by Molly Flatt
Alex returned to the text she had been composing.
Think it’ll be good for me to stay under the radar for a while, she tapped.
You can stay under the radar, Lenni’s reply shot back, in the office.
Sorry. I have no choice.
I thought we already talked about priorities.
I know. I promise, once I get back – if I get back – no more trips.
At this point, Alex thought, if only I could get back for good, I’d happily stay in my flat for the rest of my life. The smell of New York and the heat of the desert and the noise of Tokyo can go hang.
We need to capitalize on the backlash, Alex. We need to show you’re not afraid.
Just give me a few days, Lenni. A few more days.
Alex looked up. Finn was back, his pockets bulging. He unloaded a fistful of boiled sweets, two dozen sachets of instant coffee and an aerosol of magnolia air freshener into the bag.
‘Seriously?’
‘Iskeullians like to complain about Outside materialism, but half of them would trade their prize heifer for a stick of chewing gum.’
‘And you?’
‘Full-time Readers are different.’ He sat, suddenly, on the sofa and closed his eyes. Alex watched his eyelashes flutter, his face tight with pain. ‘Not,’ he said tightly, ‘that that’s an option any more.’
‘They banned you,’ Alex said, after a moment.
A tiny twitch of his shoulders. ‘I knew the rules.’
‘Taran said you loved it. More than anything. Just like your dad.’
He didn’t reply.
‘I can’t imagine what it would be like, doing that full-time. Spending hours upon hours Reading other people in the dark. Knowing that you’ll never get to see what they see, go where they go. Isn’t it torture?’
After a moment, he said, ‘It’s everything.’
‘But don’t you feel trapped?’
Another twitch. ‘It’s all I’ve ever known. Anyway, Read enough people and you come to realize that everyone is trapped in some way.’ He opened one eye. ‘When I came to your office, you said you were trapped.’
‘Yes. I suppose I was. Until—’
‘Until.’ He closed the eye.
Unbidden, Alex saw a face staring out from between rotten shutters, a halo of dusky hair. ‘I met Taran’s sister,’ she said.
He opened both eyes this time. ‘Freya?’
‘We saw her on the beach below Taran’s house. She was steaming drunk. She asked a lot of questions about real – I mean, about life Outside. Taran said she struggles.’
‘It’s harder, if you’re not allowed to Read. And Freya’s a special case.’
‘Why?’
‘She fell in love.’
‘And what’s so bad about that?’
‘With an Outsider.’
‘Oh.’
He picked a boiled sweet out of the bag. Unwrapped it. Rewrapped it. ‘She was sixteen. She told him she lived with her mother, that her mother was ill, that she couldn’t often get away. They met in Kirkwall every time she had leave, two days every three months for years, until someone from Iskeull spotted them together. She was ordered never to see him again.’ He paused. ‘She disobeyed. She got pregnant. They found her trying to smuggle him onto the island. He was beaten up and warned off. She was banned from the Library, and her Outside leave was permanently revoked. That’s when she started to drink.’
‘Jesus. What happened to the baby?’
‘It miscarried. They always do, if they’re got from Outside men.’
‘Fuck.’
There was a long silence.
‘Must’ve been strange for you,’ Finn broke it abruptly. ‘Finding out about us.’
‘Honestly,’ Alex said, admitting the truth only as she said it, ‘I think I knew about the Library already. Deep down. I think everyone does. We’re all part of it, after all, aren’t we? It’s part of us.’ She sighed. She looked across the lounge at all the faces around them. Young, old, fat, thin, brown, black, yellow, white. Anxious, excited, irritated. Mostly blank, in the pale light of a screen. ‘But coming back to London? Being the only person outside those seven islands, walking freely around the world, who has actually seen it? That’s hell. Oh, it’s lonely, not being able to talk about it with anyone. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is watching everyone plough through their lives without realizing that what’s going on in their brains matters. That they’re making real things out of their thoughts. Real, glowing, living things. And that so many of those thoughts are holding them back. Everywhere I look I see people creating Memories that are like tiny blocks of concrete, dragging them down. People operating from Storylines that are like handcuffs, tying them to a rigid idea of who they are. I want to scream at them all.’ She picked at a frayed thread on her jeans. ‘I want to scream at myself.’
‘It doesn’t really change anything, though,’ Finn said. ‘Knowing about the Library.’
She stared at him. ‘It changes everything.’
‘Not really. As you said, the Library’s just . . . people. You don’t need to Read Stories to know that’s how we work.’
‘Just? Just?’
He closed his eyes again. ‘Except it has changed, now. All of it. Because of you.’
‘Yeah,’ Alex said bitterly. ‘Thanks for reminding me. All hail the evil mutant.’ She thought of the words scrawled inside the diary. She thought of the words Diya had typed.
I thought it sounded too mad, so I told myself it must have been a horrible joke. Was it a joke?
‘Do you think that Taran’s right? Do you think it could be this Story-surging thing? Do you really think my Story could have evolved to use consciousness as a . . . a weapon?’
Another shoulder-twitch. ‘My father knew the Library better than anyone, and he never put much stock in Taran’s theories. The scholars on the Board are divided. But then I suppose the only thing we’ve ever really known about the Library is how much we don’t know.’
‘So tell me again exactly how you think I’m going to—’ She stopped. Finn had put his head in his hands. His shoulder blades, through the fabric of his shirt, were as sharp as wings.
‘Are you alright?’
He moved his head, the tiniest shake.
‘What does it feel like?’
He didn’t reply for several seconds. When he did, he spoke into his hands. ‘Like I’m on a fishing line,’ he said, ‘with a hook in my heart. And every second I’m away, Iskeull is reeling me back in.’
Above his head, the digital display started flashing.
‘So the good news is that it’s time to go,’ Alex said. ‘The bad news is you’re going to have to get up.’
They just about made it to the departure gate. Finn stood very straight, grim-faced and glitter-eyed, while the security desk made a series of calls to verify his Microstate of Iskeull identity card. But as they queued in the tunnel for the plane, his knees buckled, and Alex had to wriggle her shoulder beneath his arm and wedge him upright against the hoardings. In the future, declared the HSBC ad behind Finn’s drooping head, beside an image of an office water-cooler with a slot for swiping a credit card, growth has a cost.
‘Muscle relaxant,’ Alex said breezily to the flight attendant as she hauled him into the cabin, flashing the expensive last-minute tickets she’d put on the Eudo account. ‘He’s afraid of flying.’
It wasn’t, as it turned out, a total lie. As the Airbus taxied down the runway, Finn opened his eyes, looked out of the window and gripped the armrest so tightly that Alex thought the tendons on his wrist might burst through his tattoo. When they took off, his jaw dropped and she thought for one awful moment that he might yell. But then his features softened for the first time all day and he suddenly looked like a little boy, transformed with awe. It lasted perhaps a minute, before a spasm of pain closed him up again. He glanced at her and muttered something.
‘What?’ She leaned in.
‘Sometimes,’ he w
hispered.
‘Sometimes what?’
‘I feel trapped, too.’
19
By the time they changed onto a propellor plane at Edinburgh, Finn had become very still. It reminded Alex of how Curstag MacRob had looked, preparing to Read. She guessed that he was drawing on his training, suppressing his feelings, locking down into survival mode. The only part of him that moved during the whole hour-long journey was his left hand, which he kept wrapped around his throat. At first she thought he was struggling to breathe. But as the plane touched down into Kirkwall, his hand jerked and she got a glimpse of the pebble clenched in his palm. A piece of Iskeull, helping him to hold on.
She was afraid that his appearance – both of their appearances, judging by a glimpse in the airport loos – would create a problem in Arrivals. But when it came to their reclusive neighbours, the Orcadians appeared to have a remarkable blind spot. With no luggage except for Finn’s holdall and the rucksack Alex had thrown together while a taxi waited outside her flat, they passed through the airport without being asked a single question. Barely ten minutes later they were walking out of the double doors.
Alex had forgotten how much brighter the light was here, even at 7 p.m. It was cooler, too, with a breeze coming off the bay behind the terminal. It was hard to believe that Iskeull was being lashed by storms only forty miles away. She put on her sunglasses and turned to Finn, who was standing with his face raised to the sun.
‘So,’ she said, ‘what exactly is the plan?’
His eyes slid sideways, then widened. His whole body went stiff. For a moment Alex thought he was having some sort of fit. Then he cuffed the crown of her head and pulled it down into his chest, squashing her nose against his pecs and sending her sunglasses skittering across the tarmac.
‘What the—?’
‘Quiet,’ he hissed. ‘Move. Move!’
He hustled her towards a loitering cab, shielding her all the way with his body, then yanked open the back door and bundled her in, smacking her elbow on the frame. He threw himself in after her, chucked the holdall on top of her and slammed the door.
‘What the fuck?’
But he was staring out of the window, gripping the handle. She peered past his ear. She could see nothing more threatening than a group of Germans in matching T-shirts, a young couple with multiple piercings and a heavyset musician in black with a violin case slung over his shoulder.
The musician was Iain.
He was striding towards the departures gate of the terminal, scrutinizing the tourists as he passed. Then the automatic doors split before his bulk and he disappeared inside.
‘Shit,’ Alex murmured, slumping back against the seat. ‘Shit shit shit shit shit shit—’
‘I can’t believe they did it.’ Finn’s voice was bleak. ‘I can’t believe they voted it through.’
‘I can’t – they can’t – I didn’t think it was just – it’s like I’ve gone from Labyrinth to fucking Pulp Fiction in less than twenty-four hours.’
‘How could they? Break the Covenant, and there’s no point to any of us.’
‘So what’s the idea: he rocks up at my flat and guns me down? Drops into the office and sets to with a Kalashnikov?’
‘They’d need to have taken a decision like this to the Board. The Yíngzhōuese would never have agreed. Never. And I can’t believe it of the Pasca Nui. But if the Menikuki felt threatened enough . . . and they’d bring the Buyaniners . . .’
‘Oh my God. Finn? Finn! What happens when Iain gets to London and finds me gone? What about my family? Would he try to get to me through them?’
‘No, they’d never—’ Finn stopped. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what they’d do, any more.’
Alex grabbed the door handle. ‘We have to follow him.’
Finn closed his hand over hers. ‘And what?’
‘I don’t know. Get to him before he boards? Reason with him?’
‘’Scuse me,’ the cabbie said. He was watching Finn in his rear-view mirror as if a scorpion had been thrown through his window. ‘Are thoo twa gyaan somewey?’
‘Dislodging that Story is your only hope,’ Finn said grimly. ‘Our only hope.’
‘Fuck!’ Alex said. ‘FUCK.’
‘That’s why you came back, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. I suppose. It’s just that now it’s so fucking real. FUCK.’ Alex hugged her chest and rubbed her arms as if she could weld herself together. ‘Okay. Okay.’ She looked at Finn. ‘What the fuck do we do next?’
‘We stick to my plan,’ Finn said. ‘It’s all we can do.’ He caught the cabbie’s eye in the mirror. The cabbie looked away. ‘The Reel,’ Finn said.
After five minutes of speeding through fields and another five jerking through narrow streets, the car braked sharply in the centre of town. They were outside a white rendered building, opposite a majestic red cathedral. Alex got out and began to search her wallet for cash, but as soon as Finn’s door slammed, the cabbie ground into gear and accelerated away.
Alex looked up at the cathedral. With 800 years of weather in its sandstone bones, it looked older than the flatscreen sky. As she gazed at the confident thrust of its walls, she felt a hypocritical urge to go inside and pray. But Finn was already heading in the opposite direction, weaving between half a dozen folding chairs’ worth of tourists. She rushed after him and through the white building’s open door.
Inside The Reel, Finn’s ‘plan’ revealed itself to be a someone. Sitting at a table at the back, slumped against the wainscoting with his black head bent over an untouched beer, the plan was doing his best to look invisible. He could almost have passed for a brooding immigrant, until he looked up, and Alex saw a face that was unmistakably a product of Iskeull. On the meaty wrists sticking out of his sloppy green jumper, she spotted a telltale coil of blue tattoo.
Finn slid in beside the man and bumped his shoulder with his own. ‘Laochyn dhy,’ he said.
‘Beullych,’ the man muttered back, giving Alex a hard stare. He was stouter than Finn, more grizzled and less pale, but he looked just as ill. His eyes were glazed and his body was racked by a low-level shudder that Alex could feel through the floorboards. He looked back at his pint as Finn talked to him in Iskeullian, then shook his head and made some sort of objection. Finn pressed his point. The two of them began to argue.
Alex rapped on the table. She did it again, louder. They fell silent mid-bout and stared.
‘Sorry,’ Alex said. ‘But I’ve just seen my own assassin. Or wannabe assassin. I’m feeling a tiny bit fucking shaky. So it would be really nice if you could, y’know, tell me the fucking masterplan.’
‘This is Lucas,’ Finn said. ‘He’s a friend.’
‘Hello, Lucas,’ Alex said. ‘I’m Alex.’
‘He knows who you are.’
‘Of course he does. Dorothy Moore the bloody mutant Reader-slayer.’
‘He brought me here in his boat. He’s been waiting to bring us home.’
‘In a boat?’
‘It’s late, but it’s light, and the weather’s good. If we leave in an hour, the tides will help us to Sanday. We’ll sleep there and go on to Iskeull at first light. That part will be difficult, but if anyone can sail it, Lucas can. He’s been fishing Iskeull’s coast since before he could walk.’
‘Define difficult,’ Alex said.
Lucas muttered something.
‘You should eat,’ Finn said. ‘Keep your strength up.’
‘Define strength,’ Alex said, but she walked over to the bar anyway, and bought three sandwiches from a woman who looked at her strangely. She was carrying them back to their table when a man with a violin case walked through the door. She stumbled, and half a prawn mayo slid across the tray and into Lucas’s lap.
‘Sit down,’ Finn hissed.
The man with the violin case went over to the bar. He threw a casual glance their way, then turned his back to them and bent heads with the woman who had served Alex. Another man followed him in, carr
ying a recorder, then a teenage girl with a guitar. A woman meandered over to a small upright piano and placed sheet music on the stand.
Alex sat down and picked up the other half of the sandwich, but she couldn’t bring herself to eat. Finn and Lucas ignored theirs, too, their eyes trained on the newcomers. The man with the violin case moved away from the bar, slung his case on a table and took out a fiddle. The other musicians gathered round, tuning up, swapping jokes with the regulars, swigging beer.
The first piece was a rousing foot-stamper. The second was a catchy, repetitive reel. On the third – a dissonant, melancholy air – the fiddler began to sing.
The lyrics were in the Orcadians’ mashed-up Scandi-Scots-English dialect, so Alex couldn’t understand every word, but she caught the general drift. In olden times, a local man had voyaged across the sea to find a mysterious island that would, now and then, materialize out of the mist. The man found the island, but as soon as he set foot on its shores he was abducted by a kingdom of trowies, or trolls. The trolls took him deep underground and tied him up with rainbow ropes of magic. His son sailed after him, but he too was captured and bound. Back home, their wife and mother prepared to head out and rescue them – singing as she stitched a sealskin coat, from which she hoped the magic ropes would slip.
From the first note to the last, as he swung his bow and sung his song, the man looked straight at Lucas and Finn.
At the end there was a long, heavy silence. Then a muted smattering of applause. The musicians fiddled with their instruments. Some people turned away and began to speak loudly, while others stood to get a refill at the bar.
‘Time to go,’ Finn said, hefting his bag.
It was a short walk to where Lucas’s boat was moored between two high-tech white vessels in a disproportionately large space. Squatting between the catamarans, it looked like a dugout with an outboard motor stuck on the back, and it stank of fish. Lucas started the motor while Finn untied the rope, then offered his hand to Alex, who clambered in and settled herself on a bench at the front. There was a sheet of canvas lashed across the space behind the bench. Beneath it she found nets, oars, ropes, a lifebuoy, a spare cape and a pile of blankets. She donned the cape and draped a blanket around her shoulders. Then she put the lifebuoy on her knees and let the vibrations and the tiredness sink her scudding thoughts.
