The Black North (20 page)

‘Move closer to that window,' whispered Merrigutt.

‘Why?' asked Oona.

‘Just go,' said Merrigutt. She sounded breathless. ‘Need to see. Go on.'

But as soon as Oona moved the boy said, ‘Careful! They may be out, even if it is not their usual night! I've noticed them at other times – having a look, keeping an eye.'

‘Ignore him,' said Merrigutt. ‘Keep going.'

Oona walked on. As she reached the window Merrigutt breathed, ‘Sorrowful Lady herself preserve us.'

Oona struggled to swallow. She sighed and misted the glass, then took a handful of cloak to clear it, to look –

Leafless, cheerless forest. But worse – it was more change, more of the remaking of the North, and of a childish-looking and brutal kind. The trees had been upended, all askew, a breeze making roots shake in feeble gesticulation skyward. Any part that might've once displayed leaf or berry or nut had been buried beneath. And the roots where boughs should've been had things hanging – children's clothes without their children. Blouses and jumpers and dresses with their arms bound to branches, torn stockings. Nothing moved. The clothes hung heavy, as though they still had small bodies inside. Oona saw a litter of shoes on the ground, like dropped seed that had failed to sprout.

‘They were told to leave behind all traces,' said the boy.

The Master of the Big House appeared behind Oona. She let her attention shift enough from the forest to see his reflection – he was half-stooped, head hanging low. He went on: ‘They were told that in order to pass into the beneath, they had to remove everything they were given in the world above. And how they were tempted into doing it! Great prizes, they were promised. Such great feasts of milk and sugar and all the sweet things they could want. Treasure and toys, magical powers. Whatever they wanted, that's what the Briar-Witches told them they could have. All their dearest wishes and more, if they just followed down into the dark.'

Oona said, ‘I wouldn't have gone.' She paused. ‘Not ever. If one of those things came to me there's nothing they could've promised that would've made me go underground.' She said it strongly enough, but did she believe that she believed it? And suddenly, her fingers felt drawn to the Loam Stone, like it could give her certainty, decision. Instead, it gave her something new. For the first time it showed no nightmare of someone else or someplace near, but Oona herself: she was standing in the dark forest of her dark dreams, and before her was Morris. He spoke, and his voice was the voice she'd heard too in her nightmares, the tone of deep certainty that made her skin tingle: ‘
Follow me, Oona. Follow me – there's something you need to see. There's a nightmare I want to show you.
'

Oona's fingers fled as though stung. She was shaking. She shut her eyes and kept them the same. Merrigutt must've noticed – the jackdaw never missed a thing. But when Merrigutt spoke, covering Oona's silence, her voice was calm: ‘Tell me this straight, boy – is there a way to defeat these creatures or not?'

‘I have been watching,' said the boy, and he discovered another new mood: a whispering, morbid-sounding fascination. ‘I have been observing their movements – very interesting. They appear at dusk, creeping from their nest slowly, waiting for the dark itself to empower them. Our only chance will be if –'

‘We have to go down into the nest,' said Oona. She breathed, still hadn't opened her eyes.

‘Indeed,' said the Master of the Big House.

‘Oona, this is beyond us,' said Merrigutt. It was said in a whisper but the tower was too small for any plot to stay private.

‘We have to try,' said Oona.

‘They have such power,' said the jackdaw, and Oona felt the bird shiver on her shoulder. ‘They are the ones who created all North magic. I don't know what we'll meet down there or how we'll get by it.'

‘We have to try,' said Oona, again. ‘And I know they have their weaknesses, like all things.'

Oona's hand went to her cloak. Her fingers closed around the thing she'd brought from home – from Kavanagh cottage in Drumbroken, across the Divide and into the Black, to the Big House on its Rotten Hill. She withdrew the kitchen knife and held it vertically. Oona opened her eyes, turned and faced the Master of the Big House. He swallowed, his sight on the knife, the bulge of his Adam's apple chugging under folds of flesh.

‘I escaped from those creatures once,' said Oona. ‘So I'd be a frighted fool or worse if I can't find a way to do it again.'

‘This way now,' said the boy of the Big House. ‘I'd advise not to make too much of a sound.'

Into upturned forest. And Oona felt such a lack, a chill of absence making the air colder: she walked among things abandoned, seeing more clearly and closely where children had once been. She saw clues: a stain on a flannel shirt, maybe a dribbled mouthful of a last meal? Muck on the leg of a torn stocking, from a last tumble? Dark spot on a sleeve – perhaps last blood. Or last struggle, last attempt at escape?

Oona kept her hands from the Loam Stone – some nightmares didn't need knowing. The Master of the Big House muttered low, ‘
Beware that black beneath your feet
.'

‘We've heard that enough times,' said Merrigutt.

‘Then you should listen to it,' said the boy.

Oona looked down – she saw raised mounds, depressions that went deep.

‘Just keep moving, my girl,' said Merrigutt.

The jackdaw was a restless thing again, into the air and circling above and around Oona, then settling somewhere, then somewhere else new, on jointed root or barren ground, but always alert.

‘Just at the top of this mound,' said the Master of the Big House.

Before they'd left, the boy had wrapped himself in a velvet cloak, but stone fingers weren't much use for doing up buttons. There was such a fuss to fasten them that Oona had felt time rushing away too quickly and said, ‘Here, let me help.' She'd gotten as far as reaching when the boy had pulled away and told her, ‘I can do it myself! This was Father's favourite and best cloak, only right that I should adorn myself with it. Don't need another's help.' Then he'd spent many minutes more fumbling. The cloak dragged far behind him, and Oona had to mind not stepping on it.

They reached a sudden rise, one Oona felt had no business even being there – to Oona Kavanagh from Drumbroken, things like trees and rivers and mountains were fixed, to be worked around, not shifted. But in the North all had been changed as the King desired. And on this solitary rise was a single tree left leaning, roots raised to the sky.

‘This is our way in,' said the boy. The upended trunk of the tree had a narrow cat's-eye split for an opening.

Merrigutt arrived back on Oona's shoulder.

‘You all right?' Merrigutt asked her. ‘Been quieter since you looked out at all this from that tower. Since you touched the Stone. What did you see?'

Oona closed her eyes, and awaiting her was the same image: Morris. Same words: ‘
Follow. Follow me, Oona …
'

‘I'm fine,' she said, opening her eyes again. She could've told Merrigutt. Could've confessed to the jackdaw what she'd seen the night before, what she'd heard – the voice, the blackened forest with its crimson-eyed watching and floor churning. But she didn't. Oona had an instinct to keep these things to herself: her nightmares were her own. So she said again, ‘I'm fine.'

‘There'll be more dispells below,' said Merrigutt. ‘All kinds to try to stop us. Need to be strong-willed down there.'

‘I know,' said Oona.

‘Don't be afraid,' said Merrigutt. ‘Fear is no good to us, my girl.'

‘I'm not,' said Oona. Another lie! And she liked to tell herself that she didn't like lying.

‘Well I may as well be honest,' said Merrigutt. ‘Don't tell that boy this, but I'm bloody terrified.'

‘Good,' said Oona. Her knife was just inside her mother's cloak, a hand's snatch away.

‘Because I'm afraid, too.'

Oona peered into a passage that delved

… not too steep but she knew that on all-fours was the only way. Merrigutt moved in a hop just behind Oona, the tunnel too low for perching on a shoulder. Further behind followed the drag of the boy's long velvet cloak.

Oona went slowly. Anything she touched crumbled. She imagined one kick bringing the tunnel down with the three of them buried. Then thought to herself,
Why do I imagine these things?
She tried to unthink it, and failed. She thought then –
the Loam Stone is doing this, must be divulging these nightmares, thoughts I don't want
.

‘How far to the nest?' whispered Oona, trying to distract herself from herself.

‘Always concerned with how far,' said the boy.

‘He doesn't know,' said Merrigutt. ‘No point in asking.'

‘I'd be more wary of the magic than any distance or depth of a physical nature,' said the boy.

‘My theory is that they'll try to separate us. Try to isolate – then they'll find us easier to defeat.'

Oona said, ‘We won't get lost if we go one way all together.'

‘There is only one way,' said the boy. ‘This is a labyrinth – one path, no choices or diversions. She'll have other ways to make us lose one another.'

‘
She
?' asked Oona.

‘The Mother,' said the boy. ‘The one they all follow faithfully – their Queen.'

‘Quiet now,' said Merrigutt. ‘One thing that won't help is chatting on, they'll hear that a mile off.'

Merrigutt kept to the place between Oona's creeping hands and told her, ‘Just stay close.'

Then

down

and

suddenly steeper

d

o

w

n …

… everything not crumbling but clinging, everything wet. Oona's hands were sinking, mud clogging her toes and fingers. She slowed, and any notion of outside – comfort or ease, daylight or open air – was leaving her. Was it some magic already insinuating itself into her mind? Some dispell, ridding her of any hope?

Oona stopped and said, ‘Just need to rest a minute. Need to think.'

She looked down at Merrigutt. But the jackdaw continued, beak moving, Oona suddenly not hearing. She looked back, towards the boy – he'd stopped, too, mouth moving but giving no sound.

Oona spoke: ‘What's happening?'

But she couldn't hear her own voice. She closed her eyes.

Then a final thing, a whisper so distant, as far off as the soft memory of any Drumbroken dawn: ‘Stay close, my girl. Don't lose your way.'

Oona opened her eyes, and she knew what she'd find. Or who she'd not find: no Merrigutt, no boy of the Big House. They'd lost one another. She was alone.

Then Oona overheard –

‘
Not the best one, that girl!
'

‘
No, too much gristle! Too much fat and fidgeting!
'

‘
Too much of those second-skins on her, those … what do you call thems?
'

‘
Clothes.
'

‘
Aye!
'

‘
Should've left her. We're meant to be keeping anyway, not eating.
'

‘
We're grand – boys meant for the King, not the girls.
'

‘
But no sense now in taking any more, not with what we've got on its way!
'

‘
We'll soon be well above that sort, if the ones from across the sea keep their promise!
'

‘
They will if they know what's good for them: you don't make a Mud-and-Blood Oath with a Briar-Witch and then break it!
'

‘
True. Break the Oath and we'll break yer neck!
'

Such laughter: wet and dry, crackle and gurgle and crunch. It made Oona think of bones and blisters and she put a hand to her mouth to stop any retching. To mask her breathing, too. And, not caring what nightmare might come, what she might be shown, Oona took the Loam Stone from her satchel as some protection, or comfort. But it was cold, dark, so quiet.

Somehow she breathed, somehow crawled on.

A little ahead: brittle roots were corkscrewing from above, intent on concealing, and Oona was certain the Witches' nest was hidden just beyond. She listened again for their prattle –

‘
The ones from across the sea are due with our prizes this night, aren't they? All fresh as chicks taken out of their eggs, they promised and said so!
'

‘
And what about the one in charge? The Faceless one?
'

‘
He'll be there too, no doubting. And that Changeling.
'

In their tone she heard something close enough to fright. Oona waited.
But can't wait just here forever,
she thought. Without Merrigutt though, without even the Master of the Big House, how could she try to –?