The Book of Koli

by M. R. Carey

  So now we had got to go, just as soon as we could, and there would not be no second chances.

  Ursala was somewhat reluctant, even though we had our plan worked out. “It’s not likely they’ll sleep much after the show you put on,” she said. “We might only have seconds to get to the train.”

  “I can’t help that,” I said. “Maybe we’ll have to leave the train alone and go straight on our way. But it’s tonight or it’s never, Ursala. I’ll be burned up alive and you’ll be cooked more careful, with some carrot and maybe a gather of tore-up bay leaves.”

  We was whispering all this. The man and woman outside the grating was kept busy shooing away the people that come to look at me through the bars, but still they was close enough to hear and might be listening more attentive than usual. Certainly they was watching, for whenever Ursala come close enough to touch me she got the blunt end of a spear shoved at her and was told in fierce words to keep her hands to her own self.

  The day was not quick to pass. I thought that since I couldn’t move or talk I could at least get some sleep, but my mind was full of too many things. I felt like there was molesnakes nesting in my head or something, for there was nothing but wriggling and squirming in there. Partly I was thinking how much of my life, since I stood up at Spinner’s wedding and showed off the DreamSleeve to everyone, had been passed underground. Near to all of it was the answer, apart from the walk to Ludden and the two nights on either side. I thought of Mardew too, and how he died, and then what happened after. He would of been missed in Rampart Hold long since, and maybe searchers had been sent out after him, but they was not like to find what little was left of him, lying among the weeds in an empty street of an empty village.

  Finally, the cave quieted and the night – or what we thought of as the night – come on. Ursala touched my arm to tell me it was all right for me to get up and move around. When I sit up, I seen the guards outside was squatting a little way off, talking in low voices and not minding us so much now. Maybe it was the excitement of what was going to happen in the morning that made their watchfulness to slip, or maybe it was that they was tired from having to keep the people away from me all day long.

  Anyway, it give us our chance and we took it.

  The first thing I done was to take the DreamSleeve out of its sling inside my shirt and switch it on. Monono’s voice piped up in my ear right away. “Say hey, dopey boy! Are Thunderbirds go?”

  I pressed the DreamSleeve right up close against my mouth. “We’re ready to move, Monono,” I whispered. “I can’t say much, and you better not say nothing neither. When I shout for you to use the security alarm, can you hit everyone that’s close to me except for Ursala?”

  “No can do, Koli-bou,” Monono says. “I can only make one induction field at a time, for one person. When the alarm goes off, everyone is going to hear it.”

  “Well, maybe that’s better anyway,” I said. That was all the making ready we could do, and I didn’t have no more words to say. I just pressed my head against the DreamSleeve’s little window.

  “I know, little dumpling,” Monono said. “I’m watching over you. I hope that horrible woman who called you a runt comes strolling by. I’ll split her head like a melon.”

  I told Ursala we was ready now to go to work. She went into the back of our little cave and rummaged among the rocks and rubbish. Then she come back carrying the metal pole we had found and rolling a big stone with her foot.

  She set the stone up close to the grating but not right against it. Then she set the metal pole on top of the stone so one end was under the grating and the other end, that was much longer, was up in the air. She had told this part of it to me before, and I had good hope that it would work. I never before knowed the name of it – which was a lever – but I had done it myself with stacks of steeped wood at my mother’s mill. Ursala hadn’t never been a woodsmith, but she had a friend called Arkie something that had told her how to do it.

  We leaned our weight on the pole, and the grating gun to shift. It lifted up, inch by inch, inside of the bolts or brackets of metal that held it in place. We got it right up to the top edge of the bolts, almost, so it would just take one more shove for it to rise up free of them.

  The guards had heard the scraping sound the grating made against the bolts, and they come quick to see what we was up to. That was what we knowed would happen, and we waited for them to come. As soon as they got close, we pushed down hard on that pole and took the grating clear of the bolts at last.

  It fell forward and down, for there was nothing to hold it back. It come down right on top of the guard that was in front, knocking him flat. I think he was dead when he hit the ground, for the weight was fearful and it come down on his head first of all. His body slowed its falling though, so the woman had a little more warning and jumped back.

  She didn’t get all the way clear. The grating hit her somewhere on her shoulder or chest. She give a scream, letting out the pain of it and calling an alarm at the same time – though the sound of the grating when it hit the ground was surely alarm enough.

  Ursala picked up the metal pole and come striding out of our cell, swinging it like a reaper swings his blade. She hit the woman in the side of her head, and there was not no coming back from that. The woman fell down full-length and didn’t move.

  “Here,” Ursala said. She give me the pole and knelt down by the dead woman. When she straightened up again, she was holding a knife in her hand. “Go,” she said. “Go, Koli.” For I was looking down at the woman’s body, my courage all draining out of me. You might think that after what happened with Mardew I would be somewhat hardened to killing, but I was not. I was hoping we could get away without hurting anyone, and here was two dead before we had gone ten steps.

  But I knowed what would happen to us if we stayed, and I was not keen to abide it. So I held to the plan, and I done what needed to be done.

  First of all, I went about to smash all the lanterns that was near us – all but one that Ursala grabbed up in her free hand. The lanterns that was down on the ground I toppled with my foot, spilling the burning oil out so it run in ragged streaks across the uneven floor. To get to the ones that was hanging on ropes or chains I swung with the pole, sometimes jumping up to get a little higher. We had got to dodge aside from the broken glass and the splashes of sizzling yellow fire that come down out of them.

  People was moving and shouting now, but they wasn’t yet running our way, for the echoes in the cave made it hard to tell what direction a sound come from. It always seemed to come from everywhere at once. They knowed something was happening, but they was not sure what or where.

  I got to the big butt or tank that I seen, close up against the side of the wagon-house that Ursala said was called a train. I could tell when I had got there in spite of the dark around us, for there was a strong stink of oil. I got my fingers under the bottom of the butt and heaved hard.

  It didn’t move an inch. It was bigger than I thought, and the weight of the oil inside was more than I could manage. The footsteps and the shouts was coming closer now. I knowed we didn’t have much time.

  I set my back to the butt and tried to push it off its base. Ursala stood by and watched at first. Then she put down the lantern and come to help, but nothing we could do would move it.

  Four or five people come running towards us. I waited a second then another second for them to get right up close.

  “Now, Monono!” I says.

  The shrieking wail that come out of the DreamSleeve was like nothing I ever heard in my life before. I knowed it was coming, and even so it near to freezed me in my tracks. The people that was rushing on us stumbled to a stop, slamming their hands against the sides of their heads, staggering like they was hit with a hammer. They forgot about us for a while, as the personal security alarm shouted in their ears as loud as a hundred and forty bells.

  I turned back to the tank. It was not going to budge from me pushing it, so I tried something else. I already s
een that the butt was built like a regular barrel, with iron hoops holding in the wooden staves. I worked the end of the pole I was holding under the topmost hoop, and I shoved as hard as I could. The band bent, buckled and finally broke away clean where I was pressing on it. The staves sprung out, free at the top though they was still held at the middle and bottom. Oil poured through the spaces that was opened between them.

  I scrambled back hasty. Ursala waited until I was clear, then snatched up the one lantern we had kept and flung it. It landed in the spreading puddle of oil, which went up like nothing you have ever seen.

  The people retreated as quick as they could in front of the wave of fire, and I was glad to see it didn’t catch none of them, except for one man who got splashed on his legs and fell to the ground, rolling and shrieking. But the people wasn’t what we was aiming for. We was aiming for the train. I had broke the hoop on the side closest to it, and now the fire run up to it and under it and all around it.

  I hoped it would catch straightway. It didn’t, but there was yells and screams, loud enough so we could hear them over Monono’s alarm, as the wall of fire climbed up the side of it and licked at the windows. The people that was running towards us stopped and run for the train instead. Then there was kind of a flowering of light from one end of the train that come with a noise I could only just hear, like soft cloth tearing, and fire filled the inside quicker than you could clap your hands. It was not the oil that done that, I think, but something else that was stored inside the train that took fire from the heat.

  We had done all we could to make confusion and mischief. Now we turned and run.

  This was either the cleverest part of the plan or the stupidest. If we had run for the wicker fence and the door in it, we would of had to go through all of Senlas’s people. Finding that door in the dark would of been hard enough even if we wasn’t running for our lives with everyone’s hand against us.

  So we didn’t do it. We run into the tunnel instead. Away from the light, into the solid darkness that didn’t seem to have no end.

  The alarm stopped. The sudden silence, though it don’t make no sense to say it, was as loud as thunder after the lightning lit down right beside you.

  51

  Ursala had said to stay close to the wall. I done that, putting out one hand so I could feel my way. She also said to walk, but I run flat out at first. A panic filled me, and I didn’t have no choice. I might of kept running for ever except there was some water there, a deep puddle of it that I didn’t see but charged right into. It slowed me down enough so I got some control over myself.

  “Ursala!” I whispered. I had lost all sense of where I was in the deep dark, and didn’t have no idea if she had stayed with me.

  “She’s right behind you, Koli,” Monono said. “On your left.” I turned to look, and right away I wished I hadn’t, for I seen something back in the cave that isn’t never going to get washed out of my mind.

  We thought our setting the train alight would stop Senlas’s people from following us. They would have to stop first and put out the fire since the train was the chariot their messianic meant to ride into the world that was lost as soon as he got round to finding it again.

  But they was not putting out the fire. They was jumping on board the train. Scrambling each over other, pushing and shoving and fighting to get theirselves to the front and up through the doors, into that great big white-hot blaze inside.

  I slowed and stopped, not able to move no further for the horror of it and the disbelieving. I could not make no sense of it. Then Ursala run into me, and near to knocked me down. She give a yell, and her hand brushed past me as she thrust with the knife. It come close enough that the tip of it ripped a hole in my shirt.

  “Ursala!” I cried out. “It’s me.”

  “Koli,” she panted. “What are you standing there for? Go! Go!”

  I went. I was crying for what I seen, but Ursala was in the right of it. We had got to carry on, for if we stopped then we was most certainly dead.

  The time we spent in the tunnel was the hardest thing we did. For me it was anyway. Ursala had told me about the train and the iron bands it sit on – that it was a way people travelled around before the world was lost. Just as a wagon runs on a road, a train would run on them bands that was called tracks, and it would take the people from one village to another in less time than it would take you to say your name.

  And back then, if you was laying down those bands to carry your train, and you run into the side of a hill, you didn’t stop. You went right into the hill, ripping it open with great big engines and the fires of the dead god’s hell until you got to the other side.

  That was what the tunnel was. So most likely, Ursala said, if we just kept on going, we would come out by and by in another place. The first time she told me this, I took hold of that “most likely” and shaked it to see if it rattled. “So you’re not certain sure then?”

  “There might have been a cave-in somewhere along the way. It’s a great many years since the tunnel was dug, and the earth moves from time to time even in places that are generally stable. We might find our way blocked.”

  “And what happens then?” I asked.

  “Why, we die, Koli. What do you think?”

  So what with that, and the terrible thing I just seen, my thoughts was all in a moil as I headed on into the dark. I could hear Ursala’s breathing now, loud and ragged, so I knowed she was with me. Monono was with me too, though her voice was getting faint.

  “I’m running out of charge again,” she said. “Sorry, Koli. The alarm eats a lot of power. I’ll stay with you as long as I can.”

  “Thanks,” I whispered. “I’m somewhat scared of the dark, Monono. I spent too long there lately, one way and another.” My leg was paining me too, and I was somewhat light-headed from fasting the whole of the day before. I was afraid I might fall down before we got to the end of the tunnel and not be able to get up again.

  “You’ll be out soon, dopey boy, and you’ll never look back.”

  Ursala spit out a curse. “There are torches behind us,” she said. I looked back, and it was true. There was some lights there, maybe five or six of them. They wasn’t getting no closer, but they wasn’t falling back neither. I fell quiet, concentrating on where my feet was going and on keeping to a steady pace. Every time I gun to slow or stumble Monono urged me on. And then of a sudden she shouted out to me to stop.

  “Not that way, Koli-bou.”

  “But it’s the onliest way there is!”

  “No,” she says. “You’re getting turned around in the dark. That’s a side tunnel, and the sonar ping I sent came scampering right back to me, so it’s a dead-end. Go to your left.”

  She told me left or right a few times more, and I passed the word along to Ursala each time. But her voice was dropping lower and lower each time she spoke. “I gotta go, Koli,” she says to me at last. “I stayed with you as long as I could, but this is me signing off for now. I’ll see you on the…” There was a few more words that was whispered too low for me to hear, and then she was gone.

  I got real scared then. “How far is it?” I asked Ursala.

  “There’s no way of knowing,” she muttered. “Be quiet, Koli, please. If I can hear you, they can.”

  We walked and walked and walked. The lights behind us disappeared after a while, which I was very happy to see. It seemed like the shunned men was reluctant to follow us any further, maybe because the other end of the tunnel had sort of a holiness to it in their eyes. Then a worse thought come to me, which was that they knowed the tunnel was blocked and that we was gonna have to turn around and walk back to them, or else starve in the dark.

  By and by, though, I seen a kind of a bright dot up ahead. It didn’t look like nothing at first. I didn’t know for sure but that it was something my eyes was making because they was so sick of the darkness. But it got bigger with each step I took.

  “Ursala…” I says.

  “I see it. Keep walk
ing.”

  That was not easy for me to do. But then the light got bright enough for us to see the ground at our feet, and we commenced to run. Well, Ursala was running anyway. My leg was hurting bad now, and the dizziness was growing on me. What I was doing was more of a hop and a stumble with every now and then a run in between.

  Seeing the light put my worst fears to rest, but it brung a new one. Suppose Senlas was right? Suppose this was the world that was lost and there was some angry angels waiting for us there that would be angry with us for not bringing him? I knowed it was nonsense, but I already told you he had got himself into my head. I guess there was enough of him there still to make me doubt.

  But when we come out at last, blinking our eyes at the light, we wasn’t anywhere that was strange or different. The tracks run on between high stone walls, the same way they did on the other side of the mountain.

  We was out, and we was free.

  The trouble we had got now was that there was no climbing them walls. We had got to keep going along the tracks, and the going was hard. Weeds and wild growth of all kinds was in our way, and though we didn’t need to fear being choked or trapped or et as we would of been in Summer, yet there was stings and spikes and poison burrs enough to be wary of. There was no running now, but just picking our way and hoping we would soon come to a gap in the wall or a place where the slope got shallow enough to climb.

  “I got to stop soon,” I says to Ursala between gulps of breath. “I don’t hardly got no wind left in me.”

  “Wait until we’re out of sight of the tunnel,” Ursala said. She looked back over her shoulder. A frown come on her face, and she stopped.

  I looked where she was looking. I didn’t see nothing at first. Just the side of the mountain and the top of the tunnel’s opening, which on this side was a big curved arch like the ones in the wall of the broken house back in Mythen Rood. There wasn’t nobody coming along the tracks behind us, nor the weeds wasn’t waving like they would if there was people moving through them.