The Black North

by Nigel McDowell

‘All right then,’ she said, and dropped flat to watch, to listen out –

  ‘They had their plan to remake this Isle –

  Shift it about (and laugh all the while)!’

  And then at last she saw: the Cause were doing their marching on bare feet, hands holding tight to branches with crimson-coloured rags knotted near the top – the gaudy flags limp, hopeful of some triumphal breeze. Oona noticed that the hands that held the branches were cracked, scabbed, bleeding. But no wound, no worry at all, was going to silence their singing –

  ‘Move about our mountains and rivers with a shout –

  Bid the land to get up (and wander about)!’

  Oona saw almost only or mostly just boys. And none looked like her Morris.

  ‘Look at the state of them!’ said Merrigutt. ‘Awful, shameful crowd.’

  True: like an amble of cattle with no one as guide, they were moving without much desire or hurry. Their singing sounding more like baying. And their feet were dragging, all cracked and scabbed and bloodied, same way as their hands. How long had they been walking? How many miles? Just following the Black Road, dumbly, numb, in endless circles? Then, a miracle! The Cause stopped as a small gust took one flag and opened it for moments and Oona had to hurry to read –

  THE PERPETUAL PARADE TO THE BURREN!

  IN HONOUR OF THE NOBLE DEAD!

  THE MARCH THAT IS UNENDING FOR THOSE WHO DIED SO THAT

  There might’ve been more, but this was all Oona took before the breeze left and the flag folded. The boys’ heads slipped. In unison – they groaned. In unison – resumed The Song of the Divided Isle …

  ‘And so we go North and we’ll never quit –

  Not till we win (and no sooner, not a bit)!

  We’ll fight to the death and sing loud our Song –

  Honour our comrades (and carry them on)!’

  Then passing by so close below, Oona knew more – on the back of each boy was another. Another body. And the one being carried did no singing, wasn’t moving. Wasn’t any longer living.

  ‘By the Sorrowful Lady,’ breathed Merrigutt.

  ‘Dead,’ said Oona. ‘They’re carrying the dead ones on their backs.’

  ‘Why oh why,’ said Merrigutt, ‘do men devote such time to such ridiculous tasks? I swear to Herself, now I’ve seen it all!’

  ‘We follow them?’ said Oona.

  ‘To the Burren?’ said Merrigutt. ‘To the farthest of the far North? No. We do no such thing. I’m making it my business to keep that Stone you’re carrying safe, and it won’t stay that way for long if we join this lot. And if you don’t believe – keep watching.’

  As the end of the Perpetual Parade passed, Oona’s eyes landed on its last member – a boy who looked more burdened than any of the others. He was hunched lower, though his mouth was wider and his voice louder than any, fervent as anything in his singing. But he was sinking. He trailed a long cloak of coiling dust. And then he could bear weight no longer – the body he was carrying dropped to the Road with a desperate thud.

  ‘What’s happening to him?’ asked Oona.

  ‘Watch for the answer,’ said Merrigutt. And Oona did –

  The boy shouted the Song to his last shout but was soon silenced: slowly dispersing, vanishing, he joined the air as swarming dark, more like cinder and smoke than anything else. The last thing of him to go were words, sung loud –

  ‘I’ll honour my father and follow his might –

  His belief and his memory (and history’s fight)!’

  Then nothing – the boy was gone. Was only –

  ‘Echoes,’ whispered Merrigutt.

  34

  Before Oona could ask a thing Merrigutt said louder, ‘Look there now!’ directing Oona’s attention somewhere new. So little in the landscape moved at their level that anything that did demanded attention. A single figure was moving fast. Oona’s only thought was – not one of the Cause. Too quick on the move, this one. In too much of a hurry somewhere.

  ‘Invader?’ asked Oona.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Merrigutt. ‘That’s a woman.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Oona.

  ‘Because she’s got the look of someone with a bit of purpose,’ said Merrigutt.

  The figure hastening had so much dark settled on (let’s say her) shoulders, but (she?) was batting away at it – futile little jerks of the hand trying to keep (herself) cleaner. And she wasn’t following the Black Road. She was devoted to a path only she knew. Perhaps a former road, Oona thought, from before the remaking?

  Oona watched but the woman soon vanished into dark.

  A fresh thunder pressed Oona closer to the ground and she was ready to run this time, ready for the ground to arise, but then something stunning in its ordinariness, so unexpected: it began to rain. Heavy and punishing and loud.

  ‘Forgot!’ said Merrigutt. ‘As well as everything else, they get the worst weather up here!’

  ‘Is that the King’s work too?’ said Oona. She had to shout, the downpour was so fierce.

  ‘No,’ said Merrigutt, ‘it’s always been this bad!’

  ‘Maybe that woman is from the village Billy mentioned?’ said Oona.

  ‘Then you’ve got a choice, my girl,’ said Merrigutt.

  Oona looked for the Perpetual Parade – they were almost gone, made faint by the rain, continuing on their way North, to the place called the Burren. Would they lead to Morris and the other captured children? Would they even navigate the North at all with so much being remade? Would they survive, escape what had happened to the boy at the back – the Echoes?

  The sound of their Song was soon drowned.

  So Oona made her decision: ‘We follow the woman.’

  35

  Oona was used to tracking in the forests of Drumbroken but there was no trail left by the woman, no footprint nor mark on the Black, no branch to be broken or trap to be tripped. Instead, Oona had to put her good listening to test. She was sure she heard footfalls falling on harder ground than where she stood. Perhaps on stone? So she followed.

  Then Merrigutt, always first to see, saw and said, ‘There’s something – not far!’ Oona looked, and she just about saw something too –

  The land was flat and featureless, and then things formed: many things looming behind rain, tall and trembling and groaning like the trees of Drumbroken did in autumn storms. Oona thought, Forest! Must be! She kept fast-walking, her mother’s cloak sodden and the satchel tight in her hands. But before any forest there was suddenly a road of stone underneath Oona’s feet, and an archway of stone too – an entrance. The jackdaw left Oona’s shoulder and with two hard wing-beats landed at the highest point on the arch. Oona looked up and squinted to read a wooden sign –

  THE TOWNSHIP OF LOFTBOROUGH

  POPULATION – 243 156. 43

  ‘Something in these numbers doesn’t warm me,’ said Merrigutt, leaning in to examine the sign. Oona didn’t reply. She was still reading more. Another torn board, nailed slantways below the first, was telling them –

  YOU BETTER BEWARE THAT BLACK BENEATH

  YOUR FEET!

  One wing-beat and Merrigutt was back to Oona’s shoulder, but before the jackdaw spoke Oona said, ‘We’ve no choice! It’s pissing down and anyway, if this is where Bridget’s uncle was talking about then I believe him: it maybe won’t be as bad here as everywhere else.’

  ‘Lot of reasons there,’ said Merrigutt. ‘But still and all …’

  They waited beneath the arch like they were awaiting welcome.

  ‘To hell with it,’ said Oona. ‘Let’s go.’

  36

  A rough street of hacked-at-and-packed-in-snug stone was flanked by houses on their high legs, two gangling rows doing a slow stagger off into Black and rain. A strong breeze came and every house swayed, easing close to the next as though keen to pass whispered comment on the new arrivals. Oona staggered backwards herself with the thought: How could anyone live in such a place? How could you ever feel safe, being shifte
d about so much?

  Then suddenly at the nearest house instead of DOOR there was PERSON. A small woman, hair like a storm on her head.

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Merrigutt. ‘That’s the woman we saw running.’ Oona blinked back rain – the woman had a rifle.

  But the woman hardly looked a bit interested. She’d noticed them, but her looks were for elsewhere – roaming the street of broken stone like she’d dropped something and needed to have it back in her hands. Eventually though, the woman shook her head, her rifle drooped, and she turned herself and went inside. She shut her front door and her whole house trembled from slate to wooden shins.

  ‘What was that about?’ whispered Oona, beginning to walk into Loftborough. Merrigutt told her, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know at all what to make of this place.’

  Oona said nothing. Especially didn’t say that at her side, in her satchel, she could feel the Loam Stone burning so fierce she thought it could’ve burnt a livid hole right through her. The town of Loftborough was rife with nightmares.

  Not too far and not too many steps and another door in another house opened up. But this time they were not just noticed but hailed –

  ‘Here, you two! Bed and board?’

  The voice brought fuss behind all windows – a fidget of curtains. Oona knew they were being watched, even if they couldn’t see the watchers.

  ‘Come quick!’ called the voice. A woman’s voice. ‘I’ll change me mind and shut this door, I’m not joking you!’

  Oona and Merrigutt looked at one another.

  ‘I’ll give you no more time!’ shouted the voice. ‘I’ll be shutting my door for the night and whatever happens to you can happen and I’ve no reason to be feeling any way responsible!’

  Oona swallowed. Again she realised there was no choice, so she called back to the woman, ‘Wait, missus! We want to come up!’

  37

  A stack of sticks bound with rope clattered down – a rope-ladder.

  ‘Up!’ came the order from above. ‘It’s almost proper dark and they’ll not wait!’

  Oona climbed. The rungs were damp and she was soaked, and the ladder was as uncertain as the bridge binding the Divide but as Oona realised how exhausted she was, how little energy was left in her, she thought: If I can do anything in this world – if I’m a Kavanagh at all – then I can climb better than any!

  On she went, not quicker but more determined to be determined, wanting to be more like herself.

  At the top Merrigutt hopped from Oona’s shoulder onto a buckled strip of porch. The jackdaw looked about and took things in, as she liked to do: head jerking left and right and above and below, everywhere. But the most apparent thing, most important – a door had been left open for them, and within was light. Little of it, but enough to entice. And better, Oona thought, than the Black!

  She dragged herself up to stand. The house lurched underneath and she had to hold on. Oona noticed a wooden sign over her head: it was too paralysed with rust to do anything like swing and instead just ran with rain, but spelled out –

  The Loyal Martyr Public House

  (Maybe a few beds available – ask indoors!)

  Some quick footsteps and a woman appeared in the doorway. Big woman. Big arms and hands and … big everything. Her eyes were wide and sleeves bundled back to above the elbow and her hair was as wild as a wind-bush and looked like it had never seen a wash. In her left hand she held tight to a rifle.

  ‘In!’ she told Oona.

  Oona looked at Merrigutt. The jackdaw hopped over the threshold, so Oona followed on.

  ‘Now,’ said the woman of the house, using the word like it was a greeting. Then she settled the rifle to the wall, carefully flexed and cracked each finger and started the business of shutting the front door. Such an array of chains and locks and bolts were twisted and latched and snapped shut that Oona lost track, but in the last moment she registered just a small, final key snapped in a final lock, and this key was tucked by the woman into her brassiere. She gave the door a good tug, just to check – not a budge out of it.

  ‘Now,’ said the woman, again, and then lapsed into some absent-minded muttering of, ‘More light, yes indeed. Makes things more homely. Yes. Now.’

  She snatched the rifle from where it rested and marched off into dark. The flames kept a low enough profile in the fireplace.

  Then Merrigutt was suddenly back on Oona’s shoulder to say, ‘I’ve had a quick look about. Doesn’t seem to be anyone else here but us. Staircase near the back leading upstairs, but didn’t get the chance to look up there so –’

  ‘More light!’

  The woman reappeared with a fistful of tapers, wicks all alight. Another meticulous routine then – each taper was given its own saucer, a few drops of wax to keep it upright, and when all were lit and stood firm, the woman found homes for them around the room. They allowed Oona to see more but still not much – so many chairs and tables crouched low like things all waiting, worried. Some things reflected flame – a beaten brass fender by the fireplace, a brass coal-scuttle, and on a shallow mantelpiece above were many small things, many shards of reflected firelight.

  The woman – the landlady, Oona decided – declared: ‘Better now!’

  She slammed the rifle on something and Oona and Merrigutt both turned, shuddering. (Bit scared.) They saw the landlady only from the waist up. The dark had her lower half and Oona realised the woman was standing behind a counter. So no surprise when the question came: ‘What can I get you in the way of the drink?’ As soon as the question left her, the woman went to work cleaning: rag in hand, attacking the bar in wide arcs, far-reaching, trying to uncover a shine.

  Oona cleared her throat and said, ‘I think we’re all right for the drink.’

  ‘Now come on!’ cried the woman, not looking up. And not severe, thought Oona, but probably not to be messed with either.

  Oona decided to be honest and say, ‘We’ve not a penny. We just wanted some room for the night. Somewhere out of the rain, nothing fancy or nothing.’

  There was a small halt in the woman’s wiping, then she went on, half to herself and half to the air: ‘No money? But can’t not be hospitable. If we lose that then we’ve nothing much left, do we? And she wouldn’t be happy. No, she would’ve told me to do right by the guests.’

  ‘She’s a few stones short of a hearth,’ whispered Merrigutt. But Oona said nothing, just waited.

  Then the landlady straightened, tossing the rag from hand to loosening hand, eyes still sweeping, seeking something to have a swipe at.

  ‘Well,’ she said, with a big sigh, ‘I can’t turn you out on a night like this one, can I? You’ll have a drink with me anyway!’ Oona detected the smallest tinge of a plea in the woman’s voice, and so she decided: ‘Very kind of you, missus. I’ll have some rushwater, if you have it.’

  ‘And for the old one?’ said the landlady.

  Merrigutt spoke for herself, and from a suddenly human mouth –

  ‘A tipple of Loftborough’s finest brew!’ she said, stepping up to the bar, an old woman once more, and weary. ‘Make it the strongest you have! I need it after all we’ve seen, I tell you.’

  Merrigutt gave Oona a wink.

  ‘Good choice!’ announced the landlady. ‘Back in a tick!’ She left.

  ‘Quick now,’ said Merrigutt, ‘have a wee look at those photographs above the fireplace.’ Oona hurried over. On the mantelpiece were a dozen or more small frames, all with the same face contained: young girl, all smiles. The landlady appeared in one or two, always cradling or cuddling the little girl. Always smiling. She looked less wild, much less worried. And they were surrounded by houses like Loftborough’s, but not hoisted into the air.

  The landlady’s heavy tread could be heard returning, so Oona found two short pieces of firewood to add to the flames to make it look like she was there for good reason.

  ‘That’s it,’ the landlady told her. ‘Need to keep warm on nights like this.’ She held a barrel high
in her arms that she hefted onto the bar. A tap was found to puncture it, a small mallet to drive it in, and two glasses were wiped and readied.

  ‘I’ll enjoy this,’ said Merrigutt, smacking her lips and rubbing her hands together. It was behaviour so unlike the usual Merrigutt, and Oona saw how much her companion was trying to slip into something else, transform into some other appearance – the jovial spirit. And Oona knew she should, and could, do just the same.

  ‘The night we’ve had,’ she said, struggling up onto the bar stool by Merrigutt. ‘Looking forward to a good rest!’

  The landlady of The Loyal Martyr said nothing. In the fireplace, the logs began to crackle and hiss. From the barrel she drew a fat, clouded pint for Merrigutt. Oona was given her pint of rushwater, and the landlady joined Merrigutt in the home brew.

  ‘To hospitality when it’s most needed!’ said Merrigutt.

  Then the clash of glasses, the three of them toasting like Oona had seen Drumbroken men do. She drank. She’d intended only a sip but soon had the glass emptied. And not much later there was the slam of glass on wood – Merrigutt and the landlady had drained their pints as well. Some silence, some satisfied sighs, and then the landlady asked, ‘Have you come here to help us?’

  Oona said nothing, Merrigutt neither.

  And then without words the woman extended a hand towards Oona. Its surface was roughened by work, but it was tender as it touched Oona’s cheek. It stayed there. And with only an edge of intention, Oona’s own hand went to her satchel, to the Loam Stone.

  Her gaze met the landlady’s.

  Some sharp jolt at the core of Oona’s heart and she saw something, a flicker – a young girl running through rain, screaming, suddenly vanishing …

  The landlady’s hand left Oona and any nightmares went with it. Oona shivered as though she were still outside.

  ‘I’ll show you the place where you’ll sleep and be safer,’ said the landlady, taking up one of the saucers supporting a candle. She didn’t look at them. ‘You’ll need rest now. You won’t want to be awake, not on this night.’