Gullstruck Island (8 page)

As soon as the Inspectors were out of the room, Hathin’s mouth turned to sand. ‘Arilou’ had passed three tests. That was enough to avoid failing outright . . . but there was still the test of hearing to come, and afterwards they would probably want her to retake the test of sight. If she failed both of them completely, would the Inspectors not become suspicious? Perhaps Prox would think to mention that his luggage had been out of his sight for quarter of an hour? And even if they agreed to give Arilou a complete retest, what then? No, she had to pass all five tests, there was nothing else for it.

Out on the beach she found everybody dragging their boats away from the water, tethering the huts and moving valuables up to the caves in preparation for the coming storm. The sky was still blue, but its colour had deepened and dirtied. As she passed, everybody in turn gave her a quick questioning glance. She gave each a small bitten smile, and saw it reflected in every face.
Things are going well, but not that well.

Skein sat on the edge of the Lacery with his face towards the sea and his eyes turned to look along the beach. Hathin guessed that he was looking at neither of them.

‘He says he has gone to see if a friend has left a note for him.’ At the sound of the familiar voice Hathin turned and found Larsh had scuffed his way to stand beside her. Even she, it would seem, had learned not to notice him. She smiled up at his rapid blink and felt a warm rush of fellowship.

‘And the other Inspector?’ asked Hathin. It had suddenly occurred to her that Prox might be tying up another marker for her to find.

‘Over there, arguing with your sister,’ Larsh pointed. He looked even older by daylight.

Eiven had her hands on her hips while Prox’s face was brick-red with frustration and confusion. Between them lay a boat, its rope in Prox’s hand. Beside them stood Mother Govrie, arms folded, biting at her full lower lip.

Hathin guessed what they must be doing. Stalling. Delaying Prox so that she could carry out her next plan. The plan she did not have.

Minchard Prox did not even notice the pad-footed approach of the snub-faced girl with the nervous mouth. He was too busy sweating under the gaze of the two women.

‘You will be reunited with your boat.’ Feeling outnumbered, he had slipped out of Nundestruth and into Doorsy, hoping to borrow a little stature from the noble cadences as if they were high-heeled boots. ‘I must ride the waters in it for the test, that is all. Do you understand? I am to whisper a word for your Lady Lost to hear, and I must be away from all ears.’

Maddeningly, both women smiled and nodded as he spoke, then erupted as one into a flood of contradictions in Nundestruth.

‘. . . storm rise, my lord, current yank you to cliff-crush . . .’

‘. . . reefteef bite through boat . . .’

‘You see this?’ Prox waved the rope in his fist a little wildly, flecking the faces of the small group with specks of spray. ‘This is a Rope. I Will Tie This End To A Rock. There. That one. Boat stays out there, everything Fine.’ He knew he was being rude, but vexation and the oppression of the pre-storm heat had overwhelmed him and he could not apologize.

Now the young woman told him that the sea noise would be too loud, it would be too difficult to hear his whisper . . .

‘That’s the whole point!’ Prox exploded. ‘No way that anybody can hear from the shore, you understand? No chance of cheating this test.’ The last sentence he pronounced with a certain involuntary venom. Once again, corrosive bubbles of suspicion were swelling in his soul.

Prox had not dared to tell Skein that their luggage had spent a while out of his care. He told himself it wasn’t important, that no locals would have dared blissing-beetle-infested areas or been able to capture the hostile elephant bird. But now that he found himself obstructed by Arilou’s mother and eldest sister, he was starting to feel like one caught in a game against too many opponents.

‘No, thank you!’ Slender fingers were trying to manoeuvre the rope from his fingers. He pulled away and stooped to tie a knot hearing two, no, three silver Lace voices mingle like streams. He felt the women’s retreat like a loosening of the air, a breath of wind.

He took his time with the rope, knotting it with a certain savagery. He had just finished when a small, soft hand fell lightly on his sleeve. A girl was standing next to him, proffering a large and ornate conch, its ridges flecked with turquoise iridescence.

Do these people never stop trying to sell things?

‘No, thank you.’ Firm, but kind. He was pleased with himself.

The shell sagged downwards for a moment, and then the girl was stooping by the canoe and placing the shell inside, lodging it in the wedge of the stern.

‘Wait! What are you . . . ? No, no, no! I don’t want a shell!’

She straightened again, her face uncertain, and he realized how slight she was. Her lips were moving in breathy, almost inaudible Nundestruth. He suddenly imagined her being pushed to the back of the crowd of sellers by taller girls with keener, pealing voices.

‘Oh . . . all right,’ he sighed, overwhelmed by a sudden flood of pity and resignation. He pulled a coin from his pouch and held it out. ‘Will this do?’ She shook her head.

She was pointing at the sun. What? What was she saying? Hot? She was pointing out at the cove. At the shell. What was she doing?

‘Oh . . . never mind. Here.’ He held out two coins, and watched in bafflement and growing frustration as she winced and shook her head again. Prox felt miserably stupid for opening himself up to this ridiculous haggle. ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, take it back! Just take it!’ He reached down and grabbed the shell, but even as he was forcing it roughly back into her hands something cold slopped over his knuckles.

The shell was full of water.

He stared at her, feeling a weirdly intense sense of remorse. She had not been trying to sell him anything at all. While the others had been baiting him like a bear, she had run to fetch him a shell full of water to sustain him while he was in the boat under the heat of the sun.

She had big brown eyes, and a triple crease of worry above them.
Just because they’re smiling, it doesn’t mean they’re happy
. Didn’t she look slightly familiar? Only when he saw the little plaques of quartz gleaming like teardrops in her front teeth did he recognize her. It was Lady Arilou’s translator. A moment before her face might as well have been a featureless smudge for all the notice he had taken of it. How had it happened? How had this girl become invisible to him?

‘Thank you.’ He took back the shell. ‘Here . . . you should take this.’ He held out the coin again, and felt an immense sadness as she shook her head.

Hathin saw Prox’s face fall, but she could not bring herself to take the coin. She was, after all, there to distract him.

She glanced up the beach to where one of the old women sat talking companionably to Skein, her head cocked questioningly, her sun-blackened hands rubbing at her skinny ankles. You could not prevent a Lost’s eye wandering, but you could snag his attention for a while.

And somewhere, even now, Eiven would be clambering over the rocks, her strong brown toes curling to find purchase amid the nooks and cracks. She would be letting herself gently into the water so as not to make a splash, and then striking out beneath the surface, her lean body undulating like an eel . . .

I failed, I failed.
Hathin had not found a way to defeat the fifth test, and now Eiven was having to dare the storm current. While Prox had been busy tying the rope, Hathin had confessed to her mother and sister that she still had no plan for defeating this test. Eiven’s agate-coloured eyes had taken in Hathin’s helpless misery at a glance, turned cold and then slid off her, as if her younger sister’s existence had waned in some indefinable way. When Eiven had raised her head and narrowed her eyes at the sea, Hathin had known in an instant the desperate plan her older sister had in mind.

Silhouetted against the gleaming sea, Prox had looked like nothing but a mountainous obstacle, something to be overcome in order to prevent Eiven being discovered. But then Hathin had seen the reddened sun-weals forming on his neck, and the anguish that puckered his cheeks as he struggled with the rope. And he might be stranded out in the boat under the sweltering heat for an hour as Eiven got into position and the whole village played for time . . . and so Hathin had impulsively run off to fetch him a shell of water.

No, she could not take his coin.

As Prox turned and dragged the canoe to the water, however, Hathin’s mind flew back to Eiven. Oh, to be Lost and follow her! But Hathin had only her mind’s eye, in which she saw Eiven roll and flow with strong, rollicking pre-storm currents amid clouds of stirred sand that glittered like golden sparks as the twists of sunlight caught them. The sound of waves catching on rocks and tearing like silk would fill Eiven’s ears as though they were breaking against her skull. And the world around her would be leaping and bounding, the rocks rising and falling crazily, the reef rearing up and trying to claw at her belly with knobbed fingers . . .

Prox was now paddling his boat out into the cove. A dusk of clouds was forming in the blue sky, like sediment in an old bottle.
The King of Fans is wearing his mourning colours
, thought Hathin with a tickle of superstitious fear as she saw the volcano blackening in the shadow. The King always remembered things backwards, mourning before death or cataclysm rather than afterwards.
Eiven, where are you?

Hathin stared out across the water and deliberately let her eyes unfocus slightly. It did no good lodging your gaze on the waves as they slid and fractured. The trick was to see nothing and everything, until you started to notice any tear and break in the rhythms of the water.

Was that a heel surfacing for a moment? Eiven must be close to the surface, making for the rope rather than the boat, trying to make use of the weaker current nearer the shore. There! Right next to the rope the surface was broken by a brown hand spread like a star. The hand snatched towards the rope and . . .

‘Miss.’ There was no mistaking the soft
s
. Hathin turned to find Skein beside her. ‘Be so good as to fetch your lady sister. We must proceed with the test quickly, before the storm descends.’

Hathin dared not look back towards the water, but she suddenly sensed the atmosphere on the beach sharpen, as if every Lace watching the sea had dragged in a silent breath through their teeth. What had they seen?

‘Miss?’

‘Ye-yes . . . right away.’ Hathin turned from the Inspector, swallowing drily, and snuck another quick look out into the cove. No, there was no sign of a hand grasping the rope. Eiven had missed. She would not be able to haul herself to the boat to hear Prox’s muttered word, then bring it back.

Everywhere on the beach, the Lace were whisker-tense. A few of the villagers were now nonchalantly jogging towards the down-current end of the beach, only speeding up as they passed out of sight and leaped into the labyrinth of rocks that made up the Lacery. Hathin read the signs clearly enough. Eiven had not only missed the rope, she had been dragged off by the current. The villagers would scramble through the Lacery to the water’s edge, looking to pull Eiven from the current’s clutches.

Hathin made herself walk steadily back to the cave, her knees weak. As she clambered up the ladder to its entrance her body was abruptly flooded with a warmth that she barely recognized as anger. Why was Arilou not what she should be? Why did the village have to suffer this voiceless emergency? All of this was done for Arilou, done to keep alive the lie that illuminated her like a halo. Hathin suddenly felt that she could not bear to pull aside the curtain and see Arilou waiting there in self-absorbed serenity on the softest mat, stirring her lips in anticipation of the best honey . . .

Hathin swallowed dryness and pulled aside the curtain. The mat was empty. So were the adjoining caverns. Arilou was not there.

No Arilou wandering aimlessly on the beach. No Arilou in her sunspot on the heart-shaped rock.
Oh please no I’m sorry Arilou I’m sorry I’m sorry
. . . Suddenly, from the rocks at the water’s edge, Hathin heard a sharp human cry, almost lost amid the steel splinters of the gull cries. She slithered and scrambled towards the sound, terrified of finding either Eiven or Arilou wave-tossed and bloodied among the rocks.

Hathin squeezed through a crinkled crevice and found herself facing a strange tug-of-war. Whish stood on one side, her face terrifying without its smile. Facing her, half stooped as though he expected to have to leap on her, was her son Lohan. Each held one of Arilou’s hands. Arilou stood between them, apparently oblivious of the shallow ripples riffling around her feet and the slick slope into the deeper water behind her.

‘An accident saves us!’ Whish hissed. ‘One slip on the rocks, and she will be unable to take the test.’

‘Let go of her hand.’ Lohan’s voice was lower than usual, and very quiet. ‘And go back to the beach.’ His tone was dangerously gentle. His mother released Arilou, and then stared down at her hand as if surprised at it. Letting the loose trail of her turban fall to hide her face, she stalked away.

‘Nobody need know,’ Lohan whispered. He turned to look at Hathin, and she was startled to see the question, the entreaty in his face. ‘The rest of the village, they need not know what my mother tried to do. The rest of the family . . . why should we suffer?’ Hathin flinched from the intensity of the question. ‘I found her, I stopped her, that must count for something . . .’

‘I can’t . . .’ Hathin looked skywards, waterwards, anywhere but into Lohan’s face. She did not want to see him pleading, frightened; she wanted him to be his usual self-composed, mocking self. ‘I can’t think. I . . . I must get Arilou back to the beach.’

Arilou gave her somewhere to look, and so Hathin did not have to glance back at Lohan as she led her sister away.

If Lohan had been a little slower . . . again her mind’s eye showed her a bloodied figure face down in the shallows, dank feathers in the waxed hair . . . she gripped Arilou’s long, golden paw tightly in both of hers. Arilou gave a slight snuffle and Hathin cast a sideways glance at her sister. The corners of Arilou’s mouth drooped, and Hathin wondered whether she had sensed her danger . . . or whether this was a pout of protest at being led around by strange hands.