Angel Isle

CHAPTER

16

There must have been some kind of night in this different universe, because now it was dark, and the others were all asleep. Maja knew that because the darkness seemed to come from the outside, so it wasn’t anything Benayu had done. Everything else was, here inside the eggshell he’d made to keep their own four dimensions safe from touching the seven dimensions of this other universe.

Maja wasn’t asleep, because rag dolls can’t shut their eyes. All they can do is lie and stare into the dark and wait for it to be day again.

She knew what she was now because as soon as they were off the horses Ribek had unlooped her from round his neck and propped her against something, and for a moment her head had flopped forward and she’d seen her muddy legs sticking out in front of her with a bit of the hem of her skirt, dark green like the thread Benayu had pulled from her blouse. Her stockings were green and yellow stripes and her round puppy-paw feet were purple. The stockings were knitted, but the shoes and skirt were fabric, so she supposed her face must be fabric too, with her features painted onto it. She was pretty certain her eyes must be blue because of the way everything she could see looked a bit too blue, and the transparent mesh she saw through came from the weave of the fabric, and of course her hearing was woolly because wool was what her head was stuffed with.

Then Ribek had straightened her up and she’d been able to see everything in front of her. Benayu was explaining how he’d got all the four-dimensional stuff ready in those last hours when he seemed to be three-quarters asleep, and hidden it inside himself so that he could bring it out as they passed through the touching point. There, as soon as it came into contact with the seven-dimensional stuff of this other universe, it started to explode, but then stopped and became the place where they were now.

It was very pretty. She’d watched him copy it from the rich man’s garden they’d passed just outside Barda, with the raised pool rimmed by a low stone wall and a stone mermaid in the middle, and the turf and the trees and the rose bed with the neat clipped yew hedge behind it, though there was now a tidy pile of horse dung on the perfect turf beside it (tsk, tsk, as Striclan might have said). The horses were drinking from the pool, and Benayu had “fetched” fodder for them from somewhere.

Immediately beyond the yew hedge was the shell of the egg that enclosed it all. Or was it so close? For all Maja could tell, it could have been half a mile away. It shimmered, but it shouldn’t have because it didn’t seem to have a surface and it was all one color, a kind of extra-gray gray. (White can be dazzling white and black can be pitch black, but gray…?) Benayu said that this was because it was made of the two kinds of light, one from each universe, tangled into each other and forming a shell of solid energy to keep the actual stuff of which the universes were made from touching and being destroyed in the explosion.

Ribek, of course, had moved into sight from beside her, gone through a gap in the yew hedge and tried to touch it. She’d seen him jerk himself back and stand wringing his hand as if he’d jarred a nerve in his wrist. Benayu had laughed. Maja hadn’t been able to see him from where she’d been sitting but he sounded utterly exhausted and at the same time triumphant. It had been a frustratingly long time before anyone thought to ask what Ribek and Maja had found in the oyster pool.

Ribek was out of sight again, but Saranja had been sitting on the wall of the pool, almost at the center of her line of vision, with Jex on the coping next to her.

“Well, what happens now?” she said. “I’m afraid we haven’t got the hair any more. I’d laid it out on Rocky’s saddle and was holding it in place with a fingertip in case it blew off when Benayu told me to say the name. The moment I did so it got hot enough to burn and I snatched my hand away before I could stop myself, and when I looked it wasn’t there. Not that it would do us much good without Maja to tell us which way it wants us to go. Aren’t you going to show us what you found in the oyster-bed? Perhaps we can use that somehow.”

“Trouble is, I don’t know if it’s the right thing,” said Ribek. “I’d got hold of Maja’s wrist and I was letting her show me the way down and at the same time helping her get there. She seemed to know exactly where she wanted to go. She pushed her hand down through the oysters into stuff beneath—loose sandy gravel—and then just went limp and the breath started bubbling out of her mouth and any moment she’d’ve started breathing water. I had to get her out. I only had time for a quick grope where her hand had been. Anyway, this is what I found. I don’t think there was anything else.”

A long pause. Saranja stared, frowning.

“Show me too! Ribek, please! Jex…!”

Why couldn’t even Jex hear her?

“Let’s have a look,” said Benayu. “I should be able to tell…Yes, this is it! By all the levels, this is it! There’s the hair. Woven itself right in…No, there’s two of them…Jex! Are you all right, Jex?…Must’ve been too much for him. He should be fine—he said he’d be ready for it this time. But he was right, it would’ve destroyed Maja.”

“Almost did, I think,” said Ribek. “In the oyster pool, the moment she touched it. You’re sure she’s really all right in there?”

“Should be. Pass her across….”

“Can you clean her up a bit? I suppose I could rinse her in the pond and wring her out, but it doesn’t feel right.”

Benayu laughed again. Ribek’s vast hand appeared, closed round Maja’s body and swung her through the air. Briefly the contents of the eggshell wheeled past, Ribek himself, serious and anxious, more lawn, three narrow cypresses, Sponge fast asleep with his muzzle on his paws and his wings folded behind his back, the horses nuzzling into their fodder as if they’d worn wings all their lives (and Pogo was really beautiful—talk about dazzling white!), Benayu reaching to take her…

His hand closed round her and she felt the touch of his mind.

“Benayu?”

“Good, you sound fine, Maja. You heard all that?”

“Yes, but Ribek doesn’t remember. I forgot to remind him I’d be able to see and hear. What’s happened to Jex? He can’t hear me either.”

“He’s resting. That was all a bit much for him. I think he’ll be all right.”

“And I want to see what we found.”

“This.”

He adjusted his hold to turn her and with his other hand picked up from the grass beside him a piece of old rope, about as long as the real Maja’s foot and as thick as her two thumbs laid together. The strands at the lower end had unraveled into a fuzzy tangle.

No. They were meant to be like that.

“You’re holding him upside down. That’s his hair.”

“Ah.”

Benayu laid the rope down to reverse his hold and picked it up again. He must have done something, though Maja couldn’t feel it, or see one single strand of the rope stir or change color, but now, though still rope, it seemed to have a definitely human shape, a tall, thin figure with a wild shock of hair concealing the neckline, and body and limbs hidden beneath a long robe.

Huh, she thought. That makes two of us, one rag, one rope.

Benayu must have heard that too, because he laughed as he settled the manikin carefully against the rim of the pool.

“Say thank you to Ribek for looking after me. And remind him to show me things. He’s been doing it sometimes, but sort of by accident, I think.”

Ribek didn’t say anything for a moment when Benayu passed the message on, then chuckled. (What did that mean? Relieved? Embarrassed? No telling.)

“Glad you’re still with us,” he said. “I’ll try to remember.”

“So far so good,” said Saranja. “We got what we came for, and that’s great. Now what?”

“Let’s talk about it while we’re eating,” said Benayu. “I’ve fetched something from that restaurant the Magister was going to take us to.”

That meant the others had all got to taste oyster-and-bacon pie, but Maja hadn’t even been able to smell it. If Ribek had thought to smear some of his supper onto her painted lips she still couldn’t have tasted it because she hadn’t got a tongue. Life as a rag doll isn’t all kisses and cuddles.

“How long have we got, d’you think, Benayu, before the Watchers find a way in?” said Ribek.

“I don’t know,” said Benayu wearily. “I’m not sure they even can.”

“The Ropemaker got in somehow.”

“The touching point was still open then. I closed it as soon as we were through. I had to use Fodaro’s equations for that. So first they’d need to know a lot of other-universe stuff to open it again, and if what Jex heard is right they’ve only just found out about it. If they have, and that’s not certain.

“Then they’d have to have thought about it a lot, the way Fodaro did from what Jex had told us. There’s all sorts of really difficult mathematical relationships you have to sort out before you come up with the equations. You can’t do that by magic. It’s pure brain-stuff, and it took Fodaro years. So I doubt if the Watchers can do anything about it from the other side, except trial and error. That’d be wildly dangerous.”

“So you don’t think we’ll see them again before we go back to our own universe?” said Ribek. “Never mind that they’ll be waiting out there with everything they’ve got, ready for us to come out. We can think about that later.”

“But we’re stuck in the same kind of bind, aren’t we?” said Saranja. “We’ve got to find the Ropemaker somewhere out there, and we haven’t got Maja to help us do that, and then we’ve got to get him out of whatever he’s stuck in and bring him back here to join up with what you found in the oyster pool, but none of us can go outside the eggshell to do any of that without being destroyed….”

“The horses can, as far as I can gather,” said Ribek. “And Sponge, I suppose. They’re magical animals now. And Jex’s other self must be somewhere out there—I imagine he’d help—but…”

“It’s not even worth thinking about until I’ve talked to Jex,” said Benayu. “Getting us here was as far as I’ve worked out, and it took everything I’ve got. I’m practically dead on my feet. The first thing is for me to have a good night’s sleep, and after that I’ll need to get a lot of new stuff out of Jex and see if Fodaro’s equations still apply, and then, well, it’ll still be a question of finding the Ropemaker without Maja’s help. That’s going to be the hardest bit.”

“It would kill her to bring her back, even for a few moments?” said Ribek.

“Not worth the risk. The whole set-up here is wildly magical, and I’ve got nothing to spare to protect her.”

“All right,” said Ribek. “Let’s sleep on it.”

“Not until we’ve said thank you to Benayu,” said Saranja. “He’s done absolute wonders for us today. Back at my warlord’s they’d have held a feast and filled his cup with rubies and had the poet compose a praise-chant.”

“At least he did get oyster-and-bacon pie,” said Ribek. “Even if he had to fetch it himself.”

So now they were all asleep, people, horses, dog. All except Maja. Ribek had wished her good night and kissed her forehead and laid her beside him on the rolled-up cloak he used as a pillow. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t feel if he was actually touching her, but she could hear the steady whisper of his breathing close beside her, and that was enough.

He began to dream. She knew that because she caught faint glimpses of what he was dreaming about, a large dim space with heavy sacks stacked against one wall—it must be his mill. He was looking for someone or something. His breathing changed, became heavier, and now, still in the same dim place, he was leaning on a rail, desperate with worry and loss, staring down into a torrent of foaming water tumbling into a series of scoops attached to the rim of a great wooden wheel that was turning, turning…Something soft and green floated for a moment in the pother in one of the scoops, then was carried down into the mill-race. Loss and grief like a spear in the heart…

“Ribek! It’s all right. I’m here, me, Maja, on the pillow beside you.”

He snorted and half woke. She heard him turn toward her. His breathing faltered as fragments of the nightmare returned and trailed away.

I’ll wait till he’s stopped dreaming, she thought. Jex never came to me in the middle of a dream. But Ribek really minded. Only it probably doesn’t mean what I’d like it to. He’d feel like that about a pet dog, or something. She lay there, perfectly happy, thinking about what she was going to say.

His breathing steadied and slowed. She counted fifty breaths. Now.

She started carefully.

“Ribek.”

“Maja? I was dreaming about you.”

“Good, we can hear each other when you’re asleep. We couldn’t before. It was maddening. I kept yelling to you to turn me round when the dragon was chasing us so I could see what was happening, and sometimes you did, so I wasn’t sure you couldn’t hear me some of the time.”

“No. I just had a sudden feeling you’d have wanted to watch if you’d been able to. I suppose I did it for luck, as much as anything. You’ve brought us luck so far. I don’t know….”

“Perhaps you just somehow felt what I wanted. Anyway I saw almost everything. Benayu was wonderful. And Sponge. Tell me what I look like. I’ve seen my legs, so I know I’m a rag doll.”

“Cute. No substitute for the real thing, mind you, but nice and light and easy to carry around. You look reasonably like yourself too, apart from the blue eyes.”

Now or never. No way I’d be able to do it when I’m back in my own shape, speaking the words out aloud. Don’t rush it. Start gently, somewhere else.

“What happened back at the oyster pond? I was in the water. I think you got hold of my wrist and were helping me down, but I couldn’t see anything or feel anything except the fire-line I was following. Then everything went black.”

“Like I said. We’d reached the bottom but your hand was like a dog pulling on a leash. You weren’t doing it yourself. Your arm would’ve been completely limp, except that it was being dragged on down by your hand. It pushed on down between the oysters into the gravelly stuff and then—you saw me trying to touch Benayu’s eggshell earlier?”

“Yes.”

“It was like what happened to me, only a hundred times more so. My own arm went numb. I saw the breath bursting out of your mouth so I had a quick grope with my other hand and found the bit of rope and hauled you up to the surface. I was desperate to get you ashore and tip the water out of you, but the moment I broke the surface I was snatched into the air and deposited on Levanter’s back. I seemed to have lost you somehow. So I started yelling to Benayu to turn back and find you, but then I realized I was holding something and got the water out of my eyes and saw what it was.

“You looked absolutely pitiful and my heart sank but I just hoped that Benayu and Jex had got it right between them. I stuffed you into my shirt for the moment—I was sopping wet too, remember—and looked to see what we’d found. I hadn’t given it a thought till that moment. I could perfectly easily have dropped it in the excitement. My heart sank all over again, but all I could do was shove it into a saddlebag and sort myself out, get hold of the reins, sit properly and so on.

“As soon as I got the chance I looked behind us, but there wasn’t anything to see at first because Benayu had made a dense fog over the whole area. It wasn’t anything to bother the Watchers, really, he says, though it gave us a few more seconds to get us further out over the sea before they swept it away, but that wasn’t the point.

“I saw that happen. One moment the fog was there, the next it was thin mist, except for a dense patch over the harbor. Benayu had made that to be still there when the fog was gone. There was a screen round us, he says, but of course I couldn’t see that. And down at the harbor he’d built a good strong ward round a flock of sheep waiting to be shipped, and then ‘sent’ them—that’s the opposite of fetching—somewhere up the coast. And he’d put it into the poor old Magister’s head that he’d seen us heading off in that direction. That was part of the false trail, like the extra bit of fog.

“Anyway, what I saw looked like a ripple of sunlight sweeping up from the south and rolling the mist away in front of it. A bit of the mist seemed to stay round us, enough to hide us from the shore, I guess, but I could just make out the Magister standing by the oyster pond staring back toward Barda. Six or seven Watchers appeared out of nowhere—they all looked exactly like that one who came to the way station. The oyster pool exploded. The Magister fell flat on his face. Everything in the pool fountained up into the air and rained down through a glittering net, which I guessed was there to sieve out anything magical in the pool.

“Then the Magister was stood up like a doll—sorry about that—no offense meant—and just dropped after a couple of moments, and the Watchers disappeared. They must have gone down to the harbor because there was a colossal explosion and a swirling dark cloud which was sucked up into the sky and just vanished.

“By this time I was absolutely shuddering with cold. I was still wearing my wet clothes, and the wind was whistling past at the speed Levanter was going. The only thing that stopped me freezing solid was a bit of warmth coming up from him through my legs. Having you dangling against my chest, sodden as a sponge, wasn’t helping, so I fished you out and squeezed the water out of you best I could and cleaned you up with a dry shirt out of my saddlebag and hung you round my neck….”

Now!

“Before you did that you kissed me, didn’t you? Not on my forehead, like last night. In the middle of my face. On my mouth.”

“Well…I just felt like it. I’m fond of you. I didn’t realize you’d notice. Your face is a small target and there was a lot going on. I didn’t take careful aim. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not, except that I couldn’t feel it. I want to marry you when I’m old enough. What do you think?”

Long pause. She’d got it all wrong, and plunged right in. If she’d been in her own body she’d have been plum-red with embarrassment. Poor Ribek.

“You don’t have to answer. It probably isn’t a fair question.”

“I was thinking how to put it. The answer is no, but isn’t as simple as that.”

“No’s all right. You don’t have to explain.”

“I want to. I’ve been thinking about it, because I was aware you might have feelings like this. Nothing to be ashamed about. It happens. But if I had the same feelings about someone your age…I knew a chap once, farmer, used to bring his wheat to the mill…”

Another pause.

“Go on.”

“All I’ll tell you is that when I found out what had happened I told him he was sick in his head and he could take his wheat somewhere else to be ground. He would have been better dead.”

“I wasn’t talking about me now. I said ‘when I’m old enough.’ Suppose I was six years older…”

“Make it eight. I’d be fifty-two.”

“I don’t mind how old you are.”

“I do. I’ve seen what can happen. When I was sixteen my sister married a farmer from down the valley. She was three years older than me, and he was a bit past fifty. That’s about two years more than the gap between you and me. He was a big, strong, friendly man—we all liked him. Five years later he had a stroke. The worst of it was that he lived for another twenty-two years, an almost helpless wreck of what he’d been. My sister had the farm to manage, three children to raise, and him to look after night and day. You’ll meet her one day and you’ll see she looks a good twenty years older than I do. Two of the three girls don’t want anything to do with her. They feel that between them their parents managed to blight their own childhoods…. Oh, my dear. All that good young life my sister should have had, wasted and blasted! I’m not going to do that to you. Or to me. Do you see that? I think it was even worse for my brother-in-law than it was for my sister.”

There wasn’t any point in arguing, though Maja could think of plenty of arguments, but not now. Perhaps if she talked to his sister. For the moment it was enough that he’d really been thinking about it. Even that was more than she’d hoped for. Best thing now was to make it easy for him.

“It’s a good thing for you I can’t cry, or you’d be having to wring me out again.”

“There’s that.”

“How much younger would you have to be, d’you think? Five years? Ten? Fifteen?”

“Ten at least. But—”

“And if you tell me about this nephew you’ve got who’s only sixteen and the spit image of you at that age…”

“How did you know?”

He was teasing, of course. He’d already told her he had just five nieces, two living at the mill plus the three he’d been talking about. But so was she. Why couldn’t he see it? They were so right for each other. Not now. Change the subject.

“This is only a dream, isn’t it? We won’t talk about it when I’ve changed back.”

“Right. Thank you, Maja.”

“Wait. There’s something I do want you to talk about. To the others, I mean. It’s about one of us getting outside the eggshell. Ask Jex and Benayu if I’m a sort of magical animal, like Sponge and the horses.”

“No!”

“Or if I’m not, can they make me into one?”

“Absolutely not! It would kill you.”

“You can ask them about that too, and then we can decide. There are five of us, so Jex can have the deciding vote. You’ve got to ask them, Ribek. It isn’t fair if you don’t, because I can’t talk to them myself. You can tell them what you think, of course, but you’ve got to tell them what I think too. I’ll be listening, remember, and if you don’t play fair I’ll get into your dreams and give you horrible, horrible nightmares.”

“If they let you go I’ll be in one already.”

“It’s what I’m here for, to find the Ropemaker. It’s why I’m like this now. I’m still the only one who can do it, the way I did in the sheep-fold and the oyster-beds. It’s all meant.”

“All right. We’ll see what the others say.”