Linnet's Tour Guide: 2. Grass Isle

All young ladies planning their tour of the Fourlands are entitled to ask: why on earth should I add Grass Isle to my itinerary? Far from passing over this rocky little island we encourage you to visit its sandy beaches and eerie towers, and you will see why it has come to be much favoured by artists. The sense of adventure and excitement as you sail into its windswept strait will remain with you for life.

By ship from Vertigo you sail past a toothed islet and pass by rugged towers standing silent and foreboding where the grass meets the foreshore. There are twelve in all, encircling the island, named January to December, and Ata Dei caused them to be built when she was Shearwater’s wife. It is not for us to comment whether a wife should need that much defending from her husband, but she certainly chose to make the island her own. Perhaps she discovered that the secret of an immortal marriage is to live apart for six hundred years.

Your ship will anchor at September Tower Bay, the island’s only port and town. Here the Reeve of Grass Isle will welcome you and accompany you to his house, pride of place in the harbour front. The island forms the larger part of Cobalt Manor, which otherwise consists of a strip along the coast, and the Reeve is answerable to Governor Cobalt. Grass Isle is one of only three inhabited islands in the world; the other two being Tris and Addald Island in Ghallain. We omit to consider Teron Prison Island, as not a fit subject for polite conversation.

One day and one night will suffice to view Grass Isle, and the reeve will guide you to sites of interest. September Tower Bay is notable as the birthplace of the Eszai Tre Cloud, who was cook to the Governor of Cobalt before he won immortality. His house, although lowly, has been preserved and if you visit it, take time to consider the salutary lesson that no matter how poor one’s background, no matter what remote corner of the world you hail from, if you possess merit the Castle will reward you and like Tre Cloud you will achieve greatness.

Outside town the island is completely rural; longhorned black cattle graze freely on the open grass. Every spring equinox the Islanders hold a vibrant festival, culminating in thousands of cattle being swum across the straits to the market at Malanders. So many swim across that the sea turns black with them. We highly recommend that you visit on this date, for the drovers will welcome you to join the dances, which are more energetic than sophisticated, and steers with colourful ribbons on their horns are driven through town.

As a counterpoint to the music, ask the reeve to accompany you to one of Ata Dei’s towers. They are all empty now, dank and desolate; the creaking, rotting stairs lead to three storeys then a lookout post on the roof. The adjacent coves with their stretches of white sand are ideal places for you to assemble your easel and practise your watercolours. Or, if you are botanically minded, search for a rarity that exists only on the island. Puce Orchids the size of coffee pots scatter the grass between the fishermen’s turf-roofed hovels and whalebone arch gateways. You may see the even rarer Orchid Butterflies which live exclusively on Puce Orchids, the exceedingly rare Butterfly Geckos which live exclusively on Orchid Butterflies, and the virtually non-existent Gecko Badger which lives exclusively on Butterfly Geckos.

It is well known that there are no snakes on Grass Isle. According to an apocryphal tale San visited the island when he was a travelling sage, and in order to show his power banished all the snakes from it, which immediately curled up and turned into stone. Scholars pooh-pooh the story, but have yet to come up with a explanation as to why snakelike spiral shells, made wholly of stone, weather out of the cliffs.

The waves turn salvage from wrecks and the bones of long-dead sea monsters onto the beaches where fishermen beachcomb and iguanas sun themselves. From the northernmost tower, July Tower, you will see the anfractuous reef stretching from the head of the island to the low, green coast of Peregrine. Atop the bold reef stands the lighthouse built by Shearwater, the Circle’s first Sailor. Its beacon has been lit every night for six hundred years, but its guiding fire did not save Shearwater’s own ship, nor his life, for one storm-wracked winter’s morning he misjudged the reef and was wrecked on the bold rocks. The skeleton of his caravel Honeybuzzard can still be seen impaled on the reef at low tide. It is the subject of a very thrilling romance, ‘The Miser Captain’ by Lightning Micawater, which reads so very like truth to those of us who have sailed the straits in November’s treacherous storms.

From September pier, ferryboats leave daily at eight am to either Sheldrake in Peregrine manor or Malanders town in Cobalt. Our tour now takes this route and we embark for Malanders, where we may readily hire a coach and postilion. Cobalt manor house in its eponymous town is at the time of writing occupied by an elderly and ailing lady Governor, who has asked us kindly to omit her mansion from this tour. We therefore pass through Cobalt directly, and you are invited to turn to the following chapter, The Environs of Altergate.

July Tower, with the coast of Peregrine beyond: Click for full size