The Gracekeepers Page 7

  “For what?”

  “For keeping us safe.”

  “You’re always safe with me, my lass. Besides, I knew I had to patch that gap up quick-smart. Wouldn’t want that saltwater to get in here and cause damage, now would I? Just think about your hair!”

  “You mean your hair,” said Melia.

  “Of course I do,” said Whitby. “I have to stay beautiful for my women.”

  Melia sat up, pulling away from him in mock offense. “Women plural, is it?” But she could not keep the laughter out of her voice; could not even pretend to be annoyed at Whitby.

  “You and the sea.” He pulled her back down into his arms. “You’re better company than she is—but me and that briny temptress, we’re like this.” Whitby crossed his index finger over Melia’s so they were intertwined.

  As if in answer, the sea sighed and boomed against the hull. Melia felt the gentle scrape of coracles on either side and knew that they were all safe now. The coracles seemed to be tiny, fragile things but they had been through many storms, bobbing up among the roughest waves, weathering the wind and salt-spray like miniature fortresses. The sea had never tried to claim one of them. Perhaps she did not bother with such small prey.

  Melia turned to face Whitby, pressing herself into his body to lessen her shivers, and listened to the waves and the wind shriek and boom against the hull. In the center of a storm, it was easy to believe the old superstitions. The gods of the deep, hungry for revenge; the earth as a flat plane, with the seas tipping over the edge into nothing. Here Be Dragons.

  Melia smiled and rested her damp face against Whitby’s shoulder, letting his heat dry the rain from her forehead. Colors and shapes began to flicker behind her eyelids as she drifted into sleep. She’d weathered worse storms, and lying awake all night would only make her tired, less able to carry out any repairs in the morning. She let herself drift.

  A wave boomed against the next coracle—North’s coracle, and wouldn’t her poor bear be frightened by all this noise?—and Melia pictured its motion behind her closed eyelids. Cresting the wave, tugging on the taut chain, righting itself on the swell. Safe, like always. Even as it thudded into the side of their coracle hard enough to knock her teeth together, she knew it was safe.

  Under the sea’s tantrum, she heard another sound. Slosh-suck, slosh-suck: the rhythm of the waves, but closer and clearer. She opened her eyes to check that the canvas was still tight.

  The boat tipped on the waves, and Melia saw a small circle of stars; it tipped back and the stars were gone, replaced by blackness and the slosh of water. Melia understood what had happened before the words could form in her mind. A crack. There was a crack in the hull. Their coracle was sinking.

  “Whitby!” Melia’s fingers scrabbled at the buckles of the bunk strap. “The hull!”

  Melia crossed the coracle on her knees so she wouldn’t fall, the thin layer of water numbing her legs. She lit a lamp and held it high. Whitby was out of bed, reaching for scraps of oilcloth, reaching for the tin of tar, his movements calm and precise. She held the lamp closer to the hull. The crack was the size of an egg, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Whitby could patch that.

  But, but. The oilcloth was too small. The lid was stuck on the tin of tar. And with each swell and push of the waves, the crack widened.

  Whitby held the scrap of oilcloth to the weeping hull, but now it was not big enough to reach the edges. Melia grabbed another.

  Lid, tar, fingers, oilcloth.

  It was not enough.

  It would not stick.

  They were still on their knees, the water now halfway up their thighs, salt-stinking and dark. Melia felt sure that the coracle was sitting lower in the water. Panic blurred her thoughts. Her legs were numb. The light from the seal-fat lamp jerked against the sides of the coracle: her hands were shaking, and knowing that they shook was not enough to make them stop.

  “Hush now,” murmured Whitby over the shriek of the wind and rain, and she realized that she’d been making a sound of distress, a low moan in the back of her throat, the same pitch and beat as the waves.

  Whitby turned away from the hull, eyes casting around the coracle, looking for something that was big enough to patch the gap. Melia wanted to help him, but she could not tear her gaze away. As she watched, the crack spread wide as a yawning mouth, revealing a tumble of stars and the sea’s white teeth. The coracle tipped into the swell of a wave. Water poured through the gap, knocking Melia and Whitby on to their backs in the freezing water.

  “We can’t,” said Melia. “It’s too big. We need to get out.”

  Whitby did not reply; Melia was not sure he could bring himself to say the words. He tugged down two loops of the long rope they used for their show and knotted them around their waists. Melia reached for the floats strapped to the wall, then realized it was a waste of time. They wouldn’t make a difference in a sea this raw.

  Their coracle was only the third away from the main boat, and their ropes were long enough to reach across North’s and Ainsel’s coracles—assuming that North’s had not also been damaged in the collision. Red Gold would be on the deck of the Excalibur, but the stars might not be bright enough to let him see the coracle’s damage beneath the dark water and white froth.

  Melia threaded the lamp on to its hook—a burning canvas was now the least of their worries—and began untying the overhead. The knots were tight and her fingers were numb.

  “Whitby!” she shouted. “I can’t—it’s too—”

  And he was beside her, nimble fingers dissolving the knots, strong arms pulling back the canvas, calloused hands throwing the end of her rope out of the coracle and into the night. It thudded and splashed into the sea. Melia pulled herself up on to the edge of the coracle, wrapping the overhead ropes around one arm so that she wouldn’t tip into the water. The coracle’s edge was slippery with seawater and she overbalanced, jerking the coracle as she landed on her knees. The thud juddered through her bones—she didn’t think that she had landed that hard, but still the impact seemed to vibrate through the coracle.

  In the bleaching starlight she saw the outline of Red Gold, lashed to the Excalibur’s mainmast. She waved her free arm at him, but he did not notice. Now that Melia was out, she could see how low their coracle sat in the water; how it was already beginning to drag down its neighbors.

  A split of lightning arced across the sky, echoed by a deep grumble of thunder. It lit up the world, painting Red Gold’s wide red face as white as bone. Melia’s head spun. It was all unreal. Pale shapes. Etchings on burned wood. The ends of stories.

  Red Gold raised an arm to hail her and she threw him the rope. He could not know what had happened to the coracle, but he knew that they were in trouble. She made sure that Red Gold had a tight hold of her rope, then reached down for Whitby’s to throw that too. She could not find it.

  “Whitby!” she shouted, but the wind stole his name. She kicked her feet in the empty space of the coracle, trying to find him. “Whitby, stop trying to fix it! It’s too late!” She ducked her head inside but couldn’t see anything. She pulled some slack on her rope and dropped down into the coracle. All her breath was knocked out as she landed hip-deep in the icy water.

  “Whitby, damn you to earth!” She groped around in the dark but could only find the sides of the coracle, her numb fingers bumping and scraping against the straps and buckles. Nothing, nothing. Then: a tug around her belly, pulling her backward through the water. She pressed her hands against the walls and screamed out Whitby’s name. But Red Gold had the end of her rope, and was pulling her out.

  As she came free of the water she kicked her legs out as hard and wide as she could. They caught things, dozens of things, soft things and shattering things, but she did not know if any of those things were Whitby. Around her waist the rope tugged, tugged, and it was so tight that she could not breathe, could not call again for Whitby. Stars wheeled above her. The sea raged in long, deep heaves. She tried to turn, to untie the rope
, to signal to Red Gold. As she slid over the edge of the coracle it scraped a long graze of skin from her forearm. A wave spat saltwater on to the wound, but she felt nothing.

  She half scrambled, half dragged over the two coracles and on to the sodden deck of the Excalibur. Red Gold pushed her toward the cabin. Through the burn of saltwater in her eyes she saw that he was climbing across the coracles to save Whitby. Despite his tight and mismatched oilskins, his cracked and bloody cheeks, Red Gold at that moment was the most glorious thing that Melia had ever seen. She held tight to the mast, watching him.

  Red Gold ducked his head into the coracle, emerging with the end of the rope in his hand. He steadied himself on the half-tied canvas and hauled on the rope. Then he hesitated. Melia squinted through the salt-spray. It seemed that he had seen what was on the end of the rope, and dropped it back into the sinking coracle. But that could not be.

  Now the clowns and the glamours were emerging from their boats, ropes around their waists, faces sheened with rain. Together with Red Gold they grasped the chain attaching her coracle to the glamours’ boat. Now they were unhooking the glamours’ boat and hooking it into North’s. Now they were standing on North’s coracle, ready to unhook Melia’s entirely. No. No. Why did Red Gold not pull Whitby out? She remembered the thud as she’d fallen, the judder through the coracle. The crack of bone she’d thought had been her own.

  “No!” she shouted, though she knew Red Gold could not hear her. She launched herself off the Excalibur and on to Ainsel’s coracle, not caring about its unsteady lollop, about the rain throbbing at her shoulders, about the thunder vibrating her insides. She grabbed Red Gold’s arm.

  “No!” she shouted into his ear. He did not reply, did not shake his head, but his intentions were clear. If they did not let the coracle go, it would drag them all down. But why would Melia care? If Whitby was in the sea, then they might as well all be in the sea.

  She reached into the coracle. The water level was high, almost to the top. The end of the rope floated. She grabbed it, closed her eyes against the salt-spray, and pulled. She could lose the coracle, but she couldn’t lose Whitby. Hand over hand, eyes shut tight, she pulled. She reached the end of the rope, the start of something heavy. She kept her eyes closed.

  She felt Red Gold unfasten the chain and let the coracle sink. Still she held the rope.

  7

  CALLANISH

  The storm seemed to last for days, though Callanish did not know how many. She slept heavily, the days and nights blurred into an argument of rain and wind. She wondered whether she was supposed to feel scared; if someone else had been with her, and they had been scared, she would have understood why. The wind screamed through the shutters and saltwater seeped in around the edges of the door. She couldn’t see outside, but it seemed that her house was still in the same place. If it had come loose from its moorings and been tossed into the sea, she’d only know when she opened the door. It was soothing to think about things happening without her having to make them happen. She imagined opening the door to snow-tipped mountains, jewel-colored lakes, rainforests dripping with heat and noisy with life. Daydreams became dreams. Her bed felt like the only steady point in the storm.

  One morning, she opened the door to her mother. Veryan looked awkward, apologetic, and very pregnant. The sun was low, shining through the doorway and into Callanish’s eyes, so that every time she tried to focus on her mother, she could not. Veryan wavered and pulsed, like the distant sea on a hot day. Standing there on the porch in the middle of the graceyard, she asked for help. Callanish was going to help her mother. She would get it right this time. She would be brave and wise and her hands would be steady no matter what. But she did not know how. She could not afford to make a mistake again. She closed the door, to buy some time to think, and when she opened it again her mother was gone.

  This dream, unfamiliar as it was, ended up the same as all her other dreams: the ache in her hands and feet, the lullaby calling her, the soothing embrace of the sea. Even in the dream, Callanish kept enough of her conscious self to be glad that the door was closed and windows blocked. This dream would be different: she couldn’t wander out of bed. She couldn’t walk out on to the porch. She couldn’t wake to the chill of water closing around her ankles.

  —

  Callanish came awake to silence, her dreams clinging. She got out of bed, unbolted the door, stepped out on to the porch. The sky and the sea were as flat and blue as china plates, so perfect that she couldn’t see where they met. All of the grace-cages were empty. It was so quiet that she could hear herself breathing, a tick each time she blinked. The storm was over.

  She went back inside and began sorting through her food, separating out the things ruined by seawater. Most of it was fine; only some bread was spoiled, and that was stale anyway. She had a few eggs, some dried meat, dehydrated peas, a bag of lentils and beans, a pot of jam. Enough food for a week; or two, if she rationed it. The storm might keep people away for a while, but there would be plenty of new dead to mourn—not that she could be of help yet, as she had no newborn graces. She couldn’t perform any Restings until the supply boat came by. Gracekeepers weren’t allowed to breed the graces themselves; it was a delicate process, as each bird’s stated lifespan had to be accurate. It would be no good to tell a Resting party that they should grieve for two weeks, only for them to check back a fortnight later with their white mourning clothes packed away, and find the grace still alive.

  She unfastened both the windows, then pulled the sheets off her bed and hung them on the rafters to air. The house was bright and dry and silent. It was as if the storm had never happened.

  A fish was splashing outside her window. Callanish leaned out to see it. The sea stretched to the horizon, flat as polished metal. She leaned out of the other window and she could not see a fish, but still she heard it splash. The sound grew louder, and she realized it was the waves against a hull.

  Out on the porch, she squinted her eyes, but she couldn’t see a boat. She even tipped the rowing boat back on to the sea and floated out so she could check that nothing was coming toward the back of the house. No shadow, no smudge: nothing but blue in every direction. Still, the unsteady splash. She went back to the porch and waited. It was eerie to be able to hear something approach, but not yet see it. Everything acted differently in the doldrums: sound, taste, temperature. She didn’t think she would ever really get used to it.

  Finally, after what seemed like half a day, a shadow slid into view. Callanish ran inside and put on her gloves and slippers. She began to put on her white dress, then ran out on to the porch again when she realized she didn’t need to. Or did she? She wasn’t sure. She ran back inside and pulled on the dress. She wasn’t performing a Resting, but she was still a gracekeeper. She should be properly dressed to play her role. She braided her hair loose and low to hide her scars.

  The approaching boat was large and made of wind-scoured wood, its two masts carrying just one small sail. The boat was not moving properly through the water. As it turned to pass between the poles at the edge of the graceyard, Callanish saw that it was not only one boat: it trailed five coracles behind it, each of a different size, brightly painted and patched with rectangles of rusting metal. Usually larger boats anchored at the graceyard’s edge and took a rowing boat to the house; this one sailed its sluggish way straight through, forcing empty grace-cages to either side of the hull with a series of thuds and scrapes.

  She raised her hand to hail the figure at the wheel. He took slightly too long to respond, and in those moments the ground seemed to drop from under Callanish’s feet. They were pirates, they were thieves, they were going to kill her and throw her body in the sea.

  Then the figure hailed, and she remembered to breathe, and she saw several things at once: the captain had bright red cheeks, as if they’d been rouged; beside him stood a beautiful pregnant woman with long black hair and a pale blue dress; the canvas top of one of the coracles was peeled back; and poking up
from it was what appeared to be a bear.

  Callanish had seen a bear before. The memory was scratched and worn: a striped silk ceiling, a family dancing to a gramophone—and then the sound of screams, skin sheened red. That was her first and last bear, though she’d always loved them because of an illustration in a fairytale book her mother used to read to her. The picture wasn’t clear, as the pages were made of silk and they had become damp and stretched. It was strange to see, right there in front of her, something that she didn’t think existed any more. For a moment, she felt reality unfocus, as if she was seeing the land from the map hung on her wall.

  Then the boat bumped up against the dock, and Callanish snapped back to reality.

  “Welcome,” she said. “I am Callanish Sand. I am the gracekeeper here. Please come ashore.”

  The huge man with the red face bowed low, which was awkward as he was partway through dropping the anchor. He managed to drop anchor, finish his bow, and step on to the dock all in one movement.

  “Thank you kindly, Ms. Sand. I am Jarrow Stirling, the captain of the Excalibur.” He moved his arm as if to give the boat a pat, then seemed to think better of it. Callanish found that sensible; a good knock and the whole thing would probably fall apart. Instead he lifted his hand palm-up to help the pregnant woman step off the boat. She stumbled as her foot touched the dock. She was clearly a dampling—they could never quite get the hang of steady ground—but the captain seemed oddly at ease on the metal slats.

  “I present my wife, Avalon,” said Jarrow, “and my son, Ainsel, who is—ah, he’s below deck, in the coracle with the horses. They did not like the storm.”

  “Neither did any of us,” said the pregnant woman, presenting her hand to Callanish. “Avalon Stirling. Charmed.”

  She wasn’t sure what she was meant to do with the hand, so she bowed her head and tried to look distant.

  “I present also my crew.” Jarrow swept his arms wide with obvious pride, as if the tatty boats were made of fresh flowers. At the summons, the rest of the crew emerged from their boats, climbing on to the deck and then wobbling down on to the dock. The space was not large, and the damplings were unsteady on the planks; Callanish was sure that one of them would end up falling into the water. She hoped they were good swimmers. She felt a jolt of panic thinking of her tiny house crammed with bears and horses, and was relieved when she saw that the animals were staying in the coracles.