The Unmaking (29 page)

“This being is made of fear and anger and feeds on the same,” said Lai quietly. “At its core there is something that draws such emotion to it like a magnet. Can you feel it?”

“Yes,” whispered Eliza.

“That is what holds it together,” said Lai. “Its flesh and bone are so imbued with rage and terror that although it is burned and severed, the parts cannot fall away from the core. So it remains whole, in a sense, drawn tight around that centre. We cannot heal it, Eliza, because it was never whole. We can only try to add elements to it that will soothe it somewhat. But first
you
must tame it. Do you know why the Sorma can tame any beast?”

“No,” said Eliza.

“Because we can control our fear. You can master an animal physically by using its own strength against it. This is easily learned. But you must master the will of the beast as well. It must know, without a doubt, that you are stronger, that you can punish or protect it. For the beast to believe this, you must show no fear. Are you afraid, Eliza Tok?”

“Yes,” said Eliza.

“Then you are not ready.”

“But we don’t have time...”

“There is time. We have much to prepare. Go and ask your Aunt Ry for some tea. Rest.”

Eliza nodded. She marvelled at how calm the Sorma seemed, standing so close to the Kwellrahg, their eyes still as stones, their breathing steady.

She went to find her aunt in the camp.

Aunt Ry, her father’s eldest sister, often wandered into the desert by herself, to find little pools of water or tiny oases, returning with herbs, roots and fungi whose purpose she seemed to understand instinctively. When Eliza found her, she was playing with her five-year-old son in the shade. She had kind eyes and a heart-shaped face. Like most of the Sorma women she kept her hair cropped close, which complemented her dramatic eyes and cheekbones. Eliza was very comfortable with Ry, for she saw so much of her father in her.

“Grandmother told me to ask you for some tea,” said Eliza. She felt strangely leaden, as if she too were enclosed in a kind of barrier that kept her at a distance from the world and everyone in it.

Ry looked deeply into her eyes, taking Eliza’s chin between her thumb and forefinger. She nodded and said, “Come with me.”

Eliza followed her to her tent and waited while Ry brewed the tea, watching those strong, supple hands at work. The tea was thick and black and very bitter, but Eliza drank it all. It left her thirstier than before. Ry was talking to her and the words ran together, making no sense. Her aunt’s face was kind and concerned, but Eliza felt she was looking at it from a great distance. There was somewhere else she needed to be.

She heard her own voice as if it was someone else’s thanking Ry thickly, awkwardly, and she stumbled back out into the sun. It was too bright. If only she could drink the sun, bring dark and quiet. The Sorma moving about the camp made her claustrophobic. She couldn’t breathe. She walked away from the tents, into the desert, to put space between herself and the camp, herself and the Kwellrahg, herself and the awful thing required of her. She followed the Kwellrahg’s tracks up the dune and over the edge, and she kept walking, climbing up the steep dunes until she lay panting on their ridges, then staggering down them into hot, sandy valleys. The camp was hidden from view. She could see only the rolling hills of golden sand around her and the sky, a vast blue dome arcing overhead. The sun blazed vengefully. Though she was pouring sweat, she climbed another dune and over the peak of this one she saw something strange. In the valley below was a tree. It had a great big knobbed trunk and powerful branches twisted out every which way, like a strong hand with many muscular fingers reaching for the sky. It was the Lookout Tree from the southern cliffs of Holburg. She ran down the dune towards it, heart in her throat. As she got closer to it she saw there was somebody in the tree, perched on the very branch she and Nell used to sit on to look out over the archipelago.

She stood beneath the tree and looked up. The figure on the upper branch was a small boy, only about four or five years old. He had tight dark curls and liquid eyes and his little legs were swinging. He looked back down at her.

“Hello,” said Eliza.

“I can see
everything
from up here,” said the little boy in a piping voice. “You can’t see much at all from down there, can you?”

Eliza looked around her. The desert curved up towards the sky and the sky curved down towards it so they formed a perfect sphere and
the sun burned a hole at the top of it all.

“No, I cannay see very much,” she answered. “Where am I?”

The little fellow kicked his legs vigorously and said, “This is the edge of things. You’ve got to go back.”

She felt a terrible weariness gathering behind her eyes. “I’m too tired,” she told him. “I need to rest for a while.”

“No rest for the wicked!” piped the little fellow. “You’ve got to go back. You’re allowed to come this far, exactly. This is the farthest. That’s how Magic works.”

Eliza squinted up at him. He was looking at her quite imperiously. “I’m a Sorceress,” she told him. “What do
you
know about Magic?”

He laughed a ringing little laugh. “I know
everything
about Magic. I know where it ends.”

“Where?” asked Eliza.

“Here!” he said. “That’s why you’ve got to go back.”

She sat down and leaned against the trunk of the tree. It was so familiar against her back. If only she could see the islands, if only she could run back to town and their little house and have a glass of water. If only she could leap into the sea. The little boy regarded her from above and then asked, “Why are you sad?”

“So many reasons,” said Eliza, but she couldn’t weep. Her body was too parched, too dried up, even to squeeze out a tear or two.

“You’ve got to go back,” said the boy again, more kindly. “But you can take something with you, if you like.”

“What should I take?” asked Eliza, leaning her head back to look up at him.

The boy cackled wildly. “You look funny upside down.”

She pulled a face, and he cackled more.

“You’re funny. I
like
you.”

“My name is Eliza,” she said.

“I
know
that,” he said a bit impatiently. “But it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a word your mother and father picked out to call you, but they didn’t know anything about you then and they still don’t.”

“What’s your name?” asked Eliza.

The boy hesitated, then said, “I
like
you, but you’re a bit stupid. Do you like birds?”

“I dinnay know,” said Eliza. “I like some birds.”

“How can you do anything if you don’t know?” demanded the little boy crossly.

“I dinnay understand you,” said Eliza. “I dinnay know where I am.”

This seemed to send the little boy into a rage.

“Pay attention!” he shouted at her. “Why don’t you
pay attention?
You are
very
stupid, and
quite
ugly and you don’t
pay attention!”

“You said you liked me, lah,” said Eliza, almost tempted to laugh at this sudden tantrum.

“I don’t like you at all,” he returned snootily. “You’re a stupid girl and I’m bored of talking to you. This is the edge of things and you’ve got to go back. Are you going to take something with you or not?”

“Yes,” she said. She looked at the brilliant sky. Innumerable black dots swam before her eyes before becoming ravens. She looked up at the tree and it was full of ravens too, perched silent on every branch.

“They shouldn’t
be
up here,” the boy shouted down at her. “I don’t
want
them up here.”

Birds began to burst out of the sand like black plants suddenly sprouting all over the dunes. They walked towards her, leaving streams of little bird tracks behind them. She leaned against the tree with her legs splayed out and birds sat on her legs and on her shoulders and her head. She was dizzy with thirst. The ravens made odd rattling sounds in the backs of their throats. There were so many of them that it was quite deafening. She covered her ears and looked around at them. They regarded her most intelligently, filling the sphere of sand and sky. In the rattling, a sort of conversation emerged among them.

Power flows, of course it does. How did she carry it? Next to her heart. The centre is the strongest. We are all made of Flow. How will you bear it? Little girls grow up, there is nothing unusual in it. You cannot protect them, you cannot protect yourself. What will you call it? There is power in the names of things. Who can you trust? The worlds will have their way, in the end, in the end. You don’t understand, you can’t see the whole picture. So many secrets, kept for so long. She loves you, you know. She is in your heart. Of course she is. Of course.

Eliza was terribly thirsty now. She touched the sand but it was too dry, she could not drink it. She touched the sky but it gave her nothing. And so she told the ravens, I’m thirsty, I think I might die of it, and they became a black river that flowed into her mouth, quenching her thirst at last. The little boy in the tree scowled down at her. “Now go back,” he said, and she did so.

Chapter

~17~

D
usk fell as they flew across the Sea of Tian Xia
. For a while, Nell could see all the islands sprinkled around the coast like little jewels and it reminded her of home. But there were fewer islands as they flew on and the sky darkened until she could see nothing but the brilliant Hanging Gardens of the Sparkling Deluder far to the south. She dozed on the dragon’s back, coming to every few minutes with a start. Suppose she fell off? How long was the fall to the sea below? The steady
schoom, schoom, schoom
of the dragon’s wings lulled her out of consciousness. The odd thought crossed her mind that it would take them years to reach the Realm of the Faeries and she would return home an old woman. No, that was ridiculous. She laughed, and the sound of it was strange in the empty night sky. She had no sense of how many hours had passed when the moon suddenly illuminated an inhospitable looking land far below, lava fields crumbling to the very shore and red volcanoes flaming brightly. Rivers of fire flowed between black craggy cliffs and quenched themselves in the sea. They flew into this hell and as they did, Jalo began to sing.

The song caught them each like a hook to the heart, even Swarn. It seemed to contain all the joy and all the sorrow and all the beauty of the worlds, giving voice to everything they had no words for. Their vision blurred with tears and they forgot or did not care that they were aloft in a fiery, dangerous land. Nell felt herself soaring on the music alone; it bore her up and filled her, made her complete in a way she had never known and yet, at the same time, undid her entirely, pulled her apart. She knew she could not bear for it to end, would never survive the loss of this song, yet she also longed for it to end, to release her, let her be. And now the song was calling to them,
Come, come, come
, and they did, how could they not?
Follow, follow, follow
, what else could they do, what would be left of them without this music? It carried them gently, effortlessly, and laid them down, murmuring,
Sleep, sleep, sleep
, and it was with gratitude that they succumbed. Oblivion swept over them.

~~~

Nell woke to voices, her heart still aching with the music she had heard. She opened her eyes and blinked, confused. Trees heavy with emerald green moss surrounded her. The moss hung in elegant fringes from the branches and encased the trees entirely. Through the branches twined over her head, she saw a pale sky. She sat up and petals spilled off her. She had been lying in a bower of moss and flowers. She rose and followed the voices she had heard. She found her friends in a clearing among the trees. Ander and Charlie were sprawled on elegant divans arranged around a low table laden with bowls of fruit and cakes, eating with deep concentration. Swarn sat cross-legged on the ground, back straight, and did not touch the food. There was no sign of Jalo, but another Faery in a brightly feathered cloak was leaning against one of the trees and watching them with his arms folded, an amused expression on his face.

“You’re the last to wake up,” said Charlie, pointing out the obvious. Charlie looked the way he always did, but in this lovely setting Nell noticed how bedraggled and unwashed Ander was, and she suspected she looked just as bad.

She smiled brilliantly at the Faery, hoping she didn’t actually smell bad. “Hello. I’m Nell.”

“Please eat,” said the Faery, not bothering to introduce himself in return. “Jalo is speaking with his mother. He will come for you when they are finished.”

Needing no further prompting, Nell sat down on one of the divans and tucked into the fruit. There was a plate of what looked like dark bread but when she put it in her mouth it melted to a thick, sweet liquid almost like molasses.

“Where are the dragons?” she asked Swarn.

“They are stabled,” said Swarn. A reluctant smile tugged at the edges of her mouth. “The first dragons of the cliffs of Batt ever to enter the Realm of the Faeries, I’d wager. And I must thank you for saving the injured one. These two insist it was your doing.”