The Gracekeepers (9 page)

“North,” said the pregnant woman, and she made the word sound like a curse. “See to your beast.”

The rest of the circus crew turned away, embarrassed, and looked to Jarrow as if for instruction. Avalon did not check that North did as she was told, but tucked her arm into Jarrow's, smiling up at him. It seemed that she was used to being obeyed. Only Callanish, half scared and half curious, watched North's progress. She wanted another look at the bear.

North stepped across the coracles to the one that was growling. As she lifted the canvas she stumbled, and instead of putting out her arm to stop her knee hitting the edge, both her hands
flew to protect her belly. She glanced up, guilty, and saw that Callanish was watching. The moment stretched as they stared at each other, both determined not to react. Then North lifted the canvas and disappeared into the coracle.

She might not be as visibly pregnant as the dark-haired woman, but Callanish knew what she'd seen, and she'd had enough. The mass of people was fine, the strangeness of their costume was fine, even the lack of grace was fine. But not this. She would do whatever was needed to get these pregnant women off her porch, and hope that they never came back.

“I am sorry,” said Callanish. “I regret that I do not have the necessary equipment, and without a grace to mark the mourning I cannot—”

“Is that all?” said Jarrow. “In that case, you must not worry on our account. We shall simply mark our own mourning.”

“I am sorry,” said Callanish again. “The grace is a traditional part of the Resting. It would be wrong to perform the service without it.”

The woman with the muscled arms lifted her head and looked at Callanish. “Please,” she said.

She spoke quietly, but her voice had the power of a shout. It wasn't clear whether she was addressing Callanish or Jarrow. The word was enough to make up Callanish's mind. If this were the quickest way to get the pregnant women to leave, then she would do it. Besides, if she didn't, then they would have to drop the body into the sea themselves. The end result would be the same, but without the dignity of the Resting. There was no grace, but who would know? Who would care? She was not sure whether the growing list of her crimes made each one larger, or smaller still.

“Bring me the body,” she said, “and I will prepare for the Resting.”

The acrobat climbed back into the boat and began lifting out the bundle wrapped in silk. The man with the burned arm stepped forward to help her, but she turned her back and would not let him board. As she lifted the body and turned, the bundle fitted her exact shape.

Callanish did not mean to watch the woman struggle, but she could not take her eyes away. The woman stumbled on to the dock, landing with a thud on her knees. She managed to stand without letting the bundle touch the dock. Her arm muscles tensed as she lifted. She shook, but she did not drop the body. She made her slow, stumbling, graceful way to the house.

Jarrow broke the tension by placing an arm around Callanish's shoulders and leading her into the house, away from the rest of the crew.

“This is—ah—delicate,” he said. Callanish waited. “We need the fabric back. It's our mainsail and our big top. Without it, we can't move on and we can't perform. Can he be put in the—that is, can you sink him, or…” He seemed to struggle to find the right words.

“I understand,” she said. “I will provide fabric for the Resting and return your silks. What is the man's name?”

The acrobat appeared in the doorway. “Whitby,” she said. She raised her arms, presenting the body to Callanish, and tipped her head to the ceiling as if she was about to roar. Instead, she spoke in a whisper as quiet as a ghost. “He's the reason that the sea is calm. She wanted her sacrifice, and now she has it.” The acrobat blinked and swallowed hard. “His name was Whitby Gaunt. Please Rest him well.”

“Of course.” Callanish gestured into the house, where the acrobat slid the body on to the table. Callanish went to the window and stood with her back to the room, to give her a moment to
say farewell. Moments passed. Callanish knew without looking that the acrobat was still there; she could hear the ragged sounds of her breath. From outside the house came the shuffle of feet on the boards and the gentle thunk of the boats bumping together. Callanish wanted to say something—to comfort the acrobat, to assure her that the Resting would be noble, to explain to her that the grieving would soon be over. The practiced words would not come.

“Do not feel ashamed that you are still alive,” Callanish said.

When she turned to face the room, she saw that the acrobat had walked out of the house. She had spoken only to herself.

Callanish closed the door, pulled off her white silk gloves, and began to prepare the needles and ointments for the body.
Whitby
, she repeated in her head. This time, she did not want to feel nothing as she tipped the body under the water. She would think of her mother, and the crew would think of Whitby, and the words of the Resting would not be meaningless. For that moment, they would all be connected.

 

M
ost of the people North loved were dead, but this would be the first time she attended a Resting. When she'd lost her parents, she had been too young to mourn, or even to truly understand what had happened. That loss brought new responsibilities, as losses tend to, and a small bear was enough to keep a small child very busy. She could not miss her mother and father, as we cannot miss what we do not remember having. Instead she could only miss the idea of a family—though she found that the
Excalibur
was not a bad substitute, considering the options.

Although North did not know what to expect for Whitby's Resting, she did not have time to wonder. Her only concern was to make sure that neither her bear nor Melia cracked under the weight. In the days and nights since the storm, Melia had been traveling in the Island of Maidens with the glamours, as her own coracle was at the bottom of the sea.

“I can't stand it any more,” she whispered, red-eyed, to North as they queued for their dinner in the mess boat. “They barely sleep, always chattering about something or mixing up endless pots of colors. I know they're being quiet now, but I promise, as soon as they get back to their coracle they'll have to spatter out all the words they're saving up.”

“They can't be that bad, Melia. They fixed up that scrape on your arm, didn't they?” North used the mention of the wound as an excuse to pull Melia's hand away from it. She hadn't stopped picking at the graze, and so it would not scab over, and so it would not heal. North had asked Cyan to tape a dressing on, but Melia had peeled it off again.

“I don't care about that. You don't understand, North, it's—Everything in that boat is so bright that it hurts my eyes. I can't rest. I can't grieve. There's no peace anywhere.”

Melia could not know that there was a spare bunk in North's coracle. The only reason it was spare was that North shared with her bear, and she had not told the rest of the crew for fear that they would find it strange. But there were more important things than appearing strange.

“Stay with me,” whispered back North. “Me and the bear. We'll make room for you.”

Instead of replying, Melia tucked her hand into North's and gave it a squeeze. North was still finding her way with grief, but helping Melia lessened the ache.

The dinner rations were small, and consisted only of dampling food; they hadn't been able to perform without their big top, and with only one sail their progress had been slow. Then again, progress through the doldrums was always slow. The food was strange too: it looked like cockle and sea-kelp stew, but it had a salty-sour aftertaste that North could not identify.

She chewed her stew, saving half for her bear. It would not last long, this time spent motionless. Soon they'd feel the wind in their hair, and eat eggs and bread, and come alive in the spotlight in front of hundreds of adoring eyes. Soon this would all be over, and things could go back to normal.

T
he next morning, the circus crew assembled on the dock, dressed in their plainest, palest clothes. North wasn't sure if it was disrespectful to wear the white dress from her funeral waltz, but it was the lightest-colored fabric she owned, so it would have to do. The gracekeeper wouldn't know it was part of her act, and the rest of the crew would understand. They were dressed in a mishmash of clothing: Mauve in creamy scraps of silk, Dosh in panels of faded blue canvas, Bero in a white shirt that strained over his chest. It was the best they could do, and North was sure that their ragtag appearance would have amused Whitby. The gracekeeper, at least, had a decent outfit on: white dress, white gloves, white slippers, all made of silk. She'd fit in beautifully at the circus in that get-up. North couldn't help imagining her doing somersaults on the back of a horse, its jeweled reins held between her teeth.

She took her place on the dock beside Melia, trying to control the shake in her legs. It felt wrong to be surrounded by sea yet be standing on something that did not move with the steady flow of the water. Even though it wasn't really land, it still juddered her knees, messing up the sway and flow of her movements.

There were too many people to fit in the gracekeeper's tin boat. She seemed to have anticipated this; the lines of empty birdcages stretched for half a mile in every direction, but she had
put Whitby into the sea as close to the dock as possible. Maybe that wasn't for their benefit, thought North. Maybe she couldn't be bothered to sail out to the faraway cages.

Red Gold and Avalon took the rowing boat with the gracekeeper. Ainsel headed the line of crew on the dock, though he didn't seem pleased about it.

“Let us think now of Whitby Gaunt,” said the gracekeeper, “and of the ones who mourn him.”

Her voice was the exact opposite of Red Gold's crowd-pleasing gusto. She spoke calmly, quietly, but with enough power to silence an entire big top. As soon as she began the Resting she seemed to go into a trance; she tilted her head to the sky, almost glowing, like those paintings the revival boats unrolled over the sides when passing the “heathen” ships. The Virgin Mother. The Holy Queen. Gracekeepers were holy, in their way, but were they virgins? North couldn't remember. She focused on the gracekeeper, trying to imagine her kisses on a stranger's mouth, her pale limbs wrapping around a stranger's body—and if she could imagine it, did that mean it was true? She could imagine that Whitby was still alive, waiting behindcurtains for his cue, grinning to think of them all mourning for him as if he were gone. She could imagine it, so…

North pressed her feet hard against the metal of the dock. She must concentrate. It was easier to think about the gracekeeper's gloves, the gracekeeper's voice, the way everyone went quiet when the gracekeeper spoke. If she thought about that, she would not have to think about Whitby. North shut her eyes, took Melia's hand, and allowed herself to miss Whitby as if he was really gone.

N
orth could not sleep. The inner deck of the coracle was even less comfortable than the bunk, and at least on the bunk she had the softness and warmth of her bear's fur. But she still didn't want Melia to see them sharing, so Melia and the bear had a bunk each, and North slept on the deck between them. Or at least, she tried to.

It didn't help that Red Gold and Ainsel were still pattering around on the
Excalibur
, hissing at each other and trying to do repairs by the light of the seal-fat lamps. They'd attempted to set sail that afternoon, but the
Excalibur
was too damaged in the storm. Red Gold had to turn back before they'd made it to the posts that marked the edge of the graceyard. The gracekeeper seemed even less pleased than Red Gold at their return to her house. She'd allowed them to dock, though, and said they could stay until the boat was fixed. She had not offered to help, she had not joined them for dinner on the mess boat, and she had not spoken to anyone else in the crew. North assumed that she thought she'd done her job and that she didn't owe them anything else. Did she think they wanted to be there? That they enjoyed floating pointlessly above hundreds of corpses? North could not wait until they set sail again.

From the darkness outside came a thud, a scuffle, a shouted curse.

“Fine!” shouted Ainsel, his voice echoing in the quiet of the night. “Sink the whole damn thing for all I care!”

North held her breath.

Silence.

Then footsteps. Her coracle swayed as Ainsel jumped down off the
Excalibur
and on to his own boat. She waited and heard the unclipping of his canvas, the whicker of the horses, the muffled soothing of his voice. She heard Red Gold bumbling about
on the
Excalibur
for a few moments, then he seemed to give up and go to bed too.

Finally, the circus was asleep—but North was not. She tried not to count the passing time, but she didn't even have the steady rhythm of the water to lull her. Here in the doldrums, the sea was flat and the air felt too heavy to breathe. She tried to relax her limbs, to let sleep slide over her, but it was no use. She stood up and unclipped the edge of the canvas, heaving herself up on to the edge so she could look out.

She'd expected it to be dark, but the moon reflected off the metal bars of the cages, lighting the sea silver. It was too eerie to be beautiful. Even North—who had never been a victim of imagination—couldn't help picturing the corpses under the water. The fish would have eaten the bodies, but fish didn't eat bones. Perhaps it wasn't the water that was reflecting the moonlight, but piles and piles of gleaming bones.

North stuck her head back into the coracle, listening for the snuffle of her bear in sleep. If he was there, then nothing bad could happen to her, not even if the sea swallowed the bones of everyone in the world. Reassured, she straightened up and put her hands on the edge of the boat, leaning her weight back so that she could look up at the stars.

There was someone on the porch, silver-haired and silent. North jumped, her hand scraping off the side of the coracle. Heat throbbed across her palm and she bit down on a curse. There was no point slipping back into the boat; whoever was on the porch had already seen her.

The figure raised its hand in greeting. Moonlight caught her white silk gloves. Without thinking, North raised hers back. It was the gracekeeper—and what was her name? Had she told them? North couldn't recall. Her shoulders tensed as she remembered
her thoughts during the Resting: the gracekeeper's kisses, the stretch of her limbs. It was inappropriate, and North was ashamed. But the gracekeeper couldn't know that. She might be a holy hermit, but she wasn't a mind reader.

Cradling her raw palm against her belly, North got to her feet and made her way across the coracles. She stumbled when she stepped on to the dock, but managed not to fall. In the moonlight, the gracekeeper seemed unreal, beautiful, as if she was carved out of white stone. It was only when North sat down on the porch that she realized she'd forgotten to tie on her silver bell. She pulled her sleeves down over her arms, despite the humidity, so that the gracekeeper wouldn't see.

“It can be difficult to sleep here,” she said. “The call of the sea. It's so loud.”

North shrugged a reply.

“Sometimes I feel I haven't slept a full night since I got here. It's hard to let go. It's not safe.”

She wasn't looking at North as she spoke; instead, she kept her gaze on the horizon. A house surrounded by water and dead birds: what was unsafe about that? Nothing but the gray sky and the silver sea, and the cages lit up bright as seal-fat lamps. It was horrible, but it didn't seem dangerous.

“You're not an acrobat,” said the gracekeeper. “Or a clown, or a fire-breather. And you don't have a horse.”

“No,” answered North, even though it wasn't really a question. “I'm North. I'm the bear-girl.”

“The bear-girl. Now I see. I'm Callanish, the gracekeeper. And I'd very much like to see your bear. It reminds me of my—” She seemed to check herself. It was a moment before she spoke again. “It reminds me of something that happened, a long time ago, when I was a child. It reminds me of being saved.”

North liked the fact that Callanish was interested in the bear. Not everyone recognized what he was: bears and pictures of them were both rarities. Maybe Callanish had seen the circus perform long ago, in another life. After all, she must have come from somewhere; no one was born into the graceyards. They weren't a home.

“You can see him,” said North. “Tomorrow. It'll have to be early, though, because I'm sure we'll have the boat fixed soon.”

“And then you'll leave as soon as you can.”

“We have to. If we want to eat, we have to work. This far from the islands, we'll get through our supplies in no time.”

“That's not the only reason.” Callanish never seemed to ask any questions, and yet North felt that every sentence was a question.

“I'm restless. This place, it's…” North couldn't find a way to describe her discomfort. She suspected that Callanish, as someone who lived above hundreds of dead bodies, knew anyway. “I prefer to be at sea.”

“You want to move on. I understand. I want you to go too.”

North glanced over at Callanish. It didn't seem as if she'd meant to be so abrupt. She probably didn't spend a lot of time around people who weren't mourning, and anything you say to someone in mourning is the wrong thing. Maybe she'd stopped worrying about what she said.

“I want to get back to normal. Everything since the storm feels wrong. If we can get back to how we were before, it will all be fine.” She laughed. “Except that when Whitby finds out that his coracle sank, he'll be—”

She stopped. She knew that Whitby wasn't coming back, but also he must be coming back. It didn't make sense otherwise.

“I haven't been away from him for more than a day since we met,” said North. “The boats, they're so small; not like those huge
revival cruise ships, or the military tankers. We're so close—we live so close, anyway, and sometimes that feels the same.”

“I'm sorry. I can't imagine how it must feel to lose—” Callanish seemed to stumble on her words. “I can imagine it a little. I had that once. Where I lived—before I lived here. Seeing the same faces every day. Knowing them better than your own.”

She put her gloved hand on the porch, then stretched out her pinkie until it was touching North's pinkie. North almost flinched—but why not have some contact? Why not tell Callanish things? She was a landlocker, but gracekeepers weren't like other landlockers. They were outcasts, just like circus folk. It was either talking to her, or the hard deck of the coracle and the loneliness until dawn.

“I want you to leave because of the baby,” said Callanish, her fingertip still touching North's. “It won't be long now.”