The Daughters of Eden Trilogy Read online

  THE DAUGHTERS OF EDEN TRILOGY

  THE SHADOW CATCHER,

  FEVER HILL

  &

  THE SERPENT'S TOOTH

  Copyright © Michelle Paver 2002, 2004, 2005

  This complete anthology copyright © Michelle Paver 2013

  The right of Michelle Paver to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Condition of Sale

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The individual titles were first published in Great Britain by Transworld Publishers, a division of The Random House Group Ltd

  ISBN 978-0-9927494-5-3 (ePub)

  This edition digitally published by

  THE SHADOW CATCHER

  Part one of the Daughters of Eden trilogy

  Michelle Paver

  Digitally published by

  Michelle Paver was born in Malawi; her father was South African and her mother is Belgian. They moved to England when she was small and she was brought up in Wimbledon, where she still lives.

  Please visit Michelle's website to watch her talk about all her books, and to receive her newsletter.

  THE SHADOW CATCHER

  Copyright © Michelle Paver 2002

  The right of Michelle Paver to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Condition of Sale

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First publication in Great Britain by Transworld Publishers, a division of The Random House Group Ltd

  ISBN 978-0-9927494-2-2 (ePub)

  This edition digitally published by

  Also by Michelle Paver

  Without Charity

  A Place In The Hills

  The Shadow Catcher: Book One in The Eden Trilogy

  Fever Hill: Book Two in The Eden Trilogy

  The Serpent's Tooth: Book Three in The Eden Trilogy

  Wolf Brother: Book One in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series

  Spirit Walker: Book Two in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series

  Soul Eater: Book Three in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series

  Outcast: Book Four in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series

  Oath Breaker: Book Five in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series

  Ghost Hunter: Book Six in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series

  Dark Matter: A Ghost Story

  The Outsiders: Book One in the Gods and Warriors series

  The Burning Shadow: Book Two in the Gods and Warriors series

  THE

  SHADOW CATCHER

  Prologue

  Jamaica, 1895

  She is dizzy with hunger, and the laudanum is making her sick. It’s becoming harder to think in straight lines.

  What is she doing out here, and why did she forget to put on her riding habit? What made her think she could tackle a jungle in her underclothes?

  Mosquitoes whine in her ears as she wades through the hot green shade. The rasp of crickets is deafening. She steps on a dumb-cane leaf, and poison oozes like milk.

  The forest is watching her, waiting to see if she will survive. Bird calls echo through the canopy. A cinnamon streak brushes her shins, and through the leaves she catches the red eye of a mongoose.

  She doesn’t belong in these demon-haunted hills. They’re not for white people. They’re for outlaws and witches and the ghosts of runaway slaves. Even the names are haunted. Turnaround. Disappointment. Look Behind. If she weren’t so dizzy, she would be frightened.

  Beneath her feet the ground is soft with rottenness, but through the vegetable stink she can smell the blood on her hands. Her husband would be appalled. He has always had such a horror of blood.

  Why is everyone obsessed with blood? Bad blood. In cold blood. Dr Hay’s Tablets to Purify the Blood. Vice, insanity and disease. It’s all in the blood. At least, that’s what they say.

  On a tree trunk an emerald lizard watches her pass. She wonders what it sees. Everyone seems to see someone different when they look at her. But whatever they see, it’s mostly bad. Actually, it’s all bad.

  Her husband says she’s insane, for she never does what he says. ‘Woman’s purpose’, he tells her, ‘is to praise and to obey. If you cannot accept that, it is because you are not a proper woman.’

  Dr Valentine says that she has nerve fever, and must become a child again, so that he can re-create a more appropriate personality.

  The washerwoman who talks to ghosts tells her that she’s dangerous. ‘You bring trouble to this house, Miss Maddy. You not who you say.’

  And her lover says he doesn’t know her any more, and walks away. After what she did, she can hardly blame him for that. But she does, just the same.

  She reaches a clearing where hummingbirds dart and hover in the dusty sunlight. Beyond it the forest is thinning, and on a distant slope she sees an enormous silk-cotton tree. Its outstretched limbs are draped with strangler fig and Spanish moss, and orchids like little darts of flame.

  Is that the Tree of Life of her mother’s stories? Has she found Eden? Has she? In Eden everything is wilder and more alive. The sun shines more fiercely, the rain strikes harder, and the leaves are so green that it hurts your eyes. And deep in the forest stands the Tree of Life, and from its branches the creepers hang down to the ground, and at night after the rains they’re speckled with fireflies, and you can smell the vanilla flowers and the sweet decay.

  Behind her a branch snaps. She whips round. But the clearing is empty.

  Her mind floods with clarity. She understands why she is here, and why she is frightened. Only one man knows where she is, and if he finds her, it’s finished.

  Another twig snaps. She hears the chink of a bridle, and forgets to breathe.

  One way or another, it won’t be long now.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Galloway, south-west Scotland, March 1884 – eleven years earlier

  The important thing, her mother always said, is to think for yourself.

  Then she would bundle Madeleine into hat and coat and galoshes and muff and send her out onto the beach – with orders to find ten different kinds of seaweed, or learn how the Corsewall lighthouse got its name. Come back when you’re hungry, she would say. And watch the tides or you’ll drown.

  What
will I look like drowned, Madeleine would ask. Will you take a photograph of me?

  Several, her mother would reply. And if I’m lucky I might get one published in Amateur Photographer.

  Watch the tides, and think for yourself. As Madeleine stood at the edge of the Forbidden Kingdom, she thought, well at least I am thinking for myself. Although this probably wasn’t what Mama had in mind.

  Her breath steamed in the frozen stillness, and cold seeped through her cork-soled boots. But she couldn’t stamp her feet in case she alerted some guardian of the forest.

  Before her the carriageway swept through the great iron gates and disappeared into the shadows beneath the trees. To her right the gatehouse loomed. Frost filmed its blind marble windows. Icicles waited to fall from the roof. In the pediment a marble crow hitched its wings to fly away, while a marble snake writhed in its claws.

  Madeleine was vaguely aware of some story in the Bible about a snake, and that the snake was not the hero. She wasn’t sure if there was a crow in it as well. Her mother often said they must make a start on the Bible, but they never did. ‘I’m sorry, Maddy,’ she had said only the week before, ‘I’m too ignorant and undisciplined to make a good teacher.’ Madeleine strongly disagreed. Her mother knew singing, photography and tropical plants and animals; and she could tell stories about magic trees and dapper little talking spiders, in the sing-song language of Jamaica that she called patois.

  There was a thud behind her. She spun round. A big black crow was watching her from a swaying branch. It fixed her with bright, unfriendly eyes.

  ‘Go away,’ she told it.

  The crow gave a croak and flew off into the trees. Snow drifted down from the branch. The stillness returned.

  It was just a crow, she told herself. But she didn’t like the fact that it had understood what she said.

  Through the gates, the woods were dark and haunted: warning her not to enter the Forbidden Kingdom. She groped for Mister Parrot in her pocket, and slipped off her mitten and gave his fuzzy felt wing a reassuring squeeze.

  The Forbidden Kingdom was not, of course, its real name; that was Strathnaw. The Forbidden Kingdom was merely what her mother called it when she was angry – because Papa had said that they must never visit it on any account. ‘Then why on earth take a house two hours away from the wretched place?’ Mama would blaze at him during one of their rows.

  ‘Because it’s secluded and within our means—’

  ‘Nonsense. It’s because you miss them, and you want to retain some sort of link, however tentative—’

  ‘Rose, no.’

  ‘Tell the truth! You miss them. Heaven knows, I understand. What I don’t understand is why you won’t allow us to make an approach, not even for Maddy’s sake. She’s ten years old, and she’s never seen the place where you—’

  ‘There would be no point.’

  ‘Of course there’s a point!’

  And so it would go on, while Madeleine listened on the landing until Hannah poked her head round the kitchen door and shooed her back to bed.

  The last row had been a fortnight ago, just before Papa went back to his regiment. He had lost his temper and stormed from the house – but returned much later with an armful of hothouse lilies. Her mother had thrown them back at him (‘Damn you, I’m not an invalid!’), then burst into tears. Madeleine had crouched against the banister, picking at the varnish and wondering what to do. Her mother never cried.

  Dr Baines said it was just the usual ‘morbid despondency of a lady near her time’, and prescribed warm milk (which her mother detested), and a little phial of cocaine drops for her sore gums.

  It didn’t help. Recently, her mother’s ‘second bustle’ – the one in front – had grown so big that her back ached constantly. And she’d become fretful and despondent, which wasn’t like her. She spent her days waiting for the post, but was vexed and unsatisfied when it arrived, even if it brought a letter from Papa. Hannah went about her work with a mouth pulled as tight as a drawstring, and muttered about giving in her notice.

  In the end, Madeleine realized that it was down to her. She couldn’t let her mother go on being so unhappy. She must go to the Forbidden Kingdom and talk to whoever lived there, and then perhaps they could all go to Jamaica, just as Papa was always promising they would, at some future time that never seemed to come.

  For herself, Madeleine would much rather stay at Cairngowrie House, for she loved her lonely stretch of beach with its seals and its fulmars and its green-eyed cormorants. But she knew that her parents longed to go back to the land where they were born. Besides, she wouldn’t mind seeing a real parrot and a breadfruit tree.

  A harsh croak brought her back to the present. The crow was watching her from the gatehouse roof. Better turn aside now, it said, or there’ll be trouble.

  She wished she could do exactly that. She didn’t want to enter the Forbidden Kingdom. She wanted to be back at Cairngowrie House. She wanted her father. She wanted the scratch of his whiskers, and his spicy smell of moustache wax and Turkish tobacco.

  And yet, she reflected, he is the reason that you are here. It isn’t fair of him to say ‘I forbid it’, and then go off to the army for months. He is always leaving us. It isn’t fair.

  She took a deep breath of the freezing air, and walked through the gates into the Forbidden Kingdom.

  Beneath the trees there was a horrible waiting stillness. The snow crunched beneath her boots like broken glass, and her breath sounded rasping and loud. She forced herself to walk slowly, to show the crow that she was unafraid. But it wasn’t fooled. It followed her from branch to branch, its harsh laughter echoing through the wood.

  She walked for what seemed like hours. Then abruptly the trees were left behind.

  She had reached the edge of a vast snowbound park. From where she stood the carriageway swept down past a wide frozen lake, then up a long white hill where a line of marble knights guarded the approach to a huge stone mansion.

  Madeleine hated it on sight. Columns barred its front like a great stone cage, and its copper-coloured windows threw back the glare of the sun.

  That, she thought, is where the crows go to roost. She pictured them blackening it at dusk in their thousands, then rising to blot out the dawn in a great dark flood.

  The crow swept past her and perched on the helmet of the nearest knight. Last chance, it croaked. You’d better turn back now while you still can.

  The blood was loud in her ears; the sense of wrongdoing so strong that she caught her breath.

  If her mother were here, she would make a game of this. ‘How would you photograph that house, Maddy? How would you show the way it makes you feel?’

  The thought of her mother was a kernel of heat. The previous day, they had taken photographs with the new Instantograph, and Madeleine had modelled her mother’s green plush evening mantle. Then she’d tried on the hideous stockinette ‘abdominal binder’ which Dr Baines had insisted her mother must wear instead of stays. As Madeleine had pranced around the drawing-room with a cushion for her second bustle, her mother had mimicked the doctor’s rolling Scots tones – ‘suppoort without prayssure’ – and they’d laughed till it hurt.

  Halfway up the hill, one of the statues moved.

  Madeleine’s heart jerked.

  It was a knight on an enormous charger. His cloak of draped grey marble was dusted with snow across the shoulders. His mount’s long white mane glittered with frost. He was the guardian of the Forbidden Kingdom, come to spirit her away.

  With a croak the crow flew off into the forest. Told you not to go any further! Then the charger tossed its head and snorted steam, and the statue resolved into an officer on a big grey horse.

  Shakily, Madeleine breathed out. Nothing to be afraid of, she told herself. But her heart kept up its jerky rhythm.

  The officer hadn’t seen her yet. She watched him jump down from the saddle and pick up his mount’s near front hoof. The horse arched its neck to watch, while the officer took a
scraper from his pocket and removed a stone, then set down the hoof and jumped back into the saddle. Then he turned his head and saw her.

  She put her hand in her pocket and gripped Mister Parrot.

  ‘Who are you?’ the officer called out sharply. His voice carried through the freezing air. ‘This is a private estate. What are you doing here?’

  When she did not reply, he put his horse forward and cantered down to her. He only reined in when he was practically upon her. His spurs were at the level of her eyes, and so close that she could see the fine engravings on the cold blue steel.

  His horse put down its nose to investigate her, and she took in a blast of its hot, musky breath. It was enormous, its hooves the size of dessert plates. She had to remind herself of what her mother had once told her: that horses do not care to tread upon children.

  She craned her neck to look up at the officer. He had thick fair hair, with darker brows and moustache, and no laughter lines. His eyes were light grey and startling in his sunburned face. Madeleine had never seen a gentleman with sunburn. She had thought only farmers and fishermen got that.

  She wondered why he had no laughter lines, and whether he was unhappy, and what he would look like if he smiled. He reminded her of someone. But of whom?

  Then she had it. He had the same strong features as the warriors in her Illustrated Adventures of Ancient Greece. But she couldn’t tell if he was a hero or a villain. He looked as if he might be either: as if he might be capable of great violence or great tenderness in equal measure, and you would never know which was coming next. But curiously, that didn’t make her afraid. She felt nervous and uncertain, but most of all she wanted him to like her. She wanted him to smile at her, and be pleased to see her.

  All this flashed through her mind as she stood in the snow looking up at him, while he contemplated her with cool grey eyes which held none of the indulgence that grown-ups usually assume on meeting a child.