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  She sat down, folded her hands in her lap. The others were silent. Wull kept moving Bonn’s fixed little body, watching Remedie’s face. Beside him, Pappa let go a sharp snore and whispered unintelligible words.

  “And that’s that,” said Remedie.

  “Wait a minute,” said Tillinghast. “Where’d this thing come from then?”

  “This thing, Mr. Tillinghast? You mean my son?”

  “Whatever, the wooden kid,” said Tillinghast. “D’you win it in a raffle?”

  Remedie drew her face in against him. “From a homunculus with a mandrake,” she muttered. “I buried Bonn beneath a yew tree and made sure certain . . . conditions were met. A year to the day I dug down, and there he was, waiting for me.”

  The three looked at Bonn, still and white in Wull’s arms, perfect as a marble cherub.

  “You mean . . . you didn’t carve him?” said Wull.

  “Carve him?” said Remedie, laughing. “Gods, no, he was there, waiting. This is Bonn. I dug to where he’d been buried. His flesh was gone, and here he is now, a new body of yew root, with his soul already inside.”

  “So you did magic?” said Mix.

  “I did.”

  “So you’re a witch?”

  “Miss Cantwell doesn’t need to be asked so many questions,” said Wull. He thought for a minute. “So you c’n control magic, then?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes, I can, and I am a witch. But I don’t belong to a coven.”

  “’In’t it dangerous?” said Wull. “Like lightnin’?”

  “If you don’t know what you’re doing, it can be, of course.”

  “So, did you”—Wull paused, looked at Pappa—“did you make the mormorach come here? Is it because of you it’s in Canna Bay?”

  “Oh heavens, no! I just . . . knew it would be, that’s all. There’ll be all kinds of other creatures around in the throes of a storm like this, I’m quite sure. Like in the sea, when there’s a storm, all the water swirls up and the little beasts of the sand and rock are set in motion. It’s amazing what little animals you find that would normally be hidden.”

  “Right,” said Wull. He touched Bonn’s cheek.

  “So where’s the magic come from then?” said Mix.

  “In the name of . . .” said Tillinghast.

  “It comes from the land,” said Remedie, “and my grandmother. She taught me.”

  “That’s int’restin’,” said Mix, eyes wide. “So do you need to get naked an’ chant beside a fire?”

  “No!” said Remedie, laughing despite herself. “Why on earth would one do such a thing?”

  “Keep your plums warm,” said Tillinghast.

  “I saw it in a book once,” said Mix. “So you doesn’t have to be in a certain place for it to work? Could you do it here?”

  “Well, no. It comes from the ground—but from my own ground. There my family are all in the soil—here I can’t connect to the same energies.”

  “So do you have to be outside?”

  Remedie laughed again. “No. The kitchen’s just as good.”

  “The parlor?”

  “Yes, the parlor’s fine.”

  “The bedroom?”

  “No,” said Remedie. “It’s upstairs, too far from the soil. There’s no magic in the bedroom.”

  “Tha’s a shame,” said Tillinghast. “Mibbe it’s your squint?”

  Remedie turned her shoulders so she couldn’t see Tillinghast’s face. “The point is that Bonn’s ready to be reborn now with a new skin and a new body. A stronger one.”

  “A wooden one?” said Mix.

  Wull felt Bonn’s weight on his palms and examined the ornate little face. The baby’s surface—skin—was faintly iridescent, the sparkle of his fibers lit by the stars so that he appeared bathed in pale, glowing light. He seemed, without moving a fiber, to respond to the pressure of Wull’s hands, shifting in the same position: arms half raised, legs bent so that the heels almost touched, mouth slightly opened, as though searching for the teat.

  Wull lowered his cheek to the little mouth. The wood was cold, but he hovered, expecting to feel a bloom of breath.

  “Exactly,” said Remedie, “and when we get to Canna Bay and we’re close enough to this creature—”

  “Hey!” said Wull. “You’re going after the mormorach too?”

  “Of course,” said Remedie. “Is that your plan also?”

  “For Pappa,” said Wull. “It has stuff inside it that’ll cure him.”

  “It has a body of magic and wonderful power,” said Remedie seriously. “I’m sure it holds the answer for your father’s ills too. The mormorach will give Bonn true life once again, and then I will live with him in happiness.”

  She lifted Bonn from Wull, kissed his nose, and strapped him into the sling on her body.

  “Here,” she said, snapping off the bandage and striking a line of mud across Wull’s cheek. “I made this for you while I was wandering in the forest.”

  Wull touched his cut. The mud—tingly and at once hot and cold—had filled it like grout.

  “Thank you, miss,” he said.

  “You’re quite welcome. It’s burdock, mainly, with a few other things. It should clean up that nasty cut of yours.”

  “Brilliant,” said Tillinghast. “So we’re all on missions o’ mercy an’ helpin’ each other out, ’in’t that jus’ peachy? Now let’s get some oars an’ get the hells out o’ here.”

  “And where are we going to find oars in the middle of the forest?” said Remedie as Wull rose and stretched. “Is there a ship broker up a tree?”

  Tillinghast relished the chance to be insufferable. “No, Miss Cantwell, we’s already sourced the supplies we needs, thank you,” he said, striding back toward the cave.

  “Or we think we might have,” said Wull.

  “From the Bootmunch,” said Mix.

  “We bloody has!” said Tillinghast. “Don’t tell her . . . that . . . Jus’ come on. There might be other things as worth takin’.”

  “Who’s the Bootmunch?” said Remedie.

  “A missing explorer—he tried to kill us,” said Mix. “Well, tried to kill Till, and got me an’ Wull at the same time. Doesn’t like homunculuses, apparently.”

  “Homunculi, if you please,” said Tillinghast. “Let’s jus’ go.”

  “What happened to him anyway? The Bootmunch?” said Wull, hobbling after Tillinghast, Pappa grumbling on his shoulder.

  “Oh, by the time he’d caught me, my eyes had fair cleared up. It din’t go the way he was expectin’, I’d say.”

  Decatur House

  Numberless legs clacked and creaked through the ruin’s untended wilderness. The wind blew across the garden, pulling the tops of the uncut, dying plants and bending the bare treetops toward the ground.

  The wicker Things ran sightlessly and without aim, cracking their restless legs and changing direction in rapid swoops, responding to the slope of the ground and the air’s patterned energies, their bodies channeling the magnetism and magic that flowed through the evening sky like the currents of the tide.

  Something about the sky’s energy had changed.

  There was a sharpness and a focus that unsettled them. It jittered their limbs and whipped them into a swarm, like birds panicked in the gaze of a predator.

  The wind swelled again, sending loose stone tumbling down the front of the wrecked building and into the long grass.

  The man watched the Things from the window, chuckling at their wildness and speed. Then he let the curtain fall and sat inside, listening to the thud of their feet, bathed in the silent hiss of flame on glass while the air filled with the flutter of thick-stitched wings.

  The Drebin Woods

  The Bootmunch blinked at them. He was hanging by his heels from the cave’s roof, trussed up by whip-thin branc
hes and swinging gently. Tillinghast had wound some herb knives into his beard so that he tinkled as he swung, like a bulbous, hairy wind chime.

  “And who is this lovely lady?” said the Bootmunch, spotting Remedie. “Could I be more charmed? I do not think so. How would it be possible? What a vision of loveliness! I would kiss you on the hands and face, but alas this devil of straw has seen fit to suspend me from my own ceiling—”

  “You tried to kill me,” said Tillinghast, rummaging through the Bootmunch’s belongings.

  “Even if that were possible, straw devil, you have in return dangled me here like a Newsun decoration. So I must therefore apologize, madam, and leave my hands where they are, which is to say, tied completely behind my back.”

  He smiled. Mix patted him on the cheek.

  “Nothin’ here’s worth takin’,” said Tillinghast.

  “We’re not takin’ anything anyway,” said Wull. “We’re payin’ for whatever we get.”

  “Payin’?” said Tillinghast, scandalized. “I’s got a reputation, you know.”

  “I can imagine,” muttered Remedie.

  “Mr. Bootmunch . . .” started Wull.

  “Rushworth, remember?” said the Bootmunch quickly. “The Hiding Explorer?”

  “Mr. Bootmunch,” said Wull again, “when you tried to kill Tillinghast, here—”

  “That’s impossible, he’s a—”

  “When you tried to kill him, you gave me a mighty strong hallucination that damn near got me and this lady here killed by an ursa. . . .”

  “What about the little one?” said the Bootmunch.

  “I was miles away, eatin’ mud,” said Mix.

  “Top work, that girl,” said the Bootmunch, grinning. “Yes, I’m awfully sorry about that. Sorry, sorry, everyone, frightfully sorry”—he tried to swivel round to include Tillinghast—“but he’s a straw devil. I mixed the herbs wrong—I’d have bloody got him if I’d remembered the fennel. You should always remember the fennel.”

  “We need supplies, Mr. Bootmunch,” said Wull.

  “I’ve got stacks of fennel,” said the Bootmunch, “on account of forgettin’ to burn it at the straw devil.”

  “If he calls me that one more time . . .” said Tillinghast.

  Wull put his hand on Tillinghast’s shoulder. “We don’t need fennel,” said Wull. “We need—”

  “Fennel,” said the Bootmunch, “fennel, fennel, fennel. Help yourself to my fennel. Isn’t it a funny word? Fennel. Fennel.”

  “Stop saying fennel!” said Tillinghast.

  “I’m awfully sorry, straw devil, sorry—sorry, everyone, sorry! It’s just that you’ve tied me upside down, and all the blood’s rather rushed into my fennel.”

  “We need oars,” said Wull firmly, “and enough food for a few days.”

  “Oh, I have oars. Plenty of oars,” replied the Bootmunch. “By which I mean two. Two’s enough.”

  “We’ll take those, please,” said Wull.

  “Fine, fine. Let’s say six ducats the pair.”

  “Six ducats!” said Tillinghast.

  “A reasonable price. As a boatless man, I never use them, but they’re made of fine wood. Considered making them into stilts once so I could talk to my tree friends on their own level. But I’d have been too short, anyway; they laughed at me: ‘Hhhhhgggnnnnngghhnn,’ they said, ‘you’re just a little mite next to our stately—’”

  “Shut up now,” said Wull. “Where are they?”

  The Bootmunch waggled his eyebrows. “Money, money, money,” he said, then added, “fennel.”

  Tillinghast grabbed Wull’s arm. “An’ where’re these ducats comin’ from?” he hissed.

  “Where else?” said Wull wearily. “I’d have used my own money but the bradai stole it, an’ you said you’d give me money as trade for comin’ with me. I can pay you back.”

  “I’m not payin’ him!” said Tillinghast. “He tried to kill me! What’s he need money for anyway, livin’ out here in a bloody cave?”

  “Principle of the thing,” said the Bootmunch, swinging jauntily.

  “It’s only right and proper, Mr. Tillinghast,” said Remedie, “and you’re . . . mercifully unharmed, after all.”

  “You button your lip, toots,” said Tillinghast.

  “Are you goin’ to let him speak to you like that?” said Mix as Remedie drew her breath.

  The Bootmunch giggled happily.

  “I fixed your hand,” said Wull, standing between Tillinghast and Remedie. “You said if you came downriver you’d help me.”

  “Wi’ food an’ so on—basic needs.”

  “What’s more basic than oars for a boat?” said Mix.

  “You stay out o’ this, little miss!” said Tillinghast sharply.

  “We need these, or we can’t go anywhere,” said Wull.

  “So take ’em!”

  “I need to pay,” said Wull, looking at Pappa. “There’s no discussin’ it.”

  “Then shall we say ten?” said the Bootmunch, swinging his head back and forth and sending the knives in his hair to a melodic ting.

  “You’ll say six an’ be glad to get it,” said Wull. His eyes met Tillinghast’s and held his stare.

  “Fine, fine,” said Tillinghast, “but we’s takin’ other provision for that an’ all—’in’t no way under the gods I’s payin’ for your breakfast after this.”

  “Thank you,” said Wull.

  “Wonderful news!” said the Bootmunch. “In the spirit of friendship, would you mind awfully cutting me down? The straw devil has rather fixed me to the roof here and I’ve been hearing the call of nature for some time now.”

  Mix laughed, and was shushed by Remedie.

  Wull looked hard at the young explorer. “We’ll let you down only if you apologize for callin’ Mr. Tillinghast that name. His name’s Mr. Tillinghast, an’ it doesn’t do for you to be callin’ him anythin’ else, understand?”

  “Of course, old boy, of course. Dreadfully sorry, straw Tillinghast, sorry!”

  Tillinghast glowered but said nothing as he cut the Bootmunch down.

  Wull respectfully lifted six ducat coins from Tillinghast’s money-pouch and handed them to the Bootmunch, who held them to the firelight.

  “Seems to be in order,” he said, and cackled. “The oars’re up the back of the cave, sport, beside all the other rubbish.”

  “Other rubbish?” said Wull, watching the coins vanish about the Bootmunch’s person.

  The Bootmunch looked at him from the side of his eye. “Figure of speech, sport!” he said, grinning and moving over to Remedie. “Is that a baby, too? How marvelous! Aren’t babies wonderful? I miss my infancy: it’s to my immense sadness I lost the knack of passing wind and drinking simultaneously once I mastered walking. A shame, a great shame.”

  Mix laughed while Remedie pursed her lips.

  “This is Bonn,” she said. “He’s sleeping.”

  “They love their sleep, don’t they, the little ones? I’m so very charmed, madam, but equal to my charmedness is confusion at your choice of coterie. Tell me,” said the Bootmunch, kissing Remedie on the hand, “how has such a lovely flower found such boorish company?”

  “It’s jus’ bad luck,” said Mix. “Wait, you mean the boys, right?”

  There came a series of clattering noises, the flat bang of heavy wood falling, and after some muttered curses and slow dragging, Wull emerged into the firelight pulling two long, wide oars, their blades marked with the stamp of an ocean-going trade company. His hands were unable to meet around their width, and they were more than twice his height in length.

  “What in gods’ are these?” he said, throwing them to the ground. “An’ where’d you get all that stuff?”

  “These are o-a-r-s. You put the flat bit in the water and pull,” said the Bootmunch, ignoring
the second question. “I thought you knew about boats?”

  “I know they’re oars, Bootmunch,” said Wull, “but they’re bloody massive!”

  “Are they?” said the Bootmunch. “I always had other chaps for the rowin’, I must say. Looked awfully hard work, too! Well, good luck, mustn’t detain you.”

  “I can’t use these!” said Wull as Remedie lifted one of the handles and dropped it with a loud report onto the cave floor. “You could row a battleship with these. How am I meant to use them on a bäta?”

  “As I said, I always had other chaps for the rowin’. Couldn’t give you any advice there, what! Indeed, no! Right, lovely having you visit. Ladies, a pleasure. Straw devil—I’ll get you next time! Ha-ha! Fennel! Yes! Friends for now though, the boy insists, friends!”

  Tillinghast straightened up, a canvas bag filled with food gripped in his fist beside his hessian sack. “Let’s go,” he said to Wull.

  “I can’t even lift these!” said Wull. “This isn’t a solution!”

  “Best we’re gettin’ here,” said Tillinghast, without turning round, “an’ it was you that wanted ’em.”

  “We should go, Wulliam,” said Remedie. “Thank you, Mr. Rushworth.” She bobbed a curtsey.

  “Such manners!” said the Bootmunch. He looked expectantly at Mix, who squinted at him.

  “You’ve got the worst breath I’ve ever smelled,” she said.

  “Beg pardon?” said the Bootmunch.

  “Fine,” said Wull. “So I’ve to drag these to the bäta myself, is that it?”

  He realized he was talking to no one, and that he was alone in the cave with the Bootmunch, who was giving him an inquisitive, hungry look.

  “You could stay if you like, squire,” said the Bootmunch. He ran his tongue over his lips.

  Wull heaved at the handles and dragged the oars into the freezing air, where the milk of dawn was spreading a watery light through the treetops.

  15

  The Hellsong

  Of all the seafolk I met, it was a Watchkeep named Ambergris who expressed most succinctly why people choose to put themselves in harm’s way on voyages that can last for years at a time: “Whale oil’s just about the biggest treasure available,” he said (I am, of course, paraphrasing the rough coastal dialect!). “You can make soap and perfumes and clothing and grease for factories and machines, and clothes and corsets and obviously candles and lamps. Folk used to carry it around to keep themselves from plague. It’s worth more than gold. If it didn’t stink of fish, posh ladies would dangle it from their ears.” In this assessment Ambergris was right in every respect but one: whale oil is not “just about” the greatest treasure; it is, for all the reasons detailed above, without question the world’s preeminent treasure!