The Gracekeepers (23 page)

“What? Why?”

“They're pagans, my sister. Tree-worshippers. The preacher says that we have gained family from every island, in every archipelago, but never that one. They are irredeemable sinners. It would be a waste and a danger.”

The passageway was windowless, white-scrubbed, lined with door after door after door, but Callanish saw none of it: all she could see was the expanse of ocean between herself and her island.

“So all I have to do,” she murmured, more to herself than to the acrobat, “is get from the ship to the island.” She began to wander away down the passageway, then rushed back to grip the acrobat's hands in thanks. “From here to there!” she said. “That's all I need. And then I'll know. And if I need to, I'll wait. For the circus, and the bear, and my—I'll wait.” She released the acrobat before wandering away in the other direction, head bowed.

“I hope someone saves you, my sister,” called the acrobat after her. “Even if they have to steal you first.”

But Callanish barely heard. In her mind, she was already home.

T
he next morning Callanish woke before dawn. The room was restless with the sounds of sleep, but that was not why she woke. She could smell oak leaves. She inhaled so deeply she felt
the muted clicking of her vertebrae. Eyes bleary, she slid from her bed. Through the door, down the passageways, up on to the deck, and still she could not breathe in deeply enough, and still she could be dreaming. Out of habit she checked her hands; she felt the silk gloves, and knew she was awake. In dreams her hands were always bare. In dreams she slipped into the sea and felt it soothe her tired, air-parched skin.

The night's cold hit her with a slap. She crossed her arms over her chest, hunching so that her blue nightgown covered her knees. From the deck of the boat, she saw her home island: the answer to her question. The scent of oak trees enveloped her.

She wanted to turn the ship around and sail to her empty graceyard without looking back. She sat cross-legged on the deck, back pressed hard against the wall, and watched her distant island.

Clouds thickened overhead. Through the gaps, the blackness smudged to gray, to pale blue, to the first pinkish wisps of dawn, and the oak-tree scent was as soft and comforting as a feather bed, and the air grew heavy around her, and perhaps she dozed off, because she snapped awake to the warm weight of an arm around her shoulders.

“Good morning, little fish. I see you've made it home.”

She shrugged off Flitch's arm and stood, feeling her joints crack. The first heavy raindrop plipped on to the deck.

“Not yet, Flitch. I won't really be there until my feet touch the land.”

“Don't be a silly fishy! You're so close. Can't you smell the trees? Can't you smell your mother?”

Callanish clenched her jaw and breathed hard before she could speak. “You said you'd bring me home, and you did, and I am grateful. Thank you, Flitch. But I have to go now.”

Flitch smiled and turned his palms to the sky. “In this terrible
weather? We can't take the cutter out in this. We'll have to wait for the rain to stop. But whatever can we do to entertain ourselves until—” A raindrop hit his upturned palm and he frowned at it, rubbing his hand on his leg as if it had hurt. “Until the rain stops? Speaking of which, we haven't agreed on a payment for my services.”

“I only have a few coins,” said Callanish. “Nothing to trade. But you can have the coins, all of them. I'll get them right now.”

“Oh little fish, we always have something worth trading. You paid me before, didn't you? I'm sure there are plenty of coins left in that soft little purse of yours.” He leaned closer to her, rain heavy on his eyelashes. “How about you make a partial payment now, hmm? Then when we rescue my cutter, maybe we can renegotiate terms.”

The rain grew heavier, thudding on Callanish's shoulders, and she saw it was not water now but ice, breaking apart as it ricocheted off her and smacked the deck.

“Seven coins is all I have, hidden in my pillow, and you can help yourself to every single one of them. But I'm not your little fish, Flitch.” She put her hand along his jaw. She felt his teeth clench, and resisted the urge to pull her hand away and punch him instead. His cheek was rough with stubble, his skin cool and damp from the hail. “I don't want you. I want my mother, and I want the bear, and I want—”

A sudden thud, a shock of pain, and they stared as an acornsized hailstone skidded across the deck. Blood trickled from Flitch's head on to Callanish's hand, warm on her fingers even through the gloves. Disgust leapt in her and she took a step back. Flitch raised both hands to his head, his fingers coming away bloody.

“What did…?” he murmured. “What hit me?”

Callanish pulled off her gloves and pressed them to the cut on his head, linking his hands together over the compress before letting go. She walked away from him, toward the edge. He could see her webbed fingers now. For all it mattered, the whole of the revival boat could see them. They could curse her and damn her and throw her into the sea, and it would not matter at all, because that had always been where she would end up. Below her, waves sucked at the boat, hungry for her. She had traveled halfway around the world and ended up exactly where she started.

The hail drummed on the deck, scudding messily, turning the polished metal white. The noise of it blocked all thought. Callanish concentrated on staying still, her feet slippery on the ice. She put her hands on the guardrail, Flitch's gaze weighing heavy on her back.

“Are you going to swim home, little fish? Those landlockers won't rescue you if you drown.”

One step, two steps. Her silk slippers were sodden and she slid out of them. She flexed her feet, stretching the webbing between her toes, feeling the chill of the guardrail against her bare soles.

“You can't swim that far! No one can!” Panic grated in Flitch's voice. “Come back, Callanish. I need you. I won't call you little fish. I'll take you ashore, and I'll wait for you, and then I'll take you wherever else you want to go. You don't have to pay me anything. Just stay with me.”

Callanish paused, perched on top of the guardrail. The island was so close. Two hours of swimming; maybe three. Maybe more. But what choice did she have? She inhaled the scent of oak leaves. She jumped.

For two heartbeats she couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.
Could only feel the way the wind caught her and seemed to hold her, to lift her—

“No!” Flitch was shouting after her, or maybe it was “Go!”—she couldn't tell because the wind stole everything, all the sound, all the feeling, and she was an acrobat, falling from the heights of her sin, clad in scraps of nothing, with no need of a rope because the wind was safe, was holding her, would never let her fall, and—

The sea. She was in the sea. The water held her but it was cold, cold. Too cold to breathe and don't breathe, Callanish, don't breathe because you'll only breathe water and that's called drowning. The sky was down—the sky was up—she kicked out, fought back, and she would have to give up because she couldn't, she couldn't—but the harder she fought to hold her breath, the harder grew the pressure from her scars, as if they were trying to open, to let her breathe water—but that couldn't be, surely they weren't really gills, just scars on her flesh from her mother's knife, and that was not how it worked, you couldn't just cut yourself open and expect to find gills under your—then her scars strained, and she knew she couldn't breathe underwater but still she was, she was breathing.

She was not drowning. The knowledge that she wasn't drowning calmed her panic and she could think. The sea cocooned her in darkness so she couldn't see—but there, look, there were the silvery pocks of the hail falling on to the water, and so there was the surface. She kicked toward it. The webs between her fingers and toes caught the water, displacing it easily. She pushed once, twice—and there was the sky, and her lungs stretched, and she could breathe air.

On the deck the hail thudded, shattered, tore open skin—but
here in the sea it scattered on the water gently, like snow on snow. Hailstones tickled her limbs as they sank past. Her whole life she had been afraid of the sea, terrified that it wanted to swallow her whole. And now here she was, and it held her. She felt something that she had not felt since that night in the circus coracle, her bare hand linked with North's. She felt at home.

Behind her, on the deck of the scrubbed and strange revival boat, Flitch raged and bled and called her name. But Callanish did not look back. She took a deep breath and swam for shore.

 

“
H
elp! Jarrow, help me!”

Was the canvas cover pulled back too far? Was it obvious that she had not really been in the coracle? Should she lever herself inside more—but that filthy beast might take a swipe at her feet, and she wasn't sure she could get her feet on the slats, and it was tricky enough to maneuver when she was this big, and what if she accidentally knocked her son?

“Jarrow, please! Help!”

She steadied her feet against the coracle's entrance and opened her mouth wide, ready to scream to the full stretch of her lungs, but as she pulled in a breath she heard the thud of feet and the roar of her husband calling her name. She felt a flash of annoyance that he had not appeared at the exact moment she called for him. What could he possibly be doing that was more important than saving the precious lives of his wife and baby?

“Jarrow, Ainsel, North—someone, please! Help me!”

There were still so many things that could go wrong. North could find the razor blade on the deck of her coracle. Avalon had planned to throw it into the sea after she'd cut her arm, but the sight of a dampling watching her from a medic boat anchored nearby had distracted her. In that moment of panic, she'd dropped the blade. There was no time to go after it, even if she dared to take her son anywhere near that nasty, violent animal. But it was fine. Even if North found it, what would she say? Who would ever believe her?

“I can't get away! I think it's coming! Please help!”

Avalon held in her scream and let out some whimpers instead, tearing her dress a little more. She bent her body at an awkward angle across the canvas, just as the top of Jarrow's head appeared on the
Excalibur
's deck. And there on his face she saw panic, and fear, and love, and it was all for her. She felt affection kick in her belly. Soon they would have their home, and it would all be worth it.

“Jarrow!” she gasped. “Save me. The bear—it's trying to kill me.”

 

C
allanish was on the island. She was shiver-soaked, frantic, tired to the marrow of her bones: but she was on the island.

By the time she managed to pull herself ashore, dawn was stretching out across the horizon. The island was awakening. But most of the windows in the nearby stilt-homes were still dark, so Callanish allowed herself a moment to lie on the wooden slats of the dock.

She stretched her limbs, and it hurt. She blinked her eyes, and it hurt. She breathed, and it hurt. Her lungs throbbed with the air of the island, heavy with smells: leaves, earth, rain, wood, animals, grass, strangers, family. She kept breathing until it stopped hurting.

Over the lip of the hill a landlocker approached. Callanish stood with her bare toes scrunched together and her hands behind her back to hide the webbing. She was ready with reasons.
She had been thrown off her ship, her papers had been stolen, she had to leave her graceyard because…because…

But she knew that none of it would matter, because now the landlocker could see her face.

For a dampling it would be impossible to get on to the island. Stowing away on a revival boat, pretending to be a trader or a butcher: all pointless. They'd never get past the blackshore. But this was Callanish's birth island. This is where she'd come from. The angles and planes of her face, a mirror of her mother's, marked her out. Every landlocker here knew the face of every other landlocker here—including that of Veryan Sand.

“You,” said the landlocker to Callanish, and though she had never seen him before, she knew his face.

“Yes,” she said. “Hello.” She smiled, pretending that her clothes were not damp and her eyes were not bloodshot and her hands were not clenched into fists. “I have come home to visit my mother. I am going there right now. Goodbye.”

She took a step. Her pulse throbbed at the base of her tongue and she tasted metal in her mouth. But she took another step, and another and another, and she was past the landlocker who was a stranger and not a stranger, and she was off the gangway and on the path leading up between the stilt-homes, and no one had stopped her. The stilt-homes seemed so flimsy, the salvaged metal walls tarnished, their spindly legs constantly sucked and battered by the waves. Their roofs were planted with short-rooted vegetables—lettuce and cabbage, radish and pepper—and the remaining leaves shuddered in the breeze from the sea.

As she walked further toward the island's center, the reclaimed land under her feet grew so steady that she felt dizzy. She carried on past the reclaimed homes, their wooden walls thin as fabric, their proportions larger and their roofs lower for maximum contact
with the ground. Landlockers could buy these houses even if they weren't native islanders, so she didn't know who would be living in them now. If they were new to the island, they might not recognize her. There might be questions. Her steps quickened, and she walked as fast as she could without tripping into a run.

Memories of her childhood home loomed up, faded as old paper: soaking in an herb-scented bath, her mouth watering for pepper-pumpkin soup, the song of the wind in the trees—then the shush of her mother's footsteps, the burn of her mother's knife…

She had slowed almost to a stop, bare toes dragging in the dirt. It was fine. She was fine. This island was supposed to be her home, and what could be safer than home? She picked up her feet and kept walking.

After all, she'd visited her mother before. Not for a while, true, but she must have visited since—no. There was no use in lying to herself. She had not returned to the island since the day she left for her graceyard.

Houses and fences and face-framing windows flickered past as she walked. Finally the sun had made its way over the horizon, and Callanish was at her mother's gate. Her house was on old land—the most valuable of all, reserved for native islanders. The ground held her feet so steady she thought she might fall. She stood with her hand on the latch.

There were no flowers in her mother's garden. There was no smoke from her mother's chimney. There were no lights in her mother's window. Callanish swung the gate, walked up the path, and opened the front door.

“Mother,” she said. “I've come home.”

Callanish knew that she should wait in the doorway until
she was invited in. She knew that she should greet her mother warmly, should accept a cup of tea, should provide chatty updates on the noble and horrible business of gracekeeping. But she had come this far, and she could wait no longer.

“Mother?” she called again into the house. “It's me. It's Callanish. Can I come in?”

Still no answer. She went in anyway.

“Mother? Are you…” She trailed off. The house was too small for hiding. Callanish saw immediately that her mother was not asleep in her straw-mattress bed, or fetching food from the pantry, or soaking in the huge tin bath. She was not pulling vegetables from the tiny garden pressed up against the back wall of the house. There was nowhere else that she could be.

Callanish slumped on the bed, too cold even to shiver. The sea's chill was deep in her bones, and she knew that the earth would never get warm enough to chase it out. In the center of the kitchen table sat a grace-feather; from her perch on the bed, Callanish could see how its green-blue colors had faded and its barbs were clumped and bent from repeated handling. The sight of it made tears clot at the base of her throat. Her mother knew her, and her mother remembered her, and her mother forgave her. So where was she?

To slow her thoughts, she ran her hand over the wood of the bed frame, pressed her bare feet on the wooden floorboards, inhaled the scent of oak leaves from the trees at the…

And then she knew where her mother was. She stood up and ran toward the woods at the center of the island.