The Stone Mage & the Sea (Books of the Change Book 1) Page 3

  The albino spat into the ground by Sal’s hand, then moved away. Sal watched his big feet recede with intense relief; he’d been expecting a parting kick for sure.

  “That’s better.” The man’s voice came closer.

  Sal checked that the albino had definitely left. He saw three boys and one girl, all, except the albino, with black hair and deep-dark skin, strolling away down the road--determinedly nonchalant, as though nothing had happened. None of them was the bilby-faced boy, the only other person Sal would have recognised.

  Then a hand was thrust at him from above, and he found himself staring into the strangest face he had ever seen.

  The old man had skin that had been weathered dark brown. Strands of straggly gray hair poked out the back of a very old cap. Pale gold ear-rings hung from the high points of both ears, which stuck out firmly as though on constant alert. His eyes were slate-gray. The man’s oddest features were his tattoos: tight-wound spirals on his temples; circles on either side of his nose, like an extra set of eyes; and an up-pointed triangle on his chin. All had been executed in black ink on his dark skin, and were very fine work, probably the finest Sal had seen in all his travels.

  Tattoos were mainly an Interior thing, like pale skin. They were as uncommon on the Strand as willy-willies. The only other person he knew who had one nearly as good, if not as intricate, was his father. It was much smaller, a green cross on the back of his father’s left hand.

  “Are you still with us, boy?” the man asked, his voice amused and light.

  “I--I’m sorry,” Sal stammered. Thinking, so much for staying out of trouble, he raised a hand and let himself be helped up.

  The old man indicated the four teenagers receding into the distance. “They’re not bad kids, really,” the old man said. “Just bored. Every year I pray the Selector will take the bright ones away before bad apples like Kemp can spoil them forever. If there is a Goddess, I hope she’s listening.”

  Sal suddenly found those gray eyes back on him.

  “Eh? Are you listening?”

  “Oh, um. Thank you.” Sal still didn’t know what to say beyond that. His benefactor wore a rough sackcloth vest and cotton pants, with leather sandals on his feet. He stood an inch or two higher than Sal, looked at least five times Sal’s age, and radiated an indefinable energy. Sal had never met anyone quite like him.

  “You don’t talk much,” said the man, nodding. “You’re too busy observing. That’s good. Still, come say hello to Shilly. She’s my apprentice, just over here.”

  The old man’s hand descended on one shoulder and gripped it tight. Sal couldn’t have pulled free if he’d wanted to.

  Shilly was a girl smaller than him, although he could tell she was slightly older, crouched by the side of the road and doodling in the sand with a twig. She didn’t seem to have noticed the incident, or was prepared to ignore it. Sal was intensely grateful for that.

  “Shilly, this is--what’s your name, boy?”

  The girl looked up expectantly. Her face was small and heart-shaped with high cheeks. Her muddy brown hair, bleached at the tips by the sun and held back in a ponytail by a thick brass band, looked like it hadn’t been washed for weeks. She wore a simple blue dress that was slightly tattered around the hem. Her feet were bare.

  Her eyes were the most intense green he had ever seen.

  “Sal,” he managed.

  “Hello, Sal.” Her voice was firm, almost challenging. Her dark toes dug into the sand beneath her, and she stood. “Are you from the dry lands?”

  “Of course he isn’t,” said the man, waving dismissively. “You’re no stone-boy, are you, Sal? Even though you have your family’s eyes.”

  “I do?”

  “Of course. As clear as glass. Only fools like Kemp--and the Goddess knows there are too many of them in this world--will not see what their eyes show them. You take after your mother, I’ll wager.”

  Something in Sal fluttered. “What do you know about my mother?”

  “I didn’t say I knew anything.” The old man sighed and touched a pendant around his neck. “There’s a storm coming.”

  Sal glanced up at the blue sky, thrown off by the sudden change in subject. An unruly flock of seagulls tumbled in the air above them. “Doesn’t look like it to me.”

  Still fingering the pendant, the old man said, “Tash says so, and Tash is never wrong. You have somewhere to stay?”

  Sal nodded.

  “Good. You’ll need it. The weather here can be fierce when it wants, like the locals. You need to be careful.” He raised an arm and gestured for the girl to join him. “Come along, Shilly.”

  “You’re going? But--”

  “We have work to do down at the market. Shilly and I were on our way there when we noticed you needed help, and we were already late.”

  “Bye.” The girl smiled at him over her shoulder, the light tips of her hair dancing on her shoulders. “Watch out for the scabs!”

  Sal didn’t know what she meant, but knew he owed the old man for helping him. “Thank you!” he called again as they walked away.

  The girl winked, then turned to watch where she was going. The old man said nothing.

  Left feeling scattered by both encounters, Sal stood in the middle of the road for a long moment. Something about the old man and his apprentice made him curious; the hints about his mother and Shilly’s knowing smile in particular. He considered following them to see what they did at the market, or maybe asking Josip about them. But following them could get him in more trouble, while asking the mechanic would mean explaining what had happened with Kemp. He would be embarrassed if his father found out from the mechanic rather than from himself. Besides, asking questions would be difficult when he hadn’t been told the old man’s name.

  He turned to continue north up the hill to the mechanic’s workshop. He hadn’t gone far when markings in the sand where the girl had been squatting caught his eye. She had been doodling, he remembered. Stepping across the road to take a closer look, he found himself staring at himself--a sketch that managed in only a few lines to sum him up perfectly. It was uncanny; she had captured him after only a minute or two’s study.

  The portrait was winking at him. Underneath, in simple block characters she’d written:

  MIDNIGHT

  Only then did he realize that Shilly’s hair color matched that of the first person he had glimpsed hiding behind the wall back on the other road. She and the old man had been following him before Kemp and his darker-skinned friends had attacked. The two of them hadn’t stumbled upon him by chance at all.

  Fundelry was getting weirder by the second.

  Footsteps behind him made him jump. He turned, thinking that Kemp and the others had come back.

  But when he turned all he saw was his father walking back into town with a broad smile on his tan-skinned face.

  “Hey, Sal. I’ve been working!”

  Sal felt a shiver of relief that he wouldn’t have to fight anyone. “That’s fantastic, Dad.”

  “It’s certainly welcome. What are you doing here? Still exploring?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Find anything interesting?”

  Sal opened his mouth, then shut it. He had fully intended to explain what had happened to him, but a fear of getting into trouble stopped him now the chance had arrived. His actions might not have brought a platoon of Sky Wardens down upon them, but they had certainly attracted a degree of unwanted attention. He was uncertain enough of his footing in Fundelry without getting his father offside as well.

  “Not really,” he said, erasing both the portrait and the message from the sand with a slight movement of one foot, wishing the entire incident could be as easily erased.

  “Good,” his father said, putting an arm around his shoulders and pulling him close. “Let’s go back to Von’s and get a proper meal
in our bellies. My shout, eh.”

  “Sounds great,” Sal said, letting himself be tugged along. It would be a definite relief to escape Fundelry for a while.

  Chapter 3. “A Life Among the Stones”

  None of his encounters with the locals left Sal’s mind as easily as he would have liked. He lay awake for hours that night, trying to sleep but reliving instead his humiliation at the hands of Kemp, the bizarre old lady in the market and everything the old man and Shilly had said.

  After meeting him on the road to Josip’s, his father had been as good as his word. They had gone straight back to the hostel and bought a home-cooked dinner--their first for a very long while, and tasting of salt, like their breakfast. Von watched them eat it with an amused expression. She didn’t seem so hostile, given the extra money in her hand. Sal’s father explained that Josip would find him odd jobs around the town as they arose, an arrangement that suited him, since he would have no single employer to whom he would owe notice if he decided to leave. The rate of pay was low but enough to keep them, with a small amount left over for repairs to the buggy and fuel.

  After the meal, Sal’s father went to talk to the local School, teachers about enrolment. While his father was gone, Sal helped Von clear the dishes and wash them in startlingly hot water.

  “Do you know a man with lots of tattoos?” he asked, drawing imaginary lines on his cheeks, forehead and chin. “Like this? And ear-rings?”

  Von pondered his description. “Can’t say I do, and I know most people around here.” Her gaze sharpened. “Why? You get into trouble today?”

  “No, nothing like that. I met his apprentice. Shilly.”

  “Oh, I know her,” she nodded. “You don’t mean old Lodo, do you?”

  He shrugged. “Do I?”

  “You must do, since she’s ‘prenticed to him. Can’t say I’ve noticed any tattoos, though.”

  Sal frowned. Maybe he’d imagined them, or they were easier to miss than he recalled. “What does he do?”

  “Nothing but cause trouble, if you ask some people. Alder Sproule’s been trying to run him out of town for years now, but Iphigenia--she’s the Mayor--she lets him stay. And I’m for that. Lodo does nobody harm and a whole lot of good--in little ways, if you know what I mean. This heated water, for starters. And that knife--it broke a year ago, but you’d never know it now.”

  Von clattered noisily at the sink as though there was more she could say but wouldn’t, while Sal tried to guess where the dry dishes went. Her hair was flame-red in the light of the sunset shining through the kitchen window. Dyed, he thought, although he couldn’t see any roots coming through. The color was too vivid to be real.

  MIDNIGHT, Shilly had written. What she meant by that, he wasn’t sure, but he was curious to find out. At the very least, he could ask her what she had meant that afternoon when she had told him to watch out for the “scabs”. If he saw her again. There was no guarantee that he would.

  “What are you looking at?” Von asked, her voice sounding like a chair leg scraping across slate tiles.

  He realized that he’d been staring vacantly at her, and stammered an apology. Before he could work up the courage to ask about Kemp, his father returned.

  They retired early and his father fell immediately asleep, as he had the previous night. After watching the lights in the square come on--and this time sensing an unexpected familiarity in the shadowy figure moving from each one as it flared into life--Sal sat up reading some old books he had found under Von’s stairs. Their quality was crude, and the subjects not what he would’ve chosen, but he so rarely had a choice that their novelty alone kept him up late, squinting in the wan lamplight. He wasn’t conscious of falling asleep, but the monotonously turning wheel of his thoughts finally did the job.

  There was Kemp, large and threatening, and the old man, powerless in the dream to stop the albino’s attack. School loomed like an ancient black keep, smelling of stone and weight, and all the charms and tattoos in the world couldn’t keep it away. Von burned in a fire while his father looked on, saying nothing. Shilly drew a picture of herself that came to life and dragged her away. A faceless woman in the misty distance looked lost and sorrowful, surrounded by looming pale blue giants with ice for eyes--and only as a single chime hauled him out of sleep did Sal realize that she was his mother …

  He sat bolt upright in bed, his heart pounding. The echoes of the bell--the simple tolling of the village clock marking the beginning of night proper--still rang in the air.

  Barely half-awake, he leaned forward. A bright moon stared back at him from the night sky outside. He shivered.

  MIDNIGHT.

  Climbing quietly out from under the covers, he tiptoed to the window, half expecting to see nothing. Below, standing in the center of the square, her face clearly visible in the town’s ghostly lights, was Shilly. She was looking up at his window.

  He stood frozen for a moment, wondering if he should wave to get her attention or go back to bed, and knowing he should do the latter. It was what his father would expect him to do. But he was torn. He had a hunch that she could help him. She might be his only chance to find out what was going on--why she and Lodo had been following him, and maybe why his father had brought him to Fundelry in the first place. They weren’t necessarily connected, but the fact that they might be made the risk worth considering.

  Shilly lowered her eyes and turned to walk away. That decided him. Hunch or not, he didn’t want her to think he was ignoring her, or that he’d been too stupid to work out her message.

  Grabbing his pants and coat, he tiptoed out of the room. Loud snoring came from one of the other rooms nearby, and Sal was careful not to make any sound as he ran down the hall and stairs. He winced when a step creaked underfoot, sure that Von would pounce on him. But she didn’t. He made it to the front door undiscovered.

  It was unlocked. He slipped outside and stood on the verandah, still holding his clothes. The noise of the sea was very loud in the cold night air. Waves boomed like falling mountains, sounding so close he almost expected one to crash down on him.

  The square was empty, but she was nearby. He could feel her, like something he had lost that needed to be found.

  “Psst,” said a voice from his left. He turned, and there she was, peering around the corner of the hostel.

  “Are you going to stand there half-naked all night, or are you at least going to put your britches on?”

  He looked down at his legs; they were very pale in the moonlight, almost luminous. His face was red, though, as he tugged his pants on and shrugged into the coat. He realized only then that he’d forgotten to grab something to put on his feet.

  “That’s better.” Shilly smiled at his discomfort. “Now you’re decent, we can get going.”

  “Where to?”

  “The old boy wants to talk to you.”

  “Why doesn’t he come here, then?”

  “Too open, I guess. He keeps his reasons to himself. All I know is, the sooner you get it over with the sooner I can go back to bed. That’s reason enough for me.”

  Maybe, he thought, but it hardly satisfied him. He would be gone longer than he had thought. What if his father woke up and noticed he wasn’t there? What if something happened to him? Alone in a strange town in the middle of the night with people he hardly knew, anything could go wrong.

  But somehow the words just didn’t come.

  “If you’re done arguing,” she said, “let’s get moving, eh?”

  He followed her down the side of the hostel and into the shadows. They didn’t go near any of the lights, but he was glad they were there. No matter where he went, he would know that the hostel was near the ring around the square, the brightest place for kilometers.

  He was very conscious of the patch of light in the sky behind him as she took him northwest out of the town and over a series of steep dunes rather
than along a road.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Shh. I’m concentrating.”

  With no conversation and little light, he focused on the smooth sand beneath his feet and how it contrasted with patches of sharp grass. There was a gusty, fitful wind. On it he could smell the sea and Shilly, the latter a spicy tang like rosemary with overtones of something sweet. His mouth tasted like sleep and he hoped his breath wasn’t bad.

  She stopped without warning and he bumped into the surprising boniness of her shoulder.

  “Somewhere here…” She rummaged through a dense clump of bushes. “I’m still not used to doing this at night, which is probably why he sent me. He’s always trying to--ah!”

  A shower of sand caught Sal unawares. He spluttered back a step and coughed, blinking furiously.

  “Oops, sorry,” she said, sounding genuinely contrite. “Look. We’re here.”

  He blinked through the sand in his eyes. Where a moment ago there had been nothing but the backside of a dune, there was now an open oval doorway taller than a person. Golden light glowed from inside, pale but seeming very bright to his dark-accustomed eyes. Warm air rushed over him.

  Shilly took one step across the threshold and waited for him to follow. When he didn’t, she grabbed his hand and tugged him inside.

  “You really need to be more assertive,” she said. “Otherwise people will never even know you’re there.”

  That’s the idea, he thought, but didn’t say it aloud. Instead he looked around the room as she closed the door behind them.

  They were standing in a small antechamber, roughly spherical in shape, which appeared to have been dug out of a hillside. The walls were reddish-brown too, more like soil than sand, and sealed with a clear glaze. Golden veins snaked through the glaze. Light flowed over the walls like honey.

  A tunnel led from the antechamber deeper into the ground. When the door had closed, Shilly dusted her hands and indicated for him to follow her.

  The tunnel was only a handful of meters long, but it felt as if it took him to a great depth beneath the surface of the earth. At the bottom, the old man was waiting for them. There, in a room furnished with cushions and low tables, surrounded by tongues of fire frozen in cages of glass and rocks that glowed every color of the rainbow, Sal made a small connection.