Ebony Hill (3 page)

The air bites chill as the sun elbows its way weakly past night. Thin crusts of cloud curl around the hilltops, hinting at rain, the wind lifting the flags that mark our passage through the city. Despite the images Jago’s shown me, I find it hard to imagine Vidya before the collapse. It had another name then and more people than it seems possible could exist in one place – or at all.

As Esha leads us into an ugly block building, a rat, scrawny and grey, scurries into sight, swerves around my foot and is gone. Ronan hesitates, eyes scouring the ruins as if he is likewise seeking an escape route.

“Rail is our fastest link with the farms,” Esha tells us. “A tech team was established to open the line soon after Home Farm was settled, but progress on bringing the track right into Vidya has been slow.”

“Sourcing unbuckled iron is the problem.”

The voice comes from our left. The man who owns it is short and broad, dark skinned, dark-eyed. “Alek,” he says, giving us a measuring look. “There’s your jigger.” He
waves a meaty hand towards an oblong box on wheels.

We stare at the coffin-shaped carriage in silence. Alek slides open a panel and motions us within.

Benches bracket the jigger’s sides. Stowing our packs beneath them, we select our seats: Ronan folds himself into the farthest corner while I sit opposite the door. Esha positions herself strategically midway between.

“Do you need help?” she asks.

Alek has taken up a position beside a metal arm that tilts like the ancient see-saw Sophie and I would ride when we went to Tarbet’s summer fair – though this has handgrips instead of seats. “I’ll manage easy enough for the first hour. Once we head inland you can all lend a hand.”

He releases a clutch of levers and throws his weight on the up-side of the see-saw. There’s a shudder and a metallic screech and the carriage shunts forward a handspan. He pulls up and we move another span. Down and up and down and we’re rolling a little smoother. Out the window the city begins to flow past as we tilt down a slope, picking up speed while Alek works methodically at the handle.

Esha settles back with a sigh. “I’m looking forward to this,” she says. “I haven’t visited Ebony Hill in far too long.”

The name belongs to the highest peak of the hills that overlook Home Farm. Summertops lies across the shoulder of the ridge, a day’s journey north. I made a point over the last few days of finding out all I could about Vidya’s farms. There are four in all: three hill
blocks and the home farm, each running livestock as well as growing fodder, food and bio-fuel crops. Together they supply more than two-thirds of the city’s food – the gardens and greenhouses provide vegetables, but there’s no space for wheat and grain in the city, let alone goats and cattle. The land and air is less tainted beyond the city’s confines, besides.

“Why stay in the city at all?” I ask abruptly.

Esha’s smile is quizzical. “Moving out comes up for discussion periodically,” she says, “but the founders wanted to build a community where there’d be room to learn as well as to survive. That’s why they chose the old university as their site.”

Her eyes flicker towards Ronan, but he’s angled away from us, head turned towards the window, though that doesn’t mean he’s not listening.

“Their first focus was on reclaiming medical knowledge, but they soon recognised the need for research into the toxins the collapse had left behind. If we abandoned Vidya, it would be abandoning the battle they began to rebuild a world worth living in.”

As the jigger carries us around the ruined heart of the city, I think about how much work still lies ahead. Decon’s priority, now that they’ve identified the most unstable and toxic sites, is to work on dismantling and decontamination. For the moment their focus is on the industrial zone north of the docklands, but the work is painstakingly slow. Even in the zones where they’ve completed their task, it’ll be a long time before the land can be reclaimed for growing. Regenerating land for
productive use is one of the areas Marta has been trying to encourage me into.

Folding my thoughts away, I ask Alek if I might help with the see-saw. He eyes me lop-sidedly and tilts his chin to the unmanned handle. “Take a hold nice and gentle and let yourself get the rhythm,” he instructs. “That’s it. Now, take a bit of pressure – there. Easy does it.”

The handle beneath my hands feels like a live thing, pulling at my arms. When Alek looses his grip it feels like the energy’s gone out of it. I add more pressure, trying to maintain the momentum.

“That’s it,” he says. “Count a rhythm in your head – I have a song I sing, but I won’t burden your young ears with it. My voice was never my strongest asset. Are you all right there?”

I nod, my neck feeling oddly dislocated as it works against the dip and lift of my torso. My arms are not as strong as they were when I worked all day outdoors, and any songs I ever knew have abandoned me. I settle on counting a beat in my head. There’s something like rowing in the pull on palms and arms and back.

“Good enough,” Alek says, as I pass my third hundred. His gnarled hands return to the handle opposite. “Take a break now. I’ll need all your help later on.”

As I tuck myself back into my seat, the jigger’s small windows show the old city outskirts. Burnt-out houses, slumped fences, rusting metal. Where buildings still stand, roofs are missing, windows broken. There are craters, here and there, as if whole sections of this place where people once lived have been scooped up and thrown away.

There were wars after the collapse, people all fighting for their own little space. Staring at the ruined world beyond the jigger’s windows, it seems to me clear that everyone lost.

With a whooshing roar the world turns suddenly black, midnight black, moonless black, trapped in a dark space and unable to get out black. Then the light is back, bright, blinding, with chisel sharp flashes of colour. I blink and try to swallow my shock.

“First of the tunnels,” Alek says. “Took us a year to clear them all. We had to rebuild one from scratch. There are four on the line; we couldn’t use it without them.”

We sweep into another and this time I’m not so startled. The jigger’s noise – a rhythmic clanking – is condensed by the tunnel’s walls, but the blackness is safer now I know what it is. He might have warned us, I think, and look sideways at Alek as we return to the light. He’s bending and lifting, bending and lifting. Esha gives me a small smile as she catches my eye. Ronan’s face is still turned to the window but his body looks as taut as a gannet poised to dive.

The third tunnel is longer and curving. When we burst from its mouth we’ve left the bedraggled ruins of the city behind. To our left is the sea, the waves stretching up to lap our iron toes. To our right the hillside passes like a flickering wall. I crane my neck but we’re tucked too close to its flank to glimpse the skyline.

It’s a harsh landscape, with something in its bleakness that chimes a chord in my heart.

As the rails edge inland we pass above a scraggly cluster
of buildings that boast small signs of occupation: washing on a line, rows of frost-scarred vegetables, a sorry-looking hen scratching among weeds. Someone has built a fence of old sheets of metal and twisted wire to mark out their boundaries.

“There are a few small settlements along the coast,” Esha says. “We give help when we can, but mostly they prefer to keep to themselves.”

Alek invites Ronan to take a turn propelling us along and he walks crabwise down the carriage, arm outstretched for balance. As he grasps the jigger’s handle, I see how thin he is. It’s the first chance I’ve had to study him properly. His forearms and hands are lightly tanned, his fingers long. I tuck my stubby fingers and chewed nails out of sight. Without breaking rhythm, Ronan pushes the hair back from his eyes so that I glimpse the paler curve of his brow and angled plane of his cheek. I wonder how he’d look with more flesh on his bones.

“Good enough,” Alek tells him, after a while. “Esha, you’ll remember how it’s done?”

Esha assures him she does. As they fall into an easy reminiscing, I rest my forehead against the cool glass. The angle of the hill cuts off any view and I content myself with staring through half-shut eyes at the slope as it flickers past.

When we veer inland, the track angling sharply up the flank of the ridge, Alek beckons us all to the handles. Sweat dews on Ronan’s skin as we bend in accord, the jigger’s wheels clanking with each laboured revolution. Even Alek’s breath grows ragged.

As we crest the rise, he lets out a gusty sigh. “Good work,” he says. “I can take it from here.”

Esha hands me a bottle of water and loosens her shoulders. “The line’s made an enormous difference to Vidya,” she says, voice breathy. “It used to take three days to reach the farms but now we can do it in one.”

Ronan wipes his face on his shirt, giving me a glimpse of his ribs, each distinct beneath his skin. Our eyes intersect briefly before his skitter away.

The rails run into a cutting, earthen banks rising steeply to either side. Alek flexes his shoulders one at a time.

“I’ll spell you, if you’d like a break,” Ronan says. It’s the longest sentence I’ve ever heard from him, I swear.

There’s a moment’s hesitation before Alek nods. As he relinquishes the handle, I step forward to take his place. Even though the line is flat, it seems wrong that Ronan should shoulder the burden alone. As my fingers close on the handle he glances up. Though it’s not exactly a smile that ghosts across his face, his expression lightens briefly.

Esha’s voice hums a gentle background to the rhythm of our effort.

As we emerge from the cutting, my throat tightens. The valley before us is dark and bare, without even bracken to cloak its stark slopes. There’s a rattling shudder and the jigger switches direction, curving away along the spine of the hill.

“Is this your first visit to Ebony Hill?” Alek asks, nudging me gently back to my seat. I nod, my eyes locked
on the scene of devastation below us.

“Some sort of explosion in a chemical plant,” Alek says. “Wiped out the whole town.”

Charred ruins fill the valley floor. Black spikes of metal snag the sky, girders lie twisted and broken as fallen branches. There’s something missing, something I can’t quite place. Then it hits me: no shred of green softens the desolation. In Vidya the wastelands are being slowly swallowed by weeds. Not here.

“We don’t know what caused it, or when, but it left the whole valley unfit for life,” Esha says. “No weeds, no rats, not even cockroaches survive.”

A lake lies in a fold of hill at the head of the valley, the water dark with algae. There are no birds. The horror that’s gnawing at me finds its match in Ronan’s face. He begins to pump the jigger handle faster. Alek opens his mouth then, instead, closes it and matches Ronan’s pace. The jigger hurtles along the ridge.

“How could they do it?” I demand, my voice stricken. “And why? What did anyone gain?”

Esha slides into the seat beside me and wraps an arm around my shoulders. “It’s hard to comprehend, I know, but I doubt they intended it. Or that anyone gained.”

With my lips tight-set I accept the small comfort she offers. At least on Dunnett there was nothing like the ravaged town or dead lake. I wonder whether that’s also true of Ister.

The next valley offers weeds that feel like a balm, but the day has soured. “It’s an easy run from here,” Alek says. “Take a rest, lad,” he adds.

Ronan gives up the handle reluctantly, but he doesn’t scurry away to the far end of the carriage, instead sitting on the bench opposite.

“The farm where you grew up supported cattle and crops, is that right Ronan?” Esha says, attempting normality.

Ronan nods.

“They haven’t cattle at Home Farm, but they’ve other livestock and field crops. We’ll spend a week or so there then go up to Summertops or Dales – both perhaps. With luck Truso might be able to show us around.”

“I wouldn’t count on it at this time of year,” Alek tells her. “They started planting last week and you know Truso: he’ll not take time off when there’s work to be done.”

“There’s always work to be done.” Esha’s voice sounds pinched. “It’s years since he’s visited Vidya for any longer than it takes to make his annual report to the governors.”

“You told me you came close to living at Ebony Hill,” I remind her, wondering how Vidya would have coped with her loss.

She waves a hand dismissively, colour rising in her cheeks. “A long time ago,” she says, “before I became director of med-sci. Sometimes life’s choices don’t come with room for compromise.”

“Each finds their own,” Alek says obliquely. Esha’s lips press tight.

Beyond the next valley, the hills begin to climb, the tallest straining upward to a single, rugged snout. “That
peak there,” Alek says, leaning back to stretch his arms, “that’s Ebony Hill.”

Perhaps it’s the angle of the sun, but to me the hill looks austere and unwelcoming.

The jigger begins a slow descent, angling across the face of the slope before the line curves sharply left and we clank up a short incline. As we slow, halt, begin to roll backwards, Alek pulls on the brake. The sharp screech of metal on metal makes me wince. He opens the door.

Our stop seems to be in the middle of nowhere. In the distance, mountains rise in sharp folds of blue and grey. The sparse tussock of the hillside crackles beneath my feet. Ronan, gazing about, looks as awkward as I feel.

“Good time you’ve made,” a voice booms. A man, red haired, broad-shouldered, strides into sight. “You’ll be the islanders then?”

I feel a prickle of resentment. “I’ve lived in Vidya for two years,” I tell him stiffly. “Before that I lived on Dunnett. Ronan is from Ister.”

The newcomer makes a formal bow. “I’m Truso, and it’s my pleasure to welcome you both to Ebony Hill.” He turns. “Hello Esha.”

There’s no sign for once of Esha’s gentle smile. She nods, the lines pulling taut around her eyes.

“It’s good to see you,” he adds, before shifting his attention to Alek. “I’ve a backload for you: smoked mutton.”

We each carry a cold-crate from a turf-roofed lean-to, half buried behind a hillock.