‘Er – no thanks. That’s great. I’ll manage.’
‘Shall I clunk clokkk?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Clok: Bring refreshments?’
‘Oh – that would be nice. Can I have some fresh drinking water?’
The food was basic on our journey, and the water had run out the last few days. You can get very tired of strong sweet sticky wine.
‘Clum-clucky,’ said the doll, and sailed out. (She walks in an odd way, a type of gliding limp.) (I still can’t get over the urge to brush and comb her hair. Madness. Anyway it might all come out and then the poor thing would be bald.) (Her face isn’t so bad, but expressionless. The eyes sometimes blink, startling me every time. Her lips part when she speaks, but sometimes only these clucks or cloks emerge.)
When she came back anyway, I’d had a fast nervous bath, not enjoying it as I’d have done normally. I’d put on a long loose dress from the row of long loose dresses, white or pale grey, in the closet. There were also some ankle boots of soft leather.
I rolled up my WD with this book still safe inside the pocket. (A Hulta Wedding Dress always has a pocket. The bride is given so many small gifts all through her wedding day, she has to have somewhere to put them.) I’d thought of that, too, got very down.
Then I shook myself. Just in time, for there was Dolly again.
On the tray she’d brought was a wonderful blush-and-cream fruit, some thin slices of a sort of crunchy bread, and a decanter and glass of green crystal. Cool water, as I’d asked.
‘Thank you!’ I cried.
She just went out.
Do you thank them? Does it matter?
Well, I do anyway. It feels wrong if I just snatch without a word, the way the other three do.
I didn’t see them again until the evening. By then I’d slept a couple of hours on the low couch, a real deep, seemingly dreamless sleep. I felt better and stronger.
Dolly came into the room, clucked something about dinner on a terrace.
The view from my room’s three high windows looks straight down into the jungle ravines, or up into leaf-fringed sky. Either way, mostly an impression of distance and things growing. A wild fig tree wraps the third window up almost entirely. So when Dolly led me up a short flight of stairs and I came out on a roof-terrace, the view made me dizzy again. All that largeness and space I’d seen earlier, but now we were perched right up inside it.
The sun was going down behind the house and jungle. Across from us, over the ravines, the cliff-face was burning hot gold, and the waterfall like golden silver. And the sky was a spicy colour. Overpowering.
Not taking any notice, Y, H and Z were sprawled about, smoking beetles.
Then we had dinner served by all three dolls, Dolly, and two male dolls I’ve since called Bow and Whirr. Not very clever, I admit. Bow talks, but keeps bowing, and Whirr – just whirrs.
Dinner was all right, quite tasty, lots of fresh veg, fruit and salads, and some hot rice and pastry. No meat or cheese, or anything like that.
Hrald complained. ‘Can’t they get fish, even? There’s a river down there, isn’t there? Under that waterfall? Bad management. All this way, and not even milk for the tea.’
I didn’t take much notice of them. They ignored me.
The sky was a smoked rose, then suddenly ash-blue. Stars starred it.
Then something strange – stars – gems – in the wrong place – at first I thought I was seeing things. Blinked, saw I wasn’t.
I couldn’t keep quiet.
‘Over there – what’s that?’
‘What? Oh that. Hmm. What do you think?’
I scowled at Yazkool. ‘If I thought I knew I wouldn’t ask.’
‘Oh, Claidissa, you’re so loud and argumentative, so unfeminine—’
It was Zand who broke in. Gravely he told me, in my own language, ‘The palace is there, madam.’
‘Palace – that’s a palace?’
The top of the huge cliff – I’d noticed in the last of the sun how it was all different shapes, especially along the top. I’d thought that was just how it had weathered. I’ve seen mountains, hills, shaped like towers or clumps of roofs. And this was all in the same stone … But now in the sudden dusk, spangles had fired up everywhere, up and down the entire cliff. They were gold and white, delicate lettuce green and ruby, amethyst …
Windows.
‘It’s called the Rise,’ said Hrald. ‘Didn’t we say?’
Those beasts, of course they hadn’t.
So the cliff is called the Rise. It runs for miles, up and down and along. And it’s not a cliff, or not only a cliff. Not a palace either – it must be a city. And it’s occupied, because all those windows were gleaming and blazing now in the dark, from lighted lamps. Like they do over there every night I’ve been here.
I sat feeling completely astonished. I was frightened too. Everything was too large. Nothing was properly explained. Perhaps it couldn’t be.
But I wouldn’t say anything else.
In the deep hollow of evening, far off yet weirdly clear, something growled, above the thunder of the fall.
‘Tigapard, out hunting,’ said glib Yazkool, knowingly.
‘Or tiger,’ added Hrald.
Zand shook his head. He said, still in my language, ‘There are other things, on the Rise.’
And then – and then, to cap it all, as if too much hadn’t already happened, this STAR rose over the cliff.
‘My,’ said Yazkool. Even he looked awed, for a moment.
Hrald just gawped.
Zand got up, jingling, and bowed even lower
