The Wondermark Gazette

The light from the man’s lantern weaved in shaky squiggles above Rikah’s prone form — her hands were bound with rough rope, the same sort that encircled my own wrists like unshaven humus-worms, except inert, not eating away at decomposing flesh the way humus-worms so love to do. (Great pets, those, and handy to boot.) With a quick stroke of some sort of glassy blade, the man cut my arms free — then, before I could so much as rub my scuffed skin, he pressed the hilt of the blade into my hands. But it was no blade at all — rather, a long, thin piece of light-green glass, cloudier than the jade I’d seen in the cavern outside, but similar to that stone in some niggling respect I couldn’t quite identify — I was no vibrologist (three credits short of a vocational certificate), so I couldn’t tell if it resonated at the same aetherial frequency or some other such malarkey nonsense, but it still struck me as somehow the same. The shard was also sharp, and it was this property that inspired me to aim its narrow edge at the man with the lantern.

He was nonplussed. “Go ahead, all you like,” the man said. “Yam-Runners are immune to jade-stabs. Eugenic predisposition — and you can’t argue with Nature, now, can you?”

Drat it all! My plan — namely, stab the man and run — was unraveling faster than it had raveled just a moment ago. I looked over at Rikah, sprawled on the rock-hewn floor in what was likely an uncomfortable position. She’d have a crick in her neck when she awoke. If she awoke.

“What happened to her?” I asked, walking over and taking the liberty to kneel by her side, noting a gash on her fore-head, another on her smooth, bronze cheek. My own cheek pulsed with pulverised flesh — she and I were cheek-wound buddies, at least. For whatever that was worth (tuppence at the fair-grounds, back before the labour-inspectors moved in and bolloxed the whole operation).

The man sighed, fingering the rows of glass cylinders set — nay, crammed — into the cavern walls like so many giant drinking-straws. “She tried to run for it — you can see for yourself if you like,” he said, and with this, he drew a thin bar of glass — a light-jar — from its sconce and handed it to me, even obligingly lifting his lantern to illuminate the scene within.

I stood, and set my eye to one end of the bar, not daring to wonder what dreadful scene might unfold: had she but fallen? Had they struck her? Had they struck me, knocked me out, then used my own fists to strike her? Flickering images within the glass told the tale: I watched myself crumple, smote by the ever-unfashionable Yam-Runners, then saw Rikah turn and run, abandoning my devilishly handsome body to the fiends. They left me and gave chase, and though the figures grew smaller, their silhouettes were clearly described against that bright green finger of light, reaching to the clouds from Grenadon’s cave.

Then, I saw her driven against that brilliant stone by a cruel Yam-Runner blow. The green beam winked out, and all within the light-jar turned to darkness. I lowered the glass.

“Where she sought to find sanctuary, she found only pain,” the man explained. “Such is the lot of the Shorelanders. They threw in their lot with my brother Grenadine, and his false teachings have led them blindly, gropingly to their doom. You have seen the consequence of their sad belief, made manifest this evening.” He referred to the lightning-bombing of the Shorelander village by the Countess Peapoddy’s air-ship armada. “Even now, the Countess’ air-ships scour the ash-heaps of the Shorelands to finish off any survivors — and it will not be long before she” — Rikah– “is the last of their kind entirely. A problem we can solve right here, right now, with the shard from Grenadon’s jade, there in your hands.”

He might have said more, but I was fixed on the idea of survivors in the ash-heaps — surely it couldn’t be! Rikah and I had watched the lightning-barrage reduce the entire village to char-coal! A well-spring of hope sprouted deep within my breast: perhaps there were some Shorelanders remaining, and perhaps they had seen the jade beacon-light — and perhaps they would mount a resistance. The jade beacon itself was shattered — I held the proof in my hand — but perhaps those brave, remaining few were nonetheless clambering up the mountain as we spoke, organising themselves into a rough-shod militia, carving spears and the like from branches and mud-logs, possibly even now constructing make-shift wind-gliders and fighting for their noble lives against the Countess’ vile aero-machines. Hardy people, and pure of spirit all; I swelled my breast with the decision that I would stand by their cause to the end.

Then, the man opened the front cover of the Tome of the Precious Lore, and I caught a whiff of musty old book-dust: it was the sort of odour that in past years had made me gag, or enraged me, or thrown me into hair-trigger fits of unconscionable violence with dire consequences for all within flame-thrower range. Against any conscious command, I felt those ancient strings of homicide begin to thrum within me at the smell, and heard a voice in my head plead in harmony with that building melody: This isn’t your fight. What do you care about these people? Kill the girl. Take the Tome and run back home — or at the very least, get on that train. Get away from here while you yet breathe.

But it wasn’t a voice inside me after all. It was the man, speaking aloud.

“I could kill you easily,” he said with a shrug. “I could kill her easily. But I have no mutton with you — you have played an instrumental part in our war-fare this evening, and we are in fact indebted to your service. Thus, I am making this offer to you once more: you must kill the last Shorelander. And in return, you may have the Tome, and passage on our yam-train safely away from this place of grim death, with grimmer times to come, I promise you.”

At that time the cavern rumbled ominously, and the thousand light-jars tinkled softly, like wind-chimes in the barest zephyr of spring-time, or a baby just learning to pee. “And there’s the dawn-train arriving,” the man added, his voice echoing across the chamber. “It leaves the station when the sun crests the horizon — and with it, my offer.”

I regarded the jagged shard in my hands. Its corners were piercing my palms; beads of dark red appeared at the seams where jade met skin — but I felt nothing except a sinking, cold sensation in my feet, and a bit of itchiness about the collar where I’d been sweating. Even the pain in my face had dulled into a back-ground throb as I contemplated the instrument in my hands. I had murdered before. It had even been my hobby. And it had always been so easy.

Besides, came a voice that I had to triple-check to ensure was actually coming from within my own skull, you can heal her. With the Tome. You don’t have to kill her — just draw blood. Proclaim her dead. Secure the Tome — then you can find a way to heal her.

The argument did not seem solid, yet I watched my feet approach Rikah, and I watched my hands turn her over. In my stupor I barely registered the velvet softness of her shoulders beneath her tunic. I watched as if outside my body, as my fingers fished Ursula’s opticle from my vest-pocket and tucked it secretly into Rikah’s clenched palm: “Use this to go back home,” my mouth whispered to her. “Find your way back to the village. Before the sunlight erases the paths.”

Her eye-lids stirred, and I froze: she was awakening. “Did you hear me?” I hissed. “The opticle. Will show you the paths back home, if we can get out of here before the sun’s up. I can get you out — but for now you’ll have to trust me.” I raised the jade to draw her blood, and her eyes went wide.

“I knew it!” she said. “From the moment I first saw you at the banquet — I sensed the presence of evil on this island. You’ve done nothing but bring misery to me and my people. So go ahead, you horrible beast. May you rot forever in the Hell reserved for…for people as bad as you.”

“No!” I whispered. “I’m doing this to help you!” I snuck a glance back at the man, across the chamber. Was it my imagination, or was it growing lighter in here? The dawn was approaching!

“You have to trust me,” I whispered, lifting the jade slowly.

“Send me to my Monty,” those beautiful lips snarled at me, and that was it. I drove the dagger into her throat.

Blood burbled up rapidly from the wound. I quickly pulled up my sleeves, to avoid any unsightly stains on my upcoming train-voyage. I wondered if Paco would have time to give me a shampoo before I left. My hair was getting greasy.

I looked down as something tickled my fore-arm: Rikah’s finger-tip. She gasped for breath, spitting blood and sucking deeply at nothing at all, and it seemed that she had something to say — so I pulled the jade from her throat and allowed her a moment to gargle. “Je…jellah…” she croaked.

“Jealous?” I said. “Of Monty? Me? The man’s an oaf — don’t be absurd,” I shrieked, perhaps a bit louder than necessary, and my voice cracked, which was a little embarrassing in itself.

“No,” she sighed. “Jelly…jelly-fish.”

My fore-arm still bore the scars from the jelly-fish stings I’d suffered upon my arrival to the island. Rikah had saved me, that day — she’d neutralised the poison. I felt a pang, deep inside: guilt? Or hunger? It was hard to tell. Having my hands coated in warm blood was a comforting feeling, in general. She was so beautiful, but my muscle-memory would have to fight to find fault with this sensation of life-taking. Conflict built inside me, deep within my creaky conflict-centre.

“Gren…Grenadon,” she whispered. “It’s you. I’m sorry. I must have failed your test.”

She recognised me. Rather, she recognised the person I had pretended to be. “I, ah. I wasn’t testing you,” I said lamely. “All will be at peace?”

She shook her head. “I am failing this test as well,” she sighed, as the muscles in her neck softened and her head tipped with a solid-sounding crack onto the stone floor.

At that precise moment, a burst of orange sun-light rose to spill through the million tiny cracks between the thousand light-jars, the dawn splashing rain-bows of prismatic color over the brown cavern floor, over Rikah, even over my blood-soaked hands.

That’s right. I can’t read, my mind reminded myself. How could I have possibly used the Tome to heal her?

“Is the Tome mostly pictures?” I ventured, calling across the room, then standing and approaching the man.

The man shook his head and offered me a towel. “Sorry.”

I wiped my hands with the towel. The blood streaked and smeared, but didn’t come entirely off. I blotted my skin as best I could, then handed the towel back. He didn’t take it. “Keep it,” he said.

Then he handed me a basket containing two more things: The Tome. And a yam, my train-ticket.

I looked at the brightening sky through the cracks in the cavern walls. Countess Peapoddy still hovered up there, I knew. But I had the Tome now, and a way home. This was no longer my fight.

I extended a hand to shake. He wouldn’t get out of this affair without some blood on his hands. He hesitated, but did shake my hand. His grip was terribly strong. He probably could have whipped me in a fight. It would have been sad. I was doing the right thing by going peaceably.

“Oop,” he yelped, yanking his hand back as a bead of his own bright red blood seeped from his finger-tip. He picked at the cut with a finger-nail — and flicked off a tiny triangle of green. A chip from the jade — it must have flaked off in my hands.

He wasn’t immune, after all. I could have stabbed him.

I could still stab him.

He looked up at me for a single moment, utterly frantic, as if he were afraid I might already have the dagger in my hand. “You’d better run,” he said. “Right now. Out this door, then straight down the stairs. All the way down to the bottom. Can’t miss it. Go! This second!”

He wasn’t lying — the train’s whistle rang faintly, far-off, echoing inside the mountain. I had no time.

But at the door-way, I turned back, just for a second. “I don’t even know your name,” I said.

“That’s okay,” he replied. “Trust me. If your destiny lay here, on the Isle of Yam-Runners — you would.”

NEXT: All Aboard

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