Borderlands (29 page)

Clementine gasps. Maisy's hand flies to her chest and Teddy staggers back as though someone's whacked him. He dissolves into a shaky laugh. I feel like my legs might collapse beneath me, and I reach out to grab Lukas's arm. This can't be real. How could this be . . .?

My friends splash towards me, arms outstretched. ‘Danika!'

‘Where did you . . .? I mean, how . . .?'

‘Lukas, oh my –'

Limbs wrap around me, my ear squashes into Teddy's shoulder and the whole world is just a jumble of warm bodies. I am so relieved, so grateful, that my friends are here. That my crew is together again. But at the same time I'm ashamed of my reaction, because their presence here could be their undoing. Part of me wants to break down, here and now, and cry my eyes out.

‘I can't believe you left us!' Clementine says. ‘You had no right . . .' She falters, torn between anger and a choke of relief. ‘You had no right.'

‘We went back for you,' Teddy breathes, voice shaking. He looks from me to Lukas. ‘Both of you. But it was pitch-black, and we called and called, but we couldn't find you . . .'

‘We thought you must've gone up another way,' Maisy says. ‘All we could do was keep going, and hope we'd find you at the top.'

‘Fat lot of good it did us,' Teddy says. ‘We were just saying we hoped you two'd picked some other way to get out, but . . .' He runs a desperate hand through his hair. ‘I guess not.'

I glance at the blocked-off tunnels. The iron across their entrances is thick and heavy. I know without trying that there's no hope of pushing them – not without operating the lever on the other side. ‘The doors won't open?'

Clementine nods. ‘We've been trying, but . . .'

‘They must know someone sabotaged the engine,' Teddy says. ‘They're not gonna let us get away.'

‘Let me have a look,' I say, holding up my wrist. ‘I've got this charm that Silver made – it's hot enough to melt metal. Maybe . . .'

Teddy shakes his head. ‘Door's too thick. It'd take hours to melt through.'

I slosh forward. Even at the highest part of the cavern, the water now laps at my thighs. Wet clothing sticks to my skin, then loosens as a new swish of water rises around it. At this rate, we'll have our noses pressed to the ceiling in minutes.

‘Well?' Clementine says. She stands beside me, an arm wrapped tight around Maisy's shoulders. ‘Can you melt it?'

I bang my fist against the door. It clangs dully, like heavy iron, and I know instantly that there's no hope of melting through in time. No padlock, no bolt. Just solid metal. The only way to shift this iron is by lever – and it lies on the other side of the door.

I let out a growl, and slam my palm against the metal. The lever is so close, but we've got no hope of reaching it. If only we had someone with a Water proclivity. Someone who could flow through the gaps, around the edges of the door. Even now, water nibbles my waist. It's so cold. My body gives an involuntary shiver, and I steady myself against the door.

Okay, so we don't have a Water proclivity on the crew. Not any more, at least. Not since Radnor . . .

Don't think about that
, I tell myself, as the sound of his screams echoes back into my skull. I force the memory away. I'll have to deal with it eventually, but this isn't the time. I grit my teeth.
Focus, Danika.
What do we have to work with? Lukas is Bird and Teddy is Beast – both useless. Maisy is Fire, which isn't much help right now. Clementine doesn't have her proclivity yet, and mine is Night.

My throat tightens. Night. It's still night-time outside, isn't it? This darkness comes from the tunnels, but technically it's also the dark of night. Perhaps I can melt into it. I can flow around the edges of the doorway. I can reach the other side.

I can reach the lever.

But what if I lose myself? I've tried before to travel through Night in an emergency – down in the
Nightsong
's bunkroom – but this time there's no Silver to save me. I'll just float away, lose a grip on my humanity. The idea is more frightening than death. I'd rather drown, I think, than scatter my soul to the dark. But what about my friends? If there's even the slightest chance that this might work, that I could save them . . .

I suddenly think of Silver's words after she saved me:
‘If you don't want to lose yourself, my friend, you must trust yourself first.'
I lost myself to my proclivity because I was afraid of it. Ashamed of it.

I take a deep breath. ‘I think I can get to the other side.'

The others stare at me. ‘How?'

‘My proclivity.'

Teddy frowns. ‘Thought you couldn't control it yet.'

‘I can't. At least, I don't know if I can. It's worth a try, isn't it?'

‘But –'

The water is at my armpits now, cold and gurgling. ‘If I don't do this, we'll die.'

There. I've said it.

Lukas hesitates, then reaches up to touch my cheek. ‘Danika . . .'

I lean into his touch. And suddenly I don't even care that the others are watching, or what they might think. I grab the back of Lukas's head and pull his face towards mine. His breath is warm and his tongue is soft and there is nothing but the brush of lips and stubble against me. We share a silent breath.

The night is not evil.
I am not afraid.

Blackness floods around me: the touch of water, the touch of night. There is nothing to be ashamed of. I close my eyes. I think of coal-coloured air. Of starlit skies. And I dissolve into the dark.

Straight away, I know this time is different. There's no pull in my belly – no urge to throw myself away, or hide from the reality of what I am. I can still feel the shape of my human body: head, limbs, fingers. But all my parts are made of darkness, and it ebbs and flows with the rest of the night around me. I am part of it, but I am separate.

I'm not afraid
, my mind whispers.
I'm still me.

I'm vaguely aware of my friends nearby. They're crying out, startled by my sudden disappearance. I press past them to reach the door. When Teddy's elbow gets in the way, I'm startled to find that my body
shifts
to melt around it. Like running water . . . or shifting shadow. Like a ghost in my father's bedtime stories.

And then I'm at the door. I feel the ebb and flow of night; it puckers around its edges, sinking around the cracks in the metal. I pour myself to one side and the world twists sideways – everything is dark and metal and cold and I'm stuck halfway between iron and stone. The wall presses in behind me, the door crushes me from the front, and for a terrible moment I panic. I have to turn back! I have to be myself again, or I'll be lost. But if I change back now, my body will be crushed, a mess of flesh and gore . . .

No!
I force myself to focus. I am me. I am darkness. I am both.

And finally, I'm through. It's like squeezing the last dregs of toothpaste from a tube. I pour into a black tunnel. Here the night is so thick, and I'm so alone, that I almost forget myself again. There's a sudden drum inside my head – the pulse of the night, calling me, curling inside my belly, urging me to dissolve even further into darkness . . .

I am Danika. I am me.

The drumbeat fades. And with a gasp, I force myself back into human form.

I stand there, heaving. Everything is shadow, and I can't see any better with my eyes open than shut. I slap my thighs, my calves, my elbows, afraid that I won't all be here. But my body seems to be intact. I've done it. I've ridden my proclivity, and I didn't lose myself.

Clementine shouts from the far side of the door. ‘Danika, hurry!' Hands pound on the iron. A few more shouts, and then the terrible sound of final gasps. ‘Hurry!'

Frantic splashing, then silence.

My heart freezes. How long was I out for? Has the water reached the ceiling? I focus on the star charm and jerk its alchemy back into life. It flares, and a glow begins to paint the tunnel around me. It's still faint, but enough to spot the lever: a twisted metal handle on the wall. I grab the lever, then pull.

For a terrible moment, I think I don't have the strength to do it. My limbs are weak and shaky – the result of my float through the darkness. But I grit my teeth and give another heave.
Come on, come on . . .

The door moves, just a little. Water spills through the gap: a tiny cascade in the dark. I heave again, pushing against the lever with all my body weight. The iron creaks. It groans. Machinery clanks. The door crawls a little further upwards. I see feet below it now – kicking, flailing.

I squeeze and push so hard that tears leak from my eyes, and I feel as if my arms are on fire. But I'm rewarded with another creak, and the door cranks up a little higher. I see Maisy now, scrabbling to squeeze through the gap . . .

And with one more heave, the door is open.

Water washes out – a wave of cold and froth that snatches my legs from under me – and my friends spill out onto the tunnel floor, coughing and spluttering. I crash down and bang my head on something; pain sears across the back of my skull. I can taste blood in the water. Everything flashes dark, then light, as I fight to raise my charm bracelet above the foam.

I take a deep breath, and struggle to my feet. My friends look dizzy and distressed. Clementine's eyes bulge a little, and she takes desperate, haggard breaths.

‘You did it.' Lukas leans against the wall. ‘Danika, you did it!'

But there's no time for congratulations, or even to check that everyone is okay. The water is rising around us, faster than ever. We scramble up the slope, puffing and exhausted. A few of my friends are hyperventilating, their lungs so distressed that they're louder than the gurgle of water.

There's only room to crawl in single file, and I'm at the back of the group. The water surges up around my ankles, then my calves, and I urge the others onwards.

‘Hurry!'

I don't know where we pull the strength from, but we find it somewhere. We push, we pull, we crawl. We wriggle upwards on our bellies, and claw the dirt with desperate fingers to keep us moving forward.

The others crumble dirt and pebbles as they crawl. Debris scatters across my face, and I spit it out from gasping lips. The water reaches my waist, then my shoulders, but I shout out a warning and the others push onwards.

Finally, moonlight. Just a glimpse. It's oddly framed, between jagged gaps of my friends' limbs ahead. But I know it's there, and I know we're going to make it.

Above five metres back from the tunnel's end, the water finally closes over my head and rushes up towards Clementine's ankles. There's a final surge and we're all swimming, tumbling, desperate bodies surging up towards the open sky. Someone kicks my face, and dirt churns through the water, and my body rolls over and over in a torrent of scrabbling fingers . . .

And with lungs like fire, I tumble out into the night.

I cough. I splutter. I can do nothing but focus on the rawness of my lungs. They're demanding little flesh-sacks, when it comes down to it. They yell at my brain to
breathe, breathe, breathe
and mindlessly I obey. In, out. In, out. Every breath is a sting. Every breath is a cold rush of pleasure. And right now, all that matters in the world is to keep those lungs inflating.

After a minute, I start to get a grip on myself. The moon is bright, nestled in an empty patch of sky. Down here, though, the camp is dark. No sign of lanterns. No sign of camp fires.

Then I realise why. Water seeps up from the tunnel entrances, spilling across the camp around our ankles. The earth quivers beneath me. A couple of holes collapse away to my left, as though the tunnels beneath are crumbling.

There's no sign of the soldiers – they must have fled to higher ground as soon as the engine room exploded. They've taken most of the tents and supplies, although a few forgotten packs and chunks of rubbish float by in the churn.

‘We can't stay down here,' Teddy says. ‘The bloody ground's caving in!'

‘The ridge.' My voice is raw. ‘Up on the ridge . . .'

We stumble towards the lake's shore, where the stony ridge rises like a shield for the camp. As we crest the top, I glance at my friends, but they're all staring skywards, expressions of utter awe upon their faces. I follow their gazes towards the dam and my heart almost stops beating.

The kindred runes are crumbling. It's a gradual process: holes and cracks appear, spreading like a slow infection across the wall. In the moonlight, I can see where large chunks of stone have already fallen. The symbols crack and shiver. The earth shakes again. Crumbs of falling stone and mortar rain upon the lake.

‘What's happening?' Clementine says.

Lukas is pale. ‘The runes are breaking.'

‘Yes, I can see that! I meant
why
are they breaking? You didn't just kill yourself when we weren't looking, did you?'

Lukas shakes his head, bewildered.

I stare at the runes as they crumble. Morrigan family runes. They just needed a self-sacrifice – someone of the royal bloodline to kill themselves in an area close enough to the dam wall to . . .

It hits me and Lukas at the same time. The reflected bullet. The falling body. ‘Sharr.'

‘What?' Teddy looks about wildly. ‘Where?'

‘No, not here,' I say. ‘Down in the tunnels. She shot a bullet close to a magnetic seam. It bounced back.' I hesitate. ‘It was an accident, but I guess she sort of killed herself.'

We all turn back to the wall.

‘Self-sacrifice,' Maisy whispers. ‘She carried the Morrigan bloodline. Oh . . .' She swallows hard. ‘The wall is coming down.'

A huge crack splinters along the wall. It runs ­horizontally, just above the waterline. The higher section teeters, torn between gravity and the broken magic of the runes.

And then it happens.

After the slow crumbling of the runes, I don't expect the actual break to be so sudden. It's a rush, a roar, a smash of stone and a collapse of brick. The whole night seems to scream with the sound of it . . . and then there's just water, water, water rushing away to refill the Valley in an enormous wave of sound and motion.

The air is thick with mist and spray. My skin tingles, like the time I slept in a restaurant bin and clogged my clothes with chilli powder. I almost forget how to breathe. There is just the night, and the wave, and the stars.

I remember our boatman's words when he rowed us across to the camp.
‘Bloody big lake, this one. My sergeant reckons it's as deep as a sea.'

And now, that sea is returning home.

Water rushes into the Valley like an estranged child returning for an embrace. It smashes through the remains of the wall, refilling a channel that has lain dry and deserted for centuries. My fingers slip into Lukas's hand. He squeezes gently. I take a deep breath as the roar begins to die away. Then I stare through the space where the wall once stood. I can see only a thin slice from this angle, but it's enough to glimpse what lies beyond.

The Magnetic Valley.

And my first thought is: beautiful.

The mountains arch up skywards on either side, cupping the Valley into its V-shaped horizon. Even in the moonlight, I see a slice of rolling slopes: trees and foliage, grass and boulders. A meadow from a storybook.
‘Chasing those distant deserts of green . . .'

But the Valley isn't a desert. Not any more. Its base rolls and churns with the onslaught of water: a vast lake pouring down between the mountains. Starlight glints off the surface, winking in the dark.

And below that lake, I know, lie the flooded ­catacombs.

The king's Plan B.

‘We did it,' I whisper. ‘We stopped him.'

My other hand finds Maisy's, and I feel her body shift as she grabs Clementine. There's a pause as Clementine and Teddy look at each other, hesitant. Then Teddy shrugs, grins, and grabs Clementine's hand to complete the line.

So we stand there, silent. Below us, the water rolls on. The moment is surreal, as though I'm half-­dreaming. But I feel my crewmates' hands in my own, and their flesh is solid. Warm. Real. We are five figures, fingers joined. Five fugitives, still on the run.

Five members of a refugee crew, and we stand with the Valley at our feet.

In the end, we decide to take a boat.

The lake is shallower now, having spilled most of its contents. Its remaining water has merged with the Valley, forming one enormous channel into the east.

But its old shoreline remains intact, like a high-lipped crater, and the rowboats are still moored on its western shore – an obsolete means to ferry new recruits to the army camp. To reach the boats, we will have to walk. So we pilfer supply packs from the wreckage of the camp, and set off into the dark.

We have to sneak past a few patrols, but most of the army has dispersed. They must have seen the destruction from a distance, up on the highest peaks of the foothills. It's obvious that their plan can't be salvaged – there's no point going back down into the tunnels. With the catacombs destroyed and half their supplies washed away, I wouldn't be surprised if they're marching back to the nearest city to seek new instructions from the king.

Even so, we travel carefully. We wring the water from our clothes, and rub warmth back into our limbs. It's lucky that the borderlands are warmer than the Knife, or we'd be at serious risk of hypothermia. Our army cloaks dry quickly, at least, so I guess they're designed to survive a drenching.

It takes hours to walk around the remains of the lake. Our bodies ache and our bellies burn. When I try to eat some of our stolen rations, I feel too nauseous to keep them down. My mind is a terrible whirl of images, but I don't let myself focus on anything that's happened. I
can't
let myself remember. Not yet. Just the idea makes my breath stick like rocks in my throat. I play silent games with myself, or try to trick my friends into small talk.

We stop for a rest, and sleep for several hours in a thorny thicket. No sign of soldiers, but we're still on edge. Teddy produces the magnets that he saved from Radnor's bonfire – but in my frazzled state, it takes me four attempts to cast even a weak illusion. Teddy drags a pile of broken undergrowth across the clearing, to better conceal our hiding place.

‘Better safe than sorry, I reckon,' he says.

I don't expect to sleep, but sleep I do. My body aches with exhaustion. And I dream. I run through a field of quiet starlight, four other figures at my heels. I'm chasing something – a boat, perhaps – but it keeps soaring out of reach. It flies up, up . . . a bird of fire, wings among the stars. And suddenly it's not a boat, it's an old woman, and her smile melts like silver in the dark.

When I wake, the world is still dark. I panic for a moment, searching for Lukas. The last time I slept beside him was the night he left me.

But there he is, asleep and silent. His eyelashes flitter a little, as though he's dreaming. I fight the urge to reach out and run my fingers through his hair. Instead, I just close my eyes and wait until the others stir.

We walk on. My legs ache. My head throbs. By the time we find the army's rowboats, my stomach gnaws like it's made of teeth.

The boats still sit on what was once the shoreline – although thanks to the drop in water level, it's now the edge of a crater. The water itself lies far below. When I peer over the edge, I see it gleam beneath the moon.

Rivers spill over the edge of the crater, tumbling down to the fallen lake. In the wake of this destruction, it's hard to remember the lake's sheer enormity before it was drained. The rippling water. The dam wall. Rivers pouring in from the borderlands, turning the lake into a drainage bowl . . .

‘Almost wish I could be there,' I say, ‘when the royals find out what we've done.'

‘I don't,' Teddy says. ‘I like keeping my head on my shoulders.'

We drag a rowboat down the crater. The slope is steep, but not vertical. Luckily the ground is damp sand, so we can slide the boat down towards the water without damaging its hull. The twins guide the front of it, while the rest of us push and pull at the back. Whenever we hit a steeper patch, it takes a bit of grunting and arm-straining to stop the boat sliding away from us altogether.

‘You'd think it wanted to run away,' Teddy gasps, as we hold it back. ‘Bloody thing's more stubborn than a foxary.'

‘You just say that because you can't talk to it.' I dig in my heels, saving the boat from the slip of its own momentum. ‘If your proclivity was Wood, I bet you'd be whispering sweet nothings into its boaty little ears . . .'

‘Its boaty little
oars
,' Teddy says. ‘Get it?'

It's not much of a pun, but I'm so exhausted that I can't hold back a laugh. Even Clementine looks amused, although she makes an effort to hide it. ‘You're hopeless, Teddy Nort.'

‘I know.' Teddy flashes her a smile. ‘That's part of my charm.'

Clementine snorts, but I can't help noticing her cheeks are a little red.