Ghostheart (19 page)

Corr and the others had disappeared into their summerbeds, but I could hear them breathing soft in all the reedy holes through the rock.

‘Who knew what that fist held; there was nobody to know,’ she went on. ‘Who knew what worlds would fly from that fist once it opened; there was nobody to see. How would the world taste in the mouth; there were no mouths. What would it sound like in the ears; there were no ears. Where in that fist were all the whalefish and dandelions and men and women? Where was place and when was time?’

Somewhere in the rock Pedder laughed.

‘When was time?’ he snorted. ‘I loves that bit.’

Cowel went up too, in a sort of bray. The monsters plainly knew this story. Cara smiled into the roof.

‘At the start there was nothing,’ she went on. ‘Then the nothing filled up with seas. All was storm-waters, white-caps and gushing foams. The first seas split the nothing in two parts. Then the first salty breakers welled between the two nothings. They circled and span until the space between the fists was one great whirlpool.

‘And it would have kept turning forever like that, except for one thing, one very small thing that was to be the start of worlds and places. And time. Small things have powers big things cannot grasp.’

I remembered Dorrin’s greenplots, and stepping down onto their skinny ledges. Anybody else would have fallen trying to fit on them, trying to plant and harrow on their soft narrow shelves. Three of my regular steps and I’d have fallen. But he’d raised a store of herbs and greens there.

Not to mention my ears and mouth still stinging from Ginny trying to have my face off me.

Small things.

‘A speck of salt was gripped in the heart of the whirlpool,’ said Cara. ‘The speck was held fast in the deepest point of the whirl. All it could do was spin and whirry. Soon other specks were drawn to it and it was compassed in spinning milky waters. And the salt specks drew together, one to the other, gathering until they were no longer specks and motes but packs and balls. And then the packs and balls crashed together and they made thundering worlds that bobbed just under the upper fist of nothingness.

‘The worlds settled and calmed into the first morning.

‘Some of the worlds had it in them to shine and burn, and they did so. Others had it in them to carry away some of the sea with them, and that’s what they did. The waters flowed away into the worlds.

‘And that’s not all.

‘The creatures of the whirry, all made of specks and water, all carry their own bit of the first whirl inside. If you lie on the ground in the night and look into the stars, you will feel it. We all feel it.

‘That’s why children and such creatures like to spin and whirl and fall.

‘Our world was the first formed in that whirl, and our country was the first place of the world. It rose bubbling, bobbing like cork, before all the other places, and with all its trees and birds and caves just-so. Just as you can see them today was how it was at the start.’ Cara stopped and was so long about starting up again that the others had to yawn loudly and clear their throats. The torches were burning down, but there was a sliver-moon and it was enough.

‘A grey land to the north rose up,’ said Cara. ‘And it sent streams of ice and frost into the seas, flowing south. Cold as hell were the fishes in their beds under the ice, and the snow falling soft like sleet-rugs over their hoary bones. The day closed in and the night came early. Some plants grew beards to warm themselves, others curled up their blackened toes and died, the animals grew thin, the pools froze; it was winter.

‘And a land to the south rose up red-earthed and its streams boiled through the seas spitting embers and ash, steaming north. Then were the fishes cooked right where they hid, in glow-stone hides that seared the white flesh from their softening broth-bones. The plants ran to seed, the animals lay panting, the pools turned to dust; it was summer.

‘And there were times in-between, when it was neither one thing nor the other. These were pleasant, changeable times.

‘And there were changeable forms too. Folk weren’t hardened into one thing or another yet. If the First- ones needed to be tall, well, then they shot up like spring stalks. If arms were useful, folk sprouted a few. If it was dark-sight they needed, their eyes became lamps. There was more than one way to skin a cat, present company excluded, Higgs.’

There was laughter from the rockholes but Cara was all worries now. Her own voice sounded like it didn’t believe a word she was saying.

‘There was every kind of being, every kind of shape, and nobody knew any better. So the First-ones were just thankful to be, and to let each other be. Now of course we all know better, don’t we?’

She was losing the high-tones of the story. Doubt lit its particulars, like carrying lit rushes into chapel. Some things are better seen dim, at some distance. Up close they’re somewhat grimy and plainly human-made.

But she carried on, like saying lessons over.

‘The First-ones spread all over the world, by feet, by wing, by coracle. Into the storming water, the scouring salt, they went, without paddles, without maps, without pilot or porpoise — with only the slim shining trail in their hearts to follow. And they increased and filled the world with their various forms and their perfected shapes. But that’s when the speck of salt at the middle of the world revealed itself.

‘It is the speck that stings as well as the speck that quickens.

‘It is the first speck caught between the fists of nothing.

‘It is the speck deep inside the whirl of every person.

‘As the First-ones spread they shaped themselves to new places. Marrying only with others like themselves, their children were born as like to each other as peas. They settled into the one sort of form. They looked about and saw their fellows to be just as they were, and thought this because their own forms were natural and right. All the other forms were laughable to them, then.’

‘That’s you, my cosset,’ said Caly, somewhere close in the wall.

‘Me?’ I said.

Cara covered her face for a moment.

‘
SQu on sem sprou
,’ said Onnor’s voice.

‘Speak up,’ said Caly, louder than she need.

‘I said, Miss Quirk don’t seem so proud,’ Onnor said, and I was glad to hear her at last waxing somewhat bristly.

‘Well, that’s just the story, isn’t it?’ said Pedder, like he’d said it too many times. ‘You needs the two things, doesn’t you? You needs the one thing, and also the other thing, to make a story. Elsewise it’s all just agreeing and staying put with nothing going on and nobody saying nothing.’

Cowel made a hooting, howling kind of rageful sound.

‘Don’t be feeble. Because if it was us that was proud and nasty, what fun would that be?’ Pedder said. ‘Now shut up and let’s have the rest.’

‘
Ssssh
,’ said Onnor, and they did.

‘And the samey ones settled all over,’ Cara went on in a rush of words like she wanted it to be done. ‘Now they are so busy trying to forget what they were, that even the land they live on is offended. Their countries change themselves, to remind the people what’s really right and natural. Their lands sink and rise, sail about like boats, even turn to cloud, but still those samey ones cling to their pride.

‘But,’ she said quietly. ‘There are still those who are as they were made in the first whirl.’

I saw where this was going.

‘And those ones are you?’ I said.

‘Yes, that’s us,’ she said but she didn’t sound set to the notion. ‘Our places do not come and go. They do not have to. We do not need reminding of what we were, because we still are. We are the shape of regular people; that is, we are every shape.’

‘Folk are not peas, see; not even the fat, greenish ones,’ said Caly’s voice.

‘But where is your land? And how did you end up here?’ I couldn’t help it. I had to know what they told themselves about this rough home of theirs in the middle of changeable drags, with the Needles for guards and sea-birds for company.

‘We was sent away from our place,’ hummed Caly then, cheerful and contented-sounding. ‘Because we was special and they knowed it.’

I looked at Cara who looked back at me with cold eyes. She was waiting for me to talk. I just about ate my own lips trying not to.

‘We was sent into the world,’ she said and watched my face close the whole time. ‘From the nor-eastern place, over the whale-road we were sent, from the last lands where everybody is like us and wholly unlike each other. We were sent to help.’ Her eyes gruntled at me like a pig at an acorn but her voice was masked. ‘Because we was special.’

‘I thought all the First-ones were special,’ I said, pretending I didn’t know why she looked at me like that. ‘With all their varied and perfected shapes, you know.’

‘Bless! It’s not the shapes that make a person special,’ Caly butted in. ‘Hasn’t you been listening?’

‘We were special because of what we had in us, Miss Quirk,’ said Pedder in his chapel-tones. ‘Because of what we were
for
.’

‘But what were you for?’ I asked.

‘For helping Dogsbody of course,’ he said.

‘
He was all by himself
,’ said Onnor. You could hear the tears just about to bust out as she thought on the aloneness of this Dogsbody.

Cowel smacked his lips and bubbled like something at the bottom of a mudbottom hollow.

‘That’s right, that’s right,’ Pedder said to him. ‘He’d left the book behind.’

‘What book?’ I asked, but I already knew. Nobody answered me.

‘Poor old thing,’ said Caly’s voice. ‘Out here all lonely without even his book. It’s a lucky thing we came.’

Cara rolled like a bolster to face me. She waited until I stopped trying to look everywhere but at her and then she let me see her doubt straight-up. It trembled in every part of her face. But she spoke in clear, clean tones.

Like a question.

Like an accusation.

‘We was sent away by them who knew best,’ she said. ‘We was sent away by our
mothers
.’

And she lay back and waited.

SO I SPENT THAT NIGHT TELLING CARA.

I told her about Carrick and the plagues of wickedness. I told her about the unseasonal weather and the sky-blackening flocks. I told her about the exiles of ghosts and the expulsion of monsters. At first, she looked like my brother when I told him birds weren’t angels, and there was no downside-up country in the bogholes or elsewhere. The only difference was there was no argumentation from Cara. She just lay there as I talked, a pale log with the grey face of bafflement on her.

She lay like that for a long time.

Then slow, slow she nodded, light as campion.

‘I always felt there was something,’ she said, and that was that.

But she was terrible downcast by all the heartless particulars of the story. I couldn’t blame her. When I’d first heard it I couldn’t think how folk could do such things. Or how other folk survived having such things done to them; I’d been somewhat sneery with Lily Fell and all her talk of sorrow and God’s purposes. So to cheer her I told Cara about all the little coracles and their cargo of gifts.

I said as how her mother went to the shore every evening and watched the sea for boats or signs. I said as how Lily Fell thought she heard Cara singing every evening. I said as how her mother still walked the sands and waited for her to come home, but this just made her cry again.

So then I turned and watched the sliver-moon on the just-before-dawn sea, and I stopped talking.

Words were dwindling to useless, I swear. You said the true words and folk fell to ruckus and tears. You held back the words and they fell to eyeing you sidewise. I could see why somebody might just give up on the whole blathering thing.

Finding missing things turned out to be trickier than you would think, too. It took more than asking their whereabouts. Answers hid as much as they showed.

Poor Cara looked like nothing would make sense again, and I knew just how she felt.

This journey of mine had been no Progress at all; it’d been more like some maze. I’d found no real answer to the question of my brother, and only other questions in the answers that were given. Questions sprang from questions, and a person could go on forever asking and only get answers that led to more questing.

From Cara’s summerbed I saw my home glow-washed at the sea’s edge. Redcliff rose flushing in the first rays. Boson still lay in that pink cliff, under a mound nobody would visit.

Unless hawks and eagles had found him and dug him up.

Or the wild Cronk dogs fought over him.

Or Dolyn Craig and the others done something worse while I’d been out here looking for him, looking for an answer to him. While I’d been hunting his gods and monsters. And all the missing things.

‘Who is he?’ I asked, loud, sudden, sitting up. Cara jumped and stopped her silent tears. ‘Who is Dogsbody?’

‘Dogsbody,’ said somebody close-by in the rock.

I thought for a moment the inside-voice was back.

It wasn’t. The voice came from outside of me. I swung my legs over the edge of the summerbed and listened.

‘Dogsbody,’ it said.

Somebody was mocking me. It was probably Ginny with her two-facedness; one face like a wasp, one like a honeybee. I stuck my head out into the morning. The huddles of stones were quiet and I was alone on the ledge.

‘Dogs-body,’ the voice said again, from behind. I twisted to see.

It came from just above me.

It came from a gap in the rock.

It came from a beak in the gap.

‘Hellooo my cosset,’ said the beak in heartfelt tones. Like it knew and loved me. Like it had been waiting for me. ‘Hell-ooo.’

I slipped out of the rock to see it better.

I saw its tail-feathers and its body, green and glad. I saw its fine scarlet collar, and the pink skin outspreading from its dark eye, like the spreading rings of light from dropping a stone into black water. And I saw its beak, curved and burly. It could’ve had your finger off. It was big as a raven and smart as an adder. You could tell.