The Black North (6 page)

‘Information,' said Oona. ‘By the Torrid, they were all shouting about keeping the children alive, so –'

‘They're looking for something,' said Merrigutt. ‘A small thing, but precious enough too that the Invaders and their ‘King of the North', as they call him, would happily turn this Isle to dark and rot if it meant getting it.'

‘What something?' said Oona.

Some shiver passed through the air. Everything in the cottage shook.

‘It is a something,' said Merrigutt, ‘that we've been searching for too. And we think we've found it – we think we're right in believing that it is hidden right here in the cottage of the Kavanaghs.'

And the ground might've been listening in – could've been waiting readied to hear just these words spoken! – because it began to seethe with something underneath and every old woman was suddenly into the air and all transformed in the same hop-spasm-shudder back to jackdaws, with Merrigutt crying, ‘Oona, quick! Quick, onto the table!'

Quick but not quick enough –

Oona was grabbed by the ankles and pulled down into the earth all the way to the waist before her hands snatched and closed around a table leg. She looked for her knife – where was it to slice with once more? She dropped, was pulled down further, and no help came from the jackdaws as they whirled in a frenzy, but then someone not expected: her grandmother rose suddenly rushing from her chair, trailing web, unhooking and heaving the pot of boiling water and pouring it into the hole. Such a scream from below! And at the first hint of release Oona was kicking and crawling away, finding her knife for protection. But the screaming from beneath didn't stop – the Kavanagh cottage shook with it, the Briar-Witch racing underground, sending cracks across walls, the whole place already broken enough by the dispell but beginning to lean, the whole home folding in like a fist.

Merrigutt shouted, ‘Out! Get out before the whole place comes down!'

The jackdaws left in as fast a flood as they'd come out through the door. But Oona stayed. Her granny Kavanagh was on the floor and Oona took her by the hand and said, ‘We have to go, Granny! Quick now, we have to leave!'

But the old woman wouldn't budge. She was just as still and near-silent as she'd been in her armchair a minute before, one hand still held tight to her breast.

‘Leave now, my girl!' said Merrigutt, landing on Oona's shoulder. ‘Out! We've no time for waiting!'

‘I won't go anywhere without her,' said Oona, and then she tried to lift her grandmother, but still no movement. Oona decided:
I won't leave if she won't. If this world falls in then this is where I'm supposed to be. Mammy died here, so it's where I'll die too, if I have to
.

‘Oona,' said Merrigutt, ‘we have to escape!'

‘Go, child.'

It was her grandmother's voice then, and it had no edge, no spite. Instead only a special gentleness Oona hadn't heard for so long. Granny Kavanagh said again, ‘Go, child. But take this – you must have it … it's your turn now …'

And finally her grandmother released what she'd held so tight: Oona felt something pressed into her own hands, a small knot of material with something small and round and hard at its heart. Oona hadn't time (or much care) to open or examine and she said just, ‘Granny, please, you have to come with me or –'

‘No,' said her grandmother, ‘not
have to
any more. It was too much for me, child. It's a burden, but I know you can bear it. And this is the most important thing – don't lose sight of the light. Keep looking for it. Just do as I should've done and didn't – don't let the light go. Don't just look for the dark.'

The roof began to fall in fragments and night sky to show through –

‘Oona!' cried Merrigutt. ‘Now or not at all!'

Granny Kavanagh pushed Oona from her. And Oona went, the gift that her grandmother had given safe in her hands.

‘Keep going now! Don't hang about!'

The jackdaw was on Oona's shoulder, telling. Oona didn't wish to but had to move. The bundle her grandmother had pressed on her in one hand, knife in the other, she fought on into the travesty of former forest. And any time Oona tried to look behind to see what had become of the Kavanagh cottage Merrigutt scolded, ‘No! Don't look back! Briar-Witches never move on their own so you can bet last Tuesday's washing that if there's one about then there'll be many! Keep going on now, we'll head for the –'

The jackdaw stopped, like she'd been struck dumb.

‘What?' asked Oona. ‘What is it?'

The bird's head tilted, slowly like she was listening, her yellow eyes growing. And then Merrigutt said, ‘It's the Coach-A-Bower.' A pause from the jackdaw, and then a panicked, ‘
Run!
'

Oona tried to move faster, but a hush was settling over her senses, a softening, the world holding itself still. Only one sound existed then, and it was the faint rattle of cheap metal against cheaper. By the time Oona realised that she was running towards the sound, Merrigutt told her, ‘Get down!'

On the fringe of a wide clearing they stopped. Oona tried to make herself small, hiding behind what remained of a once-noble Drumbroken oak. In front of her were a dozen or more Invaders, their faces the only thing seeable, the rest of their uniforms blending without seam into surrounding night. They were on guard, keeping watch over a convoy of twelve dark stallion-drawn carriages. Oona noticed what the strange rattle had been – many coins held together with fine thread, hanging from the front of each carriage. They continued their rattle even without movement, without a single snatch of wind. Dark figures sat at the reins of each stallion.

‘Quiet,' said Merrigutt. ‘Quiet, or you'll end up caught too.'

Behind bars, in each carriage, Oona saw many faces:
children
. They were packed close, stacked like all that was left of them were heads. All pale and wide-eyed, thin fingers closing tightly around the bars. But when Oona looked too long at them, the hush that pressed on her hearing became stronger, heavier. She began to rise from where she was crouched, half-led without knowing it, whispering to herself, ‘Bridget? Maybe Morris?'

‘
Stop!
' said Merrigutt. ‘You can't run out there or you'll get caught too, and then what good are you to anyone? And especially not with what your granny has just given you.'

Oona stayed where she was, half-stooped. If she went on without any weapon but her kitchen knife – against Invaders with a couple of guns each – then the old jackdaw was right: she'd be caught quick, and then what? She sank a little, and listened. And what she heard from the Invaders had to press through the hush, words just vague whisperings when they reached Oona's ears –

‘Said we had to collect them all.'

‘We have done!'

‘What about the one from that falling Tower?'

‘They'll turn up, those Witches will find them. They can sniff out a child from twenty miles off!'

‘We'll need to get these supplies shifted off soon.'

‘Don't worry. These children'll be going nowhere any time soon. Or any time at all! Ain't that right, Coachman! Eh?'

The Invader's call brought a slow stirring from the front of one of the carriages. From the seat stepped one of the dark figures – a someone see-through, shaped like a man but with no flesh or blood or bone. He was hardly more than shadow. And like the carriages and horses, the figure summoned no sound. He dragged a whip with a pale handle that looked to Oona like a rough bone. The rasp of the whip across broken ground made all of Oona shiver. When the Coachman reached the bars of the carriage the children tried to recoil but their movement was slow, without much strength. The dark, transparent figure extended one dark, transparent hand to them, like an invitation into comfort. None of the children took it.

‘They'd take it if they knew what was good for them!' shouted an Invader, and he thumped the side of the carriage with the butt of his rifle. The Coachman's dark head snapped around to face the Invader, who looked enough humbled (or frightened?) to take a step-and-a-half back.

‘What are they?' whispered Oona.

‘More forces that have sided with the Invaders,' said Merrigutt. ‘The Coach-A-Bower.'

‘The Funeral-Makers?' said Oona. She remembered something, some trace. Or some story?

‘Up North we called them just the Coach,' said Merrigutt. ‘They come to collect the dead on the night they are due to die. To take the souls, accompany them to –'

‘On to the end of the world,' said Oona, remembering whispered words, prayers spoke for the Sorrowful Lady. She said what she recalled: ‘
The Coachman will come and, if you pay him the proper price, he will extend his hand to the soul that needs guiding into the next world and make them as much shadow as he is himself. And then he will take them with care and gentleness to the place beyond all places, to the place neither above nor beneath – on into the final silence
.'

‘True enough,' said Merrigutt.

The Invaders were joined then by others, maybe twelve more all jogging into sight.

One of the arriving lot nodded to one of those already gathered, then said, ‘The last cottage has been destroyed, sir.'

‘Good man,' said the Invader who was being addressed. ‘And whoever was inside, what happened to them?'

Oona listened, waiting to hear of Granny Kavanagh's end, but the conversation was interrupted by movement, by the upset of earth – what could only be to Oona's eyes the swift burrowing of a Briar-Witch. It stopped in the centre of things, and Oona saw all the Invaders take many steps backwards, their faces repulsed by something Oona couldn't see. A voice with no more shape or depth to it than a growl spoke from the ground –

‘
There was one within the cottage, but it escaped me.
'

‘What?' said the Invader in charge. ‘You let one of them escape? The order was to catch
every single child
!'

‘
We cannot catch all. We have been dormant for many seasons, and –
'

‘Excuses!' said the Invader. ‘You think my Captain will listen to excuses? Do you think the Faceless will take any of this nonsense? And what about the King himself?' At these last words, Oona heard worry creeping into the Invader's own voice.

‘
We have gifted you many things,
' said the voice of the Briar-Witch. ‘
Not least the skins of the Acre-Changeling – countless of them have been slaughtered and stripped, their coverings stolen and given to you so that you can match the look of the land you wish to conquer. And our Mother has given the greatest power to your King – to be able to reshape the land itself. We work tirelessly to assist you, and still we have had no reward.
'

‘You made the Oath,' said the Invader. ‘You know the deal – when all the children in this Isle are in our custody, when we find what the King is looking for, then you creatures will get what you want. All girls go North to the Witches, and all boys go North to the King.' He took a breath, and looked to those Invaders looking at him, waiting. Then he faced again the ground, and told the Briar-Witch, ‘Tell no one of the loss of this or any other escaped child, but I want you to continue looking for them. Go!'

Dirt flew into the air, the Briar-Witch making a fresh path underground, leaving the clearing as the Invader shouted, ‘Coachmen – take these children North!'

‘They're looking for you, my girl,' Merrigutt told Oona. They know you've something important, otherwise they wouldn't be bothered with
every single child
. You can't reveal yourself.'

‘I know,' said Oona. ‘Stop pestering me. So now what if we don't do something?'

‘We go to the White Road,' said the jackdaw. ‘You won't be the only one trying to escape from here. South is the only safe place now. Let's go.'

But Oona didn't move. She waited – knife in one hand, her grandmother's gift in the other. She saw all the Coachmen raise dark arms, their whips all poised, and as one they struck their stallions, the crack they sounded bringing everyone in earshot lower. She felt a cold wind shake the clearing, deep hush became a dark rush and the dozen carriages were gone, chased like unwanted children off into the night.

Oona walked herself sore. Jackdaw on her shoulder, she wandered a dispelled Drumbroken until the world lost some of its stubborn dark and what she took for morning arrived. But it was a sky to match her mood – the colour of damp stone and screwed down tight, any glimpse of the dawn hidden behind. Then the ending forest finally ended and Oona stopped and saw the extent of shadow – she and Bridget had seen it seeping into Drumbroken, and it had seized the entire valley, a pitiless stain that wouldn't be shifted. And just below Oona, at the bottom of a slope, was the only thing white: a wide trail of chalk, the White Road, wandering off on its way South and towards the coast. But to safety? Oona doubted that idea.

‘See now,' said Merrigutt, speaking at last. ‘Told you that you wouldn't be alone, didn't I?' Oona said nothing, just watched the creep of dark along White: a slow mass of people with possessions all strapped to their backs and across shoulders and wrapped around arms and legs and heads and anywhere at all that could take weight, or leading carts stacked high as hillocks with chairs and sawed-short-scrubbed-down tables and clothes flapping limp farewell, pots and pongers and kettles and coal scuttles and spoons and griddle plates all rattling like the grimmest band at a Nip-Winter Fair. And everywhere Oona could see the small porcelain shrines for the Sorrowful Lady, stuffed wherever they could fit.

‘So quiet,' said Oona, and all of her shivered. Apart from the scuff of bare feet and crackle of cartwheels and the sometimes sniff and whimper, there was no sound.