Mark Newton - The Book of Transformations

‘For my own good?’ Lan asked.

‘You have, it seems, caught on well.’ Cayce turned and Lan moved to follow him across the sand.

*

The approach to Villarbor was contoured with surges of trees and plants that seemed alien to the Archipelago. Spiked structures and fat-leafed things and explosions of gaudy colours. Heavy, almost monstrous insects droned in and out of the foliage, snapping back branches with their clumsy flight. Other creatures drilled holes through bark, filling their venous sacs with sap.

The stone track was well-kept, tidied regularly by small teams of men and women. They cleared paths of vegetation with strange relics shaped like a crossbow, with minimal effort, and it was not at all obvious how the devices worked.

Lan never understood why, on an island without money, anyone would want to do such jobs, yet they did. Surely you should be paid for having to do chores like this? They stopped their tasks to gather around and talk to her, and she had to strain to follow their accents. She forced a smile in her effort to cease being self-conscious. Their clothing was garish, and woven with little patches in the style of harlequins. Not one of them dressed identically, and both genders sported equally unique variants of style, and wore bright flowers in their hair — which made her frown since back on Jokull flowers were generally worn only by women.

Cayce humoured them all for a moment, but then steered her onwards towards Villarbor. She waved her goodbyes over her shoulder.

Further up the road she asked, ‘Are we in a hurry for a reason?’

‘They will spend all day talking to an outsider,’ Cayce replied. ‘We do not get many of your kind here — a layperson from the Empire, I mean.’

‘Why is that anyway?’ Lan asked.

‘It is just easier that way,’ Cayce said.

‘You said that last time, too.’

‘I probably did,’ was his non-committal response. ‘We are simply taught that outsiders have a tendency to corrupt — I wish our society to remain harmonious, is all.’

‘One more question,’ Lan said.

‘Just one?’

She paused and chuckled. ‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s just exciting for people like me, that’s all.’

‘Your question?’

‘How come you were allowed off the island? Seems as if everyone else is curious about me — but does no one ever leave?’

‘Few people want to leave. They are free to do so, of course, but they hear of the many tragedies of the Archipelago, and want nothing whatsoever to do with it.’

‘And you… How come you travel?’

‘My experiences and feelings are not entirely like the others,’ he replied, and marched on before she could press him any further.

*

Fields rolled back in all directions. Various colours denoted what must have been dozens of different crops covering small plots of land, unlike the vast, intensive efforts on Jokull. Clusters of huts and thickly wooded copses were dotted everywhere, surrounded by strange climbing fruits.

The sun was sliding from the sky, the heat still unbelievably prominent. Cayce said that the cultists managed the weather in Ysla. Whilst around the Archipelago winds and clouds heaped ice and snow, here there was little but clear skies and intoxicating warmth. It was no wonder the cultists kept this island to themselves.

She had seen the process of manipulation and been mystified. Figures perched on a hill, tilting some device towards the sky and, on the next hill along, another working in tandem. Purple shafts of light had buried deep into any clouds that persisted, disintegrating them slowly or ploughing through into the heavens. Whatever they were doing, these acts were certainly keeping the weather favourable.

Lan didn’t spot where the city actually began. As they approached the urban fringes of the settlement, they passed through smaller hub communities — and Cayce explained that this was the real principle behind Villarbor; not one centralized district but lots of them, all small interconnected zones. Between each stretched small grassland meadows, which were punctuated by mats of purple or white flowers, then secondary growth forest and coppiced trees — and then majestic woodland. Now and then they became something more formal, gardens that frothed over into one another, coloured plants blending into the distance.

The smells, the pungency, the colours, the textures, were like nothing she’d ever known.

‘The gardens are remarkably pretty,’ she commented, still on Cayce’s heels.

He strode on and said, ‘They are not meant for aesthetic purposes — we use everything in this particular district for medicinal value. Each plot is divided up by the ailment they treat. Districts specialize, most for food, but others for purposes like this.’

They passed a single-storey house surrounded by one such garden, and three women standing in casual conversation.

‘Good afternoon, sisters,’ Cayce called out.

One of them, a dark-haired girl, seemed to act coyly towards him, waving but turning away quickly, her white skirt trailing her in an arc.

‘Guessing you’re a heartbreaker here,’ Lan observed, hoping that the casual conversation might open him up.

‘I have no idea what you mean,’ he replied.

‘You know. Girl saves herself for you, thinks of you a lot, tells all her friends how charming you are.’

Cayce shrugged and laughed. ‘I would, indeed, hate to be in such a position of power over another person.’

Power — there it was again, a word that seemed electrically charged on this island, one spoken of with great disdain.

Into the forest proper and, after stepping between two giant buttress roots, they entered a zone that was clearly central to Villarbor.

Woodland towered before her, a million shades of green and brown that ultimately blended to become a dark haze in the distance. Thick, red-brown trunks extended upwards, losing themselves within a densely packed canopy. Alongside the trees, metallic structures extended like scaffolding. On others, vast ornate staircases wound themselves anticlockwise around the timber. Tracks had been cut between trees, in numerous directions, through an undergrowth of ferns.

‘What species are these?’ Lan asked.

‘Oh, we have various Tsuga, Taxodium, Sequoia… We have some rarer varieties further in.’

‘Why such interesting names?’ Lan stared up at the amazing textures to the bark.

‘These are, to our knowledge, the names given to the species when the seeds were stored, several millennia ago. Civilizations rise and fall, and after one particular fall, possibly due to some apocalyptic event, the landscape became devoid of forests. The forests of the world have since been re-grown. It is a sadness that we no longer know their original names.’

Clustered huts formed tree-crown dwellings. Walkways traversed the canopy and, above, unbelievably, people were wandering back and forth as if on the streets of a city. Food-filled baskets were constantly lowered and raised from the ground. Tiny lights cascaded down from branches, illuminating the more atramentous corners of the treescape — and Lan wondered how magical it would look at night. Within the gaps in the canopy, brown balloon-like crafts were gracefully lowering themselves towards respective platforms. People disembarked in their droves, mainly humans, but rumels, and the occasional Ceph too — from this distance, they all looked like insects.

Everything here seemed superbly crafted, and unique. The details carved into every structure were massively ornate, intricate geometric designs, or baroque and sprawling, as if the trees themselves had grown in that mesmerizing manner.

Lan turned to Cayce. ‘So what’s your house like?’

‘Nothing here is mine,’ Cayce laughed.