Oblivion

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  “Let go of that which is not yours!” The voice that came out of my mouth was deeper than my own, hard and alien. And then it happened… I don’t know how… it’s so difficult to…

  I can’t explain it. Something came out of me. Something sharp and shiny, like a knife or a sword. Yes, like a sword. There was even a singing, metallic sound in the air.

  And Chimera screamed.

  One of her wings lay on the ground. It kept its shape for a brief moment, then it began to dissolve in front of my very eyes. It disintegrated feather by feather, and each feather shimmered and became a bird. A thrush, a sparrow, a buzzard, a heron. A giant white-tailed sea eagle, a tiny wren.

  There were hundreds of them. Not living birds, even I could see that, completely untrained and still wet behind the ears though I was. There was something pale and transparent about them, and the wing of the eagle went right through the thrush, without either of them noticing it. Ghost birds. Or more accurately perhaps, bird spirits. They were all that remained of the living animals whose life and… and birdness Chimera had claimed – a life for every single feather. That was the price of Chimera’s wings.

  “And the other one,” I whispered to the new voice inside me.

  Chimera was reeling; she was being dragged down by the weight of her remaining wing now that the severed one was no longer there to counterbalance it.

  I don’t think I’d even needed to ask. The sword-like feeling welled up in me before the words had even left my lips. It hurt this time, more than the first. As if the sword had to cut its way out of me before we could liberate the stolen lives trapped in Chimera’s other wing. But the second wing fell too. And the cave was filled with the rush and call of birds, with hoarse caws and honks and tweets, with the squawking of gulls and the cries of buzzards, bewildered but free. In a roar of invisible wings, they rose and soared and finally disappeared as if the walls of the cave had ceased to exist.

  Chimera’s eyes had taken on a maddened gleam. Now it was her turn to curl up in the sand of the cave, without a feather on her body. Even her talons had shrunk to very long nails.

  “Mum!” The Nothing squawked, huddling against her legs. “What’s happening?”

  Chimera kicked her so violently that the little bundle of feathers hurtled through the air and crashed into the wall of the cave with an ugly, wet smack.

  “No!” I screamed, somehow more outraged at this one, hopeless life than the hundreds of others that hadn’t sneezed and pooed on me, or asked me what the word “friend” meant. “Don’t you dare! GO AWAY! Go! Vanish. Get out of my life and STAY OUT. I want you GONE for GOOD!”

  The words came from deep, deep inside me. They were as sharp as the invisible sword had been. They burst out of me, sticky with blood and scorching heat, and hit Chimera like a hammer blow.

  If she had screamed when the voice helped me take her first wing, it was nothing compared to what she did now. Her scream seemed to absorb all the air in the cave, so that for a very long moment I couldn’t even breathe. It went on and on. There was as much bird in that cry as there was a human voice, there was mortal fear and pain, but also hatred, rage and a thirst for revenge.

  Youuuuu…

  Willlllllllllll…

  Payyyyyyyyyyyyyy…

  Forrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…

  Thissssssssssssss….

  I covered my ears with my hands, but it wasn’t enough. I had to close my eyes too.

  Not until it had been quiet for a while did I open my eyes again. She was gone. She had vanished completely, as I’d ordered her to. Not so much as a feather or a strand of hair was left behind.

  Blessed Powers, the voice inside me murmured. The girl is a proper witch after all…

  The four animals inside the wheel were still there. The seal, the wild goose and the fire lizard all peered up at me uncertainly, as if they couldn’t quite believe that it was over. The mole looked at nothing, saw nothing. A final tremor went through its dark little body, then it was gone.

  “Go,” I said to the others. “You’re free. Go now…”

  The word “free” made me think of The Nothing, and I turned away from the circle without worrying about what happened to the three living animals.

  She was lying on the floor under the outcrop she had smashed into, a forlorn little figure never much suited to life. Even so, I found it hard to bear that she had died without ever knowing what words such as freedom, friendship and happiness really meant. I knelt down beside her and gently touched her damp, filthy feathers. She was still warm; the heat of life doesn’t leave a body as quickly as that. But… surely that was… Yes. It was there, a faint breath, a fragile and stumbling heartbeat. She was still alive.

  “Save her,” I pleaded, because I didn’t know how to do it myself, and I had a feeling that this new but ancient voice inside me was wiser than me in this respect, too.

  Are you sure that’s what she wants?

  I had to think about this before I replied. Life was hard for The Nothing. The way she was created, the way Chimera had created her, there wasn’t a lot she could do for herself.

  “Can’t we help?” I said softly. “Give her… some decent legs, perhaps. Or a pair of wings she can actually use for flying.”

  Whose life will you take to give them to her? the voice asked with glacial chill. And have you even asked her if that is what she wants?

  It felt as if I’d been slapped across my face, only on the inside. Very uncomfortable. But then it dawned on me that if I started changing The Nothing without her consent, I was no better than Chimera.

  “Chimera didn’t care whether The Nothing lived or died,” I said in my own defence. “I do.”

  And what does the poor creature herself want?

  “She said that it was hard not to go on living once you had started,” I said. “And perhaps… perhaps there might be time for her to learn the meaning of freedom. And friendship.”

  My hands started moving without my direction. They placed themselves gently on The Nothing’s damp, feathered chest, one on top of the other. And suddenly I began singing. A wordless hum, simultaneously high and low, as if I was singing two notes at the same time. My head was buzzing and spinning, and I paused for a moment when I realized that what was coming out of me was wildsong, wildsong like Aunt Isa’s.

  Stop resisting, child! the voice said irritably. We’re both exhausted, and it’s hard enough as it is.

  There were so many questions I wanted answered. What was happening to me? Whose was that old, bossy voice, and what was she doing in my head? Could I get rid of her again? And if I could – would I want to?

  But those questions would have to wait if I were to save The Nothing. If we were to save The Nothing. Because I couldn’t do it alone.

  I closed my eyes and let the wildsong come as it might.

  CHAPTER 25

  Something Is Better Than Nothing

  The cave had grown both cold and dark when I came round again. Yet I felt, at least for the brief moment that passed before I woke up properly, both warm and safe.

  I wasn’t alone. Along my back lay a familiar lithe and furry body, and next to my tummy, a curled-up feathered figure the size of a football, limp and unmoving, but warm and alive. Cat and The Nothing.

  I hadn’t passed out or anything equally dramatic. I’d simply fallen asleep. When the wildsong had finished with me and The Nothing, I had been so exhausted that I had to lie down for a moment. That moment had apparently turned into several hours, according to my watch.

  I had to get out of here. But how? I didn’t seriously believe that I could cast a spell and whizz myself back to the drawing room at Westmark, in the same way that had brought me here, nor did I have any desire to try.

  The voice inside my head didn’t offer any helpful suggestions either. In fact, it was rather quiet in there.

  “Hello?” I said tentatively. “Is anyone here?”

  It wasn’t until I said it out loud, that I realized how truly crazy it was to
try to have a conversation with… with… with…

  With Viridian. Because suddenly I knew with absolute certainty who it was I had summoned, knew whose voice had spoken inside me – regardless of how that had come about.

  “Viridian.” I only whispered the name, it felt way too risky to say it out loud.

  Cat stretched out and dug his claws into my neck – not hard enough to pierce my skin, just a Cat warning.

  I’m here, he said, with a slight emphasis on I’m. As far as he was concerned, that had to be enough – how could I possibly need anyone else?

  “Cat? Can we use the wildways to get out of here?”

  It took a while before he replied.

  Better not to, he then said. Too close to the wheel. Better not risk… waking anything up.

  A shiver went down my spine when he said it, and it put a stop to my feeling warm and safe.

  “We need to get out,” I said. “As quickly as possible.”

  There had to be a way out. Chimera might be able to magic herself in and out of here, but the goose and the seal couldn’t have. They’d both arrived using more traditional methods. Now I was somewhat bigger than the goose, but… what was it Viridian had written in her book: “There was only one way out and that was to follow the trickle of the wellspring, through the passage it had carved to reach the sea.”

  The wellspring was still here somewhere. I could hear it.

  It took me at least a scrambling, creeping and climbing hour to follow the spring and its passage through caves and caverns down to the shoreline below Westmark. I was tired, it was pitch black in the caverns, and I was carrying The Nothing. I’d made a kind of pouch for her by folding up the hem of my T-shirt and tying a knot in it, and she didn’t weigh very much – next to nothing in fact – but I had to hold her with one hand all the time so she didn’t fall out.

  It was a cold and frost-clear night, and the moon was almost full. It lit up the shore like a blue spotlight. Mounds of seaweed glistened with blue hoar frost, the crusty ice on the puddles had turned blue and even Cat’s fur took on a blueish sheen.

  We had escaped. However, now that the cave no longer shielded us against the cold, I soon began to tremble so badly I could barely walk. And when I saw how steep the cliffs were, I was sorely tempted to just sit down and have a good cry. I was so tired, tired in my body, tired in my head, but most of all tired and sore inside, in that place where the invisible sword had sprung from.

  “I know you always say I should never give up before I’ve fought,” I whispered feebly to Cat. “But how about afterwards?”

  Just then I heard a soft cry above us, and a broad shadow on silent wings swooped closely over my head. I ducked instinctively, but this time it wasn’t a shark bird or a soul-stripped seagull. It was Hoot-Hoot.

  “There they are,” a familiar voice called out from behind me. “I can see them!”

  And when I turned around, I saw Oscar come running across the blue sand, waving his arms and making a small leap of joy every now and then.

  “Here they are, here they are, here they are…”

  He came to an abrupt halt right in front of me. I could see that he wanted to give me a hug, but we don’t touch each other so much these days because the others will just tease us even more about snogging (and we really don’t!) But right now school was very far away. I didn’t give a monkey’s about anyone from our class. I didn’t even care about Alex and his moronic remarks about witches and magic. Except that…

  “Oscar?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you going to tell Alex about this as well?”

  He pulled a face.

  “I told him not to tell anyone else,” he mumbled. “It was just that… I just think it’s so cool…” He looked up at me, and for once his cheeky face was deadly serious. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have told him.”

  “No. You shouldn’t have. And if you tell anyone about what I’m about to do, then… then I really will get Aunt Isa to turn you into a frog!”

  He actually looked a tad alarmed. “She wouldn’t do that,” he said. “Would she…? And what… what exactly are you going to do?”

  “Oh, just shut up.”

  I put my arms around him and hugged him until I heard a small, sleepy “ouch” from The Nothing. We both started laughing. And then we had to hug each other again, but more gently this time.

  “We’ve been looking for you for hours,” Oscar said. “Isa said you were near the shore, but we still couldn’t find you.”

  “No,” I said. “There was a cave. An… an underground cave. It… it was hard to find the way out.” Suddenly I became aware of how much my legs were shaking underneath me, and I had to slide down on my haunches so as not to fall.

  “Are you OK?” he said with a worried look.

  “I don’t know,” I said, tentatively, because a multitude of things were whirling around inside my head. Viridian’s voice was silent now, but I could still remember what it was like to see myself through her eyes and find a small, ignorant, untrained child. Not nice. And I had a terrifying sensation of bleeding on the inside, not in my stomach or my lungs or anything like that, but in that place in me where wildsense and blood art and everything else came from. I might not be bleeding profusely from a stab wound or shark bird’s bite, yet I had been wounded. I didn’t know how to heal that kind of injury, but Aunt Isa might.

  I couldn’t explain any of that to Oscar, at least not right now. I said something simpler, easier.

  “I’m freezing. I can’t even feel my legs.”

  “Come with me,” Oscar said. “There’s a way up with steps and so on further along. And I think that Shanaia’s got a fire going up at the house.”

  Cat stretched, yawned and swatted me with a broad paw. So what are we waiting for?

  They’d left the drawing room – I imagined that all three of them had had more than enough of it – and were warming up in front of a tall, white stove in what Shanaia called the garden room, though it was clearly more room than garden. The only flowers were those on the wallpaper. Suddenly I could see that this had to be the home of a wildwitch. There were pictures of animals and birds on the walls, books about animals and birds on the bookshelves, dusty jars and pots of desiccated herbs, nesting boxes and dog baskets – Woofer had already picked the comfiest one – and cardboard boxes lined with cotton wool and newspaper, just like the hedgehog boxes back at Aunt Isa’s.

  “Here,” Aunt Isa said, handing me a steaming cup of some kind of witch’s brew. “Drink it as hot as you can without scalding yourself.”

  I sat wrapped in three blankets with my legs tucked up underneath me on a bamboo sofa with faded, floral cushions. The Nothing was still asleep on my tummy, but would snore and sneeze occasionally. I told them what had happened in the cave as best I could, but I struggled to explain many things properly. For example, how Chimera had lost her wings.

  “You cut them off her?” Oscar asked, confused. “How? With a knife? Wasn’t there a lot of blood?”

  “Not with a knife,” I said. “It was more like… it came from in here…” I pointed to the lower part of my ribs. “I don’t really…”

  “Magic?” he said eagerly. “Did you use magic?”

  “Yes… I… suppose I did.” But that didn’t ring true either. Magic was all about waving wands and fire balls and magic spells. I’d never heard of magic that cut its way out of your chest and weirdly made you bleed on the inside.

  I could feel Aunt Isa’s eyes on me, but I kept staring into my teacup.

  “Clara. I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have known better than… than to resort to blood arts.”

  “Blood arts?” Oscar’s ears pricked up. “What’s that?”

  “What I was trying to do with the wheel. Earth, water, air and fire, and blood, which binds it all together because blood is earth, water, air and fire. I had a hunch that was how the oblivion curse had been created in the first place, so it was what I thought I ne
eded to do in order to lift it. But instead…”

  She threw up her hands. “Blood has a will of its own. Blood wants blood, the saying goes, and that’s why blood arts can be difficult to control. And worse – blood arts require a very pure heart or it becomes murder. I… I shouldn’t have run that risk with you, and definitely not without you understanding what you were agreeing to.”

  “If you hadn’t done it, we might still be up in that drawing room. Or worse,” I said. “What happened to the shark birds?”

  “It was insane,” Oscar said. “They just started dropping out of the sky. We could see them through the window and hear them crash onto the floor in the hall. Some of them… some turned into ordinary, living birds and flew away. But most of them ended up as strange little heaps of feathers, bones and teeth. Totally Halloween-like. Zombie birds!”

  I thought about the feathers in Chimera’s wings. One life for each feather. Blood arts require a very pure heart or it becomes murder. Life stealer, Viridian had called Chimera.

  “Were they created using blood art?” I asked Aunt Isa.

  “Yes.”

  “Gross,” Oscar said.

  “I don’t want to turn into someone like that,” I said, and finally looked up at Aunt Isa. “I really don’t.”

  “Clara! I assure you, you won’t!”

  But I had my doubts. There was something about my blood. Viridian’s blood. My blood lives on in my heirs, Viridian had written in her book. And somehow, across four centuries, she had passed it on to me.

  It wasn’t a nice feeling.

  The Nothing could hardly believe it.

  “You want me to come with you?” she said over and over. “With you? You don’t mind?”

  “Yes,” said Aunt Isa. “If you’d like to you can live with me. Perhaps you can help me sort out my papers. After all, you know how to read and write, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” The Nothing said, startled. “I…”

  “Then that’s a deal. That is, if you’d like to?”