by Lian Tanner
‘The bargain—’
Old Lady Skint chuckled. ‘Seems to me I got an excellent bargain. A physician for the crew and an important ’ostage – a very important ’ostage – all in one. And what does it cost me? Not a single thing.’
And she went out, whistling.
Every day in the salt mine was terrible, but for Pummel that day was the worst of all.
Otte had been taken by the guard, and it was his fault. He should have kept a closer eye on the boy. He should have kept him by his side at all times.
Duckling didn’t say a word of blame. Instead, she whispered, ‘We have to get out right now! I know Sooli said the secret tunnel was for burials, but I’ve been thinking—’
She broke off as Sooli came hurrying along the passage, calling, ‘Is it true? Your friend was taken? Then there is something important I must tell you, Pummel. Come!’
‘Can’t you tell him here?’ asked Duckling.
Pummel was thinking the same thing, but Sooli looked so worried and frightened that he couldn’t go against her. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said to Duckling.
And he let Sooli drag him away.
She wouldn’t say anything more until they were several tunnels distant, and there was no one nearby who might overhear. Even then she hesitated.
‘I do not want to tell you,’ she whispered. ‘But I must!’
By then, Pummel was growing impatient. Otte was missing, and he needed to be doing something about it. Besides, he was used to Duckling telling him things straight out – when she wasn’t being treacherous, that is. He didn’t know what to do with someone who started to tell him something, then stopped, then started again, like a spooked calf.
But he made himself wait.
‘Just this morning,’ said Sooli, ‘I saw Duckling speaking with one of the guards. I do not know what she told him. But now your friend has been taken.’
At first, Pummel didn’t understand what she meant. When he realised, he gaped at her. ‘You think Duckling is mixed up in this? But she’s as worried as I am. I’m sure she wouldn’t—’
‘Sometimes those who are trapped in the mine sell whatever they have for a little more food. Or better treatment.’
‘You think she sold Otte? No, she wouldn’t! I don’t believe—’
‘She is good at pretending, yes?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘You need not listen to me,’ said Sooli. ‘But if I were you, I would want to know the truth.’ She took a couple of steps away from Pummel, then turned back and said, ‘The rituals are taking less time than I thought. By tomorrow we will be free.’
And she hurried away, leaving Pummel awash with suspicion, but with no idea where to place it.
He took the raashk from his boot and turned it over and over in his hand, though it brought him no comfort. His throat was dry. His head ached. He knew Sooli was right; he had to find out the truth.
But how? If he asked Duckling, she’d deny it, and he wouldn’t be able to tell if she was lying or not.
In the end, he searched her bedding, not really expecting to find anything. This is stupid, he thought, as he poked under her threadbare blanket. Sooli’s wrong. Duckling would never—
His fingers brushed against her spoon, the one that used to belong to a dead boy. He touched something soggy.
He swallowed.
He picked up the spoon.
Hidden beneath it were two small chunks of the gristly meat that sometimes turned up in the slop.
Pummel had always been slow to anger. A bit too slow sometimes, according to his ma. But now the heat rose up inside him like a blacksmith’s furnace. His hands shook. His vision blurred.
He’d been hungry ever since he entered the salt mine. There was never enough to eat, for him or anyone else. Another child had died yesterday, and there were a few more who wouldn’t last the week.
And yet here was Duckling with enough to hide for later!
The heat flared higher. He wanted to punch the nearest wall. He wanted to shout at Duckling until she told him the truth for once.
‘I’ll make her tell me,’ he muttered, storming out of the night cave.
But the first person he found was Sooli. ‘I was right,’ she said. ‘I can see it in your face.’
Pummel tried to change his expression so that it gave nothing away. But he was too angry.
Sooli said, ‘It is not nice to be betrayed. How do you wish to respond?’
‘I want to tell Duckling what I think of her,’ Pummel said through gritted teeth. ‘And then I want to get out of here and find Otte.’
‘Why tell Duckling anything?’ asked Sooli. ‘She will only deny it, and accuse one of us instead. There is a better way. We will turn our faces from her. All of us. We will shun her. We will teach her what happens to people who betray their friends. And then we will escape and leave her behind.’
All Duckling could think of was Otte. Why had the guards taken him? Did they know he was the Heir of Neuhalt? What would they do if they found out?
She jiggled from foot to foot, desperate to do something. But what? As far as she could see, the secret tunnel was her and Pummel’s only hope of escaping from the mine. And even then, it was a very faint hope.
What if Sooli’s telling the truth, and it’s for burials?
But every devious bone in Duckling’s body told her that Sooli wasn’t telling the truth.
She stopped jiggling and started chewing her nails. If the secret tunnel’s an escape tunnel, Pummel and I could help dig it. If we threw ourselves into it—
She looked around for Pummel and realised he hadn’t returned. So she went after him.
At first, she hardly noticed how the other children turned their backs as she passed. But when they refused to answer her questions, she knew something was wrong.
‘Have you seen Pummel?’ she asked.
The children kept their backs turned and didn’t say a word.
‘Hello?’ said Duckling. ‘I’m right behind you. Yoo hoo!’
She might as well have been invisible. The children walked away without a backward glance, leaving Duckling with a nasty squirmy feeling in her stomach.
I know I stink, but so do they. And they were talking to me earlier. What’s going on?
She finally found Pummel with Sooli near the night cave, and hurried up to them. But to her dismay, they turned their backs too.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
Pummel started to turn around, but Sooli grabbed his arm and stopped him.
Duckling put her hands on her hips. ‘What’s going on? Why won’t you talk to me? Why won’t anyone talk to me?’
Sooli’s grip tightened. The back of Pummel’s neck flushed red in the lantern light.
‘What am I supposed to have done?’ demanded Duckling.
No answer.
She wanted to walk away, but she was shaking with fury and unhappiness, and the words burst from her. ‘So, Pummel, you’ve given up on Otte? You don’t want to get him back? You’ve forgotten our vow?’
Pummel’s shoulders twitched. Beside him, Sooli was as steady as a pillar of salt.
Duckling could hardly bear to look at them. I haven’t got time for this, she told herself. And she marched away.
The rest of that day was the most miserable of her life. She wanted to follow the other children and work out how they got into the secret tunnel. She wanted to see how close it was to being finished. She wanted to throw herself at it and dig and dig and dig until she was out of the mine and could start looking for Otte.
But for once, none of the children left the salt face. No one spoke to Duckling; no one added a bit of extra salt to her bucket. When she tried to give some of her salt to the smallest children, they pulled their buckets away so that it spilled on the ground and was lost underfoot.
Duckling pretended not to care. When someone dropped a bucket on her toe, she pretended it didn’t hurt. And when she spoke to Pummel, she pretended that he answe
red her.
‘You can’t keep this up forever,’ she said to him. ‘I know you’re just as worried about Otte as I am.’
Pummel chipped stubbornly at the salt, his eyes fixed on his pick.
‘Oh, really?’ said Duckling. ‘I don’t think so. I think you’re going to need my help. You should ask Sooli about the secret tunnel again. That’s our only hope.’
But after a while she fell silent, and stayed silent all through supper, wondering when the children would go back to the tunnel.
I’ll stay awake all night, she thought. And all tomorrow too, if I have to. They’re not going anywhere near that tunnel without me seeing them.
But when she tried to get into the night cave, she was blocked by a row of children with their backs to her.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, as politely as she could after a day of being ignored.
The children didn’t move.
Duckling tried to push past them, but there were too many of them, and when she got past one, others swarmed in front of her.
She called out, ‘Pummel! Are you there?’
There was no answer, though she was sure he was in the cave somewhere.
She turned to the children again. ‘I just want to talk to Pummel,’ she said, in her most reasonable voice.
She didn’t feel reasonable. She felt hot and angry, and that squirmy feeling was back in her stomach. But one of Grandpa’s most important rules was that you should never let other people know what you are feeling.
So Duckling smiled at the children around her and said, ‘Hard day. Reckon we all need a good sleep.’
They looked right through her, as if she’d suddenly become a ghost. But whenever she tried to get past them, they stopped her.
Duckling backed away, thinking, What would Grandpa do? Poison their supper, probably, just to show them. And then find his own place to sleep, and pretend he didn’t care.
Duckling wasn’t going to poison anyone. But she could pretend she didn’t care. She grabbed a lantern and carried it away from the night cave, looking for a nice cosy spot where no one could get past without her noticing.
Not that anywhere in the mine was cosy.
At last she found a small tunnel that looked as if it hadn’t been worked for a while, and sat down with her back to the wall, feeling cold and lost. She had never imagined that Pummel would turn against her like this.
‘Maybe Grandpa’s right when he says there’s no such thing as friends,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe everyone in the whole world is just waiting for a chance to get the better of everyone else. And the only sensible thing to do is get in first.’
But thinking about Grandpa made her feel more lost than ever.
She had been sitting there alone for what felt like several hours when she heard a scratching sound. She turned down the lantern as far as it would go and hid it behind a wooden prop so the faint light wouldn’t give her away. Then she stood up and pressed herself against the wall.
If this was someone going to the secret tunnel, she was ready.
But to Duckling’s surprise, it wasn’t anything to do with the tunnel. Instead, Otte’s chicken came trotting around the corner, clucking in a worried sort of way. She ruffled her feathers and scratched at the floor of the tunnel with her strong yellow legs. Then she marched up to Duckling, fixed her with one bright eye, and perched on her foot.
Duckling sat down again. ‘I don’t suppose you know why they’re not talking to me?’ she asked.
The chicken sighed, and rested her beak on her chest feathers.
‘Me neither,’ said Duckling. ‘But it’s a nasty thing to have everyone turn against me like that.’
The chicken stretched out a leg, then tucked it beneath her body.
‘You’re not much for conversation, are you?’ said Duckling. ‘But you’re a lot better than being on my own.’
She leaned against the rock. After a little while she said, ‘How am I supposed to know right from wrong if Pummel won’t talk to me? He doesn’t even have to think about it, it’s there inside him all the time. Whereas all I’ve got inside me is Grandpa’s lessons.’
The chicken sighed again, and closed her eyes. Duckling tried to keep hers open, but she couldn’t.
Within five minutes she was asleep.
And dreaming.
Pummel was beginning to regret the shunning. His anger had cooled, and he could see what he should have seen earlier – that anyone could have put those pieces of meat under Duckling’s spoon. Anyone at all.
He would have gone looking for her there and then, but he was surrounded by exhausted children and didn’t want to wake them.
I’ll talk to her first thing tomorrow, he promised himself. Then he lay there, thinking about how horrified Ma would be if she knew he’d shunned someone.
A wave of shame washed over him. I should have shouted at Duckling rather than pretend she wasn’t there. And we’re definitely not going to leave her behind when we escape. No one deserves that, no matter what they’ve done.
When at last he fell asleep, he dreamt that the raashk had fallen off a cliff, and no matter how hard he tried to reach it, he couldn’t. The cliff was too high. Too treacherous—
At first he thought it was Sooli who’d woken him, but when he turned his head he saw the huge yellow eyes of the cat.
‘Frow Cat,’ he whispered. ‘They think you’re a ghost. They think you’re a sign that something’s about to happen.’
The cat hooked her claws into his sleeve, as if she wanted something from him.
‘What is it?’ he whispered.
She tugged at him, and he raised his head just in time to see a girl creeping out of the night cave.
When he looked at the space beside him, Sooli was gone.
The cat tugged at Pummel again, so he stood up quietly and tiptoed out of the cave, with the cat slinking beside him. He had no idea where they were going. But the whole day had disturbed him, and if something was happening now, he wanted to know what it was.
In Duckling’s dream, she found a feather and put it in her hair. Then she found three more feathers and made them into a tiny windmill, and blew on them until a storm came.
In her dream, she was standing on the edge of a cliff, with four people watching her. Two men and two women, all in a line.
They wanted something, and Duckling couldn’t work out what it was. She offered them a silver gloat, but the woman on the end of the line just laughed at her.
‘Dry,’ said the woman, who was the colour of sand, with long sandy hair that blew across her face. ‘South. Kaleem. Close your eyes.’
Duckling closed her eyes, and the woman pinched her.
‘Ow,’ said Duckling. ‘Stop it!’
‘Know the four,’ said the woman. ‘Know the four.’
This means something, thought Duckling. But I don’t know what.
She turned to a short man with red hair and skin that flickered in the sunlight. He was eating something, shoving it into his mouth as if he was starving.
‘Fire,’ said Duckling. (She didn’t know why she said it, but it was a dream, so it didn’t need to make sense.)
‘West,’ mumbled the man, through another mouthful. ‘Lodosh.’
‘Lodosh,’ repeated Duckling.
The dark-skinned old man had a huge egg in his hands, and when Duckling turned to him, he said, ‘East. Grandfather. Seleeg.’ He held the egg up to his eye, and Duckling realised she could see right through it. She could see the yolk and the white, and the old man’s eye behind it, and something else that she couldn’t quite make out.
The old woman standing behind the old man snatched the egg from his hand and crushed it in her fist.
‘No!’ said Duckling. And although she hardly ever cried (except in pretence), she burst into tears.
The old woman marched up to her until they were nose to nose. (Her skin was black; her eyes were bottomless pits.)
‘North,’ said the old woman, reaching for Duckling with her
strong old hands. ‘Black. Potoq.’
‘No,’ said Duckling again.
She put her own hands up, and they wrestled and wrestled, until Duckling was so tired that she could hardly think. But she knew that if she let the old woman win, something terrible would happen.
Still, her arms grew weaker, and the old woman grew stronger.
‘Help!’ whispered Duckling, and Otte’s chicken appeared out of nowhere and laid an egg on top of her head.
Duckling woke up, still trying to brush the yolk out of her eyes.
She was lying on bare ground, with the darkness of the salt mine all around her. Her lantern was burning low and she couldn’t see much, but she could feel the chicken’s feathers under her hand.
She stroked them, still thinking about the terrible strength of the old woman. ‘Thank you for saving me, Dora,’ she whispered.
The chicken clucked. Nearby, someone kicked a pebble.
Duckling sat up with a jerk. ‘Who’s there?’ she whispered. ‘Pummel, is that you?’
‘Thief!’ hissed a voice. ‘Murderer! You stole what belongs to my people. Now I take it back.’
Duckling had no idea what the person was talking about. But she didn’t waste time asking. She scooped up the chicken, and rolled swiftly to one side.
She was barely in time. A blow struck her arm. She heard cloth tear. She felt something wet on her skin.
She scrambled to her feet, still holding the chicken. She didn’t have a weapon; she didn’t have anything with which to defend herself, not even a spoon.
So she began to hum, silently begging her witchy breeze to come, just this once.
To her amazement and relief, it did.
She was about to use the breeze to throw dirt in her attacker’s eyes, when she found herself thinking of the red-haired man in her dream. ‘Lodosh,’ she cried.
The chicken squirmed in her arms.
The breeze became a strong wind.
And the air in front of Duckling burst into flame.