The Unnameables (26 page)

"There be more drawings like these, in this book and others," Essence said softly. "She sketched everyone on the Council, her family, other Islanders. They're quite good, most of them."

Essence moved on to show the journal to the Goatman and the Constables. Medford contemplated his Prudy head again. It looked even stiffer to him now. A sketch first would help, maybe.

He watched Ward Constable prod the figure in Constance Learned's journal as if it might be round and breathing. "Look at that, Bailey," Ward said. "Another horned man." To Medford's astonishment he clapped a hand on the Goatman's shoulder. "Almost like our own."

The atmosphere had changed, although Medford couldn't figure out exactly how. His brain could only suggest that this would be a good time to sit down and stare at nothing. So that's what he did.

At the Council table, Comfort was muttering to herself and shaking her head. Grover was whispering with Verity, looking as if he wanted to laugh. Freeman got up to join them, not laughing at all. Deemer just sat, blue-tinged.

"Bweh-eh-eh," the Goatman said softly. "When wa-a-as that goatman here?"

Medford got his brain working. "One dead grandfather ago," he said. "Maybe one and a half."

Essence set her grandmother's journal on the table with Medford's carvings.

"Mistress Head," she said, "thou wilt agree, I think, that Medford is not the first Islander to create ... well, for lack of a better term we'll call them Useless Objects. And, unless I'm much mistaken, he won't be the last, either."

Deemer lunged to his feet. "An aberration!" he cried. "Every generation has them. 'Tis our responsibility to cast them out. Though it be my own family, my own mother, I will not allow her weakness, her Unnameable—"

But now Boyce was up, too. He dragged the canvas bag out from under his chair and undid the drawstring. He thumped it down on the Council table. The bag fell away to reveal its contents: the Alma carving.

"Another of Master Runyuin's objects, Master Carver?" Verity asked.

"Nope," Boyce said. "'Tis mine. 'Tis Alma. Made it years ago. Couldn't burn it like the others."

"Boyce," Clarity said. "Oh, Boyce." And she stood up, pale as a Learned.

"Go on," Twig whispered. "'Twill be fine."

"I make little clay figures almost like that Alma carving but smaller," Clarity said, talking fast. "I've made them for years, at night. I have some my grandpa did, too. They're tied up in a box, a lot of them, out in the woods." She faced Medford, sad-eyed. "I'm sorry I didn't say, Medford. I was afraid of ... I don't know what." She sat down.

Prudy burst into the loudest, most wailing tears Med-ford had ever heard, and buried her face in her mother's lap. Clarity stroked her hair. "There, my brave girl," she said.

"How could you?" Prudy sobbed. "How could you?" With a moan, she pulled herself away from her mother and slid back onto her chair. She hid her face in her hands, shoulders shaking.

Clarity folded her hands in her lap. A tear ran down her cheek.

But now Prosper Weaver, Comfort's husband, was standing up.

"No, Prosper," Comfort moaned. "No, husband."

But Prosper ignored her. "I weave in colors, so did my ma, and she taught me," he said. "Sometimes they come out as figures like Constance Learneds, sometimes not. They're under the bed. Eats me up but there it is."

Medford was beginning to wonder if half the beds on Island weren't hiding—

"Abomination!" Deemer's eyes looked like they might pop out of his head. "Every confession tells us why we must avoid, why we must cast out the Unnameable from our midst!"

"What will you do, Deemer, banish half the island?" Twig called to him.

Deemer headed for Twig. When he came near, though, he changed his mind and lunged for his mother's journal. He held it up, open to more sketches of Constance's fellow Islanders.

"Behold, all ye who would embrace the Unnameable." Deemer was whispering, but Medford was sure even those in the back could hear. "Behold a corruption of the Useful, a thing without Use. Unnameable, because what name could suffice?"

He ripped a page out of the journal, crumpled it in his hand. Then he wheeled and hurled the journal at his daughter. She ducked and it sailed over her head.

"Thou hypocrite!" Chandler Fisher roared, on his feet now. "Banishing this boy when thine own mother—"

The crowd erupted, shouting, stomping, shaking fists. Somebody kicked over a chair. The Constable brothers bellowed for quiet, Council members held up their hands in a plea for calm, but no one paid them any mind.

"We better move," Boyce said. "Seen nothing like this before."

"Bweh-eh-eh-eh," said a windy, grassy voice behind Medford. "Bweh-eh-eh. Bweh-eh-eh..." The sound got one Islander's attention, then two, then ten.

"
A-a-a-ahhh hoo-o-o-o,
" the Goatman said. He stood up, raised a hand, twitched a finger.

Through the open window came ... a leaf. One perfect leaf from a Tanningbark tree, golden brown and dancing on a breeze.

A delicate line of Honeybugs followed the leaf as it looped and swooped across the ceiling, dipping occasionally to within a foot of some Islander who gaped up at it, mouth open, eyes wide, voice silent. The air buzzed, but the noise wasn't from the insects. It wasn't even entirely noise. It was some combination of the senses: a sound, a scent, honey on the tongue, a caress on the cheek, a lifting of the spirits.

Medford felt himself... well, not exactly cheering up, but something like that. His fears and worries didn't go away but were diminished by something broader and wilder, which swept past him without caring whether he was worried or not.

"Ahhh," the Goatman breathed. "Tha-a-at's the wa-a-a-ay."

The breeze went calm. The leaf dropped to the floor. The Honeybugs completed one last loop and flew in a line out the window. The Goatman lowered his hand.

Whup!
A sharp blast of wind rattled the windows. Everyone jumped.

The Goatman shrugged. "Not ba-a-ad," he said. "Almost kept it."

"I am glad I saw that," Boyce said. "I thank thee, Master Goatman."

Grover Physick sat down heavily and groped for his handkerchief. "Whew," he said, mopping his brow. "I was afraid we'd have bloodshed. Now that, Master Goatman, is what I call a Useful gust of breeze."

The Goatman threw back his head. "Bweh-eh-eh-eh," he caroled at the ceiling. "If it's so Useful, wha-a-at would you name it?"

"Eh?" Grover said, startled.

"Wha-a-at would you name it?" the Goatman said. "If it's Useful, it has a na-a-ame, right?"

"A name for a gust of breeze?" Deemer said with a bitter laugh. "Might as well name those abominations of my mother's. Or the foul things on this table."

"Why not? You could na-a-ame it the Goatman's Useful Gust," the Goatman said.

"Ah, but Master Goatman," Grover said, "that would be naming the product after the maker. And we don't do that, as I told thee before."

The Goatman gave Grover a goatish look. "A use may not always have a na-a-ame. But sometimes a name has a use. Those ca-a-arvings on the table have both, if both they must ha-a-ave."

He looked down at Medford, his eyes blue and kind. His grin was so wide every stumpy tooth was visible.

"On Mainland," the Goatman said, "they're called runyuins."

Connor Farmer hath petitioned the Council to add the name Shepherd to the Book. He would bring sheep in by Trade, as well as two dogs. The Council agreed to change his name if the sheep survive the voyage.

—Journal of Nell Learned, 1819

I
F A FLY HAD
wandered into the auditorium at that moment, it would have had plenty of open mouths to buzz into.

And everyone would have heard it, because no one was capable of sound.

Chandler Fishers voice splintered the silence. "Well, that solves that."

The room began to murmur, progressing quickly to pure jabber. "Always said Runyuin could be a name," Jeb Pickler told Cooper Waterman. "I did, too. You remember, that time we was talking about creature names..."

Deemer sank to the floor, his face in his hands. Essence retrieved her grandmother's journal and returned to her seat, giving her father a wide berth.

Somewhere in Medford's brain a tiny, compressed voice was chanting, "Once a Runyuin, never a Carver." He leaned past Boyce to get at the Goatman. "They're called runyuins, really? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Just ca-a-ame up with it," the Goatman said, beaming. "It's a tanner."

"Oh. You mean it's not true."

"Not yet."

Rap-rap-rap.
The crowd ignored Verity.
Rap-rap-rap.
The crowd looked up at the Council table, annoyed, and saw that it wasn't Verity doing the rapping. Verity was sitting in her chair, looking like something you'd thought was a rock but then it melted.

It was Grover Physick who was on his feet, rapping his knuckles on the table. Out of curiosity, everyone stopped talking to listen.

"Seems to me," Grover said, "that we have a proposal for a new name and a new craft. That right, Master Runyuin?"

Medford, caught off guard, managed to nod.

Verity roused herself. "I cannot preside—"

"Then don't," Violet Waterman called to her. "Let Councilor Physick do it."

"For what it's worth, I have seen carvings like this on Mainland," Essence said. "People like to look at them and they trade for them."

"Then I have a question," Comfort said, "for our acknowledged expert on Mainland affairs." Freeman eyed Comfort as if she were a barrel of root beer about to explode in his storeroom.

"I should like to know, Councilor Trade," Comfort said, "why thou saidst nothing all these years about a possible meaning for Master Runyuin's name. In thy dealings with Mainland Traders, surely thou hast heard them speak of runyuins?"

She raised her eyebrows at him and waited.

Freeman rose slowly to his feet. Medford was still trying to come to terms with his salvation resting on ... well, on a tanner. Now he realized that his salvation was only going to last a minute or two. Now Freeman was going to tell everyone that Runyuin meant no more on Mainland than it did in Town Hall.

Freeman's Council robe, fresh that morning, was soaking wet in the armpits. "Councilor Naming," Freeman said, sweating, "thou ask a worthy question."

Comfort's smile went stale. This was not the reaction she had expected.

"I ... I assumed ... that all knew such items existed. I saw no need to mention them because ... because we do not make such things. Now it appears that some of us do make them and perhaps the things be less ... well, they may be more Useful than we thought."

Medford tried to sort out where tales ended and tanners began. He gave up.

"In any event," Freeman said, "Mistress Essence suggests these runyuins may have some value in the Trade. Perhaps, in time, we may come to understand their Use."

Trade his carvings? Watch some stranger walk away with the Prudy head?
I'd rather burn them,
Medford thought.

"Say nothing, boy," Boyce whispered. "Let it work itself out."

Grover nudged Comfort with his elbow and addressed the room. "Perhaps we should rely on our very excellent Councilor Naming to preside at a later meeting," he said. "Discuss whether we can add the name Runyuin to the Book."

"Aye," Comfort said slowly. "Aye, perhaps we should."

From his seat on the floor, Deemer directed his cold pewter glare at her.

She ignored him. "As Councilor Naming, I call a hearing for the twentieth day of the Hunters Moon to consider the addition of Runyuin to the roster of Island Names and Employments. Medford may stay on Island until that time."

"And, most likely, beyond," Grover said, smiling at Med-ford.

Comfort forged ahead. "Any who wish to testify—"

"I will testify," Deemer snapped, standing up.

"So will I," Grover said.

Freeman gave Comfort a half bow from his seat. "And I."

"And now," Grover said, "if there be no other—"

"Wait," Prudy said. "What about the Goatman? What becomes of him?"

All the Councilors turned to Councilor Welfare. Med-ford held his breath.

"He must be gone, of course," Verity said. "He is most unsafe."

"Bweh-eh-eh!"

"No!" Medford stood up, feeling he'd be more persuasive that way. "He's not dangerous. 'Tis just ... he's just learning to control himself."

Verity considered the Goatman. "We could be blown out to sea whilst he learns."

"He did all right with that leaf," Twig said. "Give him a chance."

"There ain't been a bad wind the whole time he's been in jail," Ward said. "He just has to keep still and 'tis fine. Ain't that right, Bailey?"

Bailey eyed his brother as if he didn't know him. "Looking at them carvings must have addled your brains, Ward. What if the fellow gets mad? We've seen how windy he can get."

"Well, he ain't gotten windy today," Ward said. "'Cept with that leaf, which I liked."

"But he smells bad, Ward, almost as bad as that Herding Creature last night." Bailey addressed the Council. "You folks can't smell it because you're over there. But I been standing here and my nose is ruined for life. I ain't never smelled anything like it."

"Sme-e-ell!" Deemer yelled. "Contagion! Contamination! Abomination!"

Before anyone could stop him, he grabbed Medfords Boyce bowl from the Council table. He lifted it high above his head, then smashed it onto the floor with all his strength. Chips of nose and chin flew sideways.

"Bweh-eh-eh-eh!" the Goatman yelled, leaping to his hooves, arms waving.

Whup! Whup-whup-whup!

The Goatman whirled around, a panicky eye on the world outside the windows.

"Oh," Medford said. "No."

A blast of wind slammed into the side of Town Hall. Several people screamed.

The world screamed back.

Dead leaves spewed through the open window. The window slammed shut and its glass shattered, along with every other windowpane on that side of Town Hall.