the extra fee the man had demanded. Kennit could not abide a man who would not honour his original bargain. But that had not been the reason he’d killed him. He’d killed him for the sake of keeping the secret. If men knew that Captain Kennit wore a charm to ward off enchantments, why, then they would believe that he feared them. He could not let his crew believe that he feared anything. His good luck was legendary. All the men who followed him believed in it, most more strongly than Kennit himself did. It was why they followed him. They must not ever think that he feared anything could threaten that luck.
In the year since he had killed the artist, he had wondered if killing him had somehow harmed the charm, for it had not quickened. When he had originally asked the carver how long it would take for the little face to come to life, the man had shrugged eloquently, and indicated with much hand fluttering that neither he nor anyone else could predict such a thing. For a year Kennit had waited for the charm to quicken, to be sure that its spell was completely activated. But there had come a time when he could not wait any longer. He had known, on an instinctive level, that it was time for him to visit the Treasure Beach and see what fortune the ocean would wash up for him. He could wait no longer for the charm to awaken; he’d decided to take his chances. He’d have to once more trust his good luck to protect him, as it always had. It had protected him the day he’d had to kill the artist, hadn’t it? The man had turned unexpectedly, just in time to see Kennit drawing his blade. Kennit was convinced that if the man had had a tongue in his head, his scream would have been much louder.
Kennit set the artist firmly out of his mind. This was no time to be thinking of him. He hadn’t come to the Treasure Beach to dwell on the past, but to find treasure to secure his future. He fixed his eyes on the undulating tide line and followed it down the beach. He ignored the glistening shells, the crab claws and tangles of uprooted seaweed, and driftwood large and small. His pale blue eyes searched for jetsam and wreckage only. He did not have to go far to be rewarded. In a small battered wooden chest, he found a set of teacups. He did not think men had made them nor used them. There were twelve of them and they were made of hollowed-out ends of birds’ bones. Tiny blue pictures had been painted on them, the lines so fine that it looked as if the brush had been a single hair. The cups were well used. The blue pictures were faded beyond recognition of their original form and the carved bone handles were worn thin with use. He tucked the small case in the crook of his arm and walked on.
He strode along under the sun and against the wind, his fine boots leaving clean tracks in the wet sand. Occasionally he lifted his gaze, casually, to scan the entire beach. He did not let his expectations show on his face. When he let his gaze drop to the sand, he discovered a tiny cedar box. Saltwater had warped the wood. To open it he had to strike it on a rock like a nut. Inside were fingernails. They were fashioned of mother-of-pearl. Minute clamps would affix them on top of an ordinary nail and in the tip of each one was a tiny hollow, perhaps to store poison. There were twelve of them. Kennit put them into his other pocket. They rattled together as he walked.
It did not distress him that what he had found was obviously neither of human make nor designed for human use. Although he had earlier mocked Gankis’s belief in the magic of the beach, all knew that more than one ocean’s waves brushed these rocky shores. Ships foolish enough to anchor anywhere off of this island during a squall were likely to disappear entirely, leaving not even a splinter of wreckage. Old sailors said they had been swept clean out of this world and into the seas of another one. Kennit did not doubt it. He glanced at the sky, but it remained clean and blue. The wind was crisp, but he had faith the weather would hold so that he could walk the Treasure Beach and then hike back across the island to where his ship waited at anchor in Deception Cove. He trusted his luck to hold.
His most unsettling discovery came next. It was a bag made of red and blue leather stitched together, half-buried in the wet sand. The leather was stout, the bag meant to last. Saltwater had soaked and stained it, bleeding the colours into one another. The brine had seized up the brass buckles that had secured it and stiffened the leather straps that went through them. He used his knife to rip open a seam. Inside was a litter of kittens, perfectly formed with long claws and iridescent patches behind their ears. They were dead, all six of them. Quelling his distaste, he picked up the smallest. He turned the limp body over in his hands. It was blue-furred, a deep periwinkle blue with pink-lidded eyes. Small. The runt most likely. It was sodden and cold and disgusting. A ruby earring like a fat tick decorated one of the wet ears. He longed to simply drop it. Ridiculous. He plucked the earring free and dropped it in his pocket. Then, moved by an impulse he did not understand, he returned the small blue bodies to the bag and left it beside the tide line. Kennit walked on.
Awe flowed through him with his blood. Tree. Bark and sap, the scent of the wood and the leaves fluttering overhead. Tree. But also the soil and the water, the air and the light, all was coming and going through the being known as tree. He moved with them, sliding in and out of an existence of bark and leaf and root, air and water.
‘Wintrow.’
The boy lifted his eyes slowly from the tree before him. With an effort of will, he focused his gaze on the smiling face of the young priest. Berandol nodded in encouragement. Wintrow closed his eyes for an instant, held his breath, and pulled himself free of his task. When he opened his eyes, he took a sudden breath as if breaking clear of deep water. Dappling light, sweet water, soft wind all faded abruptly. He was in the monastery work room, a cool hall walled and floored with stone. His bare feet were chill against the floor. There were a dozen other slab tables in the big room. At three others, boys like himself worked slowly, their dreamlike movements indicative of their tranced state. One wove a basket and two others shaped clay with wet grey hands.
He looked down at the pieces of gleaming glass and lead on the table before him. The beauty of the stained-glass image he had pieced together astonished even him, yet it still could not touch the wonder of having been the tree. He touched it with his fingers, tracing the trunk and the graceful branches. Caressing the image was like touching his own body; he knew it that well. Behind him he heard the soft intake of Berandol’s breath. In his state of still-heightened awareness, he could feel the priest’s awe flowing with his own, and for a time they stood quietly, glorying together in the wonder of Sa.
‘Wintrow,’ the priest repeated softly. He reached out and traced with a finger the tiny dragon that peered from the tree’s upper branches, then touched the glistening curve of a serpent’s body, all but hidden in the twisting roots. He put a hand on the boy’s shoulders and turned him gently away from his worktable. As he steered him from the work room, he rebuked him gently. ‘You are too young to sustain such a state for the whole morning. You must learn to pace yourself.’
Wintrow lifted his hands to knuckle at eyes that were suddenly sandy. ‘I’ve been in there all morning?’ he asked dazedly. ‘It did not seem like it, Berandol.’
‘I am sure it did not. Yet I am sure the weariness you feel now will convince you it is so. One must be careful, Wintrow. Tomorrow, ask a watcher to stir you at mid-morning. Talent such as you possess is too precious to allow you to burn it out.’
‘I do ache, now,’ Wintrow conceded. He ran his hand over his brow, pushing fine black hair from his eyes and smiled. ‘But the tree was worth it, Berandol.’
Berandol nodded slowly. ‘In more ways than one. The sale of such a window will yield enough coin to re-roof the noviciates’ hall. If Mother Dellity can bring herself to let the monastery part with such a thing of wonder.’ He hesitated a moment, then added, ‘I see they appeared again. The dragon and the serpent. You still have no idea…’ he let his voice trail away questioningly.
‘I do not even have a recollection of putting them there,’ Wintrow said.
‘Well.’ There was no trace of judgement in Berandol’s voice. Only patience.
For a time they walked in companionable silence through the
