I wasn’t even done with thinking that thought when the door opened and a woman come into the room. She was a strange sight to see, and I did not know what to make of her. She was maybe as old as my mother, Jemiu Woodsmith, but in every other way she was as different as could be. Her skin was very light, as if the sun had never touched it, and her hair was gold. Not yellow, like butter or the yolk of an egg, but hard gold like tech. She must of coloured it that way her own self. Her eyes was black, and there was lines drawed around the edges of them to make them look bigger and darker than they was. I think there was red painted on her lips too, but I couldn’t tell that for sure. Her long gold hair went up off her head instead of down, and was made to look like waves of the sea or furrows in a field. The clothes she wore was all in the one colour, like the ones I was wearing, except they was dark blue where mine was white – a blue jacket over a blue shirt, and blue trousers. Only her boots was different, being black.
She seemed really happy to see me. “Koli?” she said. “Koli Faceless? Is that your name?” She had the strangest voice I ever heard – or maybe the second strangest, after Monono’s. There was a kind of a roll to it, or a bounce, that made most other people’s voices feel like they was just flat ground going on and on. That sounds foolish, but I don’t know how to say it better.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s me. I’m Koli.”
“And I’m Lorraine.” She put her hand on her chest as she said it, kind of pointing to herself like I might not of already noticed her. “Why, Paul said you were just a boy. I was imagining someone half your size. You must be what? At least fourteen. And tall for it.”
I didn’t know who Paul might be, although I thought maybe he could be the voice that talked out of the big drone called a raven. “No,” I said, for I felt like I had got to say something. “I’m sixteen, and short.”
The woman give a laugh that was rich and loud. “Sixteen and short and utterly charming,” she said. “Are you too old to hug?”
I didn’t know what to say to that, and I didn’t have no time to decide, for she gathered me up in her arms right then and there and pressed me to her, the way a mother does with a baby. It catched me by surprise, so I didn’t either pull away or hug her back. I just was drawed in against her. Her arms was soft but very strong, and she held me there for a long time. When I was up that close, she smelled of flowers and also of something sharp and high like the resin in a pine tree.
“Ooh, I can’t help it,” she said. “You’re like my boy. Just like my little Stanley. Why does the world think boys can’t be gentle and loving as well as strong and fierce? Of course they can. Of course they can. The one thing doesn’t get in the way of the other at all. Gentle with your friends, fierce to your foes. Welcome to my house, Koli Faceless. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that you’re visiting with us. It’s been so long since we had guests – and never one as sweet as you.”
She let me go at last. I was all confused by that embrace, and the warm welcome, and the strange speech she give. I stammered out a thank you. “Bless you,” Lorraine said. “Don’t you even think about it. Come on with me, and I’ll take you to breakfast. You must be starving. Get yourself dressed, and we’ll go straight up to the crow’s nest. I’ve laid some clothes out for you. Now you mustn’t get any ideas! They’re Albion blues, and you know you really shouldn’t wear them before you’re sworn and ranked, but they’re what we have – so just for today we’re going to turn a blind eye.”
She pointed to the end of the bed. There was some clothes there, sure enough. They was dark blue, just exactly like the ones she was wearing. I couldn’t help thinking of the Half-Ax soldiers we had met as we was coming from Calder, that was all in grey with red badges on their chests. This felt a lot like that – like these was clothes that was meant to make you look the same as the others all round you so you would end up being the same in other ways too. I didn’t like it much.
Lorraine seen me hesitate, and read me wrong. “I’m so sorry, Koli,” she said. “I’ll wait outside while you change. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.” She went across to the door, but before she got there I scraped up enough courage from somewhere to ask the thing that was sitting right on the top of my mind and had been there since I first waked up.
“What happened to my own clothes?”
Lorraine stopped and turned around. “They’re being washed,” she said. “They’ll be returned to you as soon as they’re dry.”
“But… there was something else with them.” I almost couldn’t say it, I was so scared of what the answer would be. If I had lost the DreamSleeve when I fell in the ocean, or if the water had ruined it, then I had killed Monono. I didn’t think I could live with myself if I had done that.
“Your music player is fine,” Lorraine said. “We’re just giving it the once-over. We do that with any device that comes on board. You’ll get it back as soon as we’re done, I promise.” I didn’t say nothing to that, for I wasn’t sure how my voice would come out. I was close to crying from relief. I only nodded to show I’d heard.
Lorraine went out of the room. I put the clothes on, thinking all the time about Monono and how long it would be before she was back with me. What was a once-over? What was a device, for that matter? Maybe it was another word for tech.
The clothes was well made, and fit me pretty good. I wasn’t always sure which way round they was meant to go, especially the jacket, but I figured it out by trying all the ways there was until they looked more or less sensible. There was underclothes too, and a pair of black shoes so soft they was almost like gloves. To tell you the truth, there was about two or three times as many clothes as anyone needed to wear.
While I was getting dressed, I seen how clean my skin was. I had been filthy before, from working in the forest at Many Fishes, and though the seawater might of washed away some of that dirt, the blackness under my nails and the sticky sap in my hair would not of shifted so easy. Someone had washed me while I was asleep. I didn’t like to think about that. It made me realise how helpless I must of been, not even to stir nor to know about it when Lorraine or whoever it might of been picked me up out of the sea and brung me here and made me ready for…
Well, for whatever was to come next.
I made my way at last through all the piled-up stuff to the door, opened it and stepped outside to where Lorraine was waiting for me in a kind of long, narrow hallway.
She throwed her hands up to her mouth when she seen me. “Oh my!” she said. “Oh my poor heart! Don’t you look fine! I wish my Stanley wore his blues as well as you do, Koli, I swear I do.”
She took my hand, like I was a little child that needed to be steadied when he walked, and we set off down the hallway.
The place we was in reminded me somewhat of Rampart Hold back in Mythen Rood. Rampart Hold was the onliest house I ever knowed where the places between the rooms was as big as the rooms themselves. This hallway was narrow, like I said, but it went on for a really long way, past lots of doors that looked just exactly like the one we had come out of. It went round corners and doubled back on itself, and still it kept on going. The walls and the floor and the ceiling was all of metal, so our footsteps sounded like someone banging on a drum and not managing to get a tune out of it. The walls was mostly green, but the ceilings and floors was silver-grey and almost like a mirror. When I put my feet down, another Koli that was all wavery and strange like a reflection in water brung his own feet up to meet mine. There was a smell in the air that put me in mind of Wardo Hammer’s forge at the end of a hot day – a smell of iron that had been heated up and worked and was just now settling down to cool.