by Leyland, L J
I grabbed Matthias’s wrist to haul him over the last step and then did the same with Noah. He straightened up right in front of me. He was so close that I could smell his scent of firewood and sea air, and I could feel the heat radiate off his body. We looked at each other. An invisible jolt passed between us as I realised that I had been more worried about his safety than my own. I fought an urge to throw my arms around his neck. No time for that now; that would have to wait until we were completely safe, which I was beginning to doubt would ever happen – Rhian would forever stalk me in my dreams.
‘Let’s go,’ said Matthias and we took off at a run into the darkness.
‘Maida!’ I heard a voice croak.
I skidded to a halt, throwing a cloud of gravel into the air. Grimmy. Where was he?
‘Maida!’ his voice was more urgent.
I ran back to the edge to find Rhian pulling on one of Grimmy’s legs from below whilst he desperately clung onto the rock steps. She had caught him. It was like watching a seagull pry a limpet from a rock. Grimmy was determined not to be dislodged and aimed sharp kicks at Rhian’s face from which she drew back and hissed like a cat. But still she kept on trying. The crowd below was baying for Grimmy’s blood and urged Rhian on like a gladiator moving in to kill an animal.
‘Maida! What are you waiting for you great trollop, help me!’ Grimmy yelled.
I paused. I knew how weasels like Grimmy worked. I’d slithered amongst the bottom-feeders at Nora’s before and I knew the way to handle them. I knew that there was an unspoken system of repayment amongst those types of people. No deed is ever given freely. If it is, you are seen as a soft touch, there to be taken advantage of, there to be exploited. And there was no way I’d ever let Grimmy take advantage of me.
‘Not so fast Grimmy,’ I said, ‘I’ll help you if you help me.’
‘You dirty little snake, you nasty little …’
‘That’s no way to speak to your rescuer now, is it? I’ll save your life in exchange for a little favour of my own. You have to be on our side. You have to drop your plan. Regina’s gone and you can’t bring her back. You can’t punish innocent people for what happened to her. Say you’re with us, truly with us, and I’ll save you.’
Rhian clawed at his leg with a particularly vicious swipe. Grimmy howled in agony.
‘All right! All right! Just get her off me!’
‘Promise? On Regina’s memory?’
Reluctance spread across his face. I shook my head disgustedly and began to back away.
He roared dramatically and shouted, ‘Fine! Fine! Have it your way!’
‘Promise?’
‘I bloody well promise, now help me, you useless tart!’
‘Charming manners, as always.’
I reached into my bag and pulled out the golden gun. It shimmered green under the light of the glow-worms. I pointed it into the air and pulled the trigger. The boom ricocheted off every wall and sent echoes bouncing off the rocks. It was deafening. It was followed by a strange silence that was oddly claustrophobic. All eyes were on me. In the second that followed, Rhian let go of her victim out of sheer surprise and Grimmy scrambled over the top step and scampered behind Matthias and Noah.
‘Rhian,’ I said but I was addressing the crowd as much as I was addressing her. ‘There’s something about me you should know.’
Rhian hauled herself up to the top of the steps and straightened up. She towered over me. She stood with her back to the drop-off of the waterfall. I sensed that Matthias and Noah were moving in to flank me on either side.
‘I’m from Brigadus. It’s an island full of people just like me who survived your ‘Reckoning’. I hate to break it to you but you weren’t the only ones saved. You’ve not been chosen. You’ve not been vindicated. You’re not special. If anything, you’re worse off than anyone else I know.’
She hissed at this and shifted her weight forward slightly, rocking on the balls of her feet as though she was about to spring.
‘You see, people in Brigadus have it tough. We live almost as badly as you do. Not much food, lots of disease. But we’re survivors in Brigadus. I’m a survivor. Do you know why that is? Because I’m not afraid of the dark.’ I started to sing:
We’ll walk together down the line; and see the sun begin to shine;
the past is dead our joy divine; our dream is won, the future’s mine.’
Rhian’s eyes widened.
‘I pity you, living in darkness and fear. I pity all of you but especially you, Rhian. You’re as soulless and dead as those bones you wear. You’re the one that’s bad, you’re the one that’s cold, you’re the one that’s in the dark, and I hope you rot there like you made your own people rot!’
She screamed as though my words had caused her physical pain. She bared her teeth and sprung towards me, hands outstretched to encircle my neck. But what happened next occurred so quickly that I didn’t even have time to duck.
The noise of a thousand flapping wings filled the air. A screech like a warning siren came from above and I was suddenly surrounded by blackness. Darkness, blackness, tearing at me, swirling around me. The bats had returned.
Whirling, diving and circling like a plague swarm, they rushed past us, back to their cave but it seemed as though there were no end to the flock. They just kept on coming. I was buffeted by their wings and gouged by their sharp claws, praying, hoping, that no rabid teeth would bite me.
I felt hands grab me but not from the direction I expected. I could just make out Grimmy in the pulsing gloom. He was pulling me deeper into the cave, following Matthias and Noah who were beating out a path through the swarm, swatting bats away with their water flasks. We followed in their wake, but then icy fingertips crawled up my back and grabbed my neck from behind. Rhian. I could hear her panting in my ear and I saw that her arms were covered in little scratches where bats claws had skimmed her.
‘They’ve come to reclaim you,’ she hissed.
There was pandemonium in the crowd below, I could hear screaming and yelling.
‘Back to the Dark where you belong,’ she laughed. I tried to aim the gun towards her but she was positioned behind me and I couldn’t get a good angle to fire. She was dragging me backwards, inching me towards the waterfall. It suddenly occurred to me that she was going to throw me over it. I began to struggle more wildly but her grip only tightened.
‘Good riddance, snake,’ she hissed
Something hit my side and I was flung sideways, towards the edge of the drop. I scrabbled to a halt, only just stopping short of tumbling down the stone steps to my death.
‘Only I get to insult her!’ I heard Grimmy roar.
He shoved Rhian with all the strength he could muster. I saw her briefly suspended in a halo of bats. She landed in the water with a splash. The bats let off a series of shrieks that sounded faintly victorious. Rhian’s cries mingled with the bats’ and I saw her swept over the waterfall. Her eyes never left mine as she went over.
She shrieked all the way down and then shrieked no more.
The last of the bats swooped into the cave in a rustling flurry until nothing could be heard but the sound of the waterfall.
Grimmy took my hand and led me towards Noah and Matthias. We walked slowly, for we knew that the others wouldn’t come after us now. Silently, we walked through the bat cave, skirting the hanging creatures that lined the walls, until we eventually reached the night air. Noah was right, the passageway did lead to the surface. I’d never been happier to be faced with rain and cold and wind. The wind reddened my cheeks and the rain trickled down my neck, making me shiver. I looked up and saw stars. Not false glow-worm stars, but real, genuine stars.
Chapter Twenty-two
I dreamt of the Mayor that night. He was summoning the ocean to engulf our little boat. The waves were tossing us around. We were on the top deck and I saw him, standing on the surface of the ocean, trident in hand, calling upon my death. The moonlight bounced off the water which was as dark as an aby
ss. Then we saw it.
A wave rolling towards us, higher than the mightiest oak, higher than the sky, unstoppable. We tried to sail away but where to go when all around you is water? The wave hit and I was thrown clear from the boat. I cried out for Noah and I watched his face as I got swept under. He remained safe and stable, master of the ark, whilst I joined the green-hued bodies of those the Mayor had already claimed as his victims during The Flood.
They tore at me, desperate to share some of my warmth whilst I still had it. Seaweed-slippery hair and crab pincer fingers. Pulling at me whilst I fought for air, lungs burning until I was finally defeated and gave in. I awoke with a jolt and it took a few seconds before I realised that I was safe. It was the type of night-terror that made you sweat and tangle up your bedcovers. I pushed them back with a relieved sigh and let the cool air meet my skin. The calm real-life waves rocked me back on to the verge of sleep.
But suddenly, there was a furtive noise in the corner of the room. Scrambling for the bedside light but still hampered by the heaviness of sleep, I knocked the light to the floor and swore loudly.
‘You’re loud enough to wake the dead,’ I heard Matthias drawl. He lit an oil lamp and it illuminated him sitting on my desk chair, his shoeless feet up on the desk.
‘Christ, Matthias, what the hell are you doing? You know that I hate anyone sneaking round whilst I’m sleeping. And get your stinking feet off those maps.’
He didn’t though. He just sat there, pensively picking at a thread on his shirt.
‘Time please?’ I asked.
‘Five thirty,’ he replied.
Barely a couple of hours since we had emerged from the underground hell.
‘Since when have you been an early bird? Go back to bed and get some rest. God knows, we all need it after last night.’
‘I can’t sleep.’
‘Grimmy snoring?’
Grimmy had the sofa to sleep on. He had pulled it as close to the stove as he possibly could, moaning all the while about how we’d find him frozen alive with frostbite. Noah and Matthias shared Edie and Aiden’s room but they were in close enough range to hear Grimmy’s volcanic rumblings every night. Luckily my captain’s cabin was set a bit further back and had thicker walls so I was spared the symphony at night.
‘No. Just been thinking.’
‘About …?’ I coaxed.
‘Nothing.’ He sighed.
This was most unlike him. You usually couldn’t stop him from saying what was on his mind.
‘Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?’ I asked teasingly.
‘I’m not playing this game.’
‘Go on, it’s fun. Besides I always win. Answer it.’
He sighed again. ‘Animal.’
‘Bats?’
I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about them; their putrid smell, their leathery wings, their miniature vampire fangs, the sound of them. I shivered and pulled the blankets back around me.
‘No,’ he said baldly.
‘Oh … human?’
He nodded sadly.
‘Rhian?’
‘Not really, but I suppose so.’
‘… You do realise what you just said makes no sense?’
‘For Christ’s sake, I told you I didn’t want to play this game!’
‘All right, all right but stop being so vague and just tell me what’s bothering you. What happened last night is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s going to be far worse situations when we meet the Highlanders and when we take on the Mayor so we need you on top form, not moping and sleep deprived.’
He got up from the chair and moved to sit on the foot of my bed. It took a minute for him to find the words he needed. ‘… You know how when we made it back to the boat last night, you said you were exhausted and went straight to bed? Well, there was still work that needed to be done, such as building the fire and casting off shore so that Rhian’s people couldn’t come on board in the night.’
‘Is that what’s wrong? You’re upset because I didn’t help out?’
‘No, that’s not it at all, let me finish. I said that I would cast us off so I stayed on the top deck. Noah and Grimmy were supposed to be building the fire downstairs. But I couldn’t hear any noises, so I came downstairs to see what was going on …’
‘And?’ I prompted. I was not sure where he was going with this but I could tell he was really upset. It was strange to see his massive shoulders sagging and shrinking with the weight of so much anxiety and sadness.
‘Grimmy was in the main cabin. He had your binoculars and was singing that song you both know. You know, “the future’s mine”. I’d never heard you sing it before you met him. We’re supposed to tell each other everything but you never sang it to me before. How do you know it?’ He sounded faintly accusatory.
‘I don’t know, it’s just sort of ingrained in my mind, as though it’s always been there but I just needed Grimmy to trigger it.’
‘Right … fine.’
‘I wasn’t keeping anything from you.’
‘Ok.’ But he didn’t sound convinced.
‘Come on, Matt, you’re being ridiculous.’
‘Am I? It seems to me that you two have a connection.’
I was about to balk at the idea that I was tied to that stinking loser in any way but Matthias held up his hand to stop me and said, ‘You have. He chose you tonight. I saw it in his eyes. You have a special connection in Regina. And I’m not part of it.’
I didn’t reply; I wasn’t going to indulge this type of self-pitying, especially at such an ungodly hour. But he continued, ‘I couldn’t see where Noah was at first. He wasn’t with Grimmy but your door was ajar …’ He trailed off.
It was a loaded sentence. He was trying to catch me out; but at what? ‘So …?’ I replied; there was a bite to my voice that I didn’t like but I couldn’t stop myself.
We might tease and needle each other regularly but there was never any real animosity between us. But perhaps things change. He shrugged in an inconsequential way but his expression was very pointed and accusatory. It was unbelievably enraging.
‘Let’s not dance around this anymore. What exactly are you accusing me of?’ I asked, trying to bottle my temper and not let it explode just yet.
‘OK … Was Noah with you?’
‘What? How the hell do I know? I was asleep!’
‘Oh very likely,’ he scoffed.
‘I was! And anyway, even if he was with me, I don’t need to justify myself to you.’
‘So he was then? You admit it?’
‘No! I told you, I fell asleep straight away. Is it my fault that all the men in my life are apparently sneaking around when I’m sleeping? Grimmy did it, you’ve done and now it appears that Noah has, too. Just my luck, I’m a magnet for weirdoes and sleep-watching obsessives. Great.’
He sniggered reluctantly at this.
‘Why would it bother you anyway? You’re not … you’re not jealous, are you?’ I cringed the moment I said it because it just felt so strange. We had a brother and sister relationship and the thought of it being anything more made me edgy and uncomfortable.
‘No … not in that way anyway. I just … I just felt so alone. Who do I have in this world? You have all these new people starting to emerge, these connections, but who have I got?’
‘Your grandmother, of course.’
He heaved a sigh and placed his head in his hands. ‘Maida, let’s not kid ourselves into thinking she’ll last much longer. After the Munitions Assistant sent round Parrots to frighten her, she’s never been the same. I doubt she’ll last the year.’
I was horrified and felt a renewed surge of anger towards the Mayor and his cronies. ‘We’ll stop them, Matthias and then we’ll get her proper help. She’ll be better once we get rid of the Mayor.’
He shrugged as though the matter was irrelevant and he’d already given up hope. ‘You have so much opening up for you, so many people that could now be part of your life. Grimmy –’
‘No really, Maida, Grimmy is now part of your life. You’re connected in some way. I saw the way he was with you tonight. He saved you. He’s chosen you to follow and now he’ll follow you anywhere. And he might be the key to discovering who your parents are. And when you find them … well, things will be different. Edie and Aiden are growing up, you’ll spend more time with them. And now … Noah.’
‘It might not work out, he’s a Blueblood,’ I said but the words tasted bitter in my mouth. I knew I wanted it to work out more than I could say.
‘But who do I have?’
‘Me,’ I said in a quiet voice.
‘No offence, Mai, but you’re only one person and you’ll start to drift away. You can’t be a substitute for an entire family. I have no family left.’
‘But you’re part of our family. Our family of Edie, Aiden, Noah, Wolf, Grimmy … my parents if I find them … and you … and me.’
‘Pretty dysfunctional family.’
‘Well, that can be our last name – The Dysfunctionals. Maida Dysfunctional. Matthias Dysfunctional. We’ll put it on our letterbox and hang a plaque on our front door – The Dysfunctionals’ House – only weirdoes and misfits welcome. We’ll have a great time.’
He laughed at this.
‘Now, are you done with me being your councillor or do you need more therapy because I have to get my beauty sleep now?’
‘I’m OK, I guess. Go to sleep. But do you mind if I stay in here?’
‘Seriously, what is it with people watching me sleep?’
‘No, not because of that … Grimmy’s snoring really is like thunder tonight. I’ll sleep in the chair if you don’t mind.’ He blew out the oil lamp and I snuggled down under the covers and tried to listen to his rhythmic breathing.
But I couldn’t stop my mind from whirling. Had Noah really been in my room whilst I was asleep? Should I be worried by that? I decided that no, rather than being creepy, as it was when Grimmy did it, it was actually very sweet. He was just making sure I was peaceful and safe. I felt free of anxiety and calmer than I had done in days, knowing that he was there to watch over me. I drifted off into a dream about Grimmy and Regina. My mother. Maybe. Possibly. I would tackle Grimmy about it as soon as I could. Perhaps he could help to shine some light on the situation.