The Black North (16 page)

Finally, Merrigutt spoke some more, sounding like she'd convinced herself (or was trying to): ‘Sure it'll do for tonight.'

She had to shout it almost: the rain was louder where they were, the wind outside savage. And nothing wanted to stay still – the house tilted and Oona and Merrigutt had to reach out to steady themselves. Oona watched a wash-jug on the dressing-table slide towards the brink and she waited for the shatter and crash but just as it was about to fall, it stopped. Oona groped her way forwards, lifting the saucer with candle to investigate – candlelight showed her a single thread fastened to the handle of the jug, the other end bound to the mirror to keep it moored. The room made suddenly more sense.

‘This landlady isn't as slow as she seems,' said Merrigutt.

Oona checked more things: on the bedside table was a vase with a clutch of limp cow-parsley, more thread looped around its base to stop any chance of toppling. And the wardrobe? Rope around its carven ankles. And the bed had all four posts secured with timber and plenty of nails.

‘There's more going on here than we know,' said Merrigutt.

‘And there are other things,' said Oona. ‘In the pictures over the mantelpiece, there was a wee girl in nearly all of them. And I don't think Loftborough was always like it is now. Something happened here. Something's
still
happening.'

Again – a push from outside and everything changed.

Above the bed Oona found a candlestick to snatch for, to slot the taper into.

‘You sleep in the bed there,' said Merrigutt. ‘I'll find myself somewhere to perch.'

‘Can you not just stay as you are?' asked Oona.

‘Probably shouldn't even sleep,' said Merrigutt. ‘Something tells me one of us should stay awake.'

‘Then I'll not sleep either,' said Oona.

Both yawned, then both were beaten – once more the house was prodded by outside storm and the suddenness threw both of them to the bed.

In whispers, they told each other –

‘Perhaps just a rest,' said Merrigutt, pulling her legs close. ‘Get the energy and the wits back.'

‘Just a short sleep,' said Oona, feet burrowing under blanket, looking for warmth. ‘Just a wee while.'

Both sighed.

Then Merrigutt's last whisper: ‘Try not to nightmare.'

But Oona had already decided: the last thing she did before slipping off into whatever awaited was to open her satchel, find the Loam Stone and force it beneath her pillow. And another thing before sleep – Oona needed to ask something, had been waiting for the moment since they'd seen the boy vanish from the rear of the Perpetual Parade.

‘The Echoes,' she said. ‘You said what we saw happen to that boy in the Cause was the Echoes.'

‘I did,' said Merrigutt. The old woman kept her eyes shut.

‘Then what is it?' asked Oona. ‘You must know what the Echoes mean –
tell
.'

‘I know them when I see them,' said Merrigutt. She sighed. ‘I have seen so much of them, my girl. But that doesn't mean I know what they are or why they happen, or how to stop them.'

‘How do you even know anything about them at all?' asked Oona.

But a moment and Merrigutt was apparently asleep, had already begun to snore.

Again Oona was walking through a dark and cold worse than any winter's night. Through shadow, and the same forest she'd seen before. But the trees were darker: as though they'd been seeded by a dispell and had grown with trunks cracked and yawning, had never had any expectation of leaves other than those they sent out – black, limp and damp as worn rags. It was a place content with its dark.

Then Oona saw other things. Among the branches, more things moving – eyes, crimson, and all watching. And then the voice she expected told her –

‘
You do not know what you carry. But you are learning – soon, you will command it. Soon, it will spill secrets and spill power that you cannot hope to control. It would be better to surrender it, but you are already in thrall to it. The Stone wants only to show you, and to let you see all nightmares. And you have such nightmares in you, don't you? Such things that you are hiding away in the dark.
'

Oona answered, her own voice small but strong: ‘I'm hiding nothing.'

‘
Oh, you are – we all are. But no nightmare can stay hidden.
No truth can be buried so deep that it can be ignored. Bury it, but still you shall smell the rot. Always, there are the Echoes.
'

Then the forest floor churned, its black shifting like a Muddglogg waking. Or maybe –

‘Briar-Witches?' asked Oona, and she looked to the trees like she might climb to keep safe, but none looked likely to support her.

‘
The creatures underground,
' said the voice of the forest, ‘
are as vicious as any bad and buried memory, and as powerful as any hurt. They are what nightmares are made of. Nothing is secure now. Nothing in your world is certain. I am remaking what I wish, in whatever image I choose. I am making my own nightmares.
'

Oona's eyes stayed on the ground: pale things were emerging like fingers trying to fling off the dark and she had to look away. ‘What are you? Are you the voice of the Stone, or something in my head?'

A pause, and then the voice said, ‘
I am both. I am as old as the Stone and older still. I am the dark on the horizon. I am what this Isle will become: it will be remade in my image. If you don't believe, then look – beware that black beneath your feet.
'

And Oona looked: the earth was churning not just with fingers but with faces desperate to rise.

‘
I am your ruler, Oona Kavanagh,
' said the voice. ‘
I am the voice that will bid you, before the end. I am your lord. I am your King.
'

Some hour of night even the clocks don't wish to witness and Oona awoke: again upright and with eyes open like they'd been pinned and a throat like it had been scalded. And had she again been screaming? In her hand she held the Loam Stone, and it was slowly losing its heat, its small light.

Oona tried to breathe.

Nightmares lingered – things watching, things turning and dragging aside earth, so many small fingers and faces pushing through. And above all, that voice: a low whispering, an echo of something within her own bones. But if Oona tried to grasp it tight – hold the nightmare and examine and know it – then it was just as impatient to leave, weaving away, a flickering dissolving into dark.

She breathed, and looked about.

Their candle had burnt itself down to a stump. The only thing she could make out was Merrigutt beside, sleeping the way a child might sleep. Or, Oona thought, like how Morris used to.

Moments, and then more – moonlight showed a small circular window with a single length of something flimsy pinned across. Oona listened: she noticed then that it had stopped raining. Noticed, because something had replaced it – a not-quite noise, not-quite silence. Outside, she was sure that something was happening.

Up from bed on tiptoe and to the window with the Loam Stone in her hand, with three Blackened fingers Oona peeled back the curtain. Loftborough was awake: on every porch and doorstep and at every window were women keeping watch. All had guns aimed at the ground. And their eyes too – all were focused on below.

Oona waited.

Then a sudden shudder everywhere as Oona saw something journeying beneath the street. Its progress was clear in the upset of stone and earth and it moved with such ease: like a child scrambling fast beneath a sheet. Oona saw the women point, try to aim. But then there was not only one thing burrowing but two, and then two more … and then too many more to continue counting. They were all converging on one house – the same woman Oona and Merrigutt had seen out wandering in the Black, the one they'd followed, was out on her excuse for a porch with her rifle, but she wasn't alone. A child held tight to her legs, a small girl. Her eyes too were watching the only thing in Loftborough that needed watching – the ground as it was ruined. Oona was sure without being certain that she could hear the small girl's sobbing.

Then things were silent. All stopped. The earth quit moving.

But Oona knew it was temporary, this seeming rest. She'd seen it before. She remembered the forest on the retreat from the River Torrid. Remembered the boys of the Cause, their capture. And Morris – saw him again in her mind. She knew what next.

There were screams as something dark exploded from the ground, its exit flinging stone and dirt high and Oona watched it race – up the jointed legs of the house, a climbing-crawling-scrambling that was too quick, too swift to be seen let alone stopped. Oona blinked and it was on roof of the house. A breath and then it was on the front porch. A beat and the mother was struggling with it, fighting, her child wailing at her legs, the neighbouring women leaping the gaps between houses, rushing to help.

Slash of a claw and the woman fell back, hand to her cheek –

Breathe – the creature gone, dropping back into broken ground.

Oona still watched, and all of her shivered.

The child had been taken, the mother left alone. And as she realised her loss, the woman on her porch fell. Lucky that others were there to catch.

‘This is the night they come.'

Oona turned to face the room: the landlady stood in the doorway. Her arms were outstretched, something laid lightly across. Oona thought for a moment of a small body. No, foolish thought – only a dress for someone small. Delicate, all lace and frill and dangling ribbon. Something for a child, a girl.

‘They come,' the landlady, and the big woman's voice broke. ‘They come, and they take.' Her eyes went to the dress. She pressed her face to the froth of lace at its collar and shook and shook where she stood, sobbing. ‘You're not safe here. No matter how high we've put ourselves up or how much stone packed into the street, they'll find you out. They'll have you, too.'

‘I won't let them,' said Oona, and felt foolish. She'd seen Briar-Witches snatch her brother and the other boys, seen children dragged into the White Road as blink-quick as she'd just witnessed. So how could she be different? How could she defy? She looked for answers – to Merrigutt, but the old woman still just slept.

‘You can't stop them,' said the landlady, and she sounded relieved, in some way. ‘I shouldn't think thoughts like getting my girl back. Shouldn't have been hoping.' She showed her face again but didn't look at Oona. Her eyes wandered the room instead. ‘My Daisy couldn't fight them, and she was as strong as they come. Her room, this was. Tried to keep things just as they were. Same as from before she was taken.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Oona. She didn't know what else to say so she turned back to the window. The women of Loftborough were gone, the town as almost empty-seeming as when she and Merrigutt had first arrived. Then Oona told her reflection in firm words, ‘I won't let them take us. I won't just go like everyone else. And if I can, missus, I'll try to stop them taking any others, too.'

She turned to face the room again.

The landlady had gone, leaving the door wide and Oona wondering. And then promising – as a fresh breeze nudged The Loyal Martyr and everything inside slid, slammed, the door of their room snapping shut – she said to herself: ‘I will be different. I won't fall into the dark, not like everyone else.'

Oona woke and the first thing she saw was Merrigutt on the windowsill, restored to her jackdaw guise. ‘Looks like there was some disturbance last night,' said the bird, head doing a fierce amount of flick-flicking. ‘The ground is all like something's been at it.'

‘Listen,' said Oona. Sleep-softened, she struggled from the bed which sat at a severe slant, the Loam Stone still in her hand. ‘I saw what happened. I was up. Woke and went to the window and was watching. There were I dunno how many –'

Interruption!

The landlady appeared, bedroom door arsed open as she reversed into the room, in her big hands a big enamel tray. Oona, on some instinct, hid the Loam Stone beneath her pillow.

‘Something to eat, as promised!' said the landlady in a sprightly tone, not a bit of sorrow on show. She settled the tray on the dressing-table, clapped her hands together and told them, ‘Now – it's not much, but it'll fill a hole.' The landlady hadn't looked at either of them. She'd spotted a spot of something on the oval mirror, whipped the rag from her waist and rubbed it away. ‘Now,' said the landlady again, and was on her way to leaving but Oona wasn't going to let her.

‘Wait!' said Oona, taking a step towards the landlady. ‘Last night, what I saw and what went on – that's been happening for how long?'

The landlady still didn't have a look for either of them. Her eyes were on her hands, on the rag going from hand to open hand. ‘Long time,' she admitted, eventually.

‘When?' asked Oona, and she took another step forward.

‘Since the Invaders came,' said the landlady. ‘Ever since they went hoaking in the ground and woke those things.'

‘Briar-Witches,' said Oona.

The landlady flinched. Her look strayed: from her own hands to the dressing-table laid with so many ornate things for an absent girl. Oona glanced at Merrigutt, the jackdaw still poised unmoving on the sill.

‘Are there any children left in Loftborough?' Oona asked the landlady.

‘I know of one child for definite,' she said. ‘But others? If there are, it's not many.' The woman's gaze went wandering more – to bed, round window, beyond. ‘Used to be all so close in this town. All of us as close-knit and together as anything. And now? Now all this.'

‘Why not leave?' asked Oona.

The landlady looked at her, and looked as though she hardly knew how to answer. As though Oona had asked the unaskable, the unanswerable – the impossible! From somewhere strong, the landlady found these firm words: ‘How can a person leave the place they're meant to be in?'