Whiteland

by Rosie Cranie-Higgs

  Kira pulls out her phone. ‘Probably master of puppets.’ She presses buttons, taps the screen: no response. By now, she wasn’t expecting one. ‘Do you have a torch in your hamster cheeks?’

  She gestures at his pockets. Shooting her a look that says shush, Callum digs in his jeans. A keyring emerges jangling, flush with keys, a fluorescent lighter, a beaming maple leaf—Canada!—and a teeny, tiny torch. ‘I do.’

  Kira tilts her head. ‘It looks like you meant to shrink your kids but pulled a faulty lever.’

  Callum detaches it. ‘Don’t knock Trevor. We’ll show up for animals, and that’s the main thing.’

  ‘What?’ Kira’s mockery pops and fizzles. ‘Animals? What do you mean?’

  Callum frowns. ‘I mean animals?’ He waves the torch around them. ‘Kira, we’re in the Alps. We’re up a mountain in the Alps. There’s wildlife.’

  Ruefully, Kira hugs herself. ‘I know, but…’

  ‘You were hoping for something cute?’ Callum smirks. ‘Wild horses?’

  ‘It’s not the New Forest.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.’ Callum drops the teasing. ‘I’m just going to say it. There are lynx around here, but they shouldn’t approach us, especially if we’re visible.’

  For a moment, Kira gapes. ‘This is the worst idea I’ve ever had.’ Rotating, she rakes a hand through her hair. ‘I should paint a fresco.’ She frames it with her fingers. ‘“The Mistakes of Kira McFadden.” Or, better yet, sculpt a frieze and fill it with reasons why we’re doomed.’

  ‘Hey.’ Callum taps her arm. ‘Listen. I’ve only ever seen a lynx once in the wild, and it wasn’t in magic forest land. It wasn’t in a forest at all. And.’ He taps again. She angles herself away. Being tapped is so irksome. ‘They might not even exist here. The only creature we’ve seen so far was that hummingbird. And the rampant mist beasts, but we were in the real world when that happened, so they don’t count.’

  He tenses, then shakes his head. ‘Wow.’ He laughs. ‘That sounded insane. Do you realise what you’ve done to me? I’m talking like this is believable.’

  Kira hmms. ‘Not logical, though.’ She twists her mouth. ‘If anything, the rampant mist beasts count times a hundred, because Whiteland’s where they came from. And we must have been at least on the border then.’

  Callum clicks the tiny torch on. Its equally tiny beam illumines the dense, hulking trees, hip to hip and front to back and swallowing the night. ‘I was trying,’ he says, ‘to make you feel better.’ He swings the torch around. ‘I resign.’

  Kira hugs her ribcage and doesn’t even hmm. The wood-chipped path is no longer funny, the demise of the road more menacing than cliché. Anything could be hiding in the dark. ‘What was it doing?’ she asks. ‘When you saw it?’

  Callum turns. The less-than-blinding beam turns, too. ‘Um. What was what doing when?’

  Kira lifts a hand to block the light. ‘The lynx you saw,’ she clarifies. ‘What did you see it doing?’

  ‘More or less running straight at me. No, wait!’ Callum holds up his hands as Kira’s head whips round, aghast, astounded, sick. ‘I’m sorry. That was an exception. It thought we were deer.’

  ‘How on earth did it think you were deer?’ Kira cries.

  ‘We were standing in the dark and not making any noise.’ Slowly, Callum lowers his hands. The torch rights itself. ‘My ex was taking photos of the lights along the lake, and I was trying not to distract her. If we keep moving, keep the torch on, and make noise, we’ll be fine.’ He swings the narrow beam toward the narrow path ahead. It wanders in a crooked line, as dogged as the trees, as far as Kira’s straining eyes can see. ‘Trust me.’

  And this is her travelling companion. Such fun. ‘If you want me to trust you, work on your reveals.’ Kira lays a hand on her juddering heart. ‘Dropping bombs like “there are lynx in here” and “the first and last time I saw one it attacked me” is not the way to go.’ She steels herself. ‘Okay.’

  Blowing out her lips, she walks into the torchlit trees.

  And this is his travelling companion. Callum stares. ‘I thought you were afraid.’

  ‘I am.’ Kira glances back, a silhouette flickering in the painted yellow glow. ‘But I’d rather get it over with. Overthinking is an art form, and I’m better at it than I am at oils.’

  ‘How good are you at oils?’

  ‘Very.’

  Callum flashes his eyebrows. ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘And besides.’ Kira lifts her voice. It wavers. ‘Based on the way the trees became a cliff, we can’t just head on home.’

  She has a point. Begrudgingly, Callum steps onto the woodchips. Their crunch is muted. He’d rather it was loud. For all his joking, he’s afraid, too.

  ‘We’re going on a bear hunt!’ he mutters, as the road fades and the forest enfolds them. The silence is an eiderdown. No rustling leaves, no creaking branches, no shifting of a breeze. No cheeping birds, of the kind who wake you at dawn in the spring. He pulls a series of faces, each more gaudy than the last. It’s far too bloody quiet.

  ‘Oh, a forest!’ he continues, soft beneath his breath. The eiderdown stifles his mind, smothering his lungs. ‘A really tall forest! We can’t go over it, can’t go under it. I guess we’re going through it.’ He sweeps the torch beam behind them. Snow, skeletal branches, dark. ‘We’re going on a bear hunt.’

  ‘There’d better not be bears in here.’ Kira shoots him a look. ‘If there are, you really need to work on your reveals. Riddles are also not okay.’

  In two long strides, Callum is beside her. ‘There are no bears,’ he says, shining the torch into the trees. ‘It’s a kids’ book.’ He arcs the beam back to the path. ‘It seemed to fit. You said we need distractions, to ward off the psycho and the lovesick fool.’

  Kira nods. ‘Now there’s a book.’ She thinks for a moment. ‘What about The Psycho, the Fool, and the Aimless Wander?’

  Callum waggles the torch side to side. ‘Mm. Sounds like literary criticism, or something equally fun.’

  Kira pushes out her lips. ‘True. The Psycho and the Lovesick Fool could be the first book, followed by Those Without a Plan, topped off with the great No End Game.’

  Callum laughs, actually laughs, with a kind of pleased surprise. ‘Maybe you should be a writer. Those are actually cool. Although those without a plan really should make a plan if they don’t want to wander forever in the dark.’

  Kira nods and nods again. They lapse into silence. A plan. First port of call: somewhere to spend the night. Second port of call: come up with a third.

  Her thoughts stall, sucked by a bog. She’s dreaming. Drunk.

  Oh, God.

  ‘Beaches,’ she says. It can’t grab hold already. It won’t. ‘I counter your bears with beaches.’

  Powder drifts from a body-sized branch, dancing in the yellow light. It could be gauze, a net curtain, summer rain. ‘Beaches,’ Callum repeats. ‘You want to talk about beaches?’

  Kira raises her hands, palms up. ‘I live by the beach. Romy always moans, and it always rains, but that’s where I am right now. There’s nothing remotely scary about it.’

  Callum thinks. ‘Jellyfish?’

  Kira sidesteps this. ‘Ice cream,’ she says wistfully. She doesn’t care for ice cream, but it’s bright, and she’s hungry. ‘Ice cream, and parties in beach huts, and cursing the sand and the wind. The thought of relaxing on the beach is always better than reality.’

  Callum eyes her scornfully. ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘I assure you, it is in Devon.’

  Callum draws a circle with the torch. ‘All right.’ His words twitch with humour. ‘Sharks, then. You can’t just snub me and think about food. Failing jellyfish, there must be sharks.’

  Kira taps his arm. ‘There are, but you lose. Since 1847’—one tap per syllable, see how he likes it—‘there have only been two unprovoked attacks off the British coast. If you’re trying to ruin my haven, do better.’ She shoots him a to
rchlit smugness. ‘Ha.’

  Quietly, Callum laughs. ‘You know sharks?’

  ‘Dad studied marine biology.’ Kira stops the hand with the torch tracing an infinity line, a star. Apart from being inattentive, it’s dizzying. ‘He never got a relevant job, so he sprinkles it over us at home. When we were kids, it was a new fact every few days, and he’d test us in the car.’ Sat in the passenger seat, Romy in the back. How far can ocean trenches reach? The reward is Maltesers. ‘Most of them don’t stick around, but that one’s nicely reassuring.’

  Callum nods. ‘What does he do, then? Whoa.’

  The woodchips swerve steeply, golden-brown in the beam. ‘He owns a used motorbike company,’ Kira says, swaying to stay on the path. ‘But he only really enjoys marine—what was that?’

  She stops. A rustle flits through the trees ahead, faint but undeniable. ‘Leaves?’ Callum suggests. ‘Or—’

  The torch burns to black.

  The rustling dies with the death of the light. Kira stares at the spot where the beam should have been, uncomprehending, dumbfounded. The darkness bursts with afterglow. She hardly dares to breathe.

  A rough slap and grunt cuts the quiet in two. ‘Work, goddammit,’ Callum mutters, hitting the torch against his palm. Prickled with jittery, nervous heat, Kira tries to summon a smile. In the middle of a forest, in the middle of the night, it’s still the way to fix electrics: slap and hope for the best. It’s familiar, comforting…and at least they aren’t being attacked.

  Yet.

  The smile slips to the forest floor. What happened to the rustling? She stares around at the useless dark. The only sounds are Callum slapping and her heartbeat thrumming in her ears. Her vision isn’t adjusting. The disorientation is giddy, the heady dark complete. She can’t see so much as her breath.

  They can’t go forward. They can’t go back. We can’t go over it, can’t go under it. I guess we’re going through it.

  Great. He also said they need to keep moving, keep a light on, and make noise.

  Great. Worry expands in her chest like air. The Mistakes of Kira McFadden, part two: all the reasons this was poorly thought through.

  A pinprick of brightness flickers into view. Kira blinks. Far in the distance, it doesn’t seem real. It’s her eyes playing tricks, scuppered still by afterglow and her ache for the torch to live. Shutting her eyes, she looks again. The pinprick, the beacon, the fire winks on. And if she’s not mistaken, it’s brighter.

  ‘Callum.’ She reaches blindly for his arm. Her voice is uncomfortably loud, and she drops it. ‘Callum, there’s a light.’

  Callum looks up; or rather, he believes he looks up. The night is too thick, too heavy to tell. His sense of grounding is Kira’s hand. ‘Where?’ he whispers, balance wavering. Looking around will knock him flat. ‘I can’t…’

  The light splits in two, and suddenly, he can. ‘…See.’ He finishes on a downward breath. The lights pulse. God almighty, strike him down. Shrinking and flaring like a lighthouse in the fog, they split into four.

  The rustle wakes up.

  ‘They’re coming toward us,’ Kira whispers. In his peripheral vision, she’s a shadow, where before she was words in the black. Transfixed, Callum nods. ‘What do we do?’

  Pushing the torch back into his pocket, Callum sets his mouth. ‘We don’t have much choice.’ He tears his eyes away. Kira’s face is brightening, spotlit. ‘We either stay here, where we’ll see what’s coming at us, or we bugger off into the dark, where we could meet something worse that we’d never know is there.’

  ‘Loving the optimism, Callum.’ Kira flexes her fingers, warm in thick wool, scrunching her numbing toes. Every muscle sits coiled and afraid. ‘Lights can’t kill us, though, right?’

  ‘You’d hope not.’ Callum meets her eye, and she quails. There’s more than apprehension; he’s just as afraid as she is. ‘Maybe if we don’t stare at them too—Jesus!’

  Kira snaps her head around. Sixteen lights now glide toward them, throwing the trees into stark silhouette. The rustle rushes louder, whirring feathers and breeze-blown leaves, lifting her hair, and the lights…Kira’s breath slips back into her lungs. The lights are growing, morphing, weaving past each other in a weaving dance. No longer a blazing white, they blur into blue, emerald, gold…and as they swoop closer, dipping through the trees, Kira sees.

  ‘They’re birds,’ she whispers. Her hand drifts to Callum’s arm. ‘The wings. That’s what we can hear.’ She shakes her head, faint with wonder. ‘Callum, they’re birds.’

  They are. Setting the dark alive with colour, they’re birds, and they’re mesmerising. Feathers flash as they approach—the outline of talons, the arch of a head—but the lights, glowing bright on their wingtips, are what lull Kira, entranced.

  ‘I hope this is a good thing,’ Callum murmurs. Open-mouthed, Kira can only stare: alighting on branches and treetops, the birds settle a crescent moon around the wood-chipped path. Absent in voice, their wings crescendo. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, they land, until, draining of colour and sound, the trees become darkly still.

  Kira holds her breath. For a moment, nothing happens. The trees are as statuesque, speechless, and black as if the birds were apparitions. Callum draws her toward him, and she lets him. Her pulse is a thunderstorm, his body on edge. The birds can’t have disappeared. They must be there, perched in the dark, waiting for something to happen.

  A soft white bursts into tiny, bright life, miniscule and hypnotic. Lifting from a branch directly above them, two sparks soar into the sky. Kira cranes her neck back. Higher and higher they rise through the black, beating a steady pulse. She smiles. Her head comes to rest against Callum’s shoulder. The lights dance where the stars should be, cresting the shadowy trees. It’s beautiful, dreamlike, otherworldly magic; and suddenly, it stops.

  Raven-dark, fifty feet high. Larger than an eagle, refined as a stork, the silhouetted bird hovers, beating its wings. It feels like it’s watching. Its eyes are a pressure. It craves comprehension, and slowly, it arrives.

  The sound of leaves leaps back to life. The treetops rush like wind. Pockets of air flow through the forest, drifting over in drafts. The branches creak at takeoff, and the birds begin to fly.

  But not away. With their curious colours growing, the lights glide behind Callum, buffeting the air in the direction of his back. Bewildered, he glances down. He can feel every inch of Kira’s head, still resting on his shoulder. Her body heat warms his front. She’s fused, fusing through him, staring up. For a moment, he’s riveted, caught. Illuminated and far away, she’s ethereal: an Icelandic kind of pale, her eyes a frosted blue. A fairy. A pixie. A ghost.

  The words roll through his mind, and he’s struck by how she fits. As much a spirit of the forest as the birds, dyed by the lights as they grow and glow.

  Resisting the urge to put his arms around her, Callum shakes his fascination. They’re close to strangers, and they could be in danger. The birds are behind them; they need to think, speak, move.

  Kira lifts her head and walks off. Again.

  ‘Hey!’ Callum flings out his arms. ‘What are you—’

  A sweep of air pushes him in her wake. He shoots his disapproval back at the birds, part indignant, largely concerned. They did that on purpose. Was he being too slow?

  Shadowy wings make the air throb, buffeting him on with the breeze. The pulsing lights move with them. ‘Of course.’ Callum turns to face the front. The bird above the forest casts a glow through the trees. ‘They’re taking us somewhere. Lovely.’

  The air swerves, and he stumbles. Up ahead, Kira steps off the path.

  ‘Kira!’ Callum follows unwillingly behind her. She didn’t question it; she didn’t look twice. ‘Hey! Why are you following them?’ He jogs to catch her up. ‘How did you know that’s what they wanted? We were warned this place was dangerous. They could be taking us to our deaths.’

  The breeze nudges right. His forehead furrows. Smooth and effortless, it sweeps them along, like the
rapids at a swimming pool. It isn’t unpleasant, but it’s strange.

  ‘They could be the mist fowl,’ he continues. Kira’s stillness is disquieting, her silence even more so. Has the forest got to her? Have the birds? ‘Or’—he puts a hand on her shoulder, ready to pull her out—‘they could be taking us nowhere. They’re birds. Weird birds, granted, but birds. What happens if they get us lost?’

  Kira pulls her mouth down at the corners. Relief sinks through Callum like an innocent witch, plunging to the river’s depths.

  ‘We were already lost,’ she says. Her face is a ghost of wing-tip colour. ‘I know it’s strange, but they’re helping us. I felt the shepherd bird watching me, and when I looked up, I knew.’ Bemusement glimmers over her face. ‘It goes beyond strange, in fact.’

  Callum’s eyebrows lift, lift, lift. ‘You don’t say.’

  Bemusement blends with discomfort. ‘It’s better than standing in the dark.’ Ducking her head, she mumbles into the folds of her coat. ‘They wanted us to walk, so I did. I knew that, just like I know we’ll be safe.’ She lifts her shoulders, meek and bleak. ‘Call it mad, but at least I’m not trying to hit you.’

  Callum sighs. Sighs again, more for bluster and show. ‘True,’ he concedes. Her dejection is chastening. ‘And at least I’m not the lovesick fool.’

  Kira smiles, small but there. ‘It’ll be a proposal next.’

  Callum narrows his eyes at her. ‘Funny.’

  He looks back to their iridescent, spotlit path. It’s a trail of breadcrumbs. It’s a trap.

  It’s a mind game and a trap.

  He sighs, neither for bluster nor show. It’s all they have. Goddamn.

  Out of Kira’s line of sight, he shoves his hands in his pockets and surrenders himself to the birds.

  When the white from the shepherd bird veers to the left, the jerk in the air is a shock. Callum staggers. Kira grabs him, fighting to stay on her feet. Her heart swoops with her stomach, her head. The billowing air realigns behind them, and the birds light their path anew.