‘Much further?’ Oona asked, but with barely a breath for calling. Merrigutt shouted for her: ‘Boy! Is it much more of this or what?’
‘Tis a far and hard journey to full enlightenment!’ the Master of the Big House called back.
‘That’s what my father used to say!’
‘Your father sounds like an eejit,’ said Merrigutt, mostly in a mutter. It might’ve made Oona laugh, if she’d had puff for it. She continued to climb. ‘How can we trust this one anyway?’ said Merrigutt.
‘Don’t know,’ said Oona.
‘Well, I’ll be keeping my eyes on him,’ said Merrigutt. ‘People who’ve been on their own too long should always be watched. Does things to them.’
‘Not his fault,’ said Oona.
‘You’re too keen on understanding,’ said Merrigutt.
‘You’re too keen on suspecting,’ said Oona.
‘I’m not saying the boy’s at fault, but him and that statue, they –’
‘Sister,’ said Oona: felt it needing saying. ‘His sister, not just statue. They’re brother and sister. Twins.’ What didn’t need saying out loud: just like herself and Morris.
‘All right,’ said Merrigutt.
‘I don’t hear you following!’ called the Master. ‘It’ll be a lot longer a journey if you don’t move and motivate your feet! My father said that one, too – very wise man!’
Criss, cross, clamber, crawl. And eventually a last ladder devoid of most of its rungs. Oona looked up and saw the boy scramble quickly and so easily up, dull thuds signalling the fall of his stone foot. He shouted down to them, sounding excited, ‘Come on come on come on, too slow too slow too slow!’
‘Just say the word and I’ll peck him,’ said Merrigutt.
Oona took to the ladder thinking, Just this now. Just this last climb.
When she rose it was into the crooked tower, pulling herself up and wishing she could sink to the floor, find some rest, even for a minute. She took a step forward and the floor groaned.
‘Is this even safe up here?’ she asked the dark.
Out of it, the boy called from somewhere, ‘Safe as anywhere else in Loftborough!’
‘Not much comfort,’ said Oona, loud as she liked.
‘I say just don’t move,’ Merrigutt told her. ‘Just wait.’
A handful of moments, and then an announcement from the Master of the Big House: ‘Now you shall see!’
There was a clatter and clash, a sound like a rusted wrangle of chains being dragged, and the dark on Oona’s right began to rise: behind was the so-called snooping-window, same one Oona had seen from the garden, the pane grubby and near opaque with the dabble of fingerprints, of constant touching and watching.
‘Very nice,’ said Merrigutt. ‘Lovely view onto that mess of a garden.’
‘And now the other!’ shouted the boy.
Quick footsteps, a dim glimpse of the Master of the Big House shuffling to the other side of the tower, and then the same sound of chains being hauled. And more reluctantly, the dark was lifted on Oona’s left. She was shown a second window, but this one circular, and without a single blemish. It was filled with another view – a forest under a sky of curdling cloud.
‘Move closer to that window,’ whispered Merrigutt.
‘Why?’ asked Oona.
‘Just go,’ said Merrigutt. She sounded breathless. ‘Need to see. Go on.’
But as soon as Oona moved the boy said, ‘Careful! They may be out, even if it is not their usual night! I’ve noticed them at other times – having a look, keeping an eye.’
‘Ignore him,’ said Merrigutt. ‘Keep going.’
Oona walked on. As she reached the window Merrigutt breathed, ‘Sorrowful Lady herself preserve us.’
Oona struggled to swallow. She sighed and misted the glass, then took a handful of cloak to clear it, to look –
Leafless, cheerless forest. But worse – it was more change, more of the remaking of the North, and of a childish-looking and brutal kind. The trees had been upended, all askew, a breeze making roots shake in feeble gesticulation skyward. Any part that might’ve once displayed leaf or berry or nut had been buried beneath. And the roots where boughs should’ve been had things hanging – children’s clothes without their children. Blouses and jumpers and dresses with their arms bound to branches, torn stockings. Nothing moved. The clothes hung heavy, as though they still had small bodies inside. Oona saw a litter of shoes on the ground, like dropped seed that had failed to sprout.
‘They were told to leave behind all traces,’ said the boy.
The Master of the Big House appeared behind Oona. She let her attention shift enough from the forest to see his reflection – he was half-stooped, head hanging low. He went on: ‘They were told that in order to pass into the beneath, they had to remove everything they were given in the world above. And how they were tempted into doing it! Great prizes, they were promised. Such great feasts of milk and sugar and all the sweet things they could want. Treasure and toys, magical powers. Whatever they wanted, that’s what the Briar-Witches told them they could have. All their dearest wishes and more, if they just followed down into the dark.’
Oona said, ‘I wouldn’t have gone.’ She paused. ‘Not ever. If one of those things came to me there’s nothing they could’ve promised that would’ve made me go underground.’ She said it strongly enough, but did she believe that she believed it? And suddenly, her fingers felt drawn to the Loam Stone, like it could give her certainty, decision. Instead, it gave her something new. For the first time it showed no nightmare of someone else or someplace near, but Oona herself: she was standing in the dark forest of her dark dreams, and before her was Morris. He spoke, and his voice was the voice she’d heard too in her nightmares, the tone of deep certainty that made her skin tingle: ‘Follow me, Oona. Follow me – there’s something you need to see. There’s a nightmare I want to show you.’
Oona’s fingers fled as though stung. She was shaking. She shut her eyes and kept them the same. Merrigutt must’ve noticed – the jackdaw never missed a thing. But when Merrigutt spoke, covering Oona’s silence, her voice was calm: ‘Tell me this straight, boy – is there a way to defeat these creatures or not?’
‘I have been watching,’ said the boy, and he discovered another new mood: a whispering, morbid-sounding fascination. ‘I have been observing their movements – very interesting. They appear at dusk, creeping from their nest slowly, waiting for the dark itself to empower them. Our only chance will be if –’
‘We have to go down into the nest,’ said Oona. She breathed, still hadn’t opened her eyes.
‘Indeed,’ said the Master of the Big House.
‘Oona, this is beyond us,’ said Merrigutt. It was said in a whisper but the tower was too small for any plot to stay private.
‘We have to try,’ said Oona.
‘They have such power,’ said the jackdaw, and Oona felt the bird shiver on her shoulder. ‘They are the ones who created all North magic. I don’t know what we’ll meet down there or how we’ll get by it.’
‘We have to try,’ said Oona, again. ‘And I know they have their weaknesses, like all things.’
Oona’s hand went to her cloak. Her fingers closed around the thing she’d brought from home – from Kavanagh cottage in Drumbroken, across the Divide and into the Black, to the Big House on its Rotten Hill. She withdrew the kitchen knife and held it vertically. Oona opened her eyes, turned and faced the Master of the Big House. He swallowed, his sight on the knife, the bulge of his Adam’s apple chugging under folds of flesh.
‘I escaped from those creatures once,’ said Oona. ‘So I’d be a frighted fool or worse if I can’t find a way to do it again.’
48
‘This way now,’ said the boy of the Big House. ‘I’d advise not to make too much of a sound.’
Into upturned forest. And Oona felt such a lack, a chill of absence making the air colder: she walked among things abandoned, seeing more clearly and closely where
children had once been. She saw clues: a stain on a flannel shirt, maybe a dribbled mouthful of a last meal? Muck on the leg of a torn stocking, from a last tumble? Dark spot on a sleeve – perhaps last blood. Or last struggle, last attempt at escape?
Oona kept her hands from the Loam Stone – some nightmares didn’t need knowing. The Master of the Big House muttered low, ‘Beware that black beneath your feet.’
‘We’ve heard that enough times,’ said Merrigutt.
‘Then you should listen to it,’ said the boy.
Oona looked down – she saw raised mounds, depressions that went deep.
‘Just keep moving, my girl,’ said Merrigutt.
The jackdaw was a restless thing again, into the air and circling above and around Oona, then settling somewhere, then somewhere else new, on jointed root or barren ground, but always alert.
‘Just at the top of this mound,’ said the Master of the Big House.
Before they’d left, the boy had wrapped himself in a velvet cloak, but stone fingers weren’t much use for doing up buttons. There was such a fuss to fasten them that Oona had felt time rushing away too quickly and said, ‘Here, let me help.’ She’d gotten as far as reaching when the boy had pulled away and told her, ‘I can do it myself! This was Father’s favourite and best cloak, only right that I should adorn myself with it. Don’t need another’s help.’ Then he’d spent many minutes more fumbling. The cloak dragged far behind him, and Oona had to mind not stepping on it.
They reached a sudden rise, one Oona felt had no business even being there – to Oona Kavanagh from Drumbroken, things like trees and rivers and mountains were fixed, to be worked around, not shifted. But in the North all had been changed as the King desired. And on this solitary rise was a single tree left leaning, roots raised to the sky.
‘This is our way in,’ said the boy. The upended trunk of the tree had a narrow cat’s-eye split for an opening.
Merrigutt arrived back on Oona’s shoulder.
‘You all right?’ Merrigutt asked her. ‘Been quieter since you looked out at all this from that tower. Since you touched the Stone. What did you see?’
Oona closed her eyes, and awaiting her was the same image: Morris. Same words: ‘Follow. Follow me, Oona …’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, opening her eyes again. She could’ve told Merrigutt. Could’ve confessed to the jackdaw what she’d seen the night before, what she’d heard – the voice, the blackened forest with its crimson-eyed watching and floor churning. But she didn’t. Oona had an instinct to keep these things to herself: her nightmares were her own. So she said again, ‘I’m fine.’
‘There’ll be more dispells below,’ said Merrigutt. ‘All kinds to try to stop us. Need to be strong-willed down there.’
‘I know,’ said Oona.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Merrigutt. ‘Fear is no good to us, my girl.’
‘I’m not,’ said Oona. Another lie! And she liked to tell herself that she didn’t like lying.
‘Well I may as well be honest,’ said Merrigutt. ‘Don’t tell that boy this, but I’m bloody terrified.’
‘Good,’ said Oona. Her knife was just inside her mother’s cloak, a hand’s snatch away.
‘Because I’m afraid, too.’
49
Oona peered into a passage that delved
… not too steep but she knew that on all-fours was the only way. Merrigutt moved in a hop just behind Oona, the tunnel too low for perching on a shoulder. Further behind followed the drag of the boy’s long velvet cloak.
Oona went slowly. Anything she touched crumbled. She imagined one kick bringing the tunnel down with the three of them buried. Then thought to herself, Why do I imagine these things? She tried to unthink it, and failed. She thought then – the Loam Stone is doing this, must be divulging these nightmares, thoughts I don’t want.
‘How far to the nest?’ whispered Oona, trying to distract herself from herself.
‘Always concerned with how far,’ said the boy.
‘He doesn’t know,’ said Merrigutt. ‘No point in asking.’
‘I’d be more wary of the magic than any distance or depth of a physical nature,’ said the boy.
‘My theory is that they’ll try to separate us. Try to isolate – then they’ll find us easier to defeat.’
Oona said, ‘We won’t get lost if we go one way all together.’
‘There is only one way,’ said the boy. ‘This is a labyrinth – one path, no choices or diversions. She’ll have other ways to make us lose one another.’
‘She?’ asked Oona.
‘The Mother,’ said the boy. ‘The one they all follow faithfully – their Queen.’
‘Quiet now,’ said Merrigutt. ‘One thing that won’t help is chatting on, they’ll hear that a mile off.’
Merrigutt kept to the place between Oona’s creeping hands and told her, ‘Just stay close.’
Then
down
and
suddenly steeper
d
o
w
n …
… everything not crumbling but clinging, everything wet. Oona’s hands were sinking, mud clogging her toes and fingers. She slowed, and any notion of outside – comfort or ease, daylight or open air – was leaving her. Was it some magic already insinuating itself into her mind? Some dispell, ridding her of any hope?
Oona stopped and said, ‘Just need to rest a minute. Need to think.’
She looked down at Merrigutt. But the jackdaw continued, beak moving, Oona suddenly not hearing. She looked back, towards the boy – he’d stopped, too, mouth moving but giving no sound.
Oona spoke: ‘What’s happening?’
But she couldn’t hear her own voice. She closed her eyes.
Then a final thing, a whisper so distant, as far off as the soft memory of any Drumbroken dawn: ‘Stay close, my girl. Don’t lose your way.’
Oona opened her eyes, and she knew what she’d find. Or who she’d not find: no Merrigutt, no boy of the Big House. They’d lost one another. She was alone.
50
Then Oona overheard –
‘Not the best one, that girl!’
‘No, too much gristle! Too much fat and fidgeting!’
‘Too much of those second-skins on her, those … what do you call thems?’
‘Clothes.’
‘Aye!’
‘Should’ve left her. We’re meant to be keeping anyway, not eating.’
‘We’re grand – boys meant for the King, not the girls.’
‘But no sense now in taking any more, not with what we’ve got on its way!’
‘We’ll soon be well above that sort, if the ones from across the sea keep their promise!’
‘They will if they know what’s good for them: you don’t make a Mud-and-Blood Oath with a Briar-Witch and then break it!’
‘True. Break the Oath and we’ll break yer neck!’
Such laughter: wet and dry, crackle and gurgle and crunch. It made Oona think of bones and blisters and she put a hand to her mouth to stop any retching. To mask her breathing, too. And, not caring what nightmare might come, what she might be shown, Oona took the Loam Stone from her satchel as some protection, or comfort. But it was cold, dark, so quiet.
Somehow she breathed, somehow crawled on.
A little ahead: brittle roots were corkscrewing from above, intent on concealing, and Oona was certain the Witches’ nest was hidden just beyond. She listened again for their prattle –
‘The ones from across the sea are due with our prizes this night, aren’t they? All fresh as chicks taken out of their eggs, they promised and said so!’
‘And what about the one in charge? The Faceless one?’
‘He’ll be there too, no doubting. And that Changeling.’
In their tone she heard something close enough to fright. Oona waited. But can’t wait just here forever, she thought. Without Merrigutt though, without even the Master of the Big House, how could she
try to –?
‘Are you here to help us?’
Another voice from somewhere close, and not Witch. In a whisper –
‘Girl – please tell me you’re here to take me home.’
Oona searched but saw nothing except wet. But her imagination willed her towards something, the Loam Stone warming a little and urging her to recognise: she saw a face on the wall beside. Face of a child, a girl, but with no flesh or blood left in it. It spoke and its lips crumbled, cheeks caving – it blinked and clay fell from its eyes, a solid stutter of tears. Oona heard it whisper once more: ‘Please tell me you’re here to take me home to my mammy.’
Then not one but many faces, more captured girls forming in the walls, more whispers –
‘Please help us.’
‘Take me home to my mother, I miss her.’
‘I want to go back above, I never wanted to come down here.’
‘I’m sorry I ran away from home, I should never have trusted those creatures.’
‘Quiet out there or we’ll do worse to you!’
Oona shrunk tight, stilled. The whispers of the children dwindled. Oona looked for but could no longer discern any face. A shout of a Briar-Witch: ‘That’s the good girls! Behave yourselves or we’ll have to go and tell your mammies that you’ve been bold and not done as you should!’
More damp laughter.
Surrounded by nightmares, no escape, Oona wondered, How could I have lived so long and not known the like of this nastiness? Not known nightmares at all, not had such desperate sights?
The thought of the children, of the Witches and their merciless taking – it all pushed Oona lower, and she was certain as certain that a dispell was winding its cold web around her heart. A sure banishment of hope, and a thriving of misery pouring into its place. But she’d seen such hopelessness before. She’d seen her grandmother trapped by it, and Oona was determined to be different. She’d promised herself she’d fight and this was the time to.
The Black North Page 15