Page 76 of The Bedlam Stacks

Once I’d ducked out into the open, meaning to see about food, I found that the other tents – there were three and all open to let in the air – were empty except for Martel and Quispe. The others’ blankets were still inside, but the men were gone. After everything that had happened to them it seemed especially stupid for them to have ventured off the island without Raphael, until I saw the shirts and waistcoats hanging over the lowest branches of the trees on the lake bank, on the pollen side. There hadn’t been enough room for everyone’s things on the island’s small tree, and there were some clothes on the ground around the markayuq as well. She had dropped her arms now but they must have tried to hang things on her.

I frowned when I noticed that none of the blankets had been slept in. A few had been more or less shaken out but they held the last few square folds from having been fitted in packs. Watching the bank for any tall pollen trails, I lifted my shirt down from the tree. Although it smelled faintly of the sulphur in the water, it was dry and warm, like it had been in an airing cupboard. I stood holding it, surprised to be there and alive at the same time.

Raphael jerked awake. ‘Merrick?’

‘Behind you.’

He bumped back on to the ground again. His hair was auburn now. I blew the pollen near the tent flap to whirl it above his eyes. He waved his hand vaguely to say he was all right. I was still fastening my shirt when he sat up properly and came out into the light.

‘Where are the others?’ he said when he saw the empty tents.

‘Not sure. Their things are here.’ I rubbed at the rosary print on my arm, which still coiled across the anchor tattoo like rope. It didn’t go away, but then I didn’t want it to and stopped trying.

Raphael was looking at the clothes in the trees. I saw him fall still but I didn’t pay any attention until he pointed down into the water, where Hernandez was floating face down, livid red marks around his neck. He had just drifted into view from beyond the rocks. Without deciding to, I went close to Raphael again and dropped his dry shirt into his lap, not wanting him sitting there alone and half-dressed. When he turned his head, the pollen light caught in vaults of his throat.

‘I can’t see very well,’ he said softly. ‘Where’s the markayuq?’

I started to point to the statue’s outcrop on the bank, but the space was empty. I turned around once, thinking I must have lost my bearings, but everything else was where I thought it was: the tree, Martel, even the ducks and the roiling steam above the hottest part of the spring. The markayuq was gone and there was a patch of flattened moss where she had been standing.

In fact, though, she wasn’t gone. She was standing under our sapling whitewood tree. The hem of her robe dripped, the water beading on the well-waxed leather. I’d almost walked into her.

She caught my arm and slashed the pollen with her other hand to make it flare. It lit the anchor tattoo clear. She looked from it to my face and I saw her realise I was a foreigner, but she didn’t have time for anything else before Raphael tore her hand away from me. She held on and it left grazes across my arm, and there was a strange unwilling creak of stone before Raphael shoved me to the island’s edge.

‘Go, go now,’ he said.

I slung my bag and boots across and dived. The sulphur in the water stung in the new cuts and for a second all I could hear was my heart banging. When I twisted back in the water, she had moved again, was moving, across the island towards Martel and Quispe. The height of the rocks took her out of view. Raphael came after me. We were only just out of the water when a gunshot boomed and the ducks went up like firecrackers. The fires sent up sparks that ignited the sparse pollen above the island. I saw it burn, and when it was gone, there was a deep well of darkness around the little whitewood tree. I could make out a shadow near the trunk, but that was all, and it was impossible to tell if the shot had hit her or, if it had, whether a bullet could do any damage.

*

We slowed down eventually and the pollen flare faded a little.

‘There aren’t lots of markayuq all through the woods, are there?’ I said. My voice came hoarse. I’d had a lungful of sulphury water. ‘The ones from Bedlam followed us. Or she followed us.’ Dead wolves on the border; no wonder. They had come straight between the markayuq. Arm’s reach. ‘What happened to the others? It wasn’t just her.’

‘They would have had to stop when the pollen on that side burned away. They need it to see by. She got to the island before, though. She was there just after us—’

‘Why didn’t you tell us about them straightaway?’ I demanded, because I’d realised I didn’t care what or how. I was almost shouting. I was less angry with him than with how wrong I had been. He had listened to Clem and me prattle about clockwork and odd religions when right beside him were stone men listening too. St Thomas had walked in front of me and still I hadn’t thought it could be anything but a trick.

He stopped walking. ‘Why did I not tell the foreign expeditionaries about our very rare, very holy saints, which are from a place I’ve sworn to keep secret? And say I had. Unless one had walked in front of you, would you ever have believed me? I can’t make them walk. They almost never do. What was I meant to say, without sounding like another stupid Indian with stupid Indian neuroses? I sounded bad enough as it was, keeping you back from the border. If I’d sat you down and explained that the markayuq were real, you wouldn’t have listened to me even for as long as you did. I couldn’t have done anything that proved they were anything but good clockwork. Not without shoving one of you over the border, and they’re not slow.’ He glanced back. ‘Especially not her. She’s young.’

I wanted to argue, because in my mind I was much better than that, but he was right.

‘What are they?’ I asked at last.

‘Just people.’

‘But they stand outside all the time. They barely move, how—’

‘They’re like trees; they don’t need to move. They do if they want to. It’s just not often that they want to.’ He was quiet for a space. ‘Just . . . we’ll be fine. All we need to do is keep out of their way. From a distance you look right.’

‘Is it far now?’

‘No. A few more miles.’

I knocked his arm. ‘Well done, by the way.’

‘For what?’

‘You knew they’d do something to her eventually.’