‘Pok ha boc! What is wrong with those rabbits?’ Kree had found them, dragging a coughing Mooka behind her. But Uki didn’t have time to welcome her. He was too busy staring at the figure in the middle of the huddle. The thing that Coal had said was Granny, the leader of the Maggitch clan.
Just like when he had come face to face with Valkus in the body of Mayor Renard, Uki was seeing two things at once. One was the solid, poisoned body of an old she-rabbit, the other was the ghostly image of Charice, spirit of plague and disease, floating in front of Granny’s hunched form like a mirage.
The senses he had absorbed from Iffrit let him see her true form when no one else could. A tall, thin, earless creature with thin strands of hair straggling from her head. More corpse than anything, her leathery skin was pocked and scarred with the ravages of countless diseases. Her yellowed eyes were blind and blank, yet glowing with cruel power at the same time.
He recognised her instantly from memories the fire guardian had shared with him, from the countless centuries that Iffrit had circled above her, imprisoned on an island where she had built a poison workshop to brew her vile diseases. He knew she had been made by the Ancients to help fight sickness, but had instead fallen in love with the plagues she was supposed to cure. He knew she wanted to fill the world with her viruses, choking everything except those she chose to follow her, their minds clouded by the germs that swirled through them. An army of half-dead rotten things, forced to worship her against their will, even as they crumbled to pieces.
‘Quick, Uki.’ Jori squeezed his arm, her jaw clenched as she fought back the wave of nausea that swept over her. ‘Your spear …’
Uki shook his head clear of his visions and raised the spear, ready to throw it into Charice’s heart and trap her forever in its crystal head.
He wound back his arm, just as the possessed body of Granny Maggitch opened its mouth and bellowed: ‘Gurdles! I bring a gift to end our petty squabbles once and for all! I bring you perfect plague! I bring you delectable disease!’
Before Uki could release the spear, there came a roaring, hissing sound. Loud enough to make him wince, it built up from somewhere in the swamp behind, then rushed towards them, shaking the matted wood of the platform, making the lanterns dance on the ropes above them.
And then, like a tsunami wave crashing on to a beach, a solid black cloud of buzzing, chittering insects blew out of the trees, engulfing the Gurdle village, smashing towards Uki and his friends as fast as a thunderclap.
They had an instant in which they could make out countless thousands of insect bodies, plates of shiny chitin and glimmering wings, and then the swarm was upon them. Uki felt a shove, throwing his aim off as Coal stepped in front to shield him. There was a smack as the wall of bugs hit him, and then they were up and over, covering Uki from head to toe and making the smith’s brave gesture pointless.
Biting, crawling, stinging, Uki could feel them on every exposed part of his fur. He screwed his eyes shut and curled into a ball, trying to keep the insects off him. Still, they crawled up his sleeves and trouser legs, into his galoshes, between his toes. Every time they sank their mandibles into him it burned and, judging by the screams from all around him, it was the same for the others.
The stinging seemed to last for hours, although it was probably just a matter of seconds. As fast as they had come upon them, the horde of bugs moved on. They poured over the Gurdle village and then vanished, most of them falling into the swamp, their fragile wings torn to shreds, their bodies cracked and broken by all the poisons they carried.
Free of the biting creatures, Uki scrambled to his feet. He lifted his spear again, trembling with the effort as his body used every scrap of its strength to fight off the toxins that had been injected into him.
‘Charice …’ he croaked, looking for the hooded rabbit again, hoping that he could make all this sickness vanish with one well-placed shot.
But there was no sign of her, or the other Maggitches. Like their swarm of insects, they had vanished, leaving desolation behind them. Every single rabbit in the village lay curled on the floor, gasping and twitching. Drifts of dead bugs were swept against walls and doorways like some kind of black, glittering snow. The music had stopped, the dancing had finished.
Plague had come and snuffed out the Gurdles like a candle.
CHAPTER NINE
Last Words
‘Please don’t die.’
Uki whispered the words to Jori as he held a damp cloth to her mouth. He squeezed out a few drops of water and she made a weak attempt to swallow them. Gently, Uki laid her head back down and watched her eyelids flutter as she fought to breathe. She was worse than she had been ten minutes ago and there was absolutely nothing he could do to help her.
Fighting back tears, Uki clenched his fists until it hurt, then looked down at his useless paws. What good was all his strength and power now? If only he had thrown that spear quicker … If only he had sensed Charice before she arrived in the village …
This was all his fault. Jori, Kree, Coal … they wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for him.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. His dark voice, normally cruel and mocking, talked sense for once. Crying and whimpering won’t help. Do what you can. That’s all there is. Water. Comfort. Care.
Uki nodded. Picking up his cloth and bucket, he started another round of tending to the dying.
*
After the attack, after the insects had crashed over them all, Uki had been in great pain. His body had been covered in lumps and bites – angry red bumps pushing through his fur all over. His eyes swollen shut, his skin burning like fire. Through the itching and stinging, he had been aware of cries and moans all around him. Every other rabbit in the Gurdle village must have been caught in the attack. They were all feeling the same pain.
But the others didn’t have an ancient spirit fused with their body. After the longest hour of his life, just as Uki thought he might go mad from the hundreds of blistering stings, the pain had begun to ease a bit.
A few minutes later and he had been able to sit up. He’d prised his gummed eyes open and looked at his paws and arms. The bites had begun to fade away, his flesh shrinking back to normal. He had been able to feel his body wiping out the toxins: soothing, cleansing. Soon, every last itch had gone and the absence of hurting was like plunging into a cool, clear lake. It had been bliss.
And then he’d looked around.
There wasn’t a single rabbit left standing. Curled in balls, huddled against each other, the Gurdles and his friends had all been hit by the bugs. Bitten all over, just like him.
That was when Uki had noticed the silence. All the moans and cries had stopped, which, unlike in his case, wasn’t a good thing.
Terrified at what he might find, Uki had peeled back Jori’s cloak and rolled her over. And what he saw almost made him scream. He would not have recognised his friend if it hadn’t been for the black tips of her ears. Her whole face, neck, paws … everything was swollen with thousands upon thousands of bites. It looked like someone had shoved bunches of grapes under her skin.
Moving closer, Uki had listened hard for any signs of life, praying to the Goddess that there were some. As he’d rested an ear next to her mouth, he had been rewarded by a faint tickle of breath.
Jori was alive. Just.
When he had done what he could to make her more comfortable, Uki had begun the process of checking the others. Kree and Coal were still unconscious, but breathing. Even Mooka had been knocked out by the attack.
Not knowing what else to do, Uki had gone around the village, picking up the Gurdles and bringing them on to the platform. He found Ma Gurdle, half buried in a mountain of dead bugs. Her giant frog was nowhere to be seen – Uki guessed it had sensed the wave of insects coming and jumped into the lake to escape. If only the rest of them had been quick enough to do the same.
He discovered Bo and his mother inside one of the tents. Other rabbits were lying on the rooftops and on
the shoreline. Using his strength, Uki carried them all, two at a time, and laid them out around the smouldering bonfire. He fetched blankets from the huts and tents and folded them into pillows. He brought water from the longhouse in a bucket and began to try and feed it to them, a drop at a time from a cloth. There were fifty-seven Gurdles – men, women and children alike – now stretched out over every plank of the platform outside the longhouse. After combing the banks and the trees around the village, he thought he had found everyone.
One of the huts he had visited looked like it belonged to a witch or doctor. There had been herbs and dried roots hanging from the ceiling. Clay jars and bowls of this and that on the shelves. Perhaps I could find a cure? he had thought, desperate to do something more to help. Perhaps I could make them better?
You’re more likely to poison them, his dark voice had said. You don’t know dandelions from deadly nightshade.
And it was true. There was absolutely nothing he could do except watch and pray that they would recover.
Except they didn’t.
What had started off as poison bites had become something much, much worse.
As the sun rose, Uki began to realise that the swarm of bugs had just been carriers for the real attack. Charice had filled them with one of her plagues. Even as Uki’s body had healed itself, those of his friends had begun to stew with disease. The places they had been bitten began to drip black blood and sour-smelling orange pus. Their faint breath began to rattle in their lungs as they gasped and fought to stay alive.
Some of them began to murmur and mumble, saying strange, feverish things. When Uki put his paw to their heads, he could feel them burning up.
He tore blankets into strips and soaked them in the cold water of the lake, before placing them on the rabbits’ foreheads. Anything to cool them down, to make them more comfortable. Again, it seemed useless.
In between tending to his patients, he had found a broom and begun to sweep the village clear of the swathes of dead bugs. Perhaps they might still carry some infection. Perhaps it might help a little.
It was like sweeping piles of dead leaves. They rustled and crunched as he pushed them with his broom. Keeping a safe distance, he could still see how they had been warped and altered by Charice. There were dragonflies with eight eyes and cruel, curved jaws. There were stag beetles with swollen, bloated bodies that burst as he swept them. Smaller insects filled the gaps in between them like dust. Mosquitoes and midges, bluebottles and blowflies. Their bodies fell into the lake and drifted downstream in island-shaped clusters, like poisonous, evil lily pads.
It was noon when he heard the voice.
From somewhere on the bank, behind the shielding willow trees, a rabbit was calling.
‘Hallooo! Hallooo! Is anybody there?’
Uki picked his way through the mass of sick rabbits, then scampered along the wooden walkway to the edge of the village. He got there just as the visiting rabbit pushed his way through the hanging willows on to the bank. It was a young male, dressed in Gurdle frogskin, carrying a bundle over his shoulder, tied to the end of his walking stave.
‘Stop!’ Uki shouted. ‘Don’t come into the village!’
The rabbit froze on the bank, staring at Uki in surprise. His eyes moved over the clustered boats, across the bank and up into the branches. Clearly he was wondering where all the sentries and guards had gone.
‘What be goin’ on, then?’ he said. ‘Where is everybody?’
Uki wondered how he could possibly explain what had happened and make the rabbit believe him. But he had to say something. If that rabbit set paw inside the village, he could fall sick, just like the others.
‘There’s been an attack,’ he said. ‘It was the Maggitches. Everyone in the village is sick with some kind of plague. You have to keep away!’
‘Sick? Everyone?’ The rabbit frowned at Uki, obviously wondering who this strange child was and whether he should believe him.
‘Yes. Granny Maggitch and some others came last night while the feast was going on. They put a kind of poison in the fire and now every single Gurdle is ill.’ Uki left out the part about the swarm of flies. There was no way he could explain that without revealing the story of the spirits, and for all he knew this rabbit might be as unbelieving as Ma Gurdle.
‘Gollop curse those Maggitches!’ The rabbit threw his pack to the floor and stamped his foot. ‘Are you sure it’s a plague? My aunt and cousins are in there …’
‘I’m sure,’ said Uki. ‘I’m trying to look after them all, but you can’t come in! You might catch it too and … and I don’t think any of them is going to survive.’
At that, the rabbit gasped. He put his paws to his head and paced up and down the bank. Uki had a good idea how he was feeling – desperate to do something, but completely unable to think what.
After a few moments, when the helplessness had finally sunk in, he turned back to Uki. ‘I don’t understand any of this,’ he said. ‘Who are you, and why are you still here if there’s plague? How be it that you’re not sick?’
‘I was here with my friends and Charcoal,’ said Uki, trying to think of a convincing explanation. ‘We helped a rabbit called Bo and he brought us here for the feast. My friends are ill too, and I think I might be coming down with it.’ He did a little cough and tried to look unwell.
The rabbit took a step back. ‘Will you … will you stay with them? Until the end, like?’
Uki nodded. ‘There’s not much I can do, but …’
‘Bandylegs bless you,’ said the rabbit. He reached down for the pack he had been carrying and threw it across the water to where Uki stood. ‘There’s some food and wine in there. I was bringing it to my aunt. If you need anything else, I can fetch it.’
‘Thank you,’ Uki said, pulling the pack firmly on to the boat. ‘I think you’d better stay clear, though. Perhaps you should leave the Fenlands completely. Go somewhere far away.’ Because this plague will spread, he added silently. There’s only a tiny chance I can stop Charice on my own, and if I fail, her diseases will be everywhere.
‘Maybe I will,’ said the rabbit. ‘I’ve got a wife and three nippers back in Reedwic. Otherwise I’d stay and help …’
‘It’s all right,’ said Uki.
The rabbit turned to go and then paused, as if he had remembered something. ‘Say,’ he said. ‘Were you travelling with two others? One of them with painted fur, on a giant hoppy thing?’
‘A jerboa. Yes.’
‘Then there’s folk looking for you, back in town. Asking questions in the inns and whatnot. Questions about three children. Not very nice folk either.’
Uki felt his fur prickle as he realised who it could be. ‘Is it an old woman? With a headscarf?’
‘That be the one,’ said the rabbit. ‘And she has some shady sneakers with her. All becloaked and shifty. Then there’s another too. A young chap with grey fur and fine armour. With a sword of real sky metal on his hip.’
Uki had an idea about who that was as well. ‘Does he have a flask on his belt? Made of bone, with a silver cap?’
‘Aye, that be correct. Old Pennyfeather said he was a Dusker. From a clan up north in the Coldwood.’ The rabbit peered at Uki again, his head cocked on one side. ‘What’s a young nipper like you done to have that lot after you?’
Uki shrugged. Perhaps Jori could have come up with an explanation, but his mind had gone utterly blank. ‘I’m just … just popular, I suppose?’
The rabbit nodded, tapping a finger to his nose. ‘None of my beeswax. I understand. I won’t say nothing to nobody, don’t worry. I owe you that much for what you’re doing. And there’s no way they’ll find you here.’
‘Thank you,’ said Uki.
‘No, thank you,’ said the rabbit. ‘Thank you for seeing to my family. I’ll … I’ll make sure them Maggitches pay for this. Somehow.’
Uki wanted to tell him not to try, not to keep the old battles grinding on even longer, but he had already turned away and ducked under
the willow branches. There had been tears in the rabbit’s eyes as he left, knowing he would never see his family again.
And there were tears in Uki’s too as he picked up the pack and headed back to the village square feeling more alone and helpless than ever.
*
There were parcels of biscuits and bread inside the pack, as well as some clay bottles of elderberry wine. Uki mixed some of the wine with water and did another round of his patients. They seemed to take the mixture a bit better than before. Perhaps the wine might give them some strength. Perhaps.
He found it was easier if he tried to keep busy. Every time he stopped to watch his friends, a surge of panic built up and threatened to overtake him. How could he go on without them? How could he possibly capture the last two spirits on his own?
He set about replacing all the damp cloths on the rabbits’ foreheads, then trying them with more wine and water. By the time he’d finished that, the sky above was beginning to be tinged pink. A whole day had gone and there was no sign of anyone recovering.
Uki was thinking about lighting the bonfire again, to keep everyone warm through the oncoming night, when he noticed Kree stirring beneath her blanket. He rushed over to her side.
‘Kree? Can you hear me? Are you feeling better?’
The little rabbit squinted at him through swollen eyelids. She moved her mouth a fraction, and Uki wet it with some water from his cloth.
‘Cold,’ she said, her voice hardly more than a croak. ‘Everything is cold.’
‘I’m just about to light a fire,’ said Uki. ‘A big bonfire. It’ll warm you up nicely, I promise!’
‘Uki? Is that you?’ Kree blinked again and tried to move her head. Uki knelt closer and took one of her blistered paws in his.
‘Yes, it’s me. I’m here.’ A tear trickled down his nose and dripped on to Kree’s blanket. ‘Tell me what I can do to make you feel better. Tell me how to help you.’
‘Mooka. How is Mooka?’
Uki and the Swamp Spirit Page 9
