Secrets of Carrick: Ghostheart

by Ananda Braxton-Smith

  Spring tide.

  Before I could shout Look out! the spring tide was flooding into the cave. It was ripping the seastars from the walls and breaking the blossom-animals’ holdfasts. It was sprawling Dolyn Craig up against the scaaney ledge. Then it was ebbing. Dolyn lay there and gave me the fisheye. Again it was quiet.

  And again the stone rumbled.

  Dolyn Craig leaped up like a hare, then. The whitestorm of water was on us. We jumped the threshold down into the stonechamber. There was a hail of spitfoam and sprats. I covered my head and I ran. The waters were at my heels. They were gripping my ankles. And then of a sudden, everything was still.

  Stopped on a crest.

  Hanging on an edge.

  And the sea sucked back.

  I fell. I rolled like a log and was dragged backward, my face raked by sand and shell. The waters slowed, and shallowed, and stopped again. Gritted and flayed, I stood on shaking legs in the ebb. I looked about for Lovely.

  And the stone rumbled.

  There was no wanting to or not-wanting to left in me. I bolted across the stonechamber and up onto the Otherway.

  Dolyn Craig was going like a flame up an oily rag. He pushed me out of the way, running upright and blind. He never looked back once. He went slipping in the gravel, dragging his waterlogged robes, heading for higher ground.

  I followed him, inward and upward. We went up-and-up until we were above the circling tide. Lovelypig was waiting there and I ran to hold her. Then, spitting sand and bleeding from various parts, we turned and looked back. Looked down into the ruin.

  The cave was a wrecked thing now, shattered under a sea of dead blossom-animals. Nobody would be able to hide there again. I didn’t know where Breesh was.

  First and Second Caves were gone under swaying saltfoam stacks. Some of the foam stacks stood tall and when they fell, they spread into a lake of froth. Across the flooding waters I could still see the daylight coming from outside. The stonechamber threshold was so close. I could have walked it in twenty steps, except for the sea.

  The sea kept coming.

  And resurrection crabs came ahead of the waters. Other small creatures too. All the living things were on the move. Me and Dolyn Craig kept moving too, further in, further up, further back in the swarm of spiders and beetles and crabs. We were all trooping up the Otherway.

  It was leading away into a light-specked darkness. Yellow and red spots lit the path’s rimstones and the wall I put my hand on was smeared with gleamwort. The light-specks made it easier somehow. They didn’t give off much light but they did mark out a path. Inspite of the little lights though, my legs shook as I climbed and my feet slipped under me. I didn’t trust my knees to hold me up. I slid often and the ground crunched. Gravel rolled down into steeps and stoopways, into dark deeps and pits, clattering. Setting off echoes.

  It would be heard right through the cliff.

  Then I remembered Pond-Averick. She’d been moving through these caves like it was her own country. I stopped walking and called into the rock-sour airs.

  “Hello?”

  “You expecting somebody?” said Dolyn Craig.

  “I don’t know,” I said, looking about the path and tunnels. “Maybe.”

  I was hoping that Breesh Dunnal might come back. She’d bolted quick smart when Dolyn came. I didn’t want her to be gone forever.

  Dolyn was watching me close.

  “You really are some worm, aren’t you?” he said then, cold and clear and the word hit like midwinter. I don’t know how he knew.

  I felt tears dripping from my chin. I’d been crying without knowing it. That’s what he’d seen. I didn’t even bother wiping my face.

  “And you really are some turd,” I said.

  His big flat face didn’t change. I would have to learn not to be bothered by his mouth. Until we were loosed from inside this mountain, whenever and wherever that would be, there was only him and me.

  Him and me and Lovelypig.

  I picked her up and took a few more gravelly steps. Lit by the gleams, the Otherway went plainly marked. It went up and turned to the right. Dolyn Craig gave me the deadeye and stalked off. I stayed close as I could. Whatever else he was, he was a real person and not a scaan.

  The first part of the Otherway was laid waste by rockfall. We had to squeeze between boulders and crawl under capstones, and always Dolyn marching on like I wasn’t even there. If I’d fallen, he’d have let me.

  Thinking on the horribleness of Dolyn Craig kept me going. I dogged him with a disgust rising in me that was bigger than my fear. Nothing had ever been bigger than my fear.

  After we’d climbed for some time, the light in the cave dimmed. It dwindled until there were only the specks marking out the path. It was quieter than Sunday, quieter than midnight, the quietest place I’d ever heard. That quiet had a drone to it, like bees, and I covered my ears. When I did, the sea sounded inside my head. I wished more than once Dolyn was a pleasanter sort of person, and that we might talk or something.

  What if I got stuck in here forever with that Dolyn Craig? What if he was the last person I got to talk to?

  Further up the mountain, the Otherway kept opening onto pits and drops. Some were ringed with bladestones. Others were blocked in by towering rockfalls; there was no going round them. We just had to jump the chasms and that was that.

  Lovelypig flew over them in her neat jumps. Dolyn leaped easily, without a thought. But each drop nearly did for me. Each one brought on low-to-middling Frights. I danced on the edge of every leap, grey-faced and retchy. My heart went like holy day bells. My breath was too light, too high. I wanted to swoon. It went like that for hours, and every moment of the hours was watched by Dolyn Craig’s deadeyes. He may as well have been made of wax for all the heart in him, and I told him so.

  That’s when he showed me.

  “Maybe I am,” he said, pulling his sleeve up and shoving his arm in my face.

  Dolyn’s arm was melted like a candle. The skin went in tight silver folds and noils and there were fine red lines all over. I saw it but didn’t know why he was showing me. He wasn’t the sort to be looking for pity.

  I reached out to touch the burnt skin and straightways he was away up the path again. I followed him. Lovely grumbled up at me and sighed deep as bellows.

  “I know,” I said.

  The Otherway went dark and cold. Then colder and darker. But never quite pitchy black and I was bone-deep thankful about it.

  We scrambled through cave after cave in this light that always seemed about to run out altogether. One cave was full with pale flighty spiders with legs like hairs. Another was all white wax rising in towers and falling in spears, touching each other in the middle, like fingertips meeting. After that came countless small black bats. We went and we went.

  And I started to go in a sort of dream. Like there was only me and Dolyn Craig’s footsteps in the world, and I would be walking this Otherway with him forever. The humming quiet inside the tunnels made it worse. Then of a sudden the path narrowed and ran with rills. The rills grew, the path dwindled, and then stopped altogether.

  Another rockfall blocked the Otherway but this time a stone had fallen right in the middle and got stuck tight between the walls. The stone was broad and tall and deep and smooth, entirely. It was too big to budge and too smooth to climb.

  “Bugger it,” I heard Dolyn breathe.

  Then louder. “Bugger it in flames.”

  Then loudest. “In stinking flames and blades,” he bawled so loud he woke some bats in the wall.

  Dolyn stood dark before the stone. He kneeled in the rubble. He sat down hard, with his back to the stone.

  “Well,” he said. “I suppose that’s that.”

  It had been one thing to see Dolyn Craig cry in Midwood. But to see him give up made me feel fluxy. It fetched on a new type of Fright.

  “We can’t stay here,” I told his shape.

  “Why not?” said his voice. “It’s as good a place as any
other to die.”

  My belly was churning now, and my eyes brimming but there was no time for crying. I had to get Dolyn moving. Softness, kindness, good sense; he had none of those things in him. But he had plenty of temper.

  So I sat and edged up to him. I sat so close our shoulders touched and I could feel his warmth. He tried to shift away but I gripped his arm.

  “Why don’t you just ask for help, Brother?” I said, letting him see me point straight up. To his Heaven. “He’s a friend of yours, isn’t He?”

  I said it fresh as apples. I felt his cursing glances hit even in the near-dark. And I grinned right in his face so he would see my teeth and see I didn’t care.

  “Why don’t you?” he said. “You could ask your pig.”

  Lovely sniffed loudly. She knows the word pig. And she knows a tone when she hears one.

  “Or,” Dolyn Craig went on. “You could ask your … friend.”

  I shut up then.

  “You know,” he said, leaning close. “The Father’d be right interested to hear all about you. Talking to pigs. Talking to them who aren’t there. He might think you were a bit, well, witchy.”

  His breath hissed the last word at me. By the low gleam coming off the Otherway his eyes were black holes in his head.

  “Nobody likes a witch,” he said. “Even the oldest old ones don’t like them.”

  I told myself when I got out I would never talk to Dolyn Craig again.

  “Even Shenn Cooley,” he said soft and mean, in case I hadn’t understood.

  I felt it coming then, the whitestorm of tears I was just keeping ahead of. I went to Lovelypig, who was fussing over by a corner of the great stone. I was glad that corner was so dark, so he couldn’t see me. I told myself, quite firm and sharp, to get a hold.

  “And nobody likes you, Dolyn Craig.” I told him. “Not the other Brothers.”

  I felt better. My tears dried.

  “Not the Father,” I said.

  Something bright and cold settled in me.

  “Not even your own mother,” I said.

  That shut him up all right.

  I stopped, surprised.

  “Anyway.” I said. “You’d have to get out before you could tell anybody anything, wouldn’t you?”

  Lovelypig called. She wanted me right now. She was tracking some smell in the airs around the rockfall. I stretched out into the dark to find her gruntling into the bottom of the stone. And then I smelled it myself, thin but sure. A string of wind trailing through a gap. There was a space under the fallen stone where it had caught between the rock walls. The wind smelled of water, and something else.

  Something big.

  I found Dolyn’s arm in the dark and dragged him onto his feet. He ripped it back. I found it again, and fought him for it. I hauled him into the corner.

  “Don’t touch me,” said Dolyn.

  “Why? Scared?” I said, braving him hard as I could with my tone.

  I didn’t know where all this gorm was coming from but honest, I wasn’t going to sit there waiting for the earth to fall on me. Or spiders to infest me, or brouts to eat me. Or the Others to steal me away. I was just going to get out or die trying and that was that.

  “Going to cry?” I said at last, creeping on my hands and knees into the rockfall, my heart thumping, my inside-parts trembling.

  Lovelypig led the way into the crawl space. I had to go low to follow her under the great stone. Wriggling on my belly in the earth.

  Like a worm.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Othersea

  SPRING TIDES ARE BIGGER than regular tides. They wash further upshore and drag further back into the cove. The waters drag back so far even foxes come down to rummage in the sprawl of leftovers. Sometimes they meet at the weedline and fight over the ghost-shrimp and tiny fish left behind by the tide. I’d always been ready for the spring-tide moon when it came. But not this time. Not this morning. I’d turned my back on the sea, just like Da told me never to.

  And not only that.

  I’d ignored the moon. I’d ignored the tide. I’d taken no notice of the waters altogether. Like the smallest child I’d been lost in my play. Now the curse was on me and my punishment fit. I was too frighted to leave Market-Shipton so I was to be washed away, stuck under its rock forever. My cowardy bones would become part of the cliff and nobody would ever find me. Just like Mam said, it wasn’t like I hadn’t been told.

  I only had myself to blame.

  I told myself all this as I squirmed under the fallen stone, as I went on my belly with my face in the dirt. I went that way so I wouldn’t have to look up and see the great dark stone above me.

  Lovelypig was waiting on the other side, calling me in a heartening sort of way. Dolyn came through quick smart after me, shouldering his way flat on his back, leaving half his robe behind on the stone’s spars. His knobs of knees dripped bright blood down his shanks and he’d scraped his brow.

  And we were not out.

  We were even deeper inside the mountain. On a narrow ledge in a spreading cavern. Here there were thready beams and rays coming through far-off cracks. And there were lights moving around its walls. I crawled to the drop and looked down.

  And there was a sea down there. A whole sea. With small waves and a tiny pale beach.

  The shallow waves rolled in cold blue flame onto shingle. They left behind lightsheets that lit the pebble as they ran back to the sea. Tiny fish crossed the sea, blazey lights weaving this way and that.

  Anybody else would be heart-swelled at such a sight. Not Dolyn Craig. He wanted to swap irrits everywhere he went.

  “There’s no way out,” he said. Like it was my fault.

  “What’s it to you?” I said. “You said it was as good a place as any other.”

  All round us the cavern uprose. Here-and-there its rock wall opened in drains that let inland waters fall into into the curdling sea. Most of them were just seeps; their waters dripped slow and left greenslime trails. A few spat water in drops and a few others let it fall in streams. And there was one drain on the farside carrying a whole inland river. That one was a waterfall tumbling white foam and spray down into the bowl of the silver sea.

  Dolyn came to the edge and we looked.

  It was like looking down into some giant scaaney.

  Dolyn Craig sat on the edge with his legs dangling into the drop. We hunted the dim cavern for ways out.

  “What about that one,” I said, pointing to a ledge at the far side of the cave, over by the waterfall. There were a few tunnels over there, leading out.

  Dolyn slumped on the ledge and turned his glooming face to me, all its parts loose and hanging. Even his mouth that was commonly so thin and tight-held, hung there. He drew his bleeding knees up to his bloody brow and wrapped his arms around them.

  “No way over there,” he said and he picked at one thumbnail and gazed into the cavern like it all had nothing to do with him.

  If one of the earth-trembles came while we were still here in the rock, that would be that. It wouldn’t matter any more about finding streams that might lead out. It wouldn’t matter if Dolyn called me witch or worm or what-all. The mountain would just fall on us and we would be shut in together. Forever.

  Time without end.

  I broke out in chills.

  He was sulking now. Refusing to help, finding fault, thinking himself better than other folk. He was right quick to salt the wound of any feeling he saw on me. I didn’t see why I should feel sorry for him.

  I hated that Dolyn Craig.

  If he wasn’t telling what he’d do to people, he’d gone ahead and done it and was big-mouthing about it. And he was a right soft-talker too. Not in a peaceable way, but like he was saying things nobody should ever say or hear. And he’s got that face that doesn’t show anything of his heart. I told myself he needed me too much to clout me. Then I told myself he’d do it anyway, being so contrary.

  But a person doesn’t go about clouting folk without having some rea
son. You can’t do that sort of thing without having some feeling inside, some feeling to drive the fist. But Da says some lads just do that – they clout and thump without needing a reason or a feeling. But I didn’t know about that. Dolyn Craig didn’t seem to just do anything. His eyes were brimful with reasons.

  I just couldn’t see them.

  But as much as I hated Dolyn Craig, I hated the mountain more. I hated its closed rock. And I hated the sea for washing me out of my sea-cave into this hard place. I sat on the ledge with Dolyn watching me too close, and I swallowed my Frights over and over. And I didn’t know whether Breesh Dunnal would ever come back.

  I told myself if I really couldn’t get along without her, she’d come. Like it was when she first came. I was able to call her – that is, when I called, she came – but I could never order her. She wasn’t that sort of person.

  She wasn’t that sort of thing.

  But she was no scaan. No witch or shapeshifter either. But it was true she wasn’t like regular people.

  For a start she always looked just as she did when she first came – years and years ago when I was a little child. Thick black hair, grey eyes turning silver with storms or temper, tall and broad with the muscles big in her calves and hard sinews all over. Whenever there was trouble between us, she’d stick her chin out and look at me with her steady eyes and she always turned out to be right. I didn’t mind. She was always right and she was always brave. She was always safe. And in the early days she could have lifted me and put me under her arm.

  Dolyn couldn’t lift a hen.

  He was too scrawny. And he was slip-eyed. And as far as I could see he was always wrong, and never quite safe.

  “What do you know about my mother?” he asked of a sudden, in tight tones.

  It plainly strained him to talk decent to me. He had to close his eyes and pay attention to his words. I could see it was hard for him to hold the curses back. He had to keep taking deep breaths. Like Mam told me to when I was frighted.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I don’t know anything.”