substituting a fake--a butterfly modified in order to present a unique coloration. No matter how clever a forgery it was, it would be discovered eventually. He would be ruined in his finest hour. All his past work would be forgotten, and only his shame would survive.

  “All too quickly the appointed time looms and still he has nothing. His dreams are filled with nightmares: he is mocked, taunted, jeered at as he arrives at the queen’s reception holding in his hands nothing but a dry and dusty moth.

  “Then, with just two days to spare, Polain is inspecting the butterflies in one of his auxiliary glasshouses when he spies an empty cocoon with unfamiliar spiral markings. The cocoon is paper-thin and gray in color, except for the spirals which are soft pink. Polain raises it to his nose and sniffs. It has only recently been vacated. The butterfly that crawled from it can’t be far away.

  “He searches the branches and ground nearby. If he finds it in time, it will still be hardening its wings, anchoring itself against a stone or a twig to practice fluttering before joining the great throng above. Polain creeps carefully through the enclosure, wary of stepping before he has made absolutely certain that nothing is underfoot. His heart beats a little faster as he thinks: Maybe this is the one. Maybe at last, at the last minute, my search will be over.”

  A knock at the door brought Sal’s father abruptly out of the tale. He blinked as though unaware what had interrupted him, then put his feet over the side of the bed, ready to stand.

  “Yes?” he called.

  “May I come in?” said a male voice. “I understand you’ve been looking for me.”

 
Sal’s father stiffened. Sal sat straighter on his bed: the voice was Lodo’s. He had become so wrapped up in the familiar tale that he had quite forgotten about the old man.

  “Are you...?”

  “I am Misseri, yes--although how you know of me is a mystery. No one has called me by that name for ten years or more. Would you care to tell me how you heard of it?”

  Sal’s father stood, wiped his hands on his pants and reached for the door handle. Story forgotten, he hesitated for a second, then opened the door.

  Lodo stood, undisguised, in the hallway. His gray hair was held back from his dark forehead by a bronze clasp behind his ears, exposing the blue spirals tattooed on his temples and the pale gold rings high in his ears. His expression was patient, almost indulgent, but he looked much older than Sal remembered.

  “It is you,” said Sal’s father.

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Lodo smiled. “But that leaves us with another mystery, I’m afraid. As far as I can recall, we’ve never met, yet you know me by sight. How is that?”

  “No, no, we haven’t met.” Sal’s father seemed to remember himself, and waved Lodo excitedly inside. “Not formally. But I know of you, and I did see you from a distance, once. It was a long time ago. I--” He stopped, swallowed, and continued more soberly. “I’ve been following your reputation.”

  “Oh?” Lodo’s smile widened. “Now I have a reputation. What on earth did I do to acquire one of those?”

  “You know very well … what you were accused of, anyway.”

  Lodo’s eyes narrowed. “And what do you know of my accusers?”

  “That they lied, mainly. I didn’t believe it at the time, and I don’t believe it now, to see you here, in such firm spirit. But old charges stick, and they have followed you. Your presence in this region is known by some in high places--perhaps even sanctioned, but not without a word or two of caution. It was a simple matter to inquire after scandal or rumors of scandal. People will happily talk about the misfortune of others. From there, it was just a matter of persistence. No matter how well you try to hide, your past will always follow you.”