Feathertide Read online

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Perhaps it was the drink, but nothing seemed to make sense any more.

  ‘We crossed into a different world tonight, the world of water. This building is sinking; the lower floors are already completely submerged. That’s why they call it the Palace of Sirens. It belongs more to them than to us.’

  ‘It belongs to mermaids?’ I asked, in a barely audible whisper.

  ‘Yes. It’s a secret place and soon it will be lost.’

  Sybel disappeared again into the middle of an ever-increasing throng of people, laughing her heart into the air. Tonight, people’s mistakes were not their own. Everything was fantasy and nothing was forbidden. Regret didn’t receive an invitation to this party and blame didn’t follow you home.

  I heard a whisper in my ear; ‘Don’t be afraid of the boat,’ it said.

  I whirled round to see who had spoken, but through the jostle of warm swaying bodies it was impossible to know where it had come from. Perhaps the message hadn’t been meant for me or perhaps I had imagined it. Then I heard the voice again – ‘The mist is coming’ – but still I couldn’t tell who it belonged to, man or woman, for no lips moved.

  It was in that moment that my eyes found her. It was the girl from the window, and this time she was standing quite alone in the arch of a doorway. It was her hair that revealed her to me; the unmistakable brightness of August sunflowers illuminating the darkness. She was barefoot and her feet looked strange and unlike any I had ever seen before. Even from across the room I could see that each toe was webbed to the next. Just like me she was different, something else, something other. We were the same. Then she moved, like golden sunlight glinting between the dark cloaked trees. Then Lemàn’s voice returned; Beware of the woman in the forest, she said.

  Dizzy, I tried to push through the crowds and my hand fell upon a man’s back. He mistook my touch for desire and grabbed at my waist, but I pushed him away. When I looked again, she had vanished. Desperately, my eyes darted around the room, like minnows searching between the rocks for refuge. Gathering my cloak so as not to trip, I hurried towards the doorway. Peering into the corridor, I saw nothing, but then I heard a swish and to the left I caught sight of the end of her dark cloak and the bonfire spark of her hair disappearing around a corner. Compelled, I followed her into the shadows. The light had all but gone as I felt my way along the damp and musty walls, the sweetness of the strawberry replaced by the taste of the ocean’s salt on my tongue as I plunged deep into the unfamiliar darkness.

  CHAPTER 22

  Finally, I saw a light quivering from an open doorway and I could hear the unmistakable sound of her singing. This room was gloomy, lit only by a single squat candle resting on the table. Shelves rose from floor to ceiling, and a pair of ladders leaned against the books displayed there. This was a library, or rather the relic of one. A small staircase led up to a cluster of armchairs positioned in front of a giant, stone portico. It was from here that she sat, watching me like a curious cat.

  ‘I saw you outside my window.’ She spoke in whispers, her smile never leaving her face.

  ‘Yes,’ was all I managed as I drew closer. With each step, my feathers seemed to grow larger and tingle in anticipation of what was to come.

  ‘Sit,’ she said, gesturing towards a chair.

  Slowly, I moved up the stairs, each one groaning with age.

  On the table in front of her lay a book simply entitled The Sea.

  ‘I miss it so much,’ she said, gesturing towards the book. Then with a sigh deeper than desire, she turned to gaze out across the lagoon. Her curls waltzed gently in the breeze. She wore a cloak but no mask covered her face, and I wondered about the rule. Her expression was as still as water, but her eyes shone emerald like a sun-filled forest. Behind them was a story I wanted to hear. It was the first time I realised that being flawed could be so beautiful, and for that reason I found myself drawn to her.

  Up close I could now see her toes were webbed together by a semi-translucent, violet skin, too wide and awkward to fit inside any shoe. Even the large, heavy boots worn by the men down at the boat factory wouldn’t do. She was more real than the mermaid I had seen years ago inside the circus tent, but mermaids were no longer just a myth. She was hiding nothing, happy to display her difference. She was brave, and everything I wanted to be. Lifting my eyes back to her face, I realised she had caught me staring, and I quickly looked away with my cheeks aflame.

  ‘They help me to swim,’ she replied. ‘I never like to be far from water.’ Then she hesitated, contemplating something. ‘Do your feathers help you to fly?’

  My cloak must have loosened as I sped after her along the corridors, and shyly I pulled it tighter, even though now it was too late to stay hidden. Shaking my head, I felt shame shoot up my spine like a surge of mercury. My cheeks burned.

  She frowned, perhaps in disappointment. ‘Why are you hiding them?’

  ‘I’m not,’ I lied, folding my arms protectively across my chest. My words left my mouth too quickly to be believed. ‘I’m the same as everyone else here tonight.’

  She moved closer then and I could smell oysters and clams and shells and the salt taste of the sea washed over everything. ‘Your disguise is not just for tonight, though; is it?’ Her mouth was large and a delicate pink and she smiled wider, revealing small pointed white teeth. Her wide eyes swam in front of me now more like glittering green fish. I was no longer inside the make-believe world of a circus tent, with its trickery and spectacle. Here and now, everything could be believed, yet it felt just as dream-like.

  ‘You remind me of the sea,’ I murmured. ‘Is that where you’re from?’

  ‘And you remind me of the sky,’ she replied, not answering my question. ‘A beautiful, sunset sky.’ I felt her fingers in my hair and shuddered as she gently lifted my mask and pressed her lips against mine without warning or hesitation.

  Our survival centres on the mouth: breathing, eating, kissing. When she kissed me, I felt possibilities all at once. Joy and passion, anguish and despair. The ebb and flow of yes and no; keep going, stop, discover, run and hide. Gridlock, landlock, padlock, wedlock, but there is no greater snare than heartlock. I learned early that whores give their bodies to strangers without thought, but mouths must never meet if the heart is to be protected. It is the only way in.

  ‘What is your name?’ she asked, pulling away. A curl of her hair brushed against the skin of my arm and this time it was a shiver that shot up my spine.

  ‘Maréa,’ I whispered. ‘It means the tide.’

  ‘Maréa.’ Slowly she said my name back to me, letting the ‘ray’ sound in its middle soften and dissolve like sugar on her tongue.

  ‘What is yours?’

  ‘You are a Sky-Worshipper,’ she said, once again offering no answer to my question.

  ‘Am I?’

  She smiled. ‘You are filled with light and air and the sound of birds. I heard it on your lips and felt it in your hair.’

  ‘What do you know of Sky-Worshippers?’ I asked, barely above a whisper and yet still my breath made the candle flame flicker.

  She leaned in close again. ‘I know they move to a different rhythm, like me. Their voice is carried far through the air, so far it can even reach the depths of the sea. I hear the messages they share; simple yet secretive, just like the sound of water.’

  ‘Do you understand them?’

  My question seemed to break a spell and she stepped back.

  ‘I must go,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Go? Do you mean back to the party?’ I asked hopefully, but somehow I knew that wasn’t what she meant at all.

  ‘No.’ She laughed. ‘I didn’t come for the party.’

  ‘But you can’t go yet; the first boat isn’t arriving until sunrise,’ I protested. The dark sky with its luminous edge like the glint of a sharp blade meant several more hours of the illusion still remained.

  She laughed again, a deep throaty gurgle and climbed onto the high ledge.<
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  ‘I didn’t need a boat to leave this place,’ she said.

  ‘Please!’ I reached out my hand to try and pull her back.

  ‘Don’t be afraid of what makes you different. Lose your disguise!’ she said, unclasping her cloak and letting it fall into the folds of darkness.

  I edged forward – ‘Wait … what’s your name?’ – but it was too late as I felt the soft curls of her hair slip through my fingertips and then nothing – nothing but the salt carried on the breeze.

  The canal was a long way down, and the darkness revealed nothing. I rushed to get the candle and held it over the water, but there was nothing there, and nothing moved. All was quiet and empty and still. Apart from my heart fluttering free, uncaged by her kiss, already lost with nowhere to go.

  Returning to the party, I felt a mixture of peculiar emotions, relieved only when the first boat of the morning drifted towards the steps. I had made my excuses to go outside for some air, unbelievable considering the stench that clawed its way along the canal like a mangled half-dead creature. Nevertheless, I had to escape the walls of the palace and search the water for any sign that not everything tonight had been an illusion. I was beginning to think that the strawberries had been laced with something rich and potent, such was the strangeness of my encounter. Of course, there was nothing in the water. The ledge had been on the other side of the building, looking out to the lagoon and beyond that to the sea, but the canals were all interwoven, one running into another, and I hoped that their secrets would connect and that she would be carried this way. I sat down on the last stone step, the hem of my cloak sopping beneath the froth of the water. I was no longer mindful of how quickly it soaked into my boots.

  What had just happened? The truth was too absurd to trust. She had kissed me, that bit at least was real, wasn’t it? I rubbed my lips together, but nothing of her remained. My eye drew quickly back to the water; there was nothing to see but darkness, fathoms and fathoms deep. I was suddenly startled by the creak of a boat lit by the tiny flame of a lantern on a hook. Sybel with her ability to sense everything appeared just as the first boat moored.

  ‘If you sit so close to the water, a mermaid might just pull you in.’ She smiled in amusement.

  But it was too late; one already had and my thoughts dropped like pennies in a fountain, each one weighted with a wish.

  CHAPTER 23

  Waiting. All I ever seemed to do was wait. First, waiting to leave the cage of my room, then waiting to arrive in the City of Murmurs, then waiting to discover more about my father, and now waiting to catch another glimpse of the girl with hair the colour of sunflowers.

  There was something about her that stayed in my mind. She was different, like me, yet unlike me she didn’t hide her difference. I remembered her feet, and how strange they looked, yet she seemed proud to have them, like they were a blessing. The webbing looked too thick for any knife to slice through, and yet I somehow knew that she would never even have picked one up to try. I marvelled at her openness, and her bravery made me curious. Did I admire her or was it something else, something more? My growing fascination left me bewildered. The only visitors I had seen in the whorehouse were men; I never questioned it then, but now I wondered if what I felt was forbidden, and if feelings can ever really be forbidden.

  I hadn’t touched the transcripts since I had stolen them from Leo Hawkins’ desk, and now, with newfound determination, I swept them up and took them to the solitude of the roof. I wanted to make sense of the words for myself, but as I looked at them, it was just a mysterious pattern of unconnected symbols and lines and colours tangled across the paper, and it all blurred into one.

  From up here, I could see the roof tops of the City of Murmurs tumbling far into the distance like a gigantic unsolvable puzzle; their amber tiles varnished by the sun. Through the gaps and cracks between the walls of the houses, the blue haze of the sea flickered and a boat drifted away from the city. The sight of the boat meant that the lagoon waters had stilled, and so, bundling the papers under my arm, I raced downstairs to tell Sybel. My excitement quickly faded as I saw the door to the kitchen was closed and its latch dropped telling me she had a visiting querent. If I wanted to go to the university today, then I would have to go by myself.

  Frustration overtook fear, and an hour later, I was knocking upon the door to Leo Hawkins’ study. From within a voice called for me to enter, and, for the second time, I opened the door. The dark, damp day filtered very little light into the room despite the double glass doors being flung wide open into the garden. A lamp lit his workspace, and, spread out beneath it, were pages and pages of documents and files. Flexing his wrist, he looked up, his face a mixture of exhaustion and surprise.

  ‘It’s you,’ he exclaimed, peering at me over his spectacles.

  At first, his recognition confused me, but, as I stepped closer, I realised I recognised him too. He had been my pursuer.

  In my panic I backed into a table, toppling an egg from its stand. I watched in horror as it rolled towards the edge and then fell to the floor shattering into hundreds of tiny pieces. I gasped at my clumsiness and bent down to try and gather them up. Leo Hawkins kneeled beside me and gently placed his hand on top of mine.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I stammered.

  ‘Perhaps I should add damaging property to your list of crimes.’

  I flushed red; he somehow knew that I had taken the manuscripts. Catching my eye, he smiled reassuringly, and swept my carelessness into a dustpan before discarding it in the bin. ‘It’s only one of hers. I was going to have it for my breakfast.’

  At that moment, a plump chicken, the colour of summer freckles, appeared in a doorway across the room, which led into the gardens. It watched us with great curiosity and then flapped noisily onto the desk, where it settled clucking as content as a parlour cat.

  ‘I didn’t steal anything,’ I said firmly. ‘I just borrowed some documents, which I was planning to return, but then the storm came and it wasn’t safe.’

  ‘I’m more interested to know why you wanted them in the first place,’ he said.

  ‘Is that why you were following me?’

  He nodded. ‘I saw you leave my study and soon after I realised that some of my documents were missing. I never meant to scare you, but you move too quick for me and I never got the chance to explain.’

  ‘But how did you recognise me?’

  He reached out and lifted the edge of the oversized coat. His touch made me flinch, and I quickly stepped back snatching the fabric out of his hand. ‘Sometimes, the thing you wear to hide yourself is the thing that makes you easier to find.’

  He was right; the coat was much too big for me and too distinctive with its patches of purple and green – more bedspread than garment.

  ‘I want to find this man, and I thought the documents might help me,’ I said, pulling the crumpled photograph of my father from one of its pockets. ‘He is a member of the Ornis Tribe. Do you know them?’

  As he examined it carefully, I found myself studying him. I liked the open curiosity of his face and his gentle thought-filled eyes, dark as coffee beans and just as exhilarating.

  ‘I’m afraid this was taken before I arrived and I don’t know the man in it,’ he said, handing me back the photograph. ‘Professor Bottelli often spoke about the people who lived as birds, but sadly he is no longer here to ask. He said they live on an island that floats far out to the east of the lagoon. A place of trees and mist and water. Legend says it moves like a migrating bird, never staying in the same place for long. It has no fixed co-ordinates.’

  ‘Have you ever been there?’ I asked, my mind full of imaginings.

  He shook his head. ‘No, I wish I had, but I’m afraid it’s an impossible wish. It doesn’t appear on any map. Professor Bottelli believed it floated suspended in the air and not on water at all, hidden between swirls of mist and cloud and only accessible by wings.’

  ‘But there must be a way to find him,’ I demanded. ‘If
Professor Bottelli brought him here, then surely we can do the same.’

  Leo sat back down at his desk. ‘They visit the city from time to time, but the island is ever-shifting and there is no predictable pattern to when it will arrive. Some years they visit twice, then there might be no sign of them for years. It depends on the mist and the tide and the pull of the moon.’ He stretched back in his chair, his body long and lithe, and I couldn’t help but blush, before averting my gaze. ‘I have some more of his findings here, if you would like to see them,’ he asked, sifting through a pile of papers behind him.

  I nodded and settled onto a little armchair. Listening to Leo read my father’s words to me felt strange, mysterious, illusionary. I listened as his world slowly emerged from the pages on the desk, unravelled and untangled in this quiet little room on an island in the middle of a lagoon so far away from everything. This was the closest and the furthest I had ever been to what I wanted. I longed for Lemàn to hear these words too as they flew around the room, finally released from years of captivity. Leo told me all about the language they spoke with its varied whistles and warbles, some ear-piercingly loud, others soft little chirrups. Sounds loud enough to be heard over the rush of a waterfall, through the torrents of rain, carried high above the icy tips of the mountains and dropped into the deepest cave. The language of the birds bloomed in full colour.

  I learned the tribe wasn’t migratory, preferring instead to remain on their island, following its movements, strengthened by its mists. Its members had excellent vision and hearing, and could sense a change in the weather hours before it arrived. I thought back to the storm on the boat, and how I had been able to sense it before anyone else. I smiled at how much it was all making sense. I did have the instincts of a bird, and for the first time I saw it as a gift. According to the notes, their wings made a fast, clicking sound when rubbed together, usually in happiness, and their feathers bloomed and fluffed in fear or excitement, or desire. Feelings I was beginning to recognise.