The Girl and the Guardian

Chapter Nineteen

  A Reprieve

  All the rest of that day the storm lashed the windows and made mournful organ notes in the skylight tubes above, but mostly it was quiet and peaceful, underground, in the house of the teacher. Shelley and Barachthad went back to the library, while Korman sat a long time in the lookout room, sunk in a deckchair, silent, brooding over the lands below.

  After some hours contentedly reading in the cosy library, during which she managed to forget the quest that would take her far from libraries and safety, Barachthad invited her to help get a meal. It was somewhere between lunch and dinnertime, Shelley thought, but didn’t care. No one was counting. She noticed Korman was gone.

  ‘Do not be concerned, Shelley! A Guardian may come and go, but he always returns to those he is sworn to protect,’ said Barachthad.

  So they sat down to a delightful spread of yellow seedcakes, baked by Barachthad, crispy roast vegetables of many subtle flavours, more of the miraculous rose-scented apples (she wondered what it would be like to return to Earth if she stayed the same age for years), and the cold spring water that had so refreshed her the night before. Shelley was pleased to find herself eating so healthily, and enjoying every bit of it. She felt a new vibrancy in her limbs, and a brightness and clarity in her sight and her thoughts. She felt she was bursting with life compared with how she had usually felt back on Earth. And she was really enjoying Barachthad’s company, practising her new-found skills, conversing in Aedenese. Some of the words that popped into her head came with a picture of something quite unfamiliar, and she asked about some of them.

  Barachthad did not seem to be the sort of person that worried about the outside world, the world of action, but lived, completely content, within the confines of his home. Shelley realised that what he called his ‘adventures of ideas,’ and the world of contemplation, were more real to him than anything else. He appeared almost irresponsible at times, but overall she loved the feeling of trust that this gave her: he really didn’t think she needed bossing around, or lecturing to, or ‘educating,’ even though he had been a teacher.

  ‘What did you teach, and who did you teach?’ she asked him.

  ‘Whom,’ smiled Barachthad. ‘Oh, just the young ones of our people who chose to come to me. But I didn’t really ‘teach’ them. I just listened and encouraged them in their own adventures of ideas. If they were stuck, they would ask me and I would suggest where to look for a solution.’

  ‘Sounds like my kind of school, Padrathad!’ She cheekily used his old school nickname to see what he would do.

  ‘Cheeky gagavala! “Rock-head”, indeed! But ah, that name brings back memories of students I have had… So many years, so much potential, lost…’ Barachthad’s eyes misted over, and Shelley was worried she had unlocked too much pain for the old teacher. But he pulled himself together with a sigh and a shrug, and continued, ‘Teaching in your world sounds like what the Aghmaath do: they do not trust in the flow of minds into what is or may be, and seek to force people to go on a certain path to a fixed destination.’

  ‘Yes, they’re always on your case. But I don’t even want to think about school! Can you tell me more about Korman, now?’

  ‘All I know I will tell you, but it will not be the half of it,’ said the old man. ‘Korman was of the Guardian World, the world of the Tímathians, before that world was closed off. But he was not of the Tímathian race, but a descendant of the sons of Athmad, warriors who came from Kor-Edartha long ago, seeking paradise. They wore red crosses upon their white robes.’

  ‘Sounds like the crusaders! Templar Knights, I think they were called.’

  ‘Yes! Well, Korman distinguished himself in his home world, avenging himself upon the Aghmaath there for the death of his parents. Then he was promoted and was sent on the great path across the void – it was still open in those days – to Aeden.

  ‘Here he rose to become the central Tidak – the Guardian of the Tree of Life. But he was cast out from the Order of the Dragon when the catastrophe occurred…’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Somehow, under his guardianship the Tree was despoiled of its great crystal, the Heartstone, the Arcra of Life. Naturally, then the Great Paths between the worlds vanished, and the Tree, grieving for its Jewel, began to die, and its silver sap no longer rose into its branches, and so the lightning ceased to energise it, and the agathra - amber from the sap of the jeweltrees - also began to fade.

  ‘Korman’s life was forfeit, and as is the custom among the Guardians, he went forth into the wilderness to lie down and die. But there he met, or had a vision of, the one he calls the Lady, and she spoke to him, and he did the unthinkable: he refused to die, but rose up to serve the Lady. He has done penance in the portal hills ever since, waiting for the coming of an Edarthan child he called the Kortana, the Jewel-Caller, prophesied long ago by a poet-seer.

  ‘But myself, I do not know if the old poems tell truth when they foretell the future. I myself do not count on the Timeless breaking forth into the affairs of men.’ With that, Barachthad sighed. He had said all he wanted to say about Korman. Shelley was troubled to hear the word ‘Kortana’ again, and felt as if an unseen finger was pointing at her. She wondered what would happen if it was true, if it was really her, and she refused to do whatever it was the Kortana was supposed to do.

  After lunch Shelley and Barachthad played a game which reminded her of chess but which appeared, to her bafflement, to include moves which advantaged your opponent. It was only after the second game that she realised it was some kind of collaboration, and the aim was not to beat the other player but to create together the most beautiful possible path through a maze which was itself woven by the two of you: each move left a track consisting of turned-over paving pieces.

  It was getting dark early because of the still-cloudy skies, and Barachthad drew the curtains before setting his amber lamps glowing, seemingly by magic. Best not to rely only on the mindweb to hide us from the Dark Ones,’ he commented.

  ‘How did you do that – make the amber glow?’ asked Shelley.

  ‘By focussing my thought on them, calling for the light to come through the network of light that goes all the way back to the Tree of Life itself. One must be an Ortan to do it, of course, a Light-caller. That is becoming rarer in these troubled times,’ he added, as he bustled about, fluffing up the cushions and adjusting the lamps with a touch.

  ‘Can I do that with the amber?’ asked Shelley.

  ‘Try,’ said Barachthad. She shut her eyes and asked the light to go. She opened them – the room was dark.

  ‘So, you are an Ortan too,’ said Barachthad, trying to be pleased for her. ‘Now, can you bring it back?’ Shelley silently asked, and the amber flared up all at once, brighter than before.

  ‘A very precocious Ortana,’ said Barachthad. ‘Korman will be pleased! It rhymes with Kortana…’

  ‘Where is Korman, anyway?’ asked Shelley, concerned that he had been away so long, and annoyed at the unsettling mention of that word again.

  ‘He went up to the karst, to stand in the wind and rain and to use his sword to feel the ground and the air for news.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘Probably when he is finished.’ Shelley was about to say something sarcastic, when Korman appeared noiselessly at the door leading to the upper stairs. He was wet but looked calm and pleased.

  ‘There is something changing in the air,’ he said. ‘It is good.’ He looked at the brightly glowing amber lamps, and then at Barachthad, who was looking at Shelley.

  ‘Well, she is an Ortana at any rate,’ said Barachthad. And Korman smiled.

  At dinner they sang a few of the old songs of Aeden, and everyone was merry. Korman was of the opinion that this weather was the breaking of the long drought of many years, and a good omen – as was the renewed glowing of the jeweltree amber.

  Afterwards they sat in the comfortable couch in the lounge to drink and talk. Barachthad talked of the old da
ys in Aeden, in his childhood, when the Fairies from the north would come visiting the Padmaddim and there would be parties under the Blue Moon in the apple orchards high up on the karst. Korman listened for a while, a smile on his face, then excused himself to go to the library and study the maps there.

  Finally Barachthad got up to do the dishes, and Shelley followed him into the kitchen, a homely room well set up for good cooking, with a huge walk-in pantry carved from the living rock, filled with home-made provisions for the winter: bottled fruit, dried fruit, pickles, smoked fish from the ponds, and different kinds of nuts in bags hanging from the ceiling. After looking around the kitchen awhile, as Barachthad started on the dishes, she found herself asking if she could help. It surprised her, and made her a little self-conscious, as it always did when she realised she was changing.

  ‘Of course, my dear. There is a – what would you call it – cloth for drying.’

  ‘A tea-towel, we call it, though I don’t know why,’ said Shelley.

  ‘There will be a logic to it, if you look deep enough, as with anything, don’t you think?’ Barachthad offered, and Shelley agreed. It was so good to be with reasonable people and be treated as a grownup, and at the same time be happy to be a ‘little girl,’ as he called her.

  They talked as they worked, and Shelley found herself wondering why on earth she had hated doing the dishes so much, at home. ‘I guess I hated being made to do them,’ she thought. ‘Freedom is such an important thing. I’d love to be able to free Aeden from those Thornmen.’

  She went to bed early that night, and slept in peace, wearing the silver helmet, until the early morning when she dreamed a dream. She was back on the plains where she had first arrived in Aeden. She was riding the unicorn again, and her mother was on the other side, on Earth, waving out to her. But her voice didn’t carry. It was as if the invisible wall she had sometimes felt between them was there again, and she was trying hard to get a message through, something very important. But the unicorn whinnied and she found herself calling goodbye as it turned and galloped away into the early dawn light, leaping into the air and flying over hollows where the thorn thickets lay dark on the land, skimming over moonlit waters, on and on into another dream which eluded her waking memory.

  The morning dawned rain-washed and mostly fine, with the last of the clouds being swept away by a stiff wind. There was little hot water due to the lack of sunshine the day before, but Shelley washed happily in the marble handbasin in the bathroom.

  At breakfast Barachthad said, ‘Let’s go up on top, and I will show you the gardens.’ He led Korman and Shelley up to the karst by the winding upper stairs, emerging through a cunningly disguised trapdoor into a high place, hidden from the country round about, with nothing but sky on the horizons formed by the rugged peaks. These were partly clothed with tall forests, with many bare rockfaces of grey marble crisscrossed with mossy fissures and draped with dark green ivy. Beneath the peaks, forming a private world of terraces and fruit trees in little patches of dark soil between sculpted rock-faces, were the ancestral gardens of Barachthad’s folk. Looking across at the hillsides beyond his garden Shelley could see dark entrances to other caves, behind tangled old orchards and overgrown gardens.

  ‘Now it’s all mine,’ he said wistfully, ‘though I need only a fraction of it, and the weeds do take a lot of pulling. And lately there has been the occasional thorn seedling. Like this one, here.’ He pointed to a thorn shrub that was beginning to creep over the garden, bristling with dark needle-like leaves, smothering all life beneath it.

  ‘Is it a…’

  ‘Mother thorn? No, but it still takes a lot of killing, and would prepare the way for the Mother thorns, if it got away on me. Fortunately, we are too high up here to get many of them. It is a different matter in some of the villages.’ He hacked at the weed with a mattock, and finally broke the root-mass, turning it over to dry it in the sun. ‘Later I will have to burn this,’ he added, sucking the blood from his hand where a thorn had whipped around as he struck at the roots. Shelley imagined how much worse the Mother thorns would be, moving of their own accord, seeking flesh to fasten onto…

  They gathered some leafy vegetables with bright gold-coloured stalks like some kinds of silver beet, and dug some potatoes; red, purple and white varieties. Then they went to a grove of big nut trees and gathered the fallen nuts under their deep shade. The trees reminded Shelley of macadamias, with their serrated leaves, silver underneath and dark green on top.

  After they had filled Barachthad’s bag with nuts, they followed a path through the herbs, flowering in the early sunlight, some pungent and some sweet. They came to the apple grove, full of the rosy scent of the Aeden apples, and Shelley did not want to leave, lying in the sweet-smelling grass in the dappled golden light under the laden trees.

  But Korman looked at the sun, now level with the mountain peaks, and said, ‘Long I stood here yesterday in the rain, and was refreshed. I see you love this place too. Perhaps we will return one day. But now, it is time to say goodbye. We must set out very soon or we will not reach the village before dark.’

  On the way back they visited the fishpond. It was paved around the edge, with stone seats for looking at the fish. It was narrow but deep, reflecting the blue of the sky, full of fat silver and gold fish like Koi of Earth, gliding peacefully under rocky overhangs and lilypads. Shelley dipped her hands and face in the fresh cold water, and wished she could stay and watch the fish for hours.

  They returned to the hidden door and Barachthad shut it securely behind them. The light and green freshness of the upland paradise vanished, and they descended the dark echoing stairwell. She imagined them getting their things, leaving the safety of the cave and going back into the hostile outside world. She had a sinking feeling, like she had had the first day of school in a new town where she didn’t know anyone. There were bullies at that school, who had it in for her. But these bullies, the Aghmaath, would kill her, or worse, brainwash her into joining them… She thought of Mark, how he had been bullied at the same school, and she had done nothing to defend him. Eventually he had joined the gang, and become a junior bully himself, apprenticed to the loathsome Gareth Snead. She thought, ‘What if he found his way here? He would go over to them just like that. And then he’d come after me too, I bet. Ughh! What a thought!’ She shivered.

  In the lounge they got their things together. Shelley was given a backpack like Korman’s but much smaller, and a warm cloak like his, camouflage brown with flecks of green, and travel-stained, and some light tramping boots, quite new. Barachthad seemed to have some sad memory about these, but he did not say anything, just smiled wistfully as he gave them to Shelley. There were many other items Korman put into his pack, some familiar camping things and others Shelley didn’t recognise. She put the light silk tent in her pack, and some rope, silvery and supple. ‘Silk from the Southwest Arm,’ said Barachthad, fingering it fondly. He seemed to be remembering something about that also. They packed some of the fresh produce they had picked, mostly the apples and nuts, and added some of the dried fish, long-lasting unleavened bread and dried fruits from Barachthad’s pantry – especially the dried apples, which, being sliced core-wise had little star-shaped holes in the centres where the seeds had been. ‘Good apples may be hard to find where you are going,’ said Barachthad, ‘and even dried there is a virtue in these.’

  Finally they filled their water bottles with icy spring water, and all went down to the landing of the stairway that would take them back down into the caves. Barachthad fumbled for the key and opened the door. They followed him down the winding stairway to the trapdoor. There they said a final goodbye to their kindly host. He shook Shelley’s hand warmly, and said, ‘Remember to return, my dear – when you have found what you must now seek. Perhaps then there will be time for some real adventures of ideas. I know you have the mind for it.’

  ‘Thank you for a lovely time. And I’d love to return one day,’ she replied. ‘Oh, and maybe you co
uld do something with this. It’s broken, I’m afraid, but you might find it interesting.’ And she gave Barachthad her cellphone. ‘It’s for talking to other people who’ve got them too, from a distance.’ He thanked her enthusiastically, and would have dismantled it on the spot, asking her everything she knew about its construction and mode of operation, if Korman had not said, ‘Time is marching on, my old friend. You will have to work it out from what you have already learned from Shelley. And keep it secret! The enemy would be very interested in it. They have factories where they put earth children they have captured to work, re-creating all the Earth devices they can, for use in their war against the free peoples. Now, we must go!’

  ‘Of course you must! Goodbye!’ Barachthad paid out the rope ladder into the darkness below, then turned to embrace his old friend, his arms barely reaching half-way across Korman’s broad back. Korman apologised on his part for having nothing to give him in return for his generous hospitality and aid but thanks. But the old man just laughed. ‘What do I need but a few books and a garden and a cosy room hidden away from the mad world below? Go with the Concept in your heart, good Guardian.’

  They climbed down through the hatch into the glittering blackness of the caves beneath, and as Barachthad closed the stone over them, there was one last glimpse of his big smiling face, now so familiar, as he wished them well. Then it was really dark, except for the faint glow of the crystal at the end of Korman’s staff. After all the rain, even the walls of the higher passages were wet, and from further down, still a long way ahead, there came the continuous rumble of the waterfalls. As they went on, the dark and the sound of dripping water began to prey on Shelley’s nerves. She began to imagine she heard little furtive noises in the dark ahead, over the growing roar of the cataracts. She didn’t want to meet another dragon-snake, in spite of Korman’s reassurances about them. She strained her ears to catch any sound that was not definitely just one of the infinite variations of falling or flowing water. As if in response, there came a noise that was definitely not water.

  ‘What was that?’ she whispered, clutching Korman’s arm. ‘It sounded like a growl!’

  ‘I do not know… It was not a dragon-snake, or a lynx.’ They stopped, listening. The growling came again, louder.

  ‘If I did not know better, I would say it was an anklebiter!’ said Korman.

  ‘Are they dangerous?’

  ‘Only if you stand too close to their burrows, or get between them and their treasure.’ In the dim light of his staff, Shelley saw his brows wrinkled as he stared into the gloom. Then he broke into a smile, and strode ahead. ‘It is an anklebiter. In fact, it is my anklebiter!’ he exclaimed. ‘That hermit – he cannot be trusted with a simple task!’

  Shelley followed behind. The growling now sounded more plaintive than threatening, and too high-pitched to come from the lungs of a big, dangerous animal.

  ‘There he is! Bootnip! Come to papa… There you go!’ Korman reached up into a little ledge above the stream, and nearly fell into the dark water as he lifted a little wet shivering bundle off the ledge. It had a wide grey-tinged muzzle, and was about the size of a rabbit, but shaped more like a wombat or badger, squat and big-pawed. It was squeaking and wriggling ecstatically, as Korman stroked its wet fur and spoke soothing words to it. Without warning it bit his wrist, and he yelled, toppling into the water. He struggled up, the anklebiter still attached to his arm. ‘You little…’ he began then laughed. ‘He’s only trying to tell me he’s very annoyed at being left behind,’ he explained as he prised the little jaws off his arm. ‘They hold a grudge, I’m afraid. They have quite bad tempers.’

  ‘Why have one, then?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, they sometimes get orphaned, and latch onto the first person they see. If you pick them up, like it or not you have a friend for life. I thought the hermit of the Portal Hills would be able to foster Bootnip here, but it seems he let him out too soon and he ran away. Or perhaps Bootnip bit him and he set him loose on purpose. You are lucky, Bootnip. You could have been eaten by a dragon-snake or drowned in the flood.’ He paused, and furrowed his brows again. ‘Or worse, you could have led the Kiraglim here.’

  ‘Oh, pets, who’d have them?’ groaned Shelley. ‘He is kind of cute, though – aren’t you, Bootie?’ She reached out to pat him, but he shrank from her touch, trying to back into Korman’s robes, growling and baring sharp little teeth.

  ‘He may grow to like you in time,’ said Korman. ‘You have to be patient with anklebiters. They are very useful too, in some ways.’

  ‘What ways might those be?’ asked Shelley, shaken and annoyed. ‘The little monster,’ she thought to herself. Her family had never kept pets, except for one very docile cat – and the ill-fated guinea pig Mark had been given for his seventh birthday. The cat had caught that. Shelley always suspected Mark had fed it to the cat when he got sick of feeding it after only a few days.

  ‘Come, let us go on, and face what is ahead. I will tell you about anklebiters as we go. Their official name is Limtanglim, which means foot-chewer. The shorter Galagog, footbiter, is their common name. But Miners and prospectors call them Gathragog, which means amber-eater, and they find them very useful indeed…’

  And Korman told her how the anklebiters live in burrows on the plains and rocky hills, wherever crystals or shiny nuggets of gold or amber are to be found, and they dig for these and hoard them, guarding them fiercely. They live near but not too near one another, as they are irascible and suspicious of one another on account of their treasure. For with their treasure the males woo their mates each spring, laying down a trail of bright things to lure them into their burrows. But whenever one dies, its mate will raise a mound over it along with some of its hoard of treasure and of seeds, and from the mounds grow beautiful sunflowers and other plants. The other anklebiters tend the grave mounds, and store the seeds to eat in the winter. So, a sure sign of anklebiter territory is clusters of little mounds with flowers and grains growing all around them.

  And if one is tamed, it will find crystals or gold or amber for its master (or rather, for itself), and bring them home and pile them in its bed. Then if the master is very kind, it will take a crystal and lay it at the master’s feet – and if the crystal happens to be a Lightcrystal (like the one on Korman’s staff), or amber, this is a very valuable gift. But if it is annoyed with the master, it will nip him on the ankles. So owners of anklebiters usually take to wearing knee-high boots at all times. Korman smiled as he remembered one anklebiter a Boy Raider was trying to train, which used to grip onto the top of his left boot and be dragged along, refusing to let go. ‘I saw the boy walk over a mile that way,’ he said. ‘The next time I saw him, the anklebiter was riding on his back inside what was left of the boot. It became a very good fighter for the boy. He called it Vicegrip. It beat the champion, Cufftug.’

  As they neared the entrance of the caves, the stream (no doubt fed by the heavy rain on the karst high above) roared and foamed, sometimes close to the roof so they had to bend down so close to the rushing water that it wet Korman’s beard. They were careful to step only on rock or in the stream itself, leaving no footprints. It was as if they had never been there, and the caves were home only to glow-worms and bats. They saw no sign of the dragon-snake this time. The stream rushed and roared through the dark abyss, swirling against the back of their legs as if impatient to push them out of the safety of the caves and return them to the risky adventures of the sunlit world.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Apples of Peace