In the morning she made breakfast. Feather had already gone outside and Rope was not yet up. Boots, dawdling at the door, grunted in surprise and picked up one of her damp sandals, stained with salt. He frowned, then looked up at her in sudden alarm.
Brook smiled falsely and put an egg in to fry.
It was the first time she had ever lied to one of her children.
CHAPTER 24
COPPER BRAZIER, BRAMBLE RING
THE SAME morning, Shandy was sipping a cup of peppermint tea when Shale crept to the kitchen table. Her daughter looked to the back of the room, where Moss lay humped under a quilt on the big bed.
Shandy grunted. “Don’t worry about waking your father. He could sleep through a hurricane.”
“The weather has turned fine again. Swap’s Breeze is blowing.” Shale had chopped her hair off extra short as she did every year to celebrate the end of winter.
“Mm-hmm.” Shandy sipped her tea. “When I was your age I wanted to be Trader so badly. I wanted to go so many places. But of course no one would dream of letting a woman do the job, and anyway the Trader has to stay close to his home island. Besides, Beam was still in his prime then. But even years later, when I had done my vigil and become Witness, I was terribly jealous when he took Stone on. Reliable, Stone is. But adventurous? And here I was, bursting with curiosity; and no longer allowed to even paddle out from shore in a rowboat. Unless I gave up being Witness, of course.”
“You wanted to leave Clouds End?”
“Like flowers want sun, some days.”
“I had no idea.” Shale sipped her tea. “I know, I know: nothing new there.”
Shandy breathed the vapors that curled from her cup, and took a long swallow, tasting mint and warm honey. “I need you to go to Delta for me. Stone will have trades for you to make, but I’m going to send an extra lot of pearlweirds with you, because the thing I need is rather special. . . .”
Later that spring Brook came home from the herb garden one day to find her children watching Rope grill a large bass over the fire. “Cooking again! What a lucky wife I am.”
Rope turned his fillet over with an expert’s touch, gently, so the white meat didn’t flake to pieces. “Shale and Foam are back,” he said, as if just happening to remember it.
“Already! But it’s still four days to the full moon!”
“Fair winds and hard work, I suppose.” Rope stared at his fish, inspecting the char lines. “They must have had some pretty important reason for going, don’t you think?”
“Any visit to Delta is important.”
“We helped unload the boat,” Boots said.
“Anything exciting in the cargo?”
Rope just kept staring at the fish, while his smile got wider and wider. “Fuseware, flour, cloth. Jo’s tobacco. Matches,” he added. “That sort of thing.”
Brook glared at him. Swinging around, she said, “Children—”
“Uh-uh!” Feather shook her small blond head. “We won’t tell!”
Boots nodded solemnly. “Nope. Not us.”
Later that week, Brook met Finch and Shallot on her way to Shandy’s place. Immediately Brook could see her sister was furious. The earrings Shallot had given her when courting, stacks of tiny purple shells, chattered bitterly with each short, angry stride.
Shallot stopped, smiled, and bowed very politely to Brook. “I always knew one of you would amount to something.”
Brook stopped, speechless. Finch threw her a look of mingled rage and misery, and then walked on before Brook could think of anything to say.
At last the midsummer bonfire was lit, sending a host of cheery orange sparks up to join the stars. When the old songs had been sung, Shandy shooed the villagers back from the meadow to the meeting hall despite the balmy weather. “Brook, would you mind taking my brazier back home and putting it away while we get things started?” she said evenly.
Brook knew better than to argue. She forced herself to walk to Shandy’s house as if nothing were happening. And I will to another as you have to me, she thought to herself. Was that right? Yes, it was. And I will to another, as you have to me.
The hall was curiously quiet when she returned. Warm yellow light leaked from its shutters. Solemnity gathered in the night air. Brook hovered on the threshold, gathered herself, and then went in.
Shandy sat at the head of the table. An empty chair was beside her. In front of it, gleaming on the tabletop, was a ceremonial brazier of burnished copper. Brook approached it slowly, marvelling at how new and radiant it seemed after years of minding Shandy’s worn old thing. “Oh, it’s beautiful!”
Coming closer, she saw the Witness had engraved the brazier with a band of knots, scores of them in a subtle braid, graceful and intricate as ivy. Brook let her fingers brush the metal; power dilated through her as it had when she first touched Net, as if those knots had trapped the Mist itself. “It’s beautiful.”
Slowly Shandy rose to stand before the village. “Brook, I offer you apprenticeship as Witness of Clouds End. If you accept, I give you this brazier in token, as Sage gave mine to me.”
Brook said, “And I will to another, as you have to me.”
Shandy clapped her on the shoulders. “Then let us eat!” The room burst into a roar of cheers and congratulations.
Shandy pulled out Brook’s chair and leaned down to her ear as the tumult of well-wishes rained down. Solemnly, she said, “Were you surprised?”
Brook nodded, every bit as grave, smiling as if her heart would break. “Astonished.”
It was a long night and a merry feast, and everyone congratulated themselves on having found a fine young woman to apprentice to the Witness.
Everyone except Jo. The wine she drank was bitter on her tongue, and every laugh was like a match struck and held against her skin. All night long Brook became deeper and sounder and realer while Jo withered, thin and brittle as a leaf. A leaf tumbling down Sage Creek, spilling into the sea and drifting away, drifting ever farther away from Clouds End and into the Mist.
Jo waited for a day when Brook was out delivering a baby, and the twins were with Swallow and her children. She stopped by Brook’s house early and invited Rope to go berrying on the North Point. The villagers rarely went there, for the point was cluttered with brambles. Still, summer had ripened and the blackberries were ready. There were huckleberries too, hidden under lacy grey leaves, and bright blue mountain grape.
“Ever since this spring, Brook has had these days when she founders for no reason at all. Does she want to be unhappy?” Rope said. He had found a run of mountain grape. Pluck, twist, pop: another handful of berries like soft pebbles in his fist, then down into the pouch at his waist.
Beside him Jo shrugged. “Brook was seven when her parents drowned, remember. Fostered out to Clouds End, new people, new houses.” Her white fingers slowed, fell still. “So lonely. And the ribbons she wound in her hair the day they sent her from the Harp still smelled like her mother. Otter threw them out a few years later. Cleaning. And Brook never said a word, but crept out to the Talon and cried as if her heart would break.”
The haunt’s hair had turned to brown, and dark eyes glistened in her face. A bracelet of blue shells wound around her wrist. “You should not do that,” Rope said.
“I must. The sea is hard, harder than stone. And the Mist is harder still.”
“Jo, are you all right? About the Spark, and all?”
“What do you care? You have your life.”
Rope touched Jo’s shoulder with an awkward hand. “I care.”
The haunt said nothing.
Words failed Rope. How could they thank her? In saving the islands she had taken a hurt that was slowly killing her; anyone could see that in her frayed laughter, her fire-eaten eyes. But Brook and Shandy and the other villagers did not want to save her. They were only waiting for her to die.
There was no way to say this, of course. Not to the haunt who had twinned his wife. Now Jo would die and Brook would be Witn
ess as she had always wanted. Rope shrugged, angry at his helplessness, and held out a handful of berries. “Hungry yet?”
Jo laughed and touched his hand. “Thank you.”
His heart caught. Her hand on his was soft as flower-flesh. “Ah well, let us see, what have we got here?” he said, reaching into his pouch. “Ow! Spit!” He snatched his hand back, spilling blue berries, and sucked on his fingers, swearing softly.
“Thorn?” Jo clucked sympathetically and took his hand. “Hm. Thorn,” she said. She bent her head and her lips brushed Rope’s fingers.
The pain faded, but a different kind of fire raced into him. Jo stilled, holding his hand while her chest rose and fell with three long breaths, breasts just brushing his forearm. Rope remembered the time they had met on Shale’s island; remembered what she had offered him there. Remembered her nude body, glistening, and the honeysuckle smell that came from her. She could be his. He could be a partner in her story, not just an afterthought thrown in by the Singer, a dull islander set there to show off her brilliance.
Jo’s eyes held no guile, only loneliness and gratitude. She had sacrificed much to save them all and asked nothing in return.
All these thoughts flashed through his mind as her shirt slid against his forearm. Net, flushed red, coiled around his wrist.
Rope took a deep breath, despising himself. He was a coward. He was wrong, wrong, to turn down this moment. But he was who he was. “Maybe we should be getting back.” He had not meant to whisper.
“Unfair,” Jo said. She held his wrist, touching him through Net’s scarlet mesh, and then so much of what she was poured into him, a great wave of loneliness and anger, and beneath it all a leaping flame.
Desire twisted through him and he reached for her. He knew, he knew that it was wrong, he knew he would regret it, he knew he should think, he should stop, he should look away from her fierce eyes and her anguish. He knew he was tying a knot he could never undo.
But all those thoughts were far away, distant voices calling from beyond a wall of fire, and he really didn’t care what they said.
Afterwards, when the sun was slanting toward the west and he had made her go, he sat alone in the dim green gloom. If only he had not jabbed his finger. If only Net had not been around his wrist. If only he had been stronger. He reached into his pouch to find what had pricked him, and gingerly drew out Pine Quill’s ring of thorns.
He closed his eyes.
His fist tightened around the bramble ring and he squeezed as if to crush it, squeezing and squeezing until blood leaked between his fingers, staring at his hand, remembering Pine Quill. Wondering how he could ever have done something he knew to be so wrong.
* * *
That night Brook shifted in her bed, floating up from the depths of an uneasy sleep. Rain pattered softly outside. Something had disturbed her. It was Rope settling into bed. He lay with his back to her. She murmured his name. She had not been easy to get along with since Jo had called her in the spring. A cold wind was blowing through her life. But Rope was so warm. She wanted to make up for it. Warm and solid. Dependable.
She snuggled up to the small of his back. Slid an arm around his waist, molding herself softly to him; her mind swam with night-thoughts, dream-fragments slipping away, elusive as fish diving below cold rocks.
Cold. There was a gap between her belly and his back. She grunted softly and wriggled closer. He flinched. She had been dreaming of water (always water, always the sea and ships. Always her dreams had been of strange voyages, uncertain crossings: storms, alien islands whose people she somehow knew. Walking on water. You can never look down, she remembered. You have to step softly and you can never look down.)
His flesh had fled from her again. She came further awake. His back was stiff. The arm that held her hand made no hollow for her; it lay like a dead thing, a wooden limb. She remembered how quiet he had been at dinner. How quiet. The last of her dreams fled.
A faint glow from the little lamp they left in the children’s room was the only light. She rubbed her hand in small circles on his chest. “What’s wrong?”
Silence.
Brook propped herself up on her elbow. “Are you angry?” She felt her face take on an expression of quiet concern, but inside she felt sick. Something terrible was about to happen. She killed the thought, blacked it out, refused to give power to the dropping darkness of the wooden rafters, their old sad dusty scent.
Rope did not answer. Outside, rain pattered against the roof, trickled down into darkness and spilled into Sage Creek. A ship turned slowly about its painter, creaking. The wind told sad stories to the sodden leaves; their lament like the sound of the sea. In all these sounds Rope was overcome by silence, wrapped in it. Webs of silence wove around him.
Brook’s hand faltered, stopped, an intruder against his chest. “Have I made you angry?”
“No.” He lay on his side with his back still to her. “There is something I have to tell you.”
“I know I’m not always easy to live with.”
“I have to tell you.”
“I will try to be more cheerful. I don’t know what it is. Something happened this spring, and now it seems so easy for clouds to block the sun. Even when I was little, I was sad if I could not see the sun. On the third day of cloudy weather I would always, my father would have to—”
And Rope, lying stiffly in their bed, felt the old sad smell of the stone walls creep into his chest. His lungs felt musty and hollow. His heart was a dried thing, locked in an old box.
“And the rain. The rain makes me sad,” Brook whispered. Silence pressed down on her, closing her throat, closing her chest. Her heartbeat was big in the sudden emptiness of her body. It shook her with every pulse.
Rope, staring into the darkness, said, “Jo and I went to find berries. In the berry patch on the North Point.” It was as if someone else were saying the words. They could not be coming from him. “We made love.”
Now Brook’s arm was wooden too. It lay stiff against his chest. They were two puppets lying together on the ground. The parts where they touched were dead. And Brook said, “Thank you, Rope. That must have been very hard for you to say.”
Oh his back was stiff as wood beside her, stiff as a locust’s husk. He had ceased to struggle against the silence. He had nothing to say.
And Brook, looking into the darkness now, not looking at the man that once belonged to her, said, “You are right to hate me. I deserve it.”
“Don’t!” He turned over suddenly and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Don’t do this. Please. Don’t.” He forgot himself long enough to meet her eyes and crumbled like a moth in a puff of flame. “I’m sorry.”
“Please don’t shake me.”
Rope sagged. Net left his wrist, crawling to Brook’s arm. Twined there, gripping her fiercely. “She was so lonely. Whatever happened with the Emperor . . . she is burning from the inside, you know. She didn’t—”
“How dare you say these things to me.”
“I am sorry. I am so sorry.”
“Sorry? Sorry for what? Sorry Jo is beautiful? Sorry you had a chance to fuck her? Nothing for you to feel sorry for.” She was talking now, she couldn’t help it. “It is so strange how you go along, and you have a very steady idea of the world. You tell yourself you are ready for change, but you aren’t. And then the world drops out from under you. You’re falling and there is nothing to stand on, you’re drowning and you can’t see which way is up. You feel ready for the worst, but what actually goes, the support that goes, is something you never thought to question.” She swallowed. “And it’s as if you were dead. Something in you dies. You are a stone in a shell. A little stone, rattling in a shell. Your body.” She looked at herself and cried out with hatred. She threw herself down on the bed, and covered her face with her hands.
They lay rigid, barely breathing, while outside the sad rain fell. “I’m sorry,” Brook whispered. Her voice was muffled; she moved her hands away from her face, put them at her
sides. “That was thoughtless of me. I must have sounded very bitter. I am sorry.”
Rope strained against the silence. “Brook?” He felt like a thief, touching her name. “I don’t know what happened. I know, I know I am not a good person. This proves that to me. But I love you. I love you.” He was crying. “I feel like I had this beautiful thing, this magical thing, and I just threw it away. Just being careless. And it can’t ever be unbroken.”
“None of that.” Brook took his hand, steadied herself. “There has been enough of that sort of talk. Most of it by me.” She stroked his hand, not feeling it. “Do you still love me?”
“Yes! Yes I do, if you could see how much—”
“Do you still want to be married?”
“Yes. Please.”
“Well. The knot is not cut then, is it? It just took a turn I didn’t expect. That’s all.” She would not let herself hear the sad hiss of the falling rain. An emptiness bit her heart; she would not feel it.
Net crept down her arm and bound their hands together. “There,” Brook said, snuffling with laughter. “He has his own opinions about all this.”
Rope did not speak, remembering Jo’s touch singing through Net and the heat of her desire. He felt the little Mist-creature around his wrist and hated it.
They held one another, rocking before the dying fire.
Rope said, “At the time, I didn’t feel bad, you know. It was so clear to me that I loved you, first and always.”
Brook nodded. “And Jo was lonely, and in pain. She is out there now, alone. In the darkness.” An owl hooted from up on the Ridge. “She has a house but no home to go to, no family. She is lucky she could find a friend. You were her last chance. Her last root.”
“I have put a scar on myself that I will feel until my dying day.”
Brook only shook her head. “Shh. You cannot see the future. The world is too strange a place for that. Just lie still. We are together now. That is enough.” And later she said, “We are all, all so human.”
Rope grew gradually still within her arms, staring with open eyes at the darkness, head cradled in her lap.