Chapter 4
He came to the decision without really thinking much about it. Without Amber what else was there for him in Trecossan? A drunken and violent father. A mother so self-obsessed that he might as well not exist for her. His work on the holding–his father would just as well buy another mutt...
He spent the rest of the morning revisiting their old haunts and hiding places, asking relatives and friends if they had seen her, making absolutely sure that she had gone.
And then he set out to follow her.
Whatever was out there–on the road, in the wilds between settlements–Flint was certain that it would be worse for Amber, a child who had barely set foot outside her home town before now. He, at least, had travelled and had some idea what he was getting himself into.
And so, now, he stood on the jetty close to Tessum’s brewhouse, having filled his belly with flatcake and fleshfruit. Leda’s ferry would be in soon, and he would be on his way.
She could, he knew, have set out in any direction from Trecosann, but there was a logic behind his decision to cross the river Elver and head east.
Not only had Oracle shown him that Amber may well have been more disturbed than he had realised–enough so to run away, perhaps. But Oracle had also reminded him of a time when Aunt Clarel had been a regular visitor, always a calming influence in the family home, always a favourite, in particular, of young Amber.
If Amber had, indeed, decided to run away, leaving the only place she had ever known, then her most likely destination would be the home of someone she trusted, someone she loved. Clarel lived two days east of Trecosann in the Treco settlement of Greenwater: distant enough to be safe, yet near enough to be a sensible goal.
It was Oracle’s way to reveal truths obliquely like this, and Flint felt certain that it had drawn his attention to Clarel for a reason. He wondered if Amber had gone to Oracle, too, if Oracle had shown her Clarel, hinted at refuge with a loved relative...
Or was he clutching at false hopes?
Another reason to head east was simply that, for part of the way, the road to Greenwater coincided with one of the main trade routes heading south: it would be an obvious way out of Trecosann, and he might find someone who had seen her.
And if she had been taken–or sold–into the mutt trade, then there were two main routes: if she was on a haul-boat on the river then he had no hope of finding her; but the other way was along the main trade road, heading east and then south to Farsamy and beyond.
Leda’s ferry ground into the soft cane rings protecting the jetty, its bladderpump engines sighing and farting as the canespirit feed constricted. Instantly the waiting crowd flowed on-board. The direction of traffic was almost entirely one-way today: traders leaving the market early before the festival ended tonight, business done for another month.
Flint edged forward, his pack slung over one shoulder. He had not set out unprepared: he had a pouch of money tucked away inside his tunic and in his pack he had a sleeping roll, spare clothes, a water bladder and some more flatcakes. In his belt he carried a sheathed knife–although judging by the assorted long knives, arrows and other weaponry casually on display, he had come out underarmed, reminding him again of what he was venturing into.
At the edge of the jetty now, he reached out for the grab to steady himself and climbed onto the boat.
Leda, himself, was taking payment from the travellers, a fat money belt slung diagonally across chest and shoulder. Flint handed him a dime and said, “Cousin, have you seen cousin Amber recently?”
Leda pursed his lips as he took in Flint’s battered features, and then he shook his head. “I heard she’s missing,” he said. “No luck yet?”
Flint sighed. “No,” he said. “None yet.” He was familiar with disappointment by now.
Leda’s was not the only boat that plied these waters, he told himself–particularly at festival time. Amber might even have disguised herself and crossed the river un-noticed–not hard with so many strangers in town.
“Will you watch out for her, cousin?” he asked. “She’s not been seen for two days now.”
Leda nodded, and Flint yielded to the pressure of the crowd and moved towards the fore of the boat.
~
The waters of the Elver were grey with silt. Flint stared at the swirling patterns of mud and then looked back at the retreating jetty, the bulbous podhuts clustered around the waterside.
He wondered if he would see Trecosann again.
He wondered if Amber had seen a similar sight, and what thoughts had been passing through her head. Nervous triumph at her escape... anger, perhaps, at the way her family treated her. Or fear?
He recognised the man next to him, a leatherworker from one of the forest settlements. “Cousin,” said Flint, conferring clan status on the man regardless of whether it was rightfully his.
He found it hard to talk, the vibration and passage of air hurting his broken nose. He persisted, though. “I’m looking for my sister, Amber. She is about so high –” he held a hand flat across his chest “– and she has thick, chestnut hair down to her shoulders. The whites of her eyes are yellowed by childhood jaundice. She is a True daughter of Clan Treco.”
The man shook his head. “I know her, from your description,” he said. “I’ve probably sold her leatherwear at market. But I don’t think I’ve seen her this festival. Sorry, cousin.”
Flint moved on. There were perhaps thirty passengers on Leda’s ferry, and he only had a short time before they landed and the travellers dispersed.
“...about so high, and she has thick, chestnut hair...”
“Sorry, cousin.”
“...the whites of her eyes...”
Heads shaking, sympathy in their eyes.
“...a True daughter of Clan Treco.”
“I saw you together a day or two ago–was that her? I remember her laughing. Haven’t seen her since, though.”
~
The ground on the far side of the Elver seemed little different, the same hard-packed, grey mud that would turn slick and ankle-deep in places in the depths of the wet season.
There were two podhuts here, and beyond, the jungle had been razed for a distance of easily forty paces, with only low scrub and grasses growing in that space.
The wilds started here.
The forest surrounding Trecosann on the other side of the river was managed by the clan, regular cleansing purges keeping down incursions of the truly wild morphs, protecting the citizens and their crops and livestock from the wilds. The forest here on the east side of the Elver, however, was not husbanded so conscientiously.
Flint pulled his hood forward over his head and went over to the nearest hut. Inside, a moustachioed man sat back in a bucket-seat, chewing on a jaggery stick. “Cousin,” said Flint. He asked about Amber, asked if the man had seen anyone fitting her description passing through yesterday or, perhaps, earlier today. The man shook his head.
When he emerged, most of the travellers had already dispersed.
Two tracks led away from this docking post. One headed south, along the riverbank. There were three Treco villages in that direction. Flint considered following that track, and asking in the villages. But if Amber had shown up in one of these villages, the Elders would have sent word back to Trecosann.
The second track cut across the stripped buffer zone between river and jungle, heading east towards both Greenwater and the trading route called Farsamy Way.
Already, those travellers who had not headed down the riverside trail were on the far side of the clear area, heading into the jungle. There were a dozen or more of them, carrying high packs on their shoulders, pushing hand carts and guiding a single mutt-drawn wagon. Flint settled his pack across his shoulders and hurried to catch up.
After a short distance, he was struggling. Heading steadily uphill, his knee ached with every stride and his breathing rasped painfully through the swollen passages of his damaged nose. He would have to pace himself carefully on this journey, and so he slowed to a rate that would still, eventually, bring him level with the group ahead of him. He had no wish to travel alone just yet.
The jungle here seemed little different to that on the west bank of the Elver. He recognised the trees, familiar from their leaf-shapes and calls: dawn oaks clustered together, reaching dark for the sky and cooing softly in the breeze; assorted forest ferns stood as tall as some of the trees, their great fronds casting deep shadow beneath; occasional whitewoods stood ghostly and skeletal in the thick growth; nut palms, clemmies and softspines, packed tight. Lianas and drape moss hung from boughs bejewelled with flowers and fruit.
All so familiar and yet... in the wildlands, nothing was to be trusted. What might appear familiar on the surface may easily be corrupt within, with the changing vectors rife in the unmanaged lands between settlements. Creatures too small for the eye to see, attacking the signature within the body, shifting, distorting, pulling traits across species at will so that human became not-human, animal not-animal, plant not-plant.
The trees had closed in over the track as Flint walked and now his rhythm was broken by the sudden shriek of some forest creature from the canopy above.
Again, he wondered at Amber’s thoughts if she had taken this route. Had this dark cornucopia entranced or frightened her?
All the time as he walked, he studied the jungle to either side. Much of the time it presented an impenetrable barrier, a screen of lush greenery fighting for sunlight where the trail cut through the jungle.
But there were gaps, spaces, little clefts in the darkness where animals must pass.
No sensible person would leave the trail when they were out in the wilds like this, but what of Amber? Young, confused, upset–might she find the shady refuge beneath the trees a temptation?Perhaps a hiding place from other travellers.
If that was the case, then her chances of survival–alone in the wilds–were slim, and Flint’s chances of finding her even slimmer.
All he could do was hope that his deductions were correct and that he was on her trail.
He steadied his painful breathing and increased his pace, despite the discomfort in his knee.
~
“Here–chew on some of these. It’ll help.”
Flint squinted at the fold of green leaves Lizabel held out towards him, not wishing to appear ungrateful.
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “They loosen the swelling. I need ’em a lot when pa’s not so good.”
Her smile only went up one side of her face, and Flint wondered if she had been struck down with some kind of seizure at some time, a healer unable to fully cure herself.
He nodded. Lizabel’s father, Jemmie, was pushing his cart a few paces ahead of them on the track. It was widely known that people only used the old man’s dentistry service because the pain could be soothed by Lizabel’s healing herbal teas.
He took one of the leaves and chewed on it. The bitter sap released by his chewing took rapid effect, greatly easing his breathing.
“See?”
Flint had caught up with the small group of travellers some time before. All were heading for the Farsamy Way. All knew of Amber’s disappearance and none had any information for Flint.
“It’s brave of you to come out looking for her like this,” said Lizabel.
“You people travel these routes regularly,” said Flint. Lizabel and her father were freemen with no particular clan affiliations, no particular home. “Anyway, clan-folk travel the wildlands too. I’ve been this way before. I’ve been to Treco settlements along the river, and out as far as Greenwater. I’ve even been south as far as Beshusa.”
He fell silent, realising that he sounded too defensive. Walking at Lizabel’s side, he couldn’t see if she was smiling on the other side of her face or not.
~
“You let me have a look at you, will you, young sir?”
Jemmie pulled at Flint’s lips, prising his jaws apart.
“You tell me you fell over? Hit your face on the ground an’ your leg on a rock?”
Flint grunted, dribbling, unable to answer while the dentist had his fingers rammed into his mouth.
Just as Flint was about to retch, Jemmie released him, rocking back on his heels, pushing his wide-brimmed hat back on his head. Flint turned away, tasting dirt in his mouth. He took his water bladder and drank deeply.
They had stopped to rest in a roadside clearing, with a good deal more travel to do before breaking for the night.
“Nothing’s bust,” said Jemmie. “Your teeth are fine. It’s just your nose was bust when you ‘fell’.”
“Thank you,” said Flint.
“You keep your hands off my Lizabel, you hear?” The tone of the old man’s voice had not changed. For some reason that made his threat seem even graver to Flint.
Flint looked at him. “I...”
“I’m not making no accusations, mind, but I know how you clan-types treat your mutts. I know what your father treats ’em like, too.”
Mutts? He thought of Lizabel, of how she could appear both wise and childishly innocent, with no transition between the two, of her damaged face, relic of an old illness, he had thought.
The man nodded. “Not always so obvious, is it? She changed when she was twelve. The fevers took her ma, an’ left Liz with something missing –” he tapped his head “– an’ something extra. So now we travel an’ we never go home to where people know, to where people will treat my daughter like little above a street rat. D’you understand, young sir?”
“No,” said Flint. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me when it’s clearly a secret you hold close.”
“Your sister,” said the old dentist. “You know what the possibilities are. Maybe run away, maybe lost, maybe sold into the trade and fucked senseless already by the scum who run the mutt lines. Why I’m telling you is you got to be realistic and to be aware of what’s likely to have happened, if you’re ever going to cope.
“And more, young sir: you got to hold onto your hope. You’re out here for her, and I respect that a lot when there’s not much I’ll respect other people for any more. You’re all she’s got. And you got to remember that whatever may have happened to her by the time you get to her, whatever may have changed in her, there are some things that hold true through it all.
“When the changing fevers came, eleven years ago, they took a lot of what Lizabel was, but they never took it all. You got to hold on to what you can, young sir. You hear me?”
~
There was a growth of podhuts ahead of them in the gloom. Flint had not expected that. He couldn’t remember if they had been there when he had come this way as a boy, on a family visit to Clarel and dry season work on the bladderpump farm.
The huts were empty, sealed against incursions from the wildlands, popping themselves open only when they sensed humans in the clearing.
This was a well-used road, Flint knew–that was, after all, one reason he had chosen this route. It made sense, then, to grow accommodation for travellers here, a day’s travel from Trecosann.
“How’s the travel suiting you?” asked an itinerant labourer called Alal. The group sat around a low fire, eating supplies of flatcake and fruit, and drinking sweetwater from a podhut bladder.
“It’s all bigger than I’d expected,” said Flint. He had been walking for most of the day, and still they were climbing Spinster’s Spine, the chain of hills separating the vales of Eels and Farsam. The name was appropriate, for the hills were like great vertebrae, locked together below a skin of soil and rock and tree. A sleeping giant.
“We’ve been walking all day,” he explained, “and yet we’ve travelled so little.” He had realised, during the course of the day, his own inadequate sense of geography. He knew the surrounding lands, he had some kind of grasp of the general directions and travel times to the main settlements of Farsamy, Beshusa, Coltar and Ritteney, and yet... so little idea of what lay beyond. Humankind interacted on a local scale, it seemed, each settlement the centre of its own world, of an interlocking network of settlements scattered across the wildlands.
To find one person in such vastness!
Alal, a man of much muscle and slow, careful thought, paused a long time in the golden half-light before saying, “I wouldn’t have it any smaller. The world. I’ve been in big towns, where people live crammed together. I worked in Farsamy once. People so close together ain’t the same kind of people.”
“Plenty of work for a dentist, mind,” said Jemmie, cackling.
Flint shared a hut with Alal, grateful for the big man’s human noises in the long hours of the night.
~
Not long into the morning’s trek, they parted company. The trail they had been following, a tight-packed mud road flanked by dense jungle, came to a crossing point where it cut straight across a wide road crafted from some dark stone that was flecked white and pitted with a tracery of fine cracks and clefts.
A wooden board lay flat at the side of the junction, its surface etched with arrows, words, directions. You had to stand right over it to read the words. The board indicated the directions and travel times to Farsamy, Greenwater, Trecosann and Berenwai. A fifth arrow pointed off into the heart of the jungle and was labelled, simply, hell, not far.
Flint eyed his travel companions. He had names for all fifteen, now, although many were still strangers; Alal, Jemmie and Lizabel, however, had become more than mere acquaintances in so short a time.
He realised that he had nothing with which to repay these people their kindnesses.
“Stick to the path, young sir,” Jemmie told him again. “Hide yourself from travellers unless you are certain of their nature.” He didn’t try again to persuade Flint not to travel to Greenwater alone, that argument already settled earlier this morning.
The dentist reached for his belt and released the long sheath which held his machete. He handed it to Flint. “Protect yourself,” he said. “May you have the Lord’s luck in finding your sister.”
Flint stood silently, knowing not to protest. He watched the group depart, Jemmie pulling his little cart, Alal and the others guiding their mutt-drawn wagon along the stone road, heading south.
Then he turned away. He studied Jemmie’s gift, and then attached it to his own belt. He drew the machete. Its blade was dull, the length of his upper arm; its double cutting edge was marked from use. He returned it to its sheath.
If Amber had left Trecosann of her own choice then she had almost certainly passed this way. But now Flint realised that his journey would present ever greater choices where his path may diverge from that of his sister. It was, indeed, most likely that she would head for Aunt Clarel’s home in Greenwater, so Flint’s choice of route was a sensible one. But she may easily have reached this point and–even if her intention had been to head for Greenwater–decided instead to head south, drawn to the excitement of Farsamy and beyond. He knew that she would find the prospect of travelling to the big town tempting. She could easily have fallen in with a group of travellers, as Flint had, and then decided–or been persuaded–to stay with them on their journey to the south.
Or to the north, he wondered? He turned, narrowed his eyes against the warm breeze, and studied the stop-start, humpback progress of the road heading north up Spinster’s Spine. The town of Berenwai was several days’ trek away. It was possible, he conceded, although they had no relatives or friends there and, Clan Beren traditionally being regarded as impoverished neighbours, there would be little to draw Amber in that direction.
On sudden impulse, he took a fist-sized flint nodule from the ground and struck it against another. Again, and on the third blow it cleft in two: newly cut flint, the best he could do to signal that he had passed. He placed both halves neatly on the arrow pointing to Greenwater. And then he strode across the Farsamy Way, seeking the trail where it plunged into the jungle once again.
Soon, he realised that the track was heading steadily downhill. He must have passed over the crest of Spinster’s Spine without realising: where distance gave the hills a definite profile, in reality they were little more than a gentle ripple in the landscape.
Trecosann behind him, he was on his way to Greenwater.
~
As he had yesterday, he eyed the surrounding jungle while he walked. There were still trees and other plants he recognised, but also many that were new to him.
With Jemmie’s advice fresh in his mind, he wondered if Amber would have acted similarly: hiding from any travellers she encountered. Sensible advice, where you might just as easily encounter bandits and other lawless itinerants as well as the Lost–changed people and mutts cast out or escaped.
The clear implication, though, was that she might easily hide from Flint–particularly earlier when he had been part of a group.
So as he walked, he studied the undergrowth, the entrances to animal tracks, the gaps between scrubby thorn bushes, hoping against all odds that he would see her hiding there.
He thought of old Jemmie’s words. You’re out here for her, and I respect that a lot when there’s not much I’ll respect other people for any more. You’re all she’s got. Was he really all she had? If she was out here on her own then maybe that showed that she didn’t need him to be looking out for her any more. Was he out here for her or for himself, then? A chance to break free.
Perhaps.
What did remain true was that there was nothing for him to stay in Trecosann for. And if Amber hadn’t left out of choice, then he was the only one trying to help her.
It was the uncertainty as much as anything, he realised: he had to find out what had become of her. A selfish reason perhaps, then, after all. He looked around himself again at the forbidding walls of the jungle. He did not regret his decision to come after her, not for an instant.
By the middle of the day, with the sun high over his hooded head, Flint was thirsty. He had long since drained the last of the podhut’s sweetwater with which he had replenished his water bladder. Earlier, with the sun lower and the trees affording shade, it had not been so bad, but as the heat had increased he had drunk too greedily.
He checked the water bladder again, but it had not miraculously been refilled.
He moved to the side of the trail, under the shelter of a great claw-leaved tree fern. He pulled his hood back, and felt the heat recede just a little. He studied the fern’s scaly trunk for signs of infestation before squatting and leaning back against it. He had seen many long lines of army ants today, memories of childhood stings increasing his awareness of the hazards of even everyday things.
There were sounds all around. Insects hummed and creaked and pipped, birds cried high in the canopy, other creatures–rats, lizards, more birds, perhaps–snuffled and scuffled on the forest floor.
He straightened his leg, the injured knee supported now by bindings and a poultice prepared by Lizabel.
The inherent respect for True humans was widespread in the wilds, too, Flint knew, but clearly it did not extend to the biting insects. Where the backs of his hands had been exposed they were covered in pink welts. What if vectors of the changing fevers could be transmitted by these tiny creatures, he wondered, scratching all around the most recent bite?
He blocked the thought, aware that he was spooking himself.
Eyes adjusted to the shade now, he saw that the forest thinned a short way in, and in the pool of light he saw bulbous clusters of fleshfruit hanging low.
He studied the ground carefully, head full of children’s terror tales of snakes and venomous spiders the size of a grown man’s head, of mantrap plants that would close around the legs of the unsuspecting and slowly suck their victims deeper into the dissolving digestive juices held in bladders beneath the ground.
There was just a thick layer of dead leaves, twigs, a scampering black beetle as long and narrow as Flint’s little finger.
Tree and fern trunks stood vertical and little else grew in the shade of the forest floor.
Flint moved further from the trail, passing through the forest to where another screen of vegetation thickened at the edge of the clearing.
He drew the machete and swept it down once through the greenery, and then again. Several small moths erupted from the leaves, whirring into the sunlight.
He stepped through.
Fleshfruit hung, fat and purple, paired side by side in a bunch as long as Flint’s arm.
So tempting, but he knew he wouldn’t dare eat from this bunch, wouldn’t risk even a taste of their sweet, meaty juices. There was so much richness in this biological wonderland between settlements, so much diversity and fecundity. And yet the abundance was illusory: all this richness and so much of it could easily be corrupt, tainted within. He would have to be foolish, or desperate indeed, to risk eating or drinking anything he found in the wildlands.
Some of the riper fruit had already come away from the top of the bunch but there was no sign of them on the ground. The insects and rats would take care of such fallings, but there could easily be larger beasts here.
Flint looked around, remembering Jemmie’s advice that he should never leave the trail.
He stepped back through the opening he had hacked and then paused to get his bearings. It would be so easy to lose one’s way in the jungle.
It was only a matter of paces across the bare forest floor to the tree fern where he had sheltered from the sun on the edge of the trail to Greenwater.
He hesitated under the grasping fronds of the fern.
Ahead, on the trail, was a small figure. A woman, or a girl, with long dark hair and downy, fleecy clothing.
Flint stepped out, broke into a run, and then stopped and called aloud. “Amber!”
Please, let it be Amber!