Nieve

by Terry Griggs

  In one of the chairs, sitting pert on a cushion, was an object she hadn’t noticed on the way in. A curiously familiar object. Stooping to retrieve it, she was surprised to see that it was indeed like one she used to own. A china cat, black, with green eyes, a pink nose, and gilded collar. She hadn’t seen hers in years, and had in fact forgotten all about it until now. Rubbing the dust off this one, she was even more surprised to find that it had exactly the same chipped ear (she’d dropped hers once), and the same bare spot on the top of its head. (She’d rubbed the paint off hers, stroking it like a real cat, wishing she had one. Mr. Mustard Seed, a stray, had arrived at their door not long after.) Nieve turned the china cat over to examine its base. The back of her neck began to prickle as she ran her finger over the capital letter “N” etched there, raggedly scratched into the porcelain . . . with a penknife? . . . as she had done with hers?

  “Mine!” someone said.

  Startled, she looked up. A figure, slightly smaller than herself, stood at the other end of the room in an open archway. It was a girl, very pale, with dark hair like her own, and with features very like her own . . .

  “That’s mine,” the girl repeated. “Mine, mine, mine. So are you! You’re–”

  With a shriek, Nieve dropped the cat and ran for her life.

  –Twenty-Two–

  Lich-Way

  “What is this place?”

  Nieve stood, shivering, behind a dead tree. She had streaked past Lias with such speed that he’d despaired of catching up with her. But she herself had to stop short when she almost caught up with the cart, which the captives were dragging across a stark city square. The square had a lone, leafless tree in its centre, that Nieve – then Lias – had taken refuge behind. Not that it offered much in the way of protection from inquisitive eyes. A skeletal screech owl, all bone and feathers, was perched unnoticed on a branch high up, peering down at them.

  “No place you’d visit less you had to,” Lias answered, still out of breath. “What happened?”

  “Saw something.” She didn’t want to describe it. She’d be describing herself.

  “There’ll be more.”

  “Not like that I hope.” She inched away from him. “You are a spirit. You’ve been here before.”

  “Aye, I’ve been. But I’m no spirit. Failed, remember.”

  She gave him such a skeptical look, that he added, “This place, Nieve, think of it as a . . . a kind of net. A net that the present passes through as it flows into the past.”

  “What?”

  “A net, and it catches things. The way memory does, how you remember some things, not others.”

  Nieve thought about this. “Are you caught?”

  “I am.”

  “What about me?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Okay, so the stuff caught in this make-believe net of yours, the people I mean, can they get back to where they came from?”

  “Some can.”

  Nieve stared after the wagon, which had taken a turn down a narrow lane. “I’m glad Frances didn’t see that guard hit Malcolm. What’s happened to her, d’you think?”

  “Might be she’s still in the hospital looking for him.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  Nieve knew that neither of them thought this likely, since Frances would have attracted too much attention to herself not to get caught. But wherever she was, whatever had happened to her, she’d be counting on them to follow through if they could. Question was, could they? Whatever this place was, it was uncommonly . . . heavy. She could feel it like a weight pushing down on her, compressing her, sapping her energy. She would have liked nothing better than to make her escape – now.

  The cart’s noise had grown more distant.

  “Do you know where they’re taking them?” she said.

  “Not sure. The city keeps changing, it’s never the same for long.”

  “We’ll lose them if we don’t get going.”

  “We will.” Lias made it sound like a good idea.

  But they kept on nonetheless, entering the lane and moving cautiously along the dusty track between the looming houses. Outside of the cart, faintly creaking and rumbling ahead, the city was absolutely silent. No cars, no music or voices, no machinery humming or buzzing in the background. No white noise, only a black silence. It was unnerving. But even more so when something suddenly skimmed past with a keening cry. Above them a small, dark shape hurtled along, then vanished down the street.

  “What was that?”

  “Lich-owl,” Lias shuddered. “They say it’s cry portends a death.”

  “Good thing I never believe what ‘they’ say, then.”

  Brave words. Words Nieve hoped would quell her rising panic, or at least keep it in check as they continued down the lane. The houses on both sides pressed in on them, leaning even more steeply into the already tight passage, as if hungry for occupants. Not that they didn’t already have plenty of those. Lias had warned her, but still she was unprepared for the hideous, ghostly faces that appeared in windows they passed. Faces that flickered in and out of visibility, that glared at them bug-eyed, or leered and laughed uproariously, if soundlessly.

  “Don’t look,” Lias warned.

  He didn’t have to warn her twice about those ones, but there were others that compelled her to look. One kindly-featured old woman followed her from window to window, smiling sweetly, invitingly. She reminded Nieve of Gran. Drawn to her, unable to resist, she stepped closer. As she did so the old woman’s grandmotherly face blossomed with delight and recognition. Perhaps she was a long-lost relative? How wonderful it would be to sink into her arms, to feel safe again, to forget all the frightening things that had happened.

  Lias touched the pewter amulet on his cloak and muttered something under his breath. Instantly, the old woman’s expression darkened and shifted. Her delight at observing Nieve turned into loathing, her adoring recognition into guile. Her soft features began to melt and contort into a face ghoulish and gloating. She bared her broken, bloody teeth and licked her purple lips . . . and then whirled back into the darkness, as though seized by an unseen hand.

  Recoiling and sickened, Nieve stumbled back to Lias’ side. “What did you say?” She couldn’t help but think that while her brave words earlier were only that, he knew a language more useful, more powerful. The language of ghosts and dead things.

  “Told her to flake off.”

  “Ah.”

  “Picked that one up in your schoolyard.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  He shrugged. “Got me.”

  “You pick up a lot of things.”

  “I do. Am a scavenger, a scrounger. How I survive.”

  “Who are you Lias, really?”

  “Later for that, Nieve. I promise. Haven’t you noticed, the more we speak, the more they’re attracted to us. They love the sound of it, our voices are like gold to them. Like . . . breath.”

  “Our voices are breath. You’re just trying to shut me up.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Exactly? You got that one from me. You’re not a scavenger, you’re a thief, like Lirk said.” Not the kindest accusation, she realized, seeing as he’d just saved her skin.

  “There’s only one thing I want to steal and you don’t have it.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  They walked along in silence for a few moments, but she couldn’t not ask.

  “Who does?”

  “Will you hush.”

  He paused, listening closely. Before she could protest, he yanked her into another open doorway.

  An eerie sound slit open the silence, a howling and baying that rapidly grew louder – and louder still – until finally a fearsome pack of wild dogs appeared at the bottom of the lane. In seconds, they were streaming past. Thirty, forty, frothing, red-eyed, black beasts running as one, like a many-headed river, turbulent and raucous. Nieve and Lias pressed back farther into the darkness of the house as the creatures coursed pa
st, their feet never once touching the ground, a spectral horde. Not a single speck of dust trembled in the air after they had gone.

  “Hell-hounds,” Lias whispered, as their cries were swallowed up in the depths of the city. “Let’s get out of here!” They hustled out of the house before the walls clapped shut on them, which they had been straining to do, bending and creaking. Once out and moving again, he added, “Old Shock, your doctor’s dog, he’s got some of that in him.”

  “Artichoke? Get lost.”

  “How do you think he was able to fight Gowl? How could he have led you through the dark so easily if he didn’t have some of the dark in him?”

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk?” she challenged, irritated. Artichoke was a wonderful dog, but ordinary, nothing like those baying beasts. She was ordinary, her world was ordinary – not dull, not empty, but not like this, where everything was sinister and unreal and horrifying.

  A coconut-sized clod of earth, stuck with shreds of dried grass and bone and buttons, was lying in the lane before her and in her annoyance she gave it a kick, a fiercer one than intended. The clod exploded into a cloud of dust and flying fragments, and in doing so released a small, furry, bat-faced man, who’d been tucked up inside. This little man jumped to his feet and began to hop around furiously, shaking his fist at her. Protesting still, he charged toward one of the buildings and wriggled through a crack in the steps.

  Lias was about to comment, but before he could, she turned an angry eye on him. “I don’t want to know.”

  They continued in silence, Nieve’s a simmering one, which, if nothing else, stood her in good stead for what was to follow.

  –Twenty-Three–

  Walleyes

  On leaving the lane behind they entered a maze of streets, moving stealthily behind the cart, which had picked up its pace following a sharp volley of whip-snapping. In this part of the city the buildings they passed were more of a random clutter, a graveyard of old styles, crumbling and derelict, a number decorated with gargoyles – hideous, leering faces that appeared to leap out at them but were insensible, too dry-throated even to spew fetid water on them. Most of the buildings, the tenements and shops and taverns, were as empty as shells. All facade, no threat, as though someone had simply dreamt them up and hadn’t bothered to fill in the details, including the ghosts.

  When Nieve made the mistake of mentioning this to Lias, he responded that most of what haunted this part of the city – the wirricowes, the foliots, the rawheads – must have already infiltrated the upper one and would be spreading out into the countryside, and to her town, as Wormius and Ashe had done.

  “Might still be a few leftover,” he added. “I wouldn’t count them out.”

  “Wonderful.” She didn’t enquire what a “rawhead” might be – she was in such a bad mood that she was beginning to feel like one herself. Might as well practice, she thought grimly, because if they got lost, which they’d almost done a couple of times in miscalculating the turn the cart had taken, they too might end up as nothing more than phantoms drifting endlessly through the streets of this nothing city. Her, a distinctly evil-tempered one, bumping blindly into things. What she hadn’t mentioned to Lias was that the eyedrops Gran had given her were losing their power and her vision was fading. She could still see well enough at present, but had no idea how fast her sight would go. Hours from now? Minutes?

  In her uncertainty, as if trying to outrun it, she put on a burst of speed.

  “Hey.” Lias scrambled to catch up.

  As they progressed, the houses grew larger and grander, the streets wider and laid with slate. Since it was more open here, they had to keep themselves far enough behind so as not to be noticed, while at the same time Nieve longed to rush ahead. Added to the problem of her diminishing night-sight was her growing conviction that they were being followed. Not that she’d heard any steps dogging theirs, any rustlings or patterings, however faint. It was more a feeling, a tingling alertness, a strong sense of something at her back.

  She spun around and surveyed the street behind. Nothing there. Or nothing her weakening eyesight could detect.

  “What is it?” whispered Lias.

  “Don’t know. Something.”

  They kept on – what choice was there? – if more warily.

  Walls rose up on either side of them covered with dead ivy, branches crawling over the stone like thick, black veins. Inside the walls were decayed mansions of the sort Nieve sometimes read about in novels, safe in the company of fearless fictional children. She’d found the brooding menace of those houses thrilling and fun, while the very real menace of the ones that lay behind these walls was not thrilling at all – and as for fun? How she wished she could take the Black City in her hands like a book and snap it shut, never to be opened again.

  Lias motioned to her, pressing a finger to his lips as he moved nearer to the wall on his left.

  The cart had finally come to a stop and the guards appeared to be fiddling with the latch on a gate. After rattling it and cursing at it and giving it a boot, the gate swung open and they herded their business slaves in, which involved more cursing and boots all round for them as well. Squinting after them as the wagon disappeared through the gate, Nieve wondered how it was that the captives had been able to see in this solid darkness, and realized that they probably couldn’t. Same for their human cargo, same for Malcolm. All might as well have been muffled in black hoods, prisoners of a lightless nightmare.

  Once the others were inside, they moved ahead, staying close to the wall. With her ear practically grazing it, Nieve heard a tiny, raspy sound that she took to be an insect of some sort – a welcome sign of life, no matter how small. But then, pausing to look at the wall more closely, she was startled to see a face staring out at her through a network of ivy branches. Gargoyle, she thought, although this face wasn’t anything like the grotesques she’d seen earlier, the grinning monsters and glaring devils. This face was pretty, the face of a young child. Curious, she was about to reach out and touch its cheek – it seemed so lifelike – when Lias waved her on impatiently – this was no time to dawdle.

  But it wasn’t long before he stopped, too. When Nieve caught up with him, he was staring at the wall, transfixed. It had evidently crumbled at some point and been repaired, although not with stone. A much softer material had been used. Bodies. Human bodies of all sizes, all ages, male and female, were woven together, arms and legs twisted and linked and wound, in places awkwardly bent or cruelly contorted, whatever was required to tighten the weave. Some were upside down. Some faced out and others in. Some had their eyes closed, but most not. All were expressionless, faces blanched of emotion, and all, Nieve was sure, were alive.

  “Can they feel anything?” She kept her voice low, and tried to keep it steady.

  “Probably not,” said Lias, his own voice a bit shaky. After a moment, after they’d both absorbed the worst of the shock, he added, “We’re obviously in the right place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bone House, remember? Where the troublemakers end up. Are you sure you want to go in? The odds aren’t much in our favour.”

  “Are you?”

  He nodded. “Have to.”

  “Me, too.” She thought of Malcolm, in there, behind this living wall. She couldn’t help everyone, couldn’t free everyone, but one person, maybe one. . . . “We can sneak in, check it out first. Like I did at Ferrets.”

  “Gate’s still unlatched, I think.”

  They edged closer to it, both keeping their own eyes averted from those that stared out, wide-eyed, from the wall. The gate itself consisted of two tall, skinny men, their feet and shins badly bruised. The hand of one, stiff as iron, reached out to clasp hands with the other, who did likewise. Nieve shivered to see it, the hands of these unfortunate brothers, twins, serving as latches. She shivered again . . . and then froze as a hand, much smaller, but as cold as metal, seized her arm.

  A girl who had been wedged in beside
the gate, stuck in like mortar to fill a hole, had swiftly – and improbably – reached out and clutched her. Nieve barely stopped herself from screaming. She tried to yank her arm away, but the girl held fast. Struggling to free herself, Nieve looked quickly at her, then more closely, shocked at what she saw. Who she saw.

  It was Alicia Overbury, cold as death and as immobile, except for the one hand that grasped Nieve so firmly, fingers digging into her arm. Alicia’s eyes, too, seemed overlarge with anguish. An awareness flickered in them.

  “Alicia,” Nieve whispered. “How did . . . ?” Useless question. Alicia was incapable of speech. It was that night school, Nieve thought, that vile teacher. She had never liked Alicia, but felt sorry and sick to see her trapped here. Maybe she’d stopped eating those poisonous treats, as Nieve had advised, and had woken up enough to cause some trouble. But how had she overcome her numbness, unlike the others here, to reach out? And to what end? Nieve didn’t know if Alicia was trying to stop her from entering Bone House and suffering the same fate, or if she was imploring her for help.

  “I’ll do what I can, Alicia, “ she promised. “I’ll do everything I possibly can.”

  Feeling her grip loosen, Nieve touched her hand lightly – how cold it felt! – and pulled away.

  Alicia’s arm fell by her side, heavy as a plank.

  Nieve turned back to the “gate,” expecting Lias to be waiting anxiously. Odd that he hadn’t tried to intervene when Alicia seized her.

  But Lias wasn’t there; he hadn’t waited for her. She decided that he must have gone in before Alicia grabbed her, assuming that she was following right behind. In that case, he wouldn’t have gone far. Nieve took one last look at Alicia, nodded, and then slipped into the grounds of Bone House.

  “Lias?” She spoke as softly as possible. “Can’t see you.” Her eyes were worse. It was getting harder to make things out.