HarperVoyager
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First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2016
Copyright © Emmi Itäranta 2016
Cover design by Alexandra Allden © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016.
Cover illustration © Istvan/ Chaotic Atmospheres.
Emmi Itäranta asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007536061
Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780007536085
Version: 2016-05-11
Table of Contents
I still dream of the island.
I sometimes approach it across water, but more often through air, like a bird, with a great wind under my wings. The shores rise rain-coloured on the horizon of sleep, and in their quiet circle the buildings: the houses grown along the canals, the workshops of inkmasters, the low-ceilinged taverns. The House of Words looks inward behind its high walls. Threads knotted into mazes run in all directions from the House of Webs, and air gondolas are suspended on their cables, dead weights above the streets.
At the centre of the island stands the Tower, smooth and blind. A sun of stone glows grey light at the pinnacle, spreading its sharp ray-fingers. Fires like fish-scales flicker in the windows. Sea is all around, and the air will carry me no longer. I head towards the Tower.
As I draw closer, the lights in the windows fade, and I understand they were never more than a reflection. The Tower is empty and uninhabited, the whole island a mere hull, ready to be crushed like a seashell driven to sand and carved hollow by time.
I also understand something else.
The air I am floating in is no air at all, but water, the landscape before me the seabed, deep as memory and long-buried things.
Yet I breathe, effortlessly. And I live.
Amber would sometimes wash ashore on the island; it was collected and shipped across the sea. As a child I once watched a jewel-smith polish it on the edge of the market square. It was like magic, one of the stories where ancient mages span yarn from mere mist or gave animals a human tongue. A sweet smell arose from the amber, the smith dipped the whetstone in water every once in a while, and in his hands the murky surface turned smooth and glass-clear.