Chasing the Valley

by Skye Melki-Wegner

  ‘Why’d they shut it down?’ Teddy says.

  ‘Some of the prisoners escaped,’ Maisy says, ‘and burned it to the ground. That was when they trained the first official platoon of hunters – to hunt down those prisoners in the mountains.’

  I blink. I’ve never thought about the start of the hunters. It seems like they’ve always been there – like wind or rain or fire. It’s unsettling to think that this is the place it all started: right here, in the Central Mountains. I think of prisoners running, screaming, their blood on the snow.

  Then an even worse thought hits me. This place . . . this is what the hunters exist for. This is what Sharr’s predecessors were first trained for. Do we really think we can outrun her here? Here, where it all began?

  ‘Come on,’ Teddy says. ‘Better keep moving, I reckon.’

  No one argues.

  The day wears down, and so do our bodies. Our muscles ache and our faces sting. We put one foot in front of the other, again and again, and struggle until we can’t go any further.

  Finally, I choose a ledge beneath an overhanging section of rock. It’s not a perfect shelter, but it’s the best place I’ve seen so far; at least there are trees nearby to muffle the wind.

  I use the remainder of my strength to scoop away the snow, clearing a patch of dirt for us to sleep upon, and lay out our magnets to cast my illusion. The back of my neck is itching again, to the point where I suspect my proclivity might be Mosquito. But I’ve got no energy to worry about that now. The twins gather twigs for a fire while Teddy rolls out the sleeping sacks. Starting a fire is dangerous; the smoke will be a beacon to any nearby hunters, and I doubt my illusion reaches high enough to erase all traces from the sky. But if we don’t light one, we’ll never survive the night. I’d rather take a chance of capture than a guarantee of hypothermia.

  ‘We haven’t got any matches,’ says Maisy.

  I’m too tired to think straight now. She’s looking at me for answers, and for some reason it irritates me. Haven’t I done my share today?

  ‘Your proclivity’s Flame,’ I snap at her. ‘Don’t try to deny it – I saw you snuff out Hackel’s candle back in Gunning. Can’t you just make a spark or something?’

  Clementine glares. ‘You know she can’t, Danika. There has to be a flame already present for Maisy to work with. She can’t just build a fire out of thin air, any more than Teddy can conjure up a pig for us to roast.’ She gives a haughty sniff. ‘If you haven’t figured out how proclivities work by now, I’m a little worried about your mental faculties.’

  ‘At least I’m not –’ I start.

  ‘Whoa, calm down!’ interrupts Teddy, throwing up his hands. ‘I reckon we’re a bit too tired to waste energy on arguing, aren’t we?’

  I want to snap back at him, at Clementine, at the whole world. It would feel good to rage and storm and act like a sullen child. But I know he’s right. It’s my exhaustion talking, and the argument is my fault. I shouldn’t have snapped at Maisy, not when she’s already been upset today.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mutter.

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ says Clementine.

  I look up at her in surprise, but she’s turned to busy herself with the fire. No one meets my gaze, so I slouch across to help with the twigs. Maisy tries to rub a few sticks together, but all she manages to do is peel off a bit of soggy bark.

  ‘If we had a match, I could build up this fire in no time,’ she says, looking frustrated. ‘I just need a spark to work with.’

  ‘Shame you can’t just light another flare, Danika,’ says Teddy. ‘I reckon that’d start a fire going all right, even with this lot.’

  He gestures at the snow-sodden twigs, and his words spark a memory in the corner of my mind. A flare. I remember crouching atop the wall in Rourton, pocketing the guards’ supplies. After the trauma of the last few days – and in the haze of my exhaustion – I’d almost forgotten those supplies. An extra flare, a pair of climbing picks, and a box of matches.

  ‘Matches!’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, Maisy already said that,’ says Teddy. ‘We haven’t got any.’

  I unbutton my stolen coat and fish through the pockets of my own clothes underneath. I know I stashed the matches somewhere, in one of the pockets that line my shirt. Did I ever take them out, or put them into one of the foxaries’ packs? I know I shoved the second flare into a pack, but I don’t remember taking out the matchbox . . .

  And suddenly my fingers find it. A tiny wooden box, half-crushed by the weight of our adventures, in a pocket on my hip.

  ‘They might be wrecked,’ I say, as I hold them out to the others. ‘They’ve been soaked so many times.’

  Maisy takes the box. She bites her lip, as though trying not to get her hopes up. There are only three matches inside. One has a crumpled head, as though mildew has dissolved it. Maisy tosses it aside, leaving two options. She selects the healthiest remaining match and glances up at Clementine.

  ‘Can you make a shield?’ she says.

  Her sister cups her hands around the match, protecting it from the outside air. Maisy bends down to light the match. My view is obscured by Clementine’s palms, but I hear the strike of the match-head against the side of the box. Nothing. Maisy takes a quavering breath and tries again.

  There is a strike. There is a sizzle. Faint light shines between Clementine’s fingers.

  I want to shout out in triumph, but I clap a hand across my mouth just in time. A stray gust of breath could be enough to extinguish the flame, so tiny and fragile on the head of the match. It’s barely alight as it is.

  ‘I need a stick,’ whispers Maisy, not taking her eyes away from the match.

  Teddy wordlessly offers a twig from the pile. He prods it closer towards the match, clearly holding his breath. His face is empty of its usual bravado. I suddenly notice his fingers are trembling. Teddy Nort is out of his depth. This isn’t a richie for him to steal from, or a city guard to bluff. This enemy will not be impressed by a confident grin. Either the match will stay alight or it won’t.

  Maisy stares at the flame.

  There is a flash of brighter light, and then fire spits itself up to meet the end of the twig. With a rush, the twig is alight. Clementine shrieks and the match is knocked into the dirt, but it doesn’t matter any more. We have fire. And best of all, we still have one match left, ready for future emergencies.

  Teddy places the twig in the pile, setting our campfire aflame. Maisy coaxes it up into a crackling little blaze and soon we’re munching biscuits in the warmth. I melt some snow to make water and we fill our pot with dried fruits and spices. The fruits plump up and turn into mush as the water heats; we scoop it up with our fingers and smear the warmth inside our cheeks. It’s amazing how much better I feel, now that my belly is filling again.

  Maisy is the first to go to bed, followed by Teddy. When about twenty minutes have passed, and Teddy has started to snore, Clementine looks at me. ‘You go to sleep, Danika. I’ll keep watch tonight.’

  ‘But you need rest too.’

  Clementine shakes her head. ‘I’m not going to sleep tonight anyway.’

  She stares into the fire. I’ve never seen her look so miserable. It’s not the sort of misery I’d expected from a richie; she’s not whining about life’s unfairness or anything. It’s more a quiet sort of reflection, coupled with slow breaths and clenched fists. Something has shaken Clementine Pembroke to the core.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I say quietly.

  She blinks. ‘Nothing.’

  I poke a few more sticks into the fire. They take a while to defrost, but soon the bark starts curling into black. Maisy has done a good job for someone who isn’t too experienced at using her proclivity.

  ‘Today on the train,’ I say, ‘when that man grabbed Maisy, you said you ran away to escape from creeps like that.’

  It’s not really a question
, of course, but Clementine knows I’m angling for information. She twists her fingers together, then looks at me. ‘You know our mother’s dead.’

  I nod.

  ‘She died in a bombing, years ago,’ says Clementine. ‘She was working late at her studio, breaking curfew, but then the biplanes struck . . .’

  I feel a sudden surge of camaraderie with the Pembroke twins. ‘My family died in the bombings too.’

  Clementine fishes a burning twig from the fire and turns it between her fingers. As we watch, the end smoulders and flakes into dust.

  ‘Our father runs a finance business,’ she says. ‘He has friends in government, people who worked for King Morrigan. When the king’s planes killed our mother, I thought he would quit – that he’d stop doing business with those murderers.

  ‘But he didn’t. He just got more and more wrapped up in his business, started bringing home his “colleagues” for dinner. They were middle-aged men, and most of them didn’t pay much attention to us. We were just children. We couldn’t earn them any money, so we weren’t worth their time.’

  Clementine hurls her stick back into the fire. On impact, its charred end disintegrates completely. ‘But there was one man, one of our father’s closest colleagues, who came around more often. He . . .’

  There is a pause. Clementine is clenching her fists so hard that her knuckles look white.

  ‘He what?’

  ‘He took a shine to Maisy. He was always watching her, following her. Leering at her. Slobbering at her for kisses. Maisy has always been shy, but this man . . . he just scared her. Maisy started jumping at shadows, looking over her shoulder. Every moment, she thought he might be lurking nearby. Stalking her.

  ‘He asked our father if he could marry her, even though Maisy was terrified. He wanted to buy her hand in marriage, Danika, like buying a pig from the market. And our father . . .’ Clementine releases an angry breath. ‘Our father was going to say “yes”.’

  My stomach twists. I have misjudged these girls so badly – misjudged them with my scorn and my jealousy of their privileged lives. ‘And that’s why you ran away?’

  Clementine nods. ‘I’ve tried so hard to protect her. I tried for years. Our father didn’t care – he just wanted the money.’ She pauses. ‘One of our servants knew what was happening. She told me she had a friend called Radnor, a scruffer boy who was going to put a crew together.

  ‘I didn’t want to consort with scruffers – I didn’t want Maisy to consort with scruffers – but it seemed like our only chance of escape. So I raided our bank accounts, I hired Hackel to guide us, and I bought those foxaries. I thought it would all go to plan! We had so much more money than normal refugees. I never thought . . .’

  She gestures at the snowy darkness, at the trembling form of Maisy beneath her sleeping sack. ‘I never thought this would happen.’

  I wait a moment, then place a hand on Clementine’s shoulder. She doesn’t pull away. ‘We’re going to get through this, you know. We’re going to cross into the Magnetic Valley, and go to the lands beyond, where the king can’t touch us. We’ll be safe then. All of us.’

  Clementine nods. ‘I know.’

  I fish some extra biscuits from my pockets. ‘Here.’

  ‘We already ate.’

  ‘I know. But it will help.’

  And it does. We sit in the glow of the fire, warming our hands and nibbling biscuits long into the night. We talk about little things: the noise of the market in Rourton, the feel of the cobblestones, the sight of a full moon above guard towers.

  I tell Clementine the story of a drunkard who mistook a rubbish bin for a donkey and tried to ride it home, and she actually laughs. And when she tells me about her mother – and about the terrible nights that followed the bombing – I think perhaps we’re not so different after all.

  In the morning, the fire is still smouldering. Maisy ties up a bundle of the glowing sticks. ‘I can keep these burning,’ she says. ‘It will be good tonight, when we set up another camp. That way, we can save our last match for emergencies.’

  Breakfast is porridge, made hot and steaming from the stolen oats. We mix candied nuts and dried fruit into the pot, and I decide this is the most delicious meal I can remember. In the cold, nothing can rival the heat of oats upon my tongue.

  The mountainside is thick with fog, so it’s hard to see where we’re going.

  ‘Let’s just head uphill,’ I suggest. ‘If we reach that peak over there, we can get a better look at the rest of our route.’

  We haul on our packs, disguise our campsite with broken twigs, and start our day of trekking through the snow. It’s a quiet morning, and the only sound is our boots in the undergrowth. My legs are aching from yesterday’s hike. One foot, then another. One foot, then another . . .

  The first break in the monotony comes when Teddy spots a deer through the trees. I stop to stare, awed by the arch of its antlers. It resembles a tree come to life, branches sprouting above long-lashed eyes. I’ve never seen a wild deer before; just pictures in storybooks, in the oldest of my memories. My chest feels tight. I think suddenly of lantern light, and my father’s voice murmuring. The crackle of pages, and blankets tight around my shoulders.

  The deer slips away into shadow. We continue up the slope.

  Despite my confident demeanour, I’m not really sure that we’re going in the right direction. In the exhaustion of last night, I didn’t think to check for the direction of the Pistol constellation. I don’t even know if that line of the song is still valid, or whether we’ve travelled too far south for it to apply.

  To distract myself from the cold, I run through the second verse in my mind.

  Oh frozen night,

  How the dark swallows light

  When the glasses of hours hold on

  I shan’t waste my good life

  I must follow my knife

  To those deserts of green and beyond.

  ‘I think we’re still following the folk song,’ I say aloud, as we stumble through a patch of snowy bracken. ‘You know, that bit about a frozen night.’

  ‘You think that means to cross the mountains?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘It could mean Midnight Crest,’ Clementine says. ‘A frozen peak, named after the night? That can’t be a coincidence.’

  ‘Bit of a useless instruction, really,’ says Teddy. ‘I mean, everyone knows you’ve got to cross the mountains to get out of the north.’

  I shake my head. ‘Yeah, but most people cross further to the west, don’t they? Along the traditional trading route? If the song’s about the smugglers’ secret route, I bet it’s telling us to cross further east: near Midnight Crest.’

  ‘But why?’ Clementine says. ‘I know the Valley’s to the east, but . . .’ She trails off.

  ‘Maybe the other lines are more helpful,’ I say. ‘When the glasses of hours hold on – what’s that about?’

  Teddy shrugs. ‘Hourglasses? I reckon it’s just warning us not to slow down. You know, don’t waste time or the hunters will catch you. And that’s what the next line’s about too: if you waste time, you waste your life.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I say, but I’m not entirely convinced. The rest of the song has concerned physical landmarks. Its clues involve things you can see: the forest, the river, the Marbles, the Pistol constellation . . .

  ‘Do you think the hunters know where we are?’ says Clementine. ‘That we’re in the mountains already, I mean? Maybe Sharr Morrigan is still searching those fields outside Gunning.’

  ‘She must know we were in Gunning.’ I pause, then add, ‘Lukas probably told her. I bet that’s why he ran off during the fire, so he could tell his precious cousin where we were.’

  ‘Sharr probably figured it out on her own,’ says Maisy. ‘We were heading for Gunning, and suddenly there was a huge fire and evacu
ation there. Surely a professional hunter could put two and two together.’

  ‘Yeah, she must know we got on that train,’ says Teddy. ‘But does she know we got off it again?’

  I bite my lip. ‘She’ll know. The guards will send word to the hunters that we’ve vanished from the train. I bet that creepy man could give a good description of Maisy and Clementine, and Sharr will put two and two together . . .’

  ‘Great,’ says Clementine. ‘So Sharr Morrigan’s hunting crew will be en route to the mountains now, if she’s not here already.’

  ‘Wish Radnor was here,’ Teddy says, a strange tightness in his voice. ‘He’d know what to do, I reckon.’

  We all fall silent, staring at our feet.

  The morning passes slowly, in a haze of snow and exhaustion. Despite our growing concerns about hunters, there’s no sign of pursuit. There is occasionally a flash of wings overhead, and I almost turn to tell Lukas there’s a bird nearby. Then I remember and silently berate myself for being so stupid.

  Now that we’re free of immediate dangers – apart from the cold, of course – I find myself free to worry about other concerns. The most pressing issue is the itch down the back of my neck. My proclivity is developing, but there’s no way to check whether a tattoo has started to form. The itch runs right down the top of my spine; I can tell from the speed of its spread that mine will be a speedy maturation.

  I’m tempted to yank down my scarf and ask the others to check for me, to tell me if an emblem has printed itself across my skin. But even out here, the shame of the taboo hangs over me. Part of me feels stupid for worrying about it. After all we’ve been through, and all the laws we’ve already broken . . .

  But the taboo is more than law. It’s like wearing clothes, or refusing to go to the toilet in public. I wouldn’t dance naked in front of my crewmates, would I? That’s what it would feel like to reveal my bare neck.

  ‘Stop scratching your neck,’ says Teddy.