The World Above the Sky by Kent Stetson Page A

plank.
    â€œApekwit,” he repeated kindly, pointing again to the island.
    â€œA-peg-weit?” Henry ventured.
    â€œYes. More or less,” Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk replied. “No one lives there year-round. The winters are abysmal. No moose or caribou. No bear. We use A-pek-weit,” he said, again with careful, exaggerated emphasis, “as a summer place of feasting and repose.”
    Henry smiled at Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk and nodded his thanks. “The sooner we master their gentle tongue, the better,” he said.
    Antonio was less willing to accommodate. “Pander at you peril, Sinclair. Let them come to us if they wish to know what we have to offer. Which is nothing less than ease full toil and life eternal.”
    Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk liked nothing about this man, in particular his high-pitched, tuneless, crudely whittled flute-stick voice. He returned to the fire.
    Sir Athol cocked his head, first left, then to the right. “Rotate, I say, rotate your parchments. Like this. The segments integrate...just so.”
    Henry examined the edge of the Vatican quadrant closely. Had it been torn, the rip altered to mimic antique degradation?
    â€œAntonio. I believe we’re missing a fragment…here, the lower left.”
    â€œIt’s all I was given.” Antonio drew his finger under two lines of elaborate script. “This seems familiar but makes no sense; it’s neither Latin nor Persian, nor is it ancient Greek.”
    Henry studied the script. “Elements of all three, but something else. Something more ancient, perhaps. The illustration offers a clue. Steam or smoke rising from what appears to be a hollowed-out stump....It is at this point we are to base our explorations. So I was told.”
    â€œBy whom?” Antonio enquired.
    â€œThe highest possible authority.”
    â€œSome senile éminence grise of your defunct temple directed you to establish your base camp at a stump? A burning stump?”
    Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk re-approached. He studied the map. “The Place of Boiling Waters. Under the Cape which the setting sun turns to gold.”
    â€œSorry. What?” Henry asked.
    Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk glanced at the map, raised his arm, held it straight and steady.
    â€œHe points westward and slightly to the south,” Athol noted. “What’s there?”
    Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk fluttered the fingers of his upturned hands rapidly, the hands rising and falling slightly to suggest liquid turbulence. “The Place of Boiling Waters.” He repeated the gesture cycle.
    â€œSomething about a bird, perhaps? Or birds?” Henry speculated.
    â€œFar across the waters from the cliffs of Kluscap,” he said.
    He searched their faces: nothing.
    â€œAcross from Kluscap’s Cliffs.”
    â€œWhat?” Henry said.
    â€œCome again?” said Athol.
    â€œWhat’s he pointing at?” Antonio wondered.
    â€œI don’t understand.” Henry turned back to the maps.
    Back at the fire, Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk dipped the slings in their buckets, spread them on the ground, rolled a second stone into each. He loped gingerly back to the sweat lodge, maintaining a gap between the steaming rocks and his naked calves. As he stooped to enter, laughter rushed up the trail behind him.
    Keswalqw and Eugainia burst into the clearing at a full run, Keswalqw chased by Eugainia. It was Eugainia’s hands Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk first noticed. They were covered in black, sticky goo. Glistening sludge covered her from head to foot. Little natural skin colour remained, only two white circles where she’d squinted to save her eyes. They seemed to pop out of her head—the startled enthusiasm lending a bizarre infantile authority. Nothing of the sea green linen dress, or its crystal embellishments, remained visible. The curtain of tar it had become clung to Eugainia’s