24

like ghosts

I have one of those dreams where my family’s still alive. Pa and the three little ones, even Ma. They’re all the same age they were, though I’m older. We’re living together, not here in Portcaye. Not in our old house either, but another house that doesn’t exist, surrounded by pinewoods.

Enca and Eben find a rotting head by the hitching post, maggots wriggling out of the eye sockets. They scream for me. It’s your brother!

No. Char’s here, I tell them. He’s here. It’s not our brother. I’m trying to shout, but I can’t. I can’t scream in this dream world.

I wake in a sweat, rigid-limbed, still straining to scream, the old refrain scratchy as the wool blanket – why did I survive?

To work meek as a kine for the people who destroyed everyone I loved?

Ruzi’s an early riser, but he’s still abed when I leave. It’s not cold, but mist fills the streets, cloud-thick. I stop to buy a loaf of cheese bread from the bakery downstairs and head for the Mermen Gates. I’ll go north to the woods. A person could build a shelter there. It’s close to the sea for pickings in the rock pools. That’s where I would run, if I was brave enough.

“Someone’s up and about early.” Round a bend in the road, I almost bump into Gracie. “This is mad, isn’t it?” Her smile’s dimmed behind a veil of fog. “Need a knife to cut this stuff!”

If she hadn’t hailed me, I’d have gone right past her in the mist. A basket of aguatos and greens weighs down one of her arms – she’s been to the costermongers near Crescent Lane.

“I’m going out for… I’m going outside the wall for a walk,” I tell her lamely.

“Sure I’d rather spend a day off with my feet up,” she laughs. “But each to her own.” She trudges off through the whiteout with a wave.

The familiar mermen still guard the gates, though the fog’s too thick to reveal more than a rough sense of them. It’s only been a few weeks since the announcement of their numbered days, but I’m glad they’ve survived the frenzy of demolition so far. Imilia Dezil in Sinton Square hasn’t been so lucky. The shrivelled turnip-head is still there too, stuck on its lonely gate spike.

I’ve warmed up by the time I’ve crossed the bridge and the stretch of marsh into the pines. The mist still hasn’t burned away. The ground is sodden and awfully muddy, even under the spreading branches.

I walk another hour as the mists dissolve. Ancestors, guide me. Zako said he was living like Blenny and T off the land.

They lived in a forest. This is the closest forest to Portcaye town.

I feel foolish, but that’s no reason not to try. I thread my hands together in not-quite prayer. I’m his sister. Is it absurd to think intuition might lead me to him? Perhaps the ancestors sent me that dream in the pine forest.

The ordinary wild sounds seem to lull, and perhaps I’m mad as a sack of bats, but I don’t feel alone.

“Zako. Zak,” I call, softly at first, then loud as I can – like a deranged seagull, screaming. True seagull cries reach me only as distant echoes.

There’s no answer. The chirps and whistles of the little brown forest birds grow louder when I subside.

My foot squelches into a particularly deep muddy hole tangled with roots, and I curse under my breath, trying to haul it out without losing the boot. Then someone’s hand is at my elbow, steadying. It’s Kit.

“What are you doing here?” I balance on his arm and try to scrape mud off my boot.

“Looking for you.”

“Why?”

“Gracie said she saw you. I took the day off. You shouldn’t be here alone – it’s not safe.”

“They’ve let you off for the whole day?” I realize my other boot looks just as bad and give up.

“Haven’t asked in a while.”

I turn to examine him. He looks fresh as a daisy. “Have you stopped working nights for the Reedstones?”

“They haven’t had a job for me in a while. They thought it best to lie low while Venor’s on the warpath. But they know I’m standing by. They’re plotting something. Work’ll pick up again.”

“What are they plotting?”

“The usual, you know.”

“Delusions of eccentric rebellion … with a slice of blackmail on the side?”

Kit stops me with two hands. “You make everything sound so –” he leans closer, a smile on his lips – “delicious.”

Shivers chase up my spine, not unpleasant ones. He holds my gaze like he knows what I’m feeling. Like I’ve made him feel the same.

No. I’m imagining again. When will I learn?

I keep walking. “I’m looking for Zako,” I explain.

“So I heard – like half the forest. You’ll not find him like this.” His voice is gentle but firm.

“I have to try. I’m sick of doing nothing!”

He raises his hands, fingers spread to placate me.

“He might have lit a cook fire. It’s not so misty now that smoke wouldn’t show up. I could climb up a tree and take a look.”

“Climb one of these?” Kit looks appalled.

These trees aren’t welcoming like the lovely spreading Makaia plane tree in the Lugger courtyard. It’s ages before we find a tall old tree with a branch low enough to reach. Kit’s fingers can brush it when he jumps.

“Can you boost me?” I look at him, shrugging out of my coat and bag. “Or is all that muscle for decoration?”

“Ha,” he scoffs at my challenge. “Try and keep straight.” He crouches, wraps his arms around my shins and stands upright with a grunt. I wobble but hold on to his head.

“Well? Can you reach?” his words are muffled in my trousers, and I hurry to wrap my fingers around the branch and pull while he gets under me and pushes. “You’re not as heavy as a full barrel, but I’ve never tried boosting one up a tree.”

“I’m up,” I tell him, breathless and scrabbling as more mud falls from my boots and narrowly misses his eyes. I can see his hands and top are covered already. “Sorry.”

“Concentrate on holding on up there.”

He wanders closer to the trunk as I crawl my way along and start to pull myself up the next branch. They grow closer together as I go, ladder-like, though the height’s more daunting than I expected. My weak side doesn’t help. I’m sweating from the effort, and I’m still only halfway up.

The top of the tree sways precariously as I climb, the grainy green lichen coating the bark crumbling under my fingers. The branches bend but don’t break. A stitch gnaws dully at my side.

“Careful.” Kit’s deep voice filters up to me.

“I’m nearly there,” I call down.

And then I am. The mist is a memory, and the sun that’s all but barred by the pines is burning through towers of cloud a thousand times higher than the tree. The glassy sea winks to the west, but we’re further into the forest than I thought.

My palms around the soft-needled branches are sweating despite the cold. My heart’s strumming fast as anything. It’s terrifying being this high. It’s higher than the old Bucket Wheel used to go at the fair, and that was scary enough.

I peel my hands off one at a time to rub the sweat on my woollen trousers before turning to search for smoke. The walls of Portcaye break the middle distance to the south, cliffs rising above. The coastline is flatter to the north.

Pines stretch far inland. Crows arc and call above them, and one even swoops to perch atop a neighbouring tree. It tilts a sceptical eye at me.

“You there?” Kit again.

“I am,” I call back, still catching my breath. The crow leaps off with a croak and flaps away.

“How’s the view?”

It’s beautiful, I think. I wish you could see it. “There’s no smoke,” I shout down. “I’ll wait a bit.” I peer through the branches, though I can’t see him. He doesn’t reply.

I stay crouched like a crow for who knows how long, the wind picking up. No smoke appears.

The crows tug at memories I haven’t visited in years. I was around seven years old, and some boys at school found a crow chick, not yet fledged, feather shafts still encased in white, fallen from its nest. They thought it was a great game to take it by one of its scrawny wings and dash it to death against the tree trunk. The teacher didn’t see to stop them. Then he said it mattered little – the creature was good as dead.

Ma said the teacher was a fool. Boys will always make excuses for cruelty, she told me, and by the time they’re men they don’t need excuses at all.

It wasn’t long after that she helped me make a mobile out of thin sheets of wood scavenged from Ruzi’s workshop – scraps that weren’t good enough for his instruments. We cut and glued them into flat bird shapes and strung them on white threads from a cross of twigs. Pa put a hook in the ceiling over my bed, and there they danced.

My heart has stopped banging, but the memories press hard. I blow a breath in the direction of the wheeling crows and imagine them turning and diving in new directions, black shapes tethered by threads.

A slight tremor invades my hands and legs – part strain from clinging to my perch, part reaction to the memory. I’ve trained myself out of tears, mostly, but the body still finds ways to grieve.

I can’t stay up here all day with no coat, waiting for smoke that may never come. I start down. It’s harder than going up – after the climb and my heart going fit to bust from the height, my strength has burned off like the fog.

I’m more than three body lengths above the ground when a wave of light-headedness grips me.

My foot slips, my fingers clutch at nothing, then I’m falling.

I gasp, too shocked to scream, and try to grab at branches as I crash through – unsuccessfully. They catch at my face and hands. One whips like fire into my ribs as another tears my chin and snags away my hair wrap. They do nothing to slow my fall.

Then I’m crashing into Kit, legs first. He catches me awkwardly, swearing rather colourfully as I knock the breath out of him. He staggers back but somehow manages to keep his feet, steadying us against the tree trunk – one hand on my backside, another hooked under my thigh, wrapping around my waist. My chest crushes into his face as I slide to the ground, and a strange sound escapes him, almost like a growl.

“What the fuck, Mora? Would it kill you to show a bit of care?” Is he shaking or is it me? “Are you hurt? Are you all right?”

“I’m… I’m fine,” I gasp. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?” My traitorous legs are still trying to give way, but it’s too muddy to collapse on the ground. He braces me up against the tree.

“No.” He swears some more. “You could have broken something.”

I examine the grazes on my hands then look up into his eyes. “Thank the ancestors you were here, then.”

My light-headedness fades, but his arms are still around me. As his hands start drawing away, my eyes flick to his lips – no distance at all, really. His expression is angry, and his eyes are a darker violet than usual. A wave of desire washes over me. My chest is still heaving from the shock. Kit’s warm fingers brush the side of my neck, where a vein flutters. I feel a small pain – the branches must have scraped the skin. Then his eyes tilt to mine, and I stretch up to close the gap between us.

His lips are as soft and warm as I remember, though today there’s more stubble on his chin. He deepens the kiss with a satisfied moan, his tongue parting my lips. My hands drift inside his open coat, his hard chest warm against my chilled fingers. I just want to feel him.

The bark of the tree presses firmly into my back, then Kit’s touch is lighting me up. His fingers trail along one of my arms, cupping my cold cheek, warm over my ear, then burying into my hair. His teeth gently catch my lower lip, but far too soon, his mouth is gone. I whimper a faint protest before he begins kissing my grazed neck, then my collarbone. The slow caress of his lips and tongue flood my core with heat, and I can hear myself gasping.

Then his mouth is back on mine, and his hands with their clever fingers are drifting under the hem of my blouse. One slips around my back just above my waist as the other moves over the sensitive area on my ribs where the tree branch caught it, up to my breast. The calluses on his thumb draw a singing response from my skin as he strokes me.

I wrap my arms around his back, drawing him closer to feel the length of his body curving into mine. His hair smells of woodsmoke and soap – but then a different scent cuts through my pleasure like a knife.

We’re still ankle-deep in mud, and it’s all over his shoulders from when I climbed up earlier. The smell of mud mixed with the tang of cold sweat and the cool air on my chest pushes me back to that time by the river, fighting against too many hands clawing my blouse open – mud smeared on my skin, caked on my boots. The same foul-smelling mud sloughing off Caruq after that awful raid.

I’m shaking again now, my breath hitching. What if I try to stop Kit and he gets angry like those boys? Like that brander with his prod? My mother’s warning floats front of mind again. Boys will always make excuses for cruelty. No, I don’t want to think like that. He wouldn’t.

I move my hands to his shoulders and push him away gently.

“Wait, Kit.” My voice comes out small and uncertain. “I don’t… I haven’t…” I don’t know what I want to say. The heat of him is intoxicating. My thudding heart wants all of him, here, now, knee-deep in cold mud – but my brain says I don’t know what I’m doing, and I have to beware, and this isn’t how friends who keep their friends behave. It has a point.

He pulls back reluctantly, biting his lip. His hands draw away, out of my shirt. His dark pupils search mine, soft but intense.

“Sorry.” He coughs once and pulls my coat off a nearby branch before helping me into it, even buttoning the first button up against my neck, precisely, hands steady, before he drops them. He won’t meet my eye now, more embarrassed than I am.

“It’s the mud,” I stutter out, kicking it with a boot toe. “It reminds me of that night, when those boys tried to… The smell of it.” I shudder involuntarily, and his arms circle me once more, drawing me to his chest in a firm but rather platonic hug that saves us from further eye contact. “Ever since … I’m scared.”

“It’s okay,” he rumbles, his chin in my hair. “I understand.”

I’m not sure I do.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he says into the silence. “A moment of madness. It’s not every day a girl like you falls into my arms.”

I feel warm and safe. I don’t want to move.

“I don’t mean I’m scared of you…” I start to say. “It’s not that, it’s just…”

He sighs so softly I almost don’t hear, pulling away, but one hand reaches down to touch my fingertips.

“Your hands are freezing,” he interrupts. “What did you bring to eat?”

He’s chasing the mood away. A moment of madness – is that really how he feels?

We break chunks off the cheese bread, greasy but filling, and sit on a fallen log sharing it in silence, the flask of water between us. I realize he came without any food or drink, and he’s not best dressed for the weather, though I remember well enough he runs hot. My hands are finally warming up.

I’m worried I’ve gone and made everything awful by kissing him. But then, he kissed me back. And, Thea’s wounds, if it wasn’t good – before I went and ruined it. Goodness knows how far we might have gone if not for the mud.

It’s not every day a girl like you falls into my arms.

Exactly how often do girls like me fall into your arms, then? I want to ask him. But if he wanted to talk, he’d be talking. He’s clearly more experienced than me – but then, I’ve no experience at all. He could break my heart, and I’d be no more than a notch on his bedpost.

“We should go back,” I murmur eventually. “You’re right; it’s pointless looking for him like this.”

He turns to face me, but I stare out through the young bracken and the endless torsos of trees. “Gracie’s making soup,” he offers at last.

“Sounds good,” I say with false cheeriness. I stand up, stoppering the flask.

It’s past midday before we reach the approach to Portcaye town.

Kit’s gone quiet, thinking. Suppose I have too. It’s awful, somehow, just trudging back to this godless town, back to our lives here with nothing to show.

The Mermen Gates stand out a mile now. Something’s going on there. A crowd is gathered, inside and out.

“They’re taking the statues down on an Endweek?” I ask.

“No rest for the wicked,” Kit murmurs. “I heard they’re going to melt them into blocks and call them new.”

“Oh, naturally.”

“Symbols of purity or strength or … who knows.”

I scoff. “So imaginative.”

“Not sure I’ll miss the mermen either, to be honest,” Kit confesses.

I will, but I don’t want to admit it. “It’s a miracle they lasted this long,” I offer instead.

But it soon becomes clear the mermen are not the focus of today’s crowd.

The ghastly turnip-head has come down. But one of the rail spikes has a new addition.

A real head. A fresh one. A Skøl – blonde and pale.

Kit’s pace lurches faster. I hurry to match it, wondering if they’ve changed their minds about waiting until Lovemore gets here to execute the Artist. As we near I can see the head belongs to a man I don’t recognize.

Spring’s here and it’s getting warm enough for flies. Bluebottles are already gathering at the white-and-red severing, like a mockery of a mourning ribbon.

The man’s cheeks and eyes are sunken, but his curls are remarkably kempt, wafting beyond the tip of his pointed chin.

“It’s not him,” I murmur, just as Kit’s feet scuff loudly to a stop on the stones.

“It’s him,” he stutters.

“Who?”

He swears softly. “He’s – he was – the Artist’s agent. He’s the one I paid … for the papers … Zako.”

I can’t speak. Kit’s horrified eyes meet mine, and I feel a woozy sinking behind my breastbone.

“Did the Artist rat him out?”

“Now?” Kit’s tone is uncertain. “Two moons later? Doesn’t make sense.”

I feel a flurry of panic. “What if he said something about you … and the papers you paid him for, for Zako … before they…”

A crow caws, harsh and rattling overhead.

Kit’s eyes are still wide, but he’s shaking his head.

“No.” He says it like he knows for sure, like he’ll make it true. “Come on.” He starts walking again.

I hear buzzing. A slow, fat fly collides with my face. I rub my cheek, hard. Kit’s hand is gentle between my shoulder blades. We walk through the gates and the small crowd of gawkers. Kit pulls on his jaw with his other hand.

My sinking feeling keeps on sinking.

Kraa! Kraa! The crow, fading forest-wards. I want to fly where it flies. My head is full of bird shapes, drifting like ghosts.