Night Witches

by L J Adlington

  His words evoke images of the dead-grey lake where I crashed. I see a hut in the water, raised up on wooden legs, all gnarled and knobbled. I step across the still water and knock on the hut door. No one replies. I push open the door and smell what’s inside – age, weakness, goat-milk and garlic.

  Welcome, Rain . . . comes a voice as old as stone and dark as the Eclipse.

  ‘Wake up, Rain!’

  A circle of Scrutiners forms a copse around me. They’re so tall when I look up, like silver-bark trees. If they spread their arms birds could land on them. A bird stirs – the corvil in my jacket.

  ‘Ssh . . .’ I warn it. ‘Ssh,’ I warn the Scrutiners, who are consulting keypads and screens.

  ‘Ah, you’re back.’ Uncle Mentira breaks connection and waves the Scrutiners away. ‘Sorry for the disorientation. We haven’t yet figured out the correct dosage for keeping you docile but alert. Feybane hasn’t attracted much scientific study until recently, so we’re learning as we go.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I croak. The words seem to come out one hour at a time. I’m about to add, ‘I want to go home,’ but then I remember I haven’t got a home. They turned on me. Turned me out. Don’t want me any more.

  Uncle Mentira crouches down to look me in the eye as he speaks. ‘We’ve been speculating about what it is you can do for us, Rain. Predictions are limited at the moment, with only Old Nation fey-tales as sources to go on, alongside reports of your behaviour since that initial crash in the Morass.’

  I knew it wasn’t paranoia. I knew I was being spied upon.

  ‘Haze is full of stories. Full of lies.’

  ‘Haze doesn’t interest us very much,’ says Uncle Mentira. ‘She was just a skivvy, learning conjuring tricks and keeping goats. She’s had nothing useful to say about the old woman who kept her working in the forest, apart from fanciful notions about controlling light and dark. Presuming they are fanciful . . . ?’

  For the first time there’s an edge of uncertainty in his voice – or is it fear? I don’t care about his concerns. I’m wondering who’s been making secret reports about me. Was it Reef? It had to be him. First his parents, now me. And he said I could trust him!

  I tell Uncle Mentira that I fly planes. That I want to go back to Sea-Ways.

  ‘Leave military tactics to the experts, Rain. Aura predicts the future by statistical probability, not superstitious bowl-gazing in a bath-house. According to Aura Sea-Ways will fall. It’s a lost cause. A Crux victory waiting to happen. Corona is far more important, more crucial. Corona is Aura’s hub.’

  ‘What about my friends?’

  He shrugs. ‘Friends has become a rather inaccurate term for the people you once associated with under false pretences. Still, the reports did say you were loyal. Young Reef Starzak noted repeatedly – and admiringly – how you gave no thought for your own safety if others were in danger. That has been a most useful piece of information. Which is why I brought this . . .’

  Without blinking he produces a People’s Number Five Glissom pistol from a pocket in his white coat.

  ‘I’m not afraid of you.’

  ‘I know.’ Uncle Mentira connects briefly then goes to the single door set smoothly in the white walls. I notice there’s no handle on the inside. I can also see there’s nothing made of bioweave in the room. No flowers will grow here.

  The door opens, just a little way.

  Zoya slips through the gap. I’m guessing she found the banquet all right, because there’s a stain of something on her tunic front and a crumb still lodged in the corner of her mouth. Funny to think I made this prediction back in the bath-house – You get free run of a luxury banquet in Corona. It seemed so silly and irrelevant at the time. Now everything I foretold is coming true.

  Uncle Mentira says, ‘Ah, here you are. Just in time. Come in.’

  Zoya squints at all the lights. ‘I’m missing the Festival. Everybody’s out there.’

  ‘Not everyone.’ Uncle Mentira nods towards me.

  Zoya’s surprise is genuine. ‘Pip! What . . . ?’ Then she looks from me to her father. ‘I didn’t think . . .’

  ‘Of course not,’ he says soothingly. ‘I don’t expect you to. Your job is to do as you’re told. Did you bring what I asked for?’

  She nods, yes.

  ‘Good. Safer to ask you to get it than risk taking some ourselves . . .’

  My own Cousin Zoya.

  ‘Confide in me,’ she said. ‘Trust me,’ she said. I should’ve known she’d have to betray me – who’d blame her? Anything not to be different, not to stand out, not to disobey Aura. It’s just like the vision in the bath-house basin of water – one by one people I care about turn away from me in disgust. What’s left?

  Just me. Whoever – whatever – I am.

  Little nodes connected to my wrists and scalp send signals to a scanner which scratches out lines on a screen nearby – my blood pressure? Stress levels?

  ‘Tense, isn’t it?’ says Uncle Mentira. He’s got a curious gleam in his eye, rather like a corvil eyeing up a potential meal. ‘Believe me, I wouldn’t resort to such untidy emotional blackmail if we really didn’t need some answers soon. Proper scientific research takes time we just don’t have.’

  A voice from the forest rustles in my mind. An old woman warns, Rain . . . we haven’t much time . . .

  ‘Leave Zoya out of this. It’s got nothing to do with her.’

  ‘That’s not what my trigger finger says,’ replies Uncle Mentira calmly. He holds the pistol to Zoya’s temple. She flinches and gives a little whimper, like a wolf cub would, pinned down by its parent. ‘I don’t want to do this, Rain, do you understand that? My personal preferences do not include pointing a gun at my own daughter’s head.’

  ‘Can’t you just let her go?’

  ‘Can’t you just give us a show? We need to know if you’re worth all this attention.’

  The scanner lines are getting longer and stronger. The air goes so still I think the posse of Scrutiners must be holding their collective breath.

  ‘It’s OK, Zoya,’ I say, palms out as if to calm the whole room. ‘He isn’t going to shoot.’

  I don’t blame her for crying. I am too, inside. ‘He’s serious, Pip! Just do what he says!’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘You know!’ she screams in panic as her father presses the gun harder against her skull. ‘Do that thing. The power. The black feathers. I had to tell him about it, I had to.’

  Black feathers sprouting as I chased Steen Verdessica’s plane out of the sky and into the Morass. Black feathers flying as I caught a Storm so Petra and Lida would be safe. A black feather circling as Haze leans over a bowl of water in the bath-house, chanting . . .

  Black Night’s daughter

  Bright White’s kin

  Let the lights go out –

  Let the Witch come in!

  ‘You want a witch?’ I growl at Uncle Mentira and all the stone-faced Scrutiners. ‘All right. Fine. I’ll show you a witch!’

  Lights explode. Darkness rushes in to fill the void. In my mind I’m a thousand klicks away, walking on a leaf-strewn path. My hands brush silver-bark branches and send up clouds of spores. In the real world I find I’m running my fingers along the white walls of the laboratory, looking for something I can gouge my nails into, anything alive I can tear or pull apart. Nothing. The walls and floor are opaque glass – burned sand that was once stone. My feet are heavy, trailing their bane-metal chains. It’s a prison. I’m trapped.

  The adults are useless in the dark. Even Zoya’s night-vision won’t help her in a room with no light at all. She’s huddled up against her papi, blind eyes darting all around.

  ‘Pip!’

  Don’t Pip me. I’m not that kid, not that tiddler.

  Why’s Zoya got her arm up? What’s she pointing at? The door?

  I sweep round the walls again and feel a sliver of free air. Zoya left the door open a crack! I seize it with both hands and pull it out of the wall, just as I did
with Steen’s prison door. This time I’m not breaking in, I’m breaking out. Out in the corridor the building is made of bioweave as normal. I dig my nails in and start to run, pad pad pad like a wolf, unpeeling the walls as I go. Soon I’m trailing a tumbling mass of grey.

  Scrutiners spring out at me. I wrap them in the walls. A wormling of doubt wiggles into my mind. Have I gone too far? Is it too late for me to creep back inside the shell of my borrowed body and slink around pretending to be normal somehow? Don’t know. This defiance is uncharted territory. Off the map. Off the path.

  Don’t step off the path.

  Forget the path. What did Reef say? Become lost.

  Lost? I’m losing everything I ever cared about with every moment that passes – family, friends, Reef . . . If I let the monster out will I lose myself or become myself?

  The corvil struggles from my jacket pocket and climbs to my shoulder. It sounds a single caa that seems to echo for ever. I spread my arms like wings. My fingers seem to stretch along the bioweave up to the roof and down to the foundations, stopping only where they find cold glass. When I flex, the walls shred, exposing a giant hub of labs and computing rooms, floor after floor of cubicles and corridors, filled with scientists and secretaries fumbling for emergency lights. There is no heart to this place, only thousands of nerve centres creating the brain that is Aura. It’s not alive. It’s not interested in life . . . and yet it wants to survive. It wants me to protect it. It wants me to be a good girl by going bad.

  A little sound catches my consciousness in the middle of all other noises jostling for my attention. It’s the fainter-than-faint sound of hair strands brushing against each other. There’s a click. A lighter-box sparks. A flame jumps out.

  Uncle Mentira is behind me in the corridor. In his right hand he holds a lighter-box, flicking the catch so it clicks and ignites again. His left hand is closed around something secret. He opens his palm. The breeze from the torn walls wafts over a set of fine black hairs.

  My hair.

  I know who brought him that. My navigator. My cousin. My friend.

  ‘Your hair’s a complete mess . . . Hand your hairbrush over,’ Zoya said.

  Click.

  Uncle Mentira lights the flame and holds it towards one single strand of hair.

  Agony

  One word – five letters – an infinity of klicks beyond the actual sensation of pain I feel as the fire touches the strand of hair.

  I burn!

  Not for real – not with normal flames that can be doused by water or smothered in sand. This fire is like having melted sun poured into my soul. If I scream it’s not with any normal voice but from somewhere deep and primitive. A well of rage finds expression in this scream. I cannot move. Cannot bear the pain. Cannot live a moment longer with such torture.

  Snuff.

  The fire goes out. The burned hair curls. The smell is vile. I collapse on the corridor floor. My lungs find air. My mouth finds words.

  ‘Make – it – stop!’

  ‘It will stop as soon as you see reason and follow orders.’

  ‘Going – to – Sea-Ways . . .’

  Click. The lighter-box burns again. Uncle Mentira holds the hair strand close. I see the flame reach up greedily – see every hue of orange, white and blue. Again – the pain! Again I scream for help. Again he blows the fire out. I try to rise.

  My lips are cracked. I can only manage to mouth, ‘Sea-Ways . . .’

  Click.

  No no no not again can’t bear the pain can’t stand the flames make it stop make it stop make it . . .

  . . . stop.

  On my shoulder Eye Bright has spread its feathers and launched into the air. It flies for the first time, straight at Uncle Mentira, beak stabbing and wings thrashing. Its claws grab the hair and the lighter-box. At the same time Zoya hurls herself through the darkness into her father, pushing him over.

  ‘Run, Pip, run!’

  In these chains? I lumber over to the ripped wall and look down. Why run when I can fly, or jump at least, grasping bioweave so the walls unravel as I fall. I feel beautiful black feathers float around me, so soft I could lie in them for ever. When I look up, a line of Scrutiners are peering down, blind eyes roving. Zoya’s there too, with the corvil circling round her head.

  ‘I didn’t know . . .’ she calls down.

  I flounder out of the feathers and start tugging at the chains. It’s killing me to wear them.

  ‘Didn’t know what? That bane-metal would bind me? That burning witch hair is a weapon?’

  ‘I didn’t know it would hurt so much. I didn’t want to spy on you. I got ac-reqs. I had to do what Aura says, everybody does.’

  I don’t want to hear any more reasons or excuses. ‘I’m going.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Where do you think? Back to the squadron.’

  ‘What will everyone say?’

  ‘Will you listen to yourself? Do you think you can spend your entire life worrying about what other people will think or say? Forget Aura, forget your father, do what you think is right!’

  To Zoya’s credit she only hesitates a moment then she says, ‘I’m going to jump. Catch me!’

  She leaps and screams simultaneously. Without thinking I spread a bed of feathers and let her land in it. She struggles to her feet and tries to pick feathers from her hair. I’m already limping away. My ankles are burning where the bane-metal rubs. Zoya stumbles after me.

  The city all around is almost completely lightless – did I do that? The darkness at the far end of the avenue we’re standing on starts to vibrate. Something is moving down the street.

  ‘How are we going to get back to Sea-Ways?’ Zoya pants. ‘They’ll never let us on the train, even if it’s still working, then there’s the Crux blockade.’

  A little smile twists the corner of my mouth and my heart starts to dance. ‘I thought we could fly.’

  Zoya gawps. ‘Can you really do that?’

  My smile widens. ‘I can in one of those . . .’

  I hear the sweet, sweet sound of propellers turning. There it comes, rounding the corner of the avenue, a fine sight. ‘A fine sight, indeed,’ Uncle Mentira might say, if he wasn’t too busy floundering around in darkness.

  Marina Furey jumps down from the cockpit of the Storm in her usual state of rumpled energy. She’s got lo-glo sticks poking out of every pocket and even one round her neck. Her eyes are flashing. It’s too dark for her to see the damaged laboratory hub behind me but she catches sight of the chains round my legs and the corvil now climbing clawfully up my sleeve.

  ‘If I thought you had answers you’d have a ton of explaining to do, Rain Aranoza. As for you, Zoya Mentira, I got your bizarre paper note saying Rain might need wings in a hurry. Na! Did I ever tell you how much I hate being out in the dark?’

  Now Zoya has her chance to look smug. ‘I had to do what Uncle Mentira told me to but nobody said anything about not asking for help and I thought paper was safer than messaging through Aura.’

  I stare at her. ‘So you have got a rebellious streak after all?’

  Zoya frowns. ‘Don’t tell everyone.’

  ‘Do you know what’s been happening?’ I ask Furey nervously. I’ve no idea if I even look like myself or like the monster everyone says I am.

  ‘Haven’t a clue!’ she replies. ‘However, I do know things are bad in Sea-Ways and we need every Storm crew we can get if we’re going to keep the Crux out of the city during the Long Night. The siege is now full circle. The blockade is complete. We’ve not got long before dawn, and then very little time before the Eclipse begins, so move yourself! I suggest you use this street as your runway and take off before the city’s power is restored and an army of Scrutiners comes chasing us.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘You didn’t think I’d let you fly one of these wooden toys unescorted, did you? Give me time to get to the airbase here and we’ll be right behind you in a People’s Number Forty-eight Fighter Plane . . .’


  ‘We?’ asks Zoya. ‘I don’t know how to navigate one of those.’

  ‘Neither do I, but I’m a fast learner,’ comes a new voice. And here is Ang, climbing out of the Storm. She’s got her Hero of Rodina medal pinned nicely to the front of her dress.

  I turn to Furey. ‘Don’t do it. Please, I mean it. You don’t have to.’

  She looks down at me and shakes her head. ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘But you could get hurt . . .’ You could get killed.

  ‘My daughter’s trapped in the siege, Aranoza. Do you think I wouldn’t sacrifice anything to make Tilly safe, whatever Aura’s ac-reqs or your feelings?’

  ‘She’ll be safe,’ I say, thinking of my vision of Tilly that showed her living to old age. ‘But—’

  ‘Butt out, Aranoza. Go! Fly!’

  Furey boosts me into the Storm, not wasting words asking what the chains are all about. Like a white flood, Scrutiners come running down the street. They needn’t bother shooting, I’m not stopping. It takes all my strength to pull the Storm’s control stick back, especially since this seat is too low for me. We only lift off the ground at the very last moment. The plane rises like my spirits.

  The last I hear from Furey is a faint cry of ‘Safe skies and combat glory!’

  Ahead, a pale light softens Corona’s suburban silhouettes. It’s the last dawn before the Eclipse.

  Mouth open I drink the cold air in. Eyes wide I watch the Nation rush past.

  It’s a painfully beautiful morning. Everything is stained with the pink and orange of sunrise, as well as the red of un-set Umbra. Flying towards it I feel tiny, just a speck on a vast planet turning in space. I’m bursting to be bigger. If I peel my skin off could I leap high enough to break the roof of the sky? Could I soar through comets and cosmic dust, past Umbra’s russet-red rings? Could I plummet right into the searing heat of the sun and still live to tell the tale?

  That’s just it. I don’t know. What can I do? See in the dark. See how people die. See futures swirl in still water. What use is that?

  The Storm is slow, slow, slow. I can’t count the klicks off fast enough. We follow the Transnation train tracks south to Sea-Ways. The sun pours out as much light as it can, as if it knows how close the Eclipse is. Soon there won’t be days and nights, just many-days-long darkness.