Chapter 269
The bottom of the Marka's whole keel. Jeppson sitting against it with his fists locked in his lap. Flisa on his other side in the bilge, knees up, Mingus lying against her. Vigolas and Kompis on the ladder, very quiet.
laid against the first plank at the stem, knuckles to the wood. His right eye shut. Listening.
scornful.
a long beat, then, grudging, leaning over and laying the side of her carved face flat against plank one. Her knot-eyes going dark as she listens through the wood.
shuffling along the keel on his backside, fist to the next plank.
Jeppson moving down the keel, fist to plank after plank, Flisa crawling alongside him, ear to the wood after him every time.
More of the crew on it now, sitting on the rungs in a quiet stack: Drekk, Öde, Svala, Trollmage yawning at the top. Nobody talking.
ear to plank two hundred and something, and her lips moving now with his. She's started saying it too.
deep in the stern now, the lantern low, his fist on another plank. Sweat on his chalky forehead. Voice hoarse.
on the last plank. The one by the water-barrels. The one with the knot that weeps. And he goes still.
where the bark once met the tree: not smooth. Teeth-marks: the bite of a saw, fine and even, and above them the deep notch of an axe. And burned faintly into the inside face, half worn away: BARK-YARD · GLASHEIM · ORDER STOCK.
putting her hand flat on it. Not angry. Tired.
on the ladder, closing his eyes.
her hand on the cut plank.
coming down off the ladder to crouch near her, eyes soft.
picking her gums, eyes far away.
A thousand years ago. The Great Root of the Splinterlands, a cliff of living cork-oak at the edge of the sea, unscarred, enormous, beautiful. On it, tiny against it, a gang of men with iron knives, and the first long strip of bark tearing away from the living wood in their hands, pale heartwood bared beneath, sap pouring down the root like amber blood.
And out of the fresh wound, unfolding, a girl: tall as a soldier, 1.80 m of bark and shard, sharp-chinned, a crown of shavings, knot-holes for eyes with gold deep inside them, her first breath a scream. The men dropping their knives and running.
in the present, looking down at her own small jagged hands.
one eye open, measuring her the way he measures everything.
lifting his big golden head and putting it, with great dignity, in her lap. Looking up at her with warm brown eyes.
frozen, her hands up off the dog, hovering, splinter-fingers spread. Not knowing what to do with them.
very slowly, coming down on the golden fur behind Mingus's ear. Scratching once, awkwardly, like someone who has read about it.
where her hand was. A tiny gold-glinting splinter of her caught in it, and then sliding out, on its own, as if the fur just wouldn't keep it, and dropping to the bilge. And climbing back up into her palm.
staring at her palm, at the splinter back in it.
a thousand years old and one metre nine, both hands buried in a golden retriever's neck, face pressed into his fur, shaking. Mingus thumping his tail on the bilge.
on the bottom rung, watching. The bark cube in his sash, her squashed face in it, asleep.
lifting her face out of the fur, eyes hard again, but not as hard.
The crew coming up out of the hold into grey light. Jeppson flexing his hands, which have just come unlocked, wincing. The root-harbour silent. Too silent.
last up the ladder, stopping on the top rung. Her head turning. Her knot-eyes going dark, the way they do when she listens through the roots. Every gold glint in the harbour roots flickering.
From every root, every arch, every hollow, root foxes pouring out into the dawn, hundreds of them, red streaks of fur, all running the same way: away. And every one of them, as it runs, throwing back its head and howling.
Far across the root forest, a whole root-tree, a tower of living cork-oak as tall as a lighthouse, toppling, slowly, and going down, branch by branch, trunk and all, into a mouth. A dark shape at the foot of it, chewing.