Riverkeep Read online

  “Maybe I was meant to come back here tonight. Mibbe that’s why Wull put me ashore,” said Tillinghast, sitting down. “Maybe it was planned for me.”

  “Of course it wasn’t!”

  “What?” said Tillinghast, leaning away from Clutterbuck’s red-haired face. “But you said—”

  “Don’t you think it’s more likely that you meant to come back here? That you ensured you would have to part from these people by deliberately creating conflict?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you’ve had someone in your life, just for a short time, and realized what it’s worth”—Clutterbuck stepped back and spread his arms—“so you’ve come home.”

  “I din’t mean I planned it. I meant—”

  “There can’t ever be a plan!” said Clutterbuck, cackling. “We’re all just making it up as we go and you’re no different! Because you are a human being! You’ll have to make it up as you go, and hope you can look back and say you made the right choices because that’s all any of us will be judged by.”

  Tillinghast looked at the ground as Clutterbuck poured the tea.

  “The right choices,” he said quietly, then, quieter still, “the strong one.” He looked up. “It’s really somethin’ bein’ in this house again—you can feel how old it is. I can feel the past comin’ up through the soles o’ my feet.”

  “It’s funny,” said Clutterbuck, pouring. “You’re not the first person to say so today—a traveler stopped by this afternoon, quite extraordinary—no one visits for months, and then two people in a single day. It’s quite broken our solitude in the most wonderful way, Mac, hasn’t it? Yes, indeed!”

  “We never used to get visitors,” said Tillinghast, a needle of unease in his voice.

  “And we still don’t!” said Clutterbuck, pulling herbs from the wall and arranging them on a wooden block. “I shall freshen you up,” he added, showing Tillinghast the herbs. “I can see from your stitches you’ve been having a time of it. You never did look after yourself. And nor do the Things! Oh, you must meet the Things, let me call them. . . .”

  He pushed his empty sleeve at the wall, and the house filled with a low chime.

  Tillinghast raised his eyebrows.

  “Have you forgotten?” said Clutterbuck, waving his stump and giggling. “Phantom switches for phantom limbs!”

  “No,” said Tillinghast, “I remember. There was somethin’ I think I might have wanted to bring you,” he said.

  Then he realized why walking had felt so strange as he’d shoved through the forest toward the house: in his rush to leave the bäta, he’d left the mandrake behind.

  “Mmm?” said Clutterbuck.

  “No, nothing,” said Tillinghast. He sat back in his chair, settling his weight, his huge hands wrapped round the mug. As he thought of the mandrake the sense of himself, a self-possessed strength he’d never known, grew inside him—and he had the first pangs of something being wrong, of having acted badly.

  He sniffed the air again. “Who was the other person?” he said, unease swelling in him while Clutterbuck teased tiny leaves from sticks of thyme.

  “You mean is,” said the little scientist, smiling. “He’s still here. Quiet chap, missing a tongue, of all things!”

  “Missing his tongue?” said Tillinghast as the floor shifted. He sniffed again, finding the nagging smell from the corridor.

  “Oh yes, occupational injury, apparently—writes down everything he has to say.”

  Tillinghast stood, knocking over his seat and sending his mug clattering onto the floor.

  “Big fella?” he said. “Black coat?”

  “That’s right,” said Clutterbuck, blinking at him happily. “You know him?”

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor.

  “Look—the Things are coming. . . .” said Clutterbuck. “Oh, oh gods, no!”

  The wicker Things swarmed into the room in a burst of fire, scampering blindly on thudding legs, black smoke pouring from them in thick, acrid torrents.

  “Run!” shouted Tillinghast. The smell he’d wondered at blossomed now, floral and sweet, and through it the sharpness of burning herbs stabbed his nose, its tendrils winding inside him like red-hot blades. As Pent entered at a run—face wrapped in a scarf, eyes staring hatefully through the cloud—Tillinghast fell to his knees and screamed.

  19

  Canna Bay

  Allways the succesive keep has beene the son first born to the incumbent, with the transfrence of tytle being granted ’pon the sixteenth anniversarrie of that son’s birth. This continnued uninterrupptd for the first fyve keeps, all of whomm were bore strong Fobisher boys. But it so fell that mine father, Hume, sixth Riverkeep, sired only two girls of which I, Lotte, being the elldest and in any case the most sensibble, took the oars.

  On passng my keep this day to mine own son, Braid, I retturn it to the lyne of men. The Fobisher name has been kept, and the keep’s dignittie presserved. The latter has come at high pryce, for my tyme on these watters have been a tryal matchless in the histtory of the Danék, and my most wellcome rest is needed fair sore.

  —Riverkeep Ledgers, Vol. 7, p. 23

  The houses of Canna Bay were ranked like tombstones on the hill, their gull-pebbled roofs barely visible through the mist that clung to the village like its frozen breath. The irregular loops of its sloping streets were discernible by the glow of lanterns, but the tin shells of the packing plants were almost invisible in their silence, their dull gray walls melting in the town’s shadow. Even the lighthouse was still, its great flame spent and black.

  As his face had continued to throb, Wull’s arms had reached the point of agony, the movement of every bone whining in his wrists. He rowed them past the breakwater and through the port with leaden slowness, thinking of the lanterns and picturing the frozen waste outside the boathouse.

  “Aren’t you goin’ to untie Paps’s hands now we’re here?” said Mix.

  Wull looked at Pappa, saw the gray eyes flick back at him, and shook his head. He wondered for the first time what the bohdan, lurking inside, had heard, what its thoughts were.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I need to help him first. He can’t look after himself, an’ he might do somethin’ dangerous.”

  “Well, the creature’s here all right,” said Remedie. “Look.”

  She lifted the cotton from Bonn’s face. Wull saw a flush of color on his cheeks—Bonn’s hands had curled to fists and his little mouth to a smile. Remedie beamed down at him.

  “A mormorach is a magical beast, a touch of the gods on this earth—even the air is changed. Can you taste it?”

  Wull mouthed the air. It tasted metallic and hot, like the air of a forge.

  Remedie saw his expression and smiled. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s what’s giving life to Bonn and what’ll help your father. We’re here! We made it!”

  “I thought this was a fishin’ port?” said Mix as Wull sculled past the dark, tethered lumps of fish boats bobbling in the swell, their decks lifeless and dark.

  “It is. Not much else happ’nin’ but the hunt for the mormorach I suppose,” said Wull quietly.

  “So now what do we do?” said Mix.

  “We find somewhere to sleep,” said Wull, “though how we’re goin’ to manage that with no money, I don’t know.”

  Mix went to her pocket, produced a pile of mixed coins, and smiled sheepishly. “Till’s,” she said.

  “Mix!” said Remedie. “You mustn’t steal!”

  “We c’n pay him back when we see him! He’d hundreds of ducats, you know. I only took some. An’ it’s not like he was really good to us.”

  Remedie sighed and looked troubled. “He did save Bonn and me from that ursa,” she said.

  “An’ me,” said Wull, “an’ he paid for these oars, even if they do weigh a bloody ton. An’ he was fu
nny.”

  “Well . . . let’s not overdo it,” said Remedie.

  “Right,” said Mix. “The thing is, he’s left us with that mandrake thing. So we maybe shouldn’t feel too bad spendin’ his money.”

  “He what?” said Wull, sitting upright as they beached on the pebbly, weed-stricken shore.

  “The mandrake thing. That’s it there, behind the oily jacket.”

  “That gudgeon!” said Wull. He stood up, stumbling across the bäta and lifting the sack, peering in at the rich, blood-smelling lump. “Gudgeon!” he said again. “He knows there’s folk lookin’ for this, an’ he’s left it with us so he c’n bugger off an’ get away with it!”

  “We could jus’ throw it overboard,” said Mix.

  “I don’t know,” said Remedie.

  Wull and Mix looked at her.

  “Why not? I thought you din’t like it?” said Mix.

  “I don’t—mandrakes can be evil things—but it’s started to grow, just like Bonn’s waking up. What if throwing it overboard would be like drowning a person, or killing a child? I couldn’t do that.”

  “But it’s a plant,” said Mix. “We’re always cuttin’ down trees an’ things, for the good of them, trimmin’ and prunin’ them. I like plants, don’t get me wrong, but they are jus’ plants.”

  Wull helped Pappa stand, took his empty frame on his shoulders, and carried him onto the beach.

  “It that speaks,” said Pappa quietly.

  “We’re not throwin’ it away,” said Wull. “There’s got to be somethin’ we can do with it that’s the right thing to do. Mix, you carry it, an’ bring that bag o’ fruit the Bootmunch gave us an’ all.”

  “You know that mandrake stinks,” said Mix. “If there’s dogs lookin’ for it, they’ll find it no bother at all once we’re on land again. I’m tellin’ you, we should throw it away.”

  “Nobody’s throwin’ anythin’ away!” said Wull. “Bring it an’ don’t argue. We’ve not come here to start hurtin’ helpless things.”

  He reached out a hand to help Remedie over the side, Bonn balanced against her neck.

  Mix, grumbling, lifted the sack over her shoulder, ran her hand over the bäta’s gunwale, and followed them over the banks of weed, toward the village.

  The streets were silent, the smell of the sea moving through them like a ghost, rotting fish lumps and the white mess of gulls spotted like raindrops. The cobblestones, Wull noticed, were run through with the leavings of the fish trade, and the houses patched at their places of failing tin and stone by nets and frayed rope. The whole place seemed to embody its single-minded purpose—the soul of fishing life made solid on land—and Wull sensed in its quiet decay the licking of fatal wounds, as of a great animal settling down for death.

  Passing countless dark windows, their breath leaving them in the climb, they eventually came to a low-roofed, shabby dwelling with a hand-painted sign above the door that read MRS. VIHV’S VIVISECTION AND GESTHOUSE. There was a doormat thickly sodden with decades of filth, an odor of working grime, and a lamplit card behind the lace curtains: ROOM.

  “I’m not staying here,” said Remedie.

  “Why not?” said Wull.

  “Look at it,” said Remedie.

  “You slept in the bäta last night!” said Wull. “How bad could it be?”

  “Well, quite apart from the smell, vivisection is barbaric!” said Remedie.

  “What is it?” said Mix.

  “It’s the practice of cutting animals open and studying their living parts. Frogs and mice and such. While they’re still living.”

  “Yuck . . . What for?”

  “Science,” said Remedie, with the air of one confiding an unpleasant secret.

  “It’s the only guesthouse we’ve found so far,” said Wull.

  “It smells of ale,” said Remedie, shocked. “I won’t lay my head where ale has been. And the signage is poorly spelled.”

  “You’ll kill a giant bird with your bare hands, but you won’t sleep near beer or have frogs killed in the name o’ science?” said Wull. “You’re a puzzle right enough, Miss Cantwell. Well, I’m not trampin’ through the rest o’ this village to end up back here in an hour’s time. Mix?”

  “Sorry, Miss Cantwell,” said Mix.

  “Well, really,” said Remedie.

  Wull rapped on the door, the bubbles of paint flaking on his knuckles followed by the yowl of cat displacement. The handle turned, and a thin brown face peered around the doorjamb, eyes narrowed and brows raised in readiness of judgment.

  “Yes,” said the woman. “What do you want?”

  “We’d like a room, please,” said Wull.

  The woman took in Pappa’s closed eyes, the loose drape of his body. She heard the rasp of his wind and saw the spit gathered in the corners of his mouth.

  “Scarred young man an’ a drunk old man?” she said, edging the door shut. “Unreliable.”

  “He’s not drunk—he’s ill, an’ it’s not jus’ us,” said Wull, stepping back so that Remedie and Mix could be seen, “There’s—”

  “A babby!” said the woman, throwing open the door and smiling, her eyes immediately wide and warm. “Come in, ach, the wee bundle must be frozen to the bone out there. I’m sorry about keepin’ you on the stoop but you can’t be too careful—so many frightful fish types turn up here, pickled in rum an’ without a ha’penny to their name. Hello, young lady,” she added as Mix shuffled past her. “Aren’t they funny drawings on your neck? Wherever did they come from?”

  “They’re not drawings, but thanks,” said Mix, snatching her coat around her throat. She glanced at Remedie, who appeared not to have noticed.

  “You’re quite welcome, takes all sorts,” said the woman. “Welcome to Mrs. Vihv’s Guesthouse. I’m Mrs. Vihv, an’ we’ve plenty room now that damn monster—forgive my cursin’—has smashed up most o’ the huntin’ boats. We’re all dyin’ here! So it’s a pleasure to have you an’ your ducat a head: breakfast an extra crown an’ a half, or a crown if you’ve no taste for eggs.”

  “What about the vivisection?” said Mix. “Is that included?”

  “We do that out back,” said Mrs. Vihv.

  “So what’s that?” said Mix, pointing at a small frog, neatly sliced open and spread-pinned to the dining table like a groundsheet, its insides exposed, the little pink and brown tubings twitching like a ticking clock.

  “Oh!” said Remedie, covering her mouth. “Oh, how awful!”

  “It’s quite unconscious,” said Mrs. Vihv. “With no guests, I likes to work in the parlor next to the fire. I’ll move it. Don’t worry.”

  “But why would you even . . . What could possibly . . .”

  “Oh, I’s no guilt—I mean to put something of what I’ve learned into medicine that could save hundreds. An’ that’s worth a few frogs to me, ’specially when they gets into my strawberry patch. I’s learned all kinds o’ things, findin’ out how we lives an’ how to keep us livin’. So fascinatin’.” Mrs. Vihv leaned in toward the frog. “You find out what it means to live: sometimes it’s little chemicals an’ muscles, the biology swishin’ away. Other times it’s somethin’ else, some other force—a will to keep livin’. If we could harness that! An’ sometimes you see the moment they choose to yield. There’s a lot in that, too.”

  Wull fought back the bile in his throat. “People don’t choose to die,” he said. “They don’t. They’re taken.”

  He saw Mrs. Vihv’s eyes dart to Pappa.

  “Not all the time,” she said gently. “Even frogs turn their faces to the wall.” Then she reached down and stopped the frog’s little heart.

  The sudden absence of its busy flutter seemed to Wull an explosion of silence.

  “Is that what’s for breakfast then?” said Mix.

  “Aren’t you a cheeky thing?” said Mrs. Vihv. “Not l
ike this precious, quiet wee bundle. What’s his, her . . . ?”

  “His. Bonn,” said Remedie. “He’s . . . sleeping just now. Long day traveling.”

  Mrs. Vihv clasped her hands under her chin.

  “I’ve four myself, not that you’d know it. They only come past here when their bellies are rumblin’ or their garments are lousy, the ungrateful cretins—forgive my cursin’ again. It’s terrible, terrible, an’ in front o’ the child too.”

  She ran a fingertip over Bonn’s forehead and smiled before turning and stoking the fire.

  “That’s why we’re here, actually,” said Wull. “The mormorach.”

  Mrs. Vihv stopped with the poker in midair.

  “An’ what are you plannin’ to do, a bean pole of a boy, a young girl, an’ a new mother? Forgive me, but the beast’s already sunk half a dozen o’ the best huntin’ boats that sail. There’s only one left now. It’s our only hope. Unless you’ve some grand plan.”

  “We’ve got a . . . bäta,” said Wull, helping Pappa into a chair.

  “A bäta?” said Mrs. Vihv, laughing. “What are you plannin’ on doin?’ Teachin’ it to row?”

  “I’ve got harpoons,” said Wull defensively.

  “An’ good for you, but I’ve been hearin’ stories about what this thing does to harpoonists, an’ believe you me, I’ll not stand by here with four boys o’ my own—not that they ever come to kiss their mother’s cheek, the swine—forgive me cursin’—an’ watch a young man throw himself at the tusks o’ this brute in a rowboat. It would tear a wee thing like that apart without noticin’.”

  Wull knelt down at Pappa’s feet, and tucked his hair away from his face.

  “I have to go,” he said. “I’ve come all this way.”

  “Not while you’re under my roof,” said Mrs. Vihv, gathering a pile of laundered clothes into her broad arms.

  “I’m a payin’ customer,” said Wull, confused.

  “An’ be that as it may, you’re not takin’ a wee boat out for that animal. There’s one proper huntin’ boat left, an’ much as I’m loath to even say this I’ve seen men an’ their hothead ideas o’ glory, an’ I know it’s a failed task to change your damn mind—forgive me cursin’ again. If you must find a way out there, you’ll have to speak to its captain an’ get yourself a place on its crew.”