Bone, Fog, Ash & Star (The Last Days of Tian Di #3)(3)
Eliza hugged her friend, touched that even while she was cramming for exams Nell had found the time to make her something special.
Most of her presents were handmade. Her grandmother had woven her a sturdy backpack of camel hair and her aunt Ry had made her a jaunty little cap. Her father had carved her a chess set with hinges at its center, so it could fold up into a little box. Foss, predictably, had brought her a book: Legends of the Ancients. It was an unexpected gift, since Foss had originally objected to her wanting to read it at all, insisting it was mostly rubbish. Written centuries ago by an eccentric Mancer and now mostly discredited, it contained some of the more far-fetched theories regarding the Ancients, which Eliza had begun to take an interest in.
“So you’ve changed your mind?” Eliza asked him laughingly. “You think this book might have something useful in it after all?”
“Not a bit,” replied Foss. “No, I think it is arrant nonsense, but it is your birthday and you may read it for pleasure, remembering always that there is no evidence at all to support these wild speculations!”
“I’ve brought some presents back from your friends in Tian Xia,” said Charlie, handing her two small parcels.
The first was from Swarn, the Warrior Witch, who trained Eliza in potions and weaponry. It was a slender white cylinder with the centre bored out and a mouthpiece at one end. Eliza examined it, puzzled. It looked almost like a flute, but a bundle of black darts was attached to the side of it by a tight loop of wire.
“That must be dragon bone, aye,” said Nell, leaning forward eagerly to get a better look at it.
“But what is it?” wondered Eliza.
She handed it to Foss and he turned it over in his big gold hands. He took one of the darts and sniffed it, then placed it in the hole at the end.
“Try blowing in the mouthpiece,” he suggested. “Point it away from us, please.”
“And away from the s!” piped up her grandfather, Kon, in the Sorma dialect.
Eliza put the cylinder to her lips and blew. The dart hissed away into the night.
“You will have to ask Swarn,” said Foss, “but I think the darts contain verlami, a substance that paralyzes.”
Eliza laughed dryly. “Swarn has a funny idea of what a sixteen-year-old needs,” she commented.
“Let’s see what Uri Mon Lil has got you,” said Charlie.
The wizard’s parcel was wrapped in a delightfully soft, silvery substance that fell away under her touch. At the centre of it lay a little amber dropper with what looked like smoke inside. Attached was a card written in the wizard’s spidery hand: My dear Eliza, here is a pleasant dream to celebrate your first sleep as a young woman of sixteen! Do come and visit us in Lil soon. Your affectionate friend, Uri Mon Lil.
Eliza smiled. “How just like Uri!” she said.
“When the Sorma turn sixteen, we send them out into the desert for twenty days and they have to find their way back to us,” said Lai, speaking rough Kallanese out of politeness towards the visitors. “But in your case…you have already proved such a test unnecessary.”
“That sounds like a rotten birthday,” said Nell. She had slipped a couple of pages out of her folder and was scanning them by the fading firelight.
“I’ve got something for you too,” said Charlie softly in Eliza’s ear. “But I’ll give it to you later, aye.”
And her heart began to race like when she’d been falling through the sky, braced for impact.
~~~
The Sorma were raking sand over the glowing embers and tents had been set up for Foss and for Nell. It was close to midnight, the moon a bright sliver in the sky. Charlie drew Eliza aside and they walked a little way from the camp.
“Lah, this is your present,” he said, handing her a piece of paper. “Or, this is nay it exactly but it tells you what it is.”
Willing her hands to stop trembling, Eliza unfolded it. It was a map of the Western Ocean. Marked out in the centre was a little dot, which Charlie had labelled, Eliza.
“I’m almost sure it’s nary been discovered,” he said in a rush. “It’s an island just about ten miles around. You cannay find it on any other map. White beaches and a jungle full of birds and lizards and snakes. There’s a lake on the island too, a small one, and seventeen waterfalls. A tiny island but seventeen waterfalls, aye. I’ve named it after you. Whenever you have time, I’ll take you there.”
“Charlie,” she said. Her voice sounded hoarse and strange. She cleared her throat and looked up at him. He was watching her nervously. “That’s a wonderful present, aye,” she said. He broke into a smile.
“I thought you’d like it,” he said, relieved.
“I do. Thank you.”
She folded it up again and pressed it between her fingers. Besides Nell, Charlie had been her closest friend for nearly four years now. Whatever it was she felt for him she thought she had always felt, but as she got older it became more urgent somehow. Lately she found it hard to look at him without her heart quickening, and when flying with him the joy was less in the flight than in the excuse to put her arms around him. His uncomplicated friendship was not enough for her anymore. She had said nothing to him of this, at first because she wasn’t sure what she wanted, and then because she was afraid of what he would say if she told him. After all, he had never given her reason to believe that he felt anything but friendship for her.