“You have until midday,” it squawked. Having delivered its message, the cuckoo threw itself from the tower, with what seemed like suicidal clumsiness. Down it plummeted. It contrived to glide. Next it was fluttering frantically, veering away from the town, as if its precipitate dive had snapped some string that controlled it, and now it was escaping.
White-faced, her father clutched his chest.
“No,” he gasped. “No.”
The regular squeezes of pain persuaded her father less than Astrid’s pleas that he let her save him. Where would she be without him? And Gustaf was still too young.
She might not be gone too long. To validate this hope, all she took with her at noon was the ivorywood puzzle in a little leather pouch slung round her neck by its drawstring.
Tycho Cammon greeted Astrid jovially in the town square, as pleased as a lad receiving a present. An entourage of three louts were keeping an eye out, clustering round the alien who stood so still.
Astrid demanded, “Is my father safe now?”
Cammon scanned the sky, which was clouding over.
“Right as rain,” he assured her. “You have my word for it.” Near the mouth of a lane, Astrid spied a man’s body lying face down. His head was twisted at an impossible angle.
“Murderer,” she accused.
Cammon followed her gaze. “Him? Oh, he shook his head at our activities.” Putting on a childish lisp: “He shook it and he shook it so much—”
Shuddering, Astrid stared at the motionless Unman instead.
A silver hieroglyph was appliquéd on one shoulder of the alien’s velvety bodysuit that was as black as its skin, but scuffed and soiled. Empty pouches hung from clips. White scabs crusted gland-slits on the alien’s jutting chin, below a prim cupid mouth. Its nostrils slowly opened and shut as it breathed, which was its only activity. Such hurt showed in the close-set ambery eyes.
Despite her aversion to the alien, sympathy percolated—fellow feeling.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“With it? It’s a him. Oh, I have a use for him all right.”
She imagined herself and the alien compelled to mate, to amuse Cammon the spectator. Surely he was too covetous of Astrid to dream up such a humiliation. Cammon the violator would seem just as alien to her.
She had no other audience except for Cammon and his louts, unless nearby residents were peeping. Townsfolk were keeping to their houses. Just then she heard a distant wail of protest, and recalled the presence of other cronies.
“Actually, my splendid chick,” Cammon said graciously, “this town square of yours seemed to lack a focal point until now. It needed a statue.”
“He looks very sad,” she said. “Tormented.”
“Dear me. Of course!” Cammon snapped his fingers. “Blink, Juttie, blink for the lady.”
Membranes glazed the alien’s eyes, sliding to and fro. Tears poured forth.
“I quite forgot they need to blink. Jig a bit, there’s a good statue. Jig on the spot.”
Jerkily the Juttie capered—and fell over. In the dust of the square it writhed, arms and legs spasming.
“Guess he got cramp,” said Cammon. “Relax, statue. Lie at ease!” And the alien lolled. “You must remind me, Astrid Kallio, not to use him up too quickly.”
“You’re cruel…” Not a wise thing to say.
“What do you want him for?”
This might also be unwise. Yet Cammon treated her question with the utmost seriousness.
“The truth is, I need him to tell me the names and the meanings of the stars and the constellations in the Isi tongue, and also of their own home stars and constellations.”
“Whatever for?”
“The sky presides over us,” he replied. “And over them.”
“What if he doesn’t know? Does a scullery lad know the words for embroidery?”
“Snakes’ voices speak in the Jutties’ heads—informing them of all sorts of things.”
“7 watch the sky at night.” She hoped to forge—no, not a bond—but some affinity.
He chortled. “What a fine hen you are. And a hen must be plucked.”
“I came to you voluntarily, Tycho Cammon. You didn’t call me down here with your voice. Don’t bespeak me now.”
“If I don’t, summerbright, how will you enjoy yourself?”
Astrid glanced up at the keep, as if her look might leap her back to safety. The air was becoming hazy, faintly moist. Mizzle was dulling the outlines of the keep. Upon the tower: a tiny figure. Surely her dad, with his spyglass. She waved, to reassure.
Coming down the lane past the corpse, led by a man in leathers, was… Anniki, in a cloak. Anniki looked utterly dulled and comphant. From the man’s holster jutted the butt of a light-pistol. Nobody would be obstructing him. The escort halted Anniki.
“See,” said Cammon, “your friend’s right as rain as well.”
The two women’s gazes met, across empty space. It was as if Astrid had betrayed Anniki by making a temporary get-away to the keep—while Anniki in turn had betrayed Astrid by revealing her identity.
Cammon was severing Astrid’s ties with home.
Astrid had half hoped—and half feared—that Cammon would take her to the Tamminens’ vacated house, full of wholesome herbs and dried mushrooms and roots.
That wasn’t to be. Accompanied by the trio of bodyguards, Cammon led her instead to the candlemaker’s home. To Mr. Kintilar’s. Kintilar and family had been temporarily dispossessed. All of his candles remained.
She knew the house and its smells from childhood: the odors of paraffin wax distilled from yellover wood and muskwood and kastawood, and also from bituminous shale; the aroma of scent oils.
Downstairs were Mr. Kintilar’s double boilers and pouring pitchers and tin molds. Bowls of baking powder to extinguish any wax that might catch alight. Bowls of fatty acid crystals to render wax opaque and slower burning. Spools of braided yarn, tin molds, weights for wicks. Everywhere, everywhere, finished candles were tied in clumps or hung in pairs from nails.
Everywhere, hundreds of cock-candles.
All the way up the staircase, and in the main bedroom too.
The louts stayed downstairs to drink ale filched from the larder and snack on squeaky cheesebread and cold greasy goose. If only they weren’t down below, where the creak of floorboards and bed would be audible!
In the main bedroom, hundreds of candles crowded shelves and furniture…
“What illumination we’ll see,” enthused Cammon, “if all the wicks are ht! Maybe the house’ll burn down…
“All the wax will melt,” she retorted. “It’ll become so soft!” As if she could proclaim at him.
He concentrated, summoning his power. “Wicks a-light, Burn bright, Such a sight!” he proclaimed.
“Five, six, Hot wicks, Pricks and chicks! Burn bright, Wicks a-light—!”
It was as if phosphorbugs were invading the room, each settling on a candle tip. How could it be so dark outside? Could black rainclouds have arrived so quickly in the wake of what had hardly even been drizzle? As a hundred candles breathed out little flames, and as the window framed only deep gloom, so at once there was privacy… and imminent revelation.
Deeply scared, Astrid loosened her blue bodice sacrificially.
“Don’t bespeak me…”
Yet he did. He was a petulant child indulging in a tantrum—yet his was a channeled tantrum.
He chanted: