Whiteland

by Rosie Cranie-Higgs

  Despite the eerie, dancing colour, the forest seems to have darkened. Darker, deeper, denser, nefarious. The trees knot closer together; the undergrowth crackles obtrusively, wily and sly where it juts from the snow. Kira shivers. Spine-like bushes creep up to her shoulders, forming arches and hurdles and warrens and webs. Before, she felt safe, but with the eras, eons, ages they’ve walked, both trust and knowing have dimmed.

  ‘Can I say I told you so yet?’ Callum whispers. ‘They’re trying to get us lost.’

  Kira twines her fingers together. ‘They’re not.’

  Maybe, though. Maybe they are. Maybe whatever she felt was a trick. Maybe it’s a wicked-witch trap.

  Kira shivers again. It’s too late for that; the forest is finally changing. It’s brooding, watching. Breathing, waiting. As though they’ve left its extremities and are encroaching on the heart.

  The stirrings of panic bloom cool in her chest. What if the forest has come alive and sent something after them? Masked by their human noise, shades or beasts or worse? An illustration swims to the front of her mind: thunderous fire pouring through a forest, a snorting fiend giving chase. The flames keep it hidden, but you hear its rumble, violence whooshing on the air.

  The Minpins; that was it. It chilled her as a child, and it chills her now. What if the creatures from the mist are slinking—

  A squat shape looms in the light from the birds. Kira’s thoughts shatter. Her panic plummets cold. They’re here, not behind but in front, arriving with a whimper instead of a bang—

  Callum snorts. ‘A cabin? No chance. Not a chance.’ Doggedly, he shakes his head. Kira’s panic falters. ‘We all know how that ends.’ He extends an arm to guide them away, but the buffeting air beats back. ‘I don’t think,’ he insists, more urgently, ‘we should let them lead us there.’

  ‘Too late.’

  Sheltered by trees, the cabin lies ahead, and while gentle, the wings push them on. Kira swallows her panic back into its pit. It scrabbles, but she locks the cage. It won’t help. The birds slow, their lights dim. In seconds, they’ve arrived.

  Callum exhales, long and displeased. Branches creak as the birds settle, nestling into the trees. ‘I’m guessing this is us now.’

  Kira ignores him. Made ominous by loneliness, the cabin in fact is calming. It’s log-built, small, and crooked, with reindeer carved into the shutters, snowflakes drifting down the door, and, perched like the hat of a drunkard, a precarious chimney is warped on the roof. Her scrabbling panic stops beating at the bars. It has no path, no porch, no garden. Both windows are dark, but it’s comfortable, cheering. It looks like a rustic home.

  A rustic home with a homely aunt, hoping to bustle them in. Fire lit, tea brewing, black forest gateau on the table. After trekking through the day, and the dark, and the cold, it’s so tempting to just let go.

  With the sound of wind through leaves, the birds whisper back to life. Their wings flare, beating at the air. A gentle breath escapes Kira’s lips. She shades her eyes, squinting. ‘I…’

  Her voice sighs back down her throat. In a scattered, graceful group, the birds lift into the sky. Slender shadows, they circle and soar, their wingtips violet, scarlet, rose. They are silent bar the air they move. They are phantoms in the trees. They blend to a single spark of white, and soon enough, to black.

  The wind becomes a draft. The draft becomes the rustle. The rustle flutters into stillness.

  ‘I…’ Kira shakes her head. ‘I can’t believe they existed.’ Swallowing, she turns to Callum, sizing up the cabin. The dark resolves around them. ‘They were beautiful. Weren’t they?’

  Arms folded dubiously, Callum’s voice is a frown. ‘Indeed,’ he says, a charcoal outline, a sketch. ‘But I don’t like their judgment. They’ve left us outside a deserted cabin, in the middle of a forest, in the dark.’ His hand bashes her wrist. In her mind’s eye, he’s open-armed, informing the world that it’s made of nitwits. ‘When has that ever been a good thing?’

  Kira’s beauty-fuelled awe dissolves. ‘We’re not in a horror film, Callum.’ She sighs. ‘Shut-up houses don’t have to mean death. And this one’s too cute. Or’—she waves to where it lurks in the night—‘it was.’

  ‘From the outside,’ Callum retorts, full of Homer Simpson meaning. ‘Anything could be inside. Have you heard of Hansel and Gretel? A house made of sweets, behind which hid a—oh, no, no.’ He reaches for her as, misjudging his location, she catches his side on her way to the house. ‘No, you don’t. Hey!’

  Sidestepping deftly, Kira stretches out her arms, carrying on through the black. Her breath mists faintly, ghostly and pale. Snow crunches under her boots, a crisp, hard crust. If she listens to him, his words will start to itch, and then they’ll be back where they started: sightless, lost, and vulnerable, inside and out.

  ‘That’s nice, dear,’ she says under her breath as his teeth-gritted warnings chunter on. The cabin had been to her left, so if she moves in that direction, at some point she should…

  …Hit it. Her hands knock wood, and she jumps. Fingertips brushing the logs, she moves right until they dip.

  The door. Relief twists a scoubidou with nerves, apprehension.

  Beneath her hands, the wood shifts. Her pulse skitters. Her head shoots hot. The door cracks open on its own.

  Light blooms. Kira blinks. That was far too easy; without a screee, without a groan, with only the sense of a tired fellow lumbering from his slumber, the cabin invites them in. The itch has become a scratch. Could this be a wicked-witch trap?

  Callum still hasn’t shut up. Segueing from Hansel and Gretel, he’s wound up somewhere in Russia, telling tales of Baba Yaga and endless impossible trials.

  ‘Callum.’ Kira pivots on the threshold. Callum looks like a baby presented with a maths book. ‘Two things: one, Baba Yaga’s hut sat on chicken legs, not frog’s legs, and two’—she pivots back—‘shut up.’

  He might be right. He might not. It might be a trap. It might be an ark. Either way, her breath is pluming, the night is weighty, and she’s tired. Kira steps through the door.

  The light flares, sputters, and shrinks into a candle, proud on a stool in a corner. Unthreatened by witches, ovens, or trials, Kira considers it.

  Reluctance steams off Callum as he enters. ‘And that came from where?’

  Kira sighs and rubs her eyes. ‘Shut the door.’

  He lets out a noise between a grunt and a groan. It sounds like a frog in his throat. ‘Kira.’ He tips his head back. ‘Kira, this is mad.’

  ‘It is what it is.’ Shutting the door decisively, Kira blocks out the night. ‘Sentient birds led us here. It’s all mad.’

  A hearth to the left of the candle sparks. Kira starts. Crimson flickers in the kindling, and the high pile bursts into life.

  Sweet resin, woodsmoke, a dry waft of heat. The rest of the cabin sidles from the dark. A wooden chair and table cosy in a corner, opposite the candle on its three-legged stool. A single bed sleeps in another, heaped with hefty woollen throws. The fire scorches against the far wall, befriended by a plump rocking chair and a scratchy, scarlet rug. It smells of warmth, of pine, of Callum’s chalet. Unless there’s a secret satanic basement, it’s everything they need.

  ‘There’s no kitchen.’ Callum looks around, again, again, as if it might hide in a wall. His surprise is amazing, his dismay is better, and his discontent is the best. Beginning to uncoil, Kira can’t help but laugh.

  ‘Your priorities astonish me.’ She drags out the chair. It doesn’t make a sound. Stalling, she slowly sits. Bizarre. ‘Maybe it isn’t a home.’ She peels off her outerwear. Sweat spots damp beneath her arms, and she wriggles. ‘It could be a refuge, like they have in the mountains. They don’t always have kitchens, right?’

  Callum drops into the rocking chair. The cushions puff and huff. ‘No.’

  ‘There you go.’ Kira strokes the table thoughtfully. Scratched on the edge is the sketchy tree. ‘Or maybe Whiteland doesn’t do kitchens.’

 
Callum shoots her his full disapproval. ‘What kind of place’—he extends it into every nook and cranny—‘doesn’t do kitchens? What’s the point?’

  Kira twists her hair around her fingers. She should have thought to bring a comb. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t question it. This is the only shelter we’ve seen. I imagine whatever lit the fire and the candle can kick us out if we’re rude.’

  Her bladder twinges. Kira zeroes in. Suddenly, she can feel it straining against her jeans. Oh, dear. Never mind a comb; she didn’t bring anything. Callum told her to, but she didn’t listen. Impulsivity, as strong in her as it is in Romy. Yet again, she’s the hold-your-hands-up, guilty-as-charged, perennially unprepared. If Callum hadn’t run into the buvette, they’d have nothing. No loo roll, no food, no deodorant. No soap. Heavily, oh so heavily, she sighs. At least her period isn’t due.

  ‘So there’s a ghost in here?’ Callum slumps and reclines. Hands on the arms of the rocking chair, he’s a villain without a cat. ‘Thank you, Kira. This gets better all the time.’ He rocks to face the door. ‘Do you have any more fun theories to—Jesus!’

  The chair pitches as he flinches back, rocking violently toward the fire.

  ‘What?’ Kira whips around. ‘Oh, God.’ She scrapes the chair back, catches the leg, and crashes to the floor with the wood. ‘Oh, God.’

  In the doorway stands a shadow. Kira’s head rushes hot. Punched with panic, a fist to her gut, she boots the toppled chair aside and scrabbles away. It’s not a shadow; it’s a figure, still and silent, cloaked and hooded with something like night. Hands press against Kira’s lungs.

  Softly, the figure looks up. ‘Child.’ Its wizened, hollow gaze finds her, and unreality swoons. Weathered and waifish, it’s a woman.

  Kira scrabbles back, back, back. Her bruising tailbone hits the wall. ‘Nnn.’ She grits her teeth. The cabin blurs in yellow and pain. Oh, God.

  ‘Child,’ the woman repeats. ‘Ørenna.’

  Bowing her greying head, she’s gone.

  Yellow. Pain. They calm and settle. The room’s too small, too warm, too closed. The fire pops. The candle wicks. Kira’s blood thumps in her stomach and her head. Her eyes feel ready to burst.

  ‘What in the bloodiest of hells was that?’ Callum’s knuckles strain white on the rocking chair. Slowly, he drags his head from the door, his eyes trailing behind. ‘She knew you.’

  Wordless, Kira shakes her head.

  ‘She did,’ Callum insists. ‘She didn’t look at me once. She was speaking to you.’

  Kira exhales, long and shuddering. It feels as if her lungs are a fort and someone’s pulled up the drawbridge. ‘She can’t know me,’ she whispers. ‘I’ve never been here before.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Callum says, ‘but she recognised you.’ He rocks the chair to face her. ‘Why else would she speak like that?’

  A log collapses in the fire and roars. He watches Kira, waiting, but when the silent seconds reach a silent minute, Callum rocks to face the door. It never opened, and it never shut; they would have heard, if not seen it. Which means that not everything here needs doors.

  And they’re no better off inside than out.

  ‘Are you tired?’ Kira asks from her corner. Her voice makes him jump, but he rocks back around. If he thinks like that, somewhere like this, he’ll probably lose his mind. Again. ‘I’m tired,’ she continues.

  He smirks. ‘You’re subtle. But yes, we should probably sleep.’ He scans the room. The fire, the rug, the tightly shuttered windows. The candle on the stool, the blank oak walls, the tiny, heavy-duty, slightly crooked bed.

  ‘I’ll be happy with the—’

  ‘Take it.’ Callum waves at the bed. ‘If you give me a blanket and a pillow, I’ll be fine. I feel like this chair’s become mine.’ He smiles. Hopefully it looks more relaxed than it is. He wouldn’t bank on nodding off yet, anyway; the horror-movie darkness and the horror-movie trees press in on the cabin with a blood-pressure squeeze. ‘Really. Take the bed.’

  Kira gnaws her top lip. Spreading like an ink sketch, a map upon her face, the offer rallies against her goodwill. ‘Are you sure?’

  Callum’s smile grows a little more genuine. ‘Yes.’ The word is firm and he settles back, sinking into the pine-green cushions. To be fair, it’s heaven in a chair. ‘I can keep watch better from here. And I’ll make you a deal.’ He shifts to look extra comfortable. ‘Next time glowing birds lead us to a hut, or satyrs to a cave, I’ll take whatever is serving for a bed.’

  Sliding stiffly up the wall, Kira smiles. ‘Deal.’ She hands him a blanket, prickly and thick. ‘Thank you. Although if satyrs ever do lead us to a cave, promise not to leave me alone.’

  Callum laughs. Meeting her mischievous eyes is warm. ‘If you’re sure.’ He jams a pillow behind his head. ‘The same with sirens.’ He grins. ‘Or maybe not.’

  As the fire dies down and the snow begins to fall and they ration out peanuts and crisps, the cloaked woman stands in front of the door. Quietly, mindfully watching the forest.

  She’s our child.

  The cabin pales to smoke, to air. The spirits rustle round her. We know.

  She’s lost in the world of Karliquai, the painting she took from a dream. An arcing field of moonlit snow, an indigo midnight bright with stars. A dark wooden chalet sits snug on a rise. Three dark figures look up outside it, watching a star leave the sky.

  Kira was one of them. Romy was another, but the third she couldn’t get a hold on. He was young, good-looking in a scruffy, shaggy way, and she felt like she’d known him for—

  Kira wakes to an empty, growling stomach, a sharp-scented winter draft curling through the door, and the sense that someone’s been following.

  Sleepily, she sits up. Callum is crouched outside, ankle deep in snow with his hoodie sleeves rolled. Pulling the itching blankets to her neck, she peers at him blearily. ‘What are you doing?’

  She yawns, stretching her mouth at the corners. Her tongue is fuzzy and fairly gross. Her mouth is dry. Her skin feels fairly gross, as well. Here’s to adventuring.

  ‘Ah.’ Scooping something into his arms, Callum stands and brings it inside. ‘You’re up.’

  Kira eyes the cloth-wrapped bundle doubtfully. ‘That had better not be alive.’

  ‘It’s not.’ Callum kicks the door shut in a flurry of powder, bringing the baby-sized bundle to the bed. Butting her legs for space, he sits. ‘I woke up, went out to make my own facilities, and found this by the door.’ He prods it. A waft of cooking puffs out, like Christmas or Sunday lunch. He rubs his hands together. ‘I’m praying the forest gods have given us breakfast, so we can save the Doritos for tea.’

  The folds of the cloth fall back.

  ‘Oh, God.’ Recoiling, Kira bangs into the wall. Her funny bone yowls, and she grabs it. ‘No.’ She screws up her face. ‘Oh, no, no, no. They’re way too close to alive.’

  Callum regards the skinned, roasted creatures with something like tenderness. ‘Quite the drama queen, aren’t you?’ He smirks. ‘They’re no more alive than the cloth they came in. The forest gods are helping us.’ He tilts his head thoughtfully. ‘Or someone is, at least. They’ve been cooked, see?’ He prods one golden flank. ‘Don’t tell me you’re veggie.’

  ‘I should be.’ Rubbing her elbow, Kira leans forward. Revulsion battles empathy, and the pair of them battle need. ‘They’ve still got all of their limbs.’

  ‘Well spotted.’ Callum lifts a creature by a tiny back leg. It sways like a crispy, grease-dripping pendulum, and he swings it toward his mouth. ‘Mmm.’ Frowning, he nods in appreciation. ‘It’s fine. More than fine. Probably a mouse, or a squirrel.’ He indicates the second body. ‘Try it.’

  Kira twists her purple sleeves around her fingers. Her hunger may be a hurricane, and the aroma may be barbecues, summer fêtes, chicken, but eating a mouse? A squirrel?

  ‘You were convinced last night this was some kind of trap,’ she says as Callum dines with gusto. ‘You didn’t even think we should come i
n here, and now you’re eating things left at the door.’

  ‘Hunger.’ Callum mumbles, gulps, and swallows. ‘I’m starving. As are you.’ He nods at her stomach. Kira clutches it, chagrined. ‘Also’—he tears away the last of the meat, talking unattractively around it—‘horror films are more believable at night.’

  A growl starts deep in Kira’s stomach. Gurgling around, it builds to the sound of a big-bellied burp. Disgusted—hungry—embarrassed—hungry—Kira averts her eyes. The meat could be undercooked; it could be bewitched; it could be deadly, designed to get them out of the way.

  ‘If we die, I’m blaming you.’ She reaches into the rough-spun cloth. It may be an age before they eat again, and refusing food is rude. ‘Forever.’

  Avoiding locking eyes with her breakfast, Kira cautiously starts to eat. ‘Fine by me.’ Callum wipes his greasy hands on the snow. ‘We’ll either be happy in paradise, so you won’t mind being dead, or we’ll end up endlessly rotting in hell.’

  Kira wrinkles her nose. ‘I’ll definitely mind being dead in hell.’

  Callum sits beside her again. ‘No, you won’t. If demons are shredding our fibres, you’ll be too distracted to allocate blame.’

  Kira rolls her eyes at his grin. ‘Delightful.’ She swallows and sets down the bones. He doesn’t need to know it was delicious. ‘You make such reassuring company.’

  ‘I know.’ Callum shakes his wet fingers. ‘Want some snow?’

  ‘No.’ The reply is automatic. Kira lifts her hands in a preemptive defence. Surely it’s too early for a fairyland snowball fight. ‘No, Callum, but thanks for the look.’

  He eyes her so patiently it ends up patronising. ‘For your fingers.’ He nods at her hands. ‘The grease.’

  Like a phone camera focusing, Kira’s eyes hone in on her fingertips. ‘Ah.’ She wiggles the glossy things, tries not to feel too daft, and nods. ‘Then yes. Thank you kindly.’