Arcene: The Island (9 page)

And she'd felt his mind touch hers as she crashed into the trees, and again when she landed in the pile of leaves. She'd signaled to him, told him she would see him at home, and then he retreated from her presence, sticking to the agreement made that they would never intrude in each other's minds — it was taboo, you had to be your own person.

So, Fasolt would stick to their agreement made in The Noise. He would go home, she would make her own way, and he would battle with the balloon as long as it stayed airborne. It was silly for them both to be delayed, and anyway, he knew what she was like and that she welcomed the chance for adventure on her only trip away for years.

She put such thoughts aside, willed herself to focus on the present, and as her hair whipped about her face and she inhaled deeply of the salty air, she took stock of her surroundings and let everything else fade away.

It was all about living in the now, taking in as much of the experience as possible, not letting other things crowd your mind and stop you truly experiencing the real world. It was easy to go through life only half-awake, never present, so Arcene became one with herself, opened her mind and her senses to the moment and lived life to the fullest. How it was meant to be. Something the few people still alive on the planet seldom accomplished.

The tiny community was beautiful, in its own way. Arcene stood on the edge of the harbor wall and turned in a circle, looking first out to sea then at the buildings crowding the edge of the ancient paving, cobbles peeking through the moss that made a beautifully compact carpet of green, contrasting sharply with the white seagulls wandering around, seemingly unafraid of Arcene and her companion.

"Leel, you leave them alone." It was no use, Leel had stayed by her side long enough and she was practically ready to burst at the sight of so much free food, apparently asking to be eaten. With her body trembling with anticipation and excitement, Leel bounded after the gulls, only to find they weren't the static snacks she had believed. The birds took to the air as one, screeching their warning to others, mocking Leel as she jumped at them, huge jaws snapping on nothing but air.

The houses that fronted the quayside made Arcene think of dollhouses she had discovered over the years, the doors tiny, windows allowing glimpses into ramshackle interiors where nothing remained but broken furniture and the chaos wrought by infrequent flooding over the years. There would be nothing to find, little of any use, certainly no food.

At the thought, her belly rumbled, but it would have to wait. Unless Leel somehow convinced a gull to land in her mouth there was little chance of them getting anything fresh to eat. And besides, the night was coming soon, they would have to make do with a little of what was in their pack and suffer the hunger pangs. She could deal with a lot, had, and would, but hunger was almost too much to bear.

When a child and alone, mother lost to The Lethargy, Arcene had come close to starving on many occasions, and it explained why she was so obsessed with food now. It was almost as if her childhood experiences had dictated the kind of person she was — food was life, and Arcene wanted to live forever. She might. Being Awoken meant death was defeated, at least in the normal sense of aging.

All she had to do was ensure she didn't get killed. Not easy when you had a keen sense of adventure and a total lack of concern for personal safety. Arcene felt invincible, believed she was put on the earth to make it a happier and more exciting place, so made it her goal in life to enjoy as much as she could — consequences for actions were not always big on her agenda, and the truth of the matter was that she often didn't care.

"What's that smell? Ugh." Arcene lifted an arm and sniffed, she was stinky. The wind was dying down but sent a farewell breeze skirting across the harbor, rippling the calm water and blowing a lock of hair into her mouth. "Tastes like fire. I really need a wash and a change of clothes." Her hair was filthy, and as she inspected her bare arms she noted for the first time just how covered in soot and dirt they were. Her legs were almost black and she didn't even want to think about what her face would look like.

A fire, I need a fire and something to warm water in.

Arcene had been the scruffiest, dirtiest, most unkempt child imaginable, never thinking of cleaning or personal hygiene, but as she got older her outlook changed, and now she found the memory of that crazed child amusing. Maybe she was becoming an adult whether her body allowed it or not. The smell of her own stink was definitely unwelcome, but worst of all was having dirty hair.

"Come on, Leel, let's see if we can find somewhere nice to spend the night, and get clean."

Woof, woof, woof.

Leel barked into the sky at the birds that taunted her, then skipped after Arcene who pushed open a battered green door with peeling paint and failed to resist rapping a door knocker in the shape of a boat. She ducked and entered the gloomy interior; Leel followed behind.

A Fisherman's Tale

The room was so cramped Arcene and Leel almost filled it. This was how she pictured a fisherman's cottage to be, imagining a weather-worn man sitting in a chair by the fireplace that dominated the room, fixing a net and maybe smoking a pipe. The ceiling was intact and low, beams as black as night and as hard as iron standing testament to the robust construction of the tiny dwelling.

There was a tiny two-seater sofa covered in mold with half the stuffing gone, a table on its side, and a wall covered in books that would probably disintegrate if she touched them. Glass littered the floor, a carpet that released clouds of dust and was crunchy with salt, residue from a flood that must have happened long ago — everything was dry, just powdery and ready to stick in your lungs if you breathed deeply.

"What do you think, Leel, fancy staying the night if the fireplace works?"

Woof.

Leel dodged the detritus and headed through an opening into what Arcene assumed would be the kitchen, and maybe lead upstairs. She pictured the old man that lived so close to where he would go out on his boat every day, thinking how lucky he was to have such a life. Warm in the winter evenings with his lovely fireplace, content to listen to the sounds of gulls, and the chatter of other fisherman. Maybe the odd tourist as they wandered past his front door and admired the view he probably took for granted.

That would be quite a nice life. Simple, fulfilling.

The reality was different. This was no quaint home of a fisherman, this was a holiday home for a banker that lived three hundred miles away and visited only twice a year for long weekends. A fisherman could no more afford to live in the village than the banker knew how to fish. No, the house had stood empty long before The Lethargy, shutters closed against prying eyes, locked up and a continual annoyance to the long term residents of the village, along with over half the other properties that stood empty but were too expensive for their children to afford so they could live in the place of their birth.

Arcene knew nothing of this and wandered into the kitchen to find Leel nudging open cupboard doors in a vain attempt to uncover something edible.

"Leel, there won't be any food. People would have taken it before you were born, and if there is anything left it won't be any good for eating, not now."

Leel cocked an ear, then continued nudging open the doors with her nose.

Woof, woof.

Arcene ducked, nearly hitting her head on an especially low beam, and stepped over to Leel.
Don't tell me she's found food, that's impossible.

Woof.

"All right! I am right here, you know. No need to shout."

Leel stuck her head into the cupboard; Arcene bent to see what all the fuss was about. "Out, Leel, right now." Arcene grabbed Leel by the ears and had to drag her back with all the force she could muster.

Leel resisted, but her ears were her one weak spot — she couldn't fight too hard as she hated them being pinched more than anything. "Now, you sit, and you leave them alone," Arcene scolded, then glanced back into the cupboard.

A terrified looking blackbird stared back at her, orange-rimmed eyes wide, shocked at the sight of Leel's huge jaws ready to clamp around her. Arcene noted the nest of mud, twigs and sofa stuffing, and the three eggs, as the mother stood and hopped about in front of her hideaway, bright beak open wide, trilling shrilly at the intrusion.

Leel bent her head as low as she could to get a look into the cupboard and see what the bird was doing, but remained sat, so Arcene released her hold on her ears. "It's all right, little bird, we're sorry to disturb you. Sorry for the noise. You go back to sitting on your eggs, we'll leave you to it."

Arcene closed the door gently on the scared blackbird, and whispered to Leel, "Come on, girl, let's find another house to sleep in, this one's taken." Leel stared at her like she was mad. Didn't she know they needed food, and they both loved eating eggs and birds, didn't they?

It was easy to tell what Leel was thinking, but however hungry she was Arcene wasn't about to interrupt the life of a soon-to-be mother and the young chicks that would hatch soon enough.

Parenthood was hard enough without having huge dogs scaring you half to death, and she would never put her hungry belly before the new life still forming inside such delicate blue-green shells. The miracle of life was too precious to cull it in such a manner, and if Arcene was honest it reminded her too much of her own child to let little lives be obliterated so they could eat something that wouldn't even begin to eradicate their hunger.

Arcene and Leel tiptoed out of the house; she pulled the door closed behind her quietly. At least the house was being put to use again, albeit in a rather different way to envisioned when built. The banker would have had a fit but he'd been dead for centuries. His life ebbed away as he sat in his expensive chair in his top floor office that looked out onto a dead city. He died staring at his computer screen — it had been black for days, the power having finally failed, his career along with it.

The house next door was avifauna free — Arcene's word of the year, posh word for birds — and the living room was the opposite of the previous building. It was empty, the floor bare, the kitchen not even installed. Just about perfect for Leel and Arcene.

The back room was jammed full of bathroom fittings still in tattered plastic wrap, the whole building clearly having undergone a total redevelopment and still being refurbished when the builders succumbed to The Lethargy, the owner too.

"It's a bath, Leel, we can have a bath." Leel stared at Arcene, who had clearly lost her mind. Leel didn't do baths, Leel preferred to be dirty. "It's the bath or the sea, make your mind up." Leel studied the bath as Arcene dragged it into the living room and tore the plastic off, then looked at the front door, the harbor only a few paces away.

She sniffed the bath, cocked her head at Arcene to see if there was a way out of her predicament but Arcene shook her head, so ran out the door. With a mighty splash, Leel disappeared off the cobbles and into the water.

"Stupid dog. At least the backpack is off this time." Arcene had removed it once she'd decided they would stay, as she wanted to get a fire going as soon as possible. While Leel continued to splash about, she took out the box with a few lighters in, the rest sealed in plastic in case Leel did anything stupid like she just had, but with the backpack on, and then carefully pulled out her sword, mindful of the low ceiling and the cramped space.

"Ugh, nothing to burn." Arcene went next door and quietly took the broken table and anything else wooden she could find and returned to their headquarters for the night. She squatted by the open fireplace and whittled a chair leg into shavings using her sword, the pommel bouncing for joy as the blade did what it did best: cut.

Arcene built the paper-thin kindling into an open pyramid shape in the hearth, then circled the wood with her lighter until it caught. As the flames consumed the tinder, she added thicker pieces until the heat built, checked that the draw was good so she knew the chimney functioned properly, then broke up the table by stamping on it and built a healthy fire. She busied herself for a few minutes snapping the other pieces of furniture and stacked the wood neatly beside the fire.

"Right, now I need to get water for my bath. Um, how can I heat it?" Arcene bit down on her lower lip in concentration, wondering how to go about having warm water without anything to hang over the flames to heat it. As the fire warmed the room, she wandered out into dusk that had sprung from nowhere. Late summer evenings had a habit of doing that — one minute it was warm and light, the next the darkness enveloped you like the stars were bored waiting.

Leel had apparently decided she was clean enough and was at the far end of the harbor where a section angled up from the water, presumably for launching boats. While Leel shook like the loon she was, Arcene wandered along the edge. There was no wall as such, the street simply ended, with a drop of a few feet to the water.