Chapter 1

The Liberator of Landes

In the distant country of Landes, in the district of Pelton, in a large house, in a room on the second floor, a girl was rubbing her left ear. She was twenty and pretty with bushy, dirty blond hair and dark eyes. Her body was short and skinny, but her face was round. The sudden whistling sound had woken her in the middle of the night and wouldn’t stop. She cursed to herself, using a rude word she would normally never say out loud. She might be a decent young woman in polite society but that didn’t mean she couldn’t do whatever she wanted in private. She paced back and forth in the room. The sound was not painful exactly, but it seemed to penetrate all other sounds around her and she found she could not relax.

She stopped by the window and gazed into the garden. From somewhere on the left side, a pink glow flowed across the horizon. In the faint light, Ivy could see her grandmother’s rododendron and the willow fence that separated their property from the neighbour’s.

The grass was neatly mowed and the cyrk tree branches dragged with plump fruits. It was the end of October. This part of Landes never got truly cold, and it seldomly rained. When Ivy walked around the dry dusty streets, it was only behind the tall garden walls of the rich that she saw this lushness.

Later that morning, Ivy moved through the street of Lande. People and horses pushed past each other in the narrow streets. Maids hung out of the windows, little boys stormed by in gravity racers, old men walked their grumpy dogs past ladies shielded by umbrellas, whirling dust up with their dresses, accompanied by well-dressed gentlement. Horse wagons loaded with boxes of apples or cirks took the straightest possible route through the crowd. Gigs with wealthy and less wealthy people politely called for pedestrians to step aside, so they could come through, while school kids ran towards the only public school in Lande, a low one story building that Ivy had never set foot in. Ivy opened her fan. The dust and sun was already too much at eight in the morning. She had not been able to sleep again, and the sound was still there, relentlessly chiming inside her head. Next to her in the gig adorned with silver toned wood, her maid Brisa held an umbrella over her head. The horse pulling the gig was one of Ivy’s favourites. His name was Prosper. Ivy often arrived early whenever she needed to go somewhere to pet him and give him a treat, when the coachman George wasn’t looking. George didn’t approve of treats. George yelled at someone to get out of the way as Prosper trodded towards a group of men that had stalled in the middle of everything. He parked the gig in front of the doctor’s office. Ivy stepped out, lifting her dress away from her ancles, passed the doorman and let herself into a blessedly cool hallway with dim lighting and tiled floors and walls. The doctor’s office was up the stairs, to the left. She waited in the armchair outside his door until he called her inside.

The doctor was old enough to be her grandfather and was entirely bald. A thick, but well-trimmed moustache covered the area between his nose and his upper lip, and he wore a suffocating-looking doctor’s uniform with the characteristic high collar and three white stripes from shoulder to bottom hem on the left side. He knew her well, had treated her since she was a baby, so his greeting was informal. He gestured to the chair across his desk and poured her a cup of ice water from the large glass container on his desk. Not that Ivy visited the doctor often. She was hardly ever sick. Maybe that was also the reason for the doctor’s slightly concerned expression as he handed her the water and asked her what the matter was.

‘I have this odd ringing in my ear,’ Ivy said and pressed her hand against it. It didn’t help and she should have known it. The sound was inside her head.

‘Have you been exposed to any loud sounds?’ doctor Sogim said.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Ivy said.

‘Is it very loud or more of a faint humming?’ The doctor leaned over the desk and studied her.

‘It’s not loud, no. Sometimes I forget it’s even there. It is just constant.’

The doctor made a sound as if thinking about something.

‘And how long has it been there?’

‘Maybe a week now. It has been keeping me awake.’

‘I see.’ He got up and went to stand by the window, with his back to her. Ivy could see his index finger tapping on his wrist, faster and faster, as if he was thinking hard on something important.

‘Does the sound ever seem to change?’ he said, without turning around, and Ivy thought he sounded hesitant, as if he wasn’t sure if he should be asking this.

‘It comes and goes.’

‘It goes away sometimes?’

‘It becomes louder, I suppose. Especially when I’m at home. When I walk to town it doesn’t seem so bad.’

‘Where is your house compared to town again?’ He grabbed a notebook and a pen and looked at the blank page, waiting for Ivy to speak.

‘It’s North of town.’

‘I see.’ The doctor scribbled something on the page. Ivy peered at it, but he shut the notebook before she could read what it said.

‘Maybe the noise from town creates an eccho inside your head. It’s a well-known phenomenon. Sound gets trapped in your head and is replayed when you go home in the quiet of your house.’

‘Then how come I have never experienced it before?’

‘Maybe you have been more vulnerable lately. Have you been feeling down? You look a little pale.’ He walked around the desk to put a hand on her forehead.

‘I don’t know.’ Ivy turned her eyes up, trying to remember if she had been feeling sick lately. ‘I guess maybe I have been a little more tired, but-‘

‘-that would be it. I recommend you catch plenty of rest, smoke some good quality leaf and stay cool.’

Ivy paid the doctor ten hicks for the examination. She hardly noticed her steps as she exited the building and didn’t remember anything from her journey back, or which route they had taken. Sound getting trapped in her head! Explanations such as those frustrated her. She couldn’t understand how that would work.

Ivy was lying on her back on the couch when her grandmother stepped into the living room. Ivy quickly sat up. Grandmother Mirjana was a tall, fat lady with a grand carisma. She had big, red lips and long, fake eyelashes. She always wore a massive gilded dress with puffed sleeves, bum pads, shoulder pads and white lace at the edges. Today, she had completed the look with long black silk gloves and massive red rubies hanging from her elongated earlobes. A broad rimmed hat with black net hid most of her face. Her glossy fox-coloured hair fell over her shoulders in crisp ringlets. Ivy had never seen her grandmother dye her hair, nor had grey hairs ever made an appearance on her head. Ivy had a feeling that Mirjana was as meticulous and secretive about doing her hair as every other area of her life. Today, like most other days, her grandmother wore beaded jewellery around her thick neck and wrists. Her face was wrinkly, but not excessively so. A life indoors, away from sun and stress, had preserved her appearance of youth. She spoked with a deep, resounding voice that penetrated even Ivy’s insistent chiming.

‘What are you doing, girl? Lounging are we?’

‘I was told to rest by the doctor,’ Ivy said quickly.

‘If you are going to lounge I want part too.’

Ivy moved to the side of the couch as her grandmother sat down heavily.

Ivy’s parents were currently out of town, visiting one of their summer houses at the coast. They were the third generation owners of a successful construction company. Ivy didn’t know much about the business side of things, except that apparently it had been commissioned to build some of the large bridges across the country, places Ivy herself had never been. They had asked if she had wanted to come spend the summer by the coast but Ivy had been many times before and it was nothing but wide halls and endless business talk. She could not see the point. The house in Lande was comfortable enough, and she didn’t enjoy physical activity in particular. She sometimes felt like she was waiting for something to happen although she wasn’t sure what. When she had tried to explain this to her parents, they had suggested that maybe she start taking an interest in the company. She wondered if she would be any good at it. Shielded from the world most of her life, she knew nothing of bridges or business or the mystic forces that allowed construction to live for hundreds of years. She saw in her mind a vague version of her older self, standing in the middle of a group of people, a blueprint between them. The vision bored her before she could even make it into a fantasy. If she was meant for that life, surely she would have taken an interest earlier.

‘The doctor says the sound is because of echos.’

‘What superstitious nonsense. Don’t Landes folk ever learn? Magic has gone from the world. The idea of it is nothing but hopes and wishful thinking,’ the grandmother said forcefully. ‘Is the doctor not an educated man? He should know better.’

Grandmother Mirjana often ranted about what she called ‘the decline of the Landesian culture’. She liked to tell stories about her home country of Meadena, and how they had stopped believing in the mysterious there long ago.

‘Silly, silly man,’ Mirjana continued. Ivy let her talk. ‘In my days, when Meadena and Landes were still on good terms, I would travel to Landes to learn more about the mysterious. It was exciting to me. Everyone I knew denied the existence of prophecies and echos and such nonsense. They believed magic was a thing of the past, a force of nature that we forgot how to tap into. It had its own logic and cared only about humans to the same extend of waterfalls or shooting stars. Random, even when they seem made for us.’

‘And what about the sound in my ear?’ Ivy said. ‘If not echoes, then what?’

‘Maybe it’s a disease.’

Ivy must have looked alarmed.

‘In that case at least we can treat it, girl. Shall we practice the piano? Maybe that will overpower the sound for a while.’

Ivy and Mirjana sat down next to one another in front of Mirjana’s old piano. Ivy started playing a symphony by Rudiger oe Bret. Mirjana was a talented pianist and had taught Ivy. Ivy let the music fill her, while her fingers danced across the keys and her feet pressed the pedals to let the sounds draw out. She hit the final chord and closed her eyes. The piano was positioned in the best room for the purpose; the large dining area where the sparse, but well positioned furniture and large draperies seemed to absorb and enhance the sounds around just right. Maybe that was also why Ivy subconciously had gone to this room to seek refuge for the chiming in her ears.

The piano fell silent. Mirjana and Ivy didn’t speak. Mirjana’s hands rested in her lap, her expression hard to decipher. She stroked a key with a finger, then carressing the gold frame around the music sheets before turning the page to another symphony. The grandmother pressed down a single key as if to test it, before she begun playing the piece she had chosen. She pushed the keys harder and more forcefully each time, making the music sound aggressiv, sorrowful. Ivy kept her gaze at the keys, and not her grandmother’s face.

As the sun passed its zenit, it became hot, even inside the cool stone wall of the house. Ivy and Mirjana drank lemonade, watching the gartners at work becoming more and more burnt. Ivy fanned her face with lazy movements, using the lace fan her parents had gifted her last year. A maid brought them biscuits and fresh fruit.

‘The tailor is coming today,’ grandmother Mirjana said. ‘Your mother would like to get you a new dress for the rituals.’

‘Do I get to choose the design myself?’

‘The question is, are you brave enough to choose yourself?’

Ivy and Mirjana smirked. The grandmother withdrew a thin cigaret from a little box on the table. She placed it on an elegant extender with green jewels. Ivy followed her example. She placed a cigarette at the end of her own extender adorned with blue opals.

‘Brisa, please,’ grandmother said. Brisa, the maid, lit the cigarettes for them. Ivy breathed in deeply and blew the smoke upwards. She held the cigarette extender between thumb and middle finger, like her grandmother, turning her wrist away from her body. She filled her lungs and sighed.

Brisa tightened the corset on the dress that the tailor had made for Ivy. Ivy was used to it. She enjoyed the feeling of being encased, her back supported, her shoulders drawn back. The dress was lilac, an unusual colour. She had picked it even though she knew this was not what her parents had envisioned for her. It was too different, both bold and strangely innocent. Ivy had simply been drawn to it, and had wanted to try it.

Ivy was getting dressed in her bedroom. One of the walls was covered in a single large mirror. The other wall was one long open wardrobe where Ivy’s dresses hung on gold hangers.

The window faced south. On the opposite wall hung a large and very valuable painting next to the wooden double doors. The painting showed a knight on a white horse. His face was hidden behind his helmet. There were no more knights in Landes. Only soldiers of the military. Ivy often wondered why knights would choose white horses. This one was galloping, the knight’s sword lifted. If it were to strike someone, the horse would cease to be white.

The ritual was led by the Speaker. He sat in the center of a circular room, surrounding by glowing embers. The floor tilted slightly towards the center. It was carved out into spiralling gores that ended in the fire. The participants could sacrifise a little blood, if they so wished, but it was not a requirement. Especially not for the likes of Ivy. A pillow was provided the participants of the ritual. Ivy always enjoyed the experience of sitting on the floor like a commoner, her dress spread out like a halo around her body. She didn’t like anything else about the ritual however. The crusty remnants of old blood in the gores, and the sickly smell of incence from the circular fire at the centre made her stomach turn.

Ivy and Brisa sat down (Mirjana refused to participate). The room slowly filled up. By each pillow was a small silver knife and a candle. This was one thing people did not steal. It was said that if you stole a ritual knife, bad luck would follow your family for three generations.

The sound in Ivy’s ears had turned fainter, only ever so slightly, but she was relishing the renewed focus it was giving her. A girl her own age came over. Her name was Deni, she was one of Ivy’s oldest friends. They had that kind of relationship where they would not see each other for weeks but could dive right back into deep conversation the minute they met again.

‘Your dress is… interesting,’ Deni said as a greeting.

‘It’s high fashion.’

They stared at each other with flat expressions.

‘Where do I get one?’ Deni said.

‘It’s unique. It cannot be copied.’

‘Isn’t that just my tough luck.’

The room quieted down as the Speaker began the ritual. Ivy touched Deni’s arm and they found their seats.

The Speaker talked about the mystic forces of the world. Ivy tuned out almost straight away, instead looking around at people. There was Deni, next to her. Deni who she had grown up with and confided in when chasing boys, had spent hours with on boats, floating by lazily in the summer heat on Deni’s family property. Deni, with her annoyingly sleek brown hair, large eyes, who would always make Ivy laugh. Further down was Mania, another childhood acquiantance, a few years older than Ivy who would always make snide remarks about Ivy’s grandmother not attending the ritual. Mania always said something about it, each time as if she had come up with a genius joke. Today, she glanced at Ivy’s dress with mockery, and Ivy felt suddenly accomplished about her life decisions.

‘Awa do dwi lomana gar dwi cesde,’ said the Speaker. The ritual was always conducted in ancient Landesian in which Ivy was fluent. She wondered what it might be like to learn other lanuages; languages that were useful in the real world. The Speaker was saying nothing new, or of interest, only praying for bad luck to stay away, chanting some prayers a set number of times to avert unrest.

Ivy took the tiny silver knife in her hand. It was icy to the touch. The purpose of the candle was to burn the blade before the sacrifise, so ill-intentioned echoes wouldn’t devour the flesh. The blood would flow down the gores into the fire surrounding the Speaker at the centre of the room. It took a lot of blood for it to run all the way down. Most of the time, it dried out on the surface and stayed there. Ivy had never made a sacrifice. Why would she? She observed her wrists. The skin was intact and white. She didn’t like the thought of cutting herself open for anything in the world, and wasn’t a fan of scarring. Besides, it wasn’t the done thing for a decent young woman. Ivy played with the knife. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, maybe the incessant stares from Mania, or maybe the glow of her purple dress spurring her on, but in a moment of absurdity, she slit the blade across the skin on the back of her hand. Blood trickled down the wound and followed a path around the soft curve of her wrist. There it lingered for a moment before a single drop fell down into the gore under it. Let something happen, she thought. Anything.