The Gracekeepers (12 page)

Jarrow tugged on the rope that would hoist the sail and get the fleet on their way.

Don't let Whitby's blood be on the sail
, he thought.
Please, please, all you gods of the earth and the sea, let that gracekeeper girl have rinsed the sail. Don't let there be blood
.

He hoisted the sail.

The striped fabric was bright and clean, as spotless as the day
it was made. It bellied in the wind, already tugging the
Excalibur
and its line of coracles on to their next port. Jarrow double-checked his compass and his sextant. Then he took hold of the wheel and steered them in the right direction, letting the wind soothe his throbbing skin.

 

A
fter the circus left, Callanish passed the time in looking at the map pinned to her wall, and stitching up the worn patches in her white dress, and polishing the grace-cages until they gleamed as bright as the sun. This last exercise was the most effective, as by the time Callanish had polished the final grace-cage, the first had become tarnished by the seawater and she could begin all over again.

The supply boat returned, so her grace-cages were no longer empty, and her belly did not need to be empty either. Boats passed on the horizon. Some of them approached, offering up their dead to Callanish. She stitched their faces, folded up their fists, and caged a bird above them. Every night she dreamed of the bear-girl.

One morning, she tore a finger-thick strip off the hank of fabric and sat down to write a letter to her mother. She imagined
how the words would look, printed on the fabric. They all seemed wrong. She wanted to say…she wanted to say…she closed her eyes and imagined the bear-girl. Her lips opened and she could speak. The bear-girl, and the bear-girl's baby—she knew them, deep down in her guts, her heart, the base of her spine. They felt real, like family. But how could they be when she already had a family?

Callanish wanted to say so many things, but the most important thing was something she could not say. She wanted to tell her mother that she remembered. And that she was sorry.

She stood up again, and got into her rowing boat, and went all the way out to the furthest-away grace, one she'd caged last week. It didn't have long left; she checked whether it was breathing, but its time had not yet come. Tomorrow, probably. She'd have to row back then to unclip the cage door and tip its tiny body into the water. She was almost at the edge of her graceyard, the outer circle of thirteen spindly stones with the look of weathered wood. Real wood was far too precious for such a thing, but the salvaged metal had been etched and shaped so that, if you weren't looking too closely, it could almost be wood. From this distance, the house looked like wood too; at first Callanish had worried about rust, but now she encouraged it. The metal had lasted this long. It would last after she was gone.

She poked her fingers through the dulling bars of the cage, ruffling the grace's feathers until she found the largest, brightest one. When she tugged it free, the grace did not flinch. It did not look at her, or at anything at all. It did not seem to know that she was there. She tilted the feather in the light, watching the colors shift from green to blue.

Callanish had never meant to be cruel. She remembered her mistake, and she would continue to remember it even if she could
be forgiven. She wanted her mother to know that, although she could not say it. She sat for a long time in her boat on the flat sea, surrounded by dying birds, with a single feather in her hand. Then she went back to her house, wrapped the grace-feather in the strip of fabric and wrote her mother's name and island on the outside. She waited.

W
hen the messenger finally came, it was night. This was not unusual; good messengers spoke the language of the constellations, which communicated more than an empty blue sky. Callanish was in bed, face turned to the window and the busy stars, waiting for morning. The first she knew of him was the steady splash of the waves against his boat as he approached.

The graceyard had been visited by many messengers, so without looking she knew what was out there: a single-masted boat the size of her house, sails fluttering, deck overwhelmed by a huge waterproof chest; and at the helm, hands on the wheel, a man in blue with his head shaved to the skin: the standard uniform of a messenger.

The beat of the waves grew louder, louder, and then it stopped. Callanish heard the thud of the messenger's boat bumping up against the dock. He would not be rude enough to climb out of his boat until she came to greet him. She pulled on her gloves and slippers and stepped on to the porch.

A little boat with its sails now furled and its rope fastened to the dock. A man in blue. He climbed out of the boat and stepped toward Callanish.

“I need you to take something for me,” she said. “A message.”
From the pocket of her dress she pulled a canvas-wrapped feather. “The address is on it.”

“Hello to you too,” he replied. Callanish said nothing. He lifted the parcel, tapping it with his fingertips. “I don't hear any paper inside. Is the message written on the other side of the fabric?”

It seemed rude to say that it was none of his business, so Callanish kept saying nothing.

“Or is it a verbal message? Seems odd to take the cheap option when you've already got the fabric, but I don't mind. I'm good at verbals. One of the best, if you want to know. I don't just remember the words, I remember the
intent
of the words. That's what really matters.” He grinned at her, teeth bright as bones in the moonlight.

Callanish knew that the messenger had traveled far and probably wanted to rest, but he could not rest here. She had nothing. There was nothing.

“I have payment,” said Callanish. She went into her house and scooped up chips of quartz and copper and gold: a month's worth of Resting payments, the parts she couldn't eat or wear or wash with. She went back out to the porch and dropped the chips in the messenger's waiting hand. He poked through the offering.

“This isn't enough,” he said. “Not even for a verbal.”

Callanish swayed, dizzy with panic. “But it has to be enough.”

He shrugged. “Sorry. I'll be back around in six months or so. You can save up and I'll take it then.”

Six months. What did it matter if she waited six more months? But it did matter. It did.

“You have to take it,” she said. “Please.”

“Look, I'm sorry, I really am. But I have to eat. Messages mean money, and money means food.”

No one was more shocked than Callanish when her tears began to fall. She hiccuped out a sob.

“Hey! Hey, now. No need for that.” The messenger slid his arm around Callanish's shoulders, and she let him. Her knees gave up and she collapsed on to him, both of them dropping to a clumsy embrace on the porch. “Hush now. Hush now, little fish. It's okay. It's okay, I'll take the message. You can pay me when I come back. Or we can trade for something. We'll figure it out. Don't cry, now.”

Callanish leaned forward and kissed the messenger, their lips slick and salty with tears. After a heartbeat of hesitation, he kissed her back.

She pulled away, took his hand, and led him into her house, wiping her cheeks dry on her shoulder. They lay down on the bed.

Around them, the graces shuddered in their cages and the sea sucked at the moorings. It was not difficult to pretend that they were the only people left in the world. It was so easy, in fact, that perhaps it wasn't pretending. No one would ever know what happened out here. Such small crimes.

A
fterward, they sat together on the porch, feet tucked up, two handspans of empty space between them. Callanish could not offer the messenger anything. She had no spare food, nothing to drink.

“What's your name?” asked the messenger.

Callanish picked a flake of rust from the boards and cast it into the water. It left a reddish smudge on the finger of her glove.

“What's with that map you've got pinned up on the wall?” asked the messenger.

That was a question that Callanish did not mind answering. “My great-great-great-great-grandfather,” she said. “He made lots of maps, but that's the only one left now. He was a cartographer. From back when there was still land to map.”

“There are still plenty of maps, little fish.” The messenger stretched his arms up over his head, letting the bones crack. “Sea roads, trading routes, the locations of the archipelagos. Even if people can read the constellations, they need maps. There are still cartographers around. Lots of them.”

“I didn't say that there weren't,” said Callanish. “But it's different now. Before, the land was a proper home, not like—it doesn't matter.”

The land that her ancestor had mapped no longer existed. The contours of mountains and valleys, the lines denoting when one country became another, the shaded colors to show kingship: all of it was gone under the endless ocean. Back then it had shown the real world. Now it was only history, stories of a place that once was. Callanish knew all about mourning—she only had to think of the hundreds of bird skeletons, picked clean by fish, resting forever beneath her house. But she did not know how to mourn the world that she had never seen.

The messenger seemed restless now that their bodies were separate. He was shifting on the boards, rubbing his hands over his scalp, prodding a toe into the water to scare off the fish.

“I should move on,” he said. “You never know when the next storm is coming. If I don't go now, I could be stuck here for a while.” He left a long pause, watching Callanish from the corner of his eye. He went to take her gloved hand, then seemed to think better of it. “You could put a pot of coffee on and I could stay for a while longer. We can talk about your great-great-whatever and the maps. Come on, little fish. It'll be good for you.”

Callanish stood and walked over to the messenger's boat. She waited until he lumbered to his feet with a sigh. When he got back into his boat, she tugged his rope off the dock and threw the coil into his boat without a word.

“Aren't you even going to say goodbye to me?” The messenger leaned his arm along the boat's edge and looked up at her, the coquettishness an awkward contrast with his shaved head and muscled shoulders.

“Farewell,” she said, and the messenger turned his boat and sailed back into the night.

She knew that she would sit on the porch every evening and watch for him until he returned. Not for the man that he was—he could end up under her house, picked clean by the fish, for all the difference it made—but for his message. If the feather meant anything to her mother, she would know by the response. If there were no response, then Callanish would know that she had not been forgiven. Without forgiveness, she would be forever haunted by her mistake; nothing more than the ghost of a ghost.

 

T
he scent of North-West 1's pine needles crept from the trees, across the fields, over the houses, past the harbor, and all the way into North's nostrils as she dozed in the swaying cocoon of her coracle. She was dreaming of Whitby: his long, strong limbs wrapped tight in net, dropping down into the water. His fingers and toes nibbled by fish, his body dropping piece by piece to the ocean floor to be buried in sand. The earth exhaling, pulling him in.

She coughed awake, her nose full of soil. An afternoon nap before the show had seemed like a good idea, but now she regretted it. She didn't want the image of Whitby fish-nibbled and land-buried.

Landlockers spoke of North-West 1 in favorable tones; they loved the woody, earthy scent of the pines, and believed that the needles brought luck. That was all nonsense, North knew. Pine
trees smelled of dirt and mold, like all other trees. She breathed in deep so that her nose would become accustomed and blunt the sharpness of the smell.

On either side of her, shadowed figures snored. North listened for the rhythm of Melia's breath, and decided that she still slept. She hoped that Melia dreamed of shifting colors in far-north skies, or a bed stuffed with feathers, or pork-dumpling stew. Anything but Whitby.

She got to her knees and pressed her face to her bear's furred belly to steady herself. That was a good smell. Why couldn't everything smell of warm fur and saltwater and fresh seaweed popping in the fire? Then the world would be perfect. Well, not quite perfect: she remembered the soft web of the gracekeeper's fingers, the sun-clean scent of her skin, the flutter of North's baby inside her. That was a new world; a kind of perfect she had never thought to imagine.

She peeled back the edge of the canvas and peeped out, careful not to let too much light seep into the coracle and wake the sleepers. The
Excalibur
had already docked in the harbor.

Red Gold, in all his raw-cheeked and paper-shirted glory, stood among the chaos of the harbor, charming the landlockers. If they weren't moonstruck by the excitement of his stories, then they were certainly reassured by the steadiness of his feet on the ground. North knew that landlockers found Red Gold familiar in a way they could not quite explain. They would not accept him as a true landlocker, but although he wore his tiny brass bell like all the other damplings, they knew he was not a dampling either. She would never understand how Red Gold could talk to landlockers with such ease. They chose land over sea, stagnation over motion, the stench of rotting wood over the fresh ocean breeze. They were another species entirely.

She tried to tell from the set of his jaw whether Avalon had told him about the baby. It would be difficult when the child came, she knew: to make sure the bear was never alone with it, and carry on doing her act, and somehow get enough food for all three of them, but she would just have to…she would…she had no idea what she would do. All she could do now was carry on.

North glanced down to check that her bear was still sleeping, then pulled herself up to sit on the edge of her coracle. She raised a hand to greet Dosh and Dough, who were already sunning themselves on their coracle's taut canvas. Her dress was loose, so she did not worry that they would notice her bump. She hadn't minded the gracekeeper seeing, but that had become a trade, an exchange of secrets: the outline of a bump for the touch of webbed fingers. The opening of a box she hadn't known was locked.

Past the tight line of coracles and the docked
Excalibur
, the island rose. Northern islands were usually uneven, and this one dipped and stretched messily, the central copse of pines obscuring the other side of the island. North knew from an overnight stint on a prison boat a few years ago that it was a conservative island, and revivalism was popular. She hoped that Red Gold would remember, and save the subversion for another night. Judging by what was being loaded into the trade boats, the fields here were mostly wheat, peas and broad beans—unusual, as the southern islands were usually better for farming crops, the northern better for animals. Bread with honeyed peas for dinner, then, and North couldn't argue with that. She only hoped that the landlockers would love the show enough to include some of their hard-traded meat in with the payment.

She took a deep breath, grateful that her nose had got used to the smell of the trees, and leaned back against the taut canvas. The
Excalibur
had been lucky to find a berth; every other
space was occupied by messenger cutters and medic galleons and fruit-trading clippers. Looming over them all, its sides draped with painted depictions of the blue-eyed, blue-robed Virgin, was an enormous revival cruise ship. North shivered; it was several spaces away, but so huge that its shadow would soon be cast over their coracles.

Above her, the sky was barnacled with clouds. The sun was starting to fall, spreading swathes of orange and pink as it went. Junk traders sculled in the shallows; when flotsam washed ashore it belonged to the landlockers, but if the damplings could drag it up when it was still in the water, it was fair game. North would hail one of them later, to see if she could trade some treats for her bear.

Behind North there was a rustle, a sigh, as one of the clowns shifted position.

“I hear the clams on this island make a decent pine-needle vodka,” said Dosh. Perhaps the trees were good for something after all—though North wasn't sure she'd ever drink something that tasted of pine.

“Can't be worse than the liquid fire that Bero usually serves up,” she stage-whispered back without taking her gaze down from the sky. “I bet it's the same stuff he uses to breathe flames for his act.”

No response. North sat up, resting her weight on her elbows, and tipped her head right back to look at the clowns upside down.

Dosh was regarding her with a serious expression. “Sweet North, I know you jest, but you speak a true fact. Bero has spent his whole life filling us with fire. Inside each one of us is a raging inferno waiting to take hold. Inside me, and you, and Red Gold, and even Red Gold's kind and generous wife.” Dosh rolled over and gave her an exaggerated wink, turning each tattooed limb
to tan the underside. “Now, when you go ashore to seduce those clam boys, you watch yourself among those trees. You've got a flame inside you. Don't set them alight.”

North laughed and tipped her head back to the sky. She would be going nowhere near the trees, but she didn't need to tell Dosh that; the clowns wouldn't venture any closer to the shore than they had to for tonight's performance.

North ducked back into her coracle, ready to wake her bear and Melia so that they could get ready. The islands might not be North's favorite places, but they needed to perform tonight. They needed to eat, of course—but more than that, they needed the distraction. The ghost of Whitby lurked in the corners of every coracle. If glinting lights and Red Gold's roar and the scratch of the gramophone weren't enough to distract Melia, then North was lost.

B
ehindcurtains, North and her bear waited. Most of the circus stayed in their coracles before a performance, but tonight North wanted to watch the show. It was good to see the grace and glory of her fellow performers. Sometimes she needed to be reminded of the point of all this. The glamours had re-dyed the blond braids among her dark hair and draped her body in brown fabric. She'd do the simplest version of their act: a dance, a kiss, a bow to the crowd. Then back to the mess boat to feast and comfort Melia and try to avoid Avalon's spiked, knowing gaze.

Red Gold played it safe, beginning with a subdued version of the maypole. In the olden days they'd called maypole dancing a sin. It was pagan superstition, worshipping false gods. But things change. Now even the most devout revivalists didn't dare
reject the gods of the land, for fear the crops would fail. North admired the way that Red Gold managed to braid the revivalist beliefs together with the old traditions—not forgetting a healthy dose of sensuality from the androgynous, ribbon-bound bodies. She couldn't help wondering what Callanish would make of the maypole if she were here.

BEHOLD THE BEAUTY OF THE DANCERS
'
RIBBONS
, boomed the ringmaster's voice around the big top,
AS RED AS A TULIP, AS GREEN AS THE GRASS
—at this he swept his arms wide as if glorying in the joys of spring
—AND WITH THIS DANCE WE GIVE THANKS TO THE GODS OF THE LAND FOR BRINGING NEW LIFE TO
THE WORLD
, and out slid Avalon, demure and maternal as the revival boats' Virgin in her pale blue dress,
AS I TOO THANK THE GODS FOR THE NEW LIFE
, and Red Gold beamed from ear to ear, pointing his smile from one side of the big top to the other,
OF MY BELOVED SON
, and the audience broke into applause as Avalon curtsied, her padded belly swollen as a poppy about to burst.

Such nonsense, thought North. Red Gold was far too clever for the landlockers, and they didn't even realize. Damplings did not worship the gods of the land, and if Red Gold were thanking anyone for that child, it would be the real gods, the ones of the sea. But then again—Red Gold was born a landlocker, and he had slapped her when she had gone to snap a twig from the tree. Maybe this was not just an act for him.

The clowns cartwheeled offstage, and North pulled her bear into the embrace of the curtains to keep out of their way. Her bear had been so good about having Melia in their coracle, and despite the fluster of tonight's show he stayed quiet and calm. As a reward, after tonight's performance she would find something to trade for the fish-belly and purple seaweed that he liked.

Ribbons off, costumes on, a trio of grins at North and her
bear, and the clowns raced breathless back onstage. As the ringmaster's voice echoed across the island and North peeked out from behind the curtain, Cash, Dosh and Dough began the act for which they were named.

Dressed as old-fashioned bankers, in suits and garishly patterned ties, they plodded around the stage, dragging their briefcases along the ground as if they were full of rocks. Just as the crowd was getting riled up, throwing decades of pent-up rage at the clowns, they opened their suitcases. Inside sat stacks and stacks of paper money—it was genuine too, scavenged and traded and stitched back together when it tore. And it certainly did tear when the clowns began to throw it into the crowd. The clowns' white-painted faces and blackened eyes blurred to skulls as they threw the money faster and faster.

Whatever the truth, over time the landlockers had learned to blame the banks, the relentless drive for more money, for the rising seas and the loss of their land. Once upon a time they'd had a whole planet of fields and plains and deserts and forests. Now they had to make do with the patched-up corners of gutted cities, to cluster their homes around half-dead copses, to scrape what they could from their tiny footholds in a swallowing sea. They needed a scapegoat, and the clowns provided it. North should have known that this island would like this act the best. Revivalists were always angry.

As the clowns' act continued and the clams in the crowd grew more aggressive, she shrank back into her bear's furred embrace.

Out the clowns tossed the money! Loudly they crowed about their wealth! Sneakily they rubbed together their greedy hands and discussed their nasty plots!

The clams were on their feet, stamping and braying, crumpling the notes and throwing them back onstage along with the
curses. North tried to glance over at Red Gold, but her view between the curtains was narrow and she could not see him.

It seemed to North that the clams were shouting louder than ever, and her back vibrated with the beginnings of a growl from her bear. She turned in his grasp to tap his nose—but, if she was honest, she felt like growling too. Even though she couldn't see him, she knew that Red Gold would be watching carefully. They'd all suffered violent crowds and chilly nights on the prison boat, but the ringmaster knew better than to risk that now. Although he had not spoken to North about it, she knew that he had noticed Melia's emotional state. There was a time for risk—and there was a time for safe acts and full bellies. North would never make a ringmaster, but she knew that much.

She took her bear by the paw and led him deeper into the shadows, ready for their cue.

T
hat night on the mess boat, Bero served the crew endless cups of fire. North found it easy to refuse without anyone questioning her. They seemed grateful that she was looking after Melia; although they all loved her, caring for the bereaved is a burden that few people want to carry.

So North delivered the meager portions of sweetened peas and seeded bread to her coracle, ready to ensure that her bear and Melia both cleared their plates. She dropped into the coracle to find Melia perched bird-like on the edge of her bunk, smacking chalk between her palms. Her bear was hunched on his bunk, eyeing Melia as if he was not sure whether she was a threat. The coracle vibrated with the growls sounding low in his throat. The lamplight gleamed on his teeth as his lips peeled back.

“Look, North!” crowed Melia, smacking her palms and letting the dust fill the coracle. “Ghosts!”

Chalk snowed down on the bunks, the boards, her bear. He blinked it out of his eyes but let the rest cake his fur. North would bring him all the fish-belly he could eat as a reward for not biting Melia's hands off.

It did not take long to calm Melia; just an acknowledgment that yes, there were ghosts, and no, they did not disappear because they could not be seen. The peas and bread were dusted with chalk, but they ate them anyway. A little chalk on the tongue was worth it for something for their bellies to grip.

As North washed and groomed the chalk from her bear she kept an eye on Melia, who was eating her dinner in silent slow motion. If she needed to wash and groom Melia too then she would, but she would rather not have to. Once crossed, certain boundaries could not be forgotten, and she hoped one day to look up to Melia once more.