Andrea Höst - The Touchstone Trilogy

That makes it sounds really bare and ugly, but it’s not. Partly because there’s so many plants growing over everything, but mainly because everything’s decorated. Around the bottom of every building, and around each window and door is a border. Geometric shapes, or occasionally little stylised animals. All faded yellow and blue and green, with red-earth tones showing up every so often.

I’ve been walking around the town for the entire day. The roads make it fairly easy going, but I put my shoes back on because there’s occasional sharp rubble. Shattered pottery. After I’d made it over the hill I could see both that the lake is huge, and that the town stretches well along the right side of it. I headed toward what looked to be the town centre, where there were some larger clear paved areas, and two of the four-storey towers.

The tower on the north edge of town is closest to the lake, so I picked it for my basecamp. Fort Cass. I’m sleeping on the roof tonight, since the sky is clear and there’s less dirt up here.

I haven’t found any bodies, or not obvious ones, though the chance of unearthing some bones is one of the reasons I’m not that keen on kicking through the grot. Did the people choose to leave, and abandon this place? Was it a plague? A war?

Saturday, December 1

Housekeeping

All this morning I’ve focused on Fort Cass. First I searched it properly, and took anything that looked useful up to the roof. The bottom of every room is thick with muck, dust and the remains of ancient bug-nests. I’m being extra careful in case of spiders. Or, y’know, mind-controlling tentacle monsters.

Metal objects come in two types: the things that fall into flaky red crumble when I pick them up, and the things which are green-black but whole. Most of the green-black things seem to be decorative, unfortunately. A pretty statue of a pippin, which I’ve adopted for company. What might be a belt buckle. Some cups. No knives so far, let alone needles. I don’t think the tower was a place people lived, but perhaps a place they worked, or a look-out.

After my search I kicked all the big rubble out of the top level and swept it out using the most bodged-up attempt at a broom ever. The handle fell straight off a jug I found, but it would hold water so I sloshed and swept and scraped the floor, and knocked down all the cobwebs. Not too bad.

Next on the agenda are hairy sheep. I spotted them on one of my trips to the lake: a little flock had come down to the bank to drink. They were north, out beyond the buildings, and wandered off when I went near them. I’m pretty sure they are sheep, since they looked woolly, but they had horns, and long hair growing in the wool. The horns make me a bit nervous, but I’m hoping I can go and cut some wool off them. Unless they have pointy teeth, in which case I’ll pass.

Sheepses

The hairy sheep are guarded by great big hairy rams. All of them except the little ones have horns, but the rams have big twirling ones, and scarred foreheads from bashing up against each other or anything silly enough to come near their ewes. I bet the ewes would give me a good knock too, and in the end I decided not to risk any of them. They might have been domesticated once, but they’re not keen on people now.

I still came back with a haul of wool, though. The sheep live on the hills north of town, the biggest unforested patch of ground I’ve seen so far. Other than a few trees, the grass is broken up by rocks and berry bushes. These are a different sort to the tearberries, also green but going on pink. More sour than cranberries, so I’m guessing they’re not ripe yet either. Anyway, the important thing about them is they’re thorny, and snag anything which comes near them.

For the price of a few scratches I filled my backpack with tufts of wool, crammed in hard, and there’s plenty more back there. The wool is yellow and grotty, but a huge step up from string made out of grass stalks. I have a thousand plans for it, but first on the list is cleaning it. Which means tomorrow I’m going to have to bite the bullet and try to make fire.

If I can manage fire, I should get lanolin as well as clean wool. I don’t exactly know what I’ll do with the lanolin – keep my skin nice? – but it can’t hurt to have it.

Sunday, December 2

Moonfall

Last night was only the second time I’ve seen the moon. This time it was full.

I was still sitting on the roof of Fort Cass when it rose. All the buildings were slowly picked out in blueish white and it was like looking down at a ghost of a town, everything a shimmering mirage, not real at all. The circles in the centre of each roof became the brightest part of each building, until it looked like the light was flowing out from them. And it was. I was sitting right next to one, and didn’t know whether to stay or run when a thick mist began to creep out from the centre circle. But who could not find out what it was like to touch?

About a year ago I was friends with Perry Ryan. Her parents were hardly ever home, and she liked to drink and smoke. The smoking I wasn’t so keen on, but I thought the drinking was great. It made me feel like I had a personality. I really loved it until Alyssa dragged me out of a party at Perry’s house and woke me up enough to tell me I’d been snogging Matt Wilson. The kind of jerk who takes photos. Alyssa went all Mum on me thanks to that, and no more Perry parties.

So the way that cold blue light made me feel warm and happy wasn’t exactly new, and I curled around the circle like it was a hot water bottle and let myself enjoy it. After that, I was quickly into the everything’s a blur stage. I don’t know what made me go looking for more. But I went downstairs (barefoot!) and then to a place I’d only glanced at before, an amphitheatre of step-like whitestone seats in the middle of town. When I’d looked at it during the day, the place had been infested with cats, but that night there was just the light. Gallons of it, drifting off all the buildings and washing into the amphitheatre where a huge version of the circles was glowing so strong the light rose in a column. I went and stood in it, of course, and tried to drink the air, which was more like a heavy fog than a liquid. I’ve never felt better or happier or more alive than last night, standing there with my arms outstretched and my mouth open, inhaling and swallowing light.

So. I woke up, still feeling really damn good, curled in the centre of the amphitheatre. No hangover. It was mid-morning, sunny. My mouth was dry and the arm I was lying on had pins and needles, but otherwise just Cass, feeling amazed at what had happened.

The amphitheatre is cat central. Their home base, just as the tower’s mine. There’s dozens of them, all slinky, big-eared, mostly grey tabby but a sprinkle of other colours. No fluffy Persian types here. Some really cute kittens, but the whole lot so feral and wild I wouldn’t dare try and pick one up. I got myself out of their territory as quickly as I could, and then because I was feeling energetic I walked back along the lake to a stream I’d passed, and watched otters. It’s hard to focus on practical plans when you’ve spent the night drinking the moon.

Nothing about the moon

Before my attempt at fire, I collected another pack of wool and hunted around for something big and metal which didn’t look like it would instantly fall to pieces. I ended up with this flat blue and green bowl which was hell to move since I could only just lift it, and had to put it down every ten steps. I didn’t want to risk breaking it by trying to roll it and don’t know how it will hold up to having a fire built around it. I’m setting the fire up down on the lake’s edge, for ease of access to water.