Page 73 of The Bedlam Stacks

We waited a while longer, watching the forest back the way we had come, but nothing else human disturbed the pollen. The silence began to sound less like silence. It had the ordinary clicks and creaks and hoots. The trees were so big that the wooden sound any tree will make in a place of varying temperature was more like muttering. Sometimes, when it turned to a staccato rumble of settling bark, it sounded like arboreal laughter.

‘Can you see any?’ he said at last. ‘Ducks, I mean.’

I let the current of the lake spin me. I hadn’t seen them at first because they were smart and black, and they blended neatly with the shadows in the pollen glow, but there was a little flock of them in the reeds on the other bank. He nodded when I pointed.

‘I’ll see if I can get one.’

I wanted to say it was all right, I wasn’t hungry, but I was. I let my cheek rest against the rock to watch. My hands had started to shake.

One of the ducks had wandered closer to us, away from the others. Raphael eased up to it and it seemed not to mind. He clapped his hands hard by its head and it squawked and exploded. Or rather, it went up in white blue flames, and within about four seconds there were no feathers left, only a roasted carcass. He lifted it out of the water and tore off a leg.

‘It’s cooked, try it.’

‘What . . . in God’s name was that?’

‘It’s how they make glass eggs. They’re full of flammable chemicals and then when the time’s right . . .’ He opened his hand to mime an explosion. ‘But if you startle them they go off pretty well too.’

‘They’re phoenixes.’

‘I suppose.’

‘And you haven’t made a fortune exporting them because?’

‘I haven’t got your fine criminal mind. Eat your phoenix. Christ,’ he said suddenly, stock still.

I jumped when I saw the markayuq. She was standing on the edge of the lake, just where the hotter water tumbled down over the glass.

‘Can’t believe we didn’t see that before,’ I said. It was unsettling, not to have seen it, and I looked round again, expecting Martel and his men to be waiting for us to notice them beyond the island. They weren’t. ‘Well. I’ll do the eggs.’

‘No, hold on.’ He went to the statue and unwound a length of string from its wrist, ran some wax down it – he always had some in his pocket – and started to flick knots into it, as fast as a fisherman tying netting, until most of the string was taken up. He wound it back round the statue’s wrist. When he saw me watching, he shook his head slightly. ‘Just a prayer. Give me the eggs, will you? Don’t go too close to her.’ He took the eggs carefully, but he looked unhappy as he carried them towards the hotter water.

‘Don’t burn yourself,’ I said, anxious now.

‘It doesn’t matter if I do.’

‘I talk to the air. Just because you can’t feel it—’

I was cut off by more gunshots close by. I jerked behind the boulders again, but no bullets hit the island or the water. Raphael came back.

‘They’re going to spark the pollen in a minute—’

Exactly as he said it, the pollen ignited. It was like a flour bomb and I saw the edge of the flame race outward. It stopped when it reached the edge of the water, because there wasn’t enough above the stream to maintain any flame, and in its wake it left darkness. Light did needle down through the canopy in tiny, fishing-wire beams, but not enough to see by. Raphael pulled himself up on to the island.

‘Martel, you idiot, stop shooting before you set fire to the whole forest! Get over here.’

Nothing happened for a moment, except that the markayuq on the bank lifted her head. It was because he’d moved, but it looked for all the world like she recognised the sound of Spanish and didn’t wholly approve.

Men came out of the dark, five or six, some patting at cinders on their sleeves. One was Martel.

‘I’ll get you out of here if you leave us alone,’ Raphael said tightly.

‘Excellent,’ said Martel. ‘Come along, gentlemen. What have you done with Mr Tremayne?’ he added as he waded across.

The island was too little to hide on for long. ‘He’s here. Touch him and I’ll walk you straight back the way you came.’

‘Yes, no need to labour the point. Help me up.’

Raphael pulled him up on to the rocks and Martel squeezed his shoulder, pleased to see him despite everything and, I thought, reminding him who he belonged to. Around him, the other men were climbing up too. They looked rattled, and a couple of them were singed from the pollen blast. Here and there on the edge of the lake the grass smoked. None of it looked serious enough to set off the trees, but it was plain that was only luck. They set their guns gingerly against the whitewood tree.