The Ghost's Child Page 8

  And then the cities would reappear on the skyline, and castles and lush woodlands as well, and Maddy would feel safe again, not lost at all, and gradually go back to sleep. She was dozing when a flying fish shot from the sea and landed, with a smacking sound, at the bottom of the boat. She yelped as the fish gasped and wriggled, flapping translucent wings. Recovering herself, she said, “Poor thing,” and lifted the pale body, and dropped it over the side.

  The flying fish squeaked, “Thank you,” and disappeared.

  Thereafter Maddy sat musing for a time, chewing her ragged thumbnail. A flying fish squeaking thank you.

  Bad weather trundled in later that afternoon, and lumbered after the Albatross like a bear. Maddy pulled on her oilskin and slipped her feet into wellingtons. She rolled the drumming mainsail, secured the gaff and boom, and tied herself to the mast with a length of hawser rope. The gale hit the Albatross hard on the side, spun the craft in circles, yanked it into the air. Raindrops long as knitting needles speared from the sky. The ocean was thrilled by the havoc, and lurched anarchically. Maddy’s sou’wester went overboard, as did her cooking pot. The sky was pitch, and gashed by lightning; loutish waves rose and slumped heavily as mudslides. At a moment when she was filled with desperation, Maddy opened her mouth and yelled for Feather. And half-expected him to appear, because she wanted him to so much.

  When the tempest had passed, the water was fatigued, and the Albatross travelled on evenly. Maddy spent the evening wringing out her stockings and bailing the hull. Far off to port, a great striped marlin leaped, its nose a sapphire javelin. Water fanned behind it, the sunset iridescent on its flanks. It sliced back into the ocean like the sword of a knight.

  The following day Maddy was dreamily admiring a splendid onion-domed mosque that was floating as casually as an otter on the sea, and conducting a symphony being excellently played by an orchestra of pink-eyed, cat-faced musicians, when a green turtle bobbed its head from the waves and asked, “Have you seen a marlin around here?”

  Maddy stopped conducting and peered overboard. “Actually, I have. I saw one yesterday.”

  “Ha!” The turtle barked in triumph. “I knew it! He thinks he can get away from me, but he won’t! He won’t!” With that, it scooped the water and dived. Maddy sat and stared, pouting, but it didn’t reappear.

  When next a shadow passed the boat, Maddy shouted, “Excuse me!”

  The shadow belonged to a mako shark, which propped its steely head from the water and clashed, “Yes? What?”

  It was disconcerting to speak to so many teeth. “I was wondering,” Maddy fumbled, “if you know where Feather is? I need to ask him a question, you see.”

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” said the mako, and vanished with a slash of fins. Stung by this rebuff, Maddy crawled underneath the thwarts to feel sorry for herself.

  The next morning she saw a sunfish. Once, when she was small, Maddy had seen a sunfish caught in a trawler’s net. The unfortunate beast, flat and round as a breakfast table, had attracted a crowd to the pier. It had had a sweet expression, Maddy remembered. “Excuse me?”

  The sunfish glanced past its witch-hat dorsal fin. “May I help you?”

  “Please, do you happen to know where Feather is? There’s something I have to ask him.”

  The sunfish looked askance. “Know the name, but can’t put a face. I never can put a face – can you? What you want is a dolphin. I don’t like to speak spitefully, but dolphins always think they know everything.”

  “Thank you,” said Maddy; and sat back to wait for a dolphin.

  But in fact she saw nothing for many days, and several times started to cry. The sun was too hot, the ocean too cold, the boat was never still. She was surrounded by strangers, she was utterly lost, her quest was ridiculous and futile. She was famished, her skin itched, there was nothing interesting to do. Sleeping, she dreamed of her plush clean bed, a bath filled with bubbly water. At the very worst moments she ransacked her heart, searching the clutter for solace. Searching, mostly, for a remnant of Feather – the timbre of his voice, the scent of him. Drooping and weary, she wove her fingers between his, and leaned against his shoulder.

  Suddenly the nose of the Albatross plunged, hurling Maddy from her seat. Beneath the boat frothed a rumpus like a battleship going down. It was a humpback whale, breaching and diving. “Excuse me!” Maddy bawled. “Sir, you’ll sink us!”

  The whale raised its enormous grey head, water sluicing from its smiling mouth and down the grooves of its throat. Its voice, when it spoke, was harmonious. “My apologies.”

  “Oh no, it was really my fault,” said Maddy. “Whale, by any chance have you seen Feather? I urgently need to ask him something.”

  “Indeed I have seen your Feather,” replied the whale. “It was, mind you, some time ago.”

  Maddy’s heart somersaulted, she scrambled to the prow. “Did he say where he was going?”

  “Regretfully he did not, no. And he was being blown about by Zephyrus, so he could be anywhere now.”

  “Zephyrus? Who is Zephyrus?”

  “The west wind.” The humpback rolled its tiny eye. “You might get some sense out of it, if you’re lucky.”

  Maddy thanked the whale for its help, and sat back to consider. It is one thing to converse with aquatic life, but quite another to address a wind. Night was coming, and she lay down on the floor of the Albatross, a blanket folded under her head.

  When she woke, the sky was very black, and a girl as airy as an owlfly’s wing was perched on the bowsprit, gazing at her. The girl wore a gown that was tattered and dripping; her arms were matted with seaweed. Maddy could see the moon and a scattering of stars through her gauzy chest. She sat up and asked sharply, “Who are you?”

  The girl smiled furtively, batting her lashes. Her voice was trill, and unpleasantly breathy. “Just a lost soul who went down with the ship,” she said, as if she were ordering champagne. “There are so many of us, more than anyone can count. But we’re all so bored with each other’s company! We love to meet new people. This is a nice boat you have.”

  “Thank you,” said Maddy. “Don’t touch it.”

  “What are you doing out here by yourself? You’re so far from home.”

  “I’m looking for someone,” Maddy said. “I’m perfectly all right. Please don’t worry about me.”

  The diaphanous girl pouted, and fiddled with her seaweed. “Come down and dance with us,” she suggested. “We have a ten-piece band.”

  “Thank you but no,” replied Maddy. “I’m looking for the west wind – do you know it?”

  The apparition’s eyes widened into sodden circles. “Zephyrus!” she shrilled. “It was Zephyrus who sank our ship! Stay away from Zephyrus! Be warned, be warned, be warned!”

  “Oh, for goodness sake,” Maddy sighed, and lit the lamp, which caused the phantom girl to frizzle up like a hair in a flame.

  The Albatross sailed on, in endless pursuit of the horizon. Maddy wondered what would happen if she somehow reached that elusive line. She would topple over the edge of the world and come face to face with – what? A land where trees walked, and people sprouted roots? Another girl, in another vessel, traversing an upside-down ocean? Is that what Feather had been thinking about, as he stared at the horizon – a place where everything was topsy-turvy? Maddy lay in the bottom of the boat, warbling tunelessly to herself, her thoughts riding the air like ribbons untied. She lifted a hand and began to lazily trace her important question onto the clouds. How can you know… Before she could finish, the clouds coasted apart, and the words plunked into the sea.

  Her head was hanging over the side of the boat when she saw a scrawny viperfish slunk up from the deep. “What brings you here?” she asked.

  The viperfish spoke through ludicrous teeth too big for its head. Its voice was lean and long. “Battle on. Kraken versus leviathan at dusk.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have seen Feather? I’m looking for him. There’s something he knows that I
want to know.”

  “I live at ocean’s bottom,” replied the viperfish snarkily. “I don’t get visitors.”

  “No need to be ungracious,” Maddy said. “In that case, do you know where I’d find Zephyrus?”

  “West wind? Probably be at battle. It likes argie-bargie.”

  Finally, something that sounded promising. “May I follow you there?”

  “Aaaruggh!” screeched the fish. “Only if you don’t dally! I can’t stand waiting!”

  So Maddy hoisted the sails and put the Albatross into a clip, sprinting in the wake of the lightning-fast fanged beast. Throughout the afternoon they raced towards the battle site. Maddy noticed other creatures streaming in from miles around – basking sharks, and schools of sockeye salmon; morays and herds of gigantic cuttlefish. Killer whales glided handsomely beneath the waves; auks dashed past in dozens. Leopard seals snapped their jaws as they flashed by the boat; stingrays wafted past like fainting spells. Maddy kept the Albatross tipped steep before the wind. White sharks and barracoutas sniped at the boat’s silhouette; in the sky wheeled a flock of jet-winged frigate birds. Jellyfish undulated on the ocean’s surface, trailing sparkling stingers. It was a rough and cutthroat crowd, and Maddy held tight to the tiller.

  She felt the battle before she saw it. As the sun began to droop in the sky, the ocean grew choppy, and the Albatross bounced. Soon the prow was lunging skyward, then pointing straight down; water flooded across the floor, and thumped the stern bullishly. Looking along the bowsprit, Maddy saw the ocean was boiling. She pushed the anchor hastily over the side. As the bolt of metal disappeared into the dark she saw a vast pale spectre slip by: the white whale. It glanced at her without interest, the anchor spinning in the turbulence of its flukes.

  Just then the water began to tear – Maddy clamped her arms around the mast. From the distant waves erupted a smoke-snorting monster, its brow bulky as a stagecoach, its chest a mountainside. It swung its armoured head and roared, shooting scarlet flames into the sky, crisping the wings of a spectating rukh, which shrieked like a harpy in fury. The ocean seethed as the sea-monster yawed about, its gaping mouth brandishing fortress-pike teeth. The leviathan was gargantuan and hideous, the most fearsome thing Maddy had ever seen. It stank of burning wood and rotting meat. Unexpectedly, the malevolent head was plastered by sinewy legs as thick as oaks and pied as death, which lashed from the water and suctioned to the monster’s bulging jaws. The kraken held on mightily as the leviathan hauled it from the waves and flung the sleek body skyward, knives of water flinging everywhere. Round and around the two legendary creatures careered, the leviathan tangled in tentacles and bellowing, the kraken silent as a tomb, its huge eyes flatly reflecting the clouds and the sea. The ocean threw up cliffs of waves that crashed down in every direction. The giant squid beneath the Albatross changed colour with enthusiasm; the killer whales breached, pluming water into the air. In the sky a flock of crossbow jaegers dodged and screamed hoarsely. The leviathan’s jaws slammed together and lopped off one of the kraken’s tentacles, which fell into the ocean spurting fetid oil. The limb was instantly seized by a spangly serpent, which sped away jeeringly with its prize. The kraken seemed to feel no pain: it tightened its grip on the leviathan’s head, buckling the monster’s reptilian scales. The leviathan sucked down a cavernful of air, heaved it out as a torrent of flame. Maddy felt the heat punch past her, blocked her ears to its awful sound. The fire sheared over the water, sending a pod of walruses into woofing panic.

  As the monsters warred and the sea animals hared about, the ocean began to spin. Loosely at first, the water looped the combatants as though it would fence them in; as the fighters raged on, the water spun faster; then faster and faster, and faster again, until it was flying like quicksilver and became not merely water but a whirlpool, which is water gone mad. Maddy watched in horror as the flashing hoop began to widen across the waves, its glassy centre sucking down towards the sea floor. The kraken and the leviathan, caught in the rotating maw, fought on ferociously, forced together by the water now, unable to break apart. Maddy dragged in the anchor and pinned the oars, aware she had just moments to escape the maelstrom’s grip. Even as she splashed the blades into the foam, the kraken and the leviathan were snatched under the waves, the whirlpool effortlessly stronger than both of them. The ocean circled violently, the whirlpool scooping up and swallowing everything in its reach; every creature that was able to turned and frantically fled. Maddy pulled against the oars, and the Albatross lurched back – only to pitch forward immediately, charging for the whirling rings. Maddy wailed in terror, her heart banging in her ears. Her boat was captured, and so was she – there was no salvation in jumping overboard. In the next moment she would be sucked into the funnel of pounding water, where the Albatross would break apart and she would be spun into oblivion. She jerked the oars pathetically as the boat skipped towards the vortex, helpless as a kitten on a chain. Petrified, she had only one clear thought: that Feather had left her to fight alone. Feather didn’t care what happened to her.

  Then, inexplicably, the boat jumped backward, bucking like a pony. The sails sagged, puffed again, turned inside-out. Against all logic, the Albatross changed course, wrenching itself from the grip of the maelstrom, swinging to starboard, and speeding for clear water. Maddy clung dripping to the oars, speechless with astonishment. The breeze whipped up by the racing boat pulled her hair and billowed her oilskin. The boat rushed on until the whirlpool vanished in the distance, and the ocean lay smooth all around.

  Then a voice said, “Hello! That was a close call! One more moment, and you would have been feeling rather dizzy! I hear you’ve been looking for me?”

  “Zephyrus?” Maddy peeped.

  “The one and only!” The west wind blew friskily, riffling the sails. “How may I be of assistance?”

  “Zephyrus!” Galvanized by relief, Maddy jumped to her feet. “I’m looking for Feather. I need to ask him a question. A whale said you’d seen him.”

  “I certainly have! I helped him too. I am quite thoughtful like that.”

  Maddy clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Please,” she beseeched the tangerine sky, “please, please, would you tell me where he is?”

  “Please, please, please, where, where, where. Now let me think. Let me try to remember.” The wind twanged the halyards and danced on the planks teasingly, hanging her on tenterhooks. Finally it volunteered, “Feather’s on an Island of Stillness, not far from here.”

  “Oh! … An Island of Stillness? What’s that?”

  “Don’t you know anything?” Zephyrus gusted smugly. “It’s an island that is still. Whoever lives on an Island of Stillness is granted their dearest desire – forgetfulness, fulfilment, that kind of thing. They live that way forever, punished or unpunished, forgiven or unforgiven, remembering or forgetting, smart, stupid, happy, sad. The islands used to float about, following the summer, until somebody realized that the islands should stand still. Because that’s what endless fulfilment is, isn’t it? That’s what forgetfulness is. Just stopping still. So the islands stopped floating, and now, on an Island of Stillness, everything is still.”

  “How awful that sounds,” mused Maddy.

  Zephyrus shrugged breezily. “You’d be surprised. Some people like things that way.”

  Maddy looked at the clouds. “Zephyrus,” she said, “will you take me to him? So I can have an answer, finally?”

  “Since you ask so nicely,” the wind replied, “I suppose I will. I haven’t got anything better to do. But remember, it’s Feather’s island, not yours. It’s his dearest desire, not yours. His answer might not be what you want to hear. And anyway, does a girl who’s voyaged across an ocean without compass or maps, who’s talked to whales and wind and watched sea-monsters war, need an answer from anyone?”

  Maddy hesitated, glancing away. Her eye was caught by her reflection wobbling beneath her. Gazing at her from the water was a girl who knew the friendship of narguns and trees. She’d weathered t
he bafflement of her childhood, and her bleak school years. She’d survived the disappearance of her travelling father, and the shattering loss of the fay. She’d poured the best of herself into love, and seen that love turned away; yet she’d managed to keep faith in herself. Was there any answer to any question that such a girl couldn’t discover for herself?

  “But you have come such a long way, haven’t you?” prompted Zephyrus. “It would be a shame to give up. Every journey must be finished.”

  A little flame in Maddy’s heart had simmered to almost nothing: now it sprang up again. “That’s true.” She smiled. “Every journey must be finished.”

  With that, the boat’s nose swung to face a new direction. The sails filled, the rudder dipped, and with an electric, tiger-like leap, the Albatross began cutting through the water. Maddy sat at the tiller, her hands on her knees, watching the ocean flash by. Overhead, the sky was mottling cobalt and ruby. The earliest stars came out to glitter on the waves. The moon hung frostily, close to the water, a skating rink for fireflies.

  Darkness had not closed in completely for the night, but the sky was stained a rich navy when the sails began to flutter, the boat slowed down, and a low, rocky island rose into view. “Land ahoy,” said Zephyrus, and Maddy stepped to the prow, her blood hammering.

  Every atom in Maddy fizzed with nervousness by the time the Albatross beached on the island’s shore. She was tempted to beg the west wind to take her straight home. The sand made a raspy grinding noise against the boat’s wooden keel: to Maddy, it was the sound of resistance, a sound that said begone. Zephyrus was no comfort at all. “Good luck!” the west wind chortled. “Better you than me! Whistle when you want me to get you out of here.”

  Maddy watched the wind sweep away, a dust-devil of sand blustering in its wake. She hoped it wouldn’t go far. Never in her life – not in the pine forest at home after Feather had gone, not in the juddery midst of the cold ocean – had she felt as isolated and apprehensive as she did now. For the first time in such a long time, Maddy was close to Feather – but she felt high up and untouchable, lost to everywhere.