Gullstruck Island (56 page)
Authors: Frances Hardinge
I am anything I wish to be. The world cannot choose for me. No, it is for me to choose what the world shall be.
Slowly, watching her reflected smile in the water, Hathin raised her hands and gave them two rapid claps.
‘All change!’ she whispered.
And all around her, with a soft golden roar like a lion waking, the world was changing.
Glossary
Gullstruck
The island of Gullstruck rests in splendid isolation, with no other land for hundreds of miles. Seen from above, its outline looks a lot like a hurrying hunchback figure with uncannily extended fingers and toes and a twisted, gaping bird beak. It is said that Gullstruck was fashioned by the Gripping Bird, a capering bird-man trickster, who shaped the island in his own image.
Much of ‘him’ is inhospitable, his head and shoulders wracked with giddying ravines and choked with cloud forests, his belly and legs barren land. But between these, in the region of his waist, lies a band of verdant land, the playground of the volcanoes.
A long ridge of mountains divides the mad, frilled western coast from the rest of the island, and the tallest and middlemost of these mountains is the King of Fans, cloud-shrouded and momentous. Beside him to the north-east sits his wife, Sorrow, the white volcano. Twenty miles further north of them sulks Spearhead with his barbed summit, standing at a sullen distance from the file of other mountains. Far towards the eastern side of the island steams Crackgem the Mad, amid his wildly coloured lakes. And out amid the hiss of scalding sea off the west coast, vapour twisting like wild hair, crouches Mother Tooth.
The Tribes
The original denizens of Gullstruck. According to legend, the Gripping Bird fashioned the original tribes of the island from anything he had to hand. He used berries for making the Bitter Fruit, who dwelt in the northern jungles; geyser vapour for the Dancing Steam, who lived on the hills and lakes around Crackgem; resin for the Amber, who kept to the barren southlands; and coral for the Lace, who had once been scattered all over the western half of the island but now scratched out a living on the ragged western coast.
The Cavalcaste
Originally from a distant land of plains and snow, the Cavalcaste put to sea to find new lands that they could divide up and dedicate to their sacred ancestors. They soon dominated Gullstruck, and although the majority of people are now of mixed race, most of the governors and men of power have a lot of Cavalcaste blood.
Port Suddenwind
The first landing point of the Cavalcaste fleet, where a ‘sudden wind’ blew their ships into a small bay allowing them to drop anchor. A popular joke has it that nothing sudden has happened there since. Port Suddenwind is now the home of the government of Gullstruck, a grinding, monolithic heap of useless laws that nobody can throw away.
The Lost
The Lost are born with the ability to move their senses out of their bodies and send them abroad. They are scarce and are highly respected, providing their local communities with news, communication with the rest of the island, warnings of storms and other dangers, and a roaming watch for bandits. Led by the Sightlords of the Lost Council, they are in many respects as powerful as the city governors who follow the orders of Port Suddenwind.
The Volcanoes
The tallest and middlemost mountain in the long western ridge of the island is the King of Fans, his cratered head forever lost in the clouds. Beside him to the north-east sits his wife, Sorrow, softly and perfectly conical, sweet and treacherous as snow. Twenty miles further north of them sulks Spearhead with his barbed summit, standing at a sullen distance from the file of other mountains. An old battle with the King of Fans has nicked his crater rim and left a long gouge in his flank, down which fierce streams rage. At Spearhead’s base these streams become a river which over the millennia have worn a long valley towards cold, beautiful Sorrow, and past her to the south. Far towards the eastern side of the island, isolated by universal consent, steams Crackgem the Mad, piebald in black and green, amid his wildly coloured orchid lakes. And out amid the hiss of scalding sea off the west coast, vapour twisting like wild hair, crouches Mother Tooth.
A Note from the Author
Neither the tribes of Gullstruck nor the Cavalcaste are designed to resemble or comment upon specific real-world races. Here and there I have worked in elements taken from various different cultures because they suited the story, but the world of Gullstruck is basically fantastical.
Acknowledgements
I would like to give my thanks to the following: my editor Ruth, my agent Nancy and my housemate Liz for persuading me that this book should not be dropped into a lava spout and forgotten; Martin for running up and down volcanoes with me; the museums at Rotorua and Te Wairoa for details of the Tarawera eruptions; a New Zealand fantail who followed me down a path pecking at my shadow and the beetles my footsteps had disturbed; the hill tribes of Sapa, where foreheads are shaven, cloths are hung in doorways to keep out evil and the Black Hmong’s faces and hands are stained with indigo from their smoke-scented clothes; Helen Walters for her first-hand account of baking alive on a drifting boat; Profound Decisions and the superlative Maelstrom; the Escuela Sevilla in Antigua, Guatemala; the Maori legend of the rivalry of Taranaki and Tongariro for the beautiful Pihanga; Carol for kindness and hospitality;
The Maya
by Michael D. Coe; Taranaki, Tarawera, Tongariro, Ruapehu, Whakaari, Ngauruhoe, Baldera, Mount St Helens, Arenal, Fuego, Pacaya and, last but not least, my favourite volcano, Felix Egmont Geiringer.
I should also mention a young girl who appeared quite suddenly in the middle of a jungle temple in Cambodia and followed me around with quiet stubbornness until I noticed her. She had wide-apart eyes, a faint whisper of a voice and a civet-like creature perched on one shoulder. She wanted me to blow up her balloon. This done, she vanished again among the trees. I will never know who she was.
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