The Girl of Ink & Stars

by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

  ‘Isabella?’

  I tried not to blink. ‘For her birthday.’

  ‘How did you get it?’ said Marquez. ‘One of them was wearing it.’

  Governor Adori stood up abruptly. ‘We have to follow them.’

  ‘Sir, we don’t even know where or what they are.’

  ‘They’re cowards. Taking a child—’

  ‘If it was the Banished, we need to stay away from them.’

  ‘They have my daughter.’

  ‘Sir, I don’t think she’s—’ started Marquez.

  Suddenly Adori’s blade was drawn, pressed to Marquez’s neck. I gasped and beside me Pablo took a small step back.

  ‘There’s no body, Marquez. So I suggest you don’t finish that thought.’ He pressed harder. ‘Do I make myself clear?’

  Marquez nodded. Governor Adori swung around. ‘Good. Any more questions?’ Nobody spoke. His eyes were wild. ‘Everyone saddle up.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Pablo hesitantly. ‘They took some of the horses. The cook’s, Gabo’s.’

  ‘Those without horses make your way back. Except the map-boy.’ Adori glanced at me. ‘We need you.’

  I heard him as though from a great height as I put Lupe’s bracelet in my pocket. The locket hung heavy around my neck and I pressed it to my chest through my tunic.

  I could not let calling her ‘rotten’ be the last thing I said to her. I had been wrong about her being a coward. I wanted to tell her she was brave. I wanted to tell her I wished I was as brave.

  The expedition shrank to seven. Those with bloodied clothes discarded them for fresh. The Governor had to lend Marquez a set of his royal-blue trousers and tunic.

  ‘Who shall we call Governor now?’ joked Jorge, the laugh dying in his throat at the look on Adori’s face.

  We saddled the remaining horses. I climbed up behind Pablo, too shy to put my arms around his waist until he made me.

  After twisting to watch the village of bones fade from sight, I pulled my map materials out and continued marking the distance.

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ said Pablo gently. ‘You should rest.’

  I ignored him. I did have to do this. The quill seemed the only solid thing in the world.

  Please, Lupe. Be all right.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  Where would you want to go next, Da? When the ports open again?

  If, Isa! If they opened, I’d want to go to Amrica first, of course, but then India.

  Why?

  India is a place where colour is doubly bright. Pinks that scald your eyes, blues you could drown in.

  That doesn’t sound so good.

  Oh, but it is! The richness, the texture. Just think of the pigment! My maps would be the envy of the world. India is where I would go. Through Afrik, to buy incense to perfume the papyrus bought from Æygpt. You?

  I’d come with you, to India. I’d help you find pigments to make maps beautiful enough for queens.

  But that wasn’t true. I’d wanted to explore Joya, to fill in the blankness at the heart of our island. I’d lied.

  And here I was. I looked around, at the blackly swaying trees and broad sweep of beach, at this place I’d imagined so often, a place that used to feel as distant and magical as India did to Da. But now my body was aching and Lupe’s bracelet was broken in my pocket. At least Da wasn’t here. With his bad leg he would never have been able to cope with the constant riding, or fight the attackers as I had.

  Or, said a quieter voice, perhaps he could have. Perhaps I was being unfair, and too kind to myself. Perhaps it was just selfish, wanting to come on this expedition. Perhaps it was just stupid.

  A shadow fell across my neck again, but I knew I would find no one behind me. Without my braid my head felt softer, less protected. I leant against Pablo’s back.

  It all had to be linked somehow. Not just Cata, but also the animals in the bay, fleeing just like the songbirds. The destroyed village. The attack. The connections must be there, but they were fine as spider’s silk, glinting in the corners of my mind.

  The landscape shifted subtly hour by hour, deserted village by deserted village, and by midday on the third day the world seemed a changed place. The haze had lifted and a fierce sun was beating on our backs. The land had risen up from the sea, so a cliff fell away to our left, and the water was throwing itself against the rocks so hard that flecks of surf hit my cheeks, driven by strong gusts that sacrificed Marquez’s hat to the waves.

  The Governor did not talk except to order us to rest for a few hours each night, all of us sleeping badly with the wind howling through the dark. His shoulders were hunched, and I wondered if he felt the same weight in his chest, the same tightness in his throat.

  The locket hung heavy around my neck, but I would not take it off. I could not, not until we found Lupe. The wind whipped the horses’ manes and my eyes stung and watered, the afternoon sun sending light splintering.

  Soon we were moving through overgrown fields, obviously abandoned. We must be getting close to the next village, which was just as well. The sun was approaching the horizon, and the constant battle with the wind was exhausting for us as well as the horses.

  Fierce sea winds blow from the Frozen Circle around Carment, Da had explained, tracing the path of the wind on Ma’s map. Crops grow horizontal and it is said the Carments are low to the ground too, as if bowed by air currents. We are all of us products of our surroundings. Each of us carries the map of our lives on our skin, in the way we walk, even in the way we grow.

  Finally, the shapes at the top of the slope resolved themselves into buildings. Not the stooped irregularity of ruins, but standing houses.

  ‘Sir,’ I said hesitantly. ‘The tracks loop around.’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Marquez. The tracks skirted the outer boundary of the abandoned Carment village, then turned and in an almost straight line backtracked to the far-off forest, further down the slope.

  I surveyed the smudge of the treeline. Icy fear trickled down my spine. What if they were watching right now?

  ‘I think it’s best if we stop here, sir,’ said Marquez, before the Governor could interrupt. ‘The men are tired, the horses need to rest.’

  ‘What do you suggest?’ snapped Governor Adori.

  ‘It is better to establish that this village is secure, set up a watch, and pursue them at first light,’ said Marquez, lowering his voice so I had to strain to hear. ‘I don’t trust our chances in the forest.’

  The Governor grunted and turned towards me. ‘Boy, where do those tracks go?’

  I checked Ma’s map, though I knew there were hardly any details at the centre. ‘The Marisma, sir.’

  ‘Just the swamp? No villages?’

  ‘None on this map, sir.’

  The Governor punched his hand into a wall, cracking the mud. I flinched, and Pablo took a step towards us, but the Governor only gave out more orders and strode away.

  We tied the horses to a trough. Pablo stayed behind to feed them while we entered the silent village. I travelled at the centre of the group, hand clasped around the blade’s hilt, but nothing happened. No one was there but us.

  Carment was not at all what I expected. It looked a lot like Gromera in reverse, sloping up towards the coast instead of down. Even the doors were hinged on the other side from ours. Some of the houses were as large as Pablo’s and mine put together, with dark wooden doors.

  I wiped a thick matting of cobwebs off one. It was engraved with what appeared to be the dip and swirl of waves. I swept away more, and a large ship complete with sails emerged in profile across the centre of the door. The sails had remnants of red paint flaking off them.

  I stood back and tried to imagine the whole surface painted. The blue of the waves, the red-sailed ship cresting on white foam. It was beautiful.

  My insides ached for home, with its peeling green door and map-covered walls, and Da. I turned away and wiped my eyes quickly as Marquez prowled past.

  I
followed him up the slope against the wind. We passed more carved doors, more houses with walls flaking colours, until we reached a large blank space, like a market square except it was curved, the houses set along its edge like an audience. Beyond was the cliff edge. The sea wind here was colder than anything I had ever felt before, and I pulled Gabo’s jacket tightly around me.

  Far below, the sea whorled and smashed the rocks, rolling unbroken as far I could see. Da said that somewhere far that way was the Frozen Circle, where the bears were white and breath fell in icicles from your nose.

  Directly beneath me was a harbour, protected by a stone wall. Any boats it had once held were gone. A thin line of stone steps was carved into the cliff leading down to the bay and, without thinking, I began to descend, clenching the carved handholds until my knuckles paled. The wind died down as I passed into the shelter of the rock wall, and I jumped the last three steps, landing on fine-grained sand. This sand was as white as Gromera’s was black, shining strangely.

  I pulled off Gabo’s boots and rolled up the bottoms of the trousers. The soles of my feet were a mess of blisters, my heel rubbed raw.

  I looked up at the high, dark stretch of cliff to check I was not being watched, but I doubted anyone had even noticed I was gone. Bracing myself, I stepped forward into the shallows.

  The water stung like tiny insects, but soon my toes numbed. I was in the sea, with the man who had banned it only a cliff face away. I closed my eyes. I wanted to swim, but even though Ma had taught me and Gabo how in a small lake near the mines, I could not quite dare myself to.

  Da said that the Governor banned swimming to stop anyone trying to escape.

  Not that they’d get far. The current is changeable and the ocean is full of terrors – jellyfish, sharks, sea snakes.

  Why are people so sad to leave the ocean then, Da?

  Because it’s also full of wonders, and can take you anywhere in this world.

  ‘Anywhere in this world,’ I whispered to the locket. ‘You hear that Lupe? There are so many places we have to see.’

  A muffled thump came from behind me. Before I could turn, hands seized my waist. I was being lifted.

  I kicked out, twisting and squirming desperately, but the hands were firm and the person was running, carrying me out towards the waves.

  Pablo was laughing. He paused thigh high, holding me out above the water.

  ‘Take a breath!’

  And with that he threw me into the sea.

  My body eased through the slight tug of the current. I had forgotten the sensation of weightlessness, remembered Gabo laughing as he managed to half-lift Ma in the lake. Swimming in the sea was different though. The water was black beneath me, and after a while I scared myself imagining what was below and had to get out.

  Rubbing my arms to get warm, I watched the shadow of Pablo, his head slick as a seal’s. Just as my legs began to dry he waded out and flopped down next to me.

  As if picking up a conversation we had just been having, he said, ‘This is even stranger than I thought it would be.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said, and he snorted.

  ‘Well, yes, you’re the strangest thing out here.’

  ‘You know what I meant.’ I felt my cheeks flushing. ‘Don’t laugh at me!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He sounded sincere. ‘I used to get laughed at, you know. For playing with you and Gabo.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You were younger. They used to call me an idiot.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘The boys my age,’ he said, sifting sand through his fingers. ‘An idiot. Simple.’

  ‘That’s not very inventive.’

  He gave a soft laugh. ‘I suppose not.’

  I shot him a sideways glance. ‘Is that why you stopped? Visiting us?’

  Pablo went very still. ‘I’m sorry. For not coming when Gabo . . .’

  I felt a familiar closing in my throat. ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Are you all right? With all this—’ His hand made a short movement towards mine and then he stopped, resting it on his lap again. ‘You must be scared.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘I am.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Do you think we’ll find her?’ I said. ‘Lupe.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pablo, too swiftly, too certainly, but a rush of warmth pushed through me. I traced the line of the bracelet through my damp pocket.

  ‘Good.’

  We sat watching the stars shine palely in the sky. I tried to read them, not like Masha would, for fate, but how Da would, for direction. The North Star held its place firmly above us, not the brightest in the sky but the stillest. Da always called it an anchor, a tethered star about which the sky turned.

  ‘That piece of wood, the one that glows.’ Pablo’s voice made me jump. ‘It’s from your da’s walking stick, isn’t it?’

  I nodded, guiltily realizing I had almost forgotten the Governor had it.

  ‘Do you really not know where it comes from? Why it glows?’

  ‘Not why it glows. But it’s from a boat. My great-great-grandfather’s boat.’

  ‘A boat? What happened?’

  ‘Pablo,’ I said teasingly, ‘do you want me to tell you a story?’

  ‘No,’ he huffed, lying back on the sand. There was a brief silence. ‘Maybe.’

  I lay next to him, eyes fixed on the North Star. Da’s voice came to me, strong and deep, and I spoke the words the way he would, the way he had so many times on a clear, starred night like this night.

  The wood is all that’s left of Great-Great-Grandfather Riosse’s boat. It was built from a single, special tree, as light, pound for pound, as egret’s bone. But this was not the most remarkable thing. When he scratched at the wood, the bark under his fingernails shone. Once cut, planks revealed the glowing grain. Nails slid easily into the wood without splitting it, and when in place held fast. The boat grew beneath his fingers as simply as if the tree had re-rooted itself and taken on a new form. Two months later Luna Flotante – Floating Moon – was finished, its sides glazed with dragon-tree sap so that when night fell it glowed like a beacon of fire. Fish were so attracted by the light that he could simply scoop them out of the ocean with his hands. But his luck did not last.

  One night, a strong wind took him too far out. A black cloud rolled in from the far-off coast of Afrik and settled above him. Rain came down like whiplashes, and the boat threw itself about on the crashing water, the wind lifting it up. He tied himself to the mast but it broke. He was tossed into the sea as the boat crested an enormous wave but did not plummet back down. Instead, it was pulled above the storm-riven ocean like a bizarre bird. Then he was dragged under. He knew that death was coming; his lungs strained and his head filled with bright stars of pain.

  But he did not die.

  The mast bore him to the surface, and held him there until the storm faded. He was rescued by a passing vessel. The crew were bemused by his gabbling. There had been no storm that they had seen, and certainly no flying boat. The only proof was the mast tied to his body.

  I can see you are doubting me, Isa, but I believe it. I believe that that boat was not of this earth, or, at least, was not of the human earth. It was given to him by the island, and taken back. All things have a cycle, Isabella, a habit of returning the way they came. Seasons, water, lives, perhaps even trees. You don’t always need a map to find your path back. Though often it helps. Now, what do you believe?

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  I hadn’t meant to say the last part out loud, but Pablo did not tease me. His hand slid into mine and squeezed gently, warm and rough.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We should get back.’

  I picked up the satchel and boots, following him barefoot up the steep stone steps. The wind set about howling again. When we reached the top there were lights and voices coming from one of the larger houses, and outside a fire burnt, protected from the wind by the high wall. A lone figure sat there.
/>   Pablo and I started towards the house, but as we neared the open door the Governor’s voice growled from beside the fire.

  ‘Come here, boy.’

  I tensed. He had not looked up from the flames, but was indicating a spot next to him. We started towards him but he clicked his fingers at Pablo. ‘Not you.’

  ‘You all right?’ Pablo murmured.

  ‘Hurry up,’ barked Adori.

  Shivering slightly, I walked over to him. Pablo paused in the doorway, then went inside.

  ‘Been swimming?’ He gripped my wrist, pulling me down before I could answer. ‘Sit.’

  There was a long silence before he spoke again.

  ‘So this is Carment.’ He swigged from his hip flask. I could smell the honey brandy from here, thick and sweet. ‘Home of the Banished, some say. Did you know the girl? The dead one?’

  ‘Her name was Cata.’ I said, careful to keep my voice flat. ‘Yes. She was friends with my sister.’

  ‘Your sister had an interesting assortment of friends,’ remarked the Governor.

  ‘She has, sir.’ My hand gripped the satchel so tight my knuckles clicked. I wished Pablo had not gone inside.

  ‘Tell me, boy, do you enjoy your work?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You are fortunate, then. My father was a governor, too. Of a town in Afrik. I learnt to fight, helping him to defend it. That is all being a governor is, really. Fighting. My father died trying to defend his power.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. I killed him, after all.’

  His words hit like a stone, and I tried not to flinch.

  ‘But I got my punishment. I’m here, aren’t I?’ He laughed hollowly and drank again from the flask. Now, I thought, I should ask him now.

  ‘Why are you here, sir? For punishment?’

  ‘For punishment. For redemption. Failed on that count. Yes. I was sent.’

  Redemption? I didn’t know this word. I hesitated, then asked, ‘Sent by who?’

  He was silent a long time, and I wished was brave enough to look at his face, to judge if I had gone too far.

  ‘You have asked your question,’ he said suddenly. ‘Now I have one for you. Why do you have my daughter’s locket around your neck?’