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Feathertide Page 10
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It wasn’t long until the ground had been licked clean. After filling their bellies, the dogs squeezed back through the gate and collapsed onto their straw bed from the effort of it all, apart from the littlest one, which splayed itself out across the warmth of my feet, its skin as soft and smooth as a mushroom. Looking down, I watched as it flickered its enviably long eyelashes at me, content at having found itself a new bed.
‘That’s Vithos. He was the runt of the litter, never really grew from being a puppy. You’re lucky – he likes you. He doesn’t trust people easily, and never so quickly.’ Her mouth widened in sudden delight, as though a prayer had at last been answered. ‘So – when can you start?’
I shuffled my feet and tried to flick him off, but despite his size, he was a heavy weight and refused to move. I heard him grumble. She laughed, and scooping him up, nestled him back with the others.
‘Excuse me?’ I asked in confusion. ‘When can I start what?’
‘The job. It comes with a bed, of course – the one you woke up in, which I think you found most agreeable considering how many hours you’ve been sleeping in it. I promise you it’s a better offer than the guest houses you’ll find round here with their flea-infested beds and extortionate prices. They make the young lovers weep!’
‘What exactly is the job?’ I had no idea what I was being offered, not that I was in a position to refuse.
‘I need someone to take the dogs for a daily walk. At least an hour, longer in the rain, but times can be negotiated. I would do it myself, but I carry too much weight to go far now. I have the speed, just not the stamina.’ She sighed wistfully. ‘It’s not that I am afraid to feel pain, my body is too old to feel anything else, but I just cannot keep up with them any more.’
I had no experience of dogs. I had seen them before on the farm, but I had never touched one before, never mind taken one for a walk. She must have seen the look of doubt in my face and raised her eyebrows.
‘It’s a good deal I’m offering, but if you’d rather pay for a bed, then I won’t keep you here. You can wake up with your pockets empty and your legs bitten to incurable infection and I won’t say I told you so.’
‘Yes,’ I exclaimed with a sudden shudder; my mind was made up. ‘I’ll take it. I’ll take the job.’ Besides, they looked peaceful and gentle enough, and what choice did I have if I wanted to stay? The coins left in my pocket might buy me a night or two, but not much more.
‘Good,’ she said, clapping her bear-like paws together. ‘After all, you will be staying for quite some time.’
‘How do you know that?’ I asked, startled. I hadn’t mentioned my plans to her and I had no idea how long it would take me to find my father, or even if he was here to be found.
‘I know most things, most of the time. It’s my gift; some may say my curse.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked in astonishment.
‘My name is Sybel. Come back inside, and I will tell you the rest.’
CHAPTER 13
Slowly, she unfolded her story like a tablecloth, shaking out every last crumb.
I learned that she was a prophetess, able to speak the future truth and deliver messages to eager ears. She was also a woman of ancient alchemy, trained to mix secret remedies to heal both the body and the mind. With others, she shared only their benefits, but never their ingredients. Querents paid fistfuls of coins for a reading and they travelled from neighbouring Scatterings to hear their fate spoken from her lips, such was its certainty.
‘They want to tax me,’ she said, in a sudden flurry of angry words, glad to have someone to rant to.
‘Who does?’ I had heard the whores talk of taxes in the same fierce, outraged tones, but I didn’t really understand what they meant.
‘The city officials, such fools! They daren’t, though,’ she spoke in conspiratorial whispers. ‘Most of them are my querents. It’s all a ridiculous pretence, but it’s a tiring act, and I have no patience for it. Sometimes, when people can’t afford to pay, I accept a meal, or a jug of wine; once or twice it’s been a nest of quail eggs or a peacock, who you have already met. One old woman handmade me a silk dress, the colour of forget-me-nots, far too small and delicate for my monstrous frame. I don’t know what she saw, but it wasn’t me.’ She looked down at her body and shook her head in dismay. ‘It just hangs, never worn, on a hook and I often look at it and imagine myself, one-day-beautiful, wearing it to the Teatro or walking over the Bridge of Longing, hand in hand with the lover I will never have.’ Her wistful voice suddenly filled with frustration. ‘How can you put a price on that? How can you tax gifts of kindness, gestures, hope? It’s an absolute disgrace! A folly!’ she exclaimed in a burst of emotion.
I remembered the whores being infuriated every time a man dressed in a dark suit, carrying a leather case, arrived and was led down the corridor to Sorren’s room. It was the only time a man ever departed with more coins than he arrived.
I wanted to tell her that finding love could make her just as miserable as not finding it, but what did I really know of love, having lived my whole life in the shadow-swilled cellar of a whorehouse? It was the one place where love was definitely not welcome, whether it wiped its feet on the doormat or not.
The copper pot started to babble and spit on the stove, and she quickly lifted it up, soothing its contents into two large cups. Dark and steaming, it looked like melted treacle. I inhaled its warm, nutty smell.
‘Drink,’ she instructed.
As I did, my eyes widened; it tasted bitter at first, then thick with a sweet aftertaste. Blowing into the cup I watched the dark liquid dance in its brown ruffles, but before I had finished, Sybel stood up.
‘The dogs need a run around the city,’ she said, unhooking a long, thick rope from the wall and untangling its complicated loops and knots.
‘Around the city?’ My blood ran cold. I had been so used to hiding that the thought of leaving the house filled me with fear.
‘Well, you can’t very well just walk them around the courtyard.’ She chortled, working with speed and deftness until she had shaken out all of the complications. I could see now that in her hand she held a rein, attached to which were six collars.
Although Sybel had seen my feathers and felt them in her hands, they still made me feel shameful, and, sensing my reluctance, she unhooked one of her gigantic patchwork coats from the back of the door and offered it to me. It was of pantomime proportions and drowned me immediately as I lifted it over my shoulders, covering me from head to toe. It carried a smell of damp and loss, and wearing it made me feel like a dull clown. Nonetheless its heaviness offered me the secrecy I craved and I didn’t complain. Without my cloak, there was little choice.
She marched out into the yard with me and the rope trailed behind her; she flung it like a net over the dogs. After safely harnessing each one, she then passed the end of the rope to me.
‘Don’t worry, they know their way.’
The dogs, alert to their freedom, were not about to miss an opportunity, and yelping in delight they lunged forward through the iron gates without any hesitation.
‘They haven’t been out for a while, so they might be a bit … excitable!’ called Sybel, but it was too late; I was long gone.
Any hope of finding the Uccello Hotel quickly vanished in a whisk of paws and dust and the sound of panting dogs; all I could do was hold on tight. The street, although barely wide enough for the dogs to pass side by side, didn’t slow them down. Their skin skimmed the walls and I was dragged behind at such speed that I stumbled into sun-splashed squares, before plunging back into the narrow shadows of dark and winding alleyways. I felt as if I was back on the boat suffering the storm. If I had hoped to savour the magic of the place, I was sadly mistaken for there was no time for reflection. They whirled me around the city, stopping only once at a marble fountain, just long enough to quench their thirst. Then we were off again.
They ran like prize-winning racing dogs, ears back, paws scarcely touching the grou
nd. People veered off into doorways and alcoves, shrieking and shouting. A man walking a dog of his own raised his fists and shook them in the air, angry at nearly being toppled head first into the canal. A pair of black cats, in a quiet game of seduction, were quickly parted; the first scaled a wall and arched its back with a hiss, the other quivered into a crevice, its tail flicking behind in obvious annoyance. They led me out beyond the city to a long wide stretch of pavement running alongside the open water. In the distance, I could make out the rise and fall of land, smaller islands shimmering on the horizon. Up ahead, a series of steps rose steeply. In no mood for climbing, the dogs turned a corner with such speed and surprise that I scraped my elbow on the wall and almost fell to the ground. Tumbling back into the maze of streets, I felt the reins slacken and eventually they slowed to a gentle pace. I could finally breathe and my senses returned and things became familiar once more: the bakery on the corner, the window box filled with geraniums the colour of late afternoon, the door down the street with the muddy boots drying on the step, a sudden aching reminder of home. Then at last, Sybel’s crumbling wisteria-covered wall and the iron gates, standing open to welcome us back.
Exhausted, I flopped onto the bed, glad not to have sustained any serious injuries, but just a few sore muscles.
My hair felt knotted between my fingers and no amount of tugging seemed to loosen them. Bending down, I opened my case; the contents spilled out in a jumble and I had to rummage around before I could find my hair brush. Just as I clasped the smooth handle, my eye glimpsed something lying on the floor; it was the red pouch Professor Elms had given me. Lifting it up, I already knew what was inside from its shape and weight and as I emptied it onto the bed, the professor’s pocket watch slipped out like a tiny heart with no beat left inside. I held it in my hand for a moment, and then put it on top of the pouch and laid it down on the table right next to my pillow. The professor had given it to me, hoping that I would be able to set it to trigger a memory of my own one day. It was then that the enormity of leaving home settled upon me, and I felt a tear escape and roll down the side of my face into my hair.
As though she could hear my thoughts, Sybel’s voice startled me from another room. ‘Don’t worry, you are right where you need to be.’
Yes, I thought, but I still miss everything that I left behind.
CHAPTER 14
After revealing my feathers to Sybel, or rather, after having discovered them for herself, she hadn’t questioned them at all, and for that I was so grateful. They hadn’t seemed strange to her and I was learning quickly that things in this city were different, and nothing here was hidden away. Being towed through the streets by half a dozen panting dogs didn’t cause a stir, unless of course we got in someone’s way. But I had grown up as a secret and it felt too soon for my feathers to be on display; I hadn’t forgiven them for sprouting from my skin. I still heard the loud jeers and mockery of the circus tent, and, after all this time, they still couldn’t be silenced.
Unable to convince me that there was no risk involved, Sybel found a long white strip of gauze and bandaged my feathers down until I could hardly breathe. Now I would be free to conceal my secret under thinner, much cooler, fabric. But it was my mind I needed to heal, and the flow of shame that I needed to staunch and suture. Always, at the last moment, I would still unhook Sybel’s clown-like coat from its peg in the kitchen and slip it over my shoulders: a comfort I wasn’t yet ready to cast off.
In the warm hush of the kitchen, where secrets were tempted out of their hiding place, I shared my story with Sybel. Lighting the darkness, I told her about Lemàn and the whorehouse and of Sorren who had been the one, in the end, to buy me my freedom. Friend or foe? I still didn’t know the secrets she kept. Her story remained untold, but I knew one thing for sure; the petticoat I had seen in her hand that day didn’t belong to any doll. I spoke fondly of Professor Elms and finally I told her what it was that had brought me here – the search for my father – but she had already sensed it, in that all-knowing way of hers. If anything, she seemed to have been expecting me.
‘I do not really know who I am without him,’ I said.
‘Then you must find him and your answers.’
‘But where is he? I asked.
‘The Sky-Worshippers are difficult to find,’ she admitted with a heavy sigh. ‘They sometimes come to the city market, but no one knows when, not even me.’
‘Do you know a place called the Uccello Hotel?’ I asked. It was the only starting point I had.
She pondered for a while, then shook her head. ‘I don’t think I do … it doesn’t sound familiar.’
The disappointment showed on my face, and she offered immediate solace just as Lemàn would have done.
‘Perhaps it’s changed its name. Names are interchangeable here, as you know. It could have become another fancy restaurant to please the visitors who have started to flood this city, even more than the water. What else do you know of him?’ she persisted.
The risk of loss was greater if I didn’t reveal what I knew, so after some hesitation I told her as much as I could. I told her of Lemàn’s glimpse of him in a marketplace and I told her of migrating birds and of the cradle of warm wings. I didn’t need to tell her my father was more bird than anything else, and, besides, I wasn’t even sure if that was the truth. She could read between the lines, even if the space left between them was so small you needed a magnifying glass to see what was there. Sybel could read the letters before the words had even been written.
I grew silent for a while, wondering if I had revealed too much – Sybel was a stranger, yet she didn’t feel like one. She felt as soft and safe as the mother I had left behind. But I was so used to being hidden away, unseen and unheard that I suddenly felt like an open wound exposed, despite the bandages I wore. I shrank back into myself and Sybel again sensed my fear and filled my pause with her own secrets. Her story became my tourniquet. She explained that she hadn’t always lived here; some years before, she had fled ‘The Third Plague’ of her city. It had devoured the people in their hundreds and those who had survived were left scarred and forever haunted by the horror they had seen. Houses lay deserted, filled with bones and dust. Rotting carcasses of dogs and cattle lined the roads and the air had the fetid stench of death that lingered, clawing at your throat. Everyone knew someone who had died. Few lived. Sybel lost her grandmother and her mother to the disease. She had lost her father years before, when he had left to fight in the forgotten war and never returned. Although her mother half expected him to walk back through the door one day and still kept his slippers warming by the fire, Sybel knew it wouldn’t happen. She had seen it in a vision; his body cold and sprawled in a ditch, an empty socket where his eye used to be. Her mother had struck her across the face at hearing her describe what she had seen, but her grandmother nodded knowingly and soothed her sobs against her chest. She had seen it too; it was a gift they shared. Huge pits were dug just outside the city walls to collect the dead. With no one left to love, Sybel knew she must leave, and even though the city was under quarantine, one night she crept away.
‘I left with few possessions,’ she said. ‘What I had, I carried in a drawstring bag upon my back. A favourite teapot the colour of summer, several bundles of my grandmother’s healing herbs and my father’s slippers, still warm from the fire.’ She paused in memory. ‘I don’t know why I took them really; perhaps because they were the only thing left of his. In my pocket I had a wooden comb, and a small silver mirror. I cared about the way I looked back then. That was it; it wasn’t much, but it was enough. I left most of my memories behind; they were too heavy for me to carry. I hid my heart in a place so deep that the thickets grew over it and I tried to forget I ever knew how to love. Then the dogs came and snuffled it out.’
She told me about the morning when a boat carrying spices from the east dropped its anchor in the harbour and she saw her chance of escape. When she was sure there was no one watching, she gathered up her shawls and
her courage and crept on board. Like me, she sailed out of the harbour and for many days the sea became her home. By the time they discovered her, it was too late; there was no turning back. They threatened to leave her in the next port, so that evening she prepared a magnificent stew from what she could salvage from the storage barrels below deck. Then, unfastening one of the bundles of herbs, she sprinkled in her magic, and served the men their supper. The meal silenced them and they ate without chatter. Sybel watched with a satisfied smile on her face; she knew they wouldn’t be dropping her anywhere after that. It was only upon seeing the silver domes of this city decorating the horizon that she felt compelled to step on land once more. By then, the choice was entirely her own.
‘You see, it was something different that brought me here, and no matter how hard I searched for my father, I knew I would never find him.’
‘So, what was it then? What did bring you here?’ I grew curious listening to her story. Her words were spoken low and warm, like the fading embers of a sleepy fire.
‘I’ve never really thought about it,’ she said, sounding surprised by her own admission. ‘I loved the light and the air, but sometimes we are drawn to something for no reason or without explanation. I still don’t know, but this city is my home now and I’m glad I chose it. I would never go back.’
Not knowing of any Uccello Hotel, she had promised to enquire further. After her morning errands, she returned with bread and cheese and a jug of milk, but no answers. In the afternoon, a man came to drop off fresh bales of straw. As he unloaded them into the dog pen, she practically had him pinned against the wall while I hid round a door and watched him shake his head and scratch his whiskers in bewilderment.
‘It’s hopeless.’ I said, dropping my head onto the table with a loud clunk. ‘Maybe it’s just a story after all.’
‘Nothing is ever just a story,’ she said, lifting my head up and cradling my chin in the pad of her hand. ‘I sense you will find it, but not as it was when your mother and father met. There is much changed in this city, but a lot still remains the same.’