Riverkeep Read online

An’ beats o’ thy great heart will ne’er be stilled.

  —Traditional riverfolk song

  A hundred feet below the slow-sinking wreckage of its latest victim, the mormorach spun. Its movements were erratic and painful; days of bountiful food had built a tight pressure inside it like a pot at the boil. Its skin was stretched. Fissures began to appear on its flanks, widening to slashes that ran its length and split to reveal new, tender flesh beneath.

  It roared in pain.

  In the midst of drowned sailors and wrapped in the ghosts of sails, it writhed, tearing against itself, champing its jaws and screaming, its gray-green skin flaking away. It wriggled harder, peeling the skin away until in a moment of stretching freedom, it was renewed, the shreds of its old self washed away in the dawn tide, the empty skin twirling like silken weed into the depths.

  Half again as large and happily coiled with new muscle, the mormorach roared. It thundered gracefully through the deep trenches of the bay, tearing at kelp and rock, its new body—all but invisible in the dark water—hardening again to a rough husk, ready for its next contact with the shapes above.

  Clerkhill

  Remedie trod carefully, placing her feet between knuckles of root and grass that pulled on her ankles. The cold was now absolute, a bright force on her skin even through the sweat-damped shawls. Moonlight, slivered by the canopy’s winter-stripped treetops, made ghosts of the trees, and running shadows of the gaps between, while white drifts burst on her boots, filling the world with the hiss of falling snow. She pressed her bundle to her breast and slowed her pace.

  “We’re in no hurry, my love,” she whispered. “You’ve waited all this time; there’s surely no sense in rushing now.”

  All around were the telltale lumps of ursa dens, their gathered branches like warts on the earth. Although the moon was still just high enough to keep them pressed into sleep, a stumble in the wrong direction would send her tumbling into their clutches like a doll.

  She had stopped only twice to make water since fleeing the pastor and his men. Now, beyond their reach and with her scent hidden on the wind, she could afford to rest.

  But in resting she was wrapped too tightly by the forest’s silence: an ominous, threatening quiet. Her only companionship was the sound of her own feet—without it, the woods filled with tiny noises that mimicked the footsteps of a stranger, and that was infinitely worse. And so she walked, blind with fatigue, pained by skin-split heels and dead-aching muscles.

  A branch tipped snow down her back as she passed.

  “Are you all right, my love?” she said, wrapping her bundle still more tightly against the cold. Pushing through a growth of ferns and bracken, she shushed her soundless bundle and began to sing a ditty her sailor father had sung to her as a little girl.

  Oh, the beast leaps free of the endless sea,

  the prison that caged him within.

  He’s had his rest on the ocean’s breast,

  and longs for the sun on his skin. . . .

  From below a stack of branches came a belch and a sighing cloud of snuffling breaths, as of a dog searching the ground.

  Remedie quickened her step.

  The howling gale, as it fills the sail,

  is music to lull him to sleep,

  and he scatters the spray in his boisterous play,

  as he dashes—the king of the deep!

  Oh, the beast leaps free of the endless sea,

  the prison that’s caged him within. . . .

  She carried on, nudging through the woods, certain death slumbering inches from her feet, her muscles seizing with every grunted movement from below.

  By the time she’d sung a hundred songs, she was hoarse with the cold. Stopping for only the third time, she squatted on the frozen ground, feeling the heat of her water under her skirts.

  A candle of hope flickered: a wild-swinging lantern in the distant black.

  “Look, my love!” said Remedie, rising and picking up her pace.

  Light meant people, food, heat! She focused on it, heedless of the branch tugs and thorn scratches . . . then heard something that smothered hope’s flame in terror.

  The sound of far-off, heavy, rapid footsteps.

  Drebin Woods

  “Why didn’t you wait for us?” said Wull. Sweat gleamed on his forehead; after heaving at the oars, he had virtually carried Pappa through the forest to catch Tillinghast’s dome of light.

  Tillinghast frowned. “Whyn’t you use your own lantern?”

  “I don’t have one,” said Wull. “We use the moon an’ the lanterns on the river.”

  “Well, I can’t see as it’s my fault you’s unprepared. An’ you’re here now, so you’s no cause to be moanin’.”

  Wull shifted Pappa’s weight on his shoulder.

  “Untie the arms,” said Pappa.

  “You know I can’t,” said Wull. “So, where are we going to go? There doesn’t look like bein’ anything around here. We need a cave.”

  “Oh, I knows that, you’s been most emphatic ’bout that: ‘wall at your back an’ fire at your front,’ I know. So what’s wrong with that one there?”

  “I don’t see anythin’,” said Mix.

  Tillinghast pointed to a drop of branches and foliage hanging from a rocky mound, a snow-thick tumble from which the bony fingers of frost-furred twigs scratched the air.

  “What are we lookin’ at?” said Wull.

  “There’s a cave under that, young ’uns. By all the gods, yous really does need me wi’ you. Come on. Let’s get inside an’ build that fire you’s so keen on. . . .”

  The muddied eyes had been watching them from behind a tree, following their conversation with darting glances. Now they leaped skyward as Tillinghast made for the cave mouth. Face wide, thick-haired, and painted with mud; mouth open and black; arms waving; thick, whooping lines of spit swinging from a tongue that was yellow and furred.

  As Tillinghast shot out an arm and grabbed the apparition by the throat, Wull jumped back, Mix and Pappa clasped behind him.

  “Whoa!” said Tillinghast. “’In’t no need to be rushin’ about all shouty—you jus’ stay there now.”

  In his fist was a young man—a matted cloud of dark, ragged hair ringing a face that was streaked with earth. His eyes were pink, and he beat against Tillinghast’s wrist.

  “Let me go! Let me go, I say!”

  “You was the one runnin’ at us!” said Tillinghast, releasing him.

  “Was I?” said the young man, rubbing his neck. “I’m so frightfully sorry. I get carried away sometimes—I was merely trying to ask if I could help carry anything.”

  “Untie the arms!” said Pappa.

  “Not jus’ now,” said Wull, eyeing the man warily. “You gave us a real start. What are you doin’ out here?”

  “Out here? Oh, out here? You mean here?”

  Wull, Mix, and Tillinghast shared a look.

  “He means here,” said Tillinghast, “as in the dead middle of a forest what’s nearby to bugger-all.”

  “The same thing as you fine people, I’d wager,” said the man.

  “You mean you’s takin’ your sick father on a mission o’ mercy to the coast?”

  “Well, no . . .”

  “So you’s makin’ your aimless way across the country for no good reason?”

  “Oh, certainly not . . .”

  “Then are you . . . what’re you doin’, little miss?”

  “Runnin’ away from scary people,” said Mix cheerfully.

  “Well?” said Tillinghast.

  The man pulled on his leaf-tangled, wispy beard. “Well . . . p’raps not, p’raps what I should’ve said is that I live here, and you are, in fact, in my front garden. In fact, you’re standing in my shrubbery. You, sir, the blue man. My shrubbery, yes.”

  Wull looked at Tillinghast’s
feet. They were planted, as were his, on frozen, shrubless, rooty ground.

  Tillinghast said nothing.

  “But no matter,” said the man. “Come inside, come inside, there’s tea for all who require tea! Root tea with the roots left in as the gods intended, absolutely, yes.”

  Wull looked at Tillinghast as the man bustled off toward the cave, raised his eyebrows, and mouthed, What do we do?

  We go for tea, mouthed Tillinghast, exaggeratedly. “You don’t mind me askin’ you’s name?” he called.

  “I don’t in the least mind, sport,” said the young man. He hopped across a fallen tree, his skinny legs sprightly and quick, and lifted the hanging plants aside. Warm air drifted out and kissed their skin. “Come along, come along now!”

  Wull and Mix helped Pappa in struggling protest over the log and across icy soil, holding the hanging leaves away from his face. Through Pappa’s sleeve, Wull felt again the slippery looseness of his muscles, and felt his own guts tighten.

  What am I really holding? he thought.

  Inside, the cave’s walls were decorated with formless shapes and crude paintings of wild animals. Deep in the far gloom of its bowels, a large fire glowed. The cave was eye-nippingly acrid with its smoke, but its strong heat surrounded them.

  Wull hadn’t noticed until the warmth tickled his skin how cold he was in the bones of his fingers and toes, and he flexed them gratefully.

  He had never imagined there could be another person living near the bankside, only a few hours’ row from the boathouse.

  “So what is your name?” Tillinghast was saying.

  The man’s eyes twinkled as he passed them steaming tin mugs.

  “Now that’s what you meant to ask me the first time. I know, oh, I know—many a man’s taken me for a confusion, but it is I who listens! My name is Myron Rushworth, though I use it so little now. As a man of the forest I respond only to the trees, who call me Hhhhhgggnnnnngghhnn.”

  Tillinghast choked on his tea. “Beg pardon, lad, it sounded like you was in the throes o’ some stubborn digestive transit there. What’d you say the trees called you?”

  “It’s quite all right,” said Rushworth. “To the untutored, tree-speak does sound a little odd—my tree name is Hhhhhgggnnnnngghhnn.”

  “I see,” said Tillinghast. “What a lucky break you’s already wearin’ brown trousers.”

  Wull, holding the mug to Pappa’s mouth, thought carefully.

  “Rushworth, as in the ‘Intrepid Rushworth’?” he said.

  Rushworth bowed. “At your service, sah!” he shouted, clicking his heels.

  “You’re the Bootmunch,” said Wull. “Pappa told me that story: you got lost an’ ate your boots.”

  The Bootmunch paused in the act of gathering herbs from a shelf cut into the wall. “I most certainly did not get lost, and a gentleman would never eat his boots,” he whispered.

  “What?” said Mix.

  “I said that I most certainly did not get lost, and that a gentleman would never eat his boots!” repeated the Bootmunch.

  “No, no, I heard that an’ all,” said Tillinghast, sipping his tea. “You was tryin’ to sail round the northern point of Curralinn, an’ your ship got stuck. All the supplies ran out an’ a few o’ the crew died, but you refused to eat ’em an’ got wired into your boots instead.”

  “That’s not true,” said the Bootmunch, who had become very still.

  “That’s what I heard too,” said Mix.

  “An’ what was in the papers,” said Wull.

  “The papers lie!”

  Tillinghast sipped his tea again.

  “I don’t know if I’d be so hasty denyin’ it,” he said thoughtfully. “I think it’s fair play not munchin’ the dead punters myself, an’ if you don’t own up to eatin’ your shoes, folks might reckon that’s jus’ what you did. Seems to me eatin’ footwear’s a lot more easily forgiven than slicin’ bits off a dead man’s bahookie.”

  “You mustn’t speak ill of the dead, blue man,” said the Bootmunch. He lifted another jar of herbs and wound a long string of green around the bunch he’d already formed.

  “Tillinghast,” said Tillinghast, “and this here’s Wulliam an’ his pap, an’ Mix what’s stowed away on Wulliam’s boat.”

  “I was invited. . . .” said Mix under her breath.

  “He doesn’t mean any rudeness,” said Wull.

  “I find that hard to believe, Wulliam,” said the Bootmunch, glowering at Tillinghast.

  “No, it’s true. I didn’t even want him to come with me, but he did anyway—he’s jus’ generally rude an’ unpleasant. It’s not personal.”

  “That was personal,” said Tillinghast.

  “But it’s right you’re the missin’ explorer?” said Wull.

  “Yes,” said the Bootmunch, sitting beside them on the log, “though I must quibble at ‘missing,’ for I’m certainly not missing. I have been here, that is to say here, for a number of years. If I must be known in such crude terms, I’d much rather be the ‘Hiding Explorer’!”

  “What do boots taste like?” said Mix.

  The Bootmunch shot her a look. “As I said, a gentleman would never eat—his—boots,” he hissed.

  “What age were you when you ate them?” said Mix. “You’re still quite young even if you talks like an old fella—must’ve been dead wee when you was doin’ that.”

  “I cling yet to my salad days,” said the Bootmunch. Blank eyes blinked at him. “I’m nineteen,” he added, “but I was only twelve when I was given my first captaincy, a recognition of my unique qualities of leadership!” He clicked his heels again.

  “I heard it that your daddy owned the ship an’ gave it to you as a birthday present,” said Mix, slurping her tea.

  “An’ what else was it they called you? The Sucklin’ Adventurer?” said Tillinghast.

  “No, no,” said Mix. “It was Captain Cute Face.”

  “I’ve got a beard now!” said the Bootmunch, tugging the tuft on his chin. “I hate those names!”

  He’s looking even wilder, thought Wull, shifting slightly in front of Pappa. The other two didn’t seem to have noticed.

  “They’re not bad names,” said Mix, “an’ they do say there’s only one thing worse than being talked about.”

  “Gettin’ stabbed in the face?” said Tillinghast.

  “She means not being talked about, you silly fool!” shouted the Bootmunch. “And she’s wrong!”

  “Why is it you’re hidin’?” said Wull quickly.

  “Because I am good at it,” growled the Bootmunch.

  “We found you easily enough,” said Tillinghast. “Hey! What you standin’ on my toe for? Wull stood on my toe there for no reason, d’you see that?”

  “An’ what is it you’re hidin’ from, sir?” said Wull, ignoring Tillinghast.

  “There is a simple answer to that,” replied the Bootmunch. He was wearing, Wull saw, a torn military jacket, civilian trousers that were several sizes too small, and a shirt that looked, in its fabric and cut, to be that of a woman. “I am hiding from a world that understands me as little as I understand it. I’ve no wish to be part of it—especially that rhat’s nest of a city, with its rumor and filth—when I can be here, safe and happy among my tree friends, living off the river.”

  “How’s you live off o’ the river?” said Tillinghast. “’S good tea this, by the way.”

  “Thank you,” said the Bootmunch. “It really is hard to beat fresh roots from my shrubbery.” He wound another strip of green around his bunch of herbs. “I live off the river in the sense that everything I need flows in its waters. Of course, the flow is reduced in winter—half of it is frozen over—but it still provides me with seulas and fish and clothing.”

  Tillinghast raised an eyebrow. “You mean those are clothes out the river?” he said.
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  “Oh, absolutely. I’ve found quite a wardrobe in my time here. It’s rare a month passes without some worthwhile garb floating past.”

  “Does you wear the clothes you pulls?” said Tillinghast, looking at Wull.

  “No!” said Wull, looking at the Bootmunch. “Once we take them in we clean the clothes that c’n be saved an’ they go to workhouses an’ shelters for the needy. We only take some pennies for ’em so we c’n eat an’ light the river!”

  “I’m needy enough out here—there’s no shame in it,” said the Bootmunch. “And what does a river need light for, might I ask?”

  Wull’s mind flashed to the clothes hanging clean of the river’s muck, filling the boathouse with emptiness. And he remembered Pappa rowing shirtless corpses, gleaming and soft, toward the jetty while he played on the little beach.

  “We often find bodies missin’ some part o’ their clothes,” he said. “You mean it’s ’cause you’ve taken ’em an’ put the bodies back in the water?”

  The Bootmunch looked perplexed. “Well, yes,” he said, holding his finished herb bunch at arm’s length and looking at it critically. “You can’t wear a corpse.”

  Wull stood, feeling sick. “We treat the bodies with dignity! Folks taken by the water need their dignity restored to ’em, but you sit here, usin’ them for this . . . grim life. . . .”

  “Here, Master Keep,” said Tillinghast, pulling on his arm.

  “Pappa an’ I work hard in what we do! Everythin’s in service o’ the water an’ its poor drowned souls, an’ you would wear their clothes without offerin’ them any kind o’ peace? You put them back in the water?”

  Tillinghast pulled his arm again, harder.

  “Oh, it’s not a bad life,” said the Bootmunch. “I’ve re-learned all sorts of useful skills I’d forgotten when I’d footmen and servants. I can gut a fish—flense blubber from a seula before it spoils. I can see and feel things in ways ordinary people cannot: rain before the first drop, lightning before the flash. . . .” Eyes bright, he flicked the herbs and struck a match on the stone floor of the cave. “Even acts of magic. Magic beings in numbers one can’t imagine wander the hidden spaces of the world, mostly at night, mostly . . . but often in the brightest day without the least shame. Skills such as these are how I’ve thrived all these years. To return to your point, Mr. Tillinghast, that you found me so easily . . .”