Finishing the juice, Clara searches the carriage for her possessions. They were only allowed to bring what they could fit in a knapsack, but she’s always had a gift for making a mess. Her knife is under some weeds, her spare clothes are scattered everywhere and her notebooks have migrated to the furthest reaches of the cabin.
‘Did you see the names?’ asks Hui, as Clara scrambles around, searching for the small blocks of wood she uses for her carvings.
‘What names?’
‘Scratched onto the metal under the bench,’ responds Hui, placing her beloved violin in its wool-lined case. ‘It’s Thea’s last group of apprentices. Your dad is on there.’
Clara follows her pointing finger, excitedly.
‘Arthur, Emory, Tasmin, Kiko, Reiko, Jack,’ she reads aloud, her voice warming on her father’s name.
She runs her finger across the jagged edges of ‘Jack’, imagining him scratching out the letters, humming the way he always did when he worked.
‘He was seventeen when he did that,’ I say. ‘The same age you are. Thea always brings her new apprentices out here after they pass the trials. It was the first time he’d left the village. He was so excited Thea had to tell him to stop running everywhere. Your mother was deeply embarrassed.’
Clara touches her mother’s name tenderly. Unlike her father, who filled her childhood with stories about being an apprentice, Emory very rarely mentioned this time in her life.
‘Emory only lasted six more weeks after this before she quit,’ I explain. ‘It would have been sooner, but your father kept the peace.’
Sounds about right, thinks Clara. Unlike her short-tempered mother, her father never raised his voice, and never spoke in haste. Most of the time he was smiling, and if he wasn’t you knew you’d done something really wrong.
He drowned in a storm five years ago, with the rest of these apprentices. She still thinks about him every day.
Beneath the names, she can see the tops of more words, obscured by some tall weeds. Pushing them down, she finds another message.
If you’re reading this, turn back now. Niema buried us. She’ll bury you, too.
Clara’s pulse quickens. ‘What does that mean?’ she asks nervously.
‘It’s old graffiti,’ I reply. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Who did Niema bury?’
‘I told you not to worry about it.’
My evasiveness doesn’t do much to assuage her unease, but she’s distracted by Thea’s voice hollering to them from outside.
‘Clara, Hui, we’re leaving!’
‘You ready?’ asks Hui, hitching her pack. ‘Don’t forget to leave one of your birds.’
Clara searches her pockets, retrieving a tiny wooden sparrow. She whittles them absently when she’s thinking, and has a dozen of them rattling around in her pockets. She’s been leaving them behind as markers of their passing.
After placing one on a seat, she ducks outside into the glare of sunlight, scattering a colony of rabbits which bound away into the long grass, disturbing grasshoppers and sending dragonflies into the air. An extinct volcano rises up in front of her, its peak obscured by haze.
The earth is dry underfoot, a copse of dusty pine trees offering the scantest shade. The ruins of ancient stone walls demark the olive and fig groves that used to be cultivated here. They’re wild now, piles of rotten fruit littering the ground for animals to feast on.
Clara considers asking me where they are, but Thea wants them to keep a mental map so they can guide themselves in the future.
She thinks back to school, when Niema lifted up a mouldy brown sheet by the middle and explained this was the shape, and colour, of their island when viewed from above. The volcano sits at the very centre, which means the further anyone ventures inland the steeper and rockier the terrain becomes.
It takes two days to hike from north to south along the coast, and nearly the same to cross from east to west, because you have to find a way to do it without breaking a leg. Thankfully, the island is riddled with old goat trails, which can hugely speed up journeys if you know where to find them.
‘The sun’s to the left of the volcano,’ mutters Clara to herself. ‘We must have made camp at its south face.’
Her heart leaps. The village is to the south-west. It’s probably only a few hours’ walk as the crow flies, but the terrain is almost impassable. There must be another way around.
Clara flashes a glance at Thea, trying to gauge her intentions. The elder is looking at the summit of the volcano, shading her eyes. She’s as thin as the pine trees surrounding her, and appears nearly as tall. Her dark hair is cut short, her blue eyes are sharp and her pale face is pulled taut across high cheeks and a pointed chin, without a single wrinkle evident. Her beauty is cowing. The sort you bow to rather than admire.
Thea’s nearly a hundred and ten years old, which Clara still finds astonishing as she doesn’t look much older than Emory.
‘A goat trail will take us up the volcano,’ says Thea, scrawling the route in the air with her finger. ‘We’re heading for the cauldron. Matis passed away last night’ – she casts Clara an evaluating look that’s neither sympathetic nor pitying – ‘Have you had suitable time to grieve for your great-grandfather?’
‘I have,’ says Clara, knowing there isn’t another acceptable answer to the question.
Hui squeezes her hand in support, but it isn’t necessary. Jack drowned when Clara was twelve, and she didn’t stop crying for a year. Those tears washed something out of her. She’s slightly more detached than she once was, too accepting of death.
‘As is our custom, a child will take the deceased’s place,’ continues Thea. ‘It’s our task to collect that child and deliver them to the village this afternoon.’
A trill of excitement runs through Clara and Hui. The delivery of a new child is one of the most exciting days in the village’s life, but Thea usually does it alone. Nobody’s ever seen where they come from, nor can they remember it themselves.
‘Our errand will take approximately six hours, and I’ll be testing you on chemical interactions as we walk.’ Thea rubs her hands together in a rare display of enthusiasm. ‘Who’d like to go first?’
Thea sets off with Hui close behind, but Clara drags her feet, staring at Thea’s departing back, preoccupied by the warning she found inside the carriage.
‘She buried us, she’ll bury you, too,’ she murmurs, a prickle of fear running down her spine.
Who would write something so terrible?
ELEVEN
Seth stomps through the shady lane formed by the eastern wing of the barracks and the high wall surrounding the village. Piles of pink and white bougainvillea are spilling out of cracks in the stone, growing so thickly that he has to push the blooms aside to make headway, scattering the butterflies resting on their petals.
‘You were unkind to Emory earlier,’ I say.
‘I know,’ he admits, having calmed down. ‘She just makes me so angry. It’s been the same way ever since she was a girl, asking questions nobody can answer. She knows it does no good, but she keeps poking.’
‘Why does it annoy you so much?’
‘Because …’ He trails off, thinking about it deeply for the first time. Because … they’re always good questions, he admits, in his thoughts. Emory puts them under your brain like pebbles, and there’s no rest from them. That’s the reason his daughter has so few friends, he thinks. It’s why people are nervous around her.