Wolf Star Rise: The Claidi Journals Book 2, Tanith Lee [desktop ebook reader .txt] 📗

called the Wolf Star, but it isn’t a star.’

‘What is it?’

We watched as It went on rising into the height of the east, and at the same time drew nearer.

‘I don’t know, Claidi. But she used to go there to do her work. It’s on the earth by day, on a high plateau in the jungle. By night, up it goes, as you see, moves round the sky, returns in the morning before sunrise. She’d be gone for days. I mean, when I was an infant, and the rest of the time she was with me. Days and nights. So she must also have travelled in it. Up there. It goes much higher than a balloon, do you realize that, Claidi?’

‘Yes.’

‘She never took me to see it. Let alone sail in it. But she talked about it, once or twice. It sounded magical. It’s only mechanical. All the mechanical controls are in it that make the Rise – how shall I say – run. Things to do with the food machines, even the way we use the waterfall for power. The rooms moving, that too. All are somehow worked – from up there.’

‘Do you think – does she live on the Star?’ I gasped.

‘She might have. But no, I think eventually she just arranged it to work by itself, like everything else. I think when she left she went far away. As far as she could get.’

Our heads were tilting back, to watch the Star rise ever higher.

The owl, turned to silver, slept. Only – it didn’t. Dolls don’t.

(I’d puzzled how he’d trained it to steal my book. Obviously, he’d only had to set it.)

‘Why are you telling me all this, Venn?’

‘You break rules,’ he said, dreamily. ‘You break machines, don’t you?’

He meant I’d broken, defaced the dice in the Wolf Tower.

I went cold.

‘Why would I?’

We were looking at each other. Straight into each other’s eyes.

‘To find your way home. To get back to your Hulta people. And him.’

HOW WE LEFT THERE

We got out of the library soon after, went down the great stair to the first landing. The black book was left behind for the hairy machines to replace. Venn brought the other book, hers.

On the way down, the owl flew round him twice. Then flew away.

Grem cooked supper on the landing. Fireflies appeared from nowhere, as if attracted to the brazier flames.

‘We’ll have some sleep. Get up and go all the way down when the Star comes back over, before dawn. An early start. Then we can arrange things. For the journey’ Venn. He was very organized. In control. It was all his plan now, and Grem and I were just being swept along. Perhaps that was fine for Grem.

‘I want to talk about this,’ I said.

‘Do you? What’s to talk about?’

‘All of it.’

‘Claidi, you’ve never struck me before as painstakingly slow and thorough.’

‘Haven’t I?’

‘All right. Say what you want.’

‘Well, thank you.’ So I said what I wanted. I said that he seemed to think we could set out from the Rise, go through the jungle, find the Star (handily parked on some plateau or other), nip into it, get me to smash it up – because I’m good at that?

‘Is that what you thought I meant?’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Not quite.’

‘If,’ I said, ‘the Star is some sort of sky-ship(?) and has machines in it that somehow work the palace, won’t they be difficult to damage? Besides which I don’t see myself doing that, somehow. In the Wolf Tower I destroyed – tried to – the dice and records of names – for a purpose. But if the things on her ship-star are broken, what will happen here?’

‘The rooms will stop moving about, at the very least.’

‘The food machines may stop too – the light. Even the water may be affected—’

‘How housewifely you are,’ he jeered.

‘Human is the word you’re looking for.’

‘Oh my.’

‘No, Venn. What about Grem and Jotto and Treacle – and all these animals that come and go—’

‘Not everything we eat comes from machines. Haven’t you noticed the gardens are bursting with fresh fruit and veg. There are even tea bushes, and Treacle is an expert at picking and drying the leaves. Jotto is a master-cook, despite anything he says. Even I can bake bread. As for the animals, they really don’t need us. They’re terribly good at surviving without people.’

I said, ‘What about the little animals in the enclosure?’

‘You thought they were cute? They get out all the time. Jotto goes mad finding them. They’re happy in the gardens, and I’ve seen them band together and frighten off a monkey. People – well in fact, people rather cramp an animal’s style.’

I decided not to hurl my plate at him. (Grem came quietly and took it from me anyway.)

‘As for the light, we have lamps and candles. As for the water, most of the taps run straight off the waterfall. Apart from that, none of us might want to stay.’

‘I see. So after I ruin the ship-thing for you, I’m to take myself off home, as you put it, though I don’t see how. While the rest of you bounce away in other directions. Is that it?’

He laughed, that way he does, low and soft. Somehow it ended my anger.

‘You haven’t seen what I mean, Claidi. I explained all wrong.’

‘I haven’t, no. No?’

‘I didn’t really mean smash the Star machines. Just – break their routine. Use them. Think about it. Apart from anything down here, what does the Star actually do?’

‘Rises and goes down.’

‘And crosses the sky. Both ways.’

I thought. ‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Yes, Claidi. Perhaps it’s possible to make it go another way – any way you want.’

‘Across the sea—’

‘Why not?’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know. We have to get there, get into it, and see.’

‘We have to.’

He sat back, clasping one knee. His legs are long. Nemian used to sit like this, looking like this. And Argul. Probably lots of men, and women, do. Why do there only seem to be these three men in the world?

‘Well,