The Gracekeepers Read online

  North could not speak. Four months. By then all the sewing in the world wouldn’t make her performance dress hide it, and Ainsel would know, and Red Gold would know, and there would be no use at all in lying. And the house! It was true, what Melia and Whitby had said—all that wealth really was going on a house. But not for Avalon. For North.

  “Now, my little ones,” went on Red Gold, “I know that your silence is simply because you’re too overwhelmed to speak. I’ve put everything I have into this house. But it’s worth it, my loves. It’s worth it to ensure my son’s happiness and to get our family back on to land. To ensure that the Stirling legacy is restored to glory.” He beamed at his son, who offered nothing in return. Ainsel seemed distracted, staring at his feet as he scuffed the ground, lost in thought. “And you will be happy, and you will be glorious,” said Red Gold. “You will be glorious because I want you to be.”

  The morning light had turned buttery and North had to raise a hand to shield her eyes. Ainsel was not looking at her; he’d lifted his head to look back the way they had come.

  “Ainsel,” she said. She tried not to let her voice shake. But he would not look at her. She turned instead to Red Gold.

  “I want to make you happy, Jarrow,” she said. “I do, I promise, but Ainsel and I, we don’t…”

  “Yes? Do consider, before you speak, that I have built the Excalibur up from nothing, and both of you with it. And do consider all the things that the whole crew has gone without to save for this house. This is not about making me happy. It’s about much more than that.” Jarrow kept his voice treacle-sweet, but with each passing moment his smile stretched wider. North knew this was not a good sign.

  “I mean,” she stumbled on, “I want to be happy. For you. The way you want. I want to be glorious. But landlockers, and babies, and I don’t know if I can…”

  “Yes, north child? Spit it out. Don’t keep us waiting.” Jarrow’s smile was now so wide and tight that the skin began to crack. Tiny dots of blood gleamed on his reddened cheeks.

  Why wasn’t Ainsel saying anything? North resisted the urge to punch him right in his pretty face. “Ainsel wants to tell you something.”

  Red Gold turned to his son.

  “Yes.” Ainsel finally spoke. “Yes. I want to tell you that I am glad. I can think of nothing more glorious than having a house on land, and raising my child as a true Stirling, and living with…” He trailed off.

  “With North,” prompted Red Gold. “With your wife.”

  “With…uh, yes, with—”

  From a farmhouse, the slam of a door. All three heads snapped up.

  Red Gold took their hands and gripped hard. “Now. We’re going to walk back, calm and quick. Don’t touch anything. Don’t put even your littlest toe off the path. Got it? Go.”

  Along the path with their heads down and over the stile in single file and past the low houses and past the higher houses, trying not to panic, trying not to run, and there was the blackshore, and North remembered how to breathe because there were the tin-sided towers, and there was the shush of their shoes on the gangplank, and there was her coracle chained in its row. She walked the chains and ducked under the canvas without a word. It wasn’t until she slid under her bear’s sleeping paw that she felt her heart slow.

  2

  CALLANISH

  Callanish could always predict the weather, because the graces told her. Under clear skies they stayed silent in their cages, their movement slowing as they starved. But when storms were due they couldn’t be at rest. They’d pweet and muss, shuddering their wings so that the murky green-blue feathers stuck out at defensive angles. Callanish couldn’t help but feel their disquiet.

  The morning slipped by in silence, broken only by the shift and coo of the graces. Callanish sat on the front porch of the house, perched at the edge, feet tucked under so they wouldn’t touch the water. In the distance ships passed, tiny as toys. The sea here was busy with fish, but Callanish would not catch them. She knew that fish had to eat something, and all living things grew from dead things, and there was no point being squeamish about it. But it was different when you had seen the bodies, when you knew their names, when you had laid them to rest with your own hands. In eating the fish, Callanish would have felt that she was eating the bodies. Sometimes, she could almost laugh: surrounded by a fish-rich sea, she had enough food and water to last her a lifetime, but she could have none of it.

  A Resting was due that afternoon, so after her morning of silence Callanish went inside to prepare. The grace was ready; when she entered the house he was huddled in the corner of his cage, head under his wing, speckled feathers puffling around the metal bars. He knew that a storm would come soon, but that there was nothing he could do to get away from it.

  “I know the feeling,” said Callanish to the grace, and she dropped five sunflower seeds into the cage. She wasn’t supposed to feed the graces, but she believed that some people deserved a longer remembrance. She’d already met some of the crew who were coming for the Resting, and her stomach clenched to think of the quickness in their smiles, their relief when they saw that the grace was so small. She wished she’d chosen a bigger grace for the dead man, but it was too late. All she could do now was sneak it some food to make it live longer. Real grief, and Callanish didn’t feed the grace. Those people didn’t need the grace’s death to tell them when mourning was over. Ships rarely came back to check anyway; the birds were bred to be tiny and they could not live long, caged without food or fresh water. Callanish didn’t feel bad about feeding the graces. It was such a small crime.

  She checked that her white dress was dry, then pulled it off the line and over her head. It was hardened with salt and she stretched out her shoulders to loosen the fabric; her filter wasn’t working properly, and she hadn’t wanted to waste drinking water on laundry. She roped her silver-blond hair at the back of her head, looping it low over her ears to hide her scars, and added a spray of white flowers—fake, but no one could expect them to be real. White silk gloves, white silk slippers; both sewn by her mother and re-stitched over the years. She couldn’t trade for these. They had been specially made to disguise the webbing between her fingers and toes.

  Callanish was kept busy as a gracekeeper: at least two Restings a week, always. People liked a gracekeeper who looked young. Innocent. Unthinkably far from her own death.

  For lunch she ate rye bread and honey, drank a bone cup of milk about to turn. Only eating landlocker food meant that quantities were small, and there was never quite enough of anything. She wouldn’t mind dampling food, but worried about her reputation as a gracekeeper if she requested it. Callanish could not remember how it felt to be full. More supplies would arrive with the Resting group: a large parcel of body, along with a small parcel of soap and eggs and gold. Graceyards were not a destination. Lined up along the equator as they were, deep in the doldrums, they were places for passing through. Perfect for the dead. Perfect for Callanish.

  She hoped that the Resting party would arrive before the weather turned; the graces had been restless all morning, but the sky stayed pale. Callanish strained her eyes in every direction, but she couldn’t see any storm clouds. What she could see, though, was the approach of a small tin rowing boat. The Resting party was on its way, and Callanish was ready to perform.

  —

  After the service, before Callanish could grasp the oars to row back to the dock, the widow grabbed her wrists. Callanish tensed all her muscles. If the widow’s hands moved down from Callanish’s wrists, if the gloves were to slip—then they would see her hands, and they would know, and they would tell.

  Callanish already knew what she would do if she was revealed. It would be so easy to tip herself off the side of the boat and into the water. Then she would straighten her body like a dart and sink right down to the bottom of the sea. It was the only way.

  But the widow, it seemed, only wanted to thank her. She gripped Callanish’s exposed wrists as she spoke, and her hands felt da
mp and swollen, the palms soft with fresh blisters from the boat’s oars.

  “He was…” said the widow, then trailed off. She spoke in fummels and haffs as if she could not get enough breath to speak proper words.

  “I know,” said Callanish, doing her best expression of sympathy, trying not to let her panic show. It was a fine line: she had to stay noble and restrained, as a gracekeeper should, but she did not want to be unkind. She took the widow’s hands in her own, noticing how her wedding ring dug into her finger, making the flesh bulge out at either side. Callanish wondered whether she would wear it until it was engulfed in her own flesh, forming a secret totem. She had a flash of the dead man’s hands; the way she’d tied them in fists before wrapping him in the netting so that his fingers wouldn’t poke through. She kept her own fingers pressed tight together.

  Callanish placed the widow’s hands back in her lap and let go, pretending that she was checking the grace’s cage. It was one of the finer ones, and she had made sure to polish its bars to a shine. The effect wouldn’t last long in the saltwater, but that didn’t matter as long as it looked good for the Resting.

  She regretted feeding the grace. The others on the man’s ship might be eager to finish mourning him, but she saw now that his wife wouldn’t be back to check on the grace—not because she didn’t care, but because she would remember her husband no matter when the grace died. Callanish pulled on the oars to draw the rowing boat back to the dock.

  No matter what she felt, the show must go on. She said the words, she performed the actions, she took her payment. But she only mimed grief. She didn’t mean it. How could she? She didn’t know this man, beyond his stitched-shut face and his wife’s too-tight wedding ring.

  Sometimes she pretended that she was saying the words of the service about her mother. This helped, and on the darkest days she’d had to leave long pauses for fear that her voice would crack. After those Restings she’d sit down to write a letter to her mother, but she rarely finished them and never sent them.

  “Farewell,” said Callanish in a soothing sort of voice, as the crew climbed back into their boat.

  “Farewell,” they chorused solemnly, and she knew that they were really saying it to the man they’d lost. Everyone played a role at a Resting.

  Legally, all dead damplings had to be interred in a graceyard. But Callanish knew that didn’t always happen. If someone died in the far north or south, could a crew really be expected to keep the body on board for the months it took to reach the equator? And so it would be tied in canvas and tipped overboard, and the family would decide their own time of mourning, and the dead would end up as a meal for the fishes just as they would in a graceyard. Such small crimes.

  As the little boat sailed away, back to the main ship anchored at the edge of the graceyard, Callanish felt that one end of a fine thread was tied to the boat’s stern and the other to her ribs. With every beat of the oars she felt something over her heart stretch, and stretch, until it might break. A string like the one between a body and its grace. But all threads broke eventually. It was for the best. For Callanish, being alone was safer.

  She turned away from the retreating boat and went back into the house, carrying the parcel of supplies with her. For one adult Resting she was paid a mix of food, supplies and tradable goods: ten eggs, a thick wedge of bacon, a hank of fabric for letter-writing, a lump of copper the size of her thumbnail. It was fine. It was enough. What else could she need? She would eat tonight, and that was all that mattered.

  She stacked the items on the shelf, and found herself humming so loudly that her throat burned. It reminded her that she was still there. She could eat and she could breathe. She lived.

  She would write a letter to her mother tomorrow.

  —

  When it started to get dark, Callanish sat out on the porch, her feet tucked up, a cup of milk in her hand. To keep her white dress clean, she’d exchanged it for a gray one. She was alone, and so she did not need her gloves or her slippers. The sea reflected the sky in a mass of fire. Sunset is fast at the equator; blink in the day, open your eyes to the night.

  As a child, Callanish had imagined chunks of land floating on a globe of sea, held by thick chains fastened to anchors the size of castles. She had asked her mother what would happen if the chains were to rust away, if the countries were to bump and jostle one another. Would they become attached? Would bridges be built where only sea had been before? Or would the edge of one country tip under another, upending it like a toy tug carrying too many pebbles at one end?

  “Your brain is upside-down,” her mother had said. “Land does not float on sea; the earth is a solid mass like a rubber ball, and oceans sit in cups carved out of land. No matter how deep the sea, there is always land at the bottom of it. Land decides water, not the other way around.”

  It was only when she’d been left at her new home in the graceyard that Callanish realized her mother was wrong. Land would never choose this. Water had decided the shape of the world. She sipped her milk and watched the sea roll out in every direction, mirror-flat.

  There was nothing, nothing, nothing—and then there was something. A shadow on the horizon, moving closer.

  There was no Resting due, no meeting with a bereaved family, and Callanish swithered on the porch, not sure whether she should change back into her white dress. She squinted her eyes until she was sure that there was only one person in the rowing boat. One person, no bundle of body. She put on her gloves and slippers then sat back down on the porch, finished her cup of milk, and waited.

  “Ahoy,” gasped the stranger, still a few boat-lengths away from the dock. Callanish couldn’t help smiling at the old-fashioned term.

  “Ahoy,” she replied, and stood to help the stranger climb out of the rowing boat. Except that the stranger was not exactly a stranger. “I know you,” she said. “Odell, is it?”

  She waited for him to catch his breath. It was a fair distance to row.

  “Well remembered,” he finally said. “It’s been a while—a year or so, I think. When I first arrived, with that little tour to the neighbors. I forget the name of the fellow on the other side. Time acts funny round here and I lose track sometimes.” Odell stood on the dock, shifting from one foot to the other. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  “My name is Callanish.”

  “Right! Right. You know what it’s like out here, I just…” He slapped his forehead. “Callanish. I’ll remember that now.”

  Callanish couldn’t think of a polite way to say what do you want? She should invite him in, she should get him a cup of milk. Instead she stood awkwardly on the porch.

  Odell reached down to his rowing boat and pulled out a bottle, tilting his head as a question. Callanish went into the house and got her bowl. Odell would just have to be happy drinking from it, as she didn’t have another cup. Gracekeepers were given one cup, one plate, one bowl, one spoon. They were not expected to entertain visitors. Odell filled the bowl from the bottle without comment, then went to tip some into Callanish’s empty cup.

  She shook her head. “I can’t—”

  “Yes you can.”

  She let him fill the cup. They sat on the porch together, and Odell tugged off his shoes and let his feet dangle in the water. Fish clustered around his toes, gulping at the surface of the water. Callanish suppressed a shudder.

  The sun had tipped below the horizon, leaving the sky inky and a chill in the air.

  “You’ve been doing this longer than me. Does it get easier?”

  She shrugged. The liquid in the cup burned her throat as she drank.

  “I thought so,” he said.

  The only sound was the tick of the fishes’ mouths against the water. Callanish was sure she could hear Odell’s heart beating.

  “It was my choice to do this,” he said, as if she’d asked a question. “My wife, she got into religion. Clapping and chanting—like on those revival boats, you know? All burning and swooning. And I tried to get her back�
��spoke to the preacher, all gentlemanlike, but he was having none of it. Got heated, like it does, and maybe things went too far. It was a matter of the heart, you know? Anyway, I won.”

  So Odell had hit a man, beaten a man, maybe killed a man. It made no difference to Callanish. But if he was determined to tell her, she’d let him talk.

  “I won, but Roche still wouldn’t come back to me. She told the island council, and they gave me a choice, and—well, you know how it goes.” He motioned to Callanish’s house, to the rows of grace-cages, to the endless sea. “Of course you know. It was my choice, really. I thought—I can be one better than a preacher. I can be holy. I can be a hermit, you know?”

  He refilled his bowl and glanced at Callanish. There was nothing to see on the horizon, but she kept her gaze on it anyway, so she wouldn’t have to look at Odell.

  “I told Roche that it wasn’t all about her, that I had my own life too, and I had to leave the island because I didn’t want to see her face every single day, you know? So I did it. I left. I chose to become holy.”

  His tone dared Callanish to argue. She didn’t argue.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong. I really didn’t. And it’s not even a punishment really, when you think about it. It’s more of a step up, you know? Your very own island.” He drained his bowl and made a sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh. “Well, it’s not a boat, so it must be an island. At least it doesn’t move. Want some more?”

  Callanish tipped her cup toward him. He refilled it, and then his bowl. She felt goosebumps rise along her arms from the cooling air; she drank again to feel the warmth of it. Her limbs began to relax, her feet dipping closer to the water.