“I am a Spindler. We are far too polite to think anything so controversial. What about you?”
“I think you don’t save the worlds of the Shine for who they are. You do it for whoyouare. You want to condemn the people of the Mdo for turning away? Then don’t turn away.”
“That’s a very messy position, if you think about it too long.”
I click my tongue in the roof of my mouth, once, to agree without agreeing.
“More kol?” she asks.
“I’ll take another cup. One for the road.”
Agran also sang when I left.
She struggled with the words, found it hard to catch the tune, and though these songs should never be sung solo, in her it was beautiful. In music, accents tend to become softer, fuzzier, the edges burned away, and so she sang in Adjumiri, because it was the Adjumiri thing to do.
I reached out to the dark, one last time.
It did not pay me any heed.
PART 5
Where Once There Was a Star
Chapter 63
It was late autumn on my little island near the town of Poulinio, down the far end of the Mun peninsula. I shuddered with the touch of wind when I disembarked from theEmni, smelled rain – thick rain, heavy rain blown in off the sea – and realised I didn’t have any appropriate clothes. I had learned to travel with clothes for every biome, but it had been so long since I had set foot in any place that wasn’t climate-controlled, temperature-controlled that the reality of a world that was living and breathing and full of change knocked the air from my lungs. My steps didn’t feel quite right; I grabbed my ticket for the tramway to Poulinio too hard and nearly crushed it in my hand; tried to climb the stairs too fast and tripped over my own feet. The light of the sun, unfiltered by technology, hurt my eyes. Perhaps it had always hurt my eyes. The air smelled of that nameless, unsure different that will quickly become familiar as the brain filters down its reality to only things that are changing in its endless efforts to save time and energy.
I had told the authorities I was coming, and they had replied with a polite sluggishness that suggested bureaucratic chaos raging tumultuously behind the scenes.
Of course, they said.
That island of yours.
Of course.
It’s become quite overgrown.
It’s become…
No one really wanted to go there, when you were gone.
No one wanted to…
(Walk in a cursed place, where a creature of darkness once roamed.)
Sometimes kids go out there as a dare, so please don’t be upset if you see them around. And the fishing boats sometimes stop for a picnic, but we’ll let them know. Let them know you’re coming back. There’s a doctor, actually, from the nearby city, who is very interested in getting a sample of your hair…
Major Phrawon was dead, had been for many years.
Even Yulin’s eldest child, who had been a shy if perfectly polite snippet of a human when I’d departed, was greying, old. He gave me a lift out to my island, an ident to call if I ever needed anything. I said thank you, I’d keep that in mind, but not to worry about me, not at all, and I remembered not to sing goodbye as he returned to the waters.
My island was indeed overgrown.
The bluebrush trees were bent double with their own weight, and infested with a parasitic vine whose combined mass had already toppled three of the grove, broken nests of migrating longlaps around the shattered branches. The wild grasses had grown into thatch, smothering all the delicate flowers that had once bloomed there, the orchard almost inaccessible for the great maze of thorns that had erupted around the hedge. It would take months of clearing, of traipsing back and forth – there was enough labour here to try and resurrect the ancient hover-sled, see if it remembered how to float, maybe order in some spare parts, but of course that wouldn’t solve the sheer monotony of the labour, of the to-and-fro that would be inevitable, that only a gardener could do. I found myself swelling with a mixture of pre-emptive fatigue and excitement at the prospect. What would the soil feel like,having had so many years of being left alone? Would it crumble, damp and black beneath my fingers? Would worms wiggle; had mushrooms sprouted beneath my windowsill, and would they be poisonous or delicacies? I was in a uniquely privileged position to find out, I realised, and for the first time in a long time, I nearly laughed as I trudged my loop around the island.
The first sign of anything unusual was the boat.
My little boat – the one I’d used for fishing on hot autumn evenings – was a cracked remnant of a thing, lichen blooming up the side, fresh ferns bursting through the hull. I resolved to leave it the moment I saw it, let nature continue munching on its keratinous bones. Yet beside it – another boat. A newer boat, big enough for one comfortable rower or two people who didn’t mind a bit of a squeeze, knee knocking to knee. A tarp had been pulled over it, weighted down on either side with stones, some care taken in its preservation.
