It’s barely risen to the middle of the sky when the Yunavida range is upon her. Rumbling unbroken for as far as she can see, they’re a looming stretch of rock, a blockade, a legion. Kira slows Maja to a trot. What was Callum muttering in the forest? We can’t go over it, and we can’t go under it. I guess we’ll have to go through it.
She pushes out her lips. Her insides are turning coffee-jittery, like when she studies until 3:00 a.m. How far along does the dusty mass go? How far back? It could last for acres, kilometres, leagues, until the end of the earth is closer than home. She could be stuck in the blackness forever with the monsters that sleep until dark.
Unless you make noise and disturb their peace.
Kira shakes this off with a vague sense of bravado. Her repeated dramatics are annoying; she’ll be fine. Marya told her what to do: traverse the tunnel quietly, as most of Rana, for hunting, trade, whatever, has done, and if Maja is as obedient as Klaus said, they shouldn’t meet trouble. She’s survived mist phantoms, a squalling fish, multiple injuries, crazy dead women, and crazy real women; she can deal with being quiet. It’s all, Kira thinks stoically, going to be fine.
Her bravado lasts until her eyes find the tunnel. A short way to the left, marked by a dead, spindly tree, it’s unmistakeable; Marya was right to say she couldn’t miss it. It’s a dark slash in the sandy rock, and as they trot closer, Maja whinnies.
‘Shh,’ Kira murmurs. Stroking Maja’s sweat-sodden neck, it’s as much for herself as the horse. ‘Shh. It’s still morning. Nothing’s going to hurt you.’
Still, the tunnel couldn’t look less welcoming. Despite the angle of the sun, its crooked entrance escapes the light, barely wider than the bishop-fish’s island, which is not very wide at all. Apprehension grows feelers and crawls inside her, joining the jittery coffee. It could be a B-list horror film, where darkness shrouds evil places and animals won’t go in. All they need now is a lightning bolt or maybe a scattering of bones.
It’s got the symbol.
That godforsaken thing. Kira swells with distaste. Scratched into the rock by the tunnel’s entrance, it mirrors the white-bleached tree beside it. She glares at them both. Stupid thing. Stupid, nonsensical thing. Is that the tree it’s based on, or a tree based on it? The way to the Whispers, the so-called lawmakers? Surely it must be option two; option one would be the least impressive kingdom marker ever.
The last time she came across it, Callum was with her.
For God’s sake, stop. She closes her eyes briefly. She can’t blame the symbol, or its corresponding tree, for his disappearance, no more than she can for never asking about it. It always just slipped away.
So, stop.
Casting a delaying look back, she sighs. The grasslands are so light, so bright; it’s not right to have spent so long in the dim, grim forest and so little time somewhere like this, where nobody wants to kill her, and the sun tends to exist. If it’s designed, it’s particularly cruel.
Building up her resolve, brick by dreading brick, Kira turns back to the tunnel. She has to go on, and she has to be logical. The tunnel is sinister, a primal maw leeching light from the land, but Marya told her how to take it. No candle; no sound; no quick movements. It may be cut from a B-list horror film, but that doesn’t make her the heroine. Not a B-list one, at least.
Romy. Mum. Dad.
Settling herself straight and firm, alert and as present as can be, Kira nudges the horse toward the tunnel. Maja had been slowing, so subtly she’d hardly noticed, but before she can change her mind, she urges her back into a trot. A deep breath, another grumbling whinny, and they head bravado-first into the mountain.
The first thing, before the daylight has faded, is that the tunnel is oppressively hot. She’d expected the chill of ghosts, but the air is musty, stale, and muffled, as if it’s been trapped in here for eras. Knowing Whiteland, it probably has.
She’s sheened with sweat within minutes. Her breath is airless. Her eyes are dusty. Her palms rest slippy on the reins. Good God. She shakes the hair from her neck, wiping her face with her knuckles. Her jeans are damp around the waistband. Her vest—she can practically feel it darkening, from midnight blue to black—clings over-zealously to her armpits. If the grasslands were hot, this is an inferno.
An inferno that Marya neglected to mention. She’d have remembered a warning about hellish, cloying heat; she’d have been mentally preparing all the way from Rana. As it is, however, she feels set to faint, to let the fusty air constrict her throat and siphon off her strength.
Which is what the mountain wants. Kira shakes her head to clear it. No. It is not an inferno; it’s an illusion. She can breathe. She can think. She can remember Marya’s advice. After all of Whiteland’s mind games, her thoughts are growing strong.
Follow the path. Tightening her hands on the reins, she firmly sets her sights. Follow the path, ignore the hellfire illusion, and she’ll be fine. The tunnel only has one major change, and she’s meant to know it instantly, from the drop on either side and the water underneath. Other than that, it’s all the same. She just has to stay quiet.
Which is going weirdly well. Maja hasn’t made a sound since the entrance. Perhaps she’s too afraid; perhaps she’s done this enough to know how to act, even if she’d rather stay away. Perhaps—and this is the rock-and-the-hard-place option—she can feel whatever waits in sleep and knows to stay quieter than death.
For there is something here. The tunnel seems to breathe. No one in Rana could or would tell her what, but a heavy presence wraps around her, pulsing in the air. There’s something here, and it’s something that normal life fears.
That’s the other thing. Kira’s eyes adjust to the dark and see: normal life does not exist. Step by step in front of her, Monte Yuno’s underbelly materialises, but it’s barren. No lizards, no spiders, no bats. Nothing scuttling, nothing lurking. Nothing growing in the walls. Tiny crystals glint above her head, Kyo-like, nesting in the low ceiling. Other than that, the rock is bare.
A sharp bend looms in the narrow path. With mindful quietness, Maja steers herself around it. Kira’s heart bounces up and down and back again, swooning. She’s got to pay better attention. The harder she concentrates, the harder it is, but she has to stay focused. It’s her life. Her family’s lives. Maybe—hopefully, please—Callum’s life.
After an unknowable amount of silent time, she’s disoriented and immersed. How far are they into the mountain? No one told her how long it would take.
No one told her a lot of things. Gripping the reins tight through her sweat, Kira tenses her legs at another spiked bend. Both her pulse and Maja’s beat ten to fifty dozen. If this part of Whiteland is as crafty as the rest, how will she know if it’s slinking into night? If the dead are set to—
Behind them, something plinks and skitters. The echo of a stone, loosed from the wall or kicked by the horse’s hooves.
Oh, God.
A shiver snakes through Kira’s skin. She forces herself to gently halt Maja, her heart skipping over the surface of a drum. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. Straining every limb to listen, she waits, rooted in horrified silence. She was being so careful, too; she thought they were doing so well! Flicking her eyes from left to right, the drum beats faster, faster, faster, ready to ramp up and burst into terror. What happens now?
She can see nothing but darkness and rock, hear nothing but the lingering echo. How long should she wait? Is it wise to wait at all?
Seconds. Minutes. More minutes. Nothing. With her pulse still thrumming, beating hard and sickly against her belly, Kira presses her heels cautiously into the horse’s flank. The sooner they get out of here, the better.
Minutes, and minutes, and minutes. Dejected, Maja walks with her head bent low. Her hooves barely click the hot stone. Kira watches her closely, and when the horse dips lower, she flattens herself against the heaving, sweaty neck. They’re one pulse, pounding.
In a breath, the ceiling drops. Kira’s heart beats ten to fifty dozen, gripping the ho
rse so tight it hurts. Maja knew. She’s walked this tunnel, knows its ins and outs…and still, she’s so afraid. Pray to the gods, to the Whispers, whatever, that they never find out what of.
It can’t be this passage, at least. The crystal shines gold, jutting in swathes from the ceiling and the walls. Pressed to Maja’s mane, Kira turns to watch it go. It’s iridescent, jagged and gleaming; if she ever gets home, she’ll paint it. Not just the tunnel, lit in the dusty gloom by sparkling stones, but everything: the bleak forest, the glittering river, the hummingbird and cliff face from when it all began—
The tunnel curves. With a jolting of her thoughts and chest, the inspiration becomes a sun-facing flower, a peacock butterfly. A stalactite dips down in the corner, a translucent, bloody scarlet. She stares at it in awe as they gently click past. It’s surrounded by golden, clinging crystal, mirrored at the tip by its stalagmite twin, and together—a glowing hourglass, two straining lovers—they’re perfect.
They’re also falling behind. Kira lifts her head for one last look.
The ceiling scrapes over her skull.
‘Agh!’
Pain slices in a bright, hot line. Kira claps her hands to her mouth, but too late. Beneath her, Maja whinnies, skidding to a startled stop, and out of the rocks, somewhere behind them, drifts a faint, echoing howl.
The hairs on Kira’s arms stand up. Her sticky, throbbing skull thuds. Oh, no. Oh, no, oh, God, oh, no. Louder, longer, and closer, a second howl reverberates. Her breath stutters. The passage tunnels, narrow and pulsing with fear. What has she done?
What can she do? The sounds ricochet around them, slipping out of crevices and battering the bends. If she and Maja stay perfectly still, the creatures might go back to sleep. Maja has turned to stone, wide-eyed and terrified. If Kira does the same, maybe the mountain will think them gone.
Not a chance. Not a hope in hell, not a crow in heaven. A harsh voice tears the air apart, and Kira’s insides quail. It’s unfamiliar, a tongue that drills into her bones, pooling and spreading in her marrow. She whips her head around, bending low. Rock, darkness, crystal, nothing.
Fear whumps down like a smothering pillow, clamped to her nose and mouth. Faint and pale, there’s something else. A glow, a glimmer, a gleam, gliding onto the path behind them, and beyond…Kira swallows a whimper. She needs to vomit. She needs to scream. Beyond it is another, and another, and another, drifting toward her from the depths of the dark.
Oh, God, oh, hell. The glimmers solidify, becoming crooked figures. Her mind starts to bellow, battering its walls, horror gushing up, up, up. Their heads snap to the side. Their long, disjointed bodies bend, clicking and cracking and hollow. The smell of metal fills her nose. Something sour. Something acrid. Something dead.
A chitter sounds behind her. Kira spins, unbalanced. A small creature skitters toward her, low to the ground and inhuman. Its arms are too long, its spine bent back, and approaching the horse with a clattering of claws, it blasts her every atom into raw hysteria. It has no eyes.
Caution be damned.
‘Go!’ Kira screams. Breathing in a gust of foul, musty air, she chokes, yanks the reins, and drives the horse with her hips, her weight, her slippery legs. ‘Go, Maja!’
Maja won’t. She rears up as the creature crawls closer, skidding in reverse along the twisting path. Kira flings a wild look back. The passage is full of hazy figures, contorted bodies, shimmering lights and stretching arms and the darkness splicing her guts.
‘Maja!’ Kira yells, whipping the reins. Hooves scrape rock as Maja tosses her head: no, no, no, no, no. ‘Maja!’ Kira kicks her sides. ‘Maja, come on! Move!’
Maja takes off screaming. The rush tips her backwards, giddy. The path starts to fly. Kira propels herself forward into Maja’s neck, jarring and hanging on for life. This is it. A low moan leeches from the ceiling, and she flinches. After all the times she thought it was the end, it’s here. She’ll die alone, in a haunted mountain, because she got distracted by a stalactite. If anyone was here to tell her tale, they’d revel in the irony.
A screech echoes in her ear. An empty-eyed, blood-streaked shape grins, wagging its face into hers. Kira screams, with mind and voice and more. Skulking up the wall, a shadow crooks a broken hand. A bodiless beast bays beside her. Its breath blasts like sewage. Kira sobs, pinching her eyes shut. Fireworks spark red behind them, but that’s worse, not seeing, only jolting along, every bone rattling, her chin rebounding, and she urges Maja faster, faster. Skidding round bends, scraping past walls, vaulting over rocks that make vertigo whine—
Maja stops and clatters back. Kira holds on with a fresh rush of terror, clawing back her balance with a sick, swooping moan. Water. Rippling below a wooden bridge. They almost barrelled into a pool.
That can’t be all there is. It looks like death, no more and no less. The sturdy bridge is railless. The pool pulls with a cold, grey gravity, and stamping and shrieking, Maja still backs away.
Oh, God. Wildly, Kira looks back.
Oh, God. A whimper bubbles up and out of her throat. They can’t retreat. They can’t fight. They can’t run. The figures have been following her, drifting, scuttling, bounding. A rich shadow rolls out a keen, dead howl. The others squall. They yowl. They hunt. Kira’s mind chills to nothing. If they go back, they’ll die.
A resonating groan shakes the ground. With her eyes spotting black, she whips around. The rippling water gurgles to a boil. A grumbling darkness blooms beneath the bubbles, spilling a sweet, fleshy burning. A second groan throws up waves, and as the howls and the screeches, the moans and the laughter, crescendo and roar, lights flare at the water’s edge and something breaks the surface.
Kira doesn’t wait to see what. A hot, dry hand clasps her arm, and with a guttural scream, she implodes. Her mind bottoms out. Everything releases. She kicks Maja as hard as she can.
Bellowing, Maja takes off. They hit the bridge and fly into a gallop, the wood booming and the hand torn away. A horn sounds. They’re hunting her. Kira flattens herself against Maja’s neck. No thoughts, no words, just an aching horror swamping her mind with red. She’s brittle, made of matches. They could tear her apart.
Once you realise this, the world realigns.
The wood stops booming. The bridge falls behind. The crystals glow violet as they tear through the tunnel, but the caterwauling dead keep up. Nails slash her skin as they try to hold her back. Maja’s hooves echo, and it sounds like there are more, a snorting, roaring army, the mist.
A wailing sob breaks from her throat. She can’t win. Let it end. Let it be a dream, if that’s what Whiteland wants. Let her wake up to sirens again, to murderous cold again. She shuts her eyes. It’s a scalding, bloody nightmare. She’ll jerk awake once she can’t breathe, once the rot and stench of fiery death has finally stifled her lungs. She screws her eyes up tight. Behind them, golden-red fireworks fly. Either that, or she’ll die.
Cold erupts around her.
Light.
Light that sears, light that blinds. Kira’s eyes fly wide, the clamour dying with the dark. With a scream of disbelief, she bursts into tears.
Pushing back the mountain, pushing back the dead, the ice plains have arrived.
Maja keeps running until she drops. Tired beyond her wits, the tunnel is a crack in the distance when she stops, huffs, and shrugs her burden to the ground.
Kira lands in the snow with a thump. Her elbow rebounds off the underlying ice. She jerks her head up to avoid it cracking and finds she doesn’t care if it does. Falling back into powder, she breathes. They’re out.
She lets out a single, hysterical laugh. Silence, bar a distant whooshing of wind sweeping over the ice. Crisp, frosted air. No smell but the cold, and the tacky tang of sweat, and something stale from her jeans. Kira ignores it. They’re out.
Flanks glistening, Maja shudders and sits, huffing a snorting breath. Kira lies and breathes, in her vest and jeans. The ebbing terror drains as it fades, leaving a viscous, thumping heart and a tired, throbbi
ng mind. Before long, the cold begins to bite.
The heat from Monte Yuno fell away with the tunnel, and the heat from the gallop fell away with the drop. Shivering, Kira rubs her arms and sits. Snow trickles from her hair and body, and gingerly, she taps her skull. Raised and painful, but dry. The blood has dried on her arms as well, from a dozen cuts and scrapes. A ring of bruising nail marks, and that’s all. She was lucky.
It doesn’t mean she has to look at the damage. The claws, the hands, the mountain…they tighten her chest and stir her stomach. Now she truly knows the meaning of fear.
Maja neighs softly. Kira looks up. Rising on weary legs, the horse shakes free of slivers and snow and gives her a plaintive look.
With the slightest vibration of an inward smile, Kira stands. If Maja could speak, she’d be right: it isn’t just cold here, but forest-cold. Shrugging on the lightweight, fur-lined coat, she sets to work on the blankets.
Thank God. Meticulously cut to shape and size, they take no time at all. One for the neck, two for the middle, and one for the rear; even done inexpertly, in minutes Maja’s covered. With the hoof-pouches on, she nuzzles Kira in thanks.
‘You’re welcome.’ Kira slumps against her. Fatigue is starting in tremors. It leaves the world spark-bright and unreal, but also fades the horror. She’d rather it fade to a dream than a lucid, haunting nightmare, but it’s better than not fading at all. She looks around with a sigh. ‘But what, Maja, do we do?’
Maja snorts, harrumphs, and turns to clop away, her hoofbeats dull on the ice.
‘Right.’ Kira dips her chin until it meets her chest and sighs again. ‘Okay. Just me.’
Snow and ice, ice and snow. What, indeed, do they do? Fishbone clouds scud across the blue sky. Kira shades her eyes and squints; despite the lack of a blazing sun, the day is bright and far from night. The plains themselves are just as blinding. Sloping to a ridge far to the right, below it is much of a muchness: unbroken, stretching white, and scattered, lurching peaks. Craggy dips and water holes, a group of dark specks.
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