Free The Bone Quill by Carole E. Barrowman, John Barrowman Page B

moss-covered rocks.
    ‘Lost your best friend?’
    Solon whipped round in surprise. The stranger was tall and thin with shiny black hair swept off his face, a jagged scar running through a trimmed dark beard and blue-grey eyes that gave his face a generous expression. His robes were cinched tightly round his waist as if he was wearing someone else’s habit, an odd-looking striped scarf looped around his neck.
    He reminded Solon of someone, but the young man could not put his mind to it. Perhaps he had seen him in the monastery. Solon knew all the monks personally, but he was ashamed to admit that he had been neglectful of the other men who kept the day-to-day tasks of the monastery and its lands running smoothly while the monks were copying, illustrating and binding books: labours of love that could take as long as a year at a time.
    ‘I trust you won’t give me away?’ the stranger asked. His accent was that of a native Scot, but one who had learned to soften the guttural sounds of his consonants. His enunciations had a similar rhythm and pitch to the Abbot, who had travelled to places across the oceans. ‘I come here when I can, and paint all over the island.’
    ‘No, sir. Secrets are fully safe with me,’ replied Solon.
    The man had clearly been washing paintbrushes in one of the tidal pools. Solon stared curiously at his pots of inks lined up neatly in compartments inside a wooden basket with a long leather strap. He lifted out one of the pots. It was shaped like a mug, but Solon could see its contents clearly.
    He held the vessel up to the man and tapped it. ‘What is this?’
    ‘It’s called ... glass,’ replied the man.
    He seemed uneasy. Solon strained to read his fears the way the Abbot was able to do with the old monk, but picked up nothing ... except a prickly drift of disquiet.
    Setting the vessel back inside the basket, Solon ran his fingers quickly across the lining of the case: a light, soft fabric. The basket and its insides were nothing like the ones his mother and his sisters made from rushes and seaweeds, which always smelled of herring no matter how many herbs they soaked the weeds in. This basket smelled of flowers and fresh air.
    ‘What are you doing down here?’ asked Solon.
    ‘Ach, lad, I’ve been capturing the monastery and the islands on my paper— I mean, parchment. I paint landscapes.’
    ‘Landscapes?’ Solon understood the meaning of the word, but it was base and vulgar as subject matter for art. Why waste your gift on a scene that was visible to the eye every day?
    He looked at the man’s work perched on the easel. Unable to restrain himself, Solon let out a long whistle.
    The stranger had captured the monastery in the fading daylight in thick strokes of colour like nothing Solon had ever seen before. The rows of spindly fir trees were no more than tall strips of differing shades of green inks, the rocky cliff a patch of grey, the water bright splashes of blue with spots of white dabbed upon it, the part-built tower outlined in black, and the sun a pink line on the horizon; but when taken together, when seen in their entirety, the inks blended, and the painting looked like the man had held a mirror up to the scene in front of him.
    ‘It is beautiful,’ said Solon in wonder. ‘It is as if the light reflecting on the water has been transposed to your parchment.’
    He looked into the man’s eyes, then back at the luminosity of the painting. ‘Are you a member of the Order of Era Mina?’
    The man cocked his head. ‘Era Mina?’
    ‘It is the name for the Order of monks who live here. Many of them are Animare. They ... we have faculties to ... to enliven our art, to add to its brilliance.’
    ‘Era Mina ...
Animare
! Of course!’ The man laughed, a deep throaty guffaw.
    Solon took a step away from the stranger, his flesh suddenly chilled. ‘Who are you?’
    Before the man could answer, Solon lost his footing on the damp moss, fell backwards and cracked his head on the