Witch Crag

 

 

 

 

 

Kate Cann is the author of many books for young adults, including LEAVING POPPY, POSSESSED and FIRE. She lives in Hampshire with her husband.

 

www.katecann.com

 

 

 

 

 

To Jeff. Who else?

Kita crawled the last stretch of the bramble tunnel on her stomach to protect her face and hands from thorns. Then she wriggled out on to the flint ledge, and gazed down at the grasslands that sloped away below.

Nada's funeral procession had just emerged from the great outer gates of the hill fort. Two men carried the flimsy stretcher with the old woman's body on it; two boys, who had opened the heavy wooden gates and who now ran back in an arc to close them again, followed behind.

Females never followed a funeral. Or watched one, or talked about it, even if the body taken out was someone you loved.

Tears skidded down Kita's grimy face. She was glad to be on her own, with no one to censor her emotion as wasteful. No one knew about her flint ledge, thin and perilously high on the rocky outcrop which was part of the hill-fort barricades. Crouched on it, she was perfectly screened by brambles. She came here to hide, and think, and gaze out at the grasslands and the forests beyond where she was never allowed to go. And today, she was here to grieve for Nada. She smeared the tears from her eyes and stared at the tiny funeral procession as it trooped under the great rock overhang. If she craned over the edge, she could still see it, Nada so small and still between the two marching men, and the boys circling the stretcher, proud of their responsibility, alert for danger.

Nada had cared for her as a child in the pens, where all infants went as soon as they were weaned, because the headman decreed it was more efficient that way. Kita had gone there too early, barely walking, because her mother had died of a chill. Nada had nurtured her. And when she was about six, old enough to be of use and leave the pens, Nada had looked out for her. Covered for her, taught her, whispered her stories, and sometimes risked hugging her. Friendships, special bonds, were frowned on in the hill fort, but Kita and Nada had formed a bond.

The funeral procession had disappeared from sight. Kita couldn't see the men tipping the stretcher sideways and Nada's body sliding off and bumping on to the ground, but she knew this was happening.

The sheepmen of the hill fort always dealt with death this way. Death was inevitable; to survive, you spent no time on the death of others. A dead sheep was worth something, you could eat it – but a dead human was worthless. There was no ceremony, no words, just a body thrown like meat to keep the forest dogs and the black cloud of crows satisfied, and away from the fort.

The men reappeared, jogging with the empty stretcher; the boys raced ahead of them to open the great gates. No one wanted to be outside when the crows and the dogs came.

Kita made herself stay still, made herself wait, and listen. This was the third funeral she'd watched; she knew what was coming. She stared at the close-set trees that ringed the grasslands. There was a stirring and thickening at the base of a nearby clump of firs; then a surging black shape broke free, and streamed into the open.

A pack of dogs, racing to Nada. She could hear them now, a rushing, crackling noise as they sped through the undergrowth.

Up above, another dark shape shifting; a flock of giant crows, gathering. They always came just after the dogs; they'd wait for the body to be torn open so they could feast too when the dogs were glutted.

Kita felt her stomach squirm; she retched twice. Then, hating herself, she clapped her hands over her ears so she wouldn't hear the snatching and cracking and gorging.

“Goodbye, Nada,” she whispered, eyes on the sky. “Thank you. Thank you for saving me.”

Something was happening with the crows, something weird. They separated, cawing in panic, and then instead of flying lower, they suddenly wheeled upwards, higher and higher. Kita heard sharp yelping, long, terrified whining, and looked down at the grasslands. The dogs, a black, sinewy mass of them, were streaming back towards the forest. She stared, amazed, as the dark trees absorbed them. Why had they left their grisly feast? She craned forward, but the angle was all wrong, she couldn't see Nada's body. And now all she could hear was silence.

About two hundred sheep people lived on the hill fort, and most of them were already queuing for the end-of-day meal when Kita skittered into the food hut. She grabbed one of the little scoured wooden troughs from the pile, then spotted Quainy ahead of her, yellow hair shining. She pushed and wriggled and pleaded her way through until she was standing directly behind her.

“Quainy!” she called, softly.

Quainy turned round, big blue eyes wide, smiling. Her beauty always made Kita blink. The women had rubbed ash into Quainy's hair as a child, to dull it. And at the quarterly shearings, they'd shaved her as close as they could. Beauty was a distraction; it didn't help you survive. But for the last half-year, Quainy's hair had been left to grow. Quainy was trade. She was nearly sixteen; she'd be going soon as wife to one of the horsemen, to strengthen the link between the two tribes. Kita couldn't bear to think of it.

“Where have you
been
?” Quainy whispered. “I had to cover for you. I said one of the pregnant sheep was sick and you were nursing it.”

“Thanks. I was up high.” Up high was the nearest Kita got to telling Quainy about her flint ledge. “Watching Nada get taken out.”

Quainy shuddered. “Ghoul,” she muttered. “How could you bear it?”

“Because I owed it to her. I owed it to her to see her taken. But Quainy, listen. She—”

“Less chattering!” barked the head cook. “Save your breath to eat and work!”

Quainy held out her little trough, and the scowling cook dolloped a scant ladleful of brown porridge into it.

The end-of-day meal was always the same. Porridge made from grain gathered on the lower slopes behind the hill fort at the end of summer, cooked in stock from sheep bones, with scraps of mutton added.

“Tell me tonight,” murmured Quainy, as Kita stepped forward with her trough.

The girls sat together silently at the girls' end of the young ones' benches, pressing their near knees together by way of communication. Their friend Raff was sitting opposite, with the boys. He didn't look across at them. He had a bright new bruise by his left eye, and even at the distance they sat, Kita could see his hand shaking as he spooned up his food.

*

Night-time was the best time. The need for warmth meant you could sleep close in the girls' hut, all bundled together under old, worn sheepskins, little ones just out of the pens cuddled and mothered by older girls. Kita crawled across two solid forms, wincing as one of them elbowed her, hard, and slithered down alongside Quainy.

“Did you see Raff's face?” Quainy mourned, softly. “Someone hit him again.”

“I know,” said Kita. “Those bastards, I hate them.”

They'd grown up with Raff, and despite all the obstacles and sheepman-creed disapproval, they'd formed a strong friendship with him. But they'd watched in sorrow as he'd slowly changed from a bright, funny, defiant child to a boy with hunched shoulders and a hunted expression.

“If only he could
grow
a bit,” Quainy said. “I'd give anything to make him bigger.”

“I know,” said Kita. “So he could stick it back to them.”

“And get made a footsoldier. Then they'd leave him alone.”

Kita sighed. She knew Raff would never be a footsoldier, and Quainy must know it too, but they never admitted it to each other. Footsoldiers, with their short, battling lives, were the elite of the hill fort; the young ones formed its fighting core. And they treated the other young men – the ones who stayed safe, who shared the women's work – like dirt. Raff's life was set to get even worse.

“So,” murmured Quainy, gently, “Nada's funeral. Tell.”

“It was weird. I watched them take her out and tip her off – I saw them jog back with the empty stretcher, but I couldn't lean out far enough to see her body.”

“Oh, Kita. Your high place. You'll tumble down one day.”

“Too bad. It's worth it. Anyway, the dogs came, then the crows. . .”

“Wuuurgh. How could you stomach it?”

“I told myself I had to. I had to be there, it was the least I could do when I hadn't even said goodbye to her. . .”

“That wasn't your fault,” soothed Quainy.

“But . . . but then this weird thing happened . . . the crows flew away, and the dogs ran off. They seemed full of panic, cawing, yelping – they didn't even touch her, I'm sure of it. It was all too fast.”

Quainy shifted away from Kita a little. “Did you hear anything else?” she whispered. Kita stiffened. She knew what Quainy meant – any other predator. There were rumours of monstrous unnamed creatures prowling outside, and birds even bigger and more savage than the crows.

“No, nothing,” she muttered, fiercely. “If it'd been . . . I'd've heard it, if she was taken – I'd've heard it.”

“It's OK, Kita,” said Quainy, and she pulled the sheep fleece round them more snugly. “Go to sleep now.”

“It all happened so fast, her dying,” muttered Kita. “Why didn't they tell me she'd got sick? I can't bear it that I didn't see her, didn't kiss her goodbye. . . D'you think she asked for me?”

But Quainy, exhausted, was asleep.

The girls only slept for a few hours. They were woken by the harsh sound of iron clanging against iron. This summons meant one of two things – attack from a gang of marauders, or heavy rain. Usually it was rain.

All but the youngest girls struggled to their feet and out of the hut into the downpour, running to get in line. Everyone knew their places, even in the dark; water was as necessary to survival as the sheep were, and water drill was practised too often for anyone to forget.

As the headman shouted orders, eight vast oiled sheets made of stitched-together sheepskins were unrolled. Each one was stretched between four sturdy wooden stakes and tied securely. Then thirty-two footsoldiers seized a stake each, and stood braced under the teeming sky.

Everyone watched as the sheets bulged and filled with the precious rain, waiting for the headman's next order.

It came. “
Fill!
” The footsoldiers holding the front stakes dipped their load, so that water poured off the sheets and into waiting skin buckets, each replaced so fast that barely a drop was spilt. The buckets were fed into a chain and passed from hand to hand until they reached the footsoldiers at the well, who emptied them into its stone depths and fed them back into the chain to the sheets again.

The well was not a true well but a great container, and it was the main reason the first headman had made his hill fort here. Made in the time before the Great Havoc, when nearly everything had been destroyed, it was of stone without seams, square and massive and deep in the ground. Far beyond the sheepmen's skills to build.

Kita and Quainy were at the top of the line that handled full buckets. They'd been moved up from the empty line that summer. It was exhausting, seizing the wet handle of a heavy bucket with two hands, turning to pass it on, spinning back in time to get the next one. If you were slow, if there was a build-up behind you, the flow of emptied buckets would be stalled, and water wasted. But to hurry too much meant you might slip over, slide on the mud. . .

The winter before last, Raff had slipped and sent himself and a full bucket sprawling. The boy next to him, a newly promoted footsoldier, had jumped forward on to his back and retrieved the bucket. Then he'd closed the chain with the footsoldier next to him, each of them stretching their arms out long. Raff had struggled to his feet, slimy and dripping, but the two jeering boys hadn't let him back in the line. When the headman praised the young footsoldiers afterwards, it had been the absolute seal on Raff's humiliation.

Kita screwed up her face, peering through the dark and the rain. The boy who'd grabbed that fallen bucket was there, close to her, holding one of the wooden stakes. He was called Arc, and the headman had great hopes for him; he'd recently made him leader of the young footsoldiers. Arc trained his fighting band relentlessly, and longed to be tested in a fight.

Kita realized with a start that Arc was staring straight back at her, raising his eyebrows like a question. She glared down again. Raff was three beyond Quainy; as she passed her full bucket on, she willed all their hands strength.

The rain began to lessen; the storm was gathering its skirts and heading northwards. The sheets had been filled and emptied five times; a great haul. Exhausted, everyone waited for the order to cease.

As the sheets were emptied for the sixth time, the headman shouted, “
End!
” And then the words everyone longed for.

“
Fire! Soup!
”

While the storm lasted, four older men excused from the rigour of the water chain had been busy piling brushwood and thick sticks into carriers made from yet more sheep pelts. At the headman's command, they hobbled with their loads to the fire pit, pulled off its cover, and tipped in the brushwood. One of the cooks ran from the kitchen with a flaring rag that she dropped into the pit; carefully, the men fed in the sticks as the fire took hold.

Kita and Quainy hurried past the sheep pens towards the fire pit. The pens were solid and roomy; better made than the girls' sleeping huts. The dry sheep looked out at the drenched girls, and shifted comfortably on their hay.

Flames were just beginning to dance above the rim of the pit; smoke swirled, scattering sparks. Kita smiled at the sight of it. Two cooks staggered out from the kitchen with a great cauldron of soup they'd heated on the stove that was always kept alight. Two more followed with the little wooden troughs and a huge ladle. The dripping workers in their rough woollen tunics gathered round the fire, privileged footsoldiers at the front, everyone else clustered behind.

It was a strange gathering. A fire at night, under the stars; the glow of success, of much water saved and stored; hot soup, warmth and companionship. But apart from some joshing among the footsoldiers, there was no festivity. No singing, no chatting, no laughing. Everyone sat alone, to dry, and drank the soup, to warm up, and the only object was – to survive. Cold and wet meant chills, meant illness and possible death. The fire was there for survival, nothing more.

But Kita couldn't keep the smile from her face as she watched the flames flare.

And then, too soon, much too soon, the headman said, “Put the fire out. Dawn is close. Set to work.”