The Gracekeepers (6 page)

She practiced the words in her head:
Melia. Whitby. I have to tell you something. It might not make sense, but—listen
.

But she could see that they were in no mood to hear confessions. Whitby had reached over the table and was trying to tickle Melia, so she'd shoved handfuls of her hair into his face as a distraction. He backed away from the onslaught, raising his hands in surrender.

“Mercy, mercy! I'd rather choke on my drink than on your hair.”

“Well, I'd rather you choked on my hair than said another word about that storm.” Melia, seeing that her cup was empty, took a gulp from North's. “It's not like we've never got through a storm before.”

“It's been ahead of us for days, Melia. See how it taunts us? We may need the good grace of the sea, but she couldn't care less what we do, or whether we're alive when we do it.”

Melia shrugged. “Serves us right for being daft enough to sail into it. We could stay here.”

“Stay!” Whitby snorted. “I'm sure the clams would love that. Staying still is not for us, my love. We're sharks. We move forward or we die.”

N
orth climbed into her coracle long before dawn. The party was still going, but all she wanted was the comfort of her bear's heart beating against her back. She crawled in beside him, still in her day clothes.

How silly to think that she could have confessed to the acrobats. They were her friends, but they weren't her family. The clowns on the
Excalibur
were the children of clowns on the
Excalibur
, and their children would be clowns on the
Excalibur
in turn, assuming they lived long enough to make children—but not Melia and Whitby. They'd bought their way on to the
Excalibur
, adopted it as their newest home. Who knew how many families they'd had before this one? North was born on the
Excalibur
's deck, and she'd never known another life. The acrobats wouldn't understand. There was only one creature alive that loved North
unconditionally. She lived in a family of two—soon to be three. It would be fine. Her bear was safe. He loved her, and he would learn to love her baby too. She let the coracle rock her to sleep, with her bear's heartbeat at her back and the laughter from the mess boat sounding an echo.

 

T
he clowns were hungry. Every day the feeling grew. All damplings hungered—but Cash, Dosh and Dough wanted more than food.

Stuck under the swollen thumb of Red Gold—which was really the icy thumb of his horse-bitch wife—the clowns could not fulfil their true purpose. Clowns are mind readers, megaphones, shouting out the things that the clams think but don't dare say. There's power in saying what no one else will. They wanted to scream and rage and have the whole world listen. They wanted sex and death and power. They were silenced, and it was starving them.

Cash broke away from working on Dosh's face and snorted.

“What?” mumbled Dosh, keeping still to avoid smudging the white paint.

“Red Gold lets us do the military act one night, and not the
next,” said Cash. “Where's the logic in that? Why does he get to choose when we're free and when we're chained? He should let us decide. We know better than anyone that the clams love it.”

“They love to hate it,” chimed in Dough, succinct as ever.

“Even better! Who wants to be loved? Hate is a much stronger emotion.”

“Finish. My. Face,” mumbled Dosh, lips pursed so the makeup wouldn't crease. Cash was getting frustrated. It was always hard to get more than a sentence out of Dough, but Dosh could usually be counted on to join in. Not tonight, it seemed.

“There are more important things here than our painted faces! There's no point if we can't use them to speak. Is this really enough for you?” Cash motioned around their coracle. It was sparse and scrubbed, the walls painted matte black, everything packed neatly in chests made of lashed-together seal bone. “Is this all you want our lives to be? Parading our muted voices, flashing our fly-by-night skin, nothing but flesh for clams? We have things to say. We need to say them.”

Dosh shrugged. “This is how it is. And now you made me move my face, so you can fix it.”

“But it doesn't have to be like this. It could be different.”

Cash knew that this night would be like every other. The clowns would draw on masks, wrap their limbs in costumes, tuck and pad their torsos strategically so that the audience got their gleeful little genderfuck. Then they'd pretty-up their coracle for the after-show, make it all mysterious for the clam girls: layers of colored fabric, strange bones, abandoned objects they'd found while skin-diving. When landlockers bunked up with a circus performer, they expected something special. They had all the slow-witted farm-boys they wanted on their grubby home islands—now they wanted exotic animals in unlocked cages. They
wanted to blink glitter for at least a week after. They wanted a secret to keep from their future husbands.

“You don't want a clam girl to warm your bunk tonight?” mumbled Dosh.

“Yes, I do. No, I—I don't
not
want that. I want…” For years, another body in the bunk had been enough to distract Cash. But not now.

“While you're deciding what you want, let me tell you what I want: for you to shut up and finish my damn face.”

Cash smudged two black eyes into the white. “Dough, help me out. Our fellow clown has no ambition beyond what's between our legs. But you—I know you see the bigger picture here.”

Dough, sprawled across two bunks, glanced up. “Well—”

“Clowns!”

They looked up. The coracle's canvas top was peeled back at one corner—and who should be peering in but Avalon, the horse-bitch. They all turned their backs to her and returned to their business.

“Clowns, I am speaking to you.”

“Mmm,” mumbled Cash, resuming work on Dosh's makeup.

Cash knew that Avalon wouldn't dare climb down into their coracle. Her pregnancy dictated everything she did—everything the whole damn circus did, it sometimes seemed—and she wouldn't risk a tumble down the rope ladder. Instead she'd be squatting on the canvas, trying to look regal in case any clams lifted their eyes from the shore to peer at the circus freaks.

From above Cash, there was a rustle as Avalon pulled the canvas back further. “Did you not hear me, clowns? I am ordering you to listen.”

Dough and Dosh managed to stifle their snorts of laughter, but Cash was not so quick.

“Are you mocking me, clowns?”

“No, mistress,” chanted Dosh, painted lips barely moving. “Never, mistress.”

Avalon took a deep breath, as if gathering her strength to deal with the simply
awful
clowns and their simply
awful
manners.

“I am here to ensure that you are
not
getting ready for the military show,” she said. “You should be preparing for the banker show, as you agreed.”

“Don't you trust us, mistress?” simpered Cash. “Don't you think we mean what we say?”

“Not for a moment.”

“Well, mistress, that's rather rude.” Cash paused to let the other clowns chime in, but they stayed silent. If he was the only one brave enough to openly defy the horse-bitch, then so be it. But Avalon was not finished.

“This is my circus, just as much as it is my husband's,” she said, “and the crew must obey me as they obey him.”

If that were true, thought Cash, you wouldn't need to say it. Instead of responding, the clowns got back to work.

Avalon wouldn't climb into the coracle, but she did drop her head in to stare at each of the clowns in turn. Her voice became a hiss. “Just do as you're told. Soon you won't be my problem any more. North and Ainsel can have you, and good riddance.”

“Is that so?” murmured Cash, cheeks stretching with a grin. Dosh and Dough pursed their lips at each other.

“It is so. My husband is buying a house for us. And then I will be free of this stinking, tarnished circus forever—which, I can tell you, will be the finest day of my life. I'll be a landlocker, and the rest of you can burn. I'll even watch from my house.”

“I heard that house was meant for—” burst out Dosh. But Cash's hand on Dosh's wrist stopped the words.

“Meant for what?” said Avalon, eyes narrowed.

“Meant for nothing, mistress. Meant for you, mistress.” Cash made an elaborate bow, forehead to feet.

For three long breaths, Avalon hung above the coracle. The clowns kept their faces straight as knife blades. Avalon opened her mouth as if to speak, then seemed to think better of it. She threw the canvas over with an angry flourish. The coracle swayed as she stepped off it, back to the
Excalibur
.

In the dim light the clowns huddled together, foreheads pressed, faces split with glee.

“She thinks that house is for—”

“But it's not for her, it's for North. But Red Gold—”

“Red Gold hasn't told Avalon, and when she finds out she'll hate North even more than she already—”

“She hates the rest of us as much as she does North—”

“But when she finds out—”

“Yes, when she finds out there'll be—”

The clowns grinned at one another.

“Chaos,” said Cash.

The clowns were hungry. They did not want to wait to be fed. But when they sated their hunger, they wanted it to be in the right way, for the right reasons. They could wait.

A
fter that night's performance, the crew of the
Excalibur
felt the storm finally stirring to life. They furled their big top, soothed their animals, weighed anchor; all under a sky bruised dark with clouds. As the sun set it lit the clouds from below, making them round and bright as fruit.

They drank up, slept it off, and moved forward on to the
next island. What choice did they have? Landlockers are not sympathetic to the problems of the sea—and circus folk would rather take their chances with the petulant waves. With glitter in their blood, coals in their chests, choking on their secrets, they sailed into the night. Soon they lost sight of land. The first drops of rain fell.

 

F
or days, the sea had been fractious. Waves chuttered and shwacked against the moorings of Callanish's house, making it difficult for her to think straight. She ate her meals, performed the Restings, tipped dead birds into the water. Every night she drank her cup of milk on the porch, watching the distant silhouettes of passing boats.

At mealtimes she wound up the gramophone and listened to records as she ate, the music rolling and wavering. It felt almost like a conversation. But Odell was right: sometimes you did need to say things and have someone respond.

Silence was not her only concern: the supply boat was late and her cupboards were almost empty. No graces meant no Restings, and no Restings meant no food. If it didn't come before the storm…well, no point thinking about it. Wishing for a boat did not make it arrive.

Several times, as the day slipped toward night with no sign of the supply boat, Callanish took her rowing boat out among the grace-cages. She pulled off her gloves and let her fingertips hover over the surface of the water. The webbing stretched. She knew there was seaweed down there, and fish—but there were also bodies, and both the seaweed and the fish grew from the bodies. She pulled her gloves back on and rowed back to her house. Still, each time she rowed out, she let her fingers dip closer to the sea. There would be no harm in touching it. There would be no harm in slipping off her boat and into the water. And what would be the harm, really, if she stayed down there? When Callanish was a child, her mother told her that the trees were to be worshipped because they had been there before everyone who'd ever lived on earth had been born, and they would still be there after everyone who ever lived on earth was dead. But Callanish knew that the sea had been there even longer.

One evening, as her fingers dipped toward the surface, she saw the supply boat approaching. She pulled on her gloves and rowed back to her house. Now she would not need seaweed or fish or the swallow of the sea over her head. She tried to be glad. She felt scooped-out, hollow as a shell.

She accepted the delivery without speaking. Her silence did not seem to matter, as the deliveryman kept up a steady stream of words without leaving any gaps for a response as he hauled cages of graces from the boat to the dock to the porch to the kitchen table. He spoke of trading routes and wheat shortages; of an abandoned ship found floating, perhaps empty for years, crewed only by cats; of a baby born with gills and webbed hands, a half-fish monster buried alive at the World Tree by its landlocker mother, and good riddance to the beast; of a new trend for tattooing the bases of one's fingernails purple; of a boy who had his hand cut
off for chopping down a tree; of whispered scandals among military officers. Over the years Callanish had heard all these stories, with small variations. Everything changed and nothing changed. His chatter felt like having a record playing quietly: a soothing background hum. She sat at her table, her gloved hands pressed tight between her knees, so he couldn't possibly see. She had received thousands of graces, delivered by dozens of different supply boats, and none had yet seen her hands. The government decreed that she should receive just as many graces as she needed to stay alive—but the exchange of Restings for food was not the only thing keeping her alive. Wearing her gloves and slippers was just as important as eating. Given the choice, she would rather not be buried still-breathing under World Tree.

Finally the supply boat was empty and Callanish's table was full.

“Farewell,” said Callanish, just as she always did. The deliveryman may have wished her farewell back, but it was getting hard to pick out individual words from his avalanche of sound. She was sure that he was still talking even as he sailed away.

T
he days passed. Callanish rested bodies, took her payment, filled her aching belly. One morning, she rose to a storm approaching from the north: the sky dark, the water choppy and licking up over the edges of the porch. The anxious trilling from the grace-cages made her want to cover her ears.

She took her rowing boat out between the lines of graces, pulling open the cages as she passed. Most of them were too weak to fly. Those that could get out of their cages might make it some way before falling into the sea to drown. Those that could
not fly would stay in their cages and drown. If she took them into the house, they would die because she had no food for them. Whatever she did, she could not save them. She wasn't supposed to free the birds, but who would know? Who would care? A small crime; another secret that could only hurt the one who kept it.

When all the cages were open, she lashed her boat flat to the dock. Of the newly delivered graces, not yet used for Restings, only two remained, caged in the corner of her house. She didn't have enough to feed them, and no one would approach with food for days after the storm. She opened the cages and flung open her front door, thinking that the graces would spread their wings and fill her house with a flurry on their swift path outside. Instead the pair took their time, pecking around the floor, shivering their feathers, regarding Callanish with their tiny black dots of eyes. Finally they made it to the door and opened their wings to the wind. They were stronger than the Resting graces, and soon disappeared.

When all the graces had flown she closed the metal shutters over the windows, then stood for a moment on the porch. It was almost beautiful: the water chopping up in white waves like petticoat lace, the delicate arches of the empty grace-cages, the clouds piled up in layers from charcoal to bruise-blue to black.

She wished that she could dive down into the water, that she could live down there under the water; that she could drink water and breathe water, let water support her limbs and lay a comforting weight on her shoulders. Down there she'd be safe from the storm. On the surface the waves and the wind could tear the world to tatters, but she'd be safe down in her watery cocoon. She went into the house and bolted the door. She waited.