Clouds End

  Duty, Witness.

  She blew into her battered copper brazier until her cheeks were red. Then she crumbled incense over the coals. The gummy flakes did not flame, but after many heartbeats they began to smolder, throwing off ropes of thin black smoke.

  Shandy, Witness of Clouds End, inhaled the bitter gift of incense, waiting to hear what the wind would tell her. What the emberlight would reveal.

  There is a place, the ember said, a place of joy,

  of jump lick crackling,

  of

  wind dance wavering,

  a place of fierce desires

  fiercely gratified;

  of boundless cleansing.

  Shandy shivered. It was rare to hear a Hero speak directly, but there was no mistaking Sere’s crackling voice, his yellow tongue that shook with hungry laughter.

  What does the Fire say?

  Tell the haunt she can’t run from me! I am in her now.

  * * *

  A creek flowed down from the new island’s heart. Brook had named it Stick’s Stream. “Us Clouds Enders,” she whispered. “We’re made for adventure.”

  At first she had been hurt that Rope would leave her on her own, but then the world seemed to whisper, Let him go. Something special waited for her, something magical, and it wouldn’t do to risk marriage and children: to risk becoming the ordinary woman she and Shale had sworn they would never be.

  She sat on a big stone in the center of the channel, watching bits of fire-red fern come whirling up, bob briefly against her rock, and then vanish, pulled on by the greedy sea. Water foamed endlessly under her feet. Sunlight broke into glints on the stream’s back.

  The water had many voices: a splash and chatter it spoke with the stones, a deeper, cooler conversation with its banks and its bed; the drifting, solemn talk it held with the clouds.

  Brook barely noticed when the breeze began to blow, adding a restless note to the water’s song. Now the birches waved farewell and the white clouds sailed on toward Delta, leaving her behind, and the grasses whispered, and a new voice called to her.

  At first this voice was so faint she could barely hear it. A skittish, rushing, sighing voice. As it spoke, the tiny glinting fishes in Stick’s Stream flicked away like frightened gems. A wave of white stones rolled down the streambed.

  “Mountains leap into cloud and the clouds drift at last into Mist; for change is the way of the world. . . .” And the voice laughed like the wind kicking up a pile of autumn leaves. The broken sunlight pulled together, riding the stream’s wavering back like a shadow of light. It was this brightness that had spoken to Brook. A reflection, she knew, but she could not bring herself to lift her eyes and look at what cast it.

  The Witness Knot Shandy had tied around Brook’s wrist bucked and writhed like a sail left up in a squall. “Are you Jo?”

  “Me?” A gust of laughter. “The haunt is here with you, islander, but she is the least of your problems. You sit at the edge of the Mist! Such places are dangerous, even for me.”

  The sky darkened and the air shook as with the beating of great wings. Burning feathers danced roughly in the angry wind. “Jo has been pulled into the story of this island,” the voice said. “A story of Sere and the Gull Warrior. The Warrior thinks he has won. But you know what happens when you cut fire to pieces, don’t you?”

  Fear jumped in Brook, and a vision poured through her: torches, thousands of torches weaving through the Mist. Searching.

  “The sea’s people think little of Sere. But a Hero’s reach is long. You have desires, and your haunt has them too: and so here you have come to kindle on his fingertips. He does not want her to bring her warning to the islanders. He would not have her smother a spark he has waited so long to light.”

  “I don’t understand,” Brook said.

  The throb and rumble faded slowly away, and the lightshadow wavered once more upon the surface of Stick’s Stream. Now it was clearly a woman’s form, with glass hands and mirror eyes and a braid of black hair as dark as the bottom of the sea. “Let me tell you a story,” it said.

  Brook tried to speak but found herself mute, and by this she knew it was the Singer who had found her, for no tongue might speak while the Singer told a tale.

  The Singer laughed with a sound like the wind in burning branches, and began.

  * * *

  This is a story of the Smoke, where the heat burns but the Spark is hidden.

  In the dark time before time, the forest people were imprisoned within the trunk of a great bronzewood tree. They did not know the warmth of the sun or the beauty of the sky, and the birdsong they heard was dulled and without grace.

  They clamored mightily to be set free. So great were their lamentations that at last they heard a sound like the wind in the branches, and a voice of a thousand breezes said, “Why do you shriek and mutter so?”

  And the people cried, “Set us free! We are prisoned in darkness and we long to feel the wind upon our faces!”

  The voice considered, and at last it said, “I will set you free, but know this: I send my people over every part of the earth, and they never know a home. They may wander the frozen deserts for a hundred years, or whistle along the mountaintops, or speak with only the waves. Do you still crave your freedom?”

  And the people within the tree were greatly dejected, and their leader said, “This tree is all we know. We do not wish to wander foreign lands. There must be an easier way than this.”

  But the Singer said (for it was I), “That is all the freedom I have to give.”

  Then the people redoubled their cries, and beat against the walls of their wooden prison, and finally Fathom bellowed to them with the voice of a thousand waves crashing onto shore, saying, “What do you want?”

  And the people cried out, desiring to be set free. “But this tree is all we know,” the leader said, “and greatly as we hunger for freedom, we will not leave it.”

  “Very well,” the Hero said. “I will release you, and from the body of this tree I will make a ship, and teach you to sail within it. But when I am angered, or playful, or bored, I may drown you beneath cold waters.”

  And then the people were bitterly afraid. They argued fiercely, but at last their leader said, “Many thanks for your generous offer, but the conditions you propose are too unpredictable. We prefer our dangers to be less arbitrary.”

  And Fathom shrugged, saying “That is all the freedom I had to give.”

  Now those inside the tree flung themselves about in a frenzy of despair. Their laments rose up to the heavens, and rumbled down into the center of the earth, and there was terrible strife.

  Finally they roused Sere. “What in the name of the Seven Humiliations is all this racket?”

  “Help us, O help us! We are imprisoned in this tree. We have no liberty!”

  “Neither do stones.”

  “We have no light!”

  “Neither do moles.”

  “We are starving!”

  “Hunh! . . . Poor blighters.” Sere sighed; for he knows a thing or two about hunger. “Very well. I will set you free—”

  “And we don’t want to leave our tree,” the leader added quickly.

  “Don’t push me. I will give you light, and food, and liberty, and keep you near your precious tree. But beware!” The people groaned. “Beware, for you will have taken the Spark that casts shadows: you will have learned freedom.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Done!” the leader cried.

  “Being is hard work,” Sere warned. “Sometimes you will wish to be free of that too.”

  But the people rejoiced, and lifted their voices in praise of Sere the Liberator. And the third time they chanted his name, the Tree was riven by a bolt of lightning, and they stumbled out from their ancient prison and into the world.

  Yet behind them the lightning smoldered, and a tiny spark fled deep into the heart of the wood, taking with it a host of shadows, waiting only for a bre
ath of wind to wake to fiery life.

  * * *

  “And that breath of wind has come. The Spark burns in the breast of the Emperor of the forest people,” the Singer said. “And here you sit, while the fire closes around you like a noose.”

  And Brook leaned forward, reaching over the water. “Please. Please help us. What are we to do?”

  But the Singer laughed like the wind from a great burning. “It is neither my place nor my time to say more in the world of men. But I am not done with this story; of that you may be sure. The best stories begin and end at home, and I tell only the best.”

  And then a stray gust of wind rocked Brook forward, and she touched the water, and the Singer’s glinting shadow broke into fragments and went whirling downstream.

  * * *

  “Brook!”

  She jerked her hand back from the cold water.

  “Brook! Come on!” Rope stood on the bank, chest heaving. He held out his arms and swung her to shore. “We’ve got to get back to the ship! Look!”

  Daylight was dying swiftly around them. Like a volcano, the island’s heart belched forth slow waves of heavy Mist. Whipcracks of flame made their shadows jump. Chopping wingbeats pounded the air. A gust of wind blew the Mist aside like a curtain, and Brook screamed. Sere danced over the island, impossibly tall, a grinning, jerking puppet of flame. As they watched, a sudden arc of whiteness flashed from the Mist, and Sere’s right arm dropped to the ground with a roaring crash. Trees and ferns exploded into fire around it. Weaving and bobbing, Sere stooped suddenly, grabbed his arm with his other hand, and gobbled it up.

  Brook felt sick. The wind swirled again and Mist closed around Sere and the Gull Warrior.

  Another burning feather twisted into the stream and hissed out its life. “Jo is trapped in there,” Brook said. And despite everything the haunt had done to her, she found herself hoping that somehow Jo would escape. The thought of Sere devouring her twin left a terrible hollow in her.

  “Come on!” Rope pulled her away and they staggered downstream.

  Mist boiled from the island’s heart and spread far to the west. It brooded over them, smearing the sun with a film of bloody vapor. Wind thundered and flame burst behind them, making Brook stumble. She was gasping and her heart had lost its rhythm. Her muscles felt like stones and her spit tasted of blood.

  A web of something like damp grey string reached for them, and Rope reached to brush it away.

  “No!” Brook screamed, feeling the magic in it, but it was too late.

  Rope staggered as a shock took him. His blood crackled, and energy poured through him as if he were a cloud full of lightning. The grey string snapped and curled around his hands. It was blowing into him, whistling through his palms and rushing into his heart.

  Now it was a pulsing, twisting silver-blue web. Unreality poured from it like heat from a stove door; the blue limbs became solid, elastic, possessed of tremulous strength. Rope felt the creature fluttering like a giant moth around his hand; its glow subsided; it lay still.

  “Spit!” Rope yelled. He jerked his hands back as if from a flame, but the string wound itself around his wrist and held on tight, refusing to be shaken off.

  A wave of panic washed through him, then ebbed as the creature rubbed itself back and forth, sliding through the black hair on his forearm. Somehow he was sure that whatever it was, the net of Miststuff meant him no harm.

  “I’m all right. Keep running!” Rope cried. “We’re almost at the shore. We’ve got to get back to the boat before the Mist rolls over us!”

  As they staggered out onto the shingle they saw Foam and Shale before them, madly trying to shove the dinghy into the water. Rope swore. “Tide’s out!” He sprinted over the sand.

  Mist flowed down the slope behind them, witching the rocks as it came.

  A single white gull struggled out of the grey fog. Flames sparked along its wings. It swooped wildly overhead and then crashed to the ground beside the dinghy.

  “Spit!” Rope gasped. The gull was beginning to blur. “It’s her.”

  Foam and Shale whirled. They saw the haunt curled on the sand behind them, trembling with exhaustion. She shook her wings into arms; her tiny head flattened; her sleek feathers unravelled into a drift of white hair.

  Quick as thought, Shale leapt to pin Jo’s throat beneath her elbow and fumbled for the knife at her side.

  Jo twisted under Shale to look for Brook. “Help me,” she called weakly.

  “Help!” Shale spat, shoving her elbow down until the haunt jerked and gasped. “Since when do haunts need help?”

  “He’s in there. He’s in there!” Jo screamed, looking only at Brook. “Don’t let him take me!”

  Faint with exhaustion, Brook stared back at the haunt. Angry red welts striped Jo’s face. Her arms and hands were smudged with soot, and her fingertips were red where the skin had burned away. Like a shadow Brook stood above her, dark and trembling. Around her wrist she felt the Witness Knot, taut with magic like a straining sail.

  Behind Shale and Jo, Foam yanked on the dinghy, glancing back at the fire.

  Come, Jo, the Fire hissed. Take the Spark and learn what the ember knows!

  Jo shuddered as desire crept like smoke through her veins. Desire to shed her heavy flesh and be free, to throw all care into the flames and burn herself away.

  Have you come to hear the end of my story? The Fire licked his red lips with his shaking yellow tongue.

  I promised you a place of jump-lick-crackling, remember? Of wind dance wavering. You are almost there now, Jo. Only come behind the Mist and I will cleanse you with your own desire. Ah, you flinch. Does my touch sting? You will find you crave it more the fiercer it burns. I have kindled—

  No!

  I have kindled something in you. . . .

  No! Jo held desperately to the sound of the sea, the touch of sand, the human voices shouting overhead. She could not let herself give in to the Fire. She did not want to be devoured.

  “Please,” she begged of Brook. “Take me with you. Don’t leave me.”

  “Not to sound impatient,” Foam snapped, “but when the Mist and fire roll over us, the haunt won’t be the only one in trouble.”

  “I know, I know!” Brook hovered in an agony of doubt, looking at the others for guidance. Angrily Shale shook her head. Foam shrugged and threw himself back against the dinghy; her nose was almost in the water.

  Brook touched the Witness Knot around her wrist. Calmness flowed from it like a cool stream. For an instant she saw her life, with its great tragedies and small joys, its accidents and chance encounters: all part of a grand interweaving of a thousand thousand threads, a moving knot of stories, making a braid whose design she could feel, but never understand.

  “We will take you,” she said.

  Swearing, Shale rolled off Jo and ran to the dinghy. Jo rose, silver eyes glittering.

  The haunt was back.

  They pulled like madmen for the ship and hoisted the sails while sparks rained hissing around them.

  And then like a blessing a sea breeze came up, pushing them on toward Delta, away from the Mist and the Fire.

  * * *

  When they were safely away, Rope breathed in and breathed out and stared at the world’s plain blue sky. He had done what his father never could: touched the Mist and come back. Not before senselessly risking his ship and crew, of course.

  “Salamander,” Foam said, pronouncing the word with grave care.

  Rope frowned. “Eh?”

  Foam stared around the ship. The deck was singed and the sails were peppered with pinhole burns. “The name of this boat. A salamander lives half in the water, half in the air. But in the Mist-time, in stories, a salamander is a creature that walks through fire.”

  Rope stroked his beard. “Very well,” he said at last. “Salamander she is.”

  “Salamander. That’s good.” Shale looked at Brook on the foredeck. “You were right. We had no business going to the island.”
r />   Foam nodded. “Delta’s our job from now on.”

  Remembering, Rope carefully rolled up his sleeve. The tendril of Mist was still there, clinging to his arm. “Hey, net-thing. What are you?”

  “Part of your story,” Jo said.

  In their furious haste to get underway, they had shoved the haunt down the steps to the hold and told her to stay out of the way. Now she had come back on deck. Still streaked with soot, her white hair snapped and coiled in the sea breeze. “You made it. You have called it into being, given it a part of yourself. You have let its tiny story gel, like a living pearlweird. Be honored. Few humans are granted such an opportunity.”

  The islanders peered at the Mist-creature like children investigating a wasp’s nest.

  “It’s . . .”

  “It’s . . .”

  “It’s a bit of turquoise string, is what it is,” Shale said.

  Foam reeled. “Turquoise string!” He clapped his hands to his forehead. “Who would have believed it! Turquoise string!” He turned on Rope. “Your one chance to play the hero and you give us turquoise string! I should have created a jewelled anklet, to grace a dancing foot. Or perhaps a harp with five strings, each of which played music for a different sense. Or then again, perhaps a fish whistle, to charm mackerel into our hold.”

  “Bugger yourself,” Rope said genially. He was terribly pleased that it had been he, staid old reliable Rope, who had given life to this tendril of Mist. He gazed fondly at the tiny turquoise wriggle creeping around his fingers. “What better for a simple fisherman than a decent little net?”

  Brook fingered the knot Shandy had tied around her wrist. “I met the Singer,” she said.

  Foam looked up from the Mist-thing around Rope’s hand and gave a low whistle. “Are you su—”

  “She had a voice like the wind, and when she told her story I couldn’t speak. I know what I saw.”

  “She is right,” Jo said unexpectedly. “I felt the Singer there.”

  Rope looked at Brook in wonder. “What did she say?”

  Brook frowned, touching the knot, trying to remember. “She told a story about the forest people. How Sere freed them from darkness. But the end of the story was that a spark lingered somewhere. Within them, I guess. And she said this spark has been fanned to life.”