by Molly Flatt
She had rounded two Stacks – left wall, right wall, left wall, right wall – when she felt the thunder of approaching hooves. She crouched beside the wall of the nearest unlit Stack and watched two riders gallop past, turn round another one ahead and disappear. She straightened up and returned to the path, only to run straight back as she felt another rumble, but the hoofbeats receded and no-one appeared. She continued in the same stop-start routine for what was probably only a few minutes but felt like hours. Finally all fell silent. She imagined the couple-of-hundred islanders installed in their assigned Stacks, both part-time farmers and full-time pros, shrugging off their wet capes and limbering up for a six-hour Reading shift. A couple of hundred people determined to keep Reading, despite what she’d done. Stubborn. Brave. Afraid.
From then on, the only surprises she had to contend with were the horses. Irritable in the rain despite their waxed rugs, they looked up from their piles of hay to snort or stamp as she jogged past. She was growing cold now, cold and tired. But the grim determination she had found on the causeway still held – and the improbable success of her journey so far made the whole crazy mission feel not just lucky, but somehow preordained. Chloe would say that was because Alex’s will was aligned with the universe. But then Chloe was probably, at that moment, tied to one of her shabby chic chairs with Iain poking forks in her eyes.
When Alex finally reached the central tomb, it was dark and deserted, indistinguishable on the outside from the Bronze Age hillock that Finn had used to store his father’s bike. She knelt in front of the carved stones set around its grassy entrance, then hesitated.
What the fuck was she doing? Why was she here? Wouldn’t it be better just to keep walking until she came out the other side of the Stacks, then throw herself off the peninsula’s northern cliff? It would be a better way to go, surely, than getting gunned down by a guard or slowly putrefying from the inside out. A heroic gesture of self-sacrifice. She imagined it: the long, stomach-twisting dive; the single, swift moment of rock-smash oblivion. Her broken body would reach an honest, useful end inside the bellies of gannets and whales. But then suicide wasn’t heroic, was it? It was the ultimate cop-out. And as she gazed into the tomb, Alex realized something startling. Despite all that had happened, despite all that was probably about to happen, she still appeared to have a delusional amount of hope.
She wriggled her way through the passageway into the central space, barely five foot high. A slanting beam of grainy moonlight perfectly framed the mouth of the tunnel cut into the floor. She turned and sat on the edge of the hole, her legs dangling into the darkness, and tried once again to take stock, to reason, to doubt. But she found that she was bored of thinking, bored of imagining, bored even of being afraid. She threw off her cape and bum-shuffled over the lip until her heels found the rope ladder. Then she climbed the wobbling rungs to the bottom and jumped the last couple of feet down to the rough earth.
It was like jumping into a dream that she dreamed every night, but forgot during waking hours: the springy, sloping floor; the fibrous walls; the blackness that swallowed her in a single gulp. The hours stretched and bulged, and for a while she lost all sense of time as she walked.
When her legs became so tired that she was forced to slump to the ground with her back against the wall, she wondered whether it really had taken her so long, before. She couldn’t shake the feeling that her Story was shrinking back from her, with every step she advanced. She nibbled some of the dried beef that Cait had wrapped up for her, then fell into an exhausted doze. When she woke, she felt thick-headed and bleary, but she hauled herself to her feet and set off again. She wondered what time it was, on the surface. She wondered what had happened to Finn. For all she knew, MacBrian had already discovered that she was inside the tunnel – not that it really mattered. MacBrian had said it herself the first time Alex had gone down: the path to every Story was unique, and only you could find yours.
Alex had forgotten why or where she was walking, by the time she found the door – or, rather, by the time the door allowed itself to be found. It didn’t shift so much as a millimetre when she pushed at the inscribed letters of her name. Nor did it budge when she rested her forehead on it, as before. She tried shoving and caressing; she tried sweet-talking and swearing. It ignored every strategy. Eventually she sat down, rested her back against it and closed her eyes.
She was half-asleep by the time it swung open. She scrambled to her feet and stepped down onto the walkway, still dangerously woozy, but scared it would close again before she could get through. As the door swung shut, the calm rolled through her, sigh by sweet sigh. Fifty feet above, in the cinder-coloured space over the platform, her Storylines were still dancing, swarming in and out of their rainbow fugues. But she noticed at once that they were even dimmer than before, and much slower too. The temperature in the chamber had also increased by at least fifteen degrees, and the billows of calm around her now felt feverishly hot rather than pleasantly warm. Alex took off Cait’s jumper and boots and walked barefoot across the walkway. Despite the rot that she knew lay behind the muted loops, the craving instantly took hold.
She wanted to Read them all. She wanted, so badly, to taste again every significant Memory of her past. She wanted to decode every single one of the Storylines that, spun together, would tell her the whole no-holds-barred, beauty-and-beast tale of Dorothy Alexandra Moore. But she knew it would be pointless. They would tell her nothing, bleached and barren as they were. And this time, she knew, she needed to direct all her strength onto just the one.
It took less than a minute for it to appear: her nemesis, that great murky slug backlit by a scum of flickering Memories. It too, she realized, had changed. It was visibly longer and fatter than it had been six days ago. Bloated clusters of Memories now bulged out from its current like half-digested mice. At first, she thought it had entirely frozen, but then it suddenly spasmed, as if it was trying to throw up, and juddered around an inch before stalling once more. Sucking in calm, Alex gazed up at where it coughed and swelled. She called to it. She offered it love and acceptance, if only it would let her in, let her cradle and guide the power at its heart. As she settled into the Reading posture and raised her arms, she was sure she could feel it calling back, simultaneously pushing her away and begging her to keep reaching out. And, when she closed her eyes and lifted her wrists, it immediately locked on.
As soon as the first Memory exploded, she realized how much worse the bad Storyline had become. It was so dense and noxious that Reading it was like feasting on her own fetid corpse. Her body instinctively tried to pull away, although her brain knew that once she was in the grip of the Storyline, she had to see it through. However violently her system heaved, however deep the pain and the disgust became, she simply had to stand and bear it. And so she stood and bore it as Memory after Memory exploded into her, calling up the same putrid jumble of false starts, failed ideas and unfulfilled dreams that she had tasted a week ago.
She was eleven, scribbling furiously in her pink-and-purple diary, propped up on pillows with a backpack full of camping gear discarded on her bedroom floor. She was in the kitchen, telling her mother she had decided to change her name, but stubbornly refusing to say why. She was traipsing alone through the crowded corridors of St J’s. She was arguing with Diya in the changing rooms, shouting that someone was going to die. She was sitting in the attic night after night, pounding away at the computer while her homework languished untouched in her bag. She was twenty-one, sitting in front of a plate of salmon amongst her parents’ pissed friends, listening to Dom announce that he’d found her an incredible opportunity in New York. She was alone in her room later that night, slumped on the floor, reading her diary entry from ten years’ before. She was in her parents’ frosty garden ten years after that, on New Year’s Day, hearing Harry propose. She was in Mark’s office six months ago, staring at his nose hairs while he offered her the promotion. She was in Chloe’s flat, gripping the edge of the vintage sofa, shaking with silent tears.
And in amongst those Memories were hundreds of others, good and bad, and new ones, too – Memories that had been created since she left Iskeull. The disastrous TV interview. The viral videos. The discovery of her diary. The exchange with Diya. Even several moments from the past two days with Finn. But it was impossible to string them together with one clear clasp of meaning, because every one of them remained as emotionless as computer code. Even Memories that had touched her deeply, as lived experiences only hours before, had been bled dry.
She could sense the thing getting nearer now, as the Storyline came close to completing its circuit; felt her distant body buck as it tried to break its hold. This time, rather than waiting to be tossed into oblivion, she reached out to it, tried to get purchase. But it was like trying to grab at air. Before she knew it, the void had split open and gulped her in.
She woke with a retch, half-digested beef jerky streaming out of her mouth. Groaning, sobbing, she rolled onto her side, then retched some more while her vision sparked and her stomach cramped. But as soon as the calm had plugged the worst of the pain, Alex got back to her feet and glared up at the lurching snake. It had instantly re-formed above her head, as if it knew exactly why she was there.
‘Listen,’ she whispered, ‘you mutant piece of shit. You’re MINE. I bred you. I own you. And I’m going to try again and again and a-fucking-gain, until you let me into that root Memory. I’m going to take back my Story and reclaim my past. And I’m going to force you to unleash your crazy fucking surging power only how and when I say.’
She adopted the posture. She closed her eyes. She breathed her way back into calm. She raised her arms and felt the burning loop lock on. And then the whole revolting rollercoaster slid round again. She re-Read every Memory; came close to the root; fought the void; and once again tumbled in and lost consciousness. When she dragged herself back to standing, she forced herself to draw on the intensive training top-up Finn had given her in the farmhouse kitchen the previous night. She thought of his hand, firm on her belly. She heard his voice, lilting in her ear for hours. She straightened her spine. She breathed in more calm. She looked back up at her bad Storyline. She Read.
Alex held on through twelve sickening bouts until – as she neared the end of the circuit and felt the thing approaching yet again – she couldn’t take it any more. Finn was wrong. She wasn’t strong. She was a weak pathetic failure, and she was never going to be able to wrestle this thing back under her control. This time, when the void cracked open, she didn’t try to resist it. She didn’t struggle. She opened her eyes and jumped right in.
22
You’re like a storm without an eye, said Finn.
She’s running on empty, said her mother. She’s burnt out inside.
Their voices chased each other through Alex’s head as she lay curled against the Stack, draped in her cape. What light there was, filtering through the pounding rain, suggested that it was mid-morning. She had no idea how she’d managed to stumble back through the maze from the tomb. She’d tucked herself behind an unlit tower on the perimeter of the Library before she’d collapsed and had been drifting in and out of a doze for a while. In the space between her cape and the ground she could see a flickering barcode of legs, as islanders passed in and out of the arch at the back of the index. She wondered whether they would hate her more or less, now, if they knew what she had found.
A prodigy, really, said MacBrian.
When you were with him, said Finn, he made you feel like nothing in the world was impossible. Nothing.
The shift bell rang out, just once. Ten a.m., then. She must have been inside her Story for either six or thirty hours. She really should get up. She was ambivalent about her chances of making it to their agreed meeting place, even if Finn had somehow managed to avoid getting locked up. Anyway, at this point she wasn’t entirely sure what would be worse: getting caught, or having to tell Finn what she knew. Horses were beginning to thunder in and out of the Library, shaking the ground beneath her. Perhaps one of them would trample her. She wasn’t sure she had the energy left to care. But then the changeover finished and the peninsula quietened down again and she found that she was doing it: pulling the cape onto her shoulders, drawing the hood over her head, gripping onto the lichened wall of the Stack. Standing up.
It was all too smooth. Too easy. Too unlikely, when she was such a shambling mess. But she was too tired to question her luck as she retraced her steps through the index, down the steps, across the road and onto the causeway. Mingling with the others crossing over to the main island, Alex moved doggedly through the cross-current of voices, noticing their subdued tone against the hiss and smack of the waves. She wondered how many Storylines the Readers had managed to disperse, despite their increasingly stubborn Stories. She wondered how many hours the scholars had wasted, studying their misguided theories.
There has to be a missing piece, said Finn.
As she approached the end of the causeway, she heard the chanting and stamping start up and risked a glimpse ahead. There seemed to be more picketers than before, packed behind a double rank of guards. The atmosphere was electric. A few of the younger Readers around her threw back angry shouts, but most of them seemed too exhausted to make trouble. The guards were too busy checking the chits of incoming workers to bother examining those returning from the peninsula. Alex passed through the bell tower without challenge and joined the tired Readers heading home along the western side of the avenue.
As soon as she was clear of the picket lines, she hung back and let the others draw ahead. Every few minutes a handful of people peeled off down towards the town. An hour or so later she was the only one left on the wide street, save for the occasional horse clattering past. Far from restoring her energy, the rest she’d managed to snatch seemed to have given her system time to register the full impact of what she’d just been through. As the last traces of calm seeped away, she found herself slowing to a shuffle. What had taken ten minutes to ride six days ago now took at least two hours to walk.
By the time she saw Taran’s house crouching high on the cliff above, she was drenched. Planting one squelching boot on the churned-up turf, she began to trudge up the spine of scaly black mud that led to the house. Sixty-three steps later, with every inch of her flesh stinging and booming, Alex found herself standing outside the professor’s front door. This time, when she glanced at the smeared windows, only her distorted reflection stared back. The front door was flaky with old indigo paint, the knocker a rusty twist of metal shaped into a figure-of-eight. Alex took hold of it and banged.
A loud silence. Then, what felt like an age later, heavy footsteps.
It would be MacBrian, of course. MacBrian with a dozen of Iain’s toughest tough-guys in tow. Finn would be back in prison. Taran would be disgraced. They probably wouldn’t even pause to hear what she had to say, before they blew her apart.
The door creaked open a few inches. A collection of large, pale features floated in the darkness for a moment. Then the gap widened to reveal Taran’s face. He peered beyond Alex, looked back over his shoulder, then jumped down onto the driveway. ‘Alex!’ he stammered as the door blew shut behind him. ‘I can’t believe you’re—’
‘Is Finn here?’ she croaked, stepping back into a pothole ankle-deep with freezing water.
‘We’d given up hope,’ Taran gabbled. ‘We couldn’t imagine you’d managed to—’
She raised her voice as loud as she could. ‘Finn?’
‘No, no.’ Taran lurched forward, shaking his big hands. ‘No, Alex, you mustn’t—’
‘Finn?’ She was about to fall. ‘Finn?’
Then the door banged open and she saw a flash of orange jumper and Finn was there, ducking under Taran’s arm. He stared at Alex open-mouthed, then gave a strangled laugh and crushed her against his warm, thyme-scented chest. She held herself rigid until he moved her out by her shoulders and subjected her to the drill-bit gaze.
‘You did it, didn’t you?’ he murmured. ‘You found
it, whatever it is? I can tell from your face. I knew you would, I knew it. Alex. Alex? What did you find?’
‘Not here,’ Taran blundered between them. ‘Not now. We must get inside. I’m sorry, Alex, but we were sure that you were lost . . . and Iain’s men have already been here, asking about Finn.’ He reached an arm around her shoulders and hustled her through the door into a dim entrance hall.
‘What happened?’ Finn said, rushing after them, kicking the door shut with his heel. ‘What was the Storyline? What was the root Memory? Can you control the surge?’
‘Finn,’ Taran said, ‘wait.’ He threw Alex’s sopping cape onto the floor, then steered her through a doorway into a large living room lit by a blazing fire.
As he manoeuvred her onto a sagging leather sofa, Alex looked dizzily around. Piles of books climbed the walls on all sides, teetering up to the peeling plaster of the ceiling. Other than the sofa, the only furniture was a low table, scattered with papers, empty plates and mouldy food. The only decoration was an ornate filigree silver box, incongruously elegant, displayed on the mantelpiece above the fire.
‘You’ve had a huge overdose of radiation,’ Taran said, kneeling before a battered bucket of peat in front of the hearth. Rummaging inside, he withdrew an unlabelled bottle and held it up to the flames, revealing a few inches of tawny liquid inside. ‘Here.’ He carried the bottle over and pulled out the cork. ‘Drink as much as you can.’
The handmade bottle was so heavy she could barely lift it. Alex necked a mouthful of raw heat, then lowered it, coughing, blinking at Taran through watering eyes. He gestured for her to drink again, then turned to Finn, who was hovering behind his shoulder. ‘It was a ridiculous idea. Unforgivable. She’d already tried her best. How could you expect her to be able to control Story-surging, when we still don’t fully understand how it works?’
‘It’s not,’ Alex gasped, ‘Story-surging.’