Down Station

by Simon Morden

  Even though she knew she shouldn’t, once she’d drunk her fill of cold, clear spring water so that it sat heavy and potent in her belly, she levered herself up and slid into the pool, pushing herself up and over the rim.

  She held her face just over the surface of the water, while it soaked up her arms and legs. It wasn’t deep. It barely came to her elbows. But it was enough. She pressed her head down and turned it side to side, wetting her hair and scalp, watching the water tint pink in front of her wide-open eyes.

  Then she rolled on to her back, spreading her arms wide and letting her body float. The water around her, constantly refreshed, gradually grew clearer as she lay there, her clothes once again becoming loose about her, rather than stuck to her skin. With her arms up, only the oval of her face – eyes, nose, mouth and chin – was above the rippling surface. She reached under for the boilersuit’s zip and dragged it down, easing her arms out one at a time, and pulled it down to her waist.

  It wouldn’t come. It was stuck against something on her back. And yet when she tugged, it didn’t hurt. It just didn’t move.

  The material was too tough for her to tear. She didn’t have a knife, though Crows might have left something in the castle. She couldn’t see her back anyway.

  She gave up and tried to sit. Even that simple task seemed almost beyond her. She felt so weak, it took an age to manage upright. Something broke the water behind her, distinctly, long after she did.

  She didn’t dare turn around. As the coldness of the water faded and the warmth of the late afternoon air touched her, she realised that there was something clinging to her back, hanging between her shoulder blades, heavy and wet. She sat very still, screwing her eyes up so that she wasn’t even tempted.

  She shifted slightly, and the weight shifted with her, slow and large.

  She couldn’t sit there all day. She couldn’t avoid whatever it was. She had no weapons, but she did have magic. What good that might be against something that held her so close without her noticing until now was only ever going to be a guess.

  She opened her eyes and turned her head slightly, her gaze falling on the frayed strap of her top, her bruised brown skin, the slope of her shoulder, and the tawny ridge of feathers behind.

  No hesitation now. Her head snapped around to the other shoulder, and there was another mass of mottled plumage. It didn’t matter over which side she looked, the view was identical and reversed.

  She had wings.

  Actual wings. Sodden, bedraggled, dripping water, but they were incontrovertibly wings. They hung off her back, still and lifeless, on her and part of her, and she couldn’t move them because she had no way of knowing how to move them. Which muscles should she flex, which part of her brain should she spark to trigger that? She knew how to move her fingers, her toes: she just thought about it, and it happened. But wings?

  How did she even get wings? Where did they come from, and what did they mean? Was it what Crows said, about doing too much, too soon? Had she become so infested with magic that it was breaking out, changing her without asking, taking her over.

  She didn’t know if she should be scared or not. She’d grown wings because … she’d wished for them. Trapped on the mountain with only an angry dragon for company, with a sheer drop behind her, she remembered what she’d thought, what would have helped at that moment. If she could have flown.

  And now she had wings. She didn’t know if that meant she could fly. Perhaps it did, if she could work out how to use them. On the other hand, if she did, then she knew nothing about how to fly. If she’d been given a car, she wouldn’t know how to drive it any more than being given wings gave her the knowledge of how to swoop and dive and soar.

  Still sitting in the pond, she forced her legs out the boiler suit, then worked it backwards over the wings until she was free of it. She felt awkward, that standing would make her overbalance. But she couldn’t just stay there. Afternoon was stretching into evening, and soon it would be night.

  As well as awkward, she felt restless. She hadn’t eaten for a day, two days, maybe longer – however long it had taken for her to get back to the castle. She was battered and bruised and bewinged, but she was also hollow.

  Gripping the side of the pool, she got herself to crouching. Then slowly, slowly, she stood, more water pouring from her, giving her goosebumps as it evaporated away. She felt the wind catch the feathers behind her, and she shivered.

  Her wings flexed, and tugged against her. She splashed her feet, scrabbling for stability, and after five or six steps, was able to stand mostly upright again. Gingerly, she lifted a leg over the edge of the pool, then the other, and she was on the pavement, leaving damp footprints trailing up to the door.

  She was getting used to it, to them. There was nothing to it, really, just a difference in her gait, a change in her posture, a slight delay in her turn. She’d have to open the door wider. That was fine, too.

  Wings. She had wings. Her breath caught in her throat, coming out like the first sob. She’d wanted this – not this exactly – but this: to bend the world to her will. It had always been coldly inflexible before, uncaring, unresponsive to her wants and wishes. Now Down was giving her her dreams in a piecemeal, overgenerous way that didn’t make any sense and wasn’t controllable.

  She could snap her fingers and light fires. She could drag light and dark out of thin air. She could weave the natural world around her for camouflage and for weapons. A castle was growing out of the ground to her unbidden command.

  No one had said Down was safe. It was the ways in which it was unsafe that confounded her. Friends that turned out to be enemies, she could understand. Growing wings was incomprehensible.

  She could ignore that for the moment, despite the ever-present weight on her back. The first thing she did was check the little room she’d slept in for the map she’d drawn. It had gone, taken by Crows.

  Of course it had. Maps were power and wealth. Why did people tell her the truth and then betray her with those same truths? Because they could. Draw a map, said Crows, put everything down that you remember. How stupid could she be? He’d told her exactly what he was going to do, and she hadn’t even noticed, in the same way that the wolfman had: in Down, there was no one to stop you doing whatever you wanted. She hadn’t asked, what if you wanted to be very wicked?

  So the map had gone. She could make another one, with the right materials, which inevitably had gone too, with the rest of Crows’ supposed hoard of knowledge. It became more of a question of what he’d left than what he’d taken.

  The candle was still on the table, and she lit it almost casually, even though the act itself was extraordinary. There was grain, which she could boil, but there was also a cake of something dark and heavy and sticky. She licked her fingers and tasted the dense flavours of sweet, rich fruit, dried and compressed into a single solid block.

  Which she tore into, pulling and clawing, and when that wasn’t fast enough, picking up and worrying chunks out of it with her small white teeth.

  What was she doing? She put the pressed fruit down on the table and backed away like it was something live and dangerous. She spat out what was already in her mouth and not yet down her throat or her front. She liked sweet stuff, but not that much, not that intensely. Yet she could see her fingers glistening and had the overwhelming urge to suck the syrup off them.

  She made a conscious effort to stop herself. Boiling the grain up, making a porridge, it would take time. She could do that: she didn’t have anything else do. Crows wasn’t around, and judging from what was missing, he wouldn’t be coming back. This was her castle now, and it certainly seemed to be responding to her presence by becoming more complete. She filled a metal pot with grain, listening to the way they bounced against sides, and carried it outside to fill it with water.

  The sun was setting, and the sky was turning purple with dusk. The crows were coming back to r
oost, their black shapes wheeling above her and around the incomplete tower. They called to her, and she watched the way their wings snapped and flapped as they turned.

  She felt a longing, a terrifying ache, that told her she should be up there, with them, and not concerning herself with such mundane things as cooking. Birds didn’t do that; they lived off the wild bounty of the world.

  She clenched her fists and closed her eyes, and the feeling passed.

  Crows had piled up firewood and set the pot over it. She tried to copy what he’d done, but inevitably she was unpractised, and she hadn’t been paying that much attention. The wood, she could find, stacked away in another room, but it came with no instructions on how much to use or how to lay it out. She guessed, and caught it alight by willpower alone. When the first flames had died down, she dropped a scorched, sooty flat stone into the middle of the fire, and carefully placed the pot on top of it.

  The heat reached her, and made her shy away, her feathers trembling. The pot settled on the stone at an angle, but it didn’t spill. She’d need to remember to pad her hand when she retrieved it later. When she looked up, the crows were still circling and calling. It would take a while for the grain to cook down. Time enough to climb the tower.

  She tried to resist. She tried so very hard. But wrestling with her compulsions was harder, and she was exhausted and confused, and in no state to feel strong. She gave in. She almost ran. Back inside, up the steps, past the room she’d entered previously because that too was now enclosed by timbers stretching overhead and boarded out. The steps, where they’d petered out into space now carried on, and so did she.

  The tower now had a top, a parapet of stone that was waist-high, and the rafters that would make the roof had already grown out. All that was missing was the floor beneath, and the shingles above. The crows swirled around her, cawing and cackling, but those already roosting merely hopped out of her way as she stepped on the exposed beams on her way to the edge.

  She planted her feet, held on to one of the angled uprights, and stared out over Down. From the height she was at, she could see more, even the distant mountain with the twin peaks, which the geomancer ruled and where she’d fought a dragon and at least not lost.

  When she leaned out and looked down at the cooking fire, she didn’t feel a visceral turn in her stomach. Rather, she felt the opposite. Elation. Her wings fluttered against the gusting wind, rising of their own accord.

  A crow hopped on to the parapet beside her, its head turning to inspect her with one dark eye. The same wind that she felt riffled the purple-black plumage on its back, and it flapped its wings with sudden violence, making the wing-tips snap like whips. It settled, and its pale beak announced a caw.

  ‘Caw,’ she said back. ‘Caw.’ Her own wings, brown, speckled with white and black, remained mute.

  The crow stretched its wings out again, and flapped them hard. It rose into the air, and glided back into place. It looked at her again, its bright eye shining. She could see her reflection, strange and inhuman.

  For a third time, the crow flapped and rose, fell and folded.

  It was trying to teach her how to fly, and she still didn’t have the muscles or the motive. All she had was wings, that were surely insufficient to carry her aloft.

  She stepped up on to the stonework, and spread her arms wide.

  She wanted to do it. She wanted to leap out into the sky and not hit the ground. She knew she mustn’t. That it was a dangerous, lethal delusion, brought about by Down’s magic. It was going to kill her if she jumped, because there was no way she’d survive the impact with the unforgiving pavement below.

  The crow looked at her, daring her. They were both birds. With a flap of her wings, she’d be away, rising over the darkening land, wheeling and calling with all the others. How simple and straightforward that would be.

  She wavered between flying and falling, caught between what she knew to be true and what her dreams told her to believe. The wind whirled around her bare legs, her exposed midriff, her outstretched arms. Her hair, still damp in its depths, quivered with anticipation.

  How could she contemplate this? This was craziness, drug-fuelled, bad trip psychosis. She wasn’t going anywhere but back, on to the wooden beams and down the stairs and collect her meal that was steaming merrily away over its bed of brightly glowing coals.

  But despite everything, she knew that if she missed this opportunity, that she’d wake in the morning and the gift would be gone. Down gave, and Down would take away. There was no guarantee that she’d ever find this road again.

  Tricked by the wolfman, abandoned by Crows, alone in two worlds, and only Down had stepped in to save her when death had seemed certain, each and every time, hiding her in the folds of its land and rising up to drive off the dragon.

  She steadied herself, gripped harder with her toes, and shouted out over the tops of the trees to the lake and sea beyond.

  ‘You seem to be helping me. I don’t know why. I can live small, and regret it for however long I’ve got, or I can risk everything now to live large. And I’m tired of living small.’

  She leaned forward, over the parapet, over the pavement, and stretched her whole body out towards the sky.

  22

  There was no fight. Not that day, and not the next.

  Stanislav was the one who became like a caged beast, prowling and snapping, being forced to wait and finding that waiting impossible to endure. Dalip was calmer than he thought he’d be: he had the prospect of a fight to the death, yet he’d come to some measure of acceptance that the older man had not. He’d accepted the plan they’d devised, and it was now Stanislav who wanted to change it, strike pre-emptively while the geomancer was incapacitated.

  The guards bore the brunt of his bad temper, and it was a constant surprise to Dalip that they wore it as well as they did. They were the guards, they were in charge, and they should have had no qualms about putting him back in his place. But they understood. Perhaps they were waiting for something too.

  The day’s work had ended, and the slaves were being herded chaotically back to their cells. They were, briefly, all together. Mama, as usual, waited to be pushed across the threshold.

  Then Stanislav turned around and said he had had enough.

  Pigface pushed past the other guard. ‘We don’t want any trouble, Slav. Just do as your told.’

  ‘No. Now is as good a time as we will get. Dalip? Take his knife.’

  Dalip stepped around Stanislav. He reached out, got his hand slapped away, but in that narrow corridor, it was easy enough for him to immediately bring his other hand across and pull the knife free of its scabbard. He held it high, and Stanislav reached up to take it from him.

  ‘Hey. Give that back.’ Pigface tried to find the space to wrestle with Stanislav, but there was none.

  ‘You want it back?’ Stanislav slipped his arm under Dalip’s and stabbed Pigface. Not once, but repeatedly, the blade going in and out into the man’s stomach like a sewing-machine needle. Both the other guard and Dalip watched the sudden series of impacts with shock, as if it was happening to someone else, somewhere else.

  Then Pigface folded, leaning against Dalip before sliding wetly to the floor.

  The remaining guard stared and stared, then tried to run for it.

  ‘Stop him.’

  Dalip, used to obeying that voice, and that tone of voice, leapt after him, brought him down and tangled his fingers in his hair. Then he jabbed his wrist forward, and the man’s forehead connected with the stone flags. His captive went limp.

  ‘Did you have to?’ Dalip said, getting to his feet.

  Stanislav rolled Pigface flat to search him for anything else useful. Pigface wasn’t dead yet, but would be very soon, and as he was turned, he made a sort of wet, gurgling noise that elicited quiet moans of dismay from the others.

  ‘He is the enemy.
He is complicit in our slavery. You want to show him mercy?’ He slid the bloody blade over to Dalip. ‘Then do so. It will be more than he would have done for any of us.’

  Dalip wasn’t going to stab a dying man. And neither was he going to have the other guard stabbed either. He dragged him into his own cell, pulled the door closed and started to lower the bar across it.

  ‘You have not finished him.’

  ‘No. I’m not going to either.’

  Stanislav scooped up the knife with an exasperated sigh. ‘This is weakness. This will get us all killed.’

  ‘We can just leave him there.’

  ‘When he begins to scream and shout, others will come and free him. Then we will have to kill them to escape.’ Stanislav jabbed his finger hard against Dalip’s temple. ‘You are not thinking.’

  ‘We cannot kill an unconscious man.’

  ‘You want to wait until he wakes up?’

  ‘We can’t.’ Then: ‘I won’t let you. You might not have any scruples, but I do.’

  Stanislav made to lift the bar, and Dalip slammed his hand on top of it, holding it in place.

  ‘We don’t have time for an argument,’ he said.

  Pigface coughed, his whole frame shaking, and Stanislav broke the stand-off. ‘The pit, then. Mama, go to the guard room and bar the outside door. Elena, Luiza, bring the table there through into the pit, and a chair.’

  The women stood the other side of the dying man, the other side of the thick lake of blood that was welling up and out of him, across the floor, up to the walls.

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ said Mama, ‘Sweet merciful Jesus. Look what you did, Stanislav. Look what you did to this man.’

  Elena shrank back behind her, using her bulk to shield the ruination from sight, but Luiza grabbed hold of her cousin, and started barking at her in Romanian. Stanislav was already down the corridor, at the junction. His face was set hard, and he shouted one word: ‘Hurry!’

  Dalip took a deep breath. ‘Mama, we don’t have a choice now. We can’t go back. But we can get out of here: just come with me.’