The Promise of the Child

Part 20 (updated daily)

'Like I said to Impatiens, it could have been one of us, just far away.' The make-believe had endured for far too long. Lycaste didn't think he had the creativity to stand up to further questioning.

Elcholtzia frowned. 'That would be the likely explanation.'

'A person could hide in the Province and we'd never see them,' suggested Impatiens. 'Easily.'

'So there might be someone around?' asked Lycaste cautiously, not meeting Elcholtzia's eye.

'Exactly what did you see?'

Lycaste had no choice but to own up. 'I didn't actually see anything.'

'You told me you saw someone,' said Impatiens, exasperated.

'I felt stupid. It was more of a feeling. Like someone was watching me.'

Impatiens threw his hands up in despair.

'I didn't ask you to mention it.'

'Shush, Impatiens,' said Elcholtzia softly. 'People see things from time to time. Things they can't explain.'

'Like who?'

'Musa claims he met a dwarf up Mount Gebiz. Abies saw it, too.'

'A dwarf?' Impatiens smiled. 'You mean a little person? It was probably only that bore Jotroffe.'

'Well, I don't know about that. But Ipheon saw someone last year, too, or thought he did. A yellow gentleman, strolling in his garden. Nobody he knew. He went in to fetch his daughter, thinking they had company, but when he came out the man was gone.'

'Do you believe in ghosts, Elcholtzia?' Lycaste asked, speaking before he'd had time to review his words.

'You're thinking of Pentas's stories?' Elcholtzia sighed. 'Superstition. Ghosts are of no more danger to you than the smoke in my hearth.'

'What if there was someone?' said Impatiens, blowing on the mist rising from his tea.

'Someone deliberately hiding from us? Why would they do that?'

'Any number of reasons. He could be a robber, a thief, someone out to snatch maidens.'

Elcholtzia set his mouth. 'We don't get those sorts of people down here.' He directed a bony finger at Lycaste. 'It's the boy's imagination.'

'Indulge me.'

'Hypothetically, then, the person may very well be lost. He or she might have come far, possibly en route from the port to Kipris or another island. It's possible they would be frightened of us, not knowing what we're like or how we'd be inclined to treat strangers.' Elcholtzia finished his bowl of tea, pouring another from the pot without delay. 'But that's conjecture. The actors don't come back this way until Atuminter, so we'll hear about visitors on the roads then.'

'What if he didn't take the road?' Impatiens asked. 'There are plenty of other ways through the Menyanthes.'

'Everyone takes the road.'

'Maybe they don't want to get in anyone's way or trouble us for hospitality,' suggested Lycaste. Someone lost in the wilderness could survive indefinitely in any Province; travellers were just as likely to gain weight in the hot coastal lands, where food drooped from every branch.

'Then they're not lost, and we need not trouble ourselves.'

'How about a sign?'

Elcholtzia's orange face turned to Lycaste.

'We put up a message somewhere.'

'Saying what?' Impatiens asked, a smile forming.

'I don't know.'

'There's nobody here, Lycaste.' Elcholtzia stirred and got to his feet, all dangling, wasted nakedness beneath the wiry grey hair of his belly. He went to the pantry, clearly wishing an end to the debate.

'You'd have to write the message in every language,' said Impatiens. 'If there's a lost traveller roaming the forest and peeking in at us at night, he won't speak Tenth, or probably Ninth or Eighth, will he?'

Lycaste hadn't thought of that. When Pentas first arrived from the Seventh, far to the north-east, her muddled grasp of their language – in essence the twin of her own, featuring only minor alterations in grammar and spelling – had indicated once again how impossibly intricate the grand voice of the world was, that the smallest change might require years of extra practice. Eranthis's own Seventh-tinged accent still sounded faintly ridiculous, and she'd lived with them far longer. The moulding pressure of countless, unknown millennia had gifted Meliuskind a library of nearly three hundred precisely attenuated words for every noun or adjective. Writers of fiction could craft subtler images than any master painter, the range of tools at their disposal wider and finer. Lycaste, more briefly educated even than Pentas, knew only a fraction of his own immeasurably expressive tongue, and smaller still was his command of the ruling dialect, the language of the First, which his father had struggled for years to teach him in the hope that Lycaste would one day make something of himself. Though he spoke a global language, someone three Provinces away would have to work very hard to understand him, and First, the speech of power, sounded like lyrical drunken rambling in comparison.

'The sign would have to be enormous, or we'd need to make plenty next to each other,' continued Impatiens. 'Are you going to do that?'

'Forget I said anything.' Lycaste was growing tired of the ridicule and wanted to leave. The light had slanted to a rich ellipse since they arrived, mellowing the reflected colour in the smoky room. He'd missed his afternoon nap.

Impatiens stretched to make sure Elcholtzia wasn't about to return to the withdrawing room. 'Look here, do you think I should tell him about our little venture or not?'

Lycaste didn't care. As far as he was concerned, Elcholtzia could take his place on the boat. 'Why are you asking me?'

'He might object.'

'And if he does?'

'I suppose you're right. He's not my father, just as I am most certainly not your mother.'

Lycaste shook his head, watching a butterfly that had alighted on the curved windowsill. It flexed its trembling wings in the afternoon sun, casting a sharp, translucent bow-tie shadow. With each fragile movement, patterns on the wings changed colour, like their own skins. The tips, green and dazzlingly leopard-spotted, flashed scintillating blue, while tawny strips of orange closer to the creature's body became sweeps of violet.

'If you're debating whether to tell me about the shark, you're wasting your time,' came the old man's voice from the pantry, interspersed with the clink and clatter of dishes. 'Eranthis visited me this morning and told me all about it.'

Impatiens clenched his teeth, shaking his head. 'And what do you think?'

Elcholtzia arrived carrying a jug and saucer, placed them next to the bowls with a sigh. He shook his head.

Impatiens waited. 'That's it?'

Elcholtzia noticed the butterfly still sitting on the windowsill and looked sadly at it. 'I never told you about poor Sabal, then?'

'Who was that?' asked Impatiens, his eyes suddenly widening. 'The woman who was eaten?'