Chapter 12
‘If you’ve lived in the forest since you were twelve, how do you know where we are going?’
Elver frowned. ‘I just do, okay?’
It was the next morning and they were walking through the wood, following a deer trail that Elver had picked up, heading east. It was no jih wood, that much was obvious—the signs and marks here were all those of animals you found anywhere: foxes, rabbits, badgers, squirrels, the usual cacophony of birds.
The only monster here, aside from her and Artair, was the cub, and he was trotting along at their heels.
His protests about the sack had finally worn her down, and after he had solemnly promised to not go out of their sight, she had set him free.
They were in the woods, and reasonably unlikely to run into any humans. What could go wrong?
‘This is an important task, and I don’t want to head in the wrong direction. I have a map to Mother Maura’s sanctum,’ he said and tapped his pocket, ‘but this Temple of Tisk could be anywhere, as far as I know.’
‘Well I know. I’m sure there’s plenty you have no clue about, being stuck up there in the Golden Tower of the Perpetual Boredom or whatever it’s called, but I know things.’
‘I just don’t see how…’
Elver briefly considered attempting to poison him again, in the vague hope that her power would work on him after all, then discarded the idea.
She thought of Lucian, whose experience of her touch had been very different, and entirely unexpected.
What did it mean, that he recovered memories when her skin touched his?
It was another complication on top of an already complicated situation.
‘I collect books. Alright? I pick them up from people passing through the Jih Forest. Or on the road that passes by it. Sometimes, the Queen of Serpents will bring me ones she thinks I will find interesting. One of the books I found on the road was a big book of maps with all the roads and towns and rivers marked out.’
‘When you say you picked them up, what do you mean?’ Artair was looking at her keenly.
‘Kind travellers donated them to me.’ She glared back at him.
‘You mean you stole them.’
‘Don’t get your robes in a twist. I left most of those people unharmed.
’ The cub had scampered on ahead, shouting something to her about squirrels.
‘I’ve gathered quite a collection. And when things are quiet and there are no fool humans stomping through my forest that need scaring off, or no monster that’s got itself caught in a trap or lost, then I read my books.
I’ve read them a lot, over the years. I know most of them by heart.
’ She felt a little stab of pride. She knew that the humans that caught sight of her thought she was a ghost, or a wild creature, but the reality was she was probably more educated than any of them.
‘Huh,’ said Artair. ‘That sounds lonely.’
‘What?’
‘Reading books instead of talking to people. It must be miserable, living out there all alone. At least I have my fellow novices to talk to.’
‘Shows what you know,’ said Elver sharply. ‘Most monsters are vastly more interesting to talk to than any random human you care to name.’
‘Brother Benzin knew all the names of all the plants in the garden, and he knew all their uses too.’
‘I think you just proved my point.’
Artair looked at his feet and said nothing, and Elver remembered what had happened to Brother Benzin.
‘Look,’ she said eventually. ‘If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you.’
She broke a stick from a young elm tree and then knelt by a clear patch of dirt. The cub was shouting at her again, about something else he’d seen in the trees, but she ignored it.
‘Here.’ She drew a small circle in the dirt.
‘This is your monastery.’ She drew a much larger section near it.
‘This is my forest. This little turd here is Addersport, and the line of the coast goes like this. Now, over to the east there are several roads…’ She took a moment to sketch these in while Artair watched closely.
‘There’s another city inland, smaller than Addersport, and then just beyond that is the Temple of Tisk.
See? I’m not making it up.’ She straightened up, pleased with her ability to recall the map so clearly.
‘Did they not teach you any geography at the monastery?’
‘They did,’ Artair admitted. ‘But I suppose it didn’t seem very important. I was never going to see any of it.’
‘Now that sounds miserable.’
Elver half expected him to argue with her, but instead he nodded. ‘There are a lot of things I have missed.’
They began walking again, leaving the dirt map behind.
Elver thought of the spirit that inhabited Artair when he went to sleep.
Lucian had said that he never got to eat or drink, because Artair never left any food in his cell; she supposed that if he was never allowed outside, he barely knew what it was to feel a breeze on his face, or to sink his feet into an icy stream.
It seemed to her that both of them were half a person, closed off from so much.
‘I have heard about carriages, although we didn’t have them where I grew up,’ Artair said after they had been walking for some time in silence.
‘Some of the novices have family that will travel to the monastery to visit them, and they talk about getting the carriage along bumpy roads. It doesn’t sound comfortable, but it sounds fast. Faster than this, anyway. ’
‘I’ve seen them on the Jih Forest road,’ said Elver.
‘Cramped, stupid things, pulled by horses.’ Around them, the day was growing warmer, building up into the kind of sultry heat that autumn sometimes liked to pull out of its hat.
‘I suppose you have family? Who comes to visit you in the Tower of Perpetual Boredom.’
‘I… no. I don’t have any family.’
She glanced at him, noting a change of tone in his voice.
He was a striking figure walking next to her; broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, with his bow and his ropes slung over his back.
His hair was growing increasingly untidy, although she supposed she was hardly one to judge.
And there was a shadow on his jaw, a darker splash of colour against his skin.
She thought there was probably more to know about this family Artair claimed not to have, but when she opened her mouth to ask, she felt a sudden surge of annoyance with herself.
He’s closer to human than monster. Why should I care if there are things he wishes to hide?
‘Anyway,’ she said instead, ‘a carriage is a stupid idea. Can you imagine this little pain in the arse in a carriage? We wouldn’t last half a morning before he bit someone or weed on someone…’ She stopped and looked around. The cub was nowhere in sight.
‘Where is the cub?’ asked Artair.
‘I thought you were watching him!’ She cast around and called for him. ‘Where are you? I told you not to go wandering off!’ There was no reply. ‘If you don’t come back now you’ll not get any lunch!’
Nothing.
‘If we’ve lost him…’ Artair looked alarmed, which only made her angrier.
‘Curse you and curse the Twelve, we’ll have to retrace our steps.
’ Elver moved back up the trail. ‘The last time I saw him I… no wait, I didn’t see him, I heard him, and he was talking about something in the trees, but I was drawing that map for you.
’ Idiot , she told herself. The cub is your priority, not this half human boy.
When they reached the patch of dirt still scrawled with images of the local area, she cast about and quickly found his pawprints sunk into the mud under a small gathering of hawthorn.
On the gnarled bark of one such tree, she found a single crimson feather—the cub had brushed against it on his way somewhere.
Artair picked the feather from the bark and ran the pad of his thumb over it.
‘He can’t have gone far.’
‘Worried about your precious novices?’ snapped Elver. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find your bargaining chip.’
‘That’s not…’
But she wasn’t listening. Now that she had found it, the trail was easy enough to follow—she spent most of her time in the Jih Forest tracking creatures, and the cub was no master of stealth.
Beyond the copse of hawthorn, the wood began to thin out, and soon they were travelling over a more open area, green fields and yellow gorse and grey stone hedges lining a landscape that rumpled and bumped like a discarded blanket.
This was not good news. Small roads snaked through this place, bringing travellers—bringing humans— any of whom could spot the cub and raise the alarm.
Would they capture him? Drive him off? Or worse.
The Jih Forest was a haven for a reason. Elver sped up, her heart in her mouth.
‘I can’t go back to the Queen of Serpents and tell her that I lost the cub,’ she muttered, more to herself than to Artair.
‘What’s that?’ Artair had stopped, one hand over his eyes to shield them from the glare of the sun. ‘A tent?’
Elver lifted her eyes to the hills in front of them and spotted what he was looking at: not a single tent, but one large one surrounded by smaller versions of itself.
They were striped purple and yellow, like garish pieces of candy dropped in the grass, and there were swarms of brightly dressed humans moving in and out of them.
She wondered if this was what the cub had spotted through the trees.
And even worse, just ahead of them, she could see new footprints in the grass and dirt.
Human ones. And here the cub’s trail ended.
‘Someone has grabbed him.’ Elver straightened up. ‘Someone from that fair, I expect.’
‘A fair?’
They began walking faster. ‘They’re things that humans do for entertainment.
There will be loud music, and men and women performing strange tricks, like…
throwing balls at each other.’ Elver tried to remember what she’d read about them.
Sometimes, smaller fairs made their way through Addersport, but as an orphan she’d rarely had the coin to visit such things.
‘Throwing balls at each other?’ Artair sounded puzzled.
‘And catching them. I don’t know. Some of the humans will paint their faces to look funny, and wear large trousers.’
‘Truly, the world is a strange place.’
‘There’s a sign, look.’
They were close enough to be able to read a banner hung on the largest tent. Each word was painted in elaborate, curling letters, purple and yellow and green. Artair read it aloud:
‘In the name of Vilon the Many Limbed, Booster Barnham Presents Her World Famous Cabinet of Monstrous Curiosities, Featuring Fearsome and Fascinating Jih Creatures from Every Corner of the Continent—All Legally Obtained and Restrained for Your Safety and Entertainment.’
‘Oh,’ said Elver. ‘Fantastic.’