“Tell us, Alice,” Einstein said, “why are we going to Ulbroom?”
They were sitting around the fire, letting their meal digest. Alice stared into the flames as she spoke.
“Until Sorrel came along, we had a life of order. It wasn’t always easy, but everyone knew the rules. Men were in charge. Women did the bidding of the men and brought forth children. Mutants were an abomination in the eyes of the Creator. Sorry, Einstein – I know that’s wrong now.
“I think I probably knew that a lot of what we were taught was wrong, otherwise I wouldn’t have become so good at hiding my thoughts and feelings – even from the other girls. That was the thing: you never knew who to trust.
“When the two of you escaped and left Martin for dead…” Alice shook her head. “They went wild. And when Martin recovered, he was insane with rage. We were so scared of him – nobody wanted to be in his sight. It was Doctor Abigail who finally managed to calm him down. She persuaded him that Sorrel had been sent by the Creator to test him.”
“She allowed him to save face,” Einstein said.
“Yes, that’s right. Martin was always very impressed by himself, and the thought of the Creator picking him out made him feel even more important. After a while, he settled down and it seemed that life would carry on as before. But the thought of what Sorrel had done kept niggling at him. He felt that he’d been made a fool of and his pride couldn’t cope. So he went to Dinawl to look for her. And came back with Mara.
“There was a big celebration when they got married. Nobody mentioned Sorrel – that marriage had been quietly annulled – and for a while it was as though none of it had happened. Martin had a beautiful wife and he expected a baby to follow, but it didn’t happen. For years they’d been blaming the women in Ulbroom for the lack of babies, and when Doctor Abigail suggested that perhaps it was the men who were sterile, he had her locked up for heresy.
“We looked to Mara, hoping she would calm him. Instead, she fanned the flames of Martin’s anger and said the Creator was punishing Ulbroom for the deviousness of our women. The men were enthralled by her. Before long, fingers were pointed and lies spread, and soon Doctor Abigail wasn’t the only woman locked up.”
David screwed his face up. “But what would Mara hope to gain?”
“Power,” Sorrel said. “Perhaps it’s what she has always craved.”
Alice nodded. “She looks so sweet on the outside, but one time, I saw this look on her face and I wondered if she was being wicked purely for her own amusement.
“A fever gripped the village. The men – and some of the women too – began talking about more severe punishments than simply locking up the accused. There was even talk of burning. They hadn’t pointed the finger of accusation at me yet, but I knew it was only a matter of time. We were living in fear. I didn’t know what to do but I managed to speak to Doctor Abigail and she sent me for help. But when I got to Dinawl, Sorrel wasn’t there, and then the war started… I’ve been gone from home for months now and I wonder if perhaps it’s too late. But I have to try.”
Kyle put his arm around her.
“What is it you want us to do?” David asked.
“Stop Martin and Mara. Help the women – help Ulbroom.”
“All we can do is try,” Sorrel said. “But you need to prepare yourself for the worst.”
Alice leaned into Kyle. “I know. I already have.”
Sorrel woke up to Tailwagger growling. She laid a hand on the dog’s head to quieten her and sat still, listening. Something was shuffling around in the undergrowth. She nudged David, but he was already awake and listening, as was Valen.
They pulled out their knives and woke the rest of the group. Heavy breathing and grunting, the snapping of twigs, the drag of something heavy. Whatever it was, it was coming closer. Valen put his fingers to Eli’s lips to hush the boy.
“Ugh!” Sorrel exclaimed as the creature lumbered into the clearing, dragging one of its legs.
For a second, she wondered what kind of crime against nature the creature was, but then she realised she was looking at a mutant so cloaked in grime, it was hard to tell where his clothes ended and his skin began. In fact, it looked as though the two had intertwined, his skin growing over animal hide, leather absorbed into the body.
They stepped back as the mutant shambled towards the warmth of the dying fire. He paid them no attention but fell on his knees before the stripped badger carcase, snapped off a rib and gnawed on it.
As she stared at him, Sorrel began to see past the filth coating the creature. His small, deep-set eyes were separated by an expanse of forehead as wide as a peat bog. His nose was almost non-existent, his nostrils gouges in his face. Just as she realised she recognised him, Einstein exclaimed:
“Turk!”
The mutant turned his head and stared at Einstein, then looked at the rest of them as though noticing them for the first time. His tiny mole eyes rested first on Eli and then on Sorrel. He grinned, exposing a row of broken teeth.
“Up!” he exclaimed, then laughed, the sound a rattle in his throat like the clatter of bones.
“He’s one of them,” David said, “from Amat – isn’t he?”
Sorrel nodded.
Turk tore another piece from the badger carcase and slavered over it.
“Shall we kill him?” David asked.
“No,” Sorrel said. “The limp he has he owes to me. The longer he lives, the more he suffers. Leave him be.”
“Then may he live for a long time to come,” David replied.
They left the mutant behind and continued their journey north, trekking through the bleak winter landscape. Snow blanketed the higher ground and gathered in sheltered hollows.
Valen carried Eli on his shoulders. Though Sorrel had not heard them exchange a word, a bond had developed between the two. Father and son communicated through small gestures, each understanding the other, almost as if they were reading each other’s minds. She had hoped Valen would speak again, but it seemed he had no use for talking.
The going was easiest where the ground was frozen, but it yielded precious little food. Even supplemented with ground elder, a whole badger did not go far between seven hungry people and a dog. They had feasted their fill, leaving the meagre scraps to Turk, but when their bodies had used up its goodness, they were back to running on empty.
Finally, they arrived at the head of a loch.
“I remember this place,” Sorrel said. “It’s where we left the boat when we escaped from Ulbroom.”
“That is correct,” Einstein said.
He led them to a clump of stunted trees growing near the shore. Tied up and concealed in a hollow was the rowing boat he and Sorrel had used for their escape. Einstein inspected the skiff.
“The hull is fine. She will take us all the way to Ulbroom.”
“She?” Sorrel asked.
“Boats are always female,” Einstein replied. “At least they were in Before times.”
Sorrel ran her hand along the gunnel. “She took us away from Ulbroom. I didn’t think we’d be using her to get back there.”
“I did not think we would be going back by any means,” Einstein said. “We will travel by cover of night and arrive in Ulbroom at first light.”
They made a fire on the shore and dined on a meal of seaweed and shellfish picked at the water’s edge. Afterwards, Alice and Kyle strolled along the shore, stopping to toss pebbles into the water.
“Have you noticed?” Einstein said.
“Noticed what?” David asked.
But Sorrel had seen it. “Alice, she’s thickened at the waist.”
David stared at the young woman, dawning realisation on his face. “Does she know?”
“If she does not, she soon will,” Einstein said.
With seven of them in the boat, plus the dog, there was precious little room to spare, but after so many miles of hard walking, to be sitting while travelling felt like luxury.
Einstein took the first turn a
t the oars, showing the others how to use them.
Valen was rowing when they came within sight of Ulbroom. Alice, Kyle and Eli were scrunched up together, dozing in the bow. Sorrel leaned over to wake them up.
“Almost there.” She shook Alice’s arm.
David took over the oars and they rowed cautiously into the beach at Ulbroom.
“This is strange.” Alice scanned the deserted street running along the shore.
“It’s quiet,” Sorrel said.
“Too quiet,” Alice said. “There’s always someone around, someone watching.”
“Not now, it seems,” David said.
Einstein jumped out of the boat and pulled it up the beach so that the bow was out of the water.
The others looked around as they climbed out.
“Perhaps they are all in the Creator’s house, giving thanks,” Alice said.
“They would still leave someone on watch though, wouldn’t they?”
Alice nodded. “Something’s not right.”
“Will we leave someone to watch the boat?” David asked.
“No, let’s stay together,” Sorrel said.
The village was at once familiar and yet eerily quiet. In the time that Sorrel had been there, she had known it as a place of industry, everyone busy with something, but now there was not a soul to be seen, and the houses and their gardens had an unkempt look about them with plants grown straggly before dying back and windows coated in a layer of grime. Some of the doors had been marked with an X.
Ulbroom, once so bright and cared for, looked as though it had been abandoned.
They followed Alice in a silent huddle, the hush pressing in around them.
“We’ll go to the Creator’s house.” Alice’s voice was barely more than a whisper.
Even Tailwagger seemed subdued. She loped close to Sorrel, her tail down, as they walked along the wide street towards the Free’s place of worship. Sorrel glanced at Einstein, for it was outside this place that he had endured the torment of sharp stones and heavy chains. He looked at her but said nothing.
Alice stopped so abruptly that Sorrel almost walked into her back.
“What’s…” but then she saw why Alice had stopped.
Outside the Creator’s house, in the place where Einstein had been chained, five women lay in shackles. They were slumped against the small shed that had served as a shelter for Einstein. They were dressed in rags, and their faces had the waxy pallor of death.
“Doctor Abigail,” Alice whispered.
She was so thin and dishevelled that Sorrel would not have recognised her.
They stared for a few moments upon the morbid scene.
“What happened here?” David murmured.
Just then, Doctor Abigail’s eyes fluttered open.
“She’s alive,” Sorrel said.
Alice immediately went to the woman. “Water, she needs water.”
Sorrel fetched water from the pump.
“Slowly now,” Einstein warned. “Wet her lips to begin with.”
Alice first dribbled a few drops of water on Doctor Abigail’s lips, then fed her a few small sips from the ladle.
“What happened?” Alice asked. “Can you talk?”
“You brought help.” Doctor Abigail pulled herself upright and looked at the other women. She shook three of them by the shoulder but left the fourth alone.
“Poor little Astra, she passed in the night.”
The other three stirred and stared wide-eyed at Alice and the others.
“What happened, Doctor Abigail?” Alice asked again.
Doctor Abigail raised her arms. Her wrists were red raw where the shackles had worn away at her skin.
“They said we were an abomination, like you,” she looked at Einstein. “They did to us what we did to you, but it wasn’t enough. Look there.”
Beyond the place of worship, a long stake had been driven into the ground. Beside it, neatly piled, was a large stack of firewood.
“They were going to burn us alive – one at a time. That first stake was for me. They were excited, as though it was a festival instead of murder. I tried to talk to them, to plead with the women who had been my friends and neighbours, but they were either struck dumb with fear or had been brain-washed by the men.”
Doctor Abigail took another sip of water before continuing. “I was sick with dread. I begged and pleaded with them. But before they could put me to the stake, the sickness came.”
“Sickness?” Einstein asked.
“The men, they’d been out on a hunting party. Hunting!” Doctor Abigail snorted. “It was women they were after. They’d gone north, around the coast – they came back empty-handed – or so they thought. But within hours of returning, the first of them fell ill.
“I asked them to release me, told them I could help. But they blamed me. I’m sure they would have burned me then – a sacrifice – but the sickness spread too quickly.”
“Plague,” Einstein said.
“Perhaps.”
Sorrel stared at Astra’s body.
“I don’t know what killed her in the end,” Doctor Abigail said. “Starvation perhaps? But she did not have the sickness.”
“We need to get you out of these chains,” Alice said.
“Mara has the keys.”
“Mara’s alive?” Sorrel asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen anyone for days.”
Sorrel took out her knife and stared at Martin’s house.
“There’s no cross on the door. If they’re in there and they’re alive, they already know we’re here.”
“Those women aren’t going to last much longer,” David said. “Let’s go for it.”
Einstein flung the door back on its hinges and shouted, “Knock, knock!”
Sorrel couldn’t help but grin.
They listened for a moment, but there was no response.
“Mara,” David called, “we’re coming in.”
“We only want the keys to release Doctor Abigail and the others,” Sorrel called. “We mean you no harm.”
Dust motes swirled and the faint smell of sawberries hung in the air.
“Upstairs or down?” David asked.
“Down,” Sorrel said. No way, no how did she want to go anywhere near Martin’s bedroom.
David shrugged. “I’ll go up.”
He started up the stairs and Einstein and Sorrel split the downstairs between them. The keys were small and there were many places to look, but Sorrel figured Martin’s study was as good a place as any to start. It was where she had found her father’s belongings all that time ago. But when she opened the door, it was clear that Mara had made her mark.
No longer Martin’s den, the room was filled with what Sorrel could only think of as trophies. Gold, silver and crystal glinted in the dull light. She immediately had an image in her mind of Mara going through the unlived-in houses in Ulbroom, taking what she fancied from each. She would have enjoyed her new-found wealth and power.
The sudden creak of a floorboard overhead gave pause to her thoughts. She went out to the hall and called David’s name. He didn’t answer. Einstein was searching through drawers in the kitchen. There was another sound from upstairs – footsteps?
“David?”
When he didn’t answer, she went up a couple of stairs, then stopped to listen again. A creak, a kind of shuffling – or was that her imagination? Why didn’t he answer?
Knife at the ready, heart drumming, Sorrel went up another couple of stairs. She could see along the hallway now. The door at the end was open. A shadow moved.
“David?”
Another movement. Sorrel’s nails dug into her palms as she tightened her grip on the knife.
David stepped into the hall.
“What are you doing up here?” he asked. “Find anything?”
Sorrel sighed and climbed the last couple of stairs to the top.
“Just my imagination running away with me. Why didn’t you answer?”
<
br /> David raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t hear you. Martin’s in there.” He jerked his head back at the room.
“What?” A flash of panic exploded inside Sorrel.
“Don’t worry, he’s dead,” David said.
“Don’t go near him – you don’t want to get the sickness.”
“Oh. Never thought of that. It’ll be okay. He’s been dead a while – he’s all shrivelled up. But maybe you should stay back just in case. We can ask Doctor –”
Before David could finish his sentence, the door across the hall burst open. Everything happened so fast that Sorrel had no time to do anything but watch. At the same time, the unfolding events seemed to play out so slowly that every tiny detail burnt itself onto her mind. These moments would be played back for years to come in the dead of night when sleep evaded her, or catch her by surprise on the sunniest of days.
A demon came hurtling into the room. A demon with wild red hair and knives for hands. It hissed and gibbered, and as it flew at David, its red hair parted to reveal green eyes which had once been sharp and clear but were now clouded with madness.
“Mara!” Sorrel screamed.
But if Mara heard, or even understood the sound of her own name, she paid no heed.
Sorrel saw the emotions she felt playing out on David’s face. Surprise, tinged with fear as Mara abruptly appeared, followed by swift recognition, but before any of the thoughts could be processed, a new expression appeared on his face. Three circles of shock as his eyes widened and his mouth made a dark O.
And then there was red. It blossomed on his chest where Mara plunged in her knife. From somewhere far away, Sorrel heard the sound of herself screaming, and then David’s knife arced through the air. A long gasp emitted from Mara, followed by the gargle of blood in her throat.
Sorrel didn’t hear Einstein come up the stairs. She barely felt him move her out of the way as he thundered past and along the hall to David. Why was he moving and she wasn’t? Why was he with David and she was – she was nothing but numb. But then her limbs unfroze and she was with David, kneeling beside him, following Einstein’s instructions. Pressing down on his wound, trying to make it stop bleeding, trying to make it better.
The New Day Page 22