Mire

Chapter 6

That night I slept on a sofa filled with goose down. I bit through the stitches and pulled out the downy feathers until I was sure that they weren't pricking me on purpose. I slept badly. The wind did not howl here, and the air was not full of sharp-tasting smoke. The moonlight burned through my eyelids.

The beautiful lady woke me before dawn, and we tiptoed back into the carriage. A house that large must have had servants, but the only person who saw me was the coachman. The mansion had been a silhouette at sunset when we arrived and a shadow at dawn when we left. I had not been given any food, only water, and no clean clothes to sleep in. It was as if I had not been there at all. Emma was very nervous, and her tense shoulders only relaxed when the mansion was miles behind us.

Everything was so exciting that I did not ask Emma about the need for secrecy. All I wanted to know was where we were going next! Our coachman stopped to water the horses, and he brought us pies from the coach house. I took a huge bite and burned my tongue on the steaming meat. Emma picked at the food with her fingers.

It was the only time I saw her without her gloves on. A second scar ran along the top of her right hand. She saw me looking and her face took on an odd expression. I could not read her at all. Was she angry at me, or had she burned her mouth, too? Perhaps she was happy, or tired, or amused. Her face was so blank that she could have been feeling all of those things, or something else altogether.

"What happened to your hand?" I asked.

"Don't speak with your mouth full." She returned, and that was it. When the coachman returned we threw the wax cloths out of the windows and sat in silence for the rest of the day.

The air began to smell odd. I pulled the window shutter down a little to look out. I could not see anything unusual, but the scent was so peculiar that I was sure there must be something there. Emma smiled at me for the first time all day, and pointed towards the horizon. I squinted, and I realized that the fields stopped long before they ought. It was as if the sky was suddenly much closer, and the horizon was near enough to touch. I gasped and stretched my hand out. An odd moistness crossed my palm.

"It's the sea." Emma explained, "We're at the top of a cliff. When we get to the bottom you'll see it properly. It's a big lake full of salt." she closed her eyes, "I've missed that smell."

The 'big lake' was a vivid blue-green. It swarmed with birds which screamed mockingly at each other. One of them dropped out of the sky like a stone and fell into the water. I gasped and gripped the window sill until the creature surfaced. It bobbed smugly on the waves. I sat back, feeling foolish. The birds were obviously just big ducks. I said that I could not see the horizon, but it was not true – the flat, shimmering water was broken by hundreds of tiny islands. Beyond them the sea grew deeper, as grey as storm-clouds, and twice as treacherous.

It just kept going! My jaw dropped. The carriage rattled into a village and stopped right next to the water. There was a sheer drop from the road to the water. I flattened my back against the carriage and tried not to look down. One of the men who was loitering on the dock laughed in a voice that was as rough as his weathered face.

"Clay." Emma took my hand and coaxed me away from the road. We walked onto a long wooden platform. It rested on posts which held it out above the sea. For a dizzying moment I thought that it just kept going, and that we would walk over to one of the distant rocks. We stopped, and the woman spoke in a low voice to one of the salt-faced men. He scooped me up and carried me down a steep ladder to a boat.

Emma had to stop me from leaning over the edge. I did not weigh enough to capsize us, but I was so fascinated by the breathing water that I was in danger of falling in. She sat me on her lap and told me about the dangers of the sea and about the people who died on their way from the Mainland to the island. For the rest of the journey I sat bolt-upright on my seat and shivered whenever the swell grew too high. Instead of looking at the deadly sea, I stared back at the disappearing shore. The mountains looked like jagged teeth, piercing through the writhing water into the sky. I felt dizzy when I looked at them. The immense peaks and deep valleys we had spent two days travelling through looked like anthills.