The World Above the Sky (11 page)

“They are indeed.” Eugainia ran to the centre of the meadow, she threw her head back, her arms shot straight out from her shoulders, she began to twirl. “For the first time in months, dear Lord Protector,” she said, her rope hair springing snakelike from her tarred Medusa head. “Though covered in blackest pitch, I feel clean.”

She staggered, righted herself. Henry stepped forward, then held his uncertain place.

“That's all very well, Eugainia, and I couldn't be more pleased. But I caution you. Restrain yourself, my dear. We can't have you injured or, worse still, addled beyond the council we require.”

Eugainia fell to her knees. A wretched, histrionic look spread across her tar-smeared face. She raised her arms. She wavered. Henry rushed to her support. Too late. She fell, face forward, into the grass where she heightened Henry's anxiety by rolling and laughing in ecstasy.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk passed nearby, a rock hissing in its sling. “What's she doing now, Aunt?” he asked casually.

Keswalqw watched from the sweat-lodge entrance. “She's putting all the parts of herself back together. Now...? Tree person experimenting with dog person form. I wouldn't be surprised if at any moment she starts to bark.”

“Oh,” said Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, and continued with his business, unfazed by what to the Europeans was extraordinary behaviour, but what to him and Keswalqw was a mild and unremarkable aspect of an ordinary spirit quest—a damaged spirit healing itself with spirit-leavening fun.

Eugainia sprung to her feet, grass and twigs and all manner of bracken stuck to her. She lunged at Prince Henry. He dodged her gooey embrace. She barked like a dog.

“Woof! Hah! Woof. Woof! Woof!”

“
E'e
,
ee
,” said Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. “Just as you predicted, Aunt.”

Eugainia growled. She lunged at Antonio.

“The poor creature's barking mad,” he said, backing away.

Keswalqw smiled. “I feared I'd given her too much. This is a good sign, you know, these antics of hers. Means the
gi'gwesuasgw
is working. Her spirit stirs, wishing to escape the hole in The World Below the Earth into which it tumbled, dragged into darkness by the spirit of her dead child.”

“Eugainia,” Henry said, his grimace out of balance with his words, “delighted as I am to see you animated and, ah, florally embellished—”

Eugainia, threw back her head, bayed like a hound. She launched another frontal assault. Henry held his ground—and Eugainia—at arm's-length, evading her gooey clench.

“Please, my dear,” he said. “Collect yourself. ”

“Must I?”

“You must. We need your advice.”

“Yes, yes. All right,” she relented.

Henry and Antonio resumed their places at the table. Sir Athol stood uneasy between them.

Eugania's attention wandered when Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk stooped, entered the sweat lodge with his third load of rocks.

“My Lady?”

“Ummm? Ah yes. Back to the business of Utopia.” It's all so tedious and deeply false, she thought as she settled before the maps. “Now. Show me the location of the Well of Baphomet.”

• • •

Antonio broke off discussions, pleading lightness of head and an empty stomach. Henry agreed to a short recess. He and Athol descended to camp where a pot of venison stew awaited.

Evening light lingered in the clearing. Eugainia sat alone by the fire. She rolled the tarred linen sleeves of the once-prized gown up to her elbows. Rewarmed and less viscous, the tar soothed her skin. Her fingertips traced light circles on her cheekbones and brow.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk emerged from the sweat lodge. He watched Eugainia as she worked the tar first into the skin of one arm, then the other. He wished he was tar. He wished he were her fingertips. He wished he was the black curtain of tarred hair screening her face. He wished she'd look up.

“Bring the last rocks, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk.” Keswalqw adjusted the wet hides on the sweat-lodge dome. “By the time we smoke
nespipagn
and burn the
msigue'get
, the lodge will be hot enough.”

“Come see their markings, Aunt.”

Keswalqw joined Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk at the canopied table.

“Very like our picture words. But not exact. Perhaps older versions of the same things. Look...stream, cliff, village—picture words for ordinary things.”

“They show where the land meets the sea in all directions. Even to the southeast of our peninsula, you see? And look at this…”

“Yes, yes. The island of the twelve standing oaks.”

“And here, across the hills of two mountains, the great bay to the southwest—”

“Turned Up Whale Belly Bay.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk indicated the northwest quadrant. “This is The Place of Boiling Waters, beneath the Cape, at the head of Whale Belly Bay across from Kluscap's Cliffs.”

He lifted a second map from the table, placed it beside the first.

“And there. Across the bay. The river of the yellow stones.”

“
Sahkahwaychkik
, the Old Ones, said the last white-as-a-ghost-persons bore heavy sacks of the yellow stones upon their backs, even as they staggered and fell to their deaths from the blistering sickness.”

“Such soft and useless things, those yellow stones.”

“Children's trinkets,” Keswalqw agreed. “I can't imagine their use for them.”

“They look at these markings, Hen'ry Orkney and Sir Ath'ol and little dark Jipijka'maq, but their minds are clouded with ignorance. They know nothing.”

“Poor unwitting creatures. It might be ill-mannered of us to interfere. Wait until they're ready, ready to receive the wisdom of The People.”

“They are ready. Both Ath'ol and Hen'ry Orkney ask my opinion. Which I give, leaving them even more baffled. I wonder how long they'll stay.”

“They show no signs of leaving.”

“Is it possible for them to learn, do you think?”

“Yes, yes. Eugainia learns very quickly. I've mastered quite a few of their words.”

“Am I to learn their grunting, fishbone-stuck-in-the-throat, rat-tat-tat tongue?”

“Yes, Nephew. Why would you not? You know the language of the earth and all her creatures. Why not these?”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk and Keswalqw failed to notice Antonio until he was upon them. He leaned in from the opposite side of the table, his fingers splayed atop the charts—a clear warning.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk smiled. “What do you say, Jipijka'maq. Should I learn your tongue? Would we have anything of interest to say to each other, you and I?”

Malice marked Antonio's unspoken response.

“Silent and watchful as a snake, aren't you?” Antonio stared dumbly. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk walked away.

Eugainia leaned to the heat of the firepit, now a bowl of glowing embers. She massaged tar through her hair to the scalp. She was unaware of Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk until he rolled the last hot rock onto the steaming sling. Driblets of tar flared into flame among ashes when she turned and raised her face toward him.

“Why do the savages insist on speaking to me,” Antonio asked Sir Athol who emerged from the trail carrying two shoulder-height torches, “when they know I don't understand a single word?”

“They know the territory hereabout as we know the palm of our hand. The more we know of their tongue, and vice versa, the better.”

Athol drove the torches into the ground at either end of the table. He touched an ember to the frayed, tarred head of each. One easy breath...a flicker became a flame. Athol disappeared in the growing shadow of the evergreen surround, descended toward the main encampment to fetch Prince Henry.

Antonio was thrown into stark relief in the surging light of the torches. He angled his chair away from the table, the better to keep an eye on Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk and Keswalqw. He sat grim and silent, awaiting Henry and the conclusion of their discussion.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk loped past with the last of the hissing stones. “He
is
Jipijka'maq I think,” he said when he reached the sweat lodge. “Look at him in this light. He's all circles and curves, sinuous and boneless as a serpent.”

“Hush.” Keswalqw held back the door flap. “We don't know for certain that Anto'nio doesn't understand.”

“What if he does?”

Antonio felt a presence beside him. Eugainia stood at the table, drawing her fingers through her hair. Antonio drew the maps to him.

“Calm yourself, admiral. I'm not about to befoul artifacts sent to save my life.”

Eugainia's attention moved across the parchment from east to west, where artfully executed hills and forest trailed off into blank space dominated by two words:
Terra Incognita
. Her attention remained fixed on the short phrase. She could not say what occupied her thoughts for one simple reason: her mind was blissfully and unusually silent. Try as she might, she could pull no meaning, only presentiment, from the chart fragments. Though she felt the words before her were freighted with meaning, something in the vastness of possibility suggested by the maps flooded her with peace. She sensed a lightening of spirit. These portents were good. Eugainia smelled freedom.

Antonio broke the silence.

“It seems this steambath is prepared for you.”

“Oh?”

“These savages are like as not to cut your throat as you drowse,” Antonio warned.

“You've no interest in these good people beyond what you can tear away and carry off, do you? Where you see savages, I see shining hair and skin like silk. They smell of earth and smoke, their hair scented by the forest and sea air. Our garments crawl with vermin. Our bodies stink. I see strong white teeth…not grey stumps and yellow pegs black with rot. We rarely see the age of forty. Their elders are fit, clear of eye and mind and easily thrice your age. I've seen them with their children, sir, some with as many as five generations of progeny in whom they delight. The love and respect children give their elders is as pure as any I have seen.”

Keswalqw and Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk returned to the fire where they settled. Keswalqw added enough wood to revive a moderate flame. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk kept a close eye on Antonio.

“Look at her,” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk said. “Such strength and beauty. I yearn to know what she's saying.”

“She floated on the surface of the smoking pool,” Keswalqw told him. “Like a leaf she turned this way and that, her yellow hair spread around her like rays of Grandfather Sun. She sang to the Ghost World. To her dead child. To her kin-friend, the old woman. She sang a sad and lonely song.”

“Perhaps she sings a birth song to a new child's father. Perhaps she'll let me sing a new child to her. I wish to speak with her, Aunt. To know her. Eu-gain-i-a. But she looks at me with shaded eyes, as though I was a flame too bright.”

“You flatter yourself, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. She avoids your eyes because you stare like a hungry child.”

Antonio turned the amethyst ring on his index finger. “Renounce your heretical fantasy, madam. Say aloud ‘I am merely flesh and bone. Human, not divine.' I can guarantee your safety wherever you choose to live for as long as God in heaven grants you breath.”

“I'm exhausted by the endless wars waged in Our Holy Names—King Solomon, Good King David, Lord Krishna, the blessed Lord Muhammad, Peace be upon him. I'm sickened by the blood spilled, first in the name of the Prince of Peace and now in mine. Nonetheless, I am here. I am alive. I am God's emissary on this earth. I do God's will. Not yours. Nor that of your bloated pope at Rome.”

“Insult piled upon heresy, madam. Small matter. My cousin and the Holy Church suffer your presence, your life, because we require Sinclair's maps and his knowledge of the northern seas. You're merely an annoyance, the tattered Queen of defeated zealots who nip at the robes of our authority, and will not come to heel.”

Unseen by Eugainia or Antonio, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk left the circle of light and drifted back into shadow, prepared to intervene should he feel Eugainia endangered. He stood unseen not three metres from her side. He felt strength and assurance—no threat of danger—in her voice. He stepped back.

“If I so choose I'd give Lord Henry a sign and you'd be nothing more than wretched memory. We knew precisely what and who you were before we struck our devil-deal. You needed us. We needed you. Our time of mutual need will soon end.”

Eugainia sat in Henry's chair.

“Here is my response to your...clement offer,” Eugainia concluded. “I bear you no ill will, Admiral Zeno. Quite the opposite. I give you my love. Let kindness flood your heart, and forbearance grow in mine. Peace be with you.”

What man, no matter the coldness of a fearful heart, refutes a pledge of fraternal or sororal love? Zeno's response formed but withered, unspoken. He rolled his map segment, bowed and left the clearing.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk reappeared from shadow. He sat opposite Eugainia, in what had been Antonio's chair. He loosened the drawstrings of a small hip pouch, withdrew a willow-wood pipe, its shaft attached to an intricately carved stone bowl. He packed the assembled pipe with shredded
nespipagn
.

Henry followed Athol into the torch's dual circles of light. Keswalqw beckoned them toward the fire.

“Eu-gain-ia. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. You come too, please,” Keswalqw said. “All, please come join.”

Keswalqw opened a large clamshell. With delicate tongs carved from deer antler, she extracted a live ember packed in punk, touched it to the tobacco. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk elevated the pipe, drew sharply, and exhaled. Smoke, thick and pungent, rose from the bowl. The twining vortex dissipated, a hopeful dream unmolested as it rose through the still night air. He passed the pipe to Keswalqw.

“As smoke rises, it calls down healing Power from the World Above the Sky,” Keswalqw said. She inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, watched the smoke ascend.

“What did she say?” Henry asked.

“An element of their religion,” Eugainia speculated, recalling her walk up the Smoking Mountain with Keswalqw, and the spiralling flight of the spirit birds. “Smoke carries prayer to heaven. Or invites it down, I'm not sure. I still confuse their words for
up
and
down
. Ah...let me see. Oh yes.
Lame'g
is up and
gujm
is down.”

“Why did she say
in
and
out
?” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk wondered.

“She thinks she's saying
up
and
down
.”

“She's very convincing, even when she's wrong.”

“I smile and nod and pretend to know what's going on behind those sea- and sky-coloured eyes of her's. She's good with words, normally. Especially with the children.”

“I smoked like a chimney on Apekwit,” Athol told Eugainia as he received the pipe. “Became quite accustomed to it. Began to look for it. They finally hid it from me.” He inhaled deeply before passing it on. “Can't say, I say, can't say why.”

Eugainia examined the loonhead bowl. “It would be rude to refuse.”

“Let me be first.”

“No, Henry,” Eugainia said. “It does no apparent harm. I'm next in line.”

“Quite the opposite,” Athol assured. “It baffles and then lifts the spirits.”