Whiteland

by Rosie Cranie-Higgs

  Hurtling through the trees, bark scrapes her palms. Thorns snag her jeans. Her tiny boots are coming to pieces. A branch catches her hair and she shouts, again as it tears from her scalp. Pain blooms hot, her hair in her eyes. No sign of Callum anymore, she’s a whirlwind. Her senses tunnel. The forest is thickening, spiking into barriers, interweaving and churning with ice and leaves and rot—

  Until, with a snorting roar behind and a beating of wings above, it drops away and she falls.

  Kira crashes to the ground with a yell. Slippery snow propels her downwards, through buried woodchips and hidden thickets, a vertical descent too chaotic to stop. Her foot catches on a root and she screams, snow burning her face and twigs tearing her coat as it jerks her brutishly around. This is it, she thinks wildly; this is how she goes. She’ll slam into a tree, or a rock, and that’ll be the end, smashed to pieces at the bottom of the slope. At least it’s more of a bang than a whimper.

  Unless the monsters get there first. A feral snarl ricochets behind her, the hoofbeats drumming on the forest floor. The air throbs in dizzy waves as something sinks down, down, down, the mist creeping closer and colder and colder and closer to bead wet upon her skin. How much farther can she possibly fall? Twisting, bumping, thrashing down a sheer, endless hill, blinded by spraying powder as she tries to dig in her heels. What happened to Callum?

  Throwing her arms in front of her face, Kira wards off a thicket’s prongs. What happens if she reaches the bottom intact but still, there’s no escape?

  Just as she thinks this, the forest spits her out. Swooning at a second of free fall, she tumbles over a short ridge and slams into a road.

  The wind flies out of her. For another second, or two, or three, the mist is forgotten; she’s a crumpled, aching heap, a rag doll flung to the snow-covered ground.

  Along the same ridge, a larger doll rolls, hitting the ground with a whump. Head whirling, Kira squints at it. Callum?

  ‘Callum!’ she cries, a rasp, a gasp, struggling up to her bruised elbows, her twinging, shaking knees. Heavily, Callum lifts his head. His temple is bloody. ‘Are you—’

  Up on the ridge, the hoofbeats die. Kira’s words die with them. Oh, no.

  The mist is slipping down the slope toward the road. Within it, poised in the air and paused on the ground, are two dark, colossal shapes.

  Everything turns to static. The shadow on the ground tips back its head, and Kira scrambles to her feet. Can she slip away? Melt into the mist as it enfolds her, run when she’s far enough—

  A howl cuts the air. A drawn-out battle cry, a call to arms, pierced and full and haunting. It thrums with inhumanity. Kira’s stomach falls away. She throws her eyes around the road, close to frozen, filled with fear. Callum, on his knees and breathing hard. The desert-storm trees, greyed and useless. Paw prints around her, the marks of raquettes. There must be something. Are they going to have to run?

  No. ‘Callum!’ Hope balloons as she spots the little building. Lurking in the haze down a snowy stub of road, it’s better than nothing. He hauls himself to his feet, and she runs.

  Across the road and down the slope, to the sound of a volucrine cry. Arms up for impact, she collides with the stone and scrabbles around the walls, slapping, searching for a window, a door. Callum is beside her in seconds, pushing past like he knows where he’s going, and as hooves scrape the ground and wings beat the air, he falls on the door and hauls it open.

  Light spills in. Callum groans. ‘Oh, Christ.’

  Kira’s hope plummets with her stomach, with her lungs. There’s no space, no room; axes and shovels and broken furniture scrabble for space on the floor, and there’s no way, no way they can fit—

  As the howl comes again and the hooves shake the ground, the air a rush from the flapping of wings, Kira barges her way inside. She’s not being eaten by phantom creatures; not today. Scraping along the wall beside the door, she wrenches Callum in against her, slams the door shut, and kicks at the stacks of precarious tools. Not today.

  Darkness crashes down. A landslide of shovels clatters to the floor, toppling what sound like rakes. The noise outside hits a crescendo.

  The noise outside dies.

  Kira waits. Her heart thuds a tattoo, but nothing happens. Nothing pounds on the door; nothing scrapes, or scratches, or smashes its way through. She listens harder, pushing out every sense. The smell of must, as dank as an attic or a boarded-up basement. A sharpness in her throat from effort or screaming or both. Callum’s hands on her thighs, vices through his gloves, his boots crushing hers.

  Kira closes her eyes against the dark. Have the creatures gone? Are they lurking in silence, hoping for a false sense of security? Is it socially acceptable to spend your life in a disused storage hut?

  Time is immortal when it can’t be measured. After long enough that Kira has considerably calmed, Callum exhales, long and shaken, and uncramps his fingers. ‘Add that’—he lowers his head to hers—‘to the list of things we’re never, in a million fucking years, doing again.’

  Kira opens her eyes. All she can see is his neck, damp with sweat and mottled with snow and pine needles and grit. Heaving a shuddering sigh, she wraps her arms around his waist. Whether or not he’s had enough of close quarters, she sure as hell needs the comfort.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she murmurs into his coat. ‘I love your normal forest. It’s great.’

  Callum snorts. ‘Yeah, I forgot to mention the flying, roaring horse.’ He squeezes her once before she pulls back. ‘It runs rampant this time of year. Blame Appenzeller. There’s nowt so queer as Appenzeller. Do we reckon we’re safe?’

  Kira twists her mouth. ‘We won’t know until we’re alive or dead. And I thought Appenzeller was a beer.’

  ‘It is.’ Callum tugs at rakes and shovels gloomily blocking the door. ‘It’s also a canton, and a bloody weird one.’ He kicks a reclining axe, shoves an anonymous pile of implements, and rests his fingers on the handle. ‘Now?’ He gives her a questioning look. Pulse hiccupping, she nods. ‘All right.’

  One creaking iota at a time, Callum cracks the door ajar. Kira watches as he peers through, heart hiccupping again, and again, and again. It feels like there should be violin music, or the theme from Requiem for a Dream. If she was a Victorian heroine, she’d have fainted long ago.

  ‘All good.’ He opens the door. Kira blinks at the night. After the muffled hut, it’s sharp, cut with ice or glass. The mist has dissipated. The dark is quiet and clear. ‘Let’s go before the snow becomes quicksand, or we get beamed to Jamaica.’

  Tiptoeing over the remaining tools, Kira huffs. ‘I wish I could see that as one hundred percent joking.’ She breathes the fresh, unimpeded air. ‘Considering the fact we’ve seen a magical ocean, three mirrored clearings, and some Roald Dahl and Stephen King beast amalgamations, anything could happen. Wait.’

  She stops. The realisation is a shift in air pressure, a rush of blood to the head. ‘It’s dark.’

  Callum stares at her. ‘Well done.’

  He’s halfway into are you stupid? when his face rearranges. ‘Oh, delightful.’ His mouth curls, open partway. ‘It’s not quite Jamaica, but it gets points for trying.’

  ‘It shouldn’t.’ Kira lifts her arms, letting them clap to her sides. When they entered the hut, it was morning, but the night is as full as if it’s fallen for hours. Stars prick the fringes with the clarity of winter. The moon hangs high, glinting off the trees, casting bluish shadows on the snow. ‘It’ll get too big for its boots.’

  Whatever “it” is. Kira regards Callum bleakly, more resigned than any other adjective she probably should feel. ‘What do we even—’

  She swallows the rest of her sentence. In the shadow of the building, something moves.

  ‘You’re stupid,’ a harsh voice snaps before she has a chance to be afraid. ‘The pair of you. You’re lucky they haven’t knocked this place down yet, or you’d be dead.’

  A woman strides into the moonlight. Kira’s
heart jolts; the flowered dress, the coat, the snow boots.

  ‘You were at the hospital.’ Her voice is more reverent than accusatory. She cringes inside. ‘I thought I recognised you this morning.’ She tugs on her coat sleeves and makes herself stop. Callum’s face is growing long with surprise. ‘What did you do to Romy? What do you know about…’

  She gestures wide. With a bony hand, the woman waves it away.

  ‘Psh.’ It’s an oddly feline hiss. ‘That’s not important. What is important is the fact you ignored me.’ She sweeps both hands around, a mocking mirror of Kira. ‘All of this is what I was warning you about. Staying away from Whiteland.’

  Whiteland. It looses a deep wave of cold, spreading through Kira in a waterfall, a torrent. Hearing it from Romy was one thing, but hearing it again, from someone she doesn’t know…they haven’t been chasing the wind. There’s a place in this forest that shouldn’t exist.

  ‘We’re not in Whiteland.’ Callum’s voice borders on exasperated. ‘You know we’re not. This is the old commune building; you came to the last fête. Your daughter fell in the trough.’ He points to a gnarled wooden basin, ice filling its belly and hanging from the spout. ‘What’s going on, Lena?’

  Lena, Lena, Lena, don’t be so polite.

  Romy knew her.

  No. Kira watches Lena watch them, her fierce, birdlike face unreadable. The thing inside Romy knew her.

  With a shake of her head, Lena turns away. ‘Go home, Callum.’ The words are short and dismissive. ‘You’re only going to get burned.’

  Callum spreads his hands, palms up. ‘By what?’

  Lena doesn’t look back. ‘Monsters,’ she calls. The word rings off the stone and into the night. ‘And girls who go looking for them.’

  Kira steps forward. She doesn’t feel real. ‘What does that mean?’

  Halfway up the road, Lena melts into shadow. ‘This isn’t your fight, Kira. Neither of yours.’ The fading, echoing footsteps pause. ‘Your mother knows what she’s doing.’

  The words are barely there, as insubstantial as the whisper in the trees. Kira chills, again, and again. Hello. ‘My mo—what?’

  ‘Wherever she is,’ Lena continues as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘she’ll be taking care of what happened to Romy. Don’t’—the footsteps crunch away again—‘go looking for her. Don’t go looking for anything.’

  The crunch fades to nothing. ‘What are you talking about?’ Kira’s voice cracks. Her mind is roaring. ‘Do you know where she is?’ A futile step forward. ‘Lena! Where is she?’

  Where is she? She? She?

  The echo flies to the peaks around them, high in the night like legends of stars. ‘Let’s go.’ Callum’s voice is a worn thread, pulled too tight and fraying. ‘We could follow her, but God knows where she’s going. That way’—he nods at Lena’s footprints—‘just leads to the forest. More of the forest. Christ, she’s maddening.’

  He tips his head heavenwards. ‘It’s like she’s playing a game: “How to be a plot device in one easy step.” Or two, I guess, if she’s the woman you saw at the hospital. Dropping hints so our story progresses.’

  He makes a sprinkling motion with his fingers. Kira doesn’t smile, and he drops his hand. ‘Whatever.’ He rocks himself into a trudge up the opposite road to Lena’s. ‘We’ll question her tomorrow. She can be as mysterious as she likes in the dark, but not today, Lena. Well, not tomorrow…’

  Kira lets his words blur and drift into humming. All she hears are Lena’s, warning, discouraging. Telling Callum to stay away.

  That, and starkly, irrevocably confirming Romy’s threat. The knowledge pierces like a poisoned arrow, seeping from her core to her bloodstream. Not only does Whiteland, or whatever lies in the forest, exist, but it’s a part of something they’re not meant to discover. It’s there, taking Romy. It’s there, taking Anna.

  It’s there, and they’re pissing it off.

  Exhaustion hits as the road levels out and sweeps off into the car park. As though they’re one bone-weary body, Callum slows, trains his attention on a nondescript building beside the empty beer hut, and veers off. Flush with crude graffiti, it’s better than nothing.

  ‘First-aid hut.’ Callum retrieves a key from somewhere in his coat. Kira wouldn’t have questioned his choice of pit stop, but nods all the same. ‘I don’t know what that fall did to me, but you look appalling.’

  Kira lifts her eyebrows. ‘Thanks,’ she says as the door grunts open. A pale strip light flicks on. She shields her eyes from the glare. ‘So we’re staying here until everything heals?’

  Callum motions to the full-length mirror. ‘Just until you don’t look like that.’

  Kira snorts. ‘Charming.’ Her eyes drift to her reflection. ‘Oh.’

  Her cheeks blush red from the cold. A swelling, bloodstained bruise joins yesterday’s marks, and her jaw is scraped, snow and twigs and leaves and ice matted in her hair. Her clothes are stained and torn. Her boots are scratches with leather tacked on.

  ‘See?’ Callum nods at them both. The gash on his temple is dried and lumpy, a gathering of tiny bruises ugly on his cheekbone. Woodchips skulk in his hair, and brushing them off with a vigorous hand, he slides his coat and gloves to the floor and delves into the cupboards.

  Kira does the same and stares. Yesterday has nothing on this; she’s never been so battered in her life.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Callum reemerges with several small boxes, catching the end of her unhappiness. ‘It’s fixable. And what’s not fixable will make a good lie.’ He looks her up and down, depositing the boxes on the sink beside the mirror. Long names, little bandages. ‘Yeah, you can lie. Slipping on ice. Tripping over your own feet on the train line. You’re clumsy, so you’ll get away with it. Here.’

  He turns Kira to face him. A burning overrides her indignation, and she squeaks. ‘Sorry.’ He lets go. ‘I didn’t realise.’

  Kira flexes her fingers. In, pain. Out, relief. ‘Neither did I.’ He motions for her to look up, hold still. ‘And I’m getting the feeling I should learn first aid.’ A little dry, a little rueful as he tends to her cheeks. ‘This is the second time in two days you’ve had to fix my face.’

  Callum gives her half a smile, concentrated, close. ‘I can fix your arm, too, if you want,’ he murmurs. ‘Shake it up a bit.’ He steps back. ‘Would you mind sitting on the sink? You’re a bit…’

  Kira eyes him pointedly. ‘Average.’ She hoists herself up. Her arm complains, brash and bright and slicing. ‘You’re just tall. And was that a polite way to ask if I’ll take off my shirt?’

  ‘If you want your arm seen to, then yes.’ Callum returns to her face, cotton swab in hand. Gentle, the medicinal smell mingling with winter and cologne. Kira’s skin shivers. ‘There’s quite a lot of blood.’

  The shiver ends. ‘What?’ She flicks her eyes down. Her shirt’s red checks are darker than they should be, a deep, damp scarlet seeping through her right sleeve. ‘Oh.’ She blinks at it blandly. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Pretty much.’ Callum flashes his eyebrows. A plaster for her chin, one for her temple, and he steps back. ‘Do you want me to look?’

  Kira chews the inside of her cheek. ‘I guess so.’ She drops her eyes from Callum and her fingers to her buttons. ‘I can’t blame that on ice, too. I must have been caught by a branch or something.’ She pulls the shirt off quickly. ‘Ah.’

  The wind leaves her lungs, ripped like the material from her cuts. Closing her eyes, Kira clenches her jaw. ‘I could have done that better.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Callum rummages through his long-named boxes. Grimacing, Kira keeps her eyes closed. How bad is it? ‘But it’s actually all right. Just one big cut. How does it feel?’

  ‘If I can’t see it, it’s not there.’

  Callum snorts. ‘And if it’s not there, you can’t feel it?’

  ‘Yep.’

  But it is there, and she feels it even before Callum sets to work. The pain has nothing on periods, or the time when a football hit her i
n the head, but it’s enough. Enough to make her fret about seeing her dad. How, even with Callum’s treatment, can any of it be explained? Her arm, her clothes, her boots? If it was just her face, she could say she tripped, but she looks like she’s survived a gale, only to hit a tornado.

  And how can she explain where she’s been? Sorry I didn’t message, Dad, but time passed in the blink of an eye. Literally. And then I sat in my bra with a stranger, after we ran for our lives.

  Kira shivers. Her shirtless-ness suddenly feels so naked, so vulnerable, exposed. She can’t tell her father. Not about this, not about the mist, not about searching for Anna. Certainly not about Whiteland.

  ‘Done.’ Callum taps her forehead. With a jump, her eyes flick open. ‘I need to take care of my own war wounds, but feel free to leave. It is’—he checks his watch—‘nearly ten. Your dad will have gone beyond kittens.’

  ‘He’ll have hit foals, at least.’ Kira hops from the sink. ‘Let me check my phone, and I’ll be with you.’

  Carefully, she manoeuvres her crumpled shirt over her bandaged arm. Callum shrugs, his eyes averted. ‘Up to you. You don’t have to.’

  ‘I know.’ Kira fastens her buttons, quicker than necessary. Her chest squirms as she pulls out her phone, squinting at the screen, dreading the—

  Nothing. Relief flutters and settles. Nothing bar a reply to the message she sent as she left the hotel—a message, somehow, from hours ago—saying she was going for a walk. Nothing bar that and one further message: Off to the hospital. See you later, K.

  ‘I guess he’s not having foals.’

  Kira looks up. She’d almost forgotten Callum was there. Her luck is incredible. ‘No.’ She types a quick reply. Sorry, my phone died. Went to Callum’s again. How’s Romy? ‘He went to the hospital. I guess he’s still there.’ She shoves the phone away. ‘Now instruct me.’