The Unfinished Land Page 32

  The Crafter now spilled out of the krater and flowed around them like a huge wave crashing, then changing to a great forest growing all at once, and the Crafter surrounded Calybo, absorbed him within greater shadow, Reynard thought he saw, and the little girl again served as a conduit for this chain.

  He felt his insides fill with stars.

  Green stars.

  In the greater darkness, his head and heart brimmed with horror and exaltation. He did not see what became of Calafi, or of Valdis, or of Calybo. It seemed he was about to receive a gift—a very dangerous gift, on top of all the other dangerous gifts piped or funneled into him through that chain of hands.

  For an instant, he saw a wide black face, a woman’s face, mostly, with eyes the color of a full moon, and quite beautiful, but far more terrifying in her way than the Crafter. That face, for that instant, rose above them all—and he felt and heard Calybo’s voice die, and saw him turn into gray ash—empty of all, depleted.

  One just beneath the sky, now made stuff for mud.

  This was the only time Reynard ever saw that great dark face with moonlight eyes, and for that he was glad, and glad that he had seen so little of her.

  The krater and all beneath the tower was empty, and the stone walls of the maze had collapsed, leaving only marks where they had been.

  After a moment of utter, tingling shock, accompanied by a whirlwind of voices, he realized what he had been tasked with—his part in the last play—and what he would spend many lifetimes doing. Lifetimes passed through to him by the Eaters, with their fragmented memories, their knowledge in jumbled confusion, but at times . . .

  Still affecting. Still guiding.

  Which was the way Queen Hel had designed them, and the duty she had assigned to them. She must have known all along, if time meant anything to such. But her design, her circumstance, gave Reynard no more choice than being a fisherboy—less, actually.

  He pushed up from the smooth, cold stone, and smelled the last humidity of a great storm. The Crafter was covered with a broad shroud, a single figure spreading and drawing it down so that nothing of the frightful corpse of the ancient being could be seen. This was the final task of the magician’s bone-wife. And when it was done, she collapsed into sticks and ash and dust, and never again was such a candle seen, here or anywhere else in the world, or a sorcerer as great as Troy.

  Reynard walked away from the center, to find his way back, straight out to the arch this time. He looked into the disk, looked up and around the disk, and saw gray storm and falling rain beyond, but through the disk itself—a ray of sun.

  Calafi stood behind him and gripped his hand with hers.

  “Let us go see,” she said.

  And she led him through.

  Once again, he had to stoop to pass.

  And on the other side . . .

  “Back to the beginning!” Calafi called.

  * * *

  Nikolias and Widsith waited outside the archway, and all the others, but the disk stayed dark, and nobody came forth.

  “Where are the Eaters?” Andalo asked.

  “Silence!” Nikolias admonished. “They have done what they were made to do.”

  “And what is that?” Bela asked.

  “If we see the boy again . . .”

  “I do not think we will,” Widsith said.

  “Nor do I,” Kern said. “I feel very strange!”

  “Thou art very strange!” Kaiholo said, and patted the giant’s lower arm with false assurance, for he felt very strange as well.

  “We are finished on this island,” Nikolias said. “All the Isles of the Blessed are finished, and will become other.

  “With this boy, in all his charge, a new age now begins.”

  Widsith saw through the old Traveler and all his companions. Then he held up his own hand and saw through that as well.

  He saw grass and a lovely country.

  England and No Home

  * * *

  THE ISLAND looked completely different. The sun spread itself over green rolling hills, dotted with sheep and small stone houses and fences, and the fall weather was chill, but there was not yet snow in the air, so he and Calafi hiked over the hills, following the sun until they had to rest.

  They found clean hay in a loft in a vale that smelled of the sea. “It is that way, I think,” Reynard said, but Calafi could hardly stand and they were too tired to finish the journey this day, so they hid in the barn and piled hay over themselves to try to keep warm.

  “No childers anywhere!” the girl said, then clung to him and instantly fell asleep.

  As exhausted as he was, he could not sleep yet. He seemed to be taking count of all the ways he had changed since he passed through the disk—but could not, nor could he remember what had happened in the great maze, or who had led him there and what they had given him.

  But when he closed his eyes, he saw a field of green stars radiating all around, and knew that something had happened, something had changed him.

  And he had to return home.

  * * *

  The next morning, an older woman found them in the barn while she was bringing feed to chickens, and without saying a word, she left some bread and closed the door on the barn, for she knew their times had been hard and did not feel right to disturb them.

  They awoke and ate the bread and drank from a stone trough green with moss, and resumed their walk to the shore, which was only a few miles away, through the vale.

  Calafi said out loud, “Fortune to those so kind.”

  Reynard wondered what the girl’s blessing would bring for the generous giver of bread.

  Calafi held his hand like a sister. “We have many lives now,” she said as they crossed a boulder-strewn beach.

  “How do you know?” Reynard asked.

  “I remember someone gave us time. I remember not who it was, but they gave all they had, and so now we have many lives. And so much time to ponder them all!”

  “Memories,” Reynard said.

  “We are too new to have such memories,” Calafi said. She looked across the beach to waves on the shore, and squinted. “Who is that?”

  A young woman walked on the beach, white-blond hair streaming in the ocean breeze, her black gown pulled against her legs, and her eyes, brilliant green eyes, saw them, and they slowly approached one another, filled with caution. Then they began to remember a little. Who they all were, if not what they had all been through.

  “I have been given my freedom,” the woman said.

  “I see that,” Reynard said.

  “Hel gave me my freedom.”

  “Who is that?” Reynard said, and Valdis smiled.

  “Someone I once knew,” she said, a little puzzled. “Along with others who served.”

  A boat was out on the water, caught in a patch of bright sun, and Valdis waved, and curious fishermen from the far north brought their old boat to the shore, gently nudged its bluff bow onto the sand, and asked them what they were doing here in sheep country.

  Clearly, they were charmed by Valdis, and she was charmed by them. And so they carried their strange passengers to a fishing village in Norway, and Valdis said this was where she would stay.

  Somehow Calafi came upon a purse filled with silver coins, and they paid for a coach to take them to the south, to a larger city, where that same purse bought their passage to England.

  White Shadow

  * * *

  CALAFI FOUND the country lanes fascinating and studied with rapt attention the flowers, for somehow they had skipped a winter and a heavy snow, and were now in glorious spring.

  They had little money for inns and transportation, and Calafi came up with no more purses, but neither seemed to mind sleeping out under the stars, though they went hungry often enough, and became beggars of a kind.

  “Are you my brother, really?” Calafi asked, studying him as they lounged under a hedge and waited for the summer day to grow a little cooler before they moved along.

  “
I do not think so,” Reynard said.

  “But if we have no father or mother, perhaps we can be brother and sister?”

  “I suppose,” he said.

  They heard the rumble of a wagon along the lane and peered out to see a tinker’s cart, jangling with every bump, pulled by two horses and trailed by a rider on a hefty roan—a rider wearing a long black coat, very like someone they both remembered—in part.

  The rider, a tall elderly man, stopped where they were hiding and said, “Is it safe to pass here? No roving gangs or mean spirits?”

  Calafi came out, smiling and happy, and the back flap of the wagon opened, and a thin white-haired woman looked out.

  “Be ye hungry?” she asked them.

  * * *

  Days later, the wagon rolled on with Calafi, who had decided this was where she belonged.

  Reynard and she parted with some tears, but determined they both had to find their ways, for where they had come from no longer existed.

  * * *

  Reynard never found Southwold, nor any village quite like it, nor any who knew his family—though Aldeburgh was still there, and prospering as more and more ships were made. There had been more Spanish invasions, but England had survived and now seemed on the edge of prosperity as her ships sailed the world and brought news of riches and goods.

  Reynard worked on farms and in towns, shoeing horses and tending flocks, and one day, herding sheep through a village near York, saw a man with a thick, grizzled beard—a handsome man, though blind and with a kind of lightning-strike scar from forehead to chin. The man was begging on a side street, and Reynard dropped a coin into his filthy hand, and said only one thing:

  “Cardoza?”

  “Aye, the very same, a poor vagabond master, late of the sea, and who art thou?”

  Reynard backed away and pushed his sheep on, and wondered if sometime soon he might find another man of some acquaintance—a man he knew only as Pilgrim.

  * * *

  When Reynard took a coach to London, he had saved enough coin to pay for a small room in the garret of an old, leaning house, and here he ate bread and water and hoped to find more work.

  But on the street, one middle-bright day, as the summer was coming to an end, he saw entering an alley a figure he recognized instantly: a man in reverse. A man with a white shadow. He waited for Reynard in the narrow lane, in a stray beam of sun bounced from a high, angled window.

  This man summoned him to come close.

  “Time to begin sharing thy gifts,” said the man with a white shadow. “Hast thou found th’one named Bacon? Francis Bacon?”

  Reynard said, “I have seen him remarked in passing. I think he lives nearby. And more like him!”

  “Then go to them. Many crave the touch of stars that thou dost carry.”

  Reynard held out his hands, beseeching the strange man. “There are so many in London alone!”

  “You were given much time.”

  “But I cannot visit them all!”

  “There were six other islands. All sent forth chalices like thyself, backwards and forwards, across many years. After London, go south to Italy, to Padua, where more await. Wherever thou goest, find those who speak the new languages that giveth humans mastery, and share thy stars with them all.”

  “And what will they do?”

  “They will see, and describe, and measure, and faster than light or spirit, the world and beyond will fill out, and the new will take charge. Give them a touch of the glory of the Seven Isles. Give them a touch of what once was.

  “Call it Genius.”

  Acknowledgments

  * * *

  With thanks to Astrid, my constant provider of balance, to my diligent and tireless editor, John Joseph Adams, and to David and Diane Clark, careful and wonderful readers.

  For help with my languages, I owe a debt of gratitude to Kathy Wellen, Judith Bosnak, Richard Curtis, and most especially to Kathleen Alcala.

  Any errors that remain are of course my own.

  About the Author

  © Astrid Anderson Bear

  Greg Bear has written more than thirty novels and five story collections, earning him five Nebulas, two Hugos, two Endeavours, and the Galaxy Award (China). He is one of the original founders of San Diego Comic-Con.

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