The Black North (37 page)

‘Will not,' said the King, and the hollows of his eyes burned with the same white fire that covered the forest.

And Morris couldn't pull the trigger. His remaining fingers were softening, slowly falling.

Not only his hand but whole arm was transforming, transforming to dust and blackened earth and he roared with frustration, ‘I will kill you! I'm stronger than you are! You won't take this Isle! I will be the one to –'

No more words: only a stream of dark earth was expelled from between Morris's jaws.

‘Stop it!' said Oona. She stepped in front of her brother, Loam Stone held high. ‘I can do anything I like with this Stone, so don't think I won't!'

‘It is not for me to stop anything,' said the King. ‘He has brought this magic onto himself.'

‘You were the one who brought the Echoes!' said Oona.

‘No,' said the King. He began to move towards Oona, cape a pale slither behind. ‘The Echoes were here long before I came – you know this, Oona Kavanagh. You have seen those nightmares.'

And the Stone gave her fast these sights – father with his hand crumbling, men of the Cause only dust and dropping, boy on the Black road dispersing on darkened air …

‘If you can dream whatever you wish,' said the King, ‘then why don't you save your brother? You hold the truth in your hand – can make your wishes a reality, so why not help him?'

A pause. Oona knew the answer before the King provided it –

‘Because you cannot bring yourself to dream it.'

Oona wanted to contradict. Looked to her brother and thought of him as he should be: bone and flesh with blood whirling beneath, not the slowly decaying thing she saw. But still he continued to change: feet hardening, a slow grey climbing his legs, still unable to speak.

‘Why did you come here?' asked the King, still slowly approaching, still dragging his cape of quiet fire. ‘Why did you need to face me?'

‘Because I needed to know things,' said Oona. ‘I had to find out. What are you?'

‘I have wandered this world for countless generations,' said the King. ‘I have feasted on cities and peoples, on children. Drawn sustenance from their dreams – from all the wild and wondrous wishes of humankind. And I came to your Isle seeking such riches. But instead I have found not dreams in the children here – not ambition nor adventure nor inspiration nor anything that could be called new – but only Echoes.'

‘You only took boys,' said Oona.

A pause, and the King said: ‘I doubt I'd find anything more nourishing in any other child.'

‘What are the Echoes?' asked Oona, stepping back and back but at the same time wanting to stay close to Morris, and at the same time needing to know. ‘
Tell!
'

‘You have been listening to them your whole life,' said the King. ‘I did not bring them to this Isle – I only used magic to make them manifest. They are the words and ways that endure without thought, without question: the hatreds and traditions that trickle from one generation to the next, poured like a poison from the mouth of a father into the innocent ear of a son. From a thoughtless mother to an unknowing daughter. They are the opposite of the Stone you hold in your hand – they are the enemy of dreaming, of all imagination, of the kind of hope that takes a person beyond their own horizon, as your own hope and ambition took you.'

Somehow, each word was expected by Oona. It was already known. It was what she'd seen, heard, had nightmared on her journey North: her father and his fight to follow his own father, and her brother and his fight to follow them both. And Merrigutt and the other women – their fight to be free of what was expected of them, what their mothers had been doing for generations … only they had resisted, and succeeded in escaping the Echoes. And –

‘The Cause.'

Another voice.

Oona turned – the Faceless stood behind, scarlet-eyed bird on his shoulder.

‘The Cause that embodies all these things,' said the Changeling.

‘The Cause resists you too,' said Oona. ‘It's not all bad – at least they're fighting!'

‘What is a fight worth,' said the King, moving towards her, ‘if it is so heedless?'

‘So pointless,' said the crimson-eyed bird, Faceless closing in.

‘Stay back!' shouted Oona.

‘You have no power to dictate anything here,' said the Changeling. ‘You have done well to get this far, but no further now. You have no one to save you, nothing to help.' The bird was growing, claws lengthening. ‘The command is simple, Oona Kavanagh – give us the Nightmare Stone.'

Oona looked to the object her grandmother had given her, the thing that had plagued the women of the Kavanagh family for generations. Then she looked to the King.

‘You need this,' she said. ‘You need this Stone to survive, to give you dreams enough to keep going?'

‘Yes,' said the King of the North. ‘You have seen so much pain, Oona. Surely you wish, now to surrender it. To be free of its darkness?'

Oona closed her eyes, and she saw again the things she wished she'd never seen: her family with all secrets and hurt uncovered …

‘It has driven many in your family mad,' she heard the King say, sounding so close, voice like the slow dying of a forest at the hands of fire. ‘You see, you cannot fully know yourself – it is the hardest thing, child. The Stone will show you such horrors, such truth that you will be ripped asunder by the knowledge. Give me the Stone, Oona, before it destroys you completely.'

Oona opened her eyes, and she saw again the worst thing as though it was being reenacted before her: Merrigutt entering a bright sky, ready to help, hopeful, and then shot down, falling through sunlight …

‘You're wrong,' said Oona. ‘I've seen the worst already, and I've survived it. And by the Sorrowful Lady – I will not surrender this Stone.'

A moment, and then the cry of the King: ‘Take her!'

Hands of the Faceless outstretched, Changeling shrieking –

Oona swiped the Stone through the air and the first thing that came were jackdaws – dropping as they'd done on the White Road and attacking the Changeling, so much feather and blood and noise –

‘Give it to me!' cried the King, reaching for her.

Another swipe: Oona bid white fire to leap from the trees and lunge at the King –

Shrunken and decrepit he was, but powerless he wasn't: his own dreams leeched from countless minds, the King waved a creaking hand and willed the pale fire to become mist, to drop and enshroud Oona. And she was suddenly lost. Couldn't see Morris, couldn't see herself.

Silence, and then the voice of the King –

‘You have not seen the worst, Oona Kavanagh. There is one final nightmare. One thing you need to see – I promised you it would be shown, and now you shall know it.'

And the Loam Stone blazed bright in Oona's hand, shaping a scene on the mist –

She saw Morris. Not the Morris of that moment, nor the one before; not even the same boy she'd seen taken by the Briar-Witches so many miles since. It was Morris as a boy, standing on tip toe, peering in through the window of the Kavanagh cottage.

Oona heard her mother's soft voice from inside:
‘Like everywhere in this Isle – it will change. Like you – it will Blacken, and rot.'

And then the blow from her father.

Then nothing. For a long time, no sound. Their father appeared suddenly in the doorway, spying Morris and grabbing him and asking, ‘Where's your sister? Where's she hiding?'

‘Not here,' was all Morris said. And then he asked, in a small voice: ‘Mammy fell. Why isn't she getting up?'

Their father said nothing, not at first. But lies came easy: ‘She's with the Sorrowful Lady now. Let's go in and get her laid out, like you saw with your granda, just the same as that. And Morris' (he leaned close to his son) ‘don't tell your sister what you saw. Keep it between us and your granny, yes? Just our secret. We're the men of this house, and that means taking care of things, okay?'

Morris nodded, and let himself be led indoors.

‘He knew?' said Oona.

‘Yes,' said the King. ‘Knew, and tried so unsuccessfully to bury it.'

‘No,' said Oona, but her protest was nothing. And never had the Loam Stone felt so fragile, so reduced, so dim. As Oona watched, it looked to liquefy in her hand; to melt until she could've been holding in her cupped palm only a dark puddle of blood.

‘Now you know,' said the King. ‘Now you must surrender it.'

But Oona knew something else. Something learned, something remembered:
‘It cannot be destroyed. It thrives on nightmares, and there is enough of those to sustain it for a lifetime. It shall endure even as you slowly are destroyed.'

‘It can be broken,' said Oona. She swallowed. ‘It's done the worst it can, it has nothing now – no more nightmares to torment me with, no more truth. It's mine, and I can destroy it.'

Suddenly the mist deserted and Oona saw: the forest had closed in, Morris standing closer – He forced out a cry: ‘Oona, behind you!'

Oona turned: the Faceless was rushing towards her, Changeling on his shoulder, and she snatched her grandfather's rifle from Morris's hands, more words resounding in her memory: ‘
The bird does the talking, the thinking, all things – the bird is the thing you need to worry about.
'

And she aimed and she fired. Bullet struck the bird –

Nothing, only the Faceless stopping dead.

And then a final scream, the Changeling flickering between so many desperate forms – small or large or sleek or ragged but always dark. And then no more, the Faceless only an empty thing without its manipulator sinking beside.

‘Oona.'

A single word from Morris, so faint. And then he fell too.

Oona dropped the rifle and rushed to catch, kneeled and held him as she'd held too many. Watched him as she'd had to watch others leave. One arm was gone, had been eaten away by the Echoes. And the rest of him – no more substantial than the straw men the pair of them had made back in Drumbroken for the Loughleagh Fires. And when he spoke, it was from behind a mask of ash, words just whispers –

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘I should've told. Should've said what our father was. We should've run away. Just left.'

‘We couldn't have done that,' said Oona. ‘Left Drumbroken just like that? Left home?'

‘You did,' said Morris.

Oona looked for the King but couldn't see him, couldn't tell him apart from the trees surrounding.

‘It's not too late now,' said Oona, but didn't know whether she believed it. The Loam Stone was slipping from her hand, so keen to leave her: it knew that if it found no fresh nightmares to feed on soon, it would end.

Morris throat twitched, forcing final words out. He said, ‘I wish I wasn't a Kavanagh.' Oona closed her eyes, and told her brother, ‘You're not. You're just you now.'

And she waited for what felt decided, all the while dreaming of herself and Morris and back in Drumbroken together, as they'd been before, memories returning she didn't know still lived in her mind … She felt a hand touch her cheek. Opened her eyes: her brother's face was clearing, the Echoes retreating as swiftly as they'd left Merrigutt and the other women of Loftborough as they'd escaped home.

‘You're doing it,' said Morris. ‘You're making them go away.' But there was no time for more –

White flame an inferno around them –

Trees shriveling like scorched ribbon –

And the King reappeared, bearing down on the twins.

Oona knew she had less than a breath, time only for one last dream: scarlet powder in her hand that she flung into the ruined face of the King. Fire swept over him, consuming him, but still he was reaching for the Stone as Oona cried, ‘Now the end of all this!'

She slammed the Loam Stone against the ground –

It came apart so easily, ending as though in relief –

A crack shook everything, a breach zig-zagging across the ground –

Oona made weak: she fell beside her brother as though she'd taken a blow to the stomach –

And the ground split, and the remains of the King of the North fell into the opening dark.

‘You didn't do too bad,' said Morris, all the time strengthening, trying to rise. ‘Not bad at all, sister dearest.'

But Oona wasn't rising: she wanted to weep, to curl in on herself and remain, a grief so heavy on her it was like losing Merrigutt all over again, and worse. In her palm, she held the smallest possible shard of Loam Stone.

‘Morris,' she said. ‘What now?'

‘No,' Morris told her, ‘you're not giving up now, not a bit. Not after you dragged me all the way here.'

The ground began to tilt, pitch. The ruins of cities of countless ages all crumbling – the City of Echoes was collapsing.

‘I say we escape,' said Morris. ‘And live to fight another day.' And he lifted Oona to her feet.

What else then? They ran, feeling everything around them folding, crashing and trembling – Kingdom without its King destroying itself. And on their way they heard the boys who had been taken by the King whispering new words –

‘Go! Escape! Build a better place than we left behind!'

‘Don't make the same mistakes we did!'

‘Run!'

‘This way!'

‘Here! Over here!'

Not just calling but pointing then, willing their ancient arms of ash and dust to shift, directing the twins towards the way out –

‘Hurry! You don't have long!'

Avoiding the fall of those mammoth arches, of cascading cities, Oona stayed close to her brother, half-leaning against him. And no passageway, no walls – they were suddenly out and into an erstwhile-light, an almost day. But no way back – their path across the sea had thawed.