Lost Acre

by Andrew Caldecott

  If you look harder, the town’s skill-sets emerge as embodied by her twelve Guild Halls, from the Toymakers, with a roof crowded with moving mechanicals, to the Apothecaries, the largest and most austere, hidden away in the poor quarter. There is also the South Tower’s conspicuous observatory at the heart of Rotherweird School.

  Beneath the physicality and talents, what is the spirit of this place? A portcullis guarding each way in, in the north and the south, open at dawn and closed at sunset, an embodiment of the town’s fierce independence and hostility to outsiders. Mobile stalls laden with produce for sale or barter must arrive and leave before these great gates rise and fall, confirming a like suspicion for the valley’s countrysiders. Hats are doffed with a jaunty rather than slavish air to Guild Masters, the Mayor, the Headmaster and the Herald: this is a society based on respect rather than deference. Nobody mumbles into handheld machines: here, horror of horrors, people communicate face to face.

  Enter a house, any house, to discover another absentee: there are no portraits or photographs of the dead, no diaries or letters or memoirs by or about the deceased. This town has banished history. She lives, by law, in the present.

  Houses and streets are lit by gas-lamps fuelled by methane from the marsh. No heads bow over screens, large or small; no antennae or satellite dishes disfigure the roofscape. There is no theatre, for that might encourage satire, irreverence and an eye for history. News is left to the flamboyant Town Crier, an actor-writer who lives in the present and whose doggerel answers to no one. He processes and broadcasts what he sees and hears, colourfully and with a studied neutrality.

  But beneath this easy flow swirl deeper counter-currents and eddies, there to be exploited by anyone with the requisite knowledge and a mind to.

  OUT OF TOWN

  1

  Valourhand Penitent Flash, dark, flash, dark . . . The low dawn sun is filtered by the trees, like an early black and white film. My shame is being recorded for posterity, Valourhand mused, reliving every few steps the sweeping breath of the ice-dragon and Hayman Salt’s brave stand beside the frozen river. She had put him on the shoreline as her chosen decoy, knowing the dragon would be drawn to Salt as a man who had known the mixing-point. Instead, with bow and acid arrow at the ready, she had been overwhelmed by the sheer magnificence of the beast. The brief moment of opportunity had passed, leaving poor Salt to be shivered to pieces. She was guilty of his manslaughter, at best.

  She had opted for exile as due penance – death by boredom in the company of idiots in the wider world – only to reconsider on reaching the Ten-Mile Post on the borders of the Rotherweird Valley. The prospect of Hoy’s prim streets truly nauseated her.

  A vigorous internal debate ensued:

  That’s why exile is a punishment: you give up familiar comforts for the primitive.

  The better punishment would be to go back and fight Wynter to the death.

  But that’s no punishment; it’s what you would have done if Salt had survived.

  Valourhand compromised by retracing her steps to the last bend in the road with an open view of the town. She would stay there until the electoral declaration at mid-afternoon on the Winter Solstice. If nothing untoward occurred, she would leave Rotherweird and never return.

  As she waited, two clouds, anvil-shaped, black as slate, mushroomed into the blue. At three o’clock to the minute, the temperature plummeted, the birds fell silent and the ground shook.

  Omens.

  Wynter had surely come.

  The voice protesting against exile prevailed, but on terms: she would abandon the town, but not the valley. Let adventure find her; she would not seek it out.

  2

  A Historian in Waiting

  In deepening dusk, sitting astride a branch of the great tree by the mixing-point in Lost Acre, Oblong glumly imagined a line of would-be suicides lined up on a bridge parapet, launching into the void one by one as he tried to talk them down. What a failure of advocacy! Pomeny Tighe had swung herself into the mixing-point and disappeared despite his entreaties. Would he ever succeed in a challenge which mattered?

  Wynter’s treatment of Pomeny Tighe had been peculiarly cruel. Centuries earlier, he had secretly configured the stones to reverse time, leaving Tighe to face a slow descent from extreme old age into second childhood, and then tricked her back into the mixing-point at the Winter Solstice with the false promise of a cure. The sphere they had provided for this purpose had disappeared with her in the mixing point. But what had the sphere been designed to do? He had not the faintest idea.

  A growl disturbed his reverie and balance, the latter restored by a fortuitous branch behind his back. A white-furred, wolfish animal with smouldering blue eyes was prowling around the tree. Another joined, then three more arrived at an unhurried trot. Their sniffing had an aggressive quality, which set Oblong to wondering: if they were the hounds and he was the quarry, who was their master?

  But as if of one mind, they raised their snouts and loped off into the dark.

  Relief never lasted in Lost Acre. Minutes later, an avian form swooped past him, head swivelling towards his face, before planing back to the forest below.

  It’s calling the flock, thought Oblong. I’ll be plucked from my branch like an apple.

  He dropped to the ground. Ankles turning on the frozen earth, he ran to the tile.

  *

  An hour later, tramping through the water meadows towards town, arms crossed against the cold and eyes dipped to avoid the freezing sleet, more questions spawned: Who had won the election? Had Wynter made his move? What was lying in wait for Morval Seer?

  These conundrums arrived in a mildly self-important wrapping, for was he not Rotherweird’s only modern historian? It was down to him to unravel, interpret and record.

  IN TOWN

  1

  The Winter Solstice

  Bill Ferdy cleared, washed and shelved an array of glasses in The Journeyman’s Gist before sweeping the floor; menial tasks which summoned memories of his youth, but for one unique feature: on the fireside blackboard, game scores had been supplanted by as-yet-unresolved electoral bets. May the result not reflect the final odds, he prayed:

  Snorkel 1/2

  Strimmer1/1

  Roc2/1

  Beads of sleet scurried past. Ferdy pitied the infirm and the young, dragged to the Island Field by the Popular Choice Regulations to hear the outcome of the election, leaving him, a countrysider, as the lone presence in town.

  When beer and conversation flowed, time flew; in their absence it positively crawled. 2.56, 2.57, 2.58 . . .

  As the minute hand on the mantelpiece clock finally achieved the vertical and Ferdy’s prayer ended with a plea for communal good sense, ill omens struck, one for each chime.

  A violent tremor set windows rattling and Ferdy’s feet and glasses dancing.

  Dust, a swirling orange, billowed down from the higher ground of Market Square.

  Slates cracked and shattered from a fusillade of ballot-balls, which bounced off roofs into the cobbled streets. Democracy had spectacularly imploded.

  Then came silence.

  *

  On the Island Field beyond the South Bridge, the bets on Ferdy’s blackboard had been voided by an act of God. The Thingamajig, Rotherweird’s aerial ballot box, had shattered at the climax of its automated count, her cargo of stone ballot-balls energised by unseen forces seconds before the earthquake.

  ‘Citizens of Rotherweird, we are checking it’s safe to return. Thereafter a curfew will be imposed for the public good.’

  Estella Scry’s amplified voice, backed up by the electricity arcing between the Apothecaries’ conductor-sticks, held sway over a crowd in shock. She had catered for electoral success or defeat, but not for a spoiled vote, an apocalyptic storm, earth tremors and whatever transformation lay beneath the pall of dust enveloping the town. But there was no time to reflect. She must act.

  She passed a list of three names to Gurney Thomes, who read t
hem slowly out loud. ‘Sidney Snorkel, Mr Gorhambury and Orelia Roc.’

  ‘Just so. Take them to the prison on suspicion of sabotage.’

  Thomes bridled, both at so lowly a task and her peremptory tone. ‘I am Master of the Apothecaries, Miss Scry.’

  ‘You decide who stays free is the message – or would you rather they were in awe of Hengest Strimmer?’

  Touché.

  Strimmer overheard, but did not mind. He enjoyed watching inadequate people shift to and fro like leaderless lemmings. With a failed election and his two rivals under arrest, a vacuum remained to be filled. Scry had promised him power and he believed her.

  ‘Roc is missing,’ said Thomes.

  A senior Apothecary, Sister Prudence, tall, hair in a bun, serene in her severity, stepped forward, not waiting to be asked, and announced, ‘Orelia Roc broke the cordon and headed upriver with the PE teacher. He’s an imbecile, but she’s not, which makes it a surprising decision in the circumstances.’

  Thomes could only agree. ‘How upriver?’ he asked, looking at the ice, which had been transformed by the quake into a scumble of moving crevasses and cliffs.

  ‘They had skates.’

  ‘Check for bodies,’ said Scry. ‘Give Master Thomes and me a ten-minute start, then let them back to their homes – and keep them there.’

  Snorkel belatedly found his voice. ‘This is outrageous. I’m a former head of state, a candidate, a public servant – and I was winning the vote—’

  Sister Prudence raised a stick to his face. ‘You’re a corrupt little man with no future, but as you enjoy the sensation of power . . .’

  Her stick crackled and the former Mayor subsided into a scowling grimace. Beside him, Gorhambury, immaculate in suit and tie, stood pale and immobile. He could not fault his pending incarceration. Ballot boxes should not explode, and as Town Clerk, he was responsible for due electoral process. The Apothecaries had no business meddling, but Rotherweird’s constitution had frozen in the headlights of novelty. In his head he hunted through a forest of Regulations for precedent without finding any. The town had lurched off-piste, without sign or marker.

  The two anvil clouds had separated like exhausted boxers and the snow was easing back to sleet. Even in the gloom, the town’s roofscape had subtly changed.

  As Thomes led his prisoners over the bridge, Scry said, ‘You come with me, Mr Strimmer.’

  ‘The only way to deal with bullies is counter-attack,’ Miss Trimble whispered to Boris as they watched, powerless.

  ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man,’ replied Boris mysteriously.

  *

  Remorse knifed Godfery Fanguin as the captives were led away. So many failures. He should have foreseen the ice-dragon and Valourhand’s fatal attempt at interception, and he should not have allowed his feud with Snorkel to bring about this disastrous election. Worst of all, he should have kept a firm eye on Orelia.

  And he felt excluded. Whatever intelligence had driven Orelia and Jones upriver, they had not shared it with him; nor could he seek solace with other friends, for Valourhand, Finch, Everthorne and Oblong were all inexplicably missing.

  Disenchanted with humankind (including himself), he retreated into scientific curiosity. Had Bolitho’s sphere moved the observatory to Lost Acre? What had Bole’s sphere done to Rotherweird? And what of Wynter?

  He turned to his wife. ‘Bomber, why don’t you head home while I do a recce?’

  ‘There’s a curfew.’

  ‘Bugger curfews. Something’s afoot up there.’

  ‘And something’s afoot down here. Housekeeping isn’t bailing you out a second time.’

  Fanguin squinted at his wife in puzzled dismay.

  ‘And don’t give me that “liberal-in-shock” look,’ she continued. ‘Snorkel knew he was losing and sabotaged the vote. Gorhambury did nothing to stop him. And your Miss Roc abandoned us in our hour of need. Somebody had to take over.’

  Looking around him, Fanguin realised she was not alone in that view.

  With the prisoners, Scry and Strimmer gone, the remaining Apothecaries at last moved aside and the town drew in her citizens.

  Just beyond the school, Fanguin stopped at the mouth of a narrow alley. ‘I won’t be long,’ he said brusquely to Bomber.

  ‘Don’t be,’ she replied, equally curt, as Fanguin trotted out of sight.

  Orange dust hung in the lingering dampness, but halfway up the alley the domestic gas supply revived. Windows of all shapes and sizes flickered into life. Hands poked through, checking panes for damage, closing shutters, pulling curtains.

  There’ll be work for the roofers, but otherwise no serious harm, Fanguin concluded.

  A failsafe mechanism had kept the streetlamps dark, so accentuating the two green-orange sparks which were dancing towards him from the direction of Market Square. Close to, they resolved into outlandish insects with luminous thoraxes and gauzy wings hooked at the apex. They darted, hovered, then darted again, now a few feet above his head.

  Finding their way back to Lost Acre, mused Fanguin as they disappeared down a culvert.

  He hurried on to Market Square, where he was greeted by a familiar figure.

  ‘Good evening, Doctor Fanguin.’ Scry sounded friendly, if on edge.

  Behind her, in the space between Doom’s Tocsin and the Town Hall, soared an unfamiliar windowless and doorless tower festooned in carvings.

  ‘It’s real,’ she added as he examined it. ‘Old oak through and through.’ She sounded business-like, but nonplussed. ‘Whoever built it used block, pulleys and vacuum technology. There’s no rock or debris. The old surface has vanished, cobbles and all. But I need help with the vegetation.’ On the rim of the hole clumps of spear-shaped grass lay flat. ‘Best not with your finger,’ she added as Fanguin leaned in.

  He swayed backwards as if he had never intended anything else, picked up one of the many sticks brought down by the storm and poked gingerly. Two stems whipped up; cactus-like spikes thrust and retracted.

  ‘See in the middle?’ said Fanguin. ‘They’re trying to flower. Trees and plants throw seed when distressed.’

  ‘And when feeling the urge to colonise,’ added Scry as she turned to a nearby Apothecary. ‘Show him your catch.’ The Apothecary uncapped his hands. The luminous insect changed colour, acquiring veins the hue of the hand which held it. ‘It has tiny toes too. Forget the curfew, Doctor Fanguin. Find what you can and report to the Apothecaries in the morning.’ Despite the air of command, her fingers pleated the sides of her coat; she was still on edge. ‘If you returned to Rotherweird after a long absence, where would you go?’

  That at least was a no-brainer. ‘The Journeyman’s Gist, where else?’ he replied.

  She hurried off into the darkness. A man, loitering nearby, followed her: Strimmer, the only candidate still in circulation.

  Fanguin’s remorse returned. Was Orelia still alive? With the gates closed, he could do nothing for her now, so he hurried home to gather the tools of his trade, head abuzz with puzzles. Who had built the tower, for whom? Why was Scry, a suspected Eleusian, so taken by surprise? He had half an explanation: if she had killed Bole’s familiar, as they believed, she must be hostile to Bole, and so hardly privy to his grand stratagem. The web of conspiracy had a complexity which offered a smidgen of hope. They might be scattered, but the enemy was divided.

  A note from Bomber awaited him:

  Unexpected job, flan in oven. B.

  Fanguin turned up the gas-lamp and surveyed their front hall. Exposed threads disfigured the rug’s pleasing pattern; two banisters, despite his best attention, hung loose, peppered with nail-holes; and his amateur repainting of the walls had created a displeasing stripy effect: all symptoms of the slow slide from comfort to straitened circumstances.

  Doctor Fanguin, Scry had said, two times. A mistake, or a promise of better times to come? Conjoined, those two words sounded so very right.

  He gathered a specimen box, a tube-light, a pair of forceps and
a magnifying glass before heading back to the tower and its narrow surrounding ring of Lost Acre’s soil.

  2

  First Orders

  The mantelpiece clock, still an inch off-centre, chimed dusk into evening. Bill Ferdy unlocked the great door to find the street empty but for an Apothecary who growled, ‘Get back! Haven’t you heard? There’s a curfew.’

  He returned inside, pulled himself a pint, a rare treat for a landlord, and sat in the Senex, a tall oak-backed chair next to the fire reserved by tradition for the oldest customer.

  Ten minutes later the Apothecary outside repeated his order.

  ‘I’ve nowhere to get back to,’ replied a male voice, all calmness and authority.

  After a pause, the Apothecary sounded less assertive. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘That’s tomorrow’s tale – but you may consider yourself privileged to be the first to address me.’

  The pub’s door opened to admit an ascetic-looking middle-aged man, gaunt in body and face. He neither walked nor shuffled but glided in, holding his stick clear of the floor. Under a dark tan cloak, the stranger wore velvet knickerbockers and a thick jersey with no shirt.

  ‘Your tavern is empty and it’s twenty-five past six,’ he exclaimed. ‘When did that last happen?’

  ‘The day of my father’s death,’ replied Ferdy truthfully.

  The man appeared pleased with the answer. ‘And I dare say the inn was packed with revelry on the day of your birth?’

  ‘I imagine it was.’

  ‘A witness to birth and death: that’s how worthwhile places are. I’ve endured a long journey – I’ll have the same as you, please.’