Chapter 3
Dawn brought brief respite before the day’s heat, a damp haze clinging to the treetops, screening out the sun.
Flint had seen the sky shade from deep grey to roseate silver, to a weak, golden wash and now to this hazy blue. All around, Trecosann was awakening, groggy after the festivities.
He had been to all their favourite haunts already, called on the families of her friends and questioned those who were awake.
There was no sign of Amber now and no one had seen her since the previous afternoon.
Passing through the fringes of the bellycane paddy, past the track that led to the town Oracle, he came to the humpy form of the family home. This was one of the oldest fibre buildings in Trecosann, its bulbous form encrusted with vegetation, a self-regulated dwelling that had survived–so it was said–over two hundred human generations. Some claimed even longer.
He went inside.
The only sounds came from Milly the house mutt. She fell silent when she heard him enter, perhaps fearing that he was his father, Tarn. Mutts were inherently of limited intelligence, but what insight they had was specific and sometimes particularly acute.
In any case, it didn’t take much insight to grasp the vicious nature of the head of the Eltarn household.
Flint made a brief appearance in the workroom to reassure Milly, and to ask her if she had seen Amber today.
“Milly done see Amber?” she replied, then shook her head. “Just master mistress, eh?”
He went through to the stairwell and climbed the warm, pliant steps to the sleeping floor. Loud snoring came from his parents’ cell.
He pulled the translucent screen aside and stepped into Amber’s room. An untidy sleeping pallet with a shawl woven by Aunt Clarel occupied most of one wall–it was impossible to tell if it had been slept in the previous night or not, but Milly would have said if she had been here. Amber’s clothes were stowed in the storage space behind the far screen. Alcoves in the walls held a few personal items: an artboard, a pair of weaving screens, a rivershell necklet that matched the bracelet she always wore, some combs, a half-clamshell full of coloured sand.
Nothing appeared to have changed. Nothing appeared to be missing.
He went back down to the family room to wait.
~
It wasn’t long before Tarn appeared, clean-shaven already and dressed in a long cloak.
He nodded at Flint, then said, “You been working? Thought you were at Callum’s.”
He sounded amenable today. Flint nodded. “I was at Callum’s last night,” he said. “But I woke early. I didn’t come back here to work. I’ve been looking for Amberline.”
Tarn grunted. “Still hiding?”
“I don’t know. I’m worried.”
“Worried?” Jescka stood in the doorway. Where Tarn was a slack-bodied man, and tall like his son, Jescka was a strongly built woman, with a hard physique softened only by the years.
“Amber,” said Flint. “No one has seen her since yesterday.”
“But a whole night!” said Jescka. “She’s never been gone a whole night before. What’s she playing at?”
Tarn stretched. “She’ll show up,” he said. “Or she won’t. She can look after herself.”
Flint stared at him. “She could be hurt,” he said. “Something could have happened to her.” He looked at Jescka and she, too, looked worried, even scared. A moment of weakness on her part. He felt a sudden sense of empathy with his mother. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt something like that.
“We saw the Tallyman yesterday,” he said. “Up by the Leaving Hill. He seemed... well... interested in Amber. We all know what kind of dealings the Tallyman is involved in: what if he’s done something? What if he’s tempted her away somehow? What if she’s been abducted?”
Tarn stood, suddenly menacing. Flint met his glare, fighting the urge to look away. His father leaned towards him and paused, then turned and moved away. Over his shoulder he said, “I’m going to see Callum about some new bellycane grafts. There’ll be planting to do if he’s ready. I’ll expect you here by mid-morning, not playing hide and seek with your sister.”
~
He found the Tallyman eventually. After asking around Trecosann, he finally came to the brewhouse old Tessum kept by the river.
He was sitting on a shaded bench out front, playing blocks with two of Flint’s great-uncles.
Out in the river, gulls followed two haul-boats carrying mutts south, the silver birds crying and mocking as they went.
“Cline. Jambol.” Flint greeted his two old relatives, nodding to each in turn.
Then: “Tallyman.”
The old debt-trader’s face was revealed today, hood pulled back under the shade of the bench’s canopy. Flint was reminded of an observation he had made some time ago upon a visit to the Leaving Hill: how clearly, with some people, the skull beneath the face was apparent, where with most you had to concentrate to see the bones beneath the surface.
The Tallyman stared at Flint, from deep, bony eye sockets. A few wisps of white beard clung to his jaw. He turned to his two companions. “Think this one buys favours or done give ’em?”
The three cackled, and Flint stood uncertainly, confused by their innuendo and by the way the Tallyman mixed Mutter-pidgin with everyday speech. “I’m looking for my sister,” he said.
The Tallyman nodded. “Amberlinetreco Eltarn,” he said. He drank some of his wild-herb tea, then narrowed his eyes and continued, “A fit one. Something of the Lost in her, I say. Eh, Jambol? Eh, Cline?”
Cline leaned over the bench. “I always reckoned that,” he said. “See it in her eyes, the taint. ‘Something of the Lost’ is right, isn’t it? Should have been...”
He stopped.
Exposed. That was what he had been about to say.
“Amber’s as True as you or I,” said Flint. “Her line goes back generations. She’s been ill, yes, but never with the changing fevers–as Granny Han will certify. Or would you argue with Granny Han, Great-uncle Clinetreco?”
Cline leaned back again, mumbling under his breath.
Flint turned to the Tallyman again. “Have you seen her since yesterday?” he asked. “When you saw us near the Leaving Hill–you appeared to be making certain... offers to Amber.”
“Me been make offers to plenty young ladies,” cackled the Tallyman, and his two companions laughed, too. “You be surprised how come they take one up.”
“He’s day-dreaming again,” said Jambol, chuckling.
“Amber?” Flint insisted.
The Tallyman turned and spat green slime into the dirt. “Is a grown woman,” he said. “As can make her own mind. As can make her own choices.”
“Where is she?”
“What should I know?” protested the Tallyman. He turned to his companions. “Why’s he bothering me like some dumb mutt?”
Flint ignored the insult. “Have you seen her since we were at the Leaving Hill yesterday?”
Tallyman glared at him. “Lose yourself,” he hissed. Another insult, that: as in, Go and join the Lost. “Forget her,” he went on. “Leave family business to family.”
~
Leave family business to family.
Why had he said that? Why had he put it that way? What had Amber’s disappearance to do with the family, with the clan?
He found them in the yard, out at the back of the old Hall. Jescka lecturing Petria on something or other, Callum and Tarn watching over the newly changed stock and haggling over cane grafts.
“No sign?” asked Callum. He looked as if he was about to go on, then stopped, sensing Flint’s mood.
“I’ve been speaking to the Tallyman,” said Flint, squaring up to his father. “He told me I should keep out of family business. What kind of business have you been doing, Father? What’s happened to Amber?”
There was violence in Tarn’s eyes, a rage he was trying hard to suppress. His public face.
“What do you mean?” demanded Jescka. “What are you talking about?”
“You’ve always treated her differently,” said Flint. “Always singled her out. She used to tell me you treated her worse than a mutt sometimes. And now she’s missing and what are you all doing to find her? So tell me: how much did you get for her?”
He ducked under Tarn’s swinging fist, and before he could stop himself he lunged upwards.
Tarn was off-balance, tipping forward, and Flint’s shoulder came up under his armpit.
The older man grunted and staggered back, clutching at his shoulder.
Flint was crouching low, arms spread, waiting for the next move.
And then it started to sink in...
He had never stood his ground like this before. He had always accepted the punishment, had always believed that somehow he really deserved it.
He waited for his father’s next move, and it was not long coming.
Overcoming his initial surprise, Tarn feinted to swing another blow but instead stepped forward and kicked Flint in the knee.
The joint exploded in agony and Flint fell to the ground.
Had that animal screech really been his own?
Eyes squeezed shut in pain, he didn’t see the next blow, couldn’t be sure if it was a boot or a fist that slammed into his face and turned his world briefly dark.
~
He learned later that it was Callum who stopped Tarn, stepping between the two of them, perhaps saving Flint’s life.
Sitting in the dirt with his back against the bathing trough, Flint looked up at his cousin. There were many branches of lineage separating Flint from Callum, yet his older cousin had always been someone he trusted and turned to.
Now, Callum thrust a wad of dampened sapwool at him. “Tarn has gone,” he said. “Clean yourself up, boy.”
He seemed shaken by the fight, shocked at the public display of violence. “And then you can tell me what you think you’ve found out.”
Flint pressed the wool to his face. When it came away it was dark red. The pain was dull, remote: his knee pulsing steadily; his face pulped and numb. It would get worse, he knew. It always did, before it got better.
Normally, it was Amber who would look after him in the aftermath of Tarn’s rage. But now she had gone.
He spoke, past the swelling. “They’ve always treated her differently. Father, especially. Ever since she was ill, even though Granny Han said it wasn’t changing fever and she was still True. Amber knew it.”
“Amber’s their daughter,” said Callum, taking the wad of sapwool and rinsing it. “She’s family.”
Flint looked at him. “Family can become Lost,” he said. “Family can be born Lost –” he remembered that gruesome pup’s body with three arms and two heads on the Leaving Hill “– and the fevers can change you.”
“Amber wasn’t Lost.”
“Did Tarn believe that? Did Jescka?”
“What makes you think they’ve done something to her?”
“The Tallyman. He said it was family business. Why would he say that? That choice of words means he knows something he’s not telling. Why are they dealing with the Tallyman?”
He recalled their encounter at the foot of the Leaving Hill. The Tallyman’s appraising eyes, wandering up and down Amber’s body.
At the time both he and Amber had thought it was lust in the old man’s eyes, but now Flint saw that it was not lust but greed. The Tallyman had been pricing her up.
When a human baby shows signs of the taint–some used the term imbuto, others simply called them Lost–it was taken and exposed on the Leaving Hill. Until they were old enough to have demonstrated their Trueness they were not even named, not regarded as fully human, but merely pups.
But some forms of corruption can take longer to emerge, and yet others can be acquired through the changing fevers. Those too old to expose on the Leaving Hill were banished into the wildlands between settlements or, more commonly, sold as bondsmen or even into the mutt trade. Flint knew of one family where this had happened only a year ago–they had even argued that poor, flawed Thom would have a better life as a bonded labourer. Perhaps they had even believed it to be true.
“The Tallyman has many functions,” said Callum, uncertainly.
But one of his most lucrative was as the town’s agent for the mutt trade.
~
Oracle bulged grossly, a swollen, fleshy mass embedded in the heart of the bellycane swamp. It stood as high and half again as Flint, although who knows how far its anchoring smartfibres extended into the mud? Purple veins crept across its surface, interlocking, clumping in naevoid knots. Tumorous polyps attached by pulpy cords floated in the swamp water as if, after thousands of years, the thing had finally learnt how to multiply by division.
Oracle would know he was coming. Its sensory fibres would feel his footfalls on the raised path it maintained to connect it to Trecosann. It would know him from the rhythm of his steps. It would taste his mood on the breeze, hear his breathing and the pulsing of his blood as he approached, even from some considerable distance.
Already, as he came near, a bulbous sphincter had relaxed, awaiting him.
“Flintreco Eltarn,” it sighed, as he clambered inside.
Sweet smells: newly split fleshfruit, sliced bellycane, many that he knew well yet couldn’t quite place. Oracle was playing on his senses. Soothing him. Plying its pherotropic arts in order to ease him into lucid-trance.
He lay back in Oracle’s warm embrace. The pain in his knee–so sharp, after walking here from the Hall!–began to subside, and breathing through his broken nose started to ease.
“Tell me of the world,” said Oracle. “Tell me of my clan.”
Oracle always spoke like this, as if it was somehow one of the True. Perhaps at some time in the far past there had, indeed, been something human in Oracle and its kind.
“The world is unchanged and the clan prospers.” Reassuring platitudes. Flint closed his eyes.
“Your injuries will heal,” Oracle told him. “Although the damage to your nose means that it will never return to its former shape.”
“Amber’s gone. She disappeared yesterday. Missed a Changing Festival, a clan gathering. I think she’s been taken, traded.”
“Tell me.” Soft, enveloping tones, almost too low to hear. Flint felt himself floating free, reluctantly releasing his hold on his senses. The all-encompassing security within Oracle scared him every time, as he lost his grip on his body and its pain: a transient fear, before he was submerged.
He relived their visit to the Leaving Hill, Amber’s questions about the nature of the Lost. What if I were not human? What if you were not human? Do you think that ever happens?
And then, their encounter with the Tallyman and his assessing gaze; Flint’s trek around Trecosann, asking questions of everyone he met, seeking out all their childhood haunts and hiding places, of which there were many, for they had many reasons to hide. And his fight with Tarn, of course.
~
...every step hurt, his back sore from a caning, but he kept going, determined not to let it show. This was young Flint’s eleventh dry season and he had long since learnt how to cope with the discomforts of life.
It was a lesson Amber had still to learn. She had run from the family home this morning. Showing her weakness and fear.
...he was lucid-dreaming, a part of his mind told him, still clinging to consciousness, to control. Oracle had cast him back into childhood, tapping buried memories...
Now he watched himself from a short distance. Thin and tall for a ten-year-old, black hair flopping in the breeze, skin the colour of the finest golden sugar. And such a solemn look in his eyes!
The boy trod the path from Trecosann to the Leaving Hill. There had been a row, a fight, and Amber had fled.
He remembered Aunt Clarel, now: once a regular visitor to her brother’s house, but no more. Clarel had been there, that morning, had glimpsed Flint’s pain even if she had not understood its source–had blinded herself to its source.
And now, the boy emerged from the last fringe of the forest. From this point you could look out across the tops of the trees, down to the cleft that marked the winding route of the river Elver, the waters hidden by vegetation. Monkeys chattered from somewhere nearby, no doubt gathered around an outgrowth of fleshfruit somewhere in the canopy.
Flint jumped, stretching high, and then jumped again. The second time, he managed to pluck a trumpet flower from the drooping bough of a dawn oak. He sucked the nectar from its meaty pod, then held the purple petals tight across his mouth and blew. The resulting note was pitched high, a nasal buzz, the sound the trees made to lure pollinators.
He blew again and surveyed the hill for signs of movement, but there were none.
The boy discarded the broken flower and trudged resolutely up the hill, following a path that wound up the slope across open ground littered with the white fragments of the Lost.
At one point a black vulture sat watching him, its wings spread defensively over a recent corpse, its bare face slick, reddened. It lifted heavily, struggled for height, soared with its head hung low, watching, waiting.
At the crest of the hill there was a low wall, carved from the bedrock, forming a rough circle. Flint paused in the narrow entrance, the threshold between Lost mutt pups and Lost human pups.
Within, the bones were more sparsely distributed, yet still dense enough to impress on the ten-year-old the frequency of change within the womb even amongst the True.
In the middle of the circle, a naked brown girl lay curled like a pup, knees drawn up. She was crying, he could see that much. She hurt too, in her own way.
He went to her and she twisted fearfully until she saw that it was Flint.
“I’ll kill him,” he said softly, a promise he had made on many occasions.
She dipped her head again, but she had stopped crying.
He found her clothes nearby and dropped them where she could reach. “You won’t die of exposure like this,” he told her. “You’ll just get stiff and sore.”
“I belong here,” she said.
“You hate this place. You told me.”
“They hate me. Father says I’m worse than a mutt. They’re going to make me sleep in the stock sheds. I belong up here, with the spirits of the Lost. They should have exposed me.”
“You’re too old to expose,” said Flint, watching the crows in the treetops. “And if they tried I’d stop them.”
“You always look for me, darling brother. You always know where to find me.”
Flint looked at her now, as she finally reached for her tattered vest. “Only because you’re so bad at hiding,” he assured her.
...only because you’re so bad at hiding. Now, drifting in lucid-trance, those words hung around him.
“If you’re so bad at hiding then why can I not find you now?”
“Amberline is older now. Her ways are more sophisticated. Also, it is easier to find someone when they want to be found.”
There was usually reason behind Oracle’s ramblings, Flint knew.
“Amber was more disturbed than I realised, wasn’t she? Yesterday, on the hill and in the market. Is she hiding, then? Somewhere I haven’t looked?”
Oracle’s silence was answer enough. He had looked everywhere she might hide, asked everyone she might be with. He had failed. He had protected her for so long–they had protected each other, in truth–but now he was powerless.
She might have run away, he would believe that of her. She might even have been foolish enough to take the Tallyman up on his offer of travel and adventure.
The stupid child did not understand the dangers beyond the safe confines of Trecosann.
Or perhaps she did. He remembered her as a young girl, curled up and naked at the summit of the Leaving Hill, trying to find a place with the spirits of the Lost.
Perhaps she understood the dangers all too clearly.