Impossible creatures, p.18
Impossible Creatures, page 18
Christopher looked about him, but he could see nothing. He hung by his hands and dropped the eight feet to the ground, landing in an ankle-jarring crouch.
‘Where are you?’ he called.
‘Here! Oh, by the name of the Immortal, down here!’
The dragon rose in front of him. It was bright shining silver, with green-golden wings. It was the size of a hummingbird, and it was vibrating with affront.
Mal snorted with laughter. The dragon turned to look at her.
‘You find something amusing? My size, perhaps?’
‘No,’ said Mal. ‘No! I wouldn’t dare laugh at a dragon.’
‘I am small but, mistress, I am not harmless.’ The dragon turned aside its head and snorted, and a little fireball launched itself from his nostrils. Christopher flinched backwards.
‘I am a jaculus. The tree-dragon. And it is my bounden right and duty now to eat you. It was courteous of you to come ready-washed.’
Christopher’s eyes flickered to the boat. It was too far for anyone to hear them shout.
The jaculus was looking them up and down. ‘You – boy – are not from the Enchanted Islands. Have not the tales of the mighty miniature dragon reached you in the Otherlands?’
Christopher shook his head. ‘The dragons in our stories are all large, I think. I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Your man – Pliny – he travelled here, through the waybetween. He said he would tell people about me when he returned. You should know about me!’ He snorted a spark of outraged fire, twelve inches from Christopher’s elbow; he flinched sideways.
‘Do you have a name?’ asked Mal.
‘I have just told you. I am a jaculus.’
‘But I meant … I’m called Malum. And he’s Christopher. To tell you apart from the other jaculuses.’
‘From whither do they come, these names?’
‘I was given mine by my parents,’ said Christopher.
The jaculus looked them up, down, up again. ‘I hatched, alone, from an egg,’ said the jaculus. ‘No dragon has named me. I have travelled, but never further than I need to go for food.’
‘It doesn’t have to be your parents. A human could name you.’
‘Most of the humans who have come to my island I have burned, as is my duty, at which point any kind of naming would have been impracticable. I have eaten them, very slowly, over time. The charcoal stops the flesh from rotting.’
‘Why didn’t you burn us?’
The jaculus sniffed. ‘The boy. He has a scent. There is a pull in his blood, towards the living world; there is a call in him. I found myself curious. And you, girl: I know what you are. I can smell the glimt in you. Even a kraken would not devour you. It is ill luck to eat an Immortal.’
The wind was picking up. Clouds scudded over the sun, and the tree cast a long shadow on the water. Christopher gave a shiver. The island was a harsh place, for all its glorious shine.
‘Is it just you here,’ he said, ‘guarding this tree, for a thousand years?’ Despite himself, he felt a spark of sympathy for the minuscule, imperious dragon. ‘Won’t you start to hate it, eventually?’
It was a mistake. The dragon rose into the air, a flurry of anger in miniature. ‘Upstart cur! You presume too far! I will not harm the Immortal, but I will eat you—’
‘Wait! I only meant, don’t you get lonely?’
The jaculus gave a low rumble in its throat; it sounded like a warning. ‘Dragons do not feel loneliness. That is an emotion for humankind. And perhaps some of the weaker dryads.’ It snorted fire.
‘But why do you stay here?’ said Mal. ‘You could fly anywhere.’
‘The jaculus must guard the tree of living gold.’
‘How do you know, if you never had other dragons to tell you what to do?’
The jaculus’s voice was querulous. ‘How does a bird know which is the route to fly south, from Paraspara to Edem each year? I simply know it to be so. And I have learned a great deal from the humans who have come, before I ate them. I have learned language: Arabic, Sanskrit, Old French. Two hundred years ago, an explorer came and taught me English. I did not eat him until I had learned all the irregular verbs.’
‘But you never learned your name.’
He hesitated, then nodded his dragon head. ‘I did not.’
‘If we gave you a name,’ said Christopher, ‘and if I swore, when I get back to my world, to tell stories of the importance of the jaculus – would you let us go?’
‘You? Write about me? A chronicler?’
‘Yeah. Yes. Exactly.’
‘It is true that dragons need those who sing of them, in the Outerlands. Without the songs, they are … diminished.’
Christopher nodded, and Mal nodded beside him, feverishly up and down. ‘I can do that,’ he said. ‘I can swear.’
The dragon hesitated. ‘And it would have to be a good name,’ he said. ‘Or I would have to burn you, and feast upon your body.’
Christopher met Mal’s eye. She looked, briefly, panicked. Her lips formed the word, ‘Norman?’
‘How about … Jacques?’ he said quickly.
The jaculus considered. ‘Jacques the jaculus? Is it not … too simple?’
‘Neat, not simple,’ said Mal. ‘Smart. Elegant.’
‘Spelled J-a-c-q-u-e-s,’ said Christopher. There had been a boy at school called Jacques. ‘But pronounced Jac. So you would have silent letters, which are just for you.’
‘Jacques,’ said the dragon. He looked again at Christopher, and at the gold. Then, without blinking, he took off into the air.
‘I must tell someone,’ he said. ‘I must introduce myself. Jac. Jacques.’
THE ISLAND OF MURDERERS
The Murderers’ Island was large, and harsh, and unwelcoming. The land rose in one slow-sloped mountain to the west, and other, smaller hills, rising and falling to the east. The mountainside was, from a distance, grey-brown, but as they came closer, Christopher could see it was varied: some terraced crops, wheat and another, stockier grain; some trees, some damp red dirt, across which ran goats.
Most of the houses, grey stone taken from the mountain itself, were clustered at the foot of the largest hill. It was an austere, desolate place. The sky above them was stormy, and as they sailed closer, rain began to speckle the surface of the sea.
‘It was chosen, hundreds of years ago, for the way its waters hold its inhabitants tight against its bones,’ said Irian.
‘Do all murderers get sent there?’ said Christopher.
‘No,’ said Irian. ‘Only those judged to have done unspeakable harm.’
‘Don’t they all murder each other, on the island?’ said Mal. ‘Aren’t they afraid of each other?’
‘I think some people – who murder once and find it not unpleasant – find it easier, each time, to do so again,’ said Irian. ‘But for most, the act of murder is born of dire panic, or blinding anger, or sickness, or terror. Not habit.’
Nighthand shot her a look. ‘I don’t know. I’ve known people sent there, and I would not care to meet them again. It’s an ugly place, Mal. You stay close, you understand?’
Christopher had expected the sea around the island to be wild, perhaps with ten-foot waves, or some other ferocious way of holding people within, but the sea was only the sea: restless, grey, without malice. As they came closer, they saw, rising from the water on wooden posts, a series of wooden signs in fifteen languages.
Those Who Enter May Not Leave.
Those Who Can, Turn Back Now.
Nothing Good Awaits.
‘The convicted are loaded on to small boats here,’ said Irian, ‘and sent on alone. This is where we switch boats.’
Nighthand dropped a bow and arrow he had found in Anja’s cabin into the Ever Onward, along with a handful of kitchen knives – the others flinched as they clattered down – and all four clambered on to the dryad-wood boat.
Irian pasted a scrap of sail cloth over the boat’s name. ‘Just in case,’ she said.
Nighthand touched Ratwin’s head with his large, gnarled hand. The skin on his fingertips was turning a little blue, but he held himself upright. ‘Guard the ship for us,’ he said. ‘Bite anyone who encroaches on the face.’
Mal turned to Christopher. She tried her best to grin; it was a failure. ‘Let’s hope the boat works,’ she said. ‘Or we won’t be coming back.’
Christopher felt the fear rise in him, but he nodded. ‘It will work. We’ll get the potion, and get out. I know we will.’
She looked at him, and he stared back, unflinching. He was a good liar. She smiled, more widely this time, and nodded. ‘Good.’
The dock was built in the old-fashioned style, thick stone making three corners of a square, lined with buildings, the fourth side open to the sea. The moored boats were all very similar to one another, Christopher saw – smaller, even, than their own, and painted clinical green or black. The dock blew with cast-off bits of paper and water-slicked rubbish.
There were crowds too, grouped in clusters of threes and fours, to watch them come in. Most of the crowd were men, of every age and race and stature, but among them a few women, their faces deeply lined.
Nighthand leaped heavily on to the dock, and used his good arm to loop the boat’s rope around a hoop set into the stone. Theirs looked very like all the other boats, rising and falling in the grey water of the port.
One of the men stepped forward. He wore a clean suit, tattered at the sleeve and lapel, and his voice had authority in it.
‘New arrivals, is it?’
‘Yes,’ said Irian.
The crowd saw Mal, and Christopher, and reared back. One of the young women muttered, ‘Children?’
‘As you see.’ Nighthand drew himself up to his full height, his coat covering his ravaged arm. He kept his face dark and aggressive. Everything about him jutted outwards: jaw, elbows, brow. ‘Nobody is to approach them. Nobody is to ask them questions.’
‘It’s been known, I suppose,’ said the man grudgingly, ‘that people have been given the right to bring their families. Is that what you would be then? Family?’ He looked from Nighthand to Mal to Irian to Christopher. None of them looked remotely related.
‘We are …’ said Irian, ‘together.’
The man sniffed. ‘My name is Guillaume Broch,’ he said. ‘I’m one of four wardens here – as much as there are wardens on an island where nobody, including me, can ever leave. There are procedures, you know, to process newcomers. Accommodation, work, food – we need to talk about that. You can’t just—’
‘In good time,’ said Nighthand. ‘We have an urgent request first – we must speak with the centaur, Petroc.’
A ripple of discontent and distrust ran through the crowd.
‘Why?’ said Broch.
‘We have a message,’ said Nighthand.
One of the men, small and old, and yellow in the teeth and fingers with tobacco, spat into the water. ‘Dunno how anything can be urgent here,’ he muttered.
But Broch rolled his lip at the man. ‘I didn’t ask you.’ He turned back to Nighthand. ‘The centaur is easy to find. He’s in the forest,’ and he pointed to a road that led down a street of houses and small, squat stone shops, towards the trees beyond. ‘Just follow the noise of the forge.’
The forest was very different from the forest through which they had ridden on unicorns. It was darker, and many of the trees were thorned. The branches reached for them, as if trying to halt their progress and turn them back. The rain fell more heavily, and thunder rolled over them. Back in the town, dogs howled.
‘Listen!’ said Irian. ‘Can you hear that?’
In the distance, very faintly, there was a clanging of metal on metal. The further they walked, the louder the sound grew. The woods opened abruptly into a clearing – one that had been hacked, not formed by time. There, in the centre of the trees, bending over a cauldron on a fire, was the centaur.
His horse’s body and skin were both stark white, and his hair black, cut short, and his eyes green. His skin was rough, burned in places from standing over the fire. Nature had meant his face to be staggeringly handsome, but the cruelty of the lines etched around his eyes and mouth made it impossible.
‘Oh,’ Mal whispered, and Christopher, following her gaze, realised with a jolt that the centaur was chained.
The chain was locked with cuffs to his two hind legs, and was just barely long enough to reach across the clearing. It was pure gold.
His voice was harsh, but he greeted them with some gesture towards courtesy.
‘Sit, if you want,’ he said, and pointed to some rough-carved stools close by him. Mal made to sit, but Nighthand shook his head, and she doubled back. They remained standing, out of the reach of the golden chain.
‘The old woman on the longma told me to expect you.’ As he spoke, he added a handful of leaves to the cauldron, and a bitter, acrid scent rose from it. ‘I didn’t believe her. Who would come here to collect a potion that couldn’t be transported off the island?’ His voice had a guttural quality: it sounded rarely used. ‘Do you have a way out of this place?’
Nighthand’s face was flat and careful. ‘It’s no business of yours, Petroc.’
The centaur waited.
‘We do,’ said Mal. ‘Yes.’
‘You brought the gold from the living tree? If you haven’t, there’s no point in being here.’
‘We have,’ said Irian.
His eyes looked her up and down, impudent. ‘Show me.’
Christopher took from his pocket the scrap of cloth they had wrapped around the golden branches. He crossed to the centaur, shivering in the rain, thrust them into his hands and half ran back, beyond the chain’s reach. He could smell the sourness of the centaur’s breath. Petroc unwrapped them, and there was a great leap of some fierce, wild satisfaction in his expression.
But he only said: ‘I see.’
‘So you will do it?’ said Nighthand. ‘Make the potion, to bring back the Immortal memory?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Perhaps?’ Nighthand pulled the glamry blade slowly from his belt. ‘We have not come here for perhaps.’
The centaur only raised his eyebrows. ‘Put away your little daggerette,’ he said, ‘or I won’t speak to you. I don’t like what blades do to a conversation, do I.’
Nighthand hesitated, then sheathed the blade. He was breathing heavily and his legs were not, Christopher saw, steady under him.
‘Even if I make the potion,’ Petroc said, ‘I can’t administer it. D’you understand me? It needs to be heated by dryad fire, and there are – you may have noticed – no dryads on this forsaken island.’
‘But you can make it?’ said Irian.
‘I can, yes. I haven’t said I will.’
Mal spoke as if she had been struggling to hold in the question, and couldn’t: ‘What have you done, to get chained? Nobody else we’ve seen is chained.’
He turned harsh eyes on her. ‘Why ask, when you so clearly aren’t ready to hear the answer?’
Mal glared at the centaur, flushing red, and Christopher glared too, in loyalty. ‘Who says she isn’t ready? Did you kill someone?’
Petroc lifted his eyebrows. ‘Surely even a human could see that that’s a stupid question. Yes, I did. And part of my punishment, my people decided, was to be chained. Chained in an alloy of living gold, which I cannot break. It’s unusual for one centaur to murder another.’
The centaur turned back to Mal. The rain intensified, and gleamed on his horse’s flank. ‘So you’re the one, are you? The long-hunted, ever-missing Immortal? Come closer, so I can see you. There are people out there would pay a million gold pieces to get their hands on you.’
But Mal jerked away. She crossed to a tree, sat down against it and put her chin on her knees. It was cold: there was emptiness in her arms, where the burning warmth of Gelifen should be. She breathed in the scent of her jumper, where the griffin once had lain against her skin.
‘My people speak of her,’ the centaur said. ‘It’s an obsession. They’ve been waiting for her for a hundred years.’ He scraped the ground with a hoof. ‘But I didn’t know it would be a child. The stars didn’t say so. My people put a lot of faith in the skies, but I’ve always been sceptical about what they tell us. Too vague, too high.’ He looked balefully at them, and wiped the rain from his face. ‘I only trust things that you can touch – blood and gold and fire and dirt.’
His eyes raked over Mal; he spoke lower.
‘Is she up to the task? She’s small. A little ant of a fly of a speck of a nothing much.’
Christopher did not like the way the centaur looked at Mal. He put his hand on the long-bladed kitchen knife he’d tucked into his belt as they’d left. ‘She’s brave.’
‘Is that true? Or some of your baffling human politeness, where you say neat and tidy things about people you despise?’
‘It’s true. I’ve seen it.’ He wanted to force the centaur to see it. The fumes from the cauldron were making him thick-headed and ill, but he shook himself. ‘She can fly. She escaped a murderer. She won’t give up. It’s not something she knows how to do.’
Petroc still stared at Mal. ‘They say, if the glimourie isn’t saved now, it never will be saveable. It’s a concept you humans have always struggled to grasp: that time might run out.’ The fire behind him sparked, and he sniffed the air. ‘It will be an ending: a dark, cold end. We centaurs understand that. I understand it, very well. I see the power and beauty of such an ending.’
There was a chuh of disgust. ‘Enough.’ It was Irian, louder than Christopher had ever heard her speak. She stepped close to Petroc, close within the circle of his chain. ‘I don’t care what you say or think.’ The pressure, the strange, dark pull of the centaur’s presence, snapped in the presence of her clear, steady look. ‘Will you make the potion? Yes or no. If yes, do so. If no, tell us, and we’ll leave you alone with your chain and your smoke and your miserable patch of mud. But we’ll take the gold with us.’
