The Black North (17 page)

Some fierce movement came from Merrigutt then, like a shudder, and Oona thought a transformation was about to happen, the old woman about to reappear. But then nothing. Merrigutt stayed just the same – as silent and still as two seconds before.

The landlady went to the door but Oona asked one more thing –

‘The child, the one child you said you know for certain is still about – where are they?'

The landlady stopped by the door, one hand to the handle, and said with something like disgust, ‘Lives at the edge of the town. In the direction of the marsh, in the Big House on top of Rotten Hill.'

‘How?' said Merrigutt, snapping her beak. ‘Can't be anyone there! Sure all the Big Houses are deserted!'

The jackdaw was all of a sudden impatient, but it was an impatience matched –

‘I know they are!' the landlady snapped back. ‘All except this one. Someone stayed, was left behind to keep it.'

Not to be beaten – never to be cowed or disagreed with – Merrigutt turned to the room full in one resolute hop and asked, ‘And did the men and sons of Loftborough not come to help when it was needed? Or just stayed away, left you all to fight this battle on your own?'

‘They went to fight,' said the landlady. ‘Went on further North, to meet others at the Melancholy Mountains …'

‘
Melancholy Mountains?
' said Merrigutt.

‘Used to be to called Muckrook Mountains,' said the landlady.

‘You know it if you're a Northerner at all: the quiet place where them Giants ponder their wild notions. Anyway. Then on to the Burren. All joined the Cause. Thought it best.'

‘You thought it best,' said Merrigutt, ‘or the men did? Or maybe –?' But Oona told the jackdaw, ‘Just give over.'

Merrigutt shuffled on the sill, but said no more.

‘I wouldn't expect understanding from the likes of you,' said the landlady, eyes narrowing, still focused on Merrigutt. ‘Now I've things to do, so I'll leave you to your breakfast.'

But she didn't leave them, not yet. Oona knew the woman had more, and this was what she said –

‘That Big House on its Rotten Hill – the child that's still there is only there because it's something those creatures don't want to take. Not like a child even – more like some other creature. And if I were you, I'd be as afraid of what's hiding in that Big House as I am of those BriarWitches.'

When the landlady went and bedroom door slammed itself, Oona looked to Merrigutt, and then to the tray on the dressing-table. No words: talking could be done later. Both moved fast to the tray the landlady had left and Oona found lots to look at and get watery-mouthed over: griddle-cakes, most of them singed and some probably dropped in the hearth when being baked but doused with enough sugar to make them do; drop scones that Oona took a knife to and opened, parting easily to show insides hot as hearth-stones, a soft chamber made for melting, for gooseberry jam and butter to be slopped into; small cakes dense with dried fruit that Oona gave a sniff, discovering a smell like almond. Then some kind of soft fruit in a jar Oona didn't recognise so had to dip a finger in – it was sour, made her tongue wriggle and eyes near water, but she doubted there was much on either side of the Divide more delicious. Tay was discovered in a chipped teapot (Oona unsurprised to see a faded pattern of daisies looping around its middle), and a matching milk jug and pair of cups beside.

‘Check what's in there first,' said Merrigutt, tapping her beak on the teapot.

‘Why?' asked Oona. ‘It's only tay!'

‘Could be anything,' said Merrigutt. ‘Need to be careful.'

Oona removed the lid and got a face full of steam – inside she saw a parcel of leaves bound tightly, drifting. ‘Smells like pennyroyal and thistle,' she said. ‘So nothing like poison, that all right?'

‘Suppose,' said Merrigutt. ‘I'll have to take your word for it.'

Both began their eating in proper earnest.

‘So,' said Merrigutt, her beak making small stabs at a scone, ‘what's the plan? I'd be a fool, I've realised, if I assumed we'd be doing the sensible thing and taking the first foul breeze out of here?'

‘Fool is right,' said Oona.

The jackdaw stopped, and glared.

Oona was busy doing a Bridget – cramming so much griddle-cake into her mouth that as many crumbs left her lips as words.

‘Look,' she said, ‘everyone says these Briar-Witches were brought down from the North, right? And Brid told me that she'd heard from her granda who'd heard from –'

‘– the Sorrowful Lady herself?' finished Merrigutt. ‘You're going to believe a game of whispers and gossip and take it as good Gospel?'

‘Bridget told me!' said Oona. She swallowed what she had. ‘And I believe her. And she said that the Witches had a nest someplace in the Black and that woman said that the children started being taken after the Invaders arrived, that they woke those creatures.'

‘And?' said Merrigutt. ‘How does that involve us?'

Oona lifted the teapot and filled a cup with the pennyroyal and thistle brew. Merrigutt dipped her beak into it. She didn't keel over so kept on supping.

‘I think if we could find a way to stop the Witches here,' said Oona, ‘then it could only help all the people back home in the South.'

Merrigutt stopped drinking.

‘And this child,' said Merrigutt, ‘the one on the – what did she call it?
Rotten Hill?
Lady preserve us –
Melancholy Mountains, Rotten Hill?
The names they give these places!'

‘I think we should go and see what's going on in that Big House. See what the child who lives there knows about it all.'

‘Maybe not “child”, remember? Maybe like herself said – maybe some other creature we'll have to be contending with.'

‘Doesn't matter.'

Oona looked towards the window – to the woman at another window, another home, looking out onto Loftborough. The same woman who'd had her child taken the night before – one whose cheek had been opened by a sharp claw – was weeping.

And Oona said, ‘Creature or not – if any child's been able to keep safe in this town and not be taken by those Briar-Witches, then I'm bloody well going to find them and get some answers.'

First bare foot on blessed stone! And Oona felt more secure – Briar-Witches or not, she'd decided that existing up in a house on legs wasn't for her. Not for Merrigutt either, it sounded like, on Oona's shoulder saying, ‘Thank the Lady herself we're down from that place!'

‘Well, you slept well enough in it,' said Oona. She couldn't stop herself: ‘Even with all the noise going on out here you were like a dog just dozing in the –
ow
!'

Something sharp bit Oona's sole – a shard of broken stone.
Should've been more careful
, she thought.

‘Should've been more careful,' said Merrigutt.

Oona pressed a palm to the leg of The Loyal Martyr
,
finding some meanwhile support, and lifted the stinging foot for looking at. Blood was rising there like an eager eye.
Not the best beginning to the day
, Oona thought, but she took some relief in the sight of crimson – something alive in such surrounding dead. Morning in Loftborough was scarcely brighter than night in Loftborough: the place existed in shades of ditchwater and dull.

‘We go this way,' said Oona, nodding her head to the right, settling her foot on the ground again. She winced a bit, then said, ‘At the end of the town is the Big House, isn't that what the landlady said?'

‘Suppose,' said Merrigutt. ‘Though can I just say once more and strongly suggest that we –'

‘
No
,' said Oona.

Merrigutt's reply was the usual shifting about on Oona's shoulder.

Oona began the walk, satchel on her shoulder with some supplies still in it, Loam Stone and knife and pistol hidden from sight.

Even without some storm to harass them, the houses of Loftborough still persisted with their constant creakings and groanings. Oona looked up and saw all the women outside. Some, Oona decided, were being busy for the sake of busy – they had that same way of spying and wiping down and swiping away dirt that the landlady of The Loyal Martyr had. Little or nothing else to do, they wanted distraction. But some were just sitting alone. Oona watched: discontent made the women's fingers drum and feet tap and heads twitch. As Oona passed, some of the women watched her with a look of slow, sad longing.

‘Poor divils,' Oona whispered.

‘No poorer than anyone else in the North,' said Merrigutt.

‘Knew you'd be sympathetic,' said Oona.

A pause, then Merrigutt said, ‘Listen, my girl: I'm trying to teach you that feeling sorry for yourself won't solve a thing. Won't help these women, and sympathy won't neither. Some grit, a bit of fight – that's what they need now!'

‘Isn't that easy to find some fight when you've lost your child,' said Oona. Merrigutt had no response.

‘And they tried,' said Oona. ‘Last night, they had their guns and all. Did no good.'

‘Why were you up anyway?' asked Merrigutt. ‘What awakened you?'

Oona opened her mouth, ready to say … but something stuck. She felt some urge to keep things secret. Oona found herself saying instead, ‘Just woke. Woke and then went to have a look.'

Merrigutt said nothing, Oona only walked. And the women continued to watch – Oona saw one cradling a portrait of a man.

‘What did you mean about the men of Loftborough coming to help?' asked Oona.

‘Things are different in the North,' said Merrigutt. ‘Not like Drumbroken or anywhere in the South – up North, men don't live with the women. It was the same where I grew up, so not that unusual.'

Oona's instinct was to say,
No. That's not right. Can't be!
Then she remembered where she was, and how far from home.

‘So no fathers or grandfathers,' she said, trying as she spoke to imagine it – their cottage in Drumbroken without her da or granda in it, or: ‘No brothers?'

‘Not one,' said Merrigutt. ‘People get married still and have children, but then the men go off and live a few miles from the town – usually out on the land to work at it. They visit and all, sometimes. And if a child is born a boy, they get taken to live with the men. And if it's a girl, they stay with the women. So I'd bet all the children the Witches have taken in Loftborough were girls.' Oona was silent, still trying (failing) to imagine it all – attempting to see a life so different from her own. Then she asked, ‘Did you ever see your father?'

Merrigutt said, ‘Did. Once or twice. Wasn't bothered.'

And then, when they'd almost left Loftborough behind – the town of only women and their daughters – Merrigutt announced, ‘Be ready, my girl. I can see something up ahead, and it doesn't look pretty.'

It was almost a minute before Oona had a sense of anything. Then some shape appeared, a dark space like grey sky had had a quick cut taken out of it, a scrap torn away by a rough hand: another new house for Oona to learn the shape of, and not like the cottages of Drumbroken nor the wooden huts of Innislone and not the long-legged houses of Loftborough, but instead this house was more in the family of Slopebridge Manor. Rotten Hill? More Rotten Heap. A nest even – a mound of earth where tree and briar and hedgerow were boss, mingling as they wished, untended, riddling and tangling, all coil and slither. And the Big House was bedded at the heart of it all – dark, leaning broken.

Oona had to stop as she met a drystone wall as high as her neck: only a crumbling thing, but fierce enough, a row of rusted iron arrows running along its rim. A sign near by was neatly written, and expansive in its saying –

KEEP OUT AND KEEP BACK OR ELSE!

‘Very friendly,' said Merrigutt. ‘And by the Lady – the stink of the place! Must be another dispell, the rankest kind.' She tried to hide her beak in Oona's hair. The jackdaw wasn't wrong. There was a reek so fierce it felt like even the air was urging: KEEP OUT AND KEEP BACK OR ELSE!

‘You know what,' said Oona, bringing her cloak up to cover nose and mouth, ‘people always go on and on about the Big Houses and all, but the ones I've seen so far are nothing much to be going on about.'

She let her eyes wander the surface of the building, edging up and up until she saw at the height of the house a tower, lopsided, with a single narrow window to look out from.

‘Used to be called the snooping-window,' muttered Merrigutt, also seeing. ‘So the landlords could keep watch over their estate.'

Snooping surely – Oona saw that someone was standing spying at the window. And Oona Kavanagh spied back. Then the someone spying saw Oona spying and quick as a snuffed-out flame the someone spying went.

‘Right,' said Oona. ‘Well if they think they're going to hide away up there, they've another thing coming.'

Oona took the iron bars and gave them a rattle, and found them a bit loose.

‘You're not going to climb?' said Merrigutt.

‘Any better notions?' said Oona, already up onto the wall. ‘Unlike your good self, I can't fly. So unless you want to share some of that North magic with me?'

‘I'm gonna have a wee look,' said Merrigutt. ‘Wait a minute for me to come back and tell you what's what. And when I say wait I mean
wait
!'

A linger of a look, and then the jackdaw left Oona, vanishing off into the tangle of garden.

I'll give her just the minute, Oona told herself. But she wasn't someone who knew what the point of patience was: she'd counted only to twenty when she began her awkward scaling of the fence. Soon Oona was in this state: dress torn, each leg documenting each touch of the iron arrows with a neat scrape, hands reddened with rust. But she was soon near over, almost in.