A hundred days later, Tomas walked out of the sea, followed by four men and three women. It must have been quite a sight, these bedraggled, soaking figures striding out of the waves and up the beach. Tomas claimed that he had been trapped beneath the sea within a vision of great evil; a terrible world, he said, existed elbow to elbow with our own. We were all in danger. There was a woman there, he said, a ‘glowing woman’, who ‘burned with an eerie fire’, and she was the ‘heart and soul’ of that evil place. The men and women who were with him corroborated his story, although, from what I gather, they were also quite confused by their time under the sea. (It is worth noting, however, that each one of them was traced as a person lost at sea; one had been lost nine years ago, yet he had aged not a day, and two others were from the same shipwreck.)
Tomas took himself to a remote part of the coast – for the rest of his life, he could never quite leave the sea behind – and along with his seven disciples, began to feverishly produce paintings and writings about his terrible experience, warning us of the burning woman who was the key to this evil landscape. (There is, it seems to me, a certain type of man who is terrified of the idea of a woman wielding power, of any sort; the type of man who is willing to dress up his terror in any sort of trappings to legitimise it.)
Word spread. People, the desperate, perhaps, or the rudderless, joined him at his lonely outpost, and eventually a woman called Milandra Parcs came to him. She had very good reasons to hate fell-witches, and she saw in Tomas’s words and paintings a truth she already knew in her heart: the ‘burning women’– to her mind, the fell-witches – were evil. Tomas died, finally, his body left in a high place to be eaten by birds and animals (only in death, it seemed, could he escape the sea) and Milandra created the Winnowry. It was sold as a refuge for these women at first – these were individuals, after all, who were often very frightened of their own extraordinary powers – but as the word spread of the fell-witches’ ‘corruption’ (put about by the delightful Madam Parcs, no doubt), the Winnowry became a prison. Now the Winnowry come for any woman or girl who shows the ‘corruption’, and they live out their days in that pitiless place.
What interests me is what actually happened to Tomas and the seven he led from the sea. Where were they during their missing days and months and years? Was Tomas simply mad, or had he seen part of a great revelation?
Extract from the journals of Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon
The next morning the sky was overcast, and an alien stench still lingered in the Shroom Flats. Tor opened his mouth to complain about it to Vintage, before remembering what had caused it – the incinerated body of the parasite spirit. Vintage was already up and about, noisily packing bags and retrieving notebooks, while the fell-witch was curled up by the fire, still asleep. In the night she had turned over to face the flames, sleeping close enough that a stray spark could have set her on fire too. Nothing less than she would deserve, he thought, glaring down at her still form. The wave of weakness that had swept through him the moment her fingers touched his skin was all too easy to recall – he’d never felt anything like it, and he didn’t care to ever feel it again. It had made him think of the crimson flux; your body an enemy, no longer obeying your commands.
‘Wake up our friend there, would you, Tor?’ Vintage was rooting around in bags and randomly pulling out glass jars, peering at them, and putting them back. ‘If she’s going to be helping us, she’ll want to see this.’
‘First, wake her up yourself. Second, are you truly persisting with this nonsense? She is clearly an escaped criminal of some sort.’
Vintage lowered her voice. ‘An escaped criminal able to incapacitate a parasite spirit in seconds. Think how useful that could be to us. Do stop whining, Tormalin, my love, it doesn’t suit you half as much as you think it does.’
‘By incapacitate, do you mean set everything on fire?’ However, he went over to the sleeping figure and rested his boot on her leg, giving her an experimental push. The girl gasped and scrambled backwards, the colour draining from her face. Tor frowned.
‘There’s no need to take on like that. Come on, we’re going to look at the thing you destroyed last night, if there’s anything left of it.’
The fell-witch was looking around at the towering mushrooms as if she were trying to figure out where she was. Tor crouched down and spoke to her quietly.
‘Not used to the outside world, are we?’
She narrowed her eyes at him and scrambled to her feet, pulling the black jacket more tightly around her shoulders. His black jacket. ‘Not used to waking up with a monster from a story standing over me.’
Vintage led them back to the crevice. Tormalin pulled the Ninth Rain free of its scabbard – there might have only been one parasite spirit, but it didn’t hurt to be wary.
‘Here, look,’ Vintage marched down, pointing at the shattered ground, ‘tiny pieces of the Behemoth’s moon-metal scattered everywhere. This thing must have crashed in the Third or Fourth Rain, perhaps even the Second, and the Wild has grown over its ancient bones. And then an earth tremor, and it all gets shoved back up to the surface.’
‘There’s the remains of our parasite spirit,’ said Tormalin, pointing with his sword. ‘Worth scraping into a jar?’
It looked like a broken sheet of partially clouded jelly, marked here and there with dark craters. Tormalin reached down to poke it with the end of the Ninth Rain, but Vintage appeared at his side, elbowing him out of the way none too gently. ‘Don’t touch it with winnow-forged steel! You’ll only damage it more.’
She pulled a long-handled spoon from a pocket and carefully began to spoon the wobbly muck into a spare jar. As she touched it, the substance seemed to break up, falling apart into oddly fibrous lumps. Tormalin took a step back from the remains. Looking at those strange shapes made him feel uneasy.
‘We’ve never recovered so much material!’ Vintage was beaming with delight. ‘I will need to purchase a whole new set of lenses to look at this. Now, I want to examine this hole again – don’t give me that look, Tor, I will be more careful this time.’
The broken earth had partially covered up the artefact that Vintage had attempted to retrieve the previous evening, but it was still possible to see sections of it; greenish gold metal that looked oily in the daylight.
‘I’ll get it.’ Tor stepped in front of Vintage, waving her back. ‘Look, it’s possible to see the edges of this thing now. I can climb down there.’ After the violence of the previous day’s attack the earth had settled again, revealing a rough path on the far side of the hole. Sheathing his sword, Tor lowered himself down and began to climb slowly towards the metal object.
‘Be careful, my dear! We don’t want to lose that sword of yours.’ Tor glanced up to see Vintage smiling down at him. Noon stood at her back, her arms crossed over her chest and an uncertain look on her face.
‘I’m touched by your concern, Vintage, as ever.’
When he laid his hands on the artefact he was surprised to find that it felt more like a piece of ceramic under his fingers – cool, but not cold as metal might be. He brushed the dirt and mud away to reveal its full shape; it was egg-like, with dimpled impressions in the wider half, but the top had been shattered. There was a thick substance leaking from inside. It was a deep gold in colour, but shimmering with a rainbow of other hues.
‘What is it?’ snapped Vintage. ‘What can you see?’