The Dark Ground

by Gillian Cross

  Robert started to struggle after her, but he managed to take only a couple of steps. Before he could cover any distance, the monster on the bank lifted its head and looked hard at Cam. Then it turned and slipped off into the bushes, still with Nate’s body in its mouth. And Cam was on her way back, shouting at him now.

  "Get to the other side! Before it comes after us!"

  "But . . . Nate—"

  "Don’t be a fool," Cam said bitterly. "It’s too late for that. Come on!"

  She grabbed Robert’s arm and dragged him with her, pulling so fiercely that he almost lost his footing. Zak was kneeling on the opposite bank, waiting to help them out of the water. All three of them were soaked and shivering, but Cam didn’t let them stop for an instant.

  "Get up the bank," she snapped. "Don’t look back. Just climb."

  It was a frantic, desperate scramble. Robert didn’t know how he made it to the top. When he heaved himself over the edge, onto level ground, his half-healed leg was twitching uncontrollably. He lay flat on the ground, sobbing with fear and struggling not to retch.

  "You can’t stop there." Cam heaved at his shoulder. "We have to get out of sight. Come on. On your feet."

  Robert groaned. Zak caught hold of his arm and tugged him up, and the three of them began to battle their way through the stiff grass toward the shadows ahead. Hide, hide, hide. None of them said it, but the word was drumming in Robert’s head with every step he took. There was no time for any other kind of thought. They had to get past the grassland and into the darkness beyond, underneath the great trees.

  It took them ten minutes to reach the trees. As they drew near, the grass began to thin out. Eventually it disappeared completely and they were struggling through a vast, dank wasteland, roofed by arching branches as high as the sky.

  The ground under the trees was cluttered with a labyrinth of dead leaves, heaped head-high, like old, damp carpets. Between the heaps, wet silt squelched underfoot, years deep and rotten. The air smelled of earth and decay, and the nearest tree trunk loomed above the leaf piles like a grim castle, several hours’ walk ahead of them.

  Cam plunged into the labyrinth as though she never meant to stop, but neither of them could keep up the pace she set. They were all breathless and desperate. The rotting silt sagged under them, and the piled leaves blocked their path. When there was no way around, they had to clamber over the unstable, slithering heaps. After ten minutes of struggling, they were barely able to move.

  "We can’t go on," said Zak. "We need a rest."

  Robert didn’t want to stop. Not until he was too exhausted to think. Too exhausted to remember. But he knew Zak was right. They couldn’t keep going forever.

  "What are we going to do?" Cam snapped. "Go to sleep on top of the leaves? With a label saying, EAT ME?"

  She looked up expressively, and Robert shuddered. It was obvious what she meant. They were hemmed in by the leaf piles, but not protected. Any bird that hopped close by—any dog, any hungry predator—would see them easily. They couldn’t relax unless they found a hiding place.

  "We’ll have to stop sometime," Zak said. "And it’s not going to be any different three hours farther on."

  Robert nodded. There was only one way of hiding that he could see. "We’ll have to burrow under the leaves."

  Cam scowled. But she didn’t argue. Crouching down, she began to part the dead leaves with her hands, making a space underneath the top layer.

  "It stinks," she muttered.

  It did. But there was no choice. Five minutes later, they were out of sight under the leaves, with their blankets wrapped tightly around them and their packs tucked close against their chests.

  "OK. Let’s get to sleep then," Cam said. She curled up, turning slightly away from the others.

  "Not yet," said Zak. "There’s something we have to do first."

  Robert had no idea what he meant, but it was obvious that Cam knew. Her whole body tensed.

  "We can’t do it now," she muttered, without turning back. "Not in a place like this."

  "The place isn’t important." Zak was quiet but insistent. "We must do what’s proper for Nate."

  "Nate was a fool," Cam said. Her voice was indistinct, muffled in her blanket. "He shouldn’t have been there on his own. He ought to have had someone watching out for trouble while he tied his pack."

  Someone. Robert knew who that was.

  "I should have been there," he said. The words almost choked him. "He knew I was worried about being slow across the stream, and he told me to go on ahead. But I should have stayed."

  "It’s not your fault," murmured Zak. "Nate was the hunter. He knew what to do. He should have ordered you to stay."

  Robert shook his head. "He was my friend. He was trying to help me."

  "He shouldn’t have let that interfere," Cam said sourly. "He—"

  She didn’t finish what she was saying, because Zak interrupted her. "Begin," he said. This time his voice was harsh and full of authority.

  For a second, Cam was very still. Then she began to speak in quite a different way, with a kind of awkward formality.

  "Nate lived with us and now he is dead. We do not want to let him go, but we cannot bring him back by protesting or by grieving. We shall miss him."

  "What will you miss?" said Zak.

  There was a little pause. Then Cam said, "He was the best hunter that we had. He knew how to concentrate without being afraid."

  Zak turned his head slightly, toward Robert. "And what about you? What will you miss?"

  Robert didn’t need to think. "He was my friend. He was always helping me."

  "He noticed when people needed help," said Cam. "But he always did it without a fuss."

  "He made his mind up carefully." Robert hadn’t realized that before, but when he said it Nate came to life sharply in his mind. Thinking things over and then—when he had thought—making a firm decision. "He was sensible but he wasn’t frightened of taking a risk."

  Zak lay motionless, not speaking a word, while Robert and Cam remembered in turn. Nate seemed nearer and more real with every word they spoke, and the speaking held him there with them.

  After a long time, there was silence.

  Zak let the silence stretch out until it was almost too much to bear. Then he said, "Nate is dead now. We can’t change that. We have to accept it and say good-bye to him. That is how it has to be."

  "Good-bye, Nate." Cam’s voice shook as she said it. "We shall miss you."

  "Good-bye, Nate," said Zak. "We will remember you."

  Robert closed his eyes. "Good-bye, Nate." He forced himself to say it, but he knew it wasn’t enough. It was a moment before the right words came to him. When they did, he spoke them clearly into the darkness. "He was called Steven."

  He had never said it out loud, but the name came easily, fitting his memory of Nate. Reminding him of how much he didn’t know and now would never know.

  "Good-bye, Steven," said Cam and Zak together.

  Then they slept.

  IV

  18

  LORN DREAMED OF FROST AND NIGHT.

  She was wandering over bare ground so hard and cold that her feet stuck to the earth. Pulling them free stripped off the skin, layer by layer, until she was walking on raw flesh, but there was no feeling, because her legs were numb.

  Gazing down she found that she could look into her own body. Through the transparent skin she saw ice crystals forming, blocking the arteries and clogging the muscle fibers. Her heart labored to pump the slow, thick blood and her lungs ached, drawing in air that froze the flesh inside.

  Darkness ate at the edges of her consciousness, blurring her mind. The warm core of her body was breaking down. She opened her mouth to yell defiantly, or to call for help, but the ice invaded her throat, turning the soft flesh rigid and choking her . . . .

  And then she woke.

  She was in Zak’s sleeping place, by the cavern entrance. That evening, without a word, the others had moved her blanket
s there. Twice, while they sat talking, she had gotten up to put the blankets back into her usual corner, but each time they had reappeared beside the mouth of the tunnel. In the end, she had given up and gone to sleep where they wanted her to be.

  Waking now, she could feel the draft that seeped in under the bushes blocking the entrance. The cold air curled its way between the branches, and she knew, without thinking, that the temperature had dropped while she was asleep.

  She put her face closer to the dark space and sniffed. Not frost. Not yet. But it was nearer than before. Even with her blanket, she was shivering. Very soon the frost would be there.

  Pulling the blanket around her shoulders, she stood up and padded across to the brazier, walking close to the left wall of the cavern. The others were all huddled on the opposite side, to avoid disturbing the journey line. Lorn walked close beside the sticks that protected it, following it along the wall.

  The four small stones had inched a little way farther down the line. Perdew and Bando moved them a short distance each day, and now they were about a quarter of the way along it. Crouching down, Lorn laid her hand over them. They were cold to touch, and she winced, imagining what it must be like outside. Even inside, it would be bitterly cold now, without the brazier.

  And every day it would get colder.

  She picked up the stones and cupped them in her hands to warm them. Bando was talking to himself as he slept. She could hear him mumbling disjointedly. Still holding the stones, she walked on down the cavern and stopped beside him, listening to pick out the words.

  ". . . Hello? Hello? . . . Is that—oh, hi, Cam! . . . Yes, it’s me . . . it’s Bando . . . . How are you doing . . . ?"

  For a moment Lorn could almost hear Cam’s distant, faint replies. The thought of it—the illusion—was too much to bear. She caught her breath painfully.

  The noise woke Perdew. When he saw her standing there, he got up quietly and came to join her.

  And Bando went on mumbling. "Great to hear your voice, Cam. How’s things? . . . How far have you gotten? . . . What’s it like?"

  Very softly, through gritted teeth, Lorn said, "I can’t bear it."

  Perdew put an arm around her shoulders. "I dream about phone calls, too," he muttered. "All the time. And letters and e-mails. If we could just have one message—somehow—"

  "But it’s not going to happen, is it?" said Lorn. "We can’t find out anything. All we can do is wait."

  And all the time it’s getting colder.

  She moved her cupped hands again to warm the stones. And then, seeing Perdew watching her, she opened them to show him what she was holding. He shook his head disapprovingly.

  "Put them back. Bando will go crazy if he wakes up and finds them gone."

  "They were so cold," Lorn said.

  But she turned back toward the line, looking for exactly the right place. When she found the little dents the stones had left, she began to lay them down. The red one first, and then the gray one and the yellow one.

  When she came to the last—the black one—something made her hesitate. She weighed it in her hand reluctantly, looking down at the dent.

  Then Perdew hissed at her. "Quickly! He’s waking up!"

  Lorn put the black stone down hastily, against her better judgment. But she wasn’t fast enough. Bando heard Perdew’s whisper, and he looked around and saw her.

  "Leave the stones alone!" he shouted.

  Lumbering onto his feet, he charged down the cavern toward her.

  "They’re all there," Lorn said soothingly. "Look."

  But she hadn’t been careful enough. The moment Bando saw the stones, he flew into one of his stupid, blind rages.

  "The black one shouldn’t be there! Can’t you see? It’s in the wrong place!"

  He snatched it up and threw it furiously, as hard as he could. There was a chink as it bounced off the brazier, and it disappeared into the shadows.

  Immediately Bando was horrified at what he’d done. He raced off down the cavern to get the stone back.

  But they couldn’t find it anywhere.

  23

  WHEN ROBERT WOKE, HE WAS STIFF AND COLD AND IT WAS already evening. Cam had wriggled out from under the leaves and she was gazing up at the sky.

  "Look," she said, half under her breath. "It’s the wires."

  Robert pulled himself to where she was crouching. It was getting dark, but there was enough light to make out the thick, horizontal lines. The impossible cables they had seen at the end of the tree wall were high in the air above them, off to the right. They ran straight across the wasteland, from one concrete pillar to another.

  "They go all the way," Cam said. "Right to the corner."

  For a second, Robert didn’t understand why she sounded so excited. Then he looked around and saw how dark and gloomy it was, and how the leaf piles blocked their view, in every direction. With nothing to guide them, they could have walked around in circles forever.

  But they could rely on the wires.

  They set out as soon as they had eaten, plodding patiently over the thick, wet silt. Their footsteps made no sound. After the intensity of the day before, the stillness and silence were like a dream, and they walked without speaking, deep in their own thoughts.

  It was very slow. They took half an hour to reach the next concrete pillar and another hour to reach the one after that. There was nothing but the pillars to mark off the time, and they walked on and on, until it was too dark to see.

  Then they crawled under the leaves again, to sleep.

  This time they didn’t lie separately, in their own blankets. They had lost heat too fast that way. It was better to make a space that was big enough for all three of them. They used the blankets to line it and lay curled up together, lapped in fur and breathing each other’s breath in a close, damp warmth.

  As soon as they were settled, Robert became aware of a strange, low vibration coming through the earth. It surrounded him completely, as if he could hear the ground breathing, and his body vibrated to the same humming rhythm. It swelled and faded and swelled and faded, but it never disappeared altogether.

  He was going to ask the others what they thought about it, but he wasn’t quick enough. Before he could put the words together, their breathing changed and they were asleep.

  BY THE SECOND DAY, HE KNEW THEIR BREATHING SO WELL THAT he could tell the different rhythms apart, with his eyes shut. He learned their smells, too, from all the time they spent curled up under the leaves. Cam sweated more than Zak, but beneath the sharpness of the sweat, her essential smell was fresh and sweet, like newly split wood. Zak was quite different. He smelled dry and cool, like fresh clay.

  Gradually the three of them took on the colors of the earth. Their skins had been dirty before. Now the wet silt stained them a deep brown and their worn bat-leather tunics crumpled into soft folds, like veining on dead leaves. From three steps away, they were invisible, but Robert could locate the other two without looking, picking their individual scents out of the complicated mix in the night air.

  They traveled in twilight and at dawn, in the dim hours of the day. When it was too dark to see where they were going, or too light to be safe, they wriggled in under the loose leaves and slept, gathering their strength again.

  They never saw the sun. They were always surrounded by shadows and strange, indeterminate sounds. When they were up and traveling, they moved through a world without colors, full of dim shapes and indistinct, half-seen movements. They heard the kiuuu of the night bird high above them and the rustle of unknown creatures passing near at hand.

  Lying under the leaf litter, they were wrapped in darkness, and the leaves moved all around them, nudging at their fur cocoon. Small, hard feet padded over its surface. Curious antennae intruded into any opening. Long, muscular bodies slithered past, rippling against the outside of the blankets. Every inch of the dark, barren ground had its own tenants, and Robert learned fast which of them had to be fought off with a quick jab of his spear.


  He learned which of them to eat, as well.

  There was no other food to add to the grain they carried. Nothing green grew around them, and they dared not try any of the fungi that clung to the dead leaves. To get enough food to keep them going, they had to hunt the creatures around them, spearing soft, wriggling flesh and cracking open hard, armored casings.

  All the time—hunting or walking or sleeping—Robert was aware of the strange vibration growing stronger.

  BY THE END OF THE FIFTH DAY, IT COULDN’T BE IGNORED. IT hummed in the air when they woke before dawn, and they could feel it even when they were up and walking. It seemed louder with every step they traveled. They had to brace themselves against it when they rested at midday, and by evening their whole bodies were ringing with it. In the darkness it brought with it a bright, low light that flared and vanished suddenly.

  They hardly slept at all that night. The humming filled their heads and buzzed in their brains. The strange light swept over the dead leaves, flooding everything with a cold brilliance that pierced even the top layers. Even inside the fur blankets. Robert saw Cam’s shadowy face, with the eyes gleaming, and he knew that she was thinking the same as he was.

  We’re almost there.

  THE NEXT DAY THEY REACHED THE END OF THE PARK. THE great trees stopped two hours before the end, but the metal bars went all the way, running through a green jungle of thorn vines and creepers, to a single concrete pillar in the far corner.

  It was evening when they struggled through the last of the jungle and reached the foot of the pillar. Cam stood in the shadows, looking up at it.

  "Bet there’s a good view from the top," she said.

  She had to shout now, to make herself heard. The vibrations had grown into a loud roar that came and went constantly, echoing in their heads and shaking their whole bodies. Its flaring light alternately dazzled them and plunged them into darkness, and the smell of it tainted the air they breathed. The damp, green scent of the plants was overlaid by an acrid, metallic stench that filled their lungs and clung to the backs of their throats.