The noise grew louder, an engine’s roar. Tin whirled, leaping off the Elk’s back, and Mallow leaped with him. Voles, sparrows and lizards scattered into the tall grass. Downhill, behind the many-coated crowd of animals and Wild Folk that had gathered in the wake of the Elk, who left a gleaming trail of golden dust behind her, a machine on four wheels screeched towards them. It was one of the abandoned automobiles from Before that Tin and the other orphans in the Cloister had most often used for scrap metal in the Metals Studio. There’d never been enough fuel to run them efficiently, so they’d been left to rust. This one had most of its outer metal torn away so that its wires and joints showed, like a cadaver. The Brothers must have used some of the last of the City’s stargold to get it here, Tin thought. At its wheel sat a broad, white-haired, pale-skinned Brother wearing the robes of the Cloister. Another sat beside him, slimmer, his face in shadow.
Tin’s whole body flashed hot, then cold. It was Father Ralstein himself, and Brother Warren beside him. Dread unlike any he’d ever felt in his life almost paralysed him.
“Now we’re in for it,” whispered Mallow, and the hopelessness in his voice made Tin rally with a last surge of courage. He took several steps forward, brandishing his Oddness. The crowd of Wild Folk had gone very, very still. In their blood and bones they remembered the sounds of machines like the one racing towards them, and the terror of it numbed them. Even the Elk wouldn’t move. She stood staring, the shine of her body dulled with sorrow. Comfrey clung to her neck, trying hard to breathe. Only the Coyote-folk were unafraid. The Coyote-woman rushed to Tin’s side, snarling, the others close at her heels. Another six raced from the trees where they’d been hiding. For once, Mallow didn’t quail at the sight of them. Something larger was at stake today.
“We need my Fiddleback,” Tin said, turning to them. “We have to bait them, we have to distract them so the Wild Folk here can get away, and the Elk of Milk and Gold most of all. I will go to them. I’m what they’re here for.” He only fully understood the weight of his words as he spoke them. It was the truth, and it had been eating at him while the First Bobcat had told her story. He had to turn himself over to the Brothers, distract them from the gathering of Wild Folk here. They could not learn what it was the Elk had done with the last gold of Farallone. Let the Fiddleback distract them from this truth.
“No, Tin!” cried Comfrey, jumping down from the Elk’s back too. “You can’t! Not after all this, there must be another way!”
But one of the Coyote-men was already rolling the Fiddleback down from the clearing. Tin choked. It looked so small now, so dirty and battered, half-wild itself.
“There isn’t, Comfrey,” Tin said, his voice calm. “Don’t you see, it might be my very presence here that brings about the fate you and Oro saw in the feather. We thought we were hiding the Fiddleback, and the secret of the Wild Folk, from the City, but all the while we were leading them right to the heart of it! I can’t let that happen any more.”
“You are braver than we thought, human boy,” the Coyote-man said to him in a tone that half-mocked and half-praised, and ended in a growl. The battered Fiddleback was by his side.
Comfrey tried to take hold of Tin’s shoulder, but he pulled away, unable to look at her, and began to stride down through the crowd of Wild Folk. The words of the Coyote-man gave him added strength. And it was as if his resolve and his courage released them all from their stupor. They scattered as he passed – birds and bobcats and rabbits and lizards and Mountain Lion-men and Poppy-women and Raccoon-folk, all vanishing one by one back into the brush and the tall grass.
“Mallow!” shrieked Myrtle as her twin bounded off after the boy. But for once, her brother didn’t look back. She trembled at Comfrey’s feet, torn, unable to decide whether to run after him or stay where she was.
The old, gaping automobile skidded to a halt as Tin appeared through the wild lilac branches with Mallow at his heels and the Coyote-man beside him with the Fiddleback.
“Quick,” Tin hissed to the Coyote-man. “Go! Don’t let them see you! Don’t you know they have guns?”
“Guns?” wheezed Mallow, remembering all at once their first harrowing escape in the Fiddleback, and the deafening shots fired into the air.
“Of course,” said Tin. His hand shook as he took hold of the Fiddleback’s door. But the Coyote-man wouldn’t leave. He eyed Tin with a fierce, golden look, and grinned.
“Guns or no, it would be my dearest pleasure to bite these men, to spill their blood and eat their hearts out whole,” he snarled. Tin swallowed, hard, and Mallow leaped into his arms, muttering, “Really, a hare can only take so much!”
“No,” said Tin. “You don’t understand. They will fire at you and kill you, and then your blood will spill gold and they will know. Please, run. I’ll give myself over, and it will distract them, and they’ll think it’s enough, for now.” There were tears on the boy’s face. What would they do to him when they caught him? Would they take him back to the City? Would they discover how the Fiddleback worked, and kill him for the gold in his blood, and Mallow, and then figure it out anyway and come back?
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the boy himself. Isn’t this our lucky day! I thought we’d find you out here sooner or later. Looks like he’s come round at last, Brother Warren,” said the loud, terribly familiar voice of Father Ralstein as he stepped lightly out of the automobile. His robes were torn and dirty, his pale face smudged with earth and grease and blood, but he looked strong and flushed with the chase. Beside him, Brother Warren looked similarly dishevelled, and slightly paler, but he narrowed his eyes at Tin and smiled a grim, sneering little smile. Father Ralstein laughed and raised the barrel of his rifle so that it pointed right between Tin’s eyes. “Now, Tin,” he continued, his voice deepening to a snarl, “there will be no games today. Bring your creation to me and tell me the secret of its making, or I will simply kill you and leave you for these disgusting wolves to eat.”
“They aren’t wolves,” Tin retorted in his strongest, loudest voice, clutching Mallow to him with one hand and the Fiddleback with the other. Why wouldn’t the Coyote-man leave? “They’re coyotes.” He stalled, searching wildly for words, not quite able to move any closer.
Father Ralstein fired a shot right above Tin’s head, and Mallow jumped from his arms. The Coyote-man yelped, lunging sideways, and the Elk of Milk and Gold, with Comfrey and Myrtle on her back and the First Bobcat at her side, came galloping down the hill through the brush towards them.
“No, no, no, no! Go back!” Tin yelled over his shoulder. “Take it, Father, take it, I will come willingly. I will tell you everything I know.” He pushed the Fiddleback ahead of him, and Brother Warren slipped forward and snatched at it before Tin could murmur a word of apology to its spindly, golden body. But Father Ralstein had caught sight of the Elk as she, heeding the boy’s warning, leaped to hide in the bushes, her hoofs flashing with stargold. Myrtle and Comfrey followed close at her heels, scrambling to hide in a wild lilac thicket and trying to creep into the deep scrub on their elbows and knees. Father Ralstein’s eyes went pale with greed.
“There are so many riches in the Country that we did not know of,” he hissed, swinging his gaze now to the leveret at Tin’s feet. “So many perfectly healthy animals, such fertile land. Why, it’s a sin this knowledge was kept from us so long by the greedy Country people. But not to worry, you’ll tell us everything you learned, clever boy. You’ve made friends with the natives, haven’t you? I will give you a great reward, and together we will punish them, won’t we? And make up for lost time. Shall we start with dinner, Brother Warren?” With that, he whirled on Mallow, lowering the nose of his gun.
“No!” screamed a high, wailing little voice from the brush and the turn in the road where the Elk hid. Myrtle leaped from the wild lilac and flew downhill towards her brother. Father Ralstein lifted his gun at the sound and fired. Myrtle dropped, limp, to the ground.
Then everything was a blur. Comfrey struggled u
p out of the thick brush to follow after Myrtle and snatch the leveret in her arms, sobbing. Myrtle’s blood was everywhere, streaked gold. Mallow let out a terrible keening cry that Tin thought would never end. Comfrey retreated back into the deep wild lilac branches to find the Elk and tend to Myrtle’s wound.
Meanwhile, several Coyote-men attacked Father Ralstein and Brother Warren at the same moment with bared white teeth. More shots were fired. The air filled with the sound of a horrible, whining cry, and two of the Coyote-men fell dead. From the brush the First Bobcat let out a yowl, trying to call them off. She understood that none of them were any match for these men. Their blood was all stargold as it gushed out over Father Ralstein’s feet. He staggered upright with a yell that became a shout of elation. Brother Warren sprang upon the coursing gold, taking it into his hands, up to his lips, tasting its metallic purity. Now both of their guns swung, aiming at the other Coyote-folk, at Mallow.
Tin stood, stunned. It was too late, everything was too late, he had failed; he had led the Brothers here, right to the heart of Olima and Farallone. With a scream of anguish and a final hope, Tin pulled the penknife from his back pocket. In the same moment a Mountain Lion-woman, who had been crouching in a nearby bush, lunged from her hiding place and took Father Ralstein by the neck with her long-clawed hands. But even her strength was no match for his gun. He fired, and she fell on top of him, her blood a river of gold that began to harden even as it touched the air. Brother Warren greedily shoved the Mountain Lion-woman aside in order to gather her golden blood into the pockets of his robes, but Tin was upon him then, screeching like a wildcat. He managed to scramble up the man’s back, clinging to his robes. With a single, swift movement, Tin opened his penknife and shoved the poisoned pin tip into Brother Warren’s neck.
The man dropped with little more than a gasp. Dazed, Tin clambered over him towards Father Ralstein, who was now stealthily making his way up the road to the place where the Elk and the First Bobcat hid with Comfrey and Myrtle, who was waning in the girl’s arms. Mallow crouched at his twin’s side, licking desperately at the place where the bullet had clipped her chest. Tin sprang at Father Ralstein but didn’t land with as firm a grasp as he had on Brother Warren, clinging instead to his waist. And Father Ralstein was much bigger and much stronger than Brother Warren. He whirled, dislodging Tin before the boy could open his knife blade.
“You little savage,” he spat. “I will get answers from you, you little brat, though you will get no reward now. I have my ways, you know. You have not known pain, yet.” And with a violent laugh he swung the butt of his rifle across Tin’s brow with a crack. The boy crumpled to the ground. “And what is this strange little tool I see…?” crooned Father Ralstein, crouching over the boy’s hand where he clutched the gleaming penknife.
But Comfrey’s cry from the bushes made him turn away. “I’m coming for you, my pretties,” hissed Father Ralstein up the hill. “You and that big fine elk you’re hiding. I will bring the greatest load of stargold back to the City in two hundred years. And oh, how much more there is to be had where that came from… Extraordinary, that we never knew. Extraordinary… It was right under our noses all along, at the tip of our guns!” He chuckled to himself as he strode up the road towards the Elk of Milk and Gold. An entire family of rattlesnakes made a brave attempt to attack his ankles, but three blasts from his gun sent them sprawling in every direction.
Comfrey, laying Myrtle carefully to the earth against the flank of the Elk of Milk and Gold, threw herself out of the thicket once more. She couldn’t let Father Ralstein find the Elk, whose energy seemed to have waned almost to nothing as she watched the destruction of her own Creation around her, the ground slick with starry blood. Together in the deep brush she and the First Bobcat were trying to muster their last strength to open a crack in the world once more, to begin another earthquake, to release another plague. It had taken most of their generative abilities the first time, two hundred years before. Such disasters would strike Country and City equally, all the innocent and kind people across Farallone in addition to the Brothers and their supporters. Comfrey couldn’t bear the thought. There must be something else they could do! It was only one of the Brothers against all of them. Surely he wasn’t invincible. Rage spilled through her. Myrtle was badly wounded, Tin lay unconscious on the ground, the bodies of Coyote-folk and the Mountain Lion-woman sprawled next to him, sticky with gold.
She was unarmed save a small skinning-knife, but still she leaped at Father Ralstein, screaming her own impassioned war cry. A strong wind was gathering from the north. It bent the pine trees, making them creak and wail.
“You cannot have them, you cannot have any of them!” Comfrey screamed, running at him with her little knife out. “How dare you? Do you know that you upset the balance of the entire world, and that none of this will survive, not even for your own benefit, if you take the stargold from these creatures’ bodies?”
“Is that so?” Father Ralstein drawled, amused at this young, dark girl who’d sprung before him, spitting with rage like a cat. With one strong sweep of his hand he knocked the blade from her grasp. She stood there panting, glaring at him and at the blade at his feet. He looked her up and down and began to smile. She was a healthy, sturdy thing, despite the dirt and the wild braids. Perhaps it would be better to bring her back alive with Tin. Perhaps…he turned to look over his shoulder at Tin. It would make it easier to get the boy to talk, with this girl as his hostage. Surely she knew all sorts of useful things about the riches of the Country. He smiled to himself. “I find that hard to believe, my dear. Coming from one who has never known the ease that stargold brings… Oh, you can’t imagine, I assure you, the luxuries we would give to you if you were to help us, to show us the secrets of the Country. I’d wager there is no such thing as running water in this heathen place, let alone hot running water?”
A wind whirled around them sudden and sharp and full of ocean air. Comfrey’s eyes widened.
“Yes, my daughter, you’re intrigued, aren’t you?” he crooned, edging closer, close enough to snatch her wrist. “Think of the jewels, the pretty dresses…”
But she wasn’t looking at him at all. She was looking just over his shoulder, and a little smile had begun to spread across her face. The wind reached a pitch, then settled again.
On it came the countless grizzly-ghosts of Tamal Point.
Father Ralstein whirled, feeling a sudden cold dread seep through his entire body. A roar deafened him. Then the horde of grizzly-ghosts were upon him, laying their ghost-claws into his flesh, their ghost-teeth into his neck. They could not physically hurt him, but they filled him with such unhinged fear that he dropped his rifle with a scream as high and terrified as a child’s. His eyes went wide and white as he tried to bat at the grizzly-ghosts with his hands, but at every touch cold panic spread deeper through his body. Snarling, the grizzly-ghosts thronged closer around him, and Father Ralstein turned and ran down the hill, stumbling as he tried to make his way towards his automobile.
The biggest grizzly-ghost of all, the one who had tested the children at the boundary of Tamal Point, paused before following him, bowing his head to Comfrey and to the Elk of Milk and Gold, who now stood above her on the road.
“Great One,” he growled. “We heard the gunshots and knew. We made a wind and came to find our final revenge. We will follow him to the ends of the earth if we must.”
And he was gone again, joining the other ghosts as they chased Father Ralstein, a silvery tide of claw and tooth and shaggy fur, right into his automobile. They did not slacken their pace as he sped away, but only surrounded him more closely, so that it looked as though a grey mass of fog was speeding down the road, round the corner, and gone.
The sudden silence rang through Comfrey’s body. She stood, unmoving. No bird called or stirred. The wind had gone entirely still, and did not touch the grasses or the trees. It was as if everything held its breath, including Comfrey. Then she let it out with a great sob and ra
n to Tin where he lay, one arm sprawled across the cold body of the Mountain Lion-woman, clutching his penknife. The land exhaled with her, and a chaos of bird calls rose from the hills. Flocks sped off in five directions at once, like a net thrown over the hills. Mallow bounded to her side, his whole body shaking.
“Tin, wake up, Tin!” Comfrey shook her friend’s shoulders and lay her ear against his chest. He was still breathing, though raggedly, and his heart sounded faint but regular. A line of blood seeped down his forehead, glimmering ever so slightly.
“We need the Greentwins!” Mallow wailed, throwing his ears back and his nose to the sky. “Myrtle is fading! I’ve chewed yarrow to staunch her wound, but she’s lost so much blood. And now Tin!” The leveret put his paws on his friend’s chest and nosed at his chin.
“Oh Mallow,” Comfrey said, reaching out to touch his back, her chest tight with tears. Then she let out a swift breath. “What about the Elk? She is a Creatrix after all!”
But Mallow shook his head. “No, no, one can’t ask such small favours from one such as her. Single lives are part of a much greater cycle to her.” Still, he craned uphill to glimpse her golden silhouette.
“I’m going to try to move Tin into his Fiddleback, where he will be more comfortable, and maybe we can pull him—”
It was then that the First Bobcat began to yowl, a ragged, high, terrible cry unlike anything Comfrey or Mallow had ever heard. It dropped through them like a stone through water. Tin stirred. Comfrey clutched the boy’s hand with gladness, but when she saw what it was the First Bobcat was crouched over, she leaped to her feet.
The Wild Folk Page 26