Chapter 56
night hollows fair the ancient hill
the buried ocean dreaming still
—Embroidery on robe, formerly interred in the Blue Rest, a day’s ride outside of Vantage
Too many years and a week later. The quarry cut into the land like an open sore.
A little slice of white bone dug out of the green hills where the burnt earth of the south finally gave ground to the light stone of the Rim.
A few days out from Dryke and Vantage, their numbers grown again.
Not by much, a couple of hundred more souls, but enough to rattle Crowkisser’s head.
Enough for her to leave them behind in the lee of the valley while she stalked the quarry ridge.
She’d come for peace, and she’d come for answers.
The sun is high above the white rocks, the air cut with the piercing call of some small bird, floating in looping trills from the spiked bushes that clung to the quarry’s edge.
The chalk hewn out in sheer chunks, stepping down to the lake at the quarry’s base, its water impossibly blue, picking up the edge of the sun and flicking it back at her eyes as she scours the walls for the path down.
The shore is softer on the southern side, where grass and shrub has started to reclaim the bone-white earth.
On this edge, the hillside is stepped like broken teeth.
Shallow cuts near the top, where the locals have come for the stone that lines the tops of the ware-dykes, dropping to cyclopean scars further down, the legacy of the Belltollers, brought here by the southern Aestering to shear the chalk into powder for their workings and teachings, and bindings.
Crowkisser remembers her dad’s dusty fingers, and pushes the image out of her head. This is not the time. She’s not here for the folklore, or the weaver’s ghosts. She’s got a different spirit to hunt.
The path is hard to follow at first, white against bone, the gravel shifting under her feet. She’d light her toes with crow feathers, get a little balance, but that feels wrong here, disrespectful.
She swallows a little retch of bitter bile and feels her hammering heart push against her ribs. She’s nervous; she hasn’t made this trip for a few years, and never with an army at her back.
About halfway down, the quarry hollows out, pockmarked with windblown caves.
Man-made at first, shaped by the miners digging back for the purer rock, then smoothed by the gales which tore up from the south and whirled the bowl of the quarry, lashing the water below, and softening those angular cuts into organic lines, like the inside of an ear, or the curve of a shell.
There are shells here too, buried in the rocks and calcified over time, until only the whorls of their death showed through the stone; the faintest echo of tentacles, rendered into dust. Further back in the rock, she remembers running her hand over paintings, blown like stars around the fingers of a hand.
Ochre, yellow as a bird’s eye, red as blood.
She hears the house before she sees it, the strung shells clattering in the soft wind. A smell rolls up the path, half the cool kiss of the water below, half a mess of onions and greens, skillet-fried.
The house is barely a house now, more part of the rock, like it was folding itself back into the quarry, year on year, scalloped around a bent lintel and a wooden door bleached close to the chalk by the heat of the sun.
A few swoops of those strung shells, scoured, marked with symbols she half-recognises from back in the caves.
Maybe an eye, maybe a hand, maybe a leaping fish or diving bird.
She stops at the lintel and knocks, partly out of politeness, partly to let her eyes adjust to the dark inside.
It’s a small room, but deceptive, with light coming in from above where the hollow bones of the chalk meet the sky. Sparse; a chair, a table, a cot; a brazier in the middle where the skillet dances, and bent over it, the Chalkwitch.
Her face like an owl in the half-light, amber skin burnished darker by the sun. She smiles, and the scar on her face pulls upwards. ‘Hello, darling.’
Crowkisser starts to reply just as the skillet coughs out a puff of smoke, and a bead of oil ignites black in the pan.
The smoke fills the small room. Chalkwitch curses and shifts the skillet off the stove. She turns back to Crowkisser, tears streaming down her face then bursts out laughing. ‘I still can’t cook, darling. The gods took that from me too.’
Crowkisser smiles despite herself, and reaches out her hand. ‘Shall we get some air?’
Chalkwitch’s hand is smooth as sanded wood, the muscles strong over stark bones. Bracelets clack on her wrists as they flee to the fresh air. Crowkisser holds her arm for a moment more in the sunlight, watching the pattern of the beads.
‘I made that one for you.’
Chalkwitch smiles. ‘When you were seven.’
Crowkisser squeezes her fingers a little. ‘It’s awful.’
Chalkwitch nods. ‘Children’s art usually is.’ She grins. ‘But it reminds me of you.’
She shoots a rueful glance back at the thin wisp of black smoke curling from inside. ‘Shall we chat out here today?’
Crowkisser nods. ‘I think that’d be best.’
Chalkwitch looks at her critically for a moment. ‘You know the rules.’ She holds out her arms. ‘Hugs first.’
Crowkisser rolls her eyes, and lets out a groan. ‘Seriously, Chalk?’
‘Seriously, little Crow.’
Crowkisser throws up her hands. ‘Ugh! Fine!’
Chalkwitch pulls her close, her grip still strong after all these years. She smells of soap, and chalk, and burnt onions.
‘You’re crushing me,’ Crowkisser squawks.
‘Good,’ Chalkwitch says, kissing the top of her head. ‘Now, take a seat, and talk to me.’
She slings her legs over the lip of the quarry, so they hang over the blue water below. The braids in her hair shift slightly in the breeze coming up off the lake.
Crowkisser settles next to her, lifting the hem of her skirt and sliding in close.
‘Missed you,’ she says, leaning into Chalkwitch’s shoulder.
Chalkwitch ruffles her hair. ‘Missed you too little crow. You’ve been busy.’
This close, the ruin of Chalkwitch’s face is unmissable, the burn scar that eats up half her skull tracking across her cheek and jaw like a dried riverbed, pooling in the puckered ruin of her missing eye.
The hair on that side is still patchy, burnt to ash in the fires of the south.
Burnt to ash when her god tore itself out of her to die.
Crowkisser lifts a hand to her face. ‘How does it feel today, Chalk?’
Chalkwitch smiles, the scar stretching, now rough, now eerily smooth.
‘It aches. It always does, but I’ve made my peace with it, little crow.’ She frowns a little, ‘It’s only you that hasn’t.’
‘I never meant to hurt you. Only the gods, Chalk, only the gods.’
Chalkwitch’s face stiffens a little then. ‘Killing always hurts, child. You were old enough to know what you were doing. Don’t pretend otherwise.’
Crowkisser feels shame burn on her cheeks. She tries to turn away, but Chalkwitch’s fingers are suddenly sharp on her jaw, twisting her back to meet the gaze of that ravaged eye.
‘Don’t. Own your choices. Besides,’ she pats Crowkisser’s face. ‘I’ve made my peace with it.’
‘Do you miss it?’ Crowkisser asks.
Chalkwitch tilts her head, thoughtfully. ‘Do I miss being a host? No.’
‘The powers the gods gave were wonderful, but’ – she waves a hand – ‘they were unrelenting.’
She turns until she’s facing Crowkisser squarely, and crosses her legs underneath her.
‘Never a night without dreams, never a day without someone battering down my door, asking why couldn’t I fix their broken leg, why couldn’t I make their fields grow, why couldn’t I stitch their husband’s limp cock. ’
She laughs. ‘No, I don’t miss it.’
Crowkisser smiles in relief, before Chalkwitch interrupts her, with a raised finger.
‘But do I miss the god? Yes. I miss its voice on the cold nights. I miss understanding. Or feeling like I understood. I miss knowing that there was a plan. I miss being able to share that plan, and to give comfort.’ She leans back, and squints at the sun.
‘I don’t know what the plan is now. I don’t even know how to cook. ’
Her voice is flat. ‘So yes, I miss the god. It wasn’t a friend, but it was a constant.’
Crowkisser picks at her cuffs. ‘Do you think that Mum felt like that about her god?’
Chalkwitch thinks. ‘Your mother knew what she was getting into, which is more than you could say for a lot of hosts. And she took the god because she wanted to help people, I know that much. But she never told me that much about how she felt about it. Just called it the noisy cricket.’
They both smile sadly at that, and Crowkisser feels an ache like ice around her heart.
‘The noisy cricket is chirping, Chalk, fetch the wood. I can’t leave the temple today, Chalk, the cricket’s too loud. You’ll have to go to market.’
She grins. ‘Sometimes, I think your mum was just lazy, and liked having a god to blame.’
Crowkisser grits her teeth. ‘Did the gods ever help you?’
Chalkwitch is silent for a moment. ‘It depends what you mean by help, little crow. They kept us alive. Healed us. Stopped time from touching us. Closed the wound and sealed the scar.’ She runs a hand over her face.
‘They let us glimpse the future. They let us see the pattern of the past. Was that help?’ She shrugs.
‘I don’t know, but that’s not what you’re asking me. ’
Crowkisser frowns. ‘It’s not?’ An odd feeling in her throat as she speaks, like choking on a stone.
Chalkwitch’s face is soft. ‘No, you’re asking me why your mother’s god let her die.’
Crowkisser says nothing, her lips pressed tight, but the tears come anyway as Chalkwitch takes her hands. She nods, briefly.
Chalkwitch makes a low noise in her throat. ‘Five years you’ve been building up to asking me that.’
Crowkisser clears her throat. ‘And?’
Chalkwitch shrugs. ‘And I don’t know, little crow.’
She sees the clouds forming over Crowkisser’s face and tries to head them off at the pass.
‘I’ve asked myself the same thing. Perhaps the disease took it too. Perhaps it was so bound up with her body that what she suffered, it suffered.’
‘A disease that could kill a god?’ Crowkisser asks, sceptically.
Chalkwitch raises her eyebrows. ‘Implausible, after what you’ve done? I don’t think so.’
She frowns. ‘Perhaps it just didn’t understand. They never consciously seemed to feel helpful, when we got sick, or injured. They just fixed it reflexively, like blood filling a wound. Perhaps it just didn’t know she was dying.’ She pauses for a moment. ‘Perhaps it just didn’t care.’
Crowkisser’s expression is pure fury.
Chalkwitch gently loosens her grip.
‘This is what you need to understand little crow, to make peace with this. The gods were always beyond us. We were like pots to be filled, or a coat to be worn. You darn a coat if it frays, but if it rots, you cast it off.’
Crowkisser’s breath is a low hiss. ‘Parasites. They deserved everything they got.’
Chalkwitch’s voice is thoughtful, as she turns her ruined eyes to the sun. ‘Perhaps, little crow. But the killing of the gods changed us. The south changed us. We’re all just unfilled pots now. Undarned coats, waiting to unravel.’
She gets stiffly to her feet, and holds out her hand. ‘But until then, we hunger. Do you want to try and teach me how to cook one more time?’
Crowkisser smiles. ‘It’s the least I can do.’
Chalkwitch’s hands linger on her own burnt skin, and scorched hair. All the deeper aches beneath it, where the fire of her god’s death throes seared along her bones as it tore itself loose.
She kisses the girl lightly on the forehead. ‘Yes, child. I expect it is.’