The Black North (19 page)

‘I do not take orders!' said the boy, but not commanding – more snappy, stroppy. He cried, ‘I am the Master of this house, how dare you venture in and –!'

Oona spoke up, saying, ‘Look: we only want help! I'm from the county of Drumbroken, South and beyond the Divide, and we don't play tricks or fool each other where I come from. We say things out straight. And we were told that you're a child in Loftborough that the Briar-Witches can't touch, and we're only here because we want to know why!'

Some long moments in the dark. There was the sound of shallower breathing, and then the boy said from his undecided somewhere: ‘You think you can defeat these creatures? You think you have that power?'

‘I do,' said Oona. She reached into her satchel, felt for the Loam Stone and held it tight. And could she see him then? A figure standing near? Or an impression? Or perhaps only the vagueness of nightmare.

Merrigutt whispered, ‘Get as close as you can, my girl. I'll do the rest.'

Oona took a small step, then another. And she did see someone – slight and with features too faint. She moved towards the boy, asking as she walked, ‘How have you been able to keep the Witches out? Why haven't they taken you?'

Oona heard the boy's breathing – a rattle, the like you'd hear from someone older. Then some more speech from the boy: ‘No one can defeat the Briar-Witches. Not now they are in the service of the King. And himself? Not any creature to be toyed with. The Echoes – they are everywhere now.'

Oona stopped. She tried the Loam Stone again, her affinity with it increasing all the time, hoping to squeeze something more, some small knowledge. But it wouldn't warm, gave her nothing. She found herself asking, ‘You know what causes the Echoes?'

Sound of a giggle (but more a gurgle).

The boy said, ‘
Causes
it? No one even knows what brings it upon a person! It merely exists, without reason or neat rhyme. It merely takes, transforms and destroys. And that's what makes it so dangerous. Only the King of the North knows what the Echoes are truly composed of, and he is the –'

‘
Enough!
' cried Merrigutt.

In one sudden move – the jackdaw left Oona's shoulder to transform and, as an old woman once more, Merrigutt tossed scarlet into the air. It diffused into the dark like freed and fiery swamp-flies, swirling as the Master of the Big House screamed, ‘No! Stop it!' Oona's hearing sizzled and the air shuddered, the scattering of scarlet crowding into bright shivers, silent lightning strokes. Moments, and then the entire dark deserted them in a rush, flung back and fleeing into corners where it skulked, only small scraps.

It was fortunate that Oona found a wall for support – her senses felt singed, dazed.

‘Apologies,' said Merrigutt, and she stood with one hand to the wall too, looking older than ever. But she was unwilling to show herself in such frail form – only a moment and Merrigutt was battling to become her jackdaw self. She managed it, and settled again on Oona's shoulder.

‘Powerful magic,' said Merrigutt. She sighed. ‘Took it out of me a bit there. Contrary child.'

‘Why? Why did you have to do that?' The voice of the boy.

Oona looked down and at last settled her sight on the Master of this Big House. He'd been reduced to kneeling, had both hands over his face. He was whimpering, ‘Why did you have to do that? Why be so cruel?'

‘Why were you using Briar-Witch magic?' asked Merrigutt.

‘Wasn't using it,' said the boy.

‘He's telling the truth,' said Oona, knowledge spreading not from any nightmare, but from experience. ‘It was a dispell – the Witches made the garden into that state and got rid of all ways into the house too, all doors and windows, all light kept out. They couldn't take him so they wanted to make it a hell to live here.'

‘Why so worried about being seen, though?' asked Merrigutt.

A moment more, and they had their answers – as his hands slid from his face, Oona saw why the boy had been much happier in his dark, more content in concealment, why he would have done everything to remain hidden from the world.

Only half as high as me, if even that
, thought Oona.
And age? Could be any. Fifteen, sixteen, or five or six or seven … or seven hundred!
All pointless guessing. The boy was split, body telling two stories, neither pleasant: his right side was a ruin of wrinkles and burst blood-vessel and blood-shot eye, and his left was more ruin – taken over by cracked stone, lichen-scabbed, chipped at the cheek.

‘Like that statue outside,' said Merrigutt. ‘Powerful magic. Nasty. A dispelling of flesh itself. Wouldn't wish it on a worst enemy.'

At this, the Master of the Big House cried, ‘I didn't want to be seen so how dare you remove the dark! I can see the shame in your eyes, the two of you – the judgement as you look upon me! How dare you!'

He'd been so devastated, on his knees weeping, but suddenly the boy was up and standing proud, trying to arrange himself. His white-gloved hands rushed all over, along clothes faded and ripped and worn out, all of them old-fashioned: a jacket of grubby velvet, yellowed shirt with a collar that climbed high on his throat and was buttoned to just beneath his chin, and velvet trousers that stopped shy of the knee, socks tight over the shins. His tiny feet were bundled into tiny, infant-sized shoes.

Oona didn't know what to think. Like the houses of Loftborough, she'd never seen or imagined the like of him in her life.

‘I am an oddness to you,' said the boy, lifting his head and trying – impossible task, him being so small – to look down on Oona. ‘No need to tell me. But all things are odd to eyes so used to seeing only the normal and dull things.' Any words he spoke had to squirm free from the still-human side of his face. ‘I may not have magic,' he continued, raising one gloved finger, ‘but I assure you, I have such power at my command that I could make of you little more than dust if I wanted!'

‘You've nothing,' said Merrigutt.

‘I have the dark of this house!' he told them.

‘Darkness isn't much of a power,' said Merrigutt. ‘Happens every night in this world without need of magic.'

The boy's eyes widened, looking ready for renewed weeping, all other features on his divided face shifting aside to accommodate grief. Through sobs he said, ‘You come here and bully myself and my sister. You come here unannounced and try to coerce me into helping you.'

Then Oona was revisited, for a blink, by the nightmare the Loam Stone had given her: two children, brother and sister, frightened. ‘Twins,' she said. ‘It's your twin sister, the statue in the garden.'

But the boy wasn't listening –

‘I won't be forced to leave this house!' he shouted, and Oona saw that like his stone sister his mood could shift in seconds. ‘They took my father, drove him out, but I will stay and protect this Manor against all-comers! Whatever Witch or Wolf or Giant or any creature that attempts to take it, I shall see them off! It is what our father would have wished!'

‘Fool,' said Merrigutt. ‘I'd have left this house long ago and to hell with what your father would've wanted.'

‘That's because you have no home you care for,' said the boy.

Oona waited for Merrigutt's response, but the jackdaw said nothing.

‘This is my home,' said the boy, ‘and no one is going to take it! Not those men in uniform, nor those things underground, nor either the –'

Oona said, ‘The Briar-Witches – they have a nest beneath this house?'

‘They do,' said the boy. Some pause, then he went on with, ‘Such foul things. That's my opinion. Did you not heed the sign –
Beware that black beneath your feet!
'

‘You wrote that?' said Oona.

‘Of course,' said the boy. ‘Not in person, but I have duties as the Master of the Big House.'

‘You mean you were sending that statue to do your dirty work?' said Merrigutt. ‘I'm starting to have some sympathy with her.'

The boy folded his arms and scowled as well as his statue sister could.

‘Oona,' Merrigutt whispered. ‘We need to keep moving. This is no task for us. And anyway, I thought this little quest was all in aid of finding your brother?'

‘It is,' said Oona, and she didn't bother to whisper her words. ‘And he was taken by those Witches, and so were all these other children, all from this town.'

‘So now we're setting out to save the world from any evil we come across?' said Merrigutt.

‘If you're interested,' said the boy, ‘the answer is yes: I believe there
is
a way to defeat these creatures, to banish them back to the ground for good. I have been watching them most closely.'

‘How?' asked Oona. Then felt she should add (for Merrigutt's benefit), ‘How can we trust you? And don't even think of lying to us or you'll not live long enough to regret it.'

‘I am affronted!' said he. ‘I have never lied in my life!'

‘People who say things like that are the ones who lie the most,' said Merrigutt.

‘I shall tell you such things,' said the boy of the Big House. ‘Such secrets, such revelations! Such discoveries that only I have –'

Oona sighed and shut her eyes. In her mind, as vivid as those nightmares she was becoming accustomed to, she saw Morris – watched him dragged down, disappearing into the dark with his small stubborn hands still around their grandfather's gun.

‘– and such observations I have made! Watching as –'

Oona opened her eyes and told the boy, ‘Quiet! If you do know, if you are telling the truth, then don't just tell: I want you to show us.'

They rose through the dispell, through enforced dark, climbing high along the Big House's creaking innards in criss-cross and clamber and crawl. The staircases and (where staircases had given up) ladders and boards that took them were all as rotten as walls around and hill beneath. And only enough light was admitted through cracks to get a sense of things, not properly see. Oona passed places where windows might've once opened to let the world in – a rough puckering, a cinching in tight like shut and sewn mouths. She had to go carefully, slowly, and she didn't like it. Hated having to stop at gaps – or better described:
gapes –
and hop or leap, reaching and grabbing and taking splinters for her effort.

Of course, the Master of the Big House himself went on without trouble. He even had time to pause and straighten portraits on the walls, or wipe a surface with a gloved finger and
tut-tut
and
tsk
at the state of the place, but then move on in a hurry. He was half-ancient and half-stone, but he was well-practised, long-accustomed. Oona thought:
his house, his dark, and he knows well how to find his own way through it.
Merrigutt stayed on Oona's shoulder, this time not leaving to fly on ahead and see or check. Oona was grateful.

‘Much further?' Oona asked, but with barely a breath for calling. Merrigutt shouted for her: ‘Boy! Is it much more of this or what?'

‘
Tis a far and hard journey to full enlightenment!
' the Master of the Big House called back.

‘That's what my father used to say!'

‘Your father sounds like an eejit,' said Merrigutt, mostly in a mutter. It might've made Oona laugh, if she'd had puff for it. She continued to climb. ‘How can we trust this one anyway?' said Merrigutt.

‘Don't know,' said Oona.

‘Well, I'll be keeping my eyes on him,' said Merrigutt. ‘People who've been on their own too long should always be watched. Does things to them.'

‘Not his fault,' said Oona.

‘You're too keen on understanding,' said Merrigutt.

‘You're too keen on suspecting,' said Oona.

‘I'm not saying the boy's at fault, but him and that statue, they –'

‘
Sister
,' said Oona: felt it needing saying. ‘His sister, not just
statue
. They're brother and sister. Twins.' What didn't need saying out loud: just like herself and Morris.

‘All right,' said Merrigutt.

‘I don't hear you following!' called the Master. ‘
It'll be a lot longer a journey if you don't move and motivate your feet!
My father said that one, too – very wise man!'

Criss, cross, clamber, crawl. And eventually a last ladder devoid of most of its rungs. Oona looked up and saw the boy scramble quickly and so easily up, dull thuds signalling the fall of his stone foot. He shouted down to them, sounding excited, ‘Come on come on come on, too slow too slow too slow!'

‘Just say the word and I'll peck him,' said Merrigutt.

Oona took to the ladder thinking, Just this now. Just this last climb.

When she rose it was into the crooked tower, pulling herself up and wishing she could sink to the floor, find some rest, even for a minute. She took a step forward and the floor groaned.

‘Is this even safe up here?' she asked the dark.

Out of it, the boy called from somewhere, ‘Safe as anywhere else in Loftborough!'

‘Not much comfort,' said Oona, loud as she liked.

‘I say just don't move,' Merrigutt told her. ‘Just wait.'

A handful of moments, and then an announcement from the Master of the Big House: ‘Now you shall see!'

There was a clatter and clash, a sound like a rusted wrangle of chains being dragged, and the dark on Oona's right began to rise: behind was the so-called snooping-window, same one Oona had seen from the garden, the pane grubby and near opaque with the dabble of fingerprints, of constant touching and watching.

‘Very nice,' said Merrigutt. ‘Lovely view onto that mess of a garden.'

‘And now the other!' shouted the boy.

Quick footsteps, a dim glimpse of the Master of the Big House shuffling to the other side of the tower, and then the same sound of chains being hauled. And more reluctantly, the dark was lifted on Oona's left. She was shown a second window, but this one circular, and without a single blemish. It was filled with another view – a forest under a sky of curdling cloud.