thank you
I wanted to be an artist when I was a schoolgirl – a real one.
Our homestead was just on the outskirts of Portcaye. I went to school in town before the Skøl came. I used to race over the cobblestones. I was fast then, and nimble. I loved to draw fast-moving things – animals, mostly. Horses and cats and bugs.
The year I was eight, Ma gave me a book of blank paper for the festival of the Cutter Moon. I filled it with birds – including a spread with a pair of vocifers I only saw once, flying off into the distance. They’re the biggest birds of prey – Malan vocifers, we called them, after the mountain range. They were rare, even then.
I remember her touching one lightly with her fingertips, like it might keep flying right off the page.
It was the Tenmonth when it happened, the year I turned eleven, the second day of the Cutter Moon festival. A time for feasting, for celebrating the bounty of the season.
I was in Mist-in-the-Valley’s field with my little brother, Char, when the big men approached. We were playing marbles on a patch of weathered ground.
I could see they weren’t like anyone else. Their odd hats and clothes. Their pale, stony faces. The way they walked, like they were coming to give us directions, not to ask them, even though they were the strangers.
Something was wrong. I grabbed Char’s hand to pull him away. He was already five, too heavy for me to carry any distance. Still, I should have tried. He wasn’t scared. He always liked people.
I felt the shock rip through him – through me, second-hand. He went floppy as we fell. The grass crushed under my knees. I forgot about the men drawing closer, desperate to wake him. I didn’t even understand they’d done it.
For weeks after, I’d see him lying there, the embroidery on his collar blurred by my panicked tears. Mist-in-the-Valley’s muzzle drifting over us. Father bought him for Char the year before. A little island pony. I can still see his front legs, grey and still as waymarkers, feel his hot snuffling breath in my hair and the thick weave of Char’s little woollen jumper under my hands. It was deep, deep blue, flecked white and brown, and the knit went side to side over the chest and then up and down under the ribs. I can’t hear Char breathing, I can’t hear, and his chest’s too still.
Later, I’d close my eyes and see Char’s prone shape – a roving shadow, like the after-image that comes from looking too long at a bright light.
I could still draw, after detention, after they sold me – when I could get my hands on paper and pencils. But no one cared about my drawings. I was two arms, two legs and one head with enough of a grip on their language to follow basic, barked instructions. Long gone was any chance of growing up an artist. Growing up anything’s more than most of us got.
Outside the station Ruzi’s nowhere to be seen. I make my own way back to Opal Alley, but he’s not at home either.
I head for the Lugger.
I’ve enough on me to buy the local paper. The Portcaye Post, they call it – it comes out every evening, Endweek included.
Zako has made the front page.
VALOUR VENOR: HAMMERED!
Magistrate Attacked Without Provocation
—
Savage Perpetrator Absconds
—
Future Governor Clings to Life:
Portcaye Holds Its Breath
There’s nothing about the Artist’s arrest.
I find a solitary Kit stacking pots in the Lugger’s kitchen.
“You okay?” he croaks, relieved, cracking the stove door open and herding me to warm up. “Did they bring you in?”
“Me and Ruzi. Have they been here?”
“Been and gone, like we thought. Did a number on my room. The stables. Left the Scarlets alone though.”
I shut my eyes, just for a moment. A respectable elderly couple – and owners at that. The authorities didn’t believe for one moment the Scarlets might knowingly harbour a fugitive.
“I need to tell you something,” I say. “I saw the Artist.”
I tell Kit everything. His face drops, and he curses almost as colourfully as the Artist.
“I paid his agent already. Upfront. Everything. Gave him my life savings.”
His life savings. What a thing to call money. My heart thuds. One beat. Two.
“Maybe he’ll return it…”
But Kit’s shaking his head. He makes for the door out of the kitchen to the lounge, gesturing for me to follow. He almost bumps into Renny in his distraction. She’s like Gracie – works for the Scarlets. “I need five minutes,” he tells her. There aren’t many drinkers tonight.
Renny turns an indulgent smile my way. She thinks we’re stealing an intimate moment.
Kit’s room is almost worse than mine. The branders broke his ocarina. It’s in two pieces on his desk. A few of my drawings – scenes from the Heanes’ farm and some rough sketches of insects and flowers – are strewn across it as well.
“They took your other drawings,” Kit says, “but your paper and pencils are all there.”
“Can you fix this?” I pick up the halves of his instrument.
He shakes his head. “What am I going to tell the Scarlets? I promised them he’d only be here two days.”
Guilt rises again along with the panic. “What about another forger?”
“Can we pay another forger?” Kit laughs a little desperately. “It’ll be all right.” He’s composed himself. “We’ll think of something.”
We. I look up at him. “Kit, I know I got you into this. I—”
He cuts me off. “Don’t. I knew I wasn’t signing up for a midnight kine ride. We’re both in this. I’ll find another forger. Tomorrow. I can take on extra work to find the fee. The Scarlets won’t throw Zako out, not yet.”
“I can look for more work too,” I tell him, though I’ve no idea what.
It’ll be enough. It has to be.
Back at Opal Alley, I find Ruzi sitting halfway down the iron stairs. He looks fifty years older.
“There you are.” He stands when he sees me.
Inside, we pick our way through the ruined kitchen and Ruzi sets a pot to boil.
I can’t leave him thinking the worst like this. “Zako’s safe,” I tell him.
He turns, expression blank.
“We went and got him out, me and Kit. Last night. That’s why I wasn’t home. He’s hiding at the Lugger. They didn’t find him.”
Ruzi gawps like a fish as I tell him the rest. I don’t dwell on the Artist. I make it sound like we have a solution.
“He’s safe,” Ruzi echoes, his voice thick with emotion. He’s abandoned the pot of hot water. I don’t fancy a fikka now either.
“You were up all night then,” Ruzi rumbles.
“Yeah.”
“You should sleep now.” I think he wants to get to his room before the tears welling in his eyes make like Zako and escape.
In the dark hall, he pauses. “Thank you.”