The Gracekeepers Read online

  From the darkness outside came a thud, a scuffle, a shouted curse.

  “Fine!” shouted Ainsel, his voice echoing in the quiet of the night. “Sink the whole damn thing for all I care!”

  North held her breath.

  Silence.

  Then footsteps. Her coracle swayed as Ainsel jumped down off the Excalibur and on to his own boat. She waited and heard the unclipping of his canvas, the whicker of the horses, the muffled soothing of his voice. She heard Red Gold bumbling about on the Excalibur for a few moments, then he seemed to give up and go to bed too.

  Finally, the circus was asleep—but North was not. She tried not to count the passing time, but she didn’t even have the steady rhythm of the water to lull her. Here in the doldrums, the sea was flat and the air felt too heavy to breathe. She tried to relax her limbs, to let sleep slide over her, but it was no use. She stood up and unclipped the edge of the canvas, heaving herself up on to the edge so she could look out.

  She’d expected it to be dark, but the moon reflected off the metal bars of the cages, lighting the sea silver. It was too eerie to be beautiful. Even North—who had never been a victim of imagination—couldn’t help picturing the corpses under the water. The fish would have eaten the bodies, but fish didn’t eat bones. Perhaps it wasn’t the water that was reflecting the moonlight, but piles and piles of gleaming bones.

  North stuck her head back into the coracle, listening for the snuffle of her bear in sleep. If he was there, then nothing bad could happen to her, not even if the sea swallowed the bones of everyone in the world. Reassured, she straightened up and put her hands on the edge of the boat, leaning her weight back so that she could look up at the stars.

  There was someone on the porch, silver-haired and silent. North jumped, her hand scraping off the side of the coracle. Heat throbbed across her palm and she bit down on a curse. There was no point slipping back into the boat; whoever was on the porch had already seen her.

  The figure raised its hand in greeting. Moonlight caught her white silk gloves. Without thinking, North raised hers back. It was the gracekeeper—and what was her name? Had she told them? North couldn’t recall. Her shoulders tensed as she remembered her thoughts during the Resting: the gracekeeper’s kisses, the stretch of her limbs. It was inappropriate, and North was ashamed. But the gracekeeper couldn’t know that. She might be a holy hermit, but she wasn’t a mind reader.

  Cradling her raw palm against her belly, North got to her feet and made her way across the coracles. She stumbled when she stepped on to the dock, but managed not to fall. In the moonlight, the gracekeeper seemed unreal, beautiful, as if she was carved out of white stone. It was only when North sat down on the porch that she realized she’d forgotten to tie on her silver bell. She pulled her sleeves down over her arms, despite the humidity, so that the gracekeeper wouldn’t see.

  “It can be difficult to sleep here,” she said. “The call of the sea. It’s so loud.”

  North shrugged a reply.

  “Sometimes I feel I haven’t slept a full night since I got here. It’s hard to let go. It’s not safe.”

  She wasn’t looking at North as she spoke; instead, she kept her gaze on the horizon. A house surrounded by water and dead birds: what was unsafe about that? Nothing but the gray sky and the silver sea, and the cages lit up bright as seal-fat lamps. It was horrible, but it didn’t seem dangerous.

  “You’re not an acrobat,” said the gracekeeper. “Or a clown, or a fire-breather. And you don’t have a horse.”

  “No,” answered North, even though it wasn’t really a question. “I’m North. I’m the bear-girl.”

  “The bear-girl. Now I see. I’m Callanish, the gracekeeper. And I’d very much like to see your bear. It reminds me of my—” She seemed to check herself. It was a moment before she spoke again. “It reminds me of something that happened, a long time ago, when I was a child. It reminds me of being saved.”

  North liked the fact that Callanish was interested in the bear. Not everyone recognized what he was: bears and pictures of them were both rarities. Maybe Callanish had seen the circus perform long ago, in another life. After all, she must have come from somewhere; no one was born into the graceyards. They weren’t a home.

  “You can see him,” said North. “Tomorrow. It’ll have to be early, though, because I’m sure we’ll have the boat fixed soon.”

  “And then you’ll leave as soon as you can.”

  “We have to. If we want to eat, we have to work. This far from the islands, we’ll get through our supplies in no time.”

  “That’s not the only reason.” Callanish never seemed to ask any questions, and yet North felt that every sentence was a question.

  “I’m restless. This place, it’s…” North couldn’t find a way to describe her discomfort. She suspected that Callanish, as someone who lived above hundreds of dead bodies, knew anyway. “I prefer to be at sea.”

  “You want to move on. I understand. I want you to go too.”

  North glanced over at Callanish. It didn’t seem as if she’d meant to be so abrupt. She probably didn’t spend a lot of time around people who weren’t mourning, and anything you say to someone in mourning is the wrong thing. Maybe she’d stopped worrying about what she said.

  “I want to get back to normal. Everything since the storm feels wrong. If we can get back to how we were before, it will all be fine.” She laughed. “Except that when Whitby finds out that his coracle sank, he’ll be—”

  She stopped. She knew that Whitby wasn’t coming back, but also he must be coming back. It didn’t make sense otherwise.

  “I haven’t been away from him for more than a day since we met,” said North. “The boats, they’re so small; not like those huge revival cruise ships, or the military tankers. We’re so close—we live so close, anyway, and sometimes that feels the same.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how it must feel to lose—” Callanish seemed to stumble on her words. “I can imagine it a little. I had that once. Where I lived—before I lived here. Seeing the same faces every day. Knowing them better than your own.”

  She put her gloved hand on the porch, then stretched out her pinkie until it was touching North’s pinkie. North almost flinched—but why not have some contact? Why not tell Callanish things? She was a landlocker, but gracekeepers weren’t like other landlockers. They were outcasts, just like circus folk. It was either talking to her, or the hard deck of the coracle and the loneliness until dawn.

  “I want you to leave because of the baby,” said Callanish, her fingertip still touching North’s. “It won’t be long now.”

  North sighed. “She’ll be even worse when it’s born. It’s bad enough with her pregnant. She had this apple, and she quartered it, and I really thought—oh, never mind. She’s the ringmaster’s wife and so there’s nothing we can do.”

  “Not her baby.”

  North turned to Callanish, ready to laugh, ready to deny, ready to draw back her fist and land a punch that would draw blood. Callanish wasn’t looking at North; her gaze was still out on the inky horizon. There was a tension in her body, as if she was holding herself back against the wall of the house. North couldn’t tell whether her expression was one of calm or sorrow.

  “There’s nothing there,” said North.

  “There will be,” replied Callanish.

  North’s breath caught in her throat. She could keep telling herself that the baby couldn’t be a baby because it was hidden, unreal, just a growing part of herself. But soon it would be there. It would be real.

  If the gracekeeper could tell just by looking at her, then other people would be able to tell. So far the crew had been blinded by familiarity, but that couldn’t last much longer. For a moment, North was stuck between stomach-clenching panic and a quiet, distant acceptance. Then she leaned back, lying flat on the porch. The sky stretched above her, pinpricked with stars, and the boards seemed to sway with the rhythm of her breath. After a moment, Callanish lay down bes
ide her.

  It felt like a long time since North had lain like this; she’d spent the past months hunched over, in constant motion, trying to distract, desperate to hide her swelling belly. But that didn’t matter now. She could let Callanish see. She wanted Callanish to see. She pressed her hands to her bump and looked out across the water.

  “I want to tell you something,” said North. “I don’t think you’ll believe me. But it’s true.”

  She’d tried to tell the people she’d known for almost her whole life, and hadn’t managed to get the words out. She might as well practice on a person she’d only just met.

  “I’m listening,” said Callanish, and with a shock North realized that she really was.

  “Well, this—it’s hard to explain.” North shifted, leaning her head on the front wall of the house so that she was closer to Callanish. The closer they were, the more quietly she could talk, and the less likely they were to be overheard. “I’ve never actually got this far before. I’ve tried to tell people, but I couldn’t manage it. You already know so I thought it would be easier.”

  “The child’s father is not part of your crew.”

  “No. The father isn’t really the father. He’s—she’s—oh, I don’t know.” North breathed out, emptying her lungs until her stomach ached, then pulled in a breath as deep as she could. “I’ll tell you, and it doesn’t make any sense. But I’ll say it.”

  North closed her eyes, comforted by the warmth of Callanish’s skin and the sway of water underneath them. She remembered.

  One night, months ago. Drunk and aimless at the edge of an island. All day she’d been distracted, catching a silvery gleam at the corner of her vision, squinting her eyes, sure she could see the angles and features of something beautiful swimming far out to sea.

  Evening fell and she was drained from a night of forced conversation with Ainsel, tired of feigning interest in his spoiled-child dreams. He’d been woozy-drunk, telling her how he was born with a caul and so he was eternally blessed, meant to rule from an ancient castle beneath the sea. In shallow water those structures were visible—they’d all seen them—but they were just rock formations that people imagined into palaces. North had told Ainsel that he was a ringmaster’s brat, that there was nothing for him to rule, and he’d sulked, and she’d turned away from him to stumble on to land, clumsy and disgusted but desperate to get closer to the person out at sea, purposefully not tying on her bell, glad to be courting danger. It turned out that there was no danger because there was no one there; no guards, no alarms, nothing on the island precious enough to be protected from the wicked, lawless damplings. Every time North blinked, she caught a glimpse of the sea-swimmer just before her eyes closed—but when they opened again a split second later, there was nothing. The world spun and spun and spun, but still she could not get any closer.

  She had lain along the blackshore, seaweed tangling in her hair, the water stroking her legs, and let the stars pulse above her. Perhaps if she stayed there long enough the tide would claim her, pull her out to the sea-swimmer. She let sleep drag her down, right to the bottom of the sea, and in the dreams there really were castles, and Ainsel really was a king, and she still didn’t like him.

  Then: a slow pull out of sleep, reality seeping into her dreams. A mouth pressing against hers, cold as the ocean. The weight of a body on her own. The limbs, the angles, the planes of the body matched her own—but not a man, not a woman. In the dim light of the stars, she saw the silvery gleam of scales. The sea-swimmer had finally come to her. Yes, she’d said, yes. She’d tilted back her head and opened up her body, letting words repeat inside her head, names she’d heard only in stories: selkie, nereid, mermaid.

  Then the gracekeeper moved her hand away, and the wall of the house was too hard against North’s head. She had put it in words as best she could, but it was like trying to describe the logic of dreams.

  “So I woke at dawn,” she said, “and I went back to my coracle. I thought I must have imagined it. I thought I’d wanted it so much that I’d dreamed it happening. Until—” she motioned to her bump. “And I know you won’t believe me, but I had to tell someone. So there it is. I’ve told you.”

  “I believe you,” said Callanish. Her voice was so quiet that it could have been the sound of a bird shifting in its cage.

  North got to her feet. Cradling her belly with one hand, she reached the other down to Callanish. “I want you to see him,” she said. “With strangers, he can be a bit—but it will be safe if you’re with me.”

  Callanish hesitated, then pressed her palms to the boards and stood. She looked away from North’s proffered hand, as if she knew she was being rude but didn’t want to acknowledge it. Could it be a gracekeeper thing? North had noticed that she never took off her silk gloves, so maybe she wasn’t allowed to touch anyone’s hands because she had to keep her gloves white. It was odd, but then most things about being a gracekeeper seemed odd.

  They walked together across the porch, neither seeming sure which should lead. The porch belonged to Callanish and the boats belonged to North—and also, these things belonged to neither of them. For them, everything was borrowed.

  North wondered if she should tell Callanish to step cautiously, to stay quiet; she even considered raising a straightened finger to her lips like a strict mother. There was no need. Callanish seemed lighter than a bird when she stepped on to the deck of the Excalibur. They made their way across the coracles, silent as shadows in the still night.

  North got cocky. She did a little leap, a flirty pirouette, as she stepped off Ainsel’s coracle and on to her own. A cloud had darkened the moon, and it was impossible to see whether Callanish smiled at the theatrics. But North liked to think that she did.

  The canvas of North’s coracle sagged in the middle—she’d forgotten to pull its edges tight, too shocked to see the figure on the porch—and she felt Callanish stumble as she stepped on to it. North imagined the thud of her knees against the edge of the coracle, the undignified tumble as she toppled over. Before she knew what she was doing, she’d reached out and caught Callanish’s hand, stopping her from falling. They crouched together in the darkness, hands pressed, breathing in rhythm.

  The moon blinked bright again. North looked down at their linked hands and saw how close they were standing, saw that her thumb had smudged dirt on to the white silk glove; saw too that they were standing so close that her bump was pressed rudely against the gracekeeper’s middle. She dropped the grip and hunched her body, pulling back the edge of her canvas without looking at Callanish.

  They dropped silently into the coracle. Quick as blinking, North slipped a razor blade from its holder and into the pocket of her dress. Her bear would be fine. He would stay asleep. But if he growled, if the gleam of moon lit up his curved teeth—then what? Could she really use the blade on him? But it did not matter. He was safe. He was.

  The grumble of the bear’s breath filled the tiny space. North had wanted Callanish to see the bear, to meet her family, but it was too dark. Instead she took the gracekeeper’s hand and pressed it to the bear’s broad back. At first she flinched, but then she let North’s hand hold her own.

  The bear’s snuffles caught from one breath to the next, but he did not wake. They kept their hands pressed to the bear’s fur, feeling his heart beat strong and steady. Callanish smelled of warm breezes and saltwater. North breathed in deep, holding the scent inside her.

  Suddenly Callanish pulled her hand away. North heard the shush of silk, and Callanish’s ungloved hand was in hers. Her skin was cool and smooth. Their hands were linked, but their palms did not align—North could feel a high ridge of skin linking Callanish’s knuckles, soft and solid. Webbing, like a fish. Like a mermaid.

  North knew now why the gracekeeper had believed where her baby had come from—why the gracekeeper was the only person she’d ever met who would truly understand. She was suddenly sure that if there were light, she’d see the gracekeeper’s skin gleam silver. She pressed the
ir hands tighter, holding them close to the bear.

  It was then, with their hands linked, that North first felt her baby: three taps, low down in her belly, like knocking at a door. She’d heard a word for this during Avalon’s endless wittering about her own baby, and she repeated the word in her head. Quickening. It was the quickening. She kept her hands tangled in her bear’s fur. The four of them there felt good, and safe, and real.

  “Thank you,” Callanish said, her voice as soft as breathing as she pulled away and put her gloves on. North did not know what to say in reply, so she said nothing at all.

  She tugged back the canvas, led Callanish over the coracles, and left her on the porch. She made her way to her boat without looking at the gracekeeper. She did not dare. If she looked at the gracekeeper in the moonlight, if she saw the silver gleam of her skin, how could she leave? How could she sail away and leave Callanish there alone, knowing how they were connected?

  Back in her bunk, tucked in beside the musty warmth of her bear, North fell asleep with her hands linked tight over her belly. In her dream, she was her child: tiny as a bulb of seaweed, tight as a balled fist. Above her, the beat of an enormous heart shushed and roared like waves. Through her closed eyelids, the world showed in reds and purples: the branching lines of anemones, the nodules of coral, the hard lumps of rock and mussel. Inside North was the sea. Her child had come from the sea.

  For so long, the bear had been her only family. But soon that family would have to expand to fit her child—and perhaps there could be room for someone else too.

  9

  RED GOLD

  Jarrow dreamed of the storm. All night he had the same dream, slightly different each time but always with the same end, always losing a life to the sea. Layer upon layer of drownings. Whatever he did in the dreams, he could never save Whitby.