Nurse checked the thermometer. ‘You’ll live.’
N’tombe sat like a shadow on the settle as the sun lifted out of the sea. It was reassuring to have her there; I felt protected by her presence. No dream could plague me with this woman on guard.
She said nothing until the midday bell. Then, looking at her hands, she spoke slowly. At first I wasn’t sure if she was speaking to me or just to herself. Her story seemed to blend into a waking dream.
‘I will tell you the tale of how I was called here, to this strange place,’ she said, her voice low. ‘I come from a land that is so far away that even the great pelicans, who soar many miles, cannot find my country. Deep in the heart of Africa, my people are surrounded by thick jungle, where the elephant and okapi live. Many years ago, white people came to my country, and some even started a school near my village. The white ghosts — that is what we call people with white skin — had gone by the time I started my schooling. Only their language remained, which is how I speak your tongue. I teach at the school now. And so, until I set out on my journey, I had never seen anyone with white skin.’
I’d never seen dark skin before. Strangely, it didn’t seem hard to imagine a land the reverse of mine, where everyone was dark. In that land I would be the stranger.
‘My country is so different from yours: it is warm, but here it is very cold. I miss the warmth,’ N’tombe said. ‘And my family.’
‘Why did you come here?’ I whispered.
‘I was called here.’ She crossed one leg over another and I realized, with a stab of envy, that she wore hose. On her, with her dark skin and knotted hair, they looked exotic, not shocking at all. ‘At home, we make our flour from maize, not wheat. It is ground by hand. It is a very repetitive task. One morning I was pounding the maize and, as usual, my mind was empty of all but the up-and-down motion of pestle on mortar.’
She moved her fist up and down the way kitchen maids grind millet. ‘It was Auntie Zissi who felt the call. Like smoke, it drifted through the jungle, over stumps, around the elephants that creep silent as grey dawn rising. “Come,” it whispered.
‘These calls happen sometimes. Magic worker to magic worker, we send messages to tug at heartstrings.’ She smiled, a flash of white teeth. ‘I will tell you a funny story.
The last call I felt, before this one, was Auntie Opeyemi. Auntie Opeyemi is a powerful magic worker. And one day she slipped climbing a tree and broke her arm. “Help me!” she called.
‘Just as you follow the smell of smoke to find the source of the fire, we traced the call through the jungle. We found the old lady in a crumpled heap in the grass. She was very glad to see us.’
N’tombe smiled. ‘Auntie Zissi is tiny, no larger than a child of ten years. She scolded Auntie Opeyemi. “Silly woman, at seventy years old you should have more sense than to climb a tree.” Auntie Opeyemi is very fat and very bossy. It was funny to see them arguing with each other. I went and got some men from the village to help Auntie Opeyemi back to her house where, Auntie Zissi said, she continued to argue with all who came near.’
I rolled over to see N’tombe’s face better, entranced with the image of the argument between the witches.
‘The call that brought me here to you was different.’
‘How?’
‘More … how shall I say? Elusive. Like the scent of a flower — you smell it when the wind blows in a certain direction, so you stand in one spot, sniffing like a little dog. Sniff, sniff, sniff.’ N’tombe screwed up her nose and, despite my lingering headache, I laughed at her expression. ‘And then, pow! You can smell it.’
‘Did you follow the smell?’
‘Auntie felt it first. “Listen,” she said, and I stopped pounding and felt the tug at my heart.’
‘I thought you said it was a smell?’
‘It is hard to describe,’ she said. ‘It’s a sense of rightness, a pull that eases when you turn the right way, a scent of smoke; all these things. And, yet, it’s the same as someone whispering, “Come to me”. But this call was so subtle, so faint — it must have come from far away.
‘“You have to go,” Auntie Zissi said. Auntie Zissi is very bossy, but this time I didn’t argue with her because she was right. Auntie is old and frail, and cannot walk very far. And we could tell the sender was in desperate need. “In the morning. It will be a long, long walk. I will make you some food for your journey”.’
N’tombe looked down at her clasped hands. ‘I set off the next day,’ she said slowly, adding softly, ‘Auntie was right. It was very far.’ Looking out the window, she sighed. ‘Everything is so different here.’
Seeing this stranger’s sorrow made me uncomfortable. ‘I think I can get up now. Can you help me?’
We ate luncheon in the schoolroom. There was an adult’s desk and chair set at the front of the room, below the large chalkboard. And there was my desk, set in the dead centre of the room, so when seated there the only things to be seen were the dark green board and the enormous globe set on the governess’s desk.
My eating table was placed below the window, where the room was marginally brighter. I had cleared a patch of cobwebs from the glass, so by standing on a chair, I could see the activity in the courtyard below.
N’tombe paused on the threshold of the grim room. ‘This is where you learn?’ she asked.
I shrugged. Learning was optional. ‘It’s where I have my lessons.’
She looked at me. ‘My students always learn.’
I shrugged again.
Any doubts I had that she was the same as all the other governesses vanished when she went straight to the window, clambered onto a chair and tried the ancient metal latch. It was rusted shut, covered with dust, cobwebs and fly carcasses.
Nurse came in with our food and squeaked, ‘Mistress! What are you doing?’
N’tombe stared down at our startled faces. ‘I am trying,’ she said, through gritted teeth, ‘to open the window.’
‘It’s never been opened before,’ I said and Nurse nodded.
N’tombe planted her feet firmly on my dining table, grabbed the catch in a fist and pushed down hard on the metal. There was a shower of dust and cobwebs but the catch didn’t move.
She tried again, pushing harder so the veins on her forehead bulged, their patterns merging with the braiding on her scalp.
‘Now, mistress,’ said Nurse in a placating way. ‘Just leave it, there’s a good lady. We don’t want the nasty breeze coming in here and making us all cold.’
N’tombe looked at her and Nurse trailed into silence. Then my tutor smiled, such a blank look on her face that we stepped back. She pressed her little finger down on the window catch and with a pop! the catch turned and the window flew open, the breeze whirling into the stuffy room like the clean scent of spring, shivering into the corners and flapping the pages of my books.
Nurse and I stood in the middle of the windstorm, turning to watch as anything loose in the room — paper, candles, chalk — waltzed in a circle, then, as though beckoned, flew up and out the window, spiralling up over the Castle like a flock of birds.
N’tombe shut the window. ‘You’re right,’ she said calmly. ‘It is a little cold.’
But now the room smelt of hope and, for a change, the air was clean of dust.
Nurse shut her mouth with a snap. ‘Well,’ she said, visibly pulling herself together, ‘there’s nothing like a bit of spring-cleaning, I do say. Now sit you down at the table, lady, mistress, and have your luncheon.’
We ate in silence. The bread, yesterday’s baking, was stale and stuck in my teeth. As I picked it out, trying hard to be ladylike and not show my new tutor my gums, I wondered whose hands had kneaded the dough and shaped the loaf. Was it Will’s? He’d moved so fast, shielding me from the arrow, no wonder the sergeant had wanted him for the guards.
N’tombe soaked the bread in milk before eating it. How would a stone castle seem to this stranger? What would it be like to live in Africa, where everyone had da
rk faces and there were elephants and something else in the jungles?
‘Okapi,’ she said, swallowing.
I blinked at her.
‘Okapi live in the jungle. They’re very rare. Hard to see; their coats are patterned. They blend with the light and shade and they move very softly.’
‘You knew what I was thinking?’
She smiled and finished her milk. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Alright, I suppose.’ I thought about it. ‘Yes. Better.’
‘It was the dream. A very vivid sending.’
‘I was in someone else’s body,’ I said slowly. ‘A man.’
‘Yes,’ she said and pushed her dishes away. ‘His name is TeSin. I have encountered …’ she paused, her eyes suddenly distant, ‘his work before. He is a general in the army of the Eternal. You seem ignorant of dream states; you lurch into another’s body, and then, when you see something you are not familiar with, you lurch out again. That is why you felt so ill.’
A curved sword, raised high, the fountaining blood, the thud as the bodies of the villagers rolled, headless into the grey mud. ‘It was horrible.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘It was.’
‘It wasn’t just a dream, was it?’ It had been too vivid to be a dream of the imagination.
‘No. You are right. It was not just a dream,’ she said.
‘Did you send it?’ I scraped my chair backwards as my voice rose. ‘Who are you?’ I said.
She smiled, a strange lopsided grin, and tucked a braid behind her ear. ‘Just a traveller, child.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘I have come so far. You would not believe the distance I travelled, following that call. Over streams, mountains, around seas. Winter snow, summer heat. I had never seen snow before,’ she added. ‘I think my feet will always feel tired. Yes, I sent you the dream. You were lucky.’
‘Lucky?’
‘For you, it was only a dream. For me — ah.’ She paused for a moment, then in the sing-song voice of a storyteller, said:
‘I followed the call east. The roads are unpaved, dusty in the heat of the dry season, mud tracks in the wet. Sometimes I travelled on boats, dugouts that tipped and swayed in the currents. I had some money for food, and when that ran out, I begged or stole. It took weeks to reach the lake. So much water! I could not even see the other side.
‘There are many islands, dotted across the water like stones in a pond. Holy men live on some, but others are empty, inhabited only by ghosts. The morning mist moves strangely even though there is no breeze. I rowed out to one of these islands.’ She smiled at me. ‘Have you ever rowed a boat, Princess?’
I shook my head.
‘Neither had I,’ she said. ‘I was very clumsy. I found a boat made of reeds on the shore, and paddled it onto the lake. I was sure someone would hear me and call out “Stop!” To tell the truth, I half-hoped someone would, because when I saw the cave in the rock face ahead of me, I did not want to enter. But the call pulled me on, so I clambered out of the boat and followed a track onwards, into the dark.’
I cupped my chin on my hands. How lucky this woman was, to go wherever she wished. ‘Did you have a torch?’
The beads at the ends of her braids clattered as she shook her head. ‘I stepped very cautiously, and trailed my fingers along the walls for balance. I must have walked like this for hours; it was as though I was in a dream, a dream of darkness and water.’
‘Water?’
‘A river. The sound grew louder, echoing in the darkness until my head pounded with its noise. Eventually, I entered a great chamber, and I lost connection with the rock. Wind brushed my cheek. Above were constellations of blue stars, set high up into the cavern’s ceiling.’
How could there be stars inside a cave?
N’tombe chuckled. ‘Glow-worms. They are not bright lamps, but they lit the space enough to see by, enough to see columns of stone, and the rock floor of the cave. I did not want to go further, but the call was strong and how could I go back to my aunt and tell her of my fear? So I walked into the dark, and the noise of the water grew louder.’
Sometimes I explored the cellars, carved deep into the Castle Mount, but I took care to have a torch with me. What would it be like to be alone under the earth in a strange place?
‘Ah, but I was not alone,’ she said. ‘There was a boat, tied to a rough jetty. In it stood a man, holding a long pole. He beckoned, as though he was expecting me. I was very scared. But he signalled again, and what could I do?’
‘You could have run away.’
She shook her head. ‘Running away is easy, but rarely sensible. Better to face your fear; so says Aunt Zissi, and she is very wise. So, taking a deep breath, I went forward and stepped onto the boat. It had a flat bottom. The boatman said nothing. He just undid the rope and poled us out onto the river.’
She smiled. ‘The ancient stories speak of a Ferryman who takes the souls of the dead to the jackal god, so for a moment I wondered if I had died and was on my way into the underworld. But I felt very cold, and I have never heard of ghosts complaining of the cold.
‘As we travelled forward the cave narrowed. The light of glow-worms reflected blue on my skin, and on the hat of the Ferryman. Then we stopped at a staging area. The man pointed to a deeper shadow in the cave wall. I didn’t know what else to do, so I got out of the boat and walked towards it. I found myself in a smaller cave, very narrow. So small I had to crawl.’
A movement caught the corner of my eye and I turned. Nurse, tray in hand, stood in the doorway, listening. The chambermaid leant against the wall behind her.
‘Spiderwebs brushed against my face but I couldn’t raise my hands to wipe them off. The tug of the call was strong and I had no choice, I had to follow it. I crept forward, feeling like a mindless insect burrowing in the dark.’
I shuddered.
N’tombe smiled at me. ‘I pushed too hard. There was a drop into nothingness as I shot out of the crack like a cork coming out of a bottle.’ She rubbed her nose, thinking. ‘And as I fell forward through space, I felt as though I had been split apart and put back together again. And I passed out.’
‘You fainted?’
She shrugged. ‘I do not know. All I know is that when I woke, there was a faint light in front of me. I was lying on a pile of rubble. With difficulty, I rose and staggered forward, towards the light, towards the lake. I must have passed below it on the ferry. Now I stood on its far shore.’
‘The same lake?’
‘The same, but not,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I passed a transition point,’ she said, ‘in the fall. When I opened my eyes everything was different.’
‘You must have banged your head,’ I said wisely. On the last week of the Festival a guardsman had been stunned in a tourney. When he came to, his eyes were glazed and he needed help to stagger off the field.
She shook her head. ‘It was not my head. It was the world. Everything was different.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Gone were the sounds of engines. No cars, no buzzing boat motors.’
‘Cars?’
‘In my world, there are many machines that cough and smoke and do the work for men, if they do not break down. But now all I could hear was the sigh of the wind and the slap of the waves. And the birds, of course, they were very loud. But no people, and no machines.’
‘Just a minute.’ I pressed my fingers to my temple. ‘In your world?’
She nodded. ‘That is what I said.’
Nurse sighed, a deep inhalation that sounded like the tide, or the winter wind. The chambermaid crossed herself, but I sat like a rabbit facing a huntsman, unable to move. What did she mean, ‘in my world’?
‘Princess?’ said Nurse, venturing into the schoolroom, something she rarely did when there was a governess in residence.
‘I’m alright,’ I brushed her hand away. ‘I’m just, surprised, that’s all.’ I looked at N’tombe. ‘What do you mean?’
>
‘About what?’ She sipped her milk.
‘A different world.’
‘Of course.’ She blew on her drink. Her breath rippled the surface, a little storm. ‘I thought you realized.’
‘I thought this was the only world.’
‘There are many worlds,’ she said. ‘Layered like pancakes.’
I smiled. I like pancakes.
‘Worlds form when something happens. Something that has two possibilities. When I travelled,’ she said, ‘I passed through a valley. It is very dry, and stony. A long time ago a group of humans lived there. They walked upright and used tools, just like us. A very clever man from a university told me that there, in this valley, lived the largest group of humans in the world. Maybe the only group. And I thought — what if there had been a storm and wiped out that entire population?’
I stared at her. ‘What?’
‘Or a disease. Something, anyway.’
This was a bit morbid. ‘So?’
‘Maybe that would have been the end of all humans,’ she said, in a faraway tone, and then, glancing at me, added, ‘That’s what I mean, anyway.’
I stared at her. ‘You mean what?’
‘Maybe, in one world, a flood did come and wash them all away.’
‘You just said a storm.’
She sighed. ‘My point is that the possibility existed there, at that moment, for two futures. One without people. Or the other. Perhaps, there is a world somewhere without people.’
This was all too strange. What was this woman talking about?
She laughed at my expression. ‘I never knew of other worlds either, until that cave. Rosa explained them to me. The cave was a junction point. There are a few such places, she says, where the fabric between the worlds is thin. Deep places, where the rocks have split, creating cracks where those with power may wander and step from one world to another.’
‘Who is Rosa?’ I asked. Nurse, back at the doorway again, dropped the metal tray with a clatter. The chambermaid gasped and crossed herself again.
N’tombe set down her glass with a clink. ‘You do not know the Guardian?’
I shook my head.
‘And yet she is the sister of your father. Your aunt. How can you not know her? It was her call that brought me here.’
A Necklace of Souls Page 10
