Саймон Морден - The White City

‘It’ll be fine,’ said Dalip, with no confidence that it would be. ‘We just have to work out what’s going on, and then it’ll be…’

‘Fine,’ she echoed.

They climbed up the face of the dune, following the collapsed footprints left by Crows, coming and going. As they crested the dune, they saw Crows below them, standing next to a post jutting out of the sand.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘Come and see.’

They slithered down, all except Luiza who stayed at the top.

Dalip patted the wooden post. It was curved like a tusk, weathered with salt and worn by the sand.

‘What is this?’

‘Dig at its base.’

Frowning, Dalip got down on his knees. He could tell that someone◦– presumably Crows◦– had already pushed the sand aside, and covered it up again. He dug his fingers into the cool dry sand and scooped it away, following the bend of the wood.

It flattened and ran into the lee of the dune. Dalip scraped and shovelled along its length, a task made difficult by the sand from above falling back into the hollow he was making.

There was something buried there. Protrusions at right angles to the main beam, jutting out each side in pairs. First one, then another, and after that it got too difficult to excavate any more.

He sat back on his haunches, and wiped his hands on his shins.

‘Well?’ asked Mary.

‘It’s a going to be a boat,’ said Dalip. ‘Not today, not tomorrow, but in a couple of days, it’s going to be a boat.’

There was nothing they could do to speed up the boat-building. Down worked away, quietly, secretly. Mary saw Dalip creep back to the site and watch for a long time, just to try and catch something being added. He left, frustrated, and yet the next morning when she’d gone for a look, it was half ready.

It had a hull, and the first signs of a deck. From being buried deep in the sand, it was starting to float up through the dunes in which it was being born. When it was◦– what? Finished? Ripe?◦– it would pop to the surface like a rubber duck in the bath. They’d just have to drag it to the water’s edge and push it out to sea.

Crows had been a stoker, below decks on a steamship, shovelling coal into the belly of a red-hot furnace. He’d said he had experience: believing that included little sailing boats was an assumption too far. Dalip was the only one with any relevant knowledge at all, and he didn’t know how a Down-grown ship was going to differ from a modern fibreglass dinghy. He’d confessed that he might end up killing them all.

And that was without the risk of having Crows in the same boat.

It was going to have to carry six of them, for as long as it took to cross the bay. The White City, if it was more than an artefact of Down’s collective imagination, may not be there after all. But at least they wouldn’t have to have walk all the way, and if Dalip’s idea of using the portals as a time machine was actually possible, it wouldn’t matter too much how long they spent looking for it.

She patted the boat and went back down to the beach, where Dalip and Mama were sifting through the maps again, this time looking for any mention of this mythical city made of white stone. She crouched between them and watched for a while.

‘Any luck?’ she asked.

‘It’s difficult to tell. There’s this one.’ He passed her a dog-eared scrap little bigger than a Post-it note. ‘It doesn’t seem to have a portal on it, but whatever this is was still important enough to draw.’

‘There’s no writing on it.’ She looked at the front, with its faded fine lines, then at the back, which had a completely different pattern on it. ‘And they used both sides.’

‘There are old books in the British Library where people have written an entirely different text sideways across an existing one. Paper’s going to be really rare, so yes, every last scrap gets used. Lots of these have two, three, even four maps on them.’ Dalip rubbed his eyes and screwed up his face. ‘I’m going blind staring at these things.’

‘Do you think the White City exists?’ she asked.

Mama stretched out her sore legs and wriggled her toes against the sand. Her blisters were already starting to heal. ‘Crows hasn’t outright denied it,’ she said. ‘If this is a map of it, then I guess it might.’

‘It has to,’ said Dalip.

‘And why is that?’ asked Mary.

‘Because we want it to.’

‘I thought,’ she said, ‘it was supposed to be the one place that didn’t rely on Down’s magic. So wishing it real isn’t going to make it happen.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that. Do you know what the blind spot is?’ Dalip half-turned towards her in a shuffle.

‘I… maybe.’ Mary didn’t. She knew what a blind spot was, but not the blind spot.

‘It’s the bit at the back of your eye where the optic nerve collects all the signals together and sends them to the brain. It’s the only area where there aren’t any light-collecting cells. Normally, you never notice, but there’s this trick you can do with a dot and a cross drawn on a piece of paper. Stare at the dot and move the paper closer or further away, and at a certain point, the cross will simply disappear.’

‘So…?’

‘If you want to hide from Down, you want somewhere that doesn’t have villages, castles, portals, or anything worth fighting over. Down’s blind spot. The White City.’

‘You’re just making shit up now, aren’t you?’ Mary peered deep into the map fragment for a hidden meaning.

‘It’s all I’ve got. Sorry.’

Mama looked down at her feet. ‘Crows was running to somewhere, girl. He might not know where, or even if, but he was moving with purpose. And that man, he does nothing without intending to profit from it. May as well call where he was heading the White City and have done with it.’

‘You see, that makes much more sense.’

Mary handed the map back to Dalip and stood up. Out to sea, a serpent’s head rose above the swell and turned their way. She waved before she realised what she was doing, and Mama rolled her eyes.

‘He’ll do you no good, girl,’ she said. ‘He’ll take everything, and leave you with nothing.’

Dropping her hand by her side and feeling both foolish and angry, Mary had a ready response on the tip of her tongue. Then she glanced at Dalip, who was almost cringing in anticipation.

‘You know what, Mama? Kind of worked that out for myself. The idea of having Bell’s seconds is just a little bit… you know, sad.’ She swished her skirts and turned away, still feeling the tingling in her fingers and the tip of her nose that she always experienced just before she was going to blow.

But it was better this way. More grown-up. She didn’t have to bite every single time, even though Mama’s advice was unasked for and, for fuck’s sake, all she’d done was wave. She clenched her fists and kept on walking, down the beach and towards the strand line. Tomorrow morning, they’d be heaving the boat down to the shore◦– all this bickering would be done with because they’d be on the move.

‘Wait,’ called Dalip, trotting up behind her, his feet sinking into the soft dry sand and causing him to have an awkward, almost stumbling gait.

‘You got something to say too?’

‘Me? No. What I know about relationships could be written on a stamp.’

She laughed despite her mood.

‘What is it, then?’

‘I wanted to,’ and he stopped, his lips twisting and no words coming out. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘Fuck, Dalip. Sometimes you need to just say it.’

‘Okay.’ He took a deep breath. ‘If it comes to it, save the maps, not us.’

‘What?’