The Black North

by Nigel McDowell

  ‘That’s it,’ said a voice, ‘keep at them, sister!’

  And the boy – liberated from his Big House – was beside Oona, his stone hands too doing their best to free her. Not as strong as his sister, but he was as decided on helping and soon Oona was free, abandoning the blade, holding only to the Loam Stone.

  ‘Very well done, Sally,’ said the boy of the Big House.

  ‘Not so shoddy yourself,’ said his sister.

  The three of them moved closer together, but it was a reunion short-lived –

  ‘There she is! Don’t let her escape! Get the Stone!’

  Cry of an Invader – the Faceless? She could hardly tell – and Oona felt the earth shake beneath her as soldiers on horseback and Briar-Witches and Muddgloggs all made her their target –

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the boy of the Big House.

  ‘Oh dear indeed,’ said Oona.

  ‘Stop with your oh-dear-dears!’ Sally told them. ‘You’ve got that Stone, girl – use it!’ But what else or who? From where?

  ‘Look out!’ shouted the Master of the Big House, pointing upwards. Oona registered crimson eyes, dark feather, claws ready to snatch –

  A volley of images and wishes and hopes shot through her –

  A knife thrown into the air sent the Changeling wheeling at the last moment –

  ‘You lose that gun I gave you?’ said Billy O’Riley. ‘Prefer these anyway.’

  He stood with another blade in his hand, and many more at his belt. Then more detail, the more Oona remembered him: arms tattooed to the elbows, hair and clothes singed, just as she’d seen him last, as though no time had passed between the night of Innislone’s burning and there on the Burren.

  ‘Are you even real?’ she had to wonder aloud. She realised she was asking herself. Realised it didn’t matter a bit.

  And behind Billy were more of the men of Innislone, all with knives ready. But not only men, thought Oona. She decided: we need more.

  ‘We’re ready and willing as ever,’ said another voice, a woman’s voice.

  Out of the black stepped the landlady of The Loyal Martyr. And behind her all the loyal women of Loftborough – Mrs McSooth and Mrs Molloy and Mrs Donnelly and Mrs O’Keefe and more, all with rake and shovel and spade and whatever weapon in hand.

  ‘Are these women up to this fight?’ asked Billy, looking them over.

  ‘We’re better able than you, sonny jim!’ the landlady told him.

  ‘Now this is an army!’ cried the boy of the Big House, knocking his stone hands together. Gunshots from the Invaders, and a roar went up, not from the men of Innislone but from the stone statue of Sally: ‘Attack!’

  As one, they raced ahead: Oona between the children of the Big House and Billy and his men and the Loftborough women behind. And behind Oona sensed the trio of Giants she’d summoned following too, ready for the fight. Whatever Whereabouts Wolves that still remained threading by them. One Wolf ran up alongside, and from its back someone called –

  ‘Get on!’

  Morris took Oona’s free hand and hauled her onto the Wolf’s back.

  ‘Now quickly,’ he told the Whereabouts. ‘Straight ahead now!’

  Oona saw the line of Invaders and Muddgloggs and Briar-Witches –

  ‘Now leap!’ Morris ordered, and the Wolf rose high, vaulting over the army –

  Moment like weightlessness, hovering in the dark –

  And then down, and then on.

  ‘I could get used to having one of these,’ said Morris.

  ‘Is it far?’ asked Oona, seeing nothing.

  ‘Not far at all,’ said Morris.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because we’re already there.’

  85

  They stopped at the end, the edge – a cliff that dropped deep and sheer and Oona looked out over her first sea. It spoke in small whispers of cold and loneliness and danger. She looked with a kind of longing towards the battle.

  ‘No,’ said Morris. ‘They’re all back there fighting so we can do this, remember?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oona, but still she had to fight to tear her gaze away: from friends, from those she’d brought from miles away to fight the Invaders. The Loam Stone grew hot in her hand. She heard that voice say: ‘Do not pretend that what lies behind is what you are craving, Oona Kavanagh. The dark of what lies ahead is what draws you now.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said, and Oona slipped from the Whereabouts.

  ‘He’s a handy one to have,’ said Morris, laying a hand on the Wolf’s snout. It shook him off – so docile and suddenly so violent.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ asked Morris.

  ‘It’s not a he,’ said Oona.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Morris.

  But the Whereabouts was gone – pale thing streaking off into the dark, back towards the battle.

  ‘Here,’ said Morris, kneeling by the edge of the Burren.

  Oona saw a shallow steps trickling down the cliffside. Near-vertical, not a bit of support. It was all they had as a way down.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said, and began.

  As soon as she settled her first foot on the step, the weather began to harass them: wind plucking and rain beginning, driving cold into their bones. It reminded Oona of the contrary magic that controlled the rope-bridge spanning the Divide – something wanted to stop them.

  ‘We’re gonna be blown clean off this!’ cried Morris.

  ‘No!’ Oona told him. ‘I’ll not be beaten by a bunch of bewitched steps!’

  The tumult from the Burren was lost – there was no point in thinking of what was happening there, Oona knew. The King of the North was right – there was only the way ahead, the way down into the dark.

  Soon they had to move in a crouch or risk falling, and holding hands, and shuffling.

  ‘How did you learn to use that thing?’ asked Morris, suddenly.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Oona, not being able to remember exactly when, exactly how she had come to understand the Stone. ‘Our great-grandfather Aedan explained first to me about it.’

  ‘Great-grandfather?’ said Morris. ‘You mean one that’s dead?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oona.

  ‘Sounds true enough,’ said Morris.

  ‘It is true!’ said Oona.

  ‘Sounds like you were dreaming,’ said Morris. Oona didn’t bother with anything more.

  And not too soon or any way unwelcome – their feet touched rock together. Shattered rock, everything broken, ruined shore, and Oona remembered: what Merrigutt had described when the King’s City had first surfaced, the wave it had sent crashing over land destroying, removing so much of the coast.

  ‘What the –?’ said the Morris.

  Oona saw a desperate litter of thousands, fish all stranded on sand and stone, bodies darkened and bloodied. Poisoned, just like Merrigutt had said. And she glimpsed other things too: stone that might’ve been a wall once, driftwood that might’ve been a roof. All homes, all destroyed.

  ‘We need to keep going,’ said Oona.

  Clamber, crawl – Oona’s feet were grazed, elbows becoming bloodied, the rattle of Morris’s rifle one of the few sounds. Her brother didn’t ask where they were going exactly, or how far or how they’d get there even. And Oona was grateful – in the image she’d been given there’d been the full moon laying light across the sea, but no moon was above, the sky too overcome with cloud.

  Morris slipped, swore.

  ‘Can’t see a thing!’ he said. ‘Anything could be hiding here and we’d not know!’

  So much shadow. Oona stopped: she remembered the cellar of the Big House, the boy she’d since come to know so keen to remain concealed within it. And remembered Merrigutt’s magic –

  ‘Don’t move,’ said Oona.

  She held the Loam Stone high and saw in her mind those silent lightning strokes, bright shivers, and the black above them was rent by a single streak of scarlet. The clouds were thrown back and the face of the moon was unvei
led. So bright, so full it looked overflowing. It poured a long trail of silver on the surface of the sea – a causeway stretching from broken shore, but towards where? What unknown elsewhere at the edge of the world?

  ‘This way now,’ said Oona, stepping down to the sea.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Morris. ‘Have you lost it completely?’

  Oona settled one foot on moonlight. Cold raced into every bit of her, as though the surface had frozen solid beneath her soles. She stood for a long time, wondering if she could bear it, breathless.

  ‘You have endured worse, Oona Kavanagh. What is the simple pain of the flesh, after what you have witnessed?’

  And Oona found she could suffer it.

  ‘Quick,’ she told Morris. ‘We don’t have long left. He’s waiting for us.’ And Oona settled sight on the horizon, and started to walk across the sea.

  86

  Last time: see Oona, in a place not near broken shore but nearer to where she must go. On her journey she had walked many roads: White, Blackened, and now Silver. A moonlit way leading to the edge of the everything. In her hands she held the Loam Stone, its single shred of white light unmoving. Dark sea was spread calm on either side, a surface so cold she had to go along on tip toe. But not alone – see Morris, walking two-steps-and-a-bit behind.

  Together, the twins were crossing the sea.

  And not for the first (or second or even umpteenth) time, Morris in shivering words asked her, ‘How far now?’

  ‘Not much longer,’ said Oona.

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Morris.

  ‘Just do,’ said Oona, truthfully.

  Not a minute had passed and as though Oona’s certainty had summoned it, she saw something pale against the sky, like frost clinging with brittle fingers to the dark in the distance. Oona felt the Loam Stone warm her hand for a moment – acknowledgement, or warning?

  She paused and pointed ahead, breathing, ‘The City of Echoes.’ Morris swore under his breath.

  They watched, and the City spread, wanting to encompass the whole horizon. It was crowned with sharp needles of rock. But Oona blinked and the needles appeared softer, rounder, announcing a place more grand – elegant turrets and spires, soaring towers of cold white.

  ‘You are almost here,’ the voice of the King told Oona. ‘So far, so much pain in your mind. But you have not yet seen the worst.’

  ‘Ready?’ asked Morris. Oona nodded, then began again. The twins hadn’t walked far when they reached out in the same moment, wordless, and took each other’s hand.

  Oona kept her eyes on the City, unable to ignore the rising warmth of the Stone … and as she watched, she saw the City rise further, widening. Too soon it was all she could see. Too soon, they were there.

  ‘Which way is the way in?’ asked Morris.

  Oona searched but didn’t see any place to enter: the City’s surface was pock-marked, so many dark places where things could be lost. And for a moment it looked to Oona like somewhere unspeakably ancient: sunken and then hauled to the surface, broken and rebuilt, enduring. But then not: another moment, another blink, and things looked better – not wounds at all but narrow windows, sculpted arches, broad balconies …

  Oona was glad to hear Morris say, ‘It changes.’

  Oona nodded and said, ‘Wants to fool us. Wants us in.’

  ‘But where do we –?’ began Morris.

  Summoned by their asking – the City allowed a new dark to form, only feet from the twins: their wished-for entrance.

  They looked at one another, tried for a deep breath each, and in they walked.

  Narrow passage, no part of it even. Oona had the same sense of unknown nightmares and pernicious magic as on her journey down into the Briar-Witch nest. Same feeling: this was a place they were’t meant to be, and they were moving towards something that shouldn’t ever be seen.

  ‘Move faster, Oona Kavanagh.’

  And the walls twitched. And the twins hurried on, still hand-in-hand, Morris ahead and at the end both of them stumbled and fell onto their knees as the entrance squeezed shut behind them.

  Oona was first on her feet, asking Morris, ‘You all right?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, but stayed where he was. He was watching the slow crumble of his own hand.

  ‘You’re not all right,’ she said. ‘It’s the Echoes. You’re starting to –’

  ‘Don’t bloody fuss,’ he said, and summoned the effort to stand, eyes shut tight. ‘Need to keep going. Don’t worry about me.’

  Oona said nothing more as they moved on. But they’d taken hardly a shuffling step each before they were stopped by a sight, and both swore to themselves –

  A city made of cities – a magpie place, ruins gathered and stacked, so many palaces and temples and Worshipping Houses and mansions and cottages and all homes gathered in hoard, and all broken and shattered, teetering or already toppled. Oona saw pillars reaching high and others only stumps; archways that reminded her of the entrance to the Burren, some the right size for a child to wander through and others tall enough for a Muddglogg to pass comfortably beneath; staircases spiralling high, to nowhere sensible, and then stopping … And it was black. After the pale exterior (the lie, Oona realised) of the City, and everything inside was burned, decimated. And so cold. And something else – everywhere around them stood dark statues.

  Morris leaned close and whispered, ‘They look just like people.’

  Oona knew he was right. Not statues at all. And more than this – she knew why they had come to be that way.

  ‘Do you hear them, Oona? Do you hear the desperation of Echoes?’

  ‘I do,’ said Oona, aloud.

  Morris looked at her.

  ‘Listen,’ she told him.

  And the air was filled with low whisper – the Echoes.

  The twins were drawn onwards, hearing –

  ‘I will not give in, not ever! My father was a great man and I was his son!’

  ‘I’ll not let my family down by relenting! I was born in this Isle and I’ll die here!’

  ‘I’d rather be turned to dust than die with dishonour! I will not surrender!’

  Hundreds (or thousands!) of figures populated the King’s City, but Oona knew if she’d decided to look and examine each, she wouldn’t have discovered one that wasn’t a boy. Like the men of the Cause she’d encountered in the Melancholy Mountains, she saw so many frozen attitudes – of fright, of defiance, but all open-mouthed, hands lingering in half-raised poses. And still their fervent whispers, the abiding echoes –

  ‘We’ll fight on till the end!’

  ‘We’ll do our fathers proud!’

  ‘Nothing better than an honourable death!’

  ‘For country and not for King – we’ll fight till the end!’

  ‘Come on,’ said Morris. ‘We’ll not end up like these ones. We’ll not fail.’

  Oona’s eyes went to her brother’s hand, to the grey canker that had gotten rid of two fingers already. It was still managing to hold their grandfather’s rifle.

  ‘Come on,’ he said again. ‘We need to find the centre of things. That’s where this King will be hiding.’

  And Oona only nodded.

  Such a distance they wandered through – felt like lost miles, long years, generations wasted. And everywhere the black. Or, thought Oona, Black? Things more made sense – this was the King’s home, and he wished to have everywhere look like it. She remembered from what seemed like another time: ‘I am what this Isle will become: it will be remade in my image.’

  But finally Morris pointed with his rifle and said, ‘Look there.’

  A forest. Familiar sight, almost comforting – as though it had been chosen just for them. But not – it was the forest Oona recognised from her nightmares, and from the nightmare of every Invader.

  ‘This is it,’ said Oona. She held the Stone tighter.

  On Oona’s eyelashes and toes – against lips and fingertips – she felt a wintry feather-brush, like slow snowf
all. Ash. The forest was slowly burning, soundlessly, silent white fire devouring.

  They stopped on the fringes and waited for entry.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ Morris told her.

  ‘Too late for that,’ said Oona.

  ‘Good,’ said Morris. ‘Because I’m bloody terrified.’

  And with sickening sounds of crunch and snap and groan – and the Echoes of the boys growing to such a cacophony of vow and assurance and affirmation that Oona couldn’t think her own thoughts – the trees parted, and the Kavanagh twins stepped into the forest.

  Only in, and the trees knotted closed behind. The whispers died. They were surrounded by silence, standing in a clearing with a floor of scorched stone.

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Morris.

  All around the forest continued to burn without protest.

  ‘Hiding probably,’ said Morris.

  Something moved. Or perhaps everything: branches were squirming, roots leaving the ground to waver and crackle and Morris pointed his rifle high and low, higher, Oona holding the Loam Stone close, both turning on the spot, spine-to-spine, watching.

  ‘See anything?’ asked Morris.

  ‘No,’ said Oona. And then she whispered, ‘He won’t let us see him. Not till he wants it.’ And standing there in the centre of the King’s City, Oona felt so closely examined. As though she was being stripped of her tougher self and left like a fluid denied its jar: the longer she stood, the more vulnerable she became.

  Then the voice that Oona knew well decided to speak, but not only for her –

  ‘You come to confront me, Kavanagh twins? Or have you come to learn?’

  Not a moment and Morris shouted back, ‘We’ve come to destroy you! Same way as you’ve been destroying our Blessed Isle!’

  A sound like breathing.

  ‘Come out and fight, you bloody coward!’ shouted Morris.

  And as her brother’s words died, Oona saw the Echoes take stronger hold of Morris – his hand crumbling, the rifle slipping no matter how strong he tried to hold it.

  ‘You have come to confront your King?’ said the voice of the forest.

  Morris opened his mouth but Oona took his hand, whispering, ‘Don’t say anything. Look at your hand – you’re making it worse.’