The Ecliptic (8 page)

I was mindful not to switch on my torch until I was safely through the apron of the pines. The route had become so familiar that I no longer had to look for the notches I had carved into the
tree trunks to get my bearings; but I walked slowly, cautiously, knowing that if I went too far I would emerge onto a rocky escarpment and be confronted by the open sea. (I could not face the sea
at night-time because I was afraid of it, ebbing and heaving in the blackness, as though it had some secret mission.)

It seemed I was the only person at the refuge who knew what could be found in its deepest woods at night. I often feared another resident would see me in the trees and make me explain myself, so
I went about my work quite furtively. When the air became dank and the ground turned spongy underfoot, I could tell that I was close. I was looking for an enclave where the pines stood at a slant.
Another twenty paces and I saw the trunks begin to lean, until I came to a small clearing—a kind of bald patch in the woods—where several trees were rotting sidelong on the mulch. I
shut off my torch and let the miracle reveal itself.

Pale blue mushrooms, glimmering like stars.

I had learned, through trial and error, to harvest only what I needed. The fungus was fast-growing and it replenished quickly, but the best fruitheads were the oldest—those big-eared
clusters that were left to fatten on the bark. From my satchel, I got out my knife and the tin foil. My joints cricked as I knelt in the dirt, reaching out with the blade. One clean motion of the
knife was all it took, running it against the bark until the gleaming fruitheads fell into my palm. Too slow, and the mushrooms would crumble as I sliced them. Too rough, and they would lose their
colour. I cut off twelve of the fattest and laid them on a sheet of foil, enfolded them tightly, and stowed the whole lot inside my satchel.

No light could be allowed to creep into my studio while I was sampling, so the first thing I did when I got back was shut the door and seal its frame with duct tape. Next, I extinguished my
stove and turned off the overhead fluorescents.

There was a total darkness in the room for half a breath, and then my wall of samples bloomed with light. A stroke of blue appeared on every square of canvas, but no two were alike. Some of the
swatches had a strong, unwavering glow—a blue almost as rich as the live fungus itself. Others were dilute and faltering—a Star of Bombay colour. There was dullness where the paint had
been applied too thickly or the pigment was too granulated, and glassiness where it had been oiled too heavily. That same blue was now spewing from the joins of my satchel, and I could not afford
to let it die.

I had tried so many different variations of the process with changeable results: (i) applying the powdered fungus as an essence to ready-made oil paints; (ii) boiling down the mushrooms, adding
gum arabic to the run-off to make briquettes of watercolour; (iii) mixing the ground fungus with glycerine, honey and water, oxgall and dextrin powder, to make a gouache; (iv) breaking egg yolks
into the powdered fungus to make tempera, and so on. The facilities at Portmantle were such that I could call upon as many materials as I needed, and if there was anything that Ender could not
provide for me from the supply stores, the provost would order it to be shipped from the mainland. In any case, the method that produced the brightest pigment required only the most basic
equipment.

To begin with, I brought out the mushrooms from my satchel and placed them on the table. The brightness of their caps was strong enough to work by, though it always took a moment to adjust my
eyes. I had discovered that washing the fruitheads only stultified the glow, so I brushed away the dirt with a soft sable and padded off the moisture with a paper towel. Then I chopped each
mushroom into even pieces, not too thin, not too narrow, as though preparing them for a salad. In the cold studio, it took no time at all for my fingers to numb, which made the next step
particularly difficult.

I took a large sewing needle from my drawer and threaded it with parcel string, spiking every slice of fungus until I had made a garland. Tying off the ends, I carried it to my closet and hung
it beside the water boiler to dry with all the others. (It was important not to let the slices shrivel too much, so I checked on them quite regularly.)

One of the other garlands had been drying in there for six days already and was just about ready to be powdered. It was pleasantly warm in my grip as I unhooked it. Picking all the curled-up
mushrooms from the line, one by one, I placed them in the mortar, grinding until I had a fine blue soot. I gave the pestle as much force as I could muster and worked it longer than usual, trying to
achieve a better granulation. The pigment had a compacted quality that brought to mind volcanic ash. One garland made a cupful of powder, which was enough to make about forty samples.

I emptied a third of the powder onto the granite slab, depressed a groove into the pile with my thumb, and tipped in three-quarters of a fluid ounce of linseed oil from the measuring spoon. With
the palette knife, I worked it into a paste. Then I ran the muller over it, circling and sliding, until it had a cream-cheese consistency. This was the point at which the nascent glow of the
pigment became a usable material. It collected easily onto a flathead brush, coating the bristles with little persuasion. I took a swatch of bare canvas and made one slow stroke across it, noting
the oil measurements in pencil below, the fruithead sizes and amounts, and, finally, a log number. Then I pinned it to the wall beside the others.

This procedure had to be repeated many times, adding oil to the paint by increments and remixing, until only a smear of blue remained on the slab and my arms were aching from the strain of the
muller. The last of the powder was scooped out of the mortar and decanted into an old tobacco tin, which I hid in a recess behind my bathroom cabinet. At the end of it all, I had just enough
strength to put fresh coke in the stove and light it, but I was too exhausted after that to wash my hands. I fell upon my couch with my dirty boots on and my fingernails speckled with the glow.

By the time I awoke, the snow was thawing on my rooftop and I could hear the spits of water on the walkway. When I peeled the tape from the door to look outside, the sun was
like a mist above the canopy of pines, and I could not tell if it was morning or afternoon. The lawns were green now in patches and the footpaths to the mansion were edged with slush. I could see a
couple of short-termers under the portico, drinking coffee: Gluck, a timid fellow who wrote children’s stories, and the giant Italian in the white leather coat who made self-portraits from
animal photographs. (‘I do not like this word,
montage
; it is very concrete,’ he had explained to us one mealtime. ‘I am concerned with many representations of myself.
How I choose to explore my ideas is not the issue. Discussions of process are so boring.’ This had caused Pettifer to dab his lips and respond, ‘Yes, I lost interest the moment you
brought it up,’ and the Italian had not spoken to us since.)

I showered and changed and made my way up to the mansion. When I reached the portico, Gluck and his companion were gone, and their coffee cups were left out on the swing-seat. I found Ardak in
the lobby, standing high upon a wooden ladder at the heart of the stairwell. He seemed to be fixing a curtain pole; one of the velvet drapes was slung over his shoulder like a lamb for butchering.
With the window bared, the room had a gutted feeling. Dust clotted the daylight. Fingerprints deadened the balustrade.

As I stepped by his ankles, Ardak paused and stared down at me.

‘What happened here?’ I asked, expecting he would not understand.

‘Pssshhh,’ he said, and mimed the smash of glass. He pointed to the topmost window panel and I saw that the pane had been replaced; the putty was still damp in the frame.

‘Lucky we have you to fix these things, eh?’

He gave a vacant nod.

Coming upstairs, I found MacKinney at our regular table in the mess hall, breakfasting alone. She was a fastidious eater on account of an old bowel complaint, and could often be found this way,
finishing her muesli long after the kitchen had closed. In fact, we counted on Mac to save our places every morning. The head of the table by the window was known to belong to us; it afforded the
best view of the grounds. If we ever encountered other people in our spot, Tif or Q would shoo them away with a few stern words. Sometimes, we really were no different from school bullies, but we
had spent so long at Portmantle that we had become protective of the smallest comforts.

I called to MacKinney through the doorway: ‘Who broke the window?’

She gestured to the far side of the room. ‘He was trying to kill a moth, supposedly.’ By the serving pass, Fullerton was standing in an apron and rubber gloves, wiping food-scraps
into a dustbin. ‘He’s been doing chores with Ender all morning to make up for it.’ The old man was going from table to table, collecting cutlery and dishes, and he did not seem
especially glad of the boy’s help.

I sat down with Mac and she slid something towards me. ‘That’s what did the damage, if you’re interested.’ It was a
jeton
—a dull brass token with a groove
along its middle. ‘Ardak found it in the garden. No sign of the moth, by the way. Perhaps it was obliterated.’ She did not move her gaze from Fullerton, who was now stacking all the
empty dishes in the way Ender disliked, so that the undersides became coated with the grease of eggs and
sucuk
and required extra rinsing. ‘Think it’s probably best you speak
to him. He doesn’t seem to like me very much.’

I slipped the
jeton
into my skirt pocket. ‘You take some getting used to.’

A forlorn expression came over Mac then, the milk quivering on the spoon as she lifted it to her mouth. ‘Well, I’ve been thinking a lot more about my own two since he’s been
here, that’s for sure,’ she said. ‘Not that they’re even kids any more. But still . . . It’s hard to watch him. How he stands, how he acts. Makes me feel
old.’

‘We
are
old.’

‘Oh, please. I’ve got decades on you.’ Mac prodded at her muesli. ‘Think about it—he’s basically a schoolboy and he’s already jaded enough to need a
place like this. What hope does that give the rest of us?’

‘Everyone’s problems are their own, Mac.’

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But mine don’t seem to be improving. I’ve forgotten what the point of it was, anyway.’

‘The point of what?’

‘This. Being here.’ She was going to say more, but there was an almighty clatter of dishes. A stack of plates had toppled from Ender’s serving trolley. The old man was standing
in the middle of the mess hall, peering down at the debris, as though confounded by the physics of it.

The boy rushed over to help. ‘Let me sort that out for you.’ He bent to pick up the fragments. ‘Do you have a brush?’

‘Go!’ Ender said. ‘This is not your job. I will sweep for myself.’

‘I don’t mind. Honest.’

‘
Çik! Git burdan!
’

There was a very long silence.

Fullerton stood up, wrenching off his gloves, ducking out of his apron. He returned them to the old man with a sarcastic bow. Noticing me at the table, he traipsed over, looking stung and
apologetic, but all he said was, ‘What’s his problem? I didn’t even do anything.’ He reached for the milk jug in front of Mac and drank straight out of it. The rolling lump
in his throat was oddly prominent. He had not shaved and there was a faint moustache above his lip, a dandelion fuzz about his cheeks that I could not help but think a tad pathetic. As he drank,
his fringe fell back, revealing a streak of raw pink acne at his hairline. It was possible that he had been awake all night. He seemed fragile, twitchy.

‘Didn’t you sleep?’ I asked.

He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. It was baggy and bee-striped. ‘Couldn’t keep my eyes open,’ he said.

‘Well, sorry if we kept you up too late. Quickman gets a bit combative.’

‘You didn’t.’ The boy sniffed. He set the jug down so briskly on the table that it wobbled like a bar-skittle. ‘It’s going to take me all day just to clear my head
again now. Sleep is not my friend.’

‘Come off it,’ said Mac. There was a mound of raisins left in her bowl, which she had managed to sieve out, and now she was swirling them with one finger. ‘Try staring at the
ceiling every night of your life,
then
tell me sleep isn’t good for you. I’ll swap places with you any time.’

‘No, trust me,’ the boy replied in a heavy voice, ‘you wouldn’t want dreams like mine.’ With this, he angled his head until the neck-joints clicked on both sides.
His sweatshirt lifted, revealing the waistband of his boxer shorts and the neat balloon-knot of his bellybutton. Then he said evenly, ‘Will Quickman be around later, do you reckon?’

Mac glanced at me. As though to give the boy a lesson in patience, she removed her glasses and wiped the lenses. Her whole face took on a sallow hue. ‘Quickman, let’s see . . . He
can be quite hard to predict.’