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‘Then the whole world went wrong. The earth shook and split. The very mountains were shattered and oozed hot red blood. The sun dimmed; even within our cases, we felt it fade. Hot winds blew over us, and we heard the cries of our friends as it snatched the breath from our lungs. Yet even as they fell, gasping, they did not forsake us. They dragged us into shelter, many lives ago. They could not save many of us, but they tried. I give them that, they tried. It was only for a time, they promised. Only until the dust stopped raining down, only until the skies shone blue again. Only until the earth stopped quaking. But it did not stop. The earth trembled daily and the mountains burst into fire. The forest burned and the ash fell down over all, stifling everything. The river flowed thicker than blood with it. The air was choked with it, and where it settled, it covered all life in a layer of ash. We called out to them from inside our cocoons, but after a time, they did not answer. Without the sun, we could not hatch. We lay in the deep darkness, wrapped in our memories, and waited.’

The tangle and its followers were silent. They remained as they were, draped on his stiff limbs and wings, wrapped over his bulky body. Maulkin breathed out a thin cloud of toxin in his face. ‘Speak on,’ he commanded him gently. ‘We do not understand, but we listen.’

‘You do not understand?’ He laughed thinly.

‘I do not understand. After a very long time, another people came. They were like and not like those who had sought to save us. We called out to them joyously, sure they had come at last to deliver us from the darkness. But they would not hear us. They brushed our airy voices away, dismissing us as less than dreams. Then they killed us.’

Shreever felt hope grow tiny within her.

‘I heard the screams of Tereea. I could not grasp what was happening. She was with us; then she was gone. A time passed. Then they attacked me. Tools bit into my cocoon, splitting it open while it was still thick and heavy, strong with my memories. Then…’ He became perplexed.

‘They threw my soul out onto the cold stone. It died there. But the memories remained, trapped in the layers of the cocoon. They sawed me into planks and from them created a new body. They made me anew in their own image, gouging away until they had shaped me a face and head and body such as they wear. And they drenched me in their own memories, until one day I awoke as someone else. Ringsgold they named me, and so I became. A liveship. A slave.’

A silence flowed through them all when he was still.

He had used words that Shreever did not know, spoken of things she could not grasp.

A terrible dread flowed chill over her. She knew that his tale was a monumental one, a tale of an ending of all her kind, but she did not know why.

She was almost glad she could not comprehend the tragedy.

Maulkin, still wrapped around him, had lidded his eyes. His colours had gone pale and sick.

‘I will mourn you, Draquius. Your name conjures echoes of memories in my soul. Once, I think, we knew one another. But now we must part as unremembered strangers. We will let you go.’

‘No! Please!’ Draquius’ eyes went wide and he strove to cling to Maulkin.

‘Do not let go of me. You speak my name and it rings in my heart like the bugling of the Dragon of Dawn. For so long, I have forgotten myself. They kept me always with them, never letting me have solitude, never allowing my old memories to surface. Layer on layer of their little lives they spread upon mine, until I believed I was one of them. If you let me go, they will reclaim me. It will all begin again, and perhaps, never end.’

‘There is nothing we can do for you,’ Maulkin apologized sorrowfully. ‘There is nothing we can do for ourselves. I fear you have told us the ending of our own tale.’

‘Undo me,’ Draquius pleaded in his thin little voice.

‘I am no more than the memory of Draquius. If he had survived, he would have been one of your guides, to bring you safely home. But he did not. I am all that is left, this poor shell of a life. I am memories. No more than that, Maulkin of Maulkin’s tangle.

I am a tale with no one left to tell me.

So take my memories for your own. Had Draquius survived his transformation, he would have devoured his shell and taken all his memories back into himself.

He did not. So take them for yourselves.

Preserve the memories of one who died before he could trumpet his own name across the sky. Remember Draquius.’

Maulkin lidded his great copper eyes. ‘It will be a poor memorial, Draquius. We do not know how much longer we can sustain our own lives.’

‘So take mine, and draw strength and purpose from it.’ He loosened his grip on Maulkin and folded his sticklike forelimbs across his narrow chest. ‘Free me.’

In the end, they obeyed him. They crushed and tore, splintering him into pieces.

Some of his body, they discovered to their shock, was no more than dead strips of plants.

But all that was silver and smelled of memories, they took and devoured.

Maulkin ate that part of him that was shaped as a head and forebody.

Shreever did not think he suffered, for he did not cry out.

Maulkin insisted that all partake of Draquius’ memories.

Even those who were feral were subtly urged to the sharing.

The silver threads of his memories had dried long and straight and hard.

When Shreever took her portion in her jaws, she was surprised to feel it soften and melt.

As she took it in, memories dawned bright in her mind.

It was as if she swam from clouded water to clear.

Faded images of another time came to mind and glowed bright with colour and detail.

She lidded her eyes in ecstasy and dreamed of wind under her wings.