The Touchstone Trilogy (5 page)

So I went swimming.  The water's cold, but since the day was hot and I've been hunched over pots of boiling water, this was a good thing.  In a proper story, when the heroine goes swimming naked the very handsome prince turns up to try not to watch.  Complete failure on the handsome prince part, but lying back in the water staring at a sunny blue sky, I could pretend I was anywhere.  Just Cass, on an extended lakeside holiday.

My school uniform has seen better days.  Grubby, worn, with little holes burned in the skirt from all my fire experiments.  The jacket's a bit better, since I only wear that at night.  Probably I should make more of it just nightwear. 

Nutbars

This diary is my volleyball.  I didn't get shipwrecked, and I don't have a face painted on it, but it's what I talk to.  Did Tom Hanks talk to the volleyball because he'd gone mad, or to stop himself going mad?

Reading back, I see I haven't really talked about myself very much.  Me before here.  I'm seventeen.  Eighteen in February.  I have hazel eyes and light brown hair with just a bit of a wave.  It goes blondish if I stay out in the sun a lot – I guess it's probably blondish now.  Using a lake as a mirror isn't very accurate.  I'm 172cm tall, and usually feel a complete hulk around other girls.  Mum says I have good skin, but my acne keeps making her a liar.  I'm okay-looking; not model material but I clean up all right.

I like The Killers, Gwen Stefani and Little Birdy.  Escher prints.  Orlando Bloom.  Surfing (badly!).  But mostly reading.  Sf&f, but almost anything really.  I was going to study English, history and archaeology at university, and hopefully figure out some way to turn an Arts degree into a job.  I'm an above average student, but I'm not brilliant at anything.  Partly because I'd rather read than study.

My best friend is Alyssa Caldwell.  I like Nick Dale, except when I don't like him.  I have one brother, Julian.  My Dad left when I was ten, but we see him most months.  The thing I wanted most was to be witty and confident instead of just hanging about the edges whenever I'm with a bunch of people, thinking up brilliant things I could say if the right opportunity arose.  Guess I don't have to worry about that any more.

Being here is amazing.  I'm on a whole new world, and the moonlight is wine.  Today it was rough, but I'm coping really well, honestly.

And my period's starting and I hate this.  Hate it. 

Wednesday, December 5

Felt

I'm now officially sick to death of wool.  But I have a blanket, maybe.  I'm letting it dry, hoping that it doesn't just fall to pieces when I try and pick it up. 

Thursday, December 6

Tissue

Mum talks occasionally about the myth of the paperless society.  She means people printing things in offices, but I'm being hit hard by a lack of paper products at the moment.  With a choice of washing my butt in the lake or using leaves when I go to the toilet (not even mentioning that the toilet is a hole I scraped in the ground), I miss paper every day.  My history notes didn't last long and I don't want to use this diary.  Add today's blocked and dripping nose and the failure of my history classes to tell me what pre-industrial women used for their periods, and I really really miss the papered society.

So anyway, since I wasn't feeling well, I spent the morning wandering aimlessly about, scaring the pigsies and annoying the cats.  There's a tunnel leading below the amphitheatre, deep enough that it's too dark for me to be keen on more than standing at the entrance peering in.  The cats, at least, behave just like stray cats – they watch you, and leave if you get near.  Even though there's a lot of them, they don't seem at all interested in hurling themselves at my throat or doing other uncatty things.  I wouldn't dare try and pick one up though. 

Festering Bag of Snot

The day's gone very black and hot.  I rescued my craft project, which fortunately was nearly dry and didn't immediately fall to pieces when I picked it up.  It doesn't much look like felt – more like a bunch of wool pressed flat and only just clinging together – but it's still much better than a badly woven mat of leaves.  A soft, clean (faintly greenish) piece of luxury.

My blocked nose has turned into a chesty cough.  By the time the storm started rolling in I felt absolutely rotten, but made myself go hunting in the nearest gardens, bringing up as much 'trusted' food as possible.  I won't have to worry about water, since I still haven't managed to block the stair to the roof.  I've set some bowls on the stair to catch water, and positioned my bed against the wall without a window.  It hasn't quite started raining yet, but it looks like it will be bad.  Like my cold. 

Friday, December 7

Rain and Phlegm

All day.  So hard to breathe. 

Monday, December 10

Not Drowning

When I was in Year 10 I sat next to a guy named David in Science.  We weren't friends, didn't socialise outside that class, but we got on well.  He was funny and nice, acted the clown to hide he was shy.  He moved schools the next year, and early this year I heard that he had died.  He'd always had a weak heart, was occasionally sick because of it.  I didn't know what to say, what to feel.

Mum says there's three bad things about dying: pain and other unpleasantries, the way your friends and relatives feel after, and the fact that you don't get to find out what happens next.  Mum's an atheist – she says she's never met a religion that didn't sound made up.  I'm agnostic, because I like the idea of there being something more, but the possibility of it working like Mum thinks it does – that you just stop – doesn't particularly bother me.

I don't remember very much about the past couple of days, but through it all was threaded this horror that no-one would know.  That Mum would never know.  And, yeah, that I wouldn't find out any of the explanations behind all this.

My family's a healthy one.  Colds occasionally, minor temperatures, chicken pox.  I've never been to hospital.  I needed one yesterday.  I don't know the name for what I had.  I thought you caught colds or flu from other people, not just abruptly developed them.  Whatever it was, I couldn't breathe, could barely move.  I don't know what my temperature was, since I felt hot and cold at random, but I'm pretty sure I spent half my time hallucinating (unless there really were dragons and sea monsters spiralling across the ceiling).

Last night was another moonfall.  The inside of the building glowed, and I could see the light misting past the windows.  I couldn't tell if it was exactly the same, since I couldn't get up to go on the roof.  I didn't feel drunk either – I was so out of it I'm hardly sure it happened – but I remember feeling warm and relaxed and not having to fight so much to breathe.

Today I'm not exactly better, but most of the gunk clogging my lungs is gone, and the fever, and I've managed to get upstairs to the roof, and sit here and write this, even if it's taken me half the day.  Abandoned as it is, I'm so glad to have found this town.  I feel vulnerable enough here.  I wouldn't have survived the last few days without solid shelter.  I'm feeling very small at the moment, but so glad to be breathing.

All the effort making my felt blanket, and now it really really needs a wash. 

Tuesday, December 11

Not entertaining

It doesn't get light till past 10am on my watch now.  And dark around midnight.  Now that I'm breathing better, it seems to take forever for the night to end.  All I've done so far today is lie on the roof watching the birds on the lake.  I'm worried that I've hurt my eyes somehow, since random parts of the world are blurry and not quite focused.

I'm going to go down for a forage soon.  If I feel stronger later, I might even try to clean my wool collection.  Survivor Cass needs some time-consuming projects to keep her sane.

Not that the prospect of trying to relight my fire is anything to look forward to.  That's going to have to wait more than a few days – it just takes too much concerted energy to do, and I can't even climb a flight of stairs without having to sit down. 

Wednesday, December 12

It's not paranoia if they really are watching you

I'm stronger today – woke up incredibly hungry, which made me realise how little I ate while I was ill.  I've been getting a lot done this morning, just by stopping and resting every few minutes.

The idea of lighting the fire is still in the way-too-much category, but I've managed to clean out my room again, and washed my wool mound and blanket.  The blanket didn't like that, and has developed splits.  Once it's dry I'm going to have to be careful taking it back up to my room, or I'll have felt strips instead.

While it dries I'm searching the nearest buildings.  I'm increasing my collection of metal and pottery objects, though, and even have a few knives.  They're not very sharp, and the handles have all fallen to pieces, but I have a few ideas on how to fix that.  In a few days I'll have a go at making covers for the windows.  I also want to make another blanket: if it wasn't such a lot of work I'd make a mound of them.  Though I suppose I'll have plenty of time to try.

My eyes are still strained.  Not everything is blurry, and not all the time, but I'm starting to wonder if I'll end up needing glasses.  That's annoying, but I'm more bothered by a sense of being watched all the time.  I'm forever feeling there's someone standing just behind me, or trying to catch movement out of the corner of my eye.

It's not the cats, or not so far as I can tell.  There's a few about, but they've never been very interested in me so long as I stay away from their amphitheatre.  I've been taking a lot of interest in the birds, hoping they have some nests in convenient spots.  After weeks living mainly on red pears and washews I'm really interested in the thought of eggs.  I'm also going to experiment more with some of the other possible foods I've found – I've been a bit too scared after the vomiting day, but now I'm starting to wonder if missing out on some of the food groups was the reason I was so sick. 

Today's mantra

There are no black things

Creeping

In the corner of my eye

And

There are no claws

Glinting

In the shadow of that door

But

There's nothing wrong with

Me

I'm just fine, I'm

Sane

Normal

Not seeing things.

Friday, December 14

Laying their plans

Mum has a CD of this old musical version of
War of the Worlds
.  On that, the Martians make this incredible noise, this 'uulllllaaaaa' howl which is so totally unnatural, not a noise anything on Earth would make.

I'm looking for tripods on the horizon.

The noise isn't the one from the CD, of course, but it is super weird.  A mournful wail so deep I feel it more in my bones than my ears.  I'm sitting on the roof of my tower, listening, watching, but I can't see where it's coming from.  It sounds like the hills are moaning.

Whatever it is, it's big.  Could even dinosaurs make a noise like this?  After spending the last couple of days convinced that something's been watching me, I was creeped out enough already.  I wish tonight was a moonfall, or that I'd at least figured out a way to make a light for overnight.  I'm not up for fire-lighting.  I'm lying here with my pippin statue, pretending it's company.

At this point, I can't decide whether it would be better to be going nuts, or to really have things lurking around every corner, stalking me. 

Mouse-like

Is there any difference between being eaten by a bear or a big cat and being eaten by a huge and spooky monster?  The monster might even be quicker.  You could say that the bear would be more 'natural' I suppose – but that's just familiarity.  Bears and cats are the predators which are real to my world, but does it make a difference if the teeth belong to a dragon?

There might be monsters that kill you slowly, though.  Or, if there is any kind of soul or afterlife, things which kill you 'wrong' so that your soul is damaged as well.

So can you tell I spent the night obsessing over what was going to come galumphing up to kill me?  For all that, it was a good night.  The noise stopped when the sun went down, and everything felt lighter somehow.  The feeling of being watched had gone, and then the animals came back.  I hadn't realised, but the more I felt I was being watched, the fewer animals I saw.  Like they were all hiding, while I wandered stupidly around.

The town's main population is all on the smaller side.  Sometimes the grey terriers show up and chase things, or the deer or mondo elk wander through, but I don't think they like staying here.  It's very open compared to the forest.  Birds dive-bomb the little animals and it's easy to see anything approaching if you're high up.  What bushes and trees there are aren't so big and thick that anything large could go any distance without being spotted.  If the Ming Cats hunt here, they do it at night.

Today's project was to block the windows on the ground floor.  Fort Cass is still far from impregnable, but every bit helps.  I wish my eyes would stop blurring.

Saturday, December 15

Buttered scones would hit the spot

After winding wool into a rough handle for the longest of my salvaged knives, and 'sharpening' it by scraping it against rocks, I walked back along the lake to chop long poles of bamboo from a stand I'd passed.  It was surprisingly easy, but I'm so tired now and it's barely lunchtime.  I'm the kind of lumberjack who needs nanna naps.