CHAPTER 3
Nuïy stood with his hands behind his back in the dingy front room of the family house, to one side his elder sister Gharalaiwy in her white crone robes, before him his mother Ospenry and his father, Ghylyva, sitting hunched up in his autochair. It was a scene that had been enacted a hundred times since he became a man, but here it possessed extra menace, because today he was eighteen and a guardian was required.
Nuïy’s face betrayed nothing of his feelings. It was rock. Self control was the thing; self control was all.
They would not look inside him.
Again his mother sighed and looked over at Gharalaiwy, who sat, head in her hands, staring at the floor. She glanced at Ghylyva, but only briefly and with a hint of disgust. Finally she told Nuïy, “You
will
have a guardian. You are eighteen. The laws state that all male citizens must have a guardian. We won’t be made the butt of jests by your mean streak, Nuïy. We won’t let this pass.”
“I don’t want a guardian. I don’t want a foreign woman ruling my life.”
“But Nuïy!” cried an exasperated Ospenry, “don’t you understand that your guardian would not rule your life? You would be free to live like… like your father.”
“I do not want to live like my father.”
“Don’t sulk,” Ghylyva croaked from somewhere deep in his throat.
Nuïy looked at his father, and felt repelled. Ghylyva had silvery eyes and dead, grey skin, and he stank of sweet-opium. “I will not have a guardian,” he repeated.
“Oh, yes you will,” Ospenry replied, her voice rising as she became angrier. “You
will
have a guardian, and anyway we have already chosen one.”
Nuïy remained silent. This was a new position. He did not know that negotiations had already started.
“Yes, that’s stopped your bluster, hasn’t it?” Ospenry said. “Let’s have no more of this nonsense.”
“I will have no guardian,” said Nuïy. “I don’t want one and I can live without one.”
His mother shouted, “Then where will you go? You, a callow little boy with no experience, no friends, nothing? What will you do, Nuïy? Become a vagrant and live like an animal in the Woods? Work as a slave in some decadent garden? Drink your brains out in Blissis? You’re just a youth with no experience. You need a guardian to get on in Zaïdmouth, and you
will
have one. Is that clear?”
“It is clear, but I won’t accept it.”
“So what will you do, then? Tell us your plan, Nuïy, tell us now.”
“I could do any of a number of things,” said Nuïy. “For instance, I could work in Emeralddis-”
“As what? What skills have you got? Who has taken you into their Shrine or their workshop and trained you? Nuïy, you’ve done nothing except flower learning and reading like all the other boys. Who would take you on?”
“Emeralddis is a big place. I would survive because men there have no women ruling their lives.”
Ospenry almost screamed out her frustration. “Nuïy, you’re so naive! Don’t you understand that we are your parents, and we are here to help you start your adult life? For that you need a guard-”
“I will have no guardian. I will go to Emeralddis.”
“Emeralddis is not such a bad place,” murmured Ghylyva.
Nuïy looked at his father and took the decision. It was time. He would stand no more of this battering. It was undignified.
“I will go to Emeralddis. I am going now.”
He turned and walked through the doorway, running upstairs to his room, where the bags that he had packed so many months ago and hidden under his bed lay waiting. He pulled them both out. His mother shouted from the bottom of the stairs, “You’re not going anywhere, Nuïy. I’m your mother and I’m
telling
you.”
Nuïy took the knife that he had found in a ditch down by the Sump. It was sharp. He had spent weeks honing the blade with olive oil and a whetstone. He walked downstairs.
His mother had gone to sit in the front room, and he heard soft weeping, but at the front door sat his father, with Gharalaiwy at his side.
Gharalaiwy said, “You can’t go.”
Nuïy showed them the knife. He was tall and athletic, stronger by far than either of them. “I can and I will. If you stop me I will stab you. Now leave me alone,
sister
.” He spat the word out. It was the only fragment of emotion he allowed himself. Then he looked at his father. “I’ve only got one thing to say to you. You disgust me, you weak willed
cripple
. I’m leaving you and I hope I never see you again. Or smell you. You’re not my father, you’re a disgusting beggar.”
He bent down to slash at the canvas of the autochair. Gharalaiwy, misunderstanding the gesture, screamed and ran into the front room, where she collided with Ospenry. Nuïy was at the front door, which he opened, to step out into the street.
Ospenry stood at the door. “Come here
immediately
. Now, Nuïy!”
Nuïy stepped back and looked at the house, then at his mother, his father, and at his white-faced sister. “I hate you all,” he said. “You are not my family. This abysmal urb is not my home. I’m going to Emeralddis to live with real men. If you follow me, I’ll stab you.”
He turned and walked away. He heard incoherent talking, a wailing from his mother, and the squeak-squeak of his father’s autochair. That vehicle had been the final straw, for it symbolised the hopelessness of fighting the female dominance of his family, which in turn symbolised the female domination of Veneris.
Nuïy lived on the southern edge of Veneris, alongside lackeys of the Shrine of Our Sister Crone, near self-sufficient families growing legumes and fruit in chaotic acres of garden, among the inevitable array of merchants, loafers and criminals. He had despised it for years. Since the previous summer he had been collecting tales of Emeralddis, the urb of men, inscribing them secretly at night in a book made of hardpetal wafers that he had found on a corpse in the Sump. So far he had filled ten pages in his fine, perfectly regular handwriting—the handwriting that had been marvelled over by his tutors, he reminded himself. And now he was going there, to Emeralddis.
He had no idea how many hours it would take to cover the rambling fields and lanes that lay between Veneris and Emeralddis; and of course there was the river to cross. Probably one or two hours. His knowledge of geography was fair. But his knowledge of writing, mathematics and memory was second to none, and even now, as he fled his family, he clung on to his one achievement: coming top in rote learning from his first tutor to his last by the simple means of never forgetting a fact.
He had a chance. He had a chance of success.
In his pack lay the biscuits and dried meat that he had stored away like a squirrel. Resting on the verge of a lane cut deep into the land he ate his meagre lunch, watching as mink scurried through the undergrowth opposite to chew at exposed cables, then hurry on to something more edible. The depth of the lane here exposed many networks, fractured by frost and erosion. Parts of the bank opposite were brown with rust, purple with pulverised hardpetal.
He stood. The ground was cold. If a wind came off the sea tonight there would be snow. That was a further motive for him to make Emeralddis and find shelter, for although cold did not affect him he did not want to become damp and untidy. He needed to keep his appearance to find work. He slicked back his shoulder length black hair and pulled out fragments of dried grass and leaves that were tangled there.
Onward.
After half an hour he became aware of a buzzing that emanated from his right. Lit by the afternoon sun he saw fields of shining domes, and above them what seemed at first to be smoke, but which he soon recognised as bees of the autohives that lay north of Aequalaïs. For a few minutes he watched. There were thousands of domes. The bees of this vicinity operated under mysterious laws devised by the deepest flower networks, combining to form a kind of social entity.
But their appearance meant he must move east and cross the river. It was time to find Emeralddis.
At the river he walked south until he found a stone bridge, which he crossed. On the horizon he could see the first ramshackle buildings of Blissis, so he made south, but soon he became mired in swampy ground. Here the river overflowed low banks to create marshes that, he knew from his tales, could only be crossed by raised constructions known as the Green Man’s Causeway. Squelching through the mud, hopping from tussock to tussock he found one of these ways; it was made of stone with slabs for the road, and he knew it must lead south to Emeralddis. His heart thumped. He had managed it! He felt now that he really had left his family behind. He was what he always wanted to be. An independent.
Twenty minutes walking brought him to the first outposts of Emeralddis, and he saw immediately that the tales were true. Emeralddis was big and tough and grey. As he continued south he walked between huge buildings three or more storeys high, made of granite and slate, covered with lichens and algae. In Veneris, only towers were more than two storeys high, and wood was the commonest building material, but here everything was large and solid. Trees stood everywhere. He noticed that the broad roads were littered with leaves, which, he knew, were never cleared away in deference to the Green Man.
And he saw men. Nothing but men, for women were banned from this urb, and if they dared enter it they risked their lives. Here Nuïy hoped he could lead a life without mothers, sisters or guardians.
Some of the men stared at him, so he greeted them in his deep voice, but by and large they ignored him. A few spat at him, while others just laughed, or grunted like apes. Most men wore beards and moustaches, making Nuïy feel his smooth cheeks, that his mother forced him to shave every morning. Another hated rule he could dispense with. He heard booming voices, rough songs emerging from the bars of taverns, and, as he approached the centre of the urb, the sound of a bell chiming the hour.
He stopped. The purity of its sound touched his mathematical spirit. In the centre of the street he stood transfixed, until the fifth and final chime sounded, and he was released. He felt tears on his cheeks. They marked the passage of the hours here! This urb was perfection. It felt like home.
“Oy, twig. Twig!”
An old man with a glass of ale in his hand was glaring at him.
“Yes, sir?”
The man angrily waved him on. “Git them girly tears off yer face, twig!”
Nuïy ran into a passage and wiped his face. He had made a mistake, but luck, or perhaps the Green Man himself, had saved him from trouble. He returned to the street, to see that it curved around to meet a great stone structure. The Shrine of the Green Man.
Nuïy felt a sudden desire for a new home. This would be perfect. With thumping heart he vowed to forever worship the Green Man.
He followed the road until it met the circular way that surrounded the huge Shrine. Before him lay a moat filled with thin, green stalks topped with sprays of leaves, and behind that stood a ten foot wall of grey stone. Beyond that he saw the tops of swaying trees, and a central tower that showed square windows. On the summit of this tower grew a single oak. He turned his gaze to the moat and realised that it was filled with papyrus, a plant that had no flowers and was thus venerated by the clerics of the Green Man. He felt pleased with himself. The hours of learning of the previous summer would pay off here. He knew things.
The wall was pierced at its western point by a gate, approached by a bridge over the moat. Nuïy noticed that the gate was open and there were no guards visible—this annoyed him. The Shrine being sacred to the Green Man meant it needed protection. Perhaps he could offer himself as a guard.
He walked up to the bridge. Hearing rustling amongst the papyrus stems he looked down, to see a green trumpet emerge, attached to a large sphere. Suddenly, gravel exploded out of the trumpet, hitting him in the face and arms. He leaped back. Another fired at him as his shadow crossed the bole of its body, and he was hit again. Laughter from the walls made him look up, to see two men pointing at him. They shouted at him in some guttural dialect and one laughed again. Nuïy fixed this man’s face in his memory.
He walked around the external road until he reached the southern entrance, where he saw three guards sitting at the half open gate. He approached the bridge and called out, “I want to join the Shrine. Can I enter through your gate?”
They glanced at one another, before one guard strolled to the bridge and looked down into the moat. He waved Nuïy toward him with one finger. “Hurry it on, twig.”
Nuïy sprinted across the bridge, but none of the moat creatures fired gravel at him. He caught the guard’s gaze and said, “Can I join the Shrine?”
“You talk a little flowery, twig. Where you from?”
Nuïy immediately knew that if he mentioned the word Veneris he would be laughed at again, or even thrown out. He said, “I will tell the master of this place, not you.”
“All right, twig. I’ll show you him.”
The other two guards muttered as Nuïy was taken through the gate. What he saw next made him gasp. The Shrine was a vast circle, to the east and north hundreds of trees, to the west and before him buildings of stone, linked by paths upon which cloaked men and boys walked. Centrally lay the tower he had seen, protected by an abyss over which arched bridges leaped. Nuïy’s knees almost buckled with the intensity of his desire to live and work here.
“I must see the master,” he said. “Where is he?”
“Shut up, twig. We’re getting there.”
Immediately to the right stood a small house of stone, into which Nuïy was led. It consisted of a single large room with floor-to-ceiling windows at the rear, the walls set with glass-fronted cupboards and pot plants containing more papyrus, while in the centre stood a great desk of oak at which sat a single man. Nuïy stared at him. This man had a broken nose and a much-scarred face. He touched his own broken nose. They even looked like him here!
“Twig for you,” said the guard, before leaving.
Nuïy approached. “Are you the master here? I want to join.”
The man looked up. His eyes seemed misted by age and his thinning hair was white, but his gaze was that of a weasel, and the mouth set amidst his clipped beard was a straight line. He said nothing. His movements were slow, as if he was loth to be disturbed from the papers before him.