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

man came along after supper, and shook Venn’s hand. Said he’d known Venn ‘as a puppy’ (translated Shrin). And how were Jotto and the chickens?

This morning I was down watching the vrabburrs, when I saw two girls, both with flowering hair. One had white flower hair, one blue.

I saw another cat too, with markings round the wrong way – white with a ginger under-stripe and tail.

‘Shrin, she experimented here, didn’t she?’

‘Ustar?’ (That’s what they call her.) ‘Yes, she did. The village has many abilities.’

‘Abilities? Flowers instead of hair—’

‘With hair,’ said Shrin firmly. Then she took me over to a neighbour, and said something laughingly to this woman, who in turn laughed.

And then this woman—

This woman cleared her throat – I’d heard her speak, she sounded quite normal – and then she sang like a bird. I mean birds. I could hear finches and blackbirds, nightingales, larks – and other things, all going at once, even those yellow birds that go clink.

We’ve been here two days. Venn’s been talking a lot with Burand, and the elders of the village, Old Ladies and Gentlemen.

I wanted everything to drag on anyway. No rush to get to that Star.

Then Venn came in, just before supper, to my little room, where I was talking to Flollu.

‘Claidi – can I sit down?’

‘Try that stool carved like an anteater – What is it?’

He looked awful. As if all the good stuff of the village had been drained out of him very fast. And a lot more with it. He looked – looks – empty. And afraid.

‘You don’t understand the language here. I’ve kept hearing them say things like When she was here, and then when she came back.’

‘You mean your mother? Well, she came here a lot, came back a lot, when she was working on the Star—’

‘No, not like that. It’s their tenses.’

‘Sorry, what?’

He scowled. The scowl faded. He was too distressed to be annoyed with my lack of education. ‘Past, present, that sort of thing.’

‘Mmm?’

‘Claidi, they said, she came back. I thought I hadn’t understood, myself. I’m rusty with their language. But I had. Came back in the sense of stayed. Not left.’

‘– What?’

‘Is still here.’

We both sat there, staring at each other.

At last he said, ‘What I haven’t grasped is if they’ve told her I’m here. I get the impression they haven’t. Can’t. But when I got it straight, I said, Let me see her. And without hesitation they said, Yes, when would you like to?’

The warm evening was cold, for me.

‘Is she in the Star?’

‘No. It’s a building on the flamingo lake.’

‘You’re going?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

Would I?

‘I don’t know. I never knew Twilight. I’m not even sure she is my mother. But if she was, she left me because she had no choice. I don’t – I haven’t a quarrel with her.’

He put his head in his hands.

Then he got up and walked about such a lot the wooden floor groaned, and Flollu gave a sort of snake sneeze and rippled out.

‘They said they’d row me out tonight, after supper,’ said Venn. ‘So I won’t be eating supper.’

‘No.’ My stomach too was churning.

Ustareth – here.

The Ustareth.

‘Claidi – will you come with me?’

‘Me?’

‘For all the worst reasons. I’m afraid to meet her. Afraid of what I’ll say and do – what I’ll feel. Afraid I won’t believe afterwards I saw her at all.’

‘Isn’t there a chance you and she might – make it up?’

‘No,’ he said. No rage. Just – an empty space.

HER

A tall villager rowed us over through afterglow and matching flamingoes.

The water here was thickly-smooth as milk.

It was an island, small. Trees already heavy with night, and a house only visible between them. The house had a pointed roof, with indigo tiles, now turning black. No lights, no lit windows.

‘Is she there?’ Venn asked.

‘Yes,’ said the villager. I knew that word by now at least.

‘She doesn’t put on the lights – or light a lamp.’

‘No, Venar Yllar.’

Venn was like stone. Stone-voiced. Inside, I thought, churning like I was; worse, of course, much worse.

The boat scraped in on pebbles. Two or three more flamingos flushed up from the shore and flapped away.

We got out.

‘Better wait,’ said Venn to the villager.

The villager shook his head. He said something and Venn said shortly, ‘Oh, all right.’

‘Where’s he going?’ I asked, as the man rowed off.

‘He says he’ll sit on the lake in his boat. Come back when we signal. Our meeting is to be that private.’

The Star had risen. It was already going away, in over the jungles, towards the Rise. Shadows lengthening and closing like doors.

Venn turned and strode up the shale towards the dark house in the trees.

There was no door. That was the first thing. All the windows were one storey up. Then, round the far side, fumbling now in blackness and starlight, there was a stair, which led up to one long window above. He put a foot on this stair, and the hard light came on, blinding us both.

Perhaps I should just have kept quiet, but I thought I ought to suggest this: ‘Venn, if we get in, and it’s her house – suppose the rooms move?’

‘Bar jar, lak sush,’ he grated.

I’m fairly sure this means, Shut up you *** fool. So I shut up.

The light was in a glass tube by the window, and we went up to the window pane, and looked through into a dark hollow with a floor that gleamed like water. There was no furniture in the room, but a big something crouched there—

‘What’s that?’

‘Claidi. It’s a box.’

There was no handle on the door. But after he spoke, the door just opened itself.

‘It responds to a voice,’ he said.

‘Your voice.’

‘It might have done.’

He walked in as I hung back, but then I thought the door might shut him in and me out, so I dived after.

I expected a vrabburr or something behind every object, every curtain or screen, or chest. Nothing was there though, not even a mouse, or a spider