Weaveworld

I

CAL, AMONGST MIRACLES

1

rue joy is a profound remembering; and true grief the same.

Thus it was, when the dust storm that had snatched Cal up finally died, and he opened his eyes to see the Fugue spread before him, he felt as though the few fragile moments of epiphany he’d tasted in his twenty-six years – tasted but always lost – were here redeemed and wed. He’d grasped fragments of this delight before. Heard rumour of it in the womb-dream and the dream of love; known it in lullabies. But never, until now, the whole, the thing entire.

It would be, he idly thought, a fine time to die.

And a finer time still to live, with so much laid out before him.

He was on a hill. Not high, but high enough to offer a vantage point. He got to his feet and surveyed this new-found land.

The unknotting of the carpet had by no means finished; the raptures of the Loom were far too complex to be so readily reversed. But the groundwork was laid: hills, fields, forest, and much else besides.

Last time he’d set eyes on this place it had been from a bird’s eye view, and the landscape had seemed various enough. But from the human perspective its profusion verged on the riotous. It was as if a vast suitcase, packed in great haste, had been upturned, its contents scattered in hopeless disarray. There appeared to be no system to the geography, just a random assembling of spots the Seerkind had loved enough to snatch from destruction. Butterfly copses and placid water-meadows; lairs and walled sanctuaries; keeps, rivers and standing stones.

Few of these locations were complete: most were slivers and snatches, fragments of the Kingdom ceded to the Fugue behind humanity’s back. The haunted corners of familiar rooms that would neither be missed nor mourned, where children had perhaps seen ghosts or saints; where the fugitive might be comforted and not know why, and the suicide find reason for another breath.

Amid this disorder, the most curious juxtapositions abounded. Here a bridge, parted from the chasm it had crossed, sat in a field, spanning poppies; there an obelisk stood in the middle of a pool, gazing at its reflection.

One sight in particular caught Cal’s eye.

It was a hill, which rose almost straight-sided to a tree-crowned summit. Lights moved over its face, and danced amongst the branches. Having no sense of direction here, he decided to make his way down towards it.

There was music playing somewhere in the night. It came to him by fits and starts, at the behest of the breeze. Drums and violins; a mingling of Strauss and Sioux. And occasionally, evidence of people too. Whispers in the trees; shadowed figures beneath a canopy which stood in the middle of a waist-high field of grain. But the creatures were fugitive; they came and went too quickly for him to gain more than a fleeting impression. Whether this was because they knew him for the Cuckoo he was, or simply out of shyness, only time would tell. Certainly he felt no threat here, despite the fact that he was, in a sense, trespassing. On the contrary, he felt utterly at peace with the world and himself. So much so that his concern for the others here – Suzanna, Apolline, Jerichau, Nimrod – was quite remote. When his thoughts did touch upon them it was only to imagine them wandering as he was wandering, lost among miracles. No harm could come to them; not here. Here was an end to harm, and malice, and envy too. Having this living rapture wrapping him round, what was left to envy or desire?

He was within a hundred yards of the hill and stood before it in amazement. The lights he’d seen from a distance were in fact human fire-flies; wingless, but describing effortless arabesques around the hill. There was no communication between them that he could hear, yet they had the precision of daredevils, their manœuvres repeatedly bringing them within a hair’s breadth of each other.

‘You must be Mooney.’

The speaker’s voice was soft, but it broke the hold the lights had on him. Cal looked off to his right. Two figures were standing in the shade of an archway, their faces still immersed in darkness. All he could see were the two blue-grey ovals of their faces, hanging beneath the arch like lanterns.

‘Yes. I’m Mooney,’ he said. Show yourselves, he thought. ‘How do you know my name?’

‘News travels fast here,’ came the reply. The voice seemed slightly softer and more fluting than the first, but he couldn’t be certain it wasn’t the same speaker. ‘It’s the air,’ said his informant. ‘It gossips.’

Now one of the pair stepped into the night-light. The soft illumination from the hill moved on his face, lending it strangeness, but even had Cal seen it by daylight this was a face to be haunted by. He was young, yet completely bald, his features powdered to remove any modulation in skin-tone, his mouth and eyes almost too wet, too vulnerable, in the mask of his features.

‘I’m Boaz,’ he said. ‘You’re welcome, Mooney.’

He took Cal’s hand, and shook it, and as he did so his companion broke her covenant with shadow.

‘You can see the Amadou?’ she said.

It took Cal several seconds to conclude that the second speaker was indeed a woman, the processes of his doubt in turn throwing doubt on the sex of Boaz, for the two were very close to being identical twins.

‘I’m Ganza,’ said the second speaker. She was dressed in the same plain black trousers and loose tunic as her brother, or lover, or whatever he was; and she too was bald. That, and their powdered faces, seemed to confuse all the cliches of gender. Their faces were vulnerable, yet implacable; delicate, yet severe.

Boaz looked towards the hill, where the fire-flies were still cavorting.

‘This is the Rock of the First Fatality,’ he told Cal. ‘The Amadou always gather here. This is where the first victims of the Scourge died.’

Cal looked back towards the Rock, but only for a moment. Boaz and Ganza fascinated him more; their ambiguities multiplied the more he watched them.

‘Where are you going tonight?’ said Ganza.

Cal shrugged. ‘No idea,’ he said, ‘I don’t know a yard of this place.’

‘Yes, you do,’ she said. ‘You know it very well.’

While she spoke she was idly locking and unlocking her fingers, or so it seemed, until Cal’s eyes lingered on the exercise for two or three seconds. Then it became apparent that she was passing her fingers through the palms of the other hand, left through right, right through left, defying their solidity. The motion was so casual, the illusion – if illusion it was – so quick, that Cal was by no means certain he was interpreting it correctly.

‘How do they look to you?’ she enquired.

He looked back at her face. Was the finger-trick some kind of test of his perception? It wasn’t her hands she was talking about, however.

‘The Amadou,’ she said. ‘How do they appear?’

He glanced towards the Rock again.

‘… like human beings,’ he replied.

She gave him a tiny smile.

‘Why do you ask?’ he wanted to know. But she didn’t have time to reply before Boaz spoke.

‘There’s a Council been called,’ he said. ‘At Capra’s House. I think they’re going to re-weave.’

That can’t be right,’ said Cal. They’re going to put the Fugue back?’

‘That’s what I hear,’ said Boaz.

It seemed to be fresh news to him; had he just lifted it off the gossiping air? The times are too dangerous, they’re saying,’ he told Cal. ‘Is that true?’

‘I don’t know any other,’ Cal said. ‘So I’ve got nothing to compare them with.’

‘Do we have the night?’ Ganza asked.

‘Some of it,’ said Boaz.

Then we’ll go to see Lo; yes?’

‘It’s as good a place as any,’ Boaz replied. ‘Will you come?’ he asked the Cuckoo.

Cal looked back towards the Amadou. The thought of staying and watching their performance a while longer was tempting, but he might not find another guide to show him the sights, and if time here was short then he’d best make the most of it.

‘Yes. I’ll come.’

The woman had stopped lacing her fingers.

‘You’ll like Lo,’ she said, turning away, and starting off into the night.

He followed, already full to brimming with questions, but knowing that if indeed he only had hours to taste Wonderland he should not waste time and breath asking.