The Gracekeepers Read online

  “We have to help him! He’s in my coracle, there! Please, we have to—”

  Without waiting for Callanish to reply, North dived into the sea and swam toward a coracle—one that, to Callanish’s relief, was not yet burning. She let go of the rope and swam after North.

  —

  North did not know why the gracekeeper had suddenly appeared, clambering up the side of the smoking mess boat, but it did not matter. What mattered was getting to her bear before her coracle caught fire.

  She kicked and pushed and choked on the water until she reached it, heart throbbing in her ears. The flames reflected off the dark sea, dazzling her. There was the end of the rope.

  She could not reach it.

  She scrabbled, trying to tip the coracle toward her. Panic rose in her throat—but there was Callanish, swimming smooth as a fish, and with one strong kick her upper body shot out of the water, high enough to grab the rope.

  “Come,” she said, reaching down to grab North. Her skin was slick with seawater, her webbed fingers strong around North’s wrist. Together they climbed the rope and dropped to the canvas cover, panting against the smoke billowing from the next coracle. Flames licked at the far end of the chain, the metal links reflecting the light greasily.

  “We have to unhook the—” North grabbed the connecting chain, then let go with a howl. She clutched her burned hand to her chest. “It’s too hot. And it’s coated with seal fat. That’s why the fire is spreading. Avalon, she must have—we must get him out.”

  They both dropped down into the coracle. It was dark and hot, and smelled of fur and breath. “He can’t climb up,” said North. “He’s too groggy, I had to drug him, and—he can’t. But he’s so heavy, and I don’t know how…”

  “The rope,” said Callanish. “Where’s the ladder?”

  North took her hands and placed them on the ladder. Callanish climbed out and threw North the rope they’d used to climb from the water. “Tie him,” she said.

  —

  The bear was too heavy. Callanish knew it, and North must know it too. But still they braced their feet on the canvas. Still they pulled.

  “North!” A voice boomed over the crack of flames. The ringmaster balanced on the raised edge of the big boat, a rope in his hands. “Grab it!”

  He threw the rope to North. In the dark and haze and flames, she missed. A shriek sounded—but not from North. Callanish rubbed at her eyes and focused on the figure trying to navigate from a coracle attached to the boat. Callanish recognized her: the ringmaster’s wife, black-haired and dressed in blue, her belly swollen to twice the size it had been when Callanish last saw her.

  “What are you doing?” shrieked the woman at the ringmaster. “Are you mad? Leave it! Let it burn!”

  He turned his back to the woman and threw the rope again. This time, North caught it.

  —

  The rope was rough with saltwater, scraping the skin from North’s palms as she pulled her coracle to the Excalibur. When they were close enough, Red Gold lashed the rope to the schooner and jumped on to North’s coracle. He landed with a thud, and before the coracle had stopped tilting in the water he had the bear’s rope looped around his shoulders, and he was heaving, and he was pulling, and North let out a sob of joy when her bear’s dark head appeared. With one enormous heave, Red Gold pulled the bear up on to the canvas.

  But Avalon had not given up. As Red Gold stepped back on to the Excalibur, ready to heave the bear on to the deck, she laid her hands on his arm.

  “You made me do this. You know that, don’t you, Jarrow?” Her angry tone had lightened to a whine, and North could barely make out the words. “You wouldn’t see the truth. You wouldn’t make the choice. So I took away the choice. How can you stay with the circus when there is no circus? Take me home, sweet king.”

  Red Gold did not appear to be listening. He lashed the bear’s rope and pulled North’s coracle closer in, so close the helms thudded. The sound seemed to make something in Avalon snap.

  “You can’t still want to give her that house. You can’t be that stupid.”

  Red Gold kept his head down, securing the boats. The flames were flicking at the chain on the other side of North’s coracle. The canvas could catch light at any moment.

  “It’s not Ainsel’s baby.” Avalon’s voice dropped to a croon. “North told me. She said she’d got drunk and slept with some nasty dampling—and he paid her, Jarrow, did you know that he paid her? She puts it around everywhere, she’s gone through all the clowns and the glamours and the fire-breather too. You have no idea what she’s really like, she doesn’t even love Ainsel, she just wants a house, she told me, she’d do anything to get a house, she said—”

  “Hush now, Avalon.” The ringmaster did not shout. “Hush,” he said. “It’s finished. It’s over.”

  —

  As the woman disappeared belowdecks, sobbing, the ringmaster heaved the bear on to the big boat’s deck. North and Callanish followed. As soon as their feet touched the deck, the ringmaster loosened North’s coracle and pushed it away—just in time, for the flames were reaching for the coracle’s canvas top.

  Under Callanish’s hands the bear’s fur felt oily and tangled, almost too hot to touch. He seemed dazed, half asleep. He raised a paw and she grabbed at it, ready to tug him upright. But the paw fell, and the bear’s eyes closed.

  “Are we safe?” she asked.

  “For now,” replied the ringmaster.

  North said nothing at all, too busy checking over her bear. Callanish went to ask what she could do, how she could help—and the next thing she knew, the woman was on the deck, throwing herself at North, shrieking something about a house, about a child, about love, and she raised her arm above her head.

  In her hand, a gleam of metal.

  Her arm fell.

  The bear roared.

  —

  There was noise, and movement, and light; scuffles and shrieks and the thud of bodies on the deck. And then quiet. North stayed hunched over her bear, protecting him, afraid to move, afraid to look. She counted the slow waves swaying the boat: seventeen, eighteen, nineteen—

  “North.” Red Gold spoke low and urgent in her ear. “I got Avalon into Ainsel’s coracle. But you can’t stay here.”

  “I’ll stay. I’ll help you.” She spoke into her bear’s fur.

  From Ainsel’s coracle came a thud. North and Red Gold turned their heads toward it. Another thud. The sounds kept coming, steady as heartbeats. Avalon, beating the inside of the coracle.

  “No,” Red Gold said. “You have to go. Take the Excalibur.”

  “But what about you?”

  “We’re safe. The fires will burn out. They can’t spread across the water.”

  From Ainsel’s coracle came the panicked whinnies of the horses. Avalon’s thuds immediately stopped. North imagined she could hear her soothing Lord and Lady, stroking their manes to the beat of her heart. She patted her bear’s fur to the same rhythm. She felt her breathing slow, her fear lessen.

  “What about the circus?” she asked Red Gold. “Without the Excalibur, how will you perform?”

  “It’s too late for that, North. We can’t go back to how it was. Our costumes, the coracles—it’s all destroyed. I’ll pay another boat to tow us to the North-East archipelago. Perhaps I can sell what remains for scrap.”

  “Will you buy the house? The one that was for Ainsel and me? Because I’m sorry, Jarrow, but I never wanted it. I know you do. I want you to go there and escape from all this, from the hunger and the storms, and I want—”

  “It wasn’t about escape. It was about—look, North. The house was a gift. I thought it was the best gift in the world. And yes, I had my own reasons to want you and my son on land. But I thought those reasons could work together.”

  She raised her head to look at the coracles. The fires had almost burned out, the empty shells exhaling smoke into the sky.

  “You still can be on land, Jarrow. You can live in the house. Yo
u and Avalon.”

  “No. It will be all of us.”

  “The whole crew? In a house? But they can’t—they won’t want to live on land.”

  “They will because I say they will. Working the land pays well. They won’t argue with full bellies.”

  “But what about Avalon? She won’t like—”

  “North, be quiet. I will love Avalon until the day I die, but this isn’t for her. I need to give you this, for…” Red Gold swallowed hard and looked out at the remains of his circus. “I’m sorry for what happened to your parents. What I let happen. I knew the danger. I knew that bear was a wild beast. And still I let them perform, over and over. I said I’d look after you, but then I—I let you do the same. Every performance with that creature. I knew he’d turn, eventually—it was only fair that he turned on my wife. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I put you in danger. Not just once, but every night.”

  “But I chose to. I wanted to.”

  “Is it really a choice when we have no other option? I didn’t give you another option. I made you perform, and I was going to make you marry Ainsel. I should have given you a choice then. Get on that boat and get away from here. This is the last thing I can do for you.”

  “I can’t—I don’t know if…” North hesitated, emotions stacking up inside her. If she moved, they would topple.

  “North, would you please be quiet and do as I say? I’m going to get the money. And when I’ve done that, I want you to go.”

  Red Gold’s voice moved away, and North looked up. He was stepping up from the cabin and hefting a sack on to his back. He was climbing on to Ainsel’s coracle. He was untying the rope. He was drifting away.

  He still spoke, raising his voice so that North could hear him, but he seemed to be speaking to himself. “We’ll be fine in the house. It’ll be a tight fit, but we’ll manage. A captain doesn’t abandon his crew. A house is a boat the same as a boat is a home. Avalon can cook enough for everyone. She’s always wanted a house. She’ll be happy now. We’ll have a house, a house for all of us, clowns and glamours and horses and sons. A family, now and always, a family in a house…” And then he had drifted too far away, and North could not hear him any more. So Avalon would get what she’d always wanted—and everything she’d never wanted. The house she loved, crammed floor to ceiling with the circus folk she hated. In time the crew would probably buy their way back on to other circus boats. Then Jarrow and Avalon and Ainsel could live together in the home they all wanted so much, with the baby. The four of them, playing at family, fighting over a shred of ground. It was only a matter of time before the whole thing exploded. North wondered who would be left in the shrapnel, but it all seemed so far away. Her world shrank to the size of her bear’s gasping body.

  There was a whine of rope, the shush of a sail unfurling. North glanced up: Callanish stood at the wheel.

  “Where shall we go?” she asked.

  “Away,” said North, and laid her head back on her bear’s warm side.

  —

  Callanish managed to steer the boat out of the archipelago. She set a course for the darkest patch of sea, figuring that way they’d be least likely to hit any other boats. She heard a gasp and glanced up.

  “North, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Pain. Cramps in my belly, from pulling on the rope. It’ll pass in a—oh!” North let out a yelp. The moon emerged from a cloud, lighting her face.

  Fear shivered through Callanish. She had seen that look before: her mother, many years ago, staggering to the World Tree, pulling the child Callanish after her. She took a breath and held it, allowing herself to be terrified. Then she let it go, pushing out her fear with her breath. She could be scared later. But not now. Not yet.

  She glanced around: distant lights, but no immediate danger. She dropped the anchor and crouched down beside North. It was so quiet that she could hear both their hearts beating. Above them, the stars spread out in glinting layers.

  “North, listen to me. It’s your baby. It’s coming.”

  North jerked up, hands clenching in the bear’s fur. “But it’s too soon! It hasn’t been in there long enough, there should be another month at least, and I’m not—it can’t come now. It’s not ready. I’m not ready.”

  “Babies are like bears,” said Callanish, easing North away from her bear and toward the cabin. “They don’t always do what you want them to. But now, we have some work to do.”

  “My bear! Is he okay? Will he go back to sleep?”

  As she guided North down into the cabin, Callanish looked back over her shoulder. In the moonlight she saw the gleam of the bear’s blood pooled across the deck. She saw that his furry side did not rise. She saw that his eyes were closed.

  “Yes,” she said, ducking into the cabin and laying North out on the bunk. “Yes, he’s asleep.”

  —

  The days on the boat unfolded, slow and bright.

  Every night, Callanish dreamed—not of the sea’s endless call, but of her mother. At first she welcomed the dreams, reveling in them, wishing to crawl inside them forever and never wake. She told North stories of her childhood: the candlelit processions to the World Tree, her mother baking poppyseed bread and slathering it with honey, the pair of them snapping icicles off the window ledges to dip in flower dyes and draw in the snow. The days passed, and her dreams slipped away. She grew glad to wake to North’s smile and her baby’s hands splaying like starfish.

  Every night, North expected to dream of her bear—to wake gasping and frantic, ready to leap into the water so she could be with him again. But she did not. Her sleep was calm and dreamless, rocked by the rhythm of the sea. She told Callanish about her bear: the way his breath turned to snuffles when he was happy, his delight in crisped fish skin, the rough brown pads under his front paws.

  Together, the new crew of the Excalibur rested. They breathed salt air. They ate fish. They warmed their toes in the sun and shared stories by moonlight. And when the stars came out, they looked up and saw the bear in the constellations.

  Slowly, slowly, they moved forward.

  AFTER

  “North, what are you doing? Don’t put Ursa in the water!”

  “Why not?”

  “This is a graceyard! The water is full of bodies, rotting. And bones and…”

  “Have you ever looked? Actually gone into the water and looked?”

  “No. Because, as I said, it’s full of bodies and rotting and—”

  “I looked. I wasn’t about to let my child go somewhere that I hadn’t checked first. And you know what’s down there? Nothing. There are no bodies any more, Callanish, and the bones are all buried. There are all these flashing shoals of fish, and flowing weeds with purple flowers, and around the chains that anchor the house there are mosses and weeds and all kinds of beautiful things.”

  “But the bones are still down there, right at the bottom, under the sand. The fish eat the flesh and the bones sink.”

  “So what? Let them be there. The sea is full of secrets, but they’re not all out to harm us.”

  “But I—”

  “Come here, Callanish. Sit with us.”

  “Oh, you’ve got your arms in the water and everything. Hold on to her—no, don’t let her go!”

  “She’s fine. She can swim. And I’m right here. Come and sit with us. Dip your toes in the water.”

  “I’ll sit. But do I have to put my feet in?”

  “Yes, you have to.”

  “Okay. For you.”

  “There you go! Not so bad, is it?”

  “No. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I liked it, but…”

  “But you like it.”

  “I do, North. I like it a lot.”

  “And a feather fell from the bear’s grace this morning.”

  “I suppose that must be what happens when you keep them alive for more than a few weeks. They lose feathers and grow new ones.”

  “I suppose so. I’m glad we’re keeping this one alive. And we can send
the feather to your mother, if you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure. She liked the other feather I sent. I saw how tatty it was; she must have touched it every single day. I don’t know what it made her think, but it must have been a good memory. It only started to cause her pain when I was there to remind her. North, are you and Ursa staying here with me?”

  “We can all stay here.”

  “For how long?”

  “For as long as we like. You can do Restings, and Ursa and I will sit in the house when anyone comes by. I’ll catch fish, and cook up seaweed for us. On the Excalibur we had seaweed stew, seaweed salad, seaweed puffs, seaweed patties, seaweed fritters, seaweed scones. It’s not pretty, but it’s versatile. And maybe sometimes you can stay inside with Ursa and I’ll do the Restings. Your white dress would fit me fine.”

  “Oh, North! You’d be a terrible gracekeeper!”

  “I think I’d be good. I’m used to performing, you know. It’s not so different really, what we do.”

  “But can we do that forever?”

  “Well, when we’re ready to go, we can go. All of us.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere. We’ll dive for fish and coral and mother-of-pearl, and then we’ll trade that. I’ve seen you swim, Callanish. You can dive deeper and longer than anyone else. You’ll be able to find such wonderful things.”

  “Where will we live? We don’t belong anywhere.”

  “You’re right, but you’re wrong. We don’t belong anywhere, because we can belong everywhere.”

  “But Ursa. She’s different. She—”

  “Look around you. Look at us. Is it so bad to be different? To make your own way? We have this place, and we have a boat. We can stay still or we can keep moving. But there are more than two options in the world. In fact, there are more than two worlds. And this baby—our baby—she proves that. Ursa is both of us, and she’s something else as well. I don’t know what these new worlds are yet, but I know that when we discover them, I want us to discover them together.”

  “I suppose we’ve made it this far, haven’t we? I just worry.”

  “We can’t know what’s coming with the dawn. Now stop asking questions and come into the water with me.”