Firesong (26 page)

‘Great stars!’ shouted the big voice from the cabin. ‘Don’t you know how to listen? Is the boy deaf as well as stupid?’

‘What am I to hear?’

‘Hear? Did I say hear? Did anyone say hear? You’re not to hear, you’re to listen! You know what that means? It means you don’t know what sound is out there. It means you’re waiting for the sound to come to you. Did you
hear
that? Yes? Nod your head if you understand a single word I’m saying. Good. Maybe we’re getting somewhere at last.’

Mist crept forward to peep through the cabin window, curious to know what the boy was being commanded to listen to. There, gathered round the cabin table, were Albard and Bowman, Jumper and Kestrel; and in the middle of the table, the object of all their attention, making no sound that the cat could discern, was a spoon.

‘The spoon has its own song,’ said Albard, not so angrily now, seeing the attentive expression on Bowman’s face. ‘Listen to its song.’

Bowman nodded, his eyes on the spoon.

‘Now tune your song to the spoon’s song.’

Bowman nodded again. Kestrel, in direct contact with her brother’s mind, felt a series of soft vibrations run through him.

‘Now lift the spoon.’

Bowman eased the spoon off the table, using only the grip of his mind. He had done this sort of thing before. This was nothing new.

The spoon hovered in the air.

‘Now,’ said Albard, ‘scoop a hole in the table with the spoon.’

Bowman wrinkled his brow in perplexity. The spoon dropped to the table with a clatter.

‘You have a problem with that?’

‘The spoon’s too blunt to cut into the table.’

‘But not too blunt to cut into custard.’

‘Not too blunt to cut into custard. Too blunt to cut into wood.’

‘Then don’t cut into wood. Cut into custard.’

Bowman thought about this in silence for a long moment. Then without asking further questions, he turned his attention from the spoon to the table. Albard saw this, and met Jumper’s eyes. Bowman began to listen to the table as he had listened to the spoon. It sounded deeper, duller; more – wooden.

Kestrel, watching, followed her brother’s every thought. She felt the intensity of his attention to that simple timber surface. She heard the low thudding sound that it made in his mind, and probed it curiously along with him. She felt too the undercurrent of frustration in him, that he was asked to do something he didn’t yet understand. Kestrel herself felt no such frustration: she was no more than an onlooker. Perhaps for this reason it was she, not Bowman, who all at once found herself tumbling, as into a woodland pool, into the ripple-grained surface of the table.

It was the oddest feeling. One moment she was looking at the table, the next moment it was all around her, and fluid, and warm. It even had its own distinctive smell, of resin and damp cloth. She knew at once that she could form this substance into any shape she wanted, she could puddle it like clay or pour it like water. The table, while still standing before her, had opened itself up to her and allowed her to find the true matter out of which it was made, matter that was only provisionally assembled in the form of a table.

Why, she thought to herself, it could just as easily be custard.

She looked up, eyes bright and laughing, and her gaze fell on an old calendar pinned to the cabin wall. With a soft hissing sound, the out-of-date numbers began to uncurl and form into wiggly lines on the faded paper. Then with a little
pop!
they burst into sparkly dust, and shivered into the air, leaving the paper blank on the wall.

Kestrel blinked, to force her eyes back into focus. But her eyes were seeing clearly: more clearly, more penetratingly than ever in her life. For now the cabin wall was disintegrating. With a curious gurgling sound that surely the others could hear, though they showed no sign, the planks were turning spongy, and separating into clumps of what looked like moss, and dropping down in floppy heaps onto the floor. Only, the floor wasn’t there. Beneath her feet was water: water that gleamed and rippled, and yet was firm underfoot, and entirely translucent, for looking down, looking through the vanished bottom of the barge into the shining river below, she saw the sky – or at least, bright space – and then she realised this wasn’t water at all below her, it was air – and not even air, but light –

Dizzy, frightened, she looked up, and the cabin, her brother, Albard, Jumper, all were gone. She was alone in a world of light. She held out her hand before her, and saw – nothing. She looked down at her own body and saw – nothing. She too had gone. There was only this infinity of humming light – and herself, knowing it.

So I can’t be gone. I must still be here.

But where?

Everywhere
, came the answer.
I’m everywhere. I’ve joined everything.

With that, she stopped being afraid, and at once she was filled with joy. She understood it now. Somehow she had slipped between the walls that hold things apart from each other to enter that place where they all join up. She remembered the winter dawn, when she had stood in the dazzling light of the sun streaming through the trees and had said to herself,
Why should it ever end?
Here, now, lost in a greater light, she knew there was no end, no boundaries, no this and that, no then and now. All existence had melted, including the thing she had once known as her own body –

And my mind? My self? Is that melted away?

That was scary. She shied away from the thought, and with a lurch, found she was back in the cabin, and there was Bowman wrinkling his brow, trying to turn the table into custard.

It’s easy, Bo. Like this.

She let him into her mind. He felt the light-heartedness in her, and relaxed his fierce attention. She looked with him, her eyes guiding his, at the surface of the table, and she caught its song, her ears guiding his, and spoke to him in their mind, telling him what to do.

It’s hard because it’s shivering so fast. Slow it down, and it’ll go softer.

After she’d said this she wondered how she knew it. It was something to do with the way everything had disappeared, and yet had still been there. In that brief moment, she was sure things had moved slowly, had hardly moved at all.

Bowman tried to do as she said. He felt the shivering of the table quite clearly, but he didn’t see how he could slow it down. It struck him as he listened to it that its sound was quite different to his own sound, which was sweeter and softer. Perhaps if he were to surround the table sound with his own sound, that would slow it down. So he focused his attention on the weave of sound that Albard had taught him to know as his own song, and started to fold it like a blanket around the table. Then he thought of custard.

Albard saw and approved. He had not detected Kestrel’s silent intervention. He saw only that the boy, unguided, was taking control of the solid matter before him and making it serve his will.

For a few moments, nothing happened. Bowman felt foolish, staring at a table and thinking of custard. But then he felt Kestrel give him a nudge, and he tipped over, and with a quick gulp of his mind the table’s buzz was overcome, was swallowed, by his own vibrations. The table was still there before him. But all its essential qualities were now inside him, and under his control.

Custard. He thought smooth. He thought creamy. A spoon could dip into that without any difficulty.

He raised the spoon, still using only his mind, and scooped up a brimming spoonful of table. It came up like custard. The surface of the table flowed back to smooth out the scoop, just as a thick creamy custard would, but what he had now in the spoon was table: that is, it was wood.

‘Good boy!’ bellowed Albard. ‘Now he’s getting it!’

The spoon dropped to the table. The piece of wood rolled out, and lay there rocking back and forth on its curved underside.

‘You see that, blob?’ said Albard. ‘This boy of mine is going to be alright.’

Bowman gazed at the fragment of wood. He felt a surge of power swell up within him. He turned his attention onto the spoon, and thought: water. The spoon dissolved into a silver puddle.

‘Who’s a clever boy?’ crooned Albard. ‘Who’s not a cloth-eared cretin after all? Oh, blob! If I was younger, and there was any room to move in this floating coffin, I’d dance a jig!’

Jumper looked at Bowman and smiled. Then his eyes turned quietly to Kestrel, and became thoughtful.

‘Great stars!’ shouted Albard. ‘Storm down below!’

He pounded up onto deck, and there he stood, legs planted wide apart, and urinated violently over the side into the river.

‘Aah!’ he cried as his bladder emptied. ‘Storm passing. Fair winds. Clear skies.’

The others followed him up onto deck. The barge was running on the fast-flowing currents, some ten yards from the bank.

‘You, blob! Make yourself useful! Tie us to the riverbank.’

Jumper obediently picked up one end of the mooring rope and stepped over the side of the barge, and onto the riverbank. He did this with so obliging a manner that only Mist, watching from his hiding place, noticed that he walked over the water itself.

‘So, boy!’ boomed Albard. ‘Time you learned to fly!’

Mist heard this with a surge of excitement. Now at last his long-cherished dream would come true. Ever since he had seen the hermit Dogface, his former companion, fly down from his tree, he had dreamed of being a flying cat. Since then he had learned to fly short distances, given a good run up before take off. But real flying, he knew, required no run up. Dogface hadn’t run anywhere, ever. He had just floated into the air.

Jumper drew the barge to the riverbank and moored it to a tree. An inch or so of snow covered the ground, and lay on the branches of the tall pine trees that grew almost to the river’s side. The spot chosen by Jumper for mooring the barge was evidently a well-used river crossing point, for here the encroaching forest stood back a little way, forming a semi-circular glade; and on the further side of the glade, a cart-track wound away southwards through the trees.

Albard heaved his great body off the barge, and stamped about over the snow investigating the open space. Bowman and Kestrel followed. Mist remained in hiding on the barge. The cat had no reason to hide, other than a general liking for secrecy; and here, surely, secrets were about to be revealed. Mist valued information more highly when he supposed he was not meant to be learning it.

Albard discovered that the clearing was man-made, and that here and there the woodsmen who had felled the trees had left stumps standing in the snowy ground. He fixed upon one such stump, that stood some two feet high, and had been sawn clean across, like a stool.

‘Stand on this, boy.’

Bowman stepped up onto the tree stump and stood there.

‘You want me to fly from here?’ he asked.

‘Fly? How can you fly? Have you got wings?’

‘But I thought you said –’

‘No wings, can’t fly. Not hard to grasp.’

‘No.’

‘Right, then. No more talk of flying. All I want you to do is take one step off the stump towards me. One step, no more. Got that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Off you go.’

Bowman took one step off the stump, and landed on the snowy ground.

‘No, no, no!’ bellowed Albard. ‘Did I say fall off? No, I did not! I said take one step!’

‘How am I to stop myself falling?’

‘The same way you stop yourself from sitting down. You choose not to. You fall because you expect to fall. Now get back on that stump, take one step, and wait there.’

‘How?’

‘How? HOW?’ Albard went red and stamped his feet. ‘NEVER ASK HOW! How doesn’t matter! How doesn’t exist! How is for fools and slaves! How makes everything small! You’re greater than how, you don’t care how, if you will it, the how must follow! You’re to be a master! A master knows nothing of how!’

After this sudden tirade, a silence fell over the snowy glade. Albard shook himself, and stared crossly at Jumper, who was looking at him with a smile.

‘Well? What’s so funny?’

‘Nothing,’ said Jumper. ‘You’re right, of course.’

‘No, he’s not,’ said Kestrel. ‘He’s talking nonsense. It has nothing to do with masters and slaves.’

Albard stared at her in angry surprise.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded, as if he had never seen her before. ‘Who cares what you think?’

‘My brother does. So does he.’ A nod at Jumper.

‘No they don’t. Go away. Obliterate yourself.’

‘I will not.’

‘Burn the brat!’

‘You can’t burn anyone any more.’

‘I can break your scraggy little neck.’

He made a move as if to take hold of her. She showed no fear.

‘Go on, then.’

‘I warn you –’

Kestrel took hold of his out-reached hand and bent it back with ease. He was very weak.

‘Ow! That hurts!’

Tears of pain and humiliation sprang into his eyes.

‘She hurt me! It’s not fair!’ he cried. ‘This is all your fault!’ He glowered through his tears at Jumper. ‘Why didn’t you leave me to die?’

‘Your time will come,’ said Jumper gently. ‘But first you must pass on your skills to the boy. Make him strong in your place.’

‘Yes,’ said Albard, cheering up, ‘yes, he’s young, he can be strong for me.’ He turned to Bowman. ‘When I’ve made you strong, you’ll crush this worm-child for me, won’t you? Out of respect for your teacher.’

‘She’s my sister,’ said Bowman.

‘Is she?’ Albard seemed surprised. ‘Ah, well. Be a good boy, attend to what I tell you, and you’ll rule the world. Then I shall go in peace.’

‘I don’t want to rule the world. I just want to be a Singer.’

‘Hey ho. Things come as they will. I wanted to play the violin to applauding crowds, but here I am, all skin and bone, with barely strength left to draw breath. Sun and moon! I made such music once! But you took my fiddle from me, boy – no, not you, what did you know? Sirene took it from me. Sirene never forgets, and never forgives.’

He dabbed at his eyes, took a deep breath, and returned to the task in hand.

‘Back on the stump. Take one step. Choose not to fall.’