Riverkeep (11 page)

“It's not pleasant,” said Wull reluctantly. “But it needs to be done. Who else is goin' to look for these poor souls?”

“Nobody, I s'pose,” said Mix. She thought for a moment. “That's a fine thing to do.”

“Sure, real fine,” said Wull.

And wasn't it fine waiting upstairs for the corpses to be taken away before I could eat my supper?
he thought.

“You ever hear of a thing called normative determined?” said Tillinghast.

Wull sighed. “Can't say I have.”

“You don't know what it is?”

“Not if I've not heard of it,” said Wull, in the stoic voice he used on Mrs. Wurth.

“What about you, little miss?”

“Nope,” said Mix.

“'S about your name an' what it means—tells you 'bout what kind o' person you's goin' to be. What's Wulliam mean?”

“‘Protector,' somethin' like that,” said Wull. “Guardian.”

“Oh,” said Tillinghast, making circles with his fingers in the water. “Makes sense. What 'bout Mix?”

“It's not complicated,” said Mix. “It means ‘mix,' as in to mix things together.”

“What's Tillinghast mean?” said Wull.

“I's got no idea,” said Tillinghast.

“Why've you got blue skin?” said Mix.

“I don't know. 'S jus' the color it is.”

“Never seen a person with blue skin before,” said Mix, “an' I used to live in the city. You get all sorts there. Once, we saw one o' the pierced folk with all spines in their face. 'Nother time we saw a woman with a feurhund on a leash. A feurhund, mossy as you like, all dribblin'. So how come your skin's blue?”

“It's jus' my skin,” said Tillinghast, puffing his cheeks. “I din't choose it 'cause it matched my eyes or anythin'.”

“What color eyes you got?”

“Brown. No, green. Why you askin' me so many questions?”

Mix shrugged. “I like askin' questions,” she said. “It passes the time and hell's bells, this is right borin'.”

“Is you bein' funny? 'Cause I doesn't think . . . Ow! You little bugger!”

Tillinghast swiped at the wet, vanishing head of a gray seula, rocking the bäta as he lunged.

“I told you,” said Wull. “Take your fingers off, they will. They've got some teeth.”

“He's got nothin' from me. Gave my knuckle a right tug, though,” muttered Tillinghast, rubbing his fist. “Why they followin' the boat?”

“It's called a bäta, an' it's 'cause we give them scraps an' fish heads an' such in winter.”

“But your pap's eatin' those. You can't be givin' away your old man's dinner to swimmin' vermin.”

The clouds parted above them, bathing the spindly bankside thickets in moonlight. In its bright glow the Danék's blackness became a strip of rippling silver.

“Moon's still high enough,” said Wull. “There's a few hours till the ursas wake up, but we'd best find someplace we c'n settle for the night.”

Tillinghast wrinkled his nose. “Why?” he said. “If we keep rowin', we'll be through the city by mornin'. I thought you was in a hurry?”

Wull glanced at Pappa, sleeping again.

“I am,” he said, “but that's not enough to give me cause for suicide. Once the ursas are out, I want to be somewhere with stone at my back an' fire at my front.”

“I had fire at my front once,” said Tillinghast. “Flared up after I lay with a farm girl in Nantwick—doctor told me to dip my lad in yogurt for a week—cleared it right up.”

Mix laughed.

Wull stared blankly at him. “What?” he said.

“Never mind,” said Tillinghast, grinning and shifting his hessian sack with his heels. “Nothin' for you to worry about. But why's we got to stop?”

“Because otherwise ursas will find us an' rip us apart, that's why,” said Wull.

“Ursas 'in't so tough,” said Tillinghast.

“That's not even a little bit true,” said Mix.

“Ursas aren't tough?” said Wull. “Then why are there bars an' cages on every buildin' an' jetty the whole length o' this river? Explain that to me.” He quickened his stroke and began to scan the banks with subconscious darting glances.

“People are scared of 'em. I dun't know why—I ran into a few of 'em when I went after the Mad Monk o' Boddin. That Holy island's teemin' wi' them.”

“Well, let me tell you why people're scared o' them,” said Wull. “Pappa an' me have found plenty folks what've come to
grief on an ursa's claws, an' there 'in't much left of 'em to find. One man we found was broken in half across his middle with little pulls on his skin, like torn parchment. His guts'd been taken from inside him, the way you an' I would eat a whelk.”

“
You
might eat a whelk. . . .” said Tillinghast.

Wull ignored him.

“Other time we foun' bits o' six people scattered like seeds across a fair distance beside a fallen tree. There were fingernails studded into the bark: seems the ursa wanted to get at them so badly, it jus' ripped the tree down. This wasn't a sapling neither; it was a big thick oak. Sometimes we find ursa footprints when we're out in the mornin', an' there's been the odd time you c'n see they were runnin' after somethin'—that means paw prints four times the size o' your head with a stride five times the length o' you—”

“Oh, I's plenty long, be assured about—”

“
They c'n swim faster
than ten men can row, so it does us no good to stay out here an' watch 'em. If we want to get through tonight, we need to find a cave, light a bloody big fire, an' pray to all the gods we know there's somethin' else for 'em to hunt, because if they're hungry enough they'll come right through the fire an' even your smart mouth won't stop them tearin' you apart.”

The bäta carried on in silence. Pappa began snoring, his mouth glistening with scales.

“You enjoyed that, din't you?” said Tillinghast eventually, yawning.

“I made my point,” said Wull.

“It was good,” said Mix, grinning at him. “I liked the bit about the smart mouth.”

Tillinghast narrowed his eyes at her. “An' well made your point was, but I doesn't fancy stoppin' jus' yet. Let's stay on as long as we can.”

“So you mean you're wanting a turn at the oars. . . .” Wull started.

Tillinghast held up a hand. “I's a payin' customer. You doesn't see coach passengers gettin' out an' givin' the horses a break now, does you?”

Wull gritted his teeth. “I am
not
a horse, an' you shouldn't—”

“Oh, untwist your kecks, I was kiddin'. But I ain't rowin'. The whole point o' me bein' here is to get a rest, so I's not goin' to find restfulness by heavin' away at a dirty big corpse boat for hours on end. I've been watchin' you doin' it an' it looks exhaustin'.”

“I was
supposed
to be on my own—not burdened by strangers,” said Wull. “An' if I was, I could set my own schedule an' stop when I pleased—now my boat's gettin' pulled down by the weight of a stowaway and an unwelcome lump who's forced his way on here by flashin' some money!”

“Bought his way on here, if you please,” said Tillinghast. “Fine, fine, fine. Let's jus' bank it now an' see what we can get.”

Wull turned the bäta on a planted blade and guided it to the southern shore.

“I still think
stowaway
's harsh,” muttered Mix. “I was invited, eventually.”

Pappa roused, his eyes rolling as he took stock of his surroundings. “Where?” he said.

“We're goin' to find somewhere to spend the night, an' the Drebin Woods is as good as anywhere now that we're past the village,” said Wull.

“It that speaks,” said Pappa. “What's ursas?”

Tillinghast shot a glance at Wull, who felt his face flush.

“Ursas are dangerous animals. They're very strong. You told me all about them, remember?” said Wull. “You said they would always win, so I wasn't to be out past the dippin' moon.”

“Never did,” said Pappa.

“Set it down there, Master Keep,” said Tillinghast.

“Never did,” said Pappa again.

“All right,” said Wull, “all right.”

He followed Tillinghast's hand and drove the bäta's nose into the pebbled bank under a low-slung branch. Panes of ice split apart under the hull, and Tillinghast hopped overboard, pulling the boat farther onto the ground with
a force that rocked Wull's balance and sent Mix tumbling from the prow.

“Hey!” she said, crashing onto the bottom boards.

Wull helped her up and looked at Tillinghast.

“That's some strength you've got to pull a weight like that,” he said warily.

“You've no idea,” said Tillinghast, grinning. He produced a small lantern, lit the wick with a match struck on the bäta's edge, and set off into the forest.

From a frost-crusted bank shrub ten yards away, mud-splattered eyes watched. Quick words were whispered and a dry, bite-scarred tongue ran over lips pitted by the sores of winter. The shrub trembled with excitement.

“Stand up, Pappa,” said Wull. He looked at the woods around them, new and fierce with their hidden spaces, the skeletal spikes of broken trunks poking through the ground like shattered bone. “I don't know about this spot,” he called to Tillinghast. “It seems too hemmed in. Maybe we should row farther downriver.”

Tillinghast, already too distant to hear, carried on walking, his lantern casting stark light onto the trunks that shot up around him.

“Come on, Paps,” said Mix, reaching for Pappa's other elbow.

“No! Leave in boat!” said Pappa.

“We can't,” said Wull. “We said we'd camp here for the—”

He stood still, balanced Pappa's weight on the gunwale, and looked at the water, still moving, ever flowing toward the wider sea.

“Wull?” said Mix.

Wull stood still.

We could leave now,
he thought,
row off and leave the big lump to walk the woods and force himself on someone else.

But the idea was impossible. Leaving Tillinghast behind would just mean banking with only Mix for company elsewhere, and Wull had the feeling that the blue-skinned giant would find them anyway. Besides, he realized as his cut cheek flashed again with pain, he needed Tillinghast's money.

“There we go,” he said, helping Pappa land ungainly on the frozen bank.

“Untie the arms!” said Pappa.

“I can't,” said Wull.

“Even for a bit?” said Mix. “I'll help you keep an eye on him.”

“No, he can't be trusted. He doesn't even know what he might do.”

“Do know,” said Pappa darkly.

“Well, that's something, at least,” said Wull. Checking that the moon was still above the tree line, he reached into the bäta, lifted the blankets and the bucket of fish heads, and, with Mix on Pappa's other side, held the frail body by the crook of the arm. Slowly, they followed the light of
Tillinghast's lantern, finding space for their feet and for Pappa's in the root-tangled mesh of the forest floor.

As they disappeared, the muddied eyes vanished in a whispering scuttle of leaves, the tramping feet obscured by Wull's gentle words of encouragement.

Flow on, sweet Danék, through glens green an' deep,

Disturb not the slumbering dead in thy keep;

Thy waters flow fast, quick, and strong evermore,

An' gold-crested boat swell break white on thy shore.

Flow on, sweet Danék, 'neath threat'ning black cloud,

Disturb not the soft-padding ursas aloud;

Thy silent crew's secrets be e'er unclaimed,

An' pray let thy treach'rous current be tamed.

Flow on, sweet Danék, away to the west,

Disturb not the pure, precious life in thy chest;

We pray that thy larder be e'er overfilled,

An' beats o' thy great heart will ne'er be stilled.

—Traditional riverfolk song

A hundred feet below the slow-sinking wreckage of its latest victim, the mormorach spun. Its movements were erratic and painful; days of bountiful food had built a tight pressure
inside it like a pot at the boil. Its skin was stretched. Fissures began to appear on its flanks, widening to slashes that ran its length and split to reveal new, tender flesh beneath.

It roared in pain.

In the midst of drowned sailors and wrapped in the ghosts of sails, it writhed, tearing against itself, champing its jaws and screaming, its gray-green skin flaking away. It wriggled harder, peeling the skin away until in a moment of stretching freedom, it was renewed, the shreds of its old self washed away in the dawn tide, the empty skin twirling like silken weed into the depths.

Half again as large and happily coiled with new muscle, the mormorach roared. It thundered gracefully through the deep trenches of the bay, tearing at kelp and rock, its new body—all but invisible in the dark water—hardening again to a rough husk, ready for its next contact with the shapes above.

Remedie trod carefully, placing her feet between knuckles of root and grass that pulled on her ankles. The cold was now absolute, a bright force on her skin even through the sweat-damped shawls. Moonlight, slivered by the
canopy's winter-stripped treetops, made ghosts of the trees, and running shadows of the gaps between, while white drifts burst on her boots, filling the world with the hiss of falling snow. She pressed her bundle to her breast and slowed her pace.

“We're in no hurry, my love,” she whispered. “You've waited all this time; there's surely no sense in rushing now.”

All around were the telltale lumps of ursa dens, their gathered branches like warts on the earth. Although the moon was still just high enough to keep them pressed into sleep, a stumble in the wrong direction would send her tumbling into their clutches like a doll.

She had stopped only twice to make water since fleeing the pastor and his men. Now, beyond their reach and with her scent hidden on the wind, she could afford to rest.

But in resting she was wrapped too tightly by the forest's silence: an ominous, threatening quiet. Her only companionship was the sound of her own feet—without it, the woods filled with tiny noises that mimicked the footsteps of a stranger, and that was infinitely worse. And so she walked, blind with fatigue, pained by skin-split heels and dead-aching muscles.

A branch tipped snow down her back as she passed.

“Are you all right, my love?” she said, wrapping her bundle still more tightly against the cold. Pushing through a growth of ferns and bracken, she shushed her soundless
bundle and began to sing a ditty her sailor father had sung to her as a little girl.

Oh, the beast leaps free of the endless sea,

the prison that caged him within.

He's had his rest on the ocean's breast,

and longs for the sun on his skin. . . .

From below a stack of branches came a belch and a sighing cloud of snuffling breaths, as of a dog searching the ground.

Remedie quickened her step.

The howling gale, as it fills the sail,

is music to lull him to sleep,

and he scatters the spray in his boisterous play,

as he dashes—the king of the deep!

Oh, the beast leaps free of the endless sea,

the prison that's caged him within. . . .

She carried on, nudging through the woods, certain death slumbering inches from her feet, her muscles seizing with every grunted movement from below.

By the time she'd sung a hundred songs, she was hoarse with the cold. Stopping for only the third time, she squatted on
the frozen ground, feeling the heat of her water under her skirts.

A candle of hope flickered: a wild-swinging lantern in the distant black.

“Look, my love!” said Remedie, rising and picking up her pace.

Light meant people, food, heat! She focused on it, heedless of the branch tugs and thorn scratches . . . then heard something that smothered hope's flame in terror.

The sound of far-off, heavy, rapid footsteps.

“Why didn't you wait for us?” said Wull. Sweat gleamed on his forehead; after heaving at the oars, he had virtually carried Pappa through the forest to catch Tillinghast's dome of light.

Tillinghast frowned. “Whyn't you use your own lantern?”

“I don't have one,” said Wull. “We use the moon an' the lanterns on the river.”

“Well, I can't see as it's my fault you's unprepared. An' you're here now, so you's no cause to be moanin'.”

Wull shifted Pappa's weight on his shoulder.

“Untie the arms,” said Pappa.

“You know I can't,” said Wull. “So, where are we going to go? There doesn't look like bein' anything around here. We need a cave.”

“Oh, I knows that, you's been most emphatic 'bout that: ‘wall at your back an' fire at your front,' I know. So what's wrong with that one there?”

“I don't see anythin',” said Mix.

Tillinghast pointed to a drop of branches and foliage hanging from a rocky mound, a snow-thick tumble from which the bony fingers of frost-furred twigs scratched the air.

“What are we lookin' at?” said Wull.

“There's a cave under that, young 'uns. By all the gods, yous really does need me wi' you. Come on. Let's get inside an' build that fire you's so keen on. . . .”

The muddied eyes had been watching them from behind a tree, following their conversation with darting glances. Now they leaped skyward as Tillinghast made for the cave mouth. Face wide, thick-haired, and painted with mud; mouth open and black; arms waving; thick, whooping lines of spit swinging from a tongue that was yellow and furred.

As Tillinghast shot out an arm and grabbed the apparition by the throat, Wull jumped back, Mix and Pappa clasped behind him.

“Whoa!” said Tillinghast. “'In't no need to be rushin' about all shouty—you jus' stay there now.”

In his fist was a young man—a matted cloud of dark, ragged hair ringing a face that was streaked with earth. His eyes were pink, and he beat against Tillinghast's wrist.

“Let me go! Let me go, I say!”

“
You
was the one runnin' at us!” said Tillinghast, releasing him.

“Was I?” said the young man, rubbing his neck. “I'm so
frightfully
sorry. I get carried away sometimes—I was merely trying to ask if I could help carry anything.”

“Untie the arms!” said Pappa.

“Not jus' now,” said Wull, eyeing the man warily. “You gave us a real start. What are you doin' out here?”

“Out here? Oh, out
here
? You mean
here
?”

Wull, Mix, and Tillinghast shared a look.

“He means here,” said Tillinghast, “as in the dead middle of a forest what's nearby to bugger-all.”

“The same thing as you fine people, I'd wager,” said the man.

“You mean you's takin' your sick father on a mission o' mercy to the coast?”

“Well, no . . .”

“So you's makin' your aimless way across the country for no good reason?”

“Oh, certainly not . . .”

“Then are you . . . what're you doin', little miss?”

“Runnin' away from scary people,” said Mix cheerfully.

“Well?” said Tillinghast.

The man pulled on his leaf-tangled, wispy beard. “Well . . . p'raps not, p'raps what I should've said is that I live here, and you are, in fact, in my front garden. In fact, you're standing in my shrubbery. You, sir, the blue man. My shrubbery, yes.”

Wull looked at Tillinghast's feet. They were planted, as were his, on frozen, shrubless, rooty ground.

Tillinghast said nothing.

“But no matter,” said the man. “Come inside, come inside, there's tea for all who require tea! Root tea with the roots left in as the gods intended, absolutely, yes.”

Wull looked at Tillinghast as the man bustled off toward the cave, raised his eyebrows, and mouthed,
What do we do?

We go for tea,
mouthed Tillinghast, exaggeratedly. “You don't mind me askin' you's name?” he called.

“I don't in the least mind, sport,” said the young man. He hopped across a fallen tree, his skinny legs sprightly and quick, and lifted the hanging plants aside. Warm air drifted out and kissed their skin. “Come along, come along now!”

Wull and Mix helped Pappa in struggling protest over the log and across icy soil, holding the hanging leaves away from his face. Through Pappa's sleeve, Wull felt again the slippery looseness of his muscles, and felt his own guts tighten.

What am I really holding?
he thought.

Inside, the cave's walls were decorated with formless shapes and crude paintings of wild animals. Deep in the far gloom of its bowels, a large fire glowed. The cave was eye-nippingly acrid with its smoke, but its strong heat surrounded them.

Wull hadn't noticed until the warmth tickled his skin how cold he was in the bones of his fingers and toes, and he flexed them gratefully.

He had never imagined there could be another person living near the bankside, only a few hours' row from the boathouse.

“So what is your name?” Tillinghast was saying.

The man's eyes twinkled as he passed them steaming tin mugs.

“Now
that's
what you meant to ask me the first time. I know, oh, I know—many a man's taken me for a confusion, but it is I who listens! My
name
is Myron Rushworth, though I use it so little now. As a man of the forest I respond only to the trees, who call me Hhhhhgggnnnnngghhnn.”

Tillinghast choked on his tea. “Beg pardon, lad, it sounded like you was in the throes o' some stubborn digestive transit there. What'd you say the trees called you?”

“It's quite all right,” said Rushworth. “To the untutored, tree-speak does sound a little odd—my tree name is Hhhhhgggnnnnngghhnn.”

“I see,” said Tillinghast. “What a lucky break you's already wearin' brown trousers.”

Wull, holding the mug to Pappa's mouth, thought carefully.

“Rushworth, as in the ‘Intrepid Rushworth'?” he said.

Rushworth bowed. “At your service, sah!” he shouted, clicking his heels.

“You're the Bootmunch,” said Wull. “Pappa told me that story: you got lost an' ate your boots.”

The Bootmunch paused in the act of gathering herbs from a shelf cut into the wall. “I most certainly did not get lost, and a gentleman would never eat his boots,” he whispered.

“What?” said Mix.

“I
said
that I most certainly did not get lost, and that a gentleman would never eat his boots!” repeated the Bootmunch.

“No, no, I heard that an' all,” said Tillinghast, sipping his tea. “You was tryin' to sail round the northern point of Curralinn, an' your ship got stuck. All the supplies ran out an' a few o' the crew died, but you refused to eat 'em an' got wired into your boots instead.”

“That's not true,” said the Bootmunch, who had become very still.

“That's what I heard too,” said Mix.

“An' what was in the papers,” said Wull.

“The papers lie!”

Tillinghast sipped his tea again.

“I don't know if I'd be so hasty denyin' it,” he said thoughtfully. “I think it's fair play not munchin' the dead punters myself, an' if you don't own up to eatin' your shoes, folks might reckon that's jus' what you did. Seems to me eatin' footwear's a lot more easily forgiven than slicin' bits off a dead man's bahookie.”

“You mustn't speak ill of the dead, blue man,” said the Bootmunch. He lifted another jar of herbs and wound a long string of green around the bunch he'd already formed.

“Tillinghast,” said Tillinghast, “and this here's Wulliam an' his pap, an' Mix what's stowed away on Wulliam's boat.”