The Dark Ground

by Gillian Cross

  "Yes." Bando looked around for support. "That’s what happens in stories, isn’t it? People go away to have adventures—and at the end they go home again."

  The air was so tense that Cam could hardly breathe. She saw Nate’s hands clench into fists and felt her own fingers curl tightly, digging into the palms of her hands.

  "But suppose that going home is the beginning of the adventure?" Zak said softly. "Suppose the girl goes back to the tower and finds she can’t reach the handle?"

  He raised his two hands, shaping the solid sides of the tower. Uncoiling as he lifted them, he rose first onto his knees and then onto his feet in a single fluid movement, stretching up and up, with his head tilted right back, staring at something way beyond his reach.

  Cam saw the tower rising in front of her, gleaming and unattainable in the firelight. Going up and up and up. To kill the pain, she turned roughly to Lorn, speaking very fast, out of somewhere deeper than reason.

  "The boy . . . if he’s not dead . . . if he survives . . . he can come into the cavern."

  Lorn’s head snapped around. She was caught off guard, pulled out of the story, but she was still quick-witted.

  "He’ll be injured," she said. "Maybe crippled for life."

  Cam thought of the bird’s quick beak. Of its silent wings and strong, murderous claws. Then she thought of the view from the top of the bitter-nut tree.

  "He can come," she said. "Whatever state he’s in."

  11

  WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?

  Sitting high in the oak tree, Robert could almost hear Emma’s voice prodding at him. It was one of her favorite questions. Is that the worst you can think of? And he would rack his brains to imagine horrible mutilations and disasters, as though guessing the worst in advance could stop it from happening.

  Suppose you went completely blind? Or deaf? Or suppose you lost all your arms and legs? Emma usually went for physical things, and he’d copied her, pretending he’d felt the same. But he’d always known there were worse horrors for him. Things inside his head that would catch him up in a swirl of rushing darkness. Black terror. Being overwhelmed. Being unmade—None of the words he could think of got anywhere near.

  It had never occurred to him that the worst would be something that affected everything. Not just his mind or his body, but the whole world in which he moved. Everything changed and lost—and black terror flooding into the void.

  HE SAT IN THE TREE FOR A LONG TIME. NOT MOVING. NOT thinking. Not able to do anything except stare out at the impossible world around him.

  The branches made a clear-cut pattern against the light. A pattern with a double meaning.

  Flick—and it was a network of twigs, with the old leaves tarnished and next year’s buds already beginning to swell.

  Flick—and the same thing became a cage of heavy wood, where the buds were bigger than his fist and the smallest twig was too strong for him to move.

  Flick. He was sitting on an ordinary oak branch that stretched up and away in front of him.

  Flick He was stranded on a wide, cambered surface, split with cracks like ground destroyed by drought.

  Flick.

  His muscles ached. His torn arm hurt. The wound in his leg was red and hot. But his mind floated free and light, making pictures in the air.

  The old questions seemed ludicrously simple now. Where am I? What’s going to happen? He could think about those. But the new ones danced high above his head, right out of reach. How had he ended up so close to home—and so far away? And why? When he started to ask those questions, his brain swerved aside, like a horse at an impossible jump. Words like delusion and hallucination drifted in and out of his head, but they couldn’t link the last moment in the plane and the first moment in the dark wood.

  The two realities wouldn’t fit together.

  IT WAS THIRST THAT FINALLY GOT HIM MOVING. HUNGER WAS nothing. Hunger was a pain he could bear. But by midday, when the sun was high in the sky, his thirst was unendurable. It was a sick joke. He was tormented by hunger and thirst, in sight of his own house. From where he was, he could actually glimpse the roof of the kitchen. Under that roof, the fridge was crammed with food. There was water on tap. The cupboards were bursting with pasta and rice and cans of beans. One of those cans would keep him alive for a week.

  Except that he wouldn’t be able to open it.

  He pictured himself scuttling across the kitchen floor and scrabbling helplessly at the bottom of the cupboards. Like a tiny cartoon figure, he stood marooned and helpless on the floor while water gushed out of the tap and into the sink.

  Pathetic.

  Fiercely he shook his head, to get rid of the images. They were no use to him. He had to focus. His only hope of survival was to find the girl he’d seen and join up with her group—whoever they were. He had to find her.

  And that meant that he had to climb down the tree.

  The black terror surged up in his mind again, but he pushed it back. If he let himself despair, he was dead. He had to be practical. He knew he was sitting in one of the oak trees on the far side of the park. OK. So how tall were those trees? Thirty feet? Fifty? And how tall was he?

  He thought about it. To him—as he was now—the tree was like a mountain. It was monstrously high. But he’d climbed mountains before, and going down was usually the easy part. If he started right away, he ought to be on the ground in a couple of hours.

  Cautiously he stood up, leaning against the tree trunk with his good arm. He was waiting for pain to knock him sideways, but it didn’t come. His injured leg was numb and wooden. When he took a step away from the trunk, his head swam and he staggered slightly, but it was possible to move.

  At the moment.

  He wasn’t stupid enough to think that the numbness would last forever. Sometime soon there would be weakness and fever and excruciating pain. He had to get out of the tree before that happened, or he would never do it.

  Looking over the side of the branch, he studied the grooved bark of the trunk below him. He had always thought of bark as flat and smooth, but now he saw that this bark was full of ridges and cracks where he could wedge his hands and feet. The ground was terrifyingly far away, but he had learned already that one step after another would take him where he needed to go. If he could climb down at all, then he could make it.

  It was still half an hour before he could bring himself to trust his wounded leg and climb off the branch. In the end, the only thing that got him moving was fear of the ogre-bird. If it came back while he was sitting on the branch, he was done for.

  Shutting everything else out of his mind, he let himself slowly off the branch and began to climb down the tree trunk.

  HE WAS HOPELESSLY WRONG ABOUT THE TIME IT WOULD TAKE. It wasn’t at all like walking on a mountain. It was more like inching down a vertical rock face over an abyss, without a rope or an ax to secure him. The holds were good, but he had to concentrate fiercely every second he was climbing—even though his wounded arm ached and his leg trembled unpre-dictably. It took every ounce of strength and determination he could drag up.

  Whenever he reached a branch, he stopped and sprawled out, completely exhausted. But he didn’t relax. His eyes moved constantly, watching the sky around him and the endless, complex network of branches.

  He was in danger all the time. Every shadow overhead might be a bird that could swoop down and snap him up. Every movement on the ground might be a sharp-toothed creature waiting for him to climb down into its jaws. And he had no weapons and no way of fighting back.

  The fear got him climbing again as soon as he could manage it. He stayed alert, freezing whenever he heard a sound or felt a breeze on his cheek, but there was no space for feelings. All his attention was focused on finding the next handhold, the next foothold.

  Slowly, slowly he inched down the tree, glad of the mud and dirt and wood dust that covered his body and the filthy fleece that disguised his shape.

  Halfway down, he reached a sm
all branch growing at a sharp angle. Settling himself into the crook, he peered at the ground below him, trying to see the bridge where the ogre-bird had snatched him. If he was going to find the strange girl again, he had to get back to that place.

  It took him a long time to figure it out. From halfway up the tree, his eyes saw familiar shapes, and his brain named them in the old way. Park. Hedge. Ditch. Brambly wood. In that sense, he knew exactly where he was.

  The oak tree was growing in the hedge that separated the playing fields from the wood at the far end of the park. Just inside the wood there was a small drainage ditch, running along the back of the hedge.

  That’s where I was. That’s the ravine.

  He had to force himself to see it like that. The picture flicked backward and forward unstably in his head, and he had to scan the ditch—the ravine—a dozen times before he picked out the dry, broken stalk lying half in and half out of it.

  The bridge the ogre-bird had snapped.

  From where he was, it looked tiny, like a thread. He understood then how much farther he had to climb, and he put his head down on the branch in front of him and despaired.

  HE GAVE UP TWICE MORE BEFORE HE REACHED THE BOTTOM of the tree. Once when the wound on his leg broke open and began to bleed. And once when he lost his grip and fell, sliding and crashing through the leaves to land, sore and winded, on a lower branch.

  Each time, he lay flat out, utterly wretched. And each time he began to climb again in the end. What else could he do? He had no choice but to keep moving, down and down and down, with his head spinning and his body crying out with pain and exhaustion. Down and down. Down and down and down.

  When he reached the bottom, he was too tired to think. Too tired even to worry about the slow leak of blood from his wounds. Instinctively, like any other small, desperate creature, he burrowed into the litter of dry leaves at the foot of the tree. And as soon as he was completely hidden, he fell asleep.

  WHEN HE WOKE UP, IT WAS PITCH-DARK AND EVERYTHING WAS covered with dew. He drank and drank, not caring where the dewdrops were hanging. Then he hauled himself out of the leaves and limped unsteadily down to the edge of the ravine. He was on the other side now, where the girl had disappeared the night before. The bank of the ravine was thick with tangled plants, and he began to work his way through them, toward the bridge. It was like struggling through a jungle. His leg was heavy and throbbing now, and it was all he could do to stay on his feet. He had to stop and rest every few steps, and by the time he reached the bridge he was lightheaded and stumbling.

  And he had no idea where to go next.

  The girl had run across the bridge, to the place where he was standing now, and then she had vanished. He stood by the broken bridge, swaying and dazed, trying to think of how to find her. There must be . . . clues. A logical way to investigate. There had to be—

  But he was beyond thought. He didn’t even care whether the people he was hunting for were friendly or hostile. It didn’t matter anymore. He just wanted people.

  Sliding to the ground, in the shadow of the bridge, he lifted his voice and shouted, with all the energy he had left.

  "Help! Help me! Where are you?"

  The words echoed horribly in his head. An idiot’s trumpeting. Here I am! Come and kill me! Above him and all around, the deep sounds of the night rumbled and creaked incomprehensibly. Here I am! Come and kill me! He didn’t dare to shout again. Shrinking deeper into the shadows, he waited to see what would happen.

  THREE OF THEM CAME TOGETHER, RUNNING QUICKLY OUT OF the tangled vegetation. They stopped when they reached the bridge, and he could just make out their dark shapes, standing back to back as they peered around, looking for him. He drew in a breath, ready to call again—and they moved before he could speak, quick as water over rocks. Two of them flipped around beside his hiding place, closing him in. The third swung herself up on to the tree trunk and leaned over, looking down at him.

  Her face was hidden in shadow, but she wasn’t the girl he had seen before. The dark shape of her head was heavy and solid. Robert felt his throat dry up. Until that moment he had been thinking of any other people around as fellow passengers. Survivors of the same plane crash.

  But now—he didn’t know. And he was afraid.

  The idea of a plane crash didn’t fit anymore. So who were these people? What were they? He didn’t know. All he knew was that he had, somehow, become . . . like them.

  The woman leaned forward, stretching out her hand. Rough fingers brushed his face, and when he jerked his head away she laughed suddenly. A harsh, mocking bark.

  Her head turned slightly, and he heard her sniff the air. When her fingers reached out again, they found the wound on his leg and he yelled, before he could stop himself, at the sudden, sharp pain.

  The woman made a quick sound, and the other two bent and took hold of him. They lifted him out of his hiding place like a clump of thistledown, hitching their arms around his back and hoisting him onto his feet. One of them was taller than the other, but they were both male, and strong, and they both smelled the same—an acrid, smoky smell that caught in the back of Robert’s throat and made him gag.

  They hauled him away from the ravine, dragging him through rough-edged plants that scraped his skin and caught at his fleece. The ground sloped sharply up toward a wall of trees and they pulled him up the slope. The tall one had harsh, rough hands. The short one was gentler, taking his weight when he stumbled.

  Toward the top of the slope, they clambered over a huge, gnarled tree root. Between that and the next one, there was a small hole going into the ground. The woman fell onto her knees and crawled into it, feet first.

  The other two forced Robert to follow her, thrusting his head into the tunnel. The woman caught hold of his shoulders and dragged him in, edging backward and pulling him after her. Too weak to resist, Robert slid on his side through a tight, earthen tunnel, with soil falling onto his face, clogging his nose and ears. He screwed his eyes up tightly and concentrated on breathing.

  After a few seconds, he felt warm air and space around him. He opened his eyes onto a smoky darkness filled with moving shadows. He was lying in some kind of big cave, deep in the earth, and it was crowded with people.

  At least, they looked like people . . . .

  There were dozens of them, dim shapes, lit by a red glow that came from the far end of the cave. The air was thick with wood smoke, underlaid with something strong and animal, and there was a constant noise of rustling and crackling and whispering.

  Little people. Tiny creatures, huddled in a hole in the ground. Little people moving fast and secretly, smeared with the colors of the earth, faces hidden in the shadows. If he met their eyes, what strangeness would he see there? If he cut them, would they bleed cold sap?

  At the far end of the cavern was a vast brazier, punched full of holes. It was four or five times as tall as the shifting figures around it. Its dull light flickered over them, casting distorted shadows onto the rough, earthen walls.

  The men heaved Robert up onto his feet again and dragged him down the cave, toward the brazier. The tall man let him go abruptly, but the short one lowered him onto the ground, crouching down beside him. Robert scuttled away until he was up against the wall, with the warm earth touching his back. He huddled there, and his eyes flitted around the cavern, from one face to another.

  Out of the blurred darkness and the shifting, indistinguishable shapes came a familiar figure. A girl knelt in front of him, holding out something in one hand. One side of her face was lit red by the brazier, and he saw that it was the girl who had brought him food. He remembered the feel of her narrow wrist, fragile and real in his hand.

  She lifted her cupped fingers toward him. He smelled what she was holding and sensed that it was warm. When she put it to his lips, he opened his mouth and let her push it in.

  It was a coarse, stiff mash, starchy and full of husks. He swallowed and gagged—and then swallowed again as the next mouthful came at him
. And the next. And the one after that.

  The girl was scooping the food out of some container on the ground, but Robert was too tired and too weak to look down and see what it was. He just kept swallowing. Once he tried to turn his head away, but the girl slapped at his cheek with her free hand. He opened his mouth again and swallowed the last mouthful, out of sheer shock.

  Then he slept.

  12

  THEY BURNED HIS LEG.

  The pain woke him without warning, searing into the wound in his thigh. Even before he opened his eyes, he was already tensing his muscles, trying to twist away, but he couldn’t move. He was held by dozens of hands, clamped on to every limb. A circle of strange faces closed him in, staring down at him and filling the air he breathed with their smoke smell.

  He screamed without choosing to, hardly knowing that the noise was his own, and the pain came again, stabbing at his arm this time. The smoke smell was drowned out by the ugly stink of his own charred flesh, and he fainted.

  FOR DAYS — TWO? THREE? — HE DRIFTED THROUGH A WEB OF whispers and blurred images. People came and went around him, talking fast and low. Muttering in undertones to each other, with their heads close together and their hands moving, sketching meanings that he could not catch.

  There was fur underneath him, spread over springy branches that bent with his body. There was fur wrapped around him, tickling his face. He looked out of his cocoon into the hot orange holes of the brazier, which lapped him with its fierce, dry heat.

  And all around the voices fluttered and hissed, like the buzzing of flies, like the crackle of burning wood.

  Hazily, as his consciousness came and went, he picked at the stream of sound, snatching fragments of sense. He moved his lips to repeat the patterns that came again and again, and, bit by bit, he began to understand.

  Lorn . . . Cam . . . Nate . . .

  He recognized the names first, learning which head turned at each different call.

  Lorn was the girl who had led him there. She sat beside him with food, pushing it at him until he opened his mouth and ate. The sound of her name linked itself to those neat, deft fingers. It wound itself into the strands of her plaited hair and took on the shape of her fine-boned face. Lorn looked after him. And when she wasn’t looking after him, she sat in a corner of the cavern weaving threads together to make long, strong ropes.