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THE GRACEKEEPERS by Kirsty Logan - EXCERPT
THE GRACEKEEPERS by Kirsty Logan - EXCERPT
T H E
ISBN 978-0-553-44661-6
eBook ISBN 978-0-553-44663-0
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Callanish’s head and pulled her close, the world instantly reduced
to the earthy, floral smell of her mother’s skin and the scratchy
wool of her dress. But Callanish could still hear the screams, the
roars, the chaos of running feet. She felt herself lifted as her
mother hefted her on to her hip and ran.
Jolting with movement, Callanish fought to peer back over
her mother’s shoulder. She saw landlockers scrambling to the
exits. She saw the dropped bodies of the man and woman, their
white clothing stained dark, their skin sheened red. She saw the
bright gleam of a blade in the woman’s motionless hand. She saw
the big bear, belly sliced open, a shadow heaving its final breaths.
And in the center of it all she saw two figures: one draped in
white, one furred black; both with eyes open moon-round and
empty. A small girl and a small bear, hands and paws still linked.
NORTH
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Out on stage, the rest of the circus folk were performing the
maypole, everything wrapped in ribbons: the pole, their hair,
their bodies, all wrapped tight so the crowd couldn’t tell which
were girls and which were boys, so they were all girlboygirls. The
ribbons were dyed bright with ground-up shells and seaweed,
streaking color on to their bare skin.
North’s bear was not bright. He was brown as wood and he
was patterned a little like wood too, whorls of lighter fur among
the dark. To match his fur, North’s dark hair was tied up in loops
and her pale body was draped in brown fabric. She had to match
his golden chains too, so she had dyed strands of her hair gold and
woven them into braids. North stroked her hands along her bear’s
broad neck in swoops, keeping rhythm with his breath. It was
important to calm him before a performance, to show him that
she was on his side, to get him used to his chains all over again.
Bears are harder to train than dogs or horses or any other animals,
because they’re vicious and have faulty memories. North was like
that too, or at least that’s what Avalon, the ringmaster’s wife, said.
As if summoned by the thought, Avalon slid out from be-
hind a wedge of curtain. She had a sprig of apple blossom tucked
behind her ear, its petals velvety as her cheek. North had never
seen fresh flowers before Avalon started wearing them in her hair.
“Darling urchin,” she purred. She tossed an object from hand
to hand as she spoke, smooth as juggling. “Is your mangy beast
ready to terrify the children?”
But North did not hear a word. She stared, hypnotized, at
the object passing between Avalon’s hands. The apple was a per-
fect sphere, green speckled with red, shiny as a bird’s eye. Avalon
pulled a silver knife from her dress pocket and cut the apple’s
softening flesh into quarters, exposing the pips tenderly. Its scent
exploded in the air: sweetly souring, past its best but still with a
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sheen of juice. She didn’t know how much apples cost, but it was
certainly worth weeks of the circus crew’s dinners. North inhaled
as deeply as she could.
Avalon ate a slice from the knife’s blade, pips and stem and
all. Then another. Then she raised a third to her mouth, and,
noticing North’s gaze, paused.
“Oh, little wraith. You only have to ask, you know. Would
you like a piece?”
North tried to speak, but she’d spent all afternoon murmur-
ing to the bear and her throat had tightened. She coughed.
“What was that?”
“Yes.” North had to clench her jaw and swallow hard before
she could force herself to add—“Please.”
Avalon sighed, and someone who didn’t know her might
think that her regret was genuine. North knew better, and
wished she hadn’t said please.
“I am sorry, urchin. It’s for the baby.” Avalon cupped her
belly maternally and chewed the third quarter of the apple. For
the baby, for the baby. In the few months since Avalon had an-
nounced her pregnancy, everything that happened in the circus
was for the baby. North couldn’t wait for the damned thing to be
born—though Red Gold already had one pampered son, and he
certainly didn’t need another.
As Avalon swallowed, she smiled. With a flick of her little
silver knife, she tossed the last quarter of the apple under the
curtain, where it disappeared in the dust and shadow. North bit
down a mewl of dismay. As if sensing her mood, North’s bear
began growling, low and thick.
Avalon narrowed her eyes at the bear as if he had offended
her, but North could see that his growls made her nervous. She
wanted to command her bear, to anger him, to prod him into
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Melia and Whitby sniffed the air, dragging their faces into
sneers in imitation of Avalon, then pressed North into the em-
brace of the curtain so the other performers could file past. They
huddled together, placing their wide hands on the bear’s back as
if to bring him into the conversation. The curtains and overhead
of the big top were made of the schooner’s four sails, and the fab-
ric felt rough with saltwater.
“I hear,” stage-whispered one acrobat, “that Avalon, our be-
loved ringmaster’s wife, has had quite enough of circus life. She
wishes to abandon us all to the jaws of the sea.”
“But how could she ever tire of us, pray tell?” said the other
in mock shock.
“It’s sad news indeed, sweet sister,” said Whitby. “Avalon
scorns the sea and wishes only for land. A house, a garden, a piece
of ground that doesn’t move.”
“Just think on it! All that gold, taken straight from our ring-
master’s pockets and funneled into a teensy piece of land, with-
out any of it touching our dinner table. For shame, my darling
husband.”
North hunched her shoulders, sure that if she looked up she’d
see the ringmaster’s reddened, glittered cheeks looming toward
her. The stage makeup irritated his skin so he plastered on more
to cover it, which irritated it more until it cracked and bled.
North had seen the pinkish gleam of the bowl after Red Gold
had washed; his veins must hold as much glitter as blood.
“Land? How very dull, brother! What a yawnful sort of life!”
“So true—the exact same sky and the exact same ground,
every single day! You’d barely be able to breathe for all the
yawning!”
“Hush now,” said North, as from the stage came the boom of
Red Gold introducing the wondrous bear-girl, fearless and
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fierce. She shrugged her shoulders out from under the acrobats’
arms, then made a show of fussing with her bear’s collar until she
felt them leave. Her bear always went onstage shackled, though
if he decided to use his strength, the fine gold chains would snap
like strands of hair. The chains were decorative, meant only for
the eyes of the crowd. Spectacle is grounded in the illusion of
control. The crowd think they want safety, but what they really
crave is the trick gone wrong: the fall from a trapeze, the uncov-
ering of bone.
Earlier, when the Excalibur had docked, North had spied on
the landlockers from under the canvas top of her coracle. They all
seemed haggard and hunched in their hard-won finery, as if even
the crust of soil they’d allowed the circus was too much. It didn’t
matter that damplings outnumbered landlockers ten to one; they
had land, and land meant food, and food meant power, and no
one was allowed to forget that.
For their act, North and her bear would mime a courtship:
her kisses on his sharp teeth, the two of them in a clumsy waltz,
then a musty-furred swoon in his arms and the slight lifting of
her dress as the applause swept them offstage. It was always a
crowd-pleaser: the female side of the big top loved the romance,
the male side appreciated the reveal of flesh, and everyone was
thrilled by the danger of the bear. North could still do her act.
She would let out her costume when she needed to.
From the stage Red Gold’s voice grew even louder, HERE
TO TAME THE TERRIFYING BEAST WITH TEETH SHARPER THAN
RAZOR-SHELLS, CHILDREN AVERT YOUR INNOCENT EYES, and
North darted her hand under the curtain and groped around in
the dust for the apple slice. She ate it in one bite, sucking her lips
inward so she wouldn’t miss any of its juice. As she wrapped her
bear’s chain around her fist and stepped out from behind the cur-
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tain, she let her tongue prod at the shreds of appleskin between
her teeth, and swallowed them too. She had to. For the baby.
W ith the crowd’s shouts and claps still echoing in her ears, North
settled the bear in the shell of their boat. After a performance he
needed to be groomed, fed, soothed. She’d worked hard to get
him used to the golden chains, but he knew they weren’t natu-
ral and shuddered back from them every time. North had never
hurt him, and never would. Other animals could learn by cru-
elty: jeweled whips for ponies, kicks and slaps for dogs. But that
would not work on bears. They learned steadily, through rapport,
a dialogue built up over years. The problem was that her bear
seemed hardly to remember her from day to day. She believed
that he loved her, but he sometimes looked at her as if she were
a stranger.
Faulty memory, like everyone said, and that’s why North’s
job was so hard, but also why she had a place in the circus at all.
There were many circus boats—all of them less decrepit than the
Excalibur—but none of the others had a bear-girl. In a world with
so little land, mammals were rare outside the landlocker farms.
Because North’s bear was a rarity, that meant that North was a
rarity too.
Before she could begin his grooming, he would have to eat.
There was no point in grooming him first, as bears are not known
for being tidy eaters.
The main circus boat had been pulled ashore, as with various
unfurlings the mast became the center of the big top, the striped
sails became the canvas, the deck the stage. Some circuses left
their ships in the water and performed up on the dock. North
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ing would make them float back to shore, so those fancy ladies
could see what she thought of their gifts.
By the time she was finished, she could barely muster the
energy to comb her own hair. All circus folk kept their hair long,
dyed bright with whatever colored things they could scavenge.
It helped with the illusion of their performance; their tightrope-
walk between the genders. Once a preacher from a revival boat
had picketed the circus show with signs proclaiming THE SINS OF
GLAMOUR, shouting about how the words glamour and grammar
meant the same, and every word spoken by a beautiful woman
was a spell cast over the god-fearing man. Red Gold loved the
publicity; the performance that night was packed. And ever
since, the three crewmembers on the beauty boat had been called
the glamours.
North’s hair was currently dark, except for her scatter of gold
braids. She combed it through with her fingers, then retied the
braids. The dyed hair felt rougher than the rest, but still sturdy
enough. She hadn’t asked the glamours how they’d made the
golden color; once they had made silver-blue dye from eels, and it
damaged everyone’s hair so much that it crumbled in their hands.
She went to close the canvas, then pushed it back instead, let-
ting the night’s chill soothe her tired eyes. The wind was strong
enough to cover all other sounds: the chatter from the coracles,
the lazy slap of waves on hulls, the distant whisper of leaves from
the center of the island.
Above her, the stars outshone the meager lights on the land.
All the answers lay up there, to those who could see. Without
knowledge of the sky, no one would know where to find safe
port, when to sail hard and when to seek anchor. North gave her
prayers to the stars and the tides, just as she did every night. They
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deserved worship for being the only reliable things in the world.
Except, perhaps, for one other.
North fastened the canvas and slid under her bear’s warm
frontpaw. His heart beat a thud-a-thud against her back as she
let the waves rock them both to sleep. She was good at looking
after her bear, and she clung to that thought. Soon there would
be another person on their boat, but it would be okay, because
North already knew how to care for a creature that needed her.
She could still be the bear-girl. In time, her child could earn its
own place in the circus. She could look after them both, baby and
bear. She could keep them safe from the world—and from each
other.
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fast. She was soothed by the slow breath of waves and the scrape
of the coracles shifting: the lullaby of the sleeping circus.
“No, no, don’t worry about that. Just ready yourself and come
out here. I have a surprise.”
North tied her hair in a knot and began gathering her bear’s
things. If she had to be woken so early, she might as well make
the most of it. “I’m sorry, I can’t. We’ll be moving pitch soon, and
I should let the bear get some exercise in the shallows while we’re
here, so if you don’t mind—”
“Come out here. I’m not asking.” Red Gold’s head disappeared
from the lip of the coracle. In the gap left, North saw that the
streaks of pink in the sky were burning to red.
She leaned over the bunk to settle her bear. Her toe bumped
against the box containing the golden chains, and she did con-
sider them; she rarely left her bear alone, and if he woke without
her there he might be frightened or angry. But no—the chains
would make him angrier still, and even a bear on the rampage was
not as scary as Red Gold when disobeyed. She pulled on trousers
and a knitted jumper. It took her a moment to find her bell—all
damplings had to wear a tiny brass bell on their clothes when on
land, in case they were mistaken for landlockers—and another
moment to attach it to the laces of her soft leather shoes. Usually
she went barefoot, and the soles of her feet felt as thick as her
coracle’s hull. But no matter how tough it was, she would not let
her bare skin touch land. She stretched her jumper, making sure
it hung loose over her middle, and climbed out of the coracle.
Red Gold had already made it to the dock and stood with
his arm around his son, chest thrust forward. North’s boat was
midway along the line, and she took as long as she dared to make
her way along the chains. In the brightening light, she could
not ignore the peeling paint and rusted metal of the coracles. In
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places, the reds and greens and purples had flaked off entirely,
leaving patches of dull gray. Saltwater and paint did not mix well.
Ainsel had clearly paid a visit to the Island of Maidens—
Whitby and Melia’s scathing nickname for the glamours’ boat.
His hair was braided with feathers and the contours of his face
were subtly shaded to match his clothing. Blue under his cheek-
bones, green along his brows, a merging of the two at the corners
of his eyes. He looked as vain and haughty as his horse.
“Good morning, North,” he said as she stepped on to the
dock where the Excalibur was moored.
“Good morning, Ainsel. I trust you slept well.”
“Such a fine day for an adventure, isn’t it, my little ones?”
cooed Red Gold. He hooked his arms into North’s and Ainsel’s
elbows. He managed a few steps like this, but their different
heights made it impossible, so he settled for striding along be-
tween them. “The sky—glorious! This land—glorious! The joy
of being with my two most favorite young lovers—most glorious
of all!”
North offered up a tight smile. It was taking all her concen-
tration to make sure that Red Gold stayed in the middle. More
than anything, she did not want Ainsel to reach for her hand.
She’d have to let him take it, and his skin would be as smooth as
satin slippers, and she’d be forced to run back to her coracle and
tie shut the canvas and never come out again.
Red Gold carried on a steady stream of exclamations as the
three of them followed the gangway up from the port, their
leather shoes soft on the wooden slats. The tin-sided towers
looked more ramshackle than ever, the waves slapping at their
bases. North could not understand why anyone would choose to
live there. The crew called the landlockers “clams” for their brain-
less need to cling to the shore. Was the desire to be near land
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“North! No!” Red Gold came tearing around the edge of the
trees, arms outstretched as if to catch her. “You mustn’t!”
She stepped back on to the path. “It’s okay. There’s no one
around to see.”
Red Gold slapped her hands away from the trees, even
though she’d already stepped back from them. Her skin burned.
“That doesn’t matter. Don’t you know that the trees are sacred?”
He elbowed past her and examined the branch she’d touched, as if
she’d left dirty fingerprints on it.
“Oh come on, you can’t believe in—” North stopped at the
look on Red Gold’s face. As a dampling he did not need to wor-
ship the gods of the land, but apparently he did anyway.
“This is where we’re from, child,” he said.
“But I’m not—”
He sucked his teeth and made a tutting sound. “Not you,
North! Me and my boy. We’re landlockers, you know. The land
is where we’re from, and the land is where we’ll return.” North
looked away so that Red Gold wouldn’t see her expression of dis-
gust. “And when you’re married,” continued Red Gold, “it will be
on land.”
“But when did you decide this?” Ainsel seemed to be strug-
gling not to shout. He swallowed hard and lowered his voice.
“How long do we have until—when is the happy day?”
North tried to keep her face neutral. Bad enough to go on to
land, and bad enough to have to marry Ainsel—now Red Gold
wanted to combine the two? But it would be fine. Ainsel would
tell him. There would be no wedding, on land or at sea.
The ringmaster brought his great paw down on his son’s
shoulder. “I decided, and that’s all that matters. You and our north
child will be married when we get to the North-East 19 archi-
pelago. The capital, by the World Tree. It’s not usually allowed for
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