Uki and the Outcasts

by Kieran Larwood

  But not all of them ran. Some were more spiteful and called out horrible things. ‘Mismatch’ and ‘two furs’. ‘Magpie’ and ‘demon boy’. More than a few times they had thrown stones as well as insults.

  It didn’t take Uki long to realise that every child in the village hated him and that it was all because of his fur.

  ‘I wish I didn’t look like this,’ he often said to his mother at night when they were huddled together by their tiny fireplace.

  ‘You mustn’t say that, Uki,’ she told him. ‘The Goddess made you this way. You can’t help what you look like. But you can help what your heart is like, what your thoughts are. You have a good heart, Uki, and your thoughts are kind. Don’t let those children change that just because they don’t understand you.’

  She used to pray her words got through to him, or that the tribe rabbits might change their minds and accept him. But in her bones she knew they never would. So she began to make plans to take Uki away to the south, where rabbits weren’t so cruel and superstitious. She knew he needed friends to play with to show him the meaning of kindness.

  Except life doesn’t pay much attention to plans: the weather was never quite right, or she needed just a few more provisions, or there were just a few more pots to make … Always a reason to put it off.

  Right up until it was too late.

  It was just a few weeks ago, during the last days of winter as the weather began to change. They had scraped and starved their way through the harshest, deadliest season, although it had left them both little better than fur-covered skeletons. Now she had an order of pots to finish that would hopefully give them food. Enough, maybe, to put some flesh back on their bones; to build up some strength for a journey. After that, she had been telling herself, we’ll be off. Out of the Wastes, over the mountains and back to Gotland.

  Uki, not wanting to get in her way, had gone out to the stream.

  He loved it there, quiet and alone, and his favourite pastime was building dams and bridges across the little trickle of water, then balancing his way across them. He had been unable to do it all winter, but now the thaw had begun and the stream was running again.

  Using hazel twigs and flat lumps of slate, he blocked off the flow and watched as the water built up behind it. It grew into a pool, higher and higher, before it began to trickle over the top like a tiny waterfall. That was when his moment came: a few seconds in which to teeter his way across the top before it was too late.

  Finally, just as he leapt to safety, the dam would give way with a whoosh. A satisfying burst, like a long-held breath being released.

  Then he would start again, building it bigger and better.

  That day he had been on his third attempt. Quite a big pool had grown behind the dam, the stream in front drying to a trickle. He almost thought his wall would never break, that the pool would grow and grow into a pond, then a lake … He made one trip safely across the top, arms stretched out for balance, and was about to head back when, with a crack, the twigs snapped and the water burst outwards, swooshing down the stream bed in a flood of sticks and dead leaves.

  Uki had been about to cheer when a peal of laughter came from the other side of the stream. Looking up, he saw a girl there. A girl from the village with the snow-white fur and blue eyes of all the other rabbits.

  Uki felt a sudden wash of panic, not unlike his dam breaking moments earlier. He tensed himself, ready to face the insults or the hurled rocks, just as he’d done a hundred times over.

  Instead, the girl hopped across the stream and came over to him. Uki blinked at her with wide, mismatched eyes. This had never happened before.

  ‘That was brilliant!’ she said. ‘Are you going to do it again? Can I help?’

  Another child? To play with? Uki was overjoyed at first – until his dark voice decided to speak.

  Don’t, it said. It’s just part of some cruel new trick. Another way to hurt you.

  The thought made Uki pause for a moment, but in the end the need for some kind of company won him over. He nodded at the girl, not really knowing how to speak to anyone but his mother, and the pair set to work.

  As they gathered twigs and rocks and began stacking them in the stream bed, the girl chattered away. Her name was Nua and her father was a hunter. She had heard about Uki, and even spotted him once or twice. She knew the other children were scared of him but she wasn’t. She didn’t believe in silly things like demons and monsters. She knew he would be nice.

  Uki could hardly believe his ears. At first he only nodded at her, but as his confidence grew he began to grunt yes or no, and finally started to answer her almost-endless comments and questions.

  By the end of the afternoon, they had built a pretty good dam and had taken the first steps of a friendship. It was, he thought at the time, the best afternoon of his life.

  He was even going to show her his balancing trick: to teach her how to feel the wood below with her toes and step-step-step as quickly as possible, holding your breath for the sudden snap and splash in case you fell into the water …

  And then the bullies showed up.

  Every warren or village has them: one or more children who, for reasons only they know, aren’t happy unless they are making somebody else miserable.

  In Uki’s village there were two such horrors – a boy and his older sister.

  Both were as mean as starved snakes: him with his fists, and her with her tongue. Of the many attacks on Uki over the years, those two had been behind them all, in one way or another.

  And today was going to be no different.

  They stood on the far edge of the stream, watching Uki and Nua play, with a spiteful glint in their eyes. They watched for a long time, waiting until they couldn’t bear the happiness of the growing friendship any more. Just as Uki was about to step out on to the dam, the girl called out.

  ‘Hey, Nua! Don’t you know you’re supposed to stay away from the outcast? He’s a demon!’

  ‘We’re going to tell on you,’ said the boy. ‘Your da is going to beat you with a stick for this.’

  Both Uki and Nua jumped clean out of the stream with a splash. Uki’s eyes flashed and he moved to pull Nua behind him – out of harm’s way – but to his surprise, she stepped in front of him, with just as much fierceness, if not more.

  ‘Tell all you want,’ Nua shouted back, fists bunched on her hips. ‘My da won’t mind. Not when I tell him how nice Uki is. He’s a much nicer rabbit than either of you.’

  ‘Our ma says he’s an evil spirit,’ said the girl. ‘He should have been left out for Zeryth when he was born.’

  ‘Your ma is nothing but a mean gossip and a liar!’ Nua shouted. ‘Everyone in the village knows it, too!’

  That made the bullies angry. The boy reached down, pulled out a great slab of slate from the bank and, before Uki could yell a warning, threw it towards them with all his might. It hit the surface of the stream and bounced once, twice, before hitting Nua in the stomach.

  She fell, screaming, into the water and the two bullies fled. Uki tried everything he could to help his new friend – lifting her to the bank, speaking softly to soothe her – but she was too upset. She staggered off, back to the village and her parents.

  Uki had a sick feeling in his gut. And when he went back to the hut and told Meera, she had a sick feeling too.

  Bullies are always cowardly as well as mean. There was no way those two would take the blame for what had happened, not when there was a perfectly good scapegoat in the form of Uki. And even if Nua tried to correct them with the truth, it wouldn’t help. Not when the villagers wanted the bullies’ story to be true.

  All these years they had been waiting for something like this. A reason to make their fear and hatred of Uki seem reasonable. That patchwork demon, they would be saying. Look what he did to poor little Nua. Threw a rock at her when she was walking by the stream. Nearly drowned her, he did! We knew he was evil all along, and this proves it!

  Sure enough, dusk hadn’t
even fallen before there was a commotion outside their hut. A babble of angry voices as the village gathered together to do something about Uki.

  Meera grabbed a blanket and began filling it with what food and clothing they had even as she heard the crash of her kiln being kicked over, the stack of freshly made pots inside it shattering in a shower of sparks.

  She thought they might just let them leave, but they had other ideas. Peeking through a hole in the wall, she saw the two children who had terrorised Uki, wrapped in the protective arms of their mother, secretly smiling at the chaos their lies had caused. Rocks were already in their paws and other rabbits were copying them, picking up lumps of granite and slate, ready to hurl.

  It filled Meera with rage, but what could she do? Beside her, Uki was sobbing, telling her he was sorry for the trouble he’d caused. Poor, innocent little Uki, whose only crime was being different.

  It wasn’t long before the stones started flying.

  If the roundhouse had been stronger they might have bounced off, but the rocks punched through the battered turf roof like it wasn’t there.

  They smashed the pots and plates on the hearth, they splintered the tiny chairs and table. One bounced off Meera’s shoulder, bringing tears to her eyes. Another hit Uki on the shin, cutting deep into his bone and making him scream.

  Meera knew they would die if they stayed in the hut. Their only hope was that the place was little more than a crumbling shell. Grabbing Uki to her chest, she ran at the back wall, using her weight to crash through the ancient stone.

  The rocks, only held together with moss and cobwebs, burst outwards, and they tumbled free. The villagers were too caught up in their stoning to notice, so they managed to half-run, half-stagger, over the stream and into the woods.

  Meera’s decision to leave had been made for her but without any of the preparation they needed. Even though the thaw had started, it was still winter. The nights were deadly this far north, the days almost as bad without proper food and shelter.

  They would have been better off staying put and letting the stones do their work.

  *

  In the end, they didn’t make it anywhere near as far as Meera had hoped.

  Past the tribal graveyard (where she now knelt) through a gap in the broken Wall and a little way into Icebark Forest. They were making for Nether – a small trading town at the edge of the forest – but were still deep amongst the trees when Uki’s fever took hold.

  They had limped for two days, her with her injured shoulder and him with that nasty, deep gash to his leg. They had rested as little as possible, fearing the villagers might be on their trail. Perhaps she should have taken more time to wash Uki’s wound, or use clean scraps of cloth for bandages, but all she could think of was getting away.

  When they finally stopped, Meera noticed Uki was sweating, his brow hot and fevered. The cut on his leg was edged with angry red skin and wept sticky, yellow fluid.

  An infection.

  She knew the signs but not how to treat them (she was a potter, not a healer). Frantically, she cleaned the cut and bound it with fresh coverings torn from her cloak, but she didn’t know which plants would help. She barely even knew which berries and leaves were safe to eat.

  The sorry pair staggered into a clearing and made camp as best they could, but Zeryth must have had his heart set on their souls. That night, winter decided to leave a parting gift. Frost and hail, mist and wind. It didn’t let up for days. There was no food to be found, no help or healers within reach.

  Already half-starved, they both faded quickly, her from hunger and Uki from the infection in his blood. At the back of her mind, Meera always thought someone would appear – a kindly stranger, a wandering woodsman – offering help and food, as in the stories. But they didn’t. And then, that very morning, Uki had shuddered in his sleep, given one last gasp … and died.

  *

  The rock cairn was finished. Uki’s skinny little body was completely covered, just a pile of stones like all the others in the graveyard.

  Meera should really cry or wail now, she supposed. Tear her clothes, pull her ears, scream at the sky, perhaps. But instead she just felt empty and cold, like a hollowed-out shell of a thing. And she was so very, very tired.

  She looked at the roots of the dead oak tree, spreading out and around Uki’s grave. They seemed, she thought, like a good place to sleep. Her final sleep: one that would last forever.

  With the end of her strength, she planted a kiss on the topmost stone of Uki’s grave, and then curled up amongst the root and rock, the dead grass and cold earth, and closed her eyes.

  She would open them again when she was in the Land Beyond.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Fire Spirit

  But how can the hero of our tale be a hero if he is dead? (I can tell that’s what you’re about to ask, so just close your mouth and let me get on with the story.)

  Well, Uki wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway.

  The winter frost began to creep through the stones of the cairn, painting white crystals over the blanket shroud he was wrapped in. It froze his mother’s last tears into tiny jewels of ice. It began to freeze Uki’s starved, fever-racked body, making him as cold and stiff as the skeletons sleeping all around him.

  But, somewhere deep inside the little rabbit’s shell, there was a tiny spark of life left. The dimmest of heartbeats, the quiet crackling of neurons in his brain. The fever hadn’t killed him. Not yet, anyway. Just stilled his breath and his pulse so deeply, his poor starving mother had thought him gone.

  No, Uki wasn’t dead, but he would have been before morning had not something quite amazing happened.

  *

  Before I get to that part, though, there’s a bit of explaining to do.

  Now. You remember how brave Podkin and Paz (and even braver Pook) fought a great battle against Scramashank and the Gorm? And how they destroyed the corrupted Gifts with magic arrows?

  And you will also remember how the Gorm warriors fell apart after that blow was struck. You might even recall how Podkin thought he heard a roar from beneath the earth, from the evil iron being that was Gormalech.

  Well, Podkin was right.

  That creature of living metal, seething beneath the Earth’s crust where he had been trapped for millennia, did indeed roar.

  The wound Podkin gave him was worse than any he had felt before. His hold on the surface world was broken, and he shrank back into himself to lick his wounds. Down through the caverns and dark tunnels of bedrock, down to where the rocks are soft and safe and warm. There to gather his strength and plan, I expect, his next attempt to break the Balance that was his pact with the goddesses.

  Gormalech, Podkin had discovered, was a creature made by the Ancients. One that had warped out of control and driven them up into the stars.

  But the Ancients had made many other things besides that ruinous monster. Most of them had been devoured by him, sucked up into his living, boiling mass of iron as if they’d never existed. Some, however, remained. Little nuggets of cunning craft and skill, buried under the ground and either too hard or too poisonous for Gormalech to get into.

  The creature had worried and chewed at these, like a badger with a sore tooth. He had squashed and squeezed them over the centuries, ground them this way and that until most had been forgotten, especially in his recent obsession with the rabbits walking about up there.

  One such treasure had been left behind in Gormalech’s sudden departure. Left, as it happened, a few centimetres from the surface in the Ice Wastes of north Hulstland, not far from a certain graveyard we have just been hearing about.

  Quite a tiny thing: an amethyst-pink crystal about the size of a small pumpkin.

  All the centuries of pressure had worn it down, rubbed it thin as paper like a piece of sea glass, and the things trapped inside it had weakened it even more.

  On the very night that Uki was buried, the crystal popped.

  A tiny, tinkling sound, had there been anyo
ne around to hear it, and a cluster of little glowing things emerged. Five fireflies – minuscule specks of light – floated free and drifted off into the dark woodland, lighting the pale trunks of the trees around them.

  One spark, bright orange in colour, drifted towards the graveyard.

  It jinked and twitched to and fro, as if sniffing something out. A scent hidden nearby: a spark of life in the cold, dead woodland.

  Uki.

  Yes, it had sensed the flickering pulse of the young rabbit. It could also tell that, like a guttering candle, it was about to be snuffed out.

  Zipping and sparkling, rushing between the graves, it headed for Uki’s pile of rocks and slipped in through a gap. It found his cold little body there, and wormed its way between the blankets, over his face, up to the corner of his ice-blue eye. And then wriggled inside.

  *

  Uki woke up.

  There had been fever, he remembered. Such pain in his leg. Cramps in his empty belly.

  All that had gone now.

  There was something pressing down on him. Lots of somethings. Hard, poky somethings. He sat up, hearing the clatter of tumbling rocks. Somebody had covered him in them, like he was dead. Was he dead?

  He blinked his eyes but couldn’t see anything. It took him a moment to realise there was fabric over his face. A cloth or blanket. A moment’s squirming and it fell away, revealing two things: it was night, and he was in a graveyard.

  Waking up buried in a graveyard is not a nice experience for anyone. In fact, Uki was just gathering his breath to scream his head off, when he noticed a shape floating in the air by his face.

  It was a little ball of fire, flickering like flames in the hearth: round and round, lighting up Uki’s top half as he poked out of his fresh, new grave.

  As Uki watched, the flames grew, spreading outwards and twisting into a new form. A figure with arms, legs and a round, earless head. It was small – no bigger than a newborn baby – but perfectly shaped. Eyes appeared, and a gap in the fire that looked like a mouth, opening and closing like a gasping fish. The thing waved its fiery arms frantically, as if it were trying to tell Uki something urgent.