‘Ah … You devil …’
Gingerly, she rises. The little priest is trapped between two rocks. He must have fallen there when she struck at him, and now, clear as day, one of his wings twitches uselessly.
‘You … you have murdered me,’ he says.
There is an obvious reply to that, but Nessa can’t be bothered making it. Megan’s ghost, on the other hand, is full of suggestions. Harvest those wings of his, Ness. They’ll make great toilet paper.
In spite of everything, Nessa can’t help grinning. Megan would say something just like that if she were here. Or worse. Probably a lot worse. But Nessa should get moving now. The safety of the fire is calling her.
Just lie down …
But she can’t, she can’t. Nessa isn’t capable of giving up even if the only home left to her is hell itself.
‘At least kill me!’
She turns. The monk or priest or whatever he once was looks up from the two rocks that have trapped him.
‘I’m nothing but food,’ Fr Ambrosio says. ‘I would forgive you if you ate me. I mean … after. If you were … quick.’
Earlier, she had considered cannibalizing the Sídhe, but now the thought revolts her. Nor can she contemplate leaving the little creature to a lonely death. He cannot help what the Sídhe have made him, can he?
She frees him easily, pulling him up. He is naked apart from a little loincloth he must have made for himself. His body without the wings is no larger than her two hands and he weighs less than a robin would at home. He groans when his broken wing falls askew, tiny eyelids fluttering, body trembling.
‘How long have you been in this form?’ she asks him.
‘Who can know such a thing in this place? A long time. Before that, I was a horse. But what does it matter, my child? Just do it. It is a kindness that God will forgive.’
She could snap him in two. It would be the easiest thing in the world for hands like hers, but her stomach isn’t up to the task and she has to fight against the nausea even as she grips him …
‘Wait!’ he cries. ‘I … I can’t do it, my child. I … I’ve changed my mind. Leave me. Just leave me here.’
Relief washes through her and her stomach unclenches. ‘If you insist,’ she whispers. Nessa is looking for a good place to put him down when she spots something. A tiny stick – his toothpick spear, with a point on it made of who knows what?
Doesn’t matter. It makes an excellent splint that she ties on with a stray thread from the rags of her uniform. She hums as she works, a song of her mother’s about the stubble fields of Autumn. Then, she rips yet another piece of her shirt away to make a sling for him.
‘You’re taking me with you?’ Fr Ambrosio asks, stupefied. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ she says. But it’s a lie. Already the loneliness of this place is wearing her down. It’s worse than the hunger, she thinks, not having anybody. Even one of the Sídhe’s monsters seems like a gift from God right now.
Soon enough, she’s heading back up the slope, her little enemy in the crook of one arm. She stumbles often in this rough terrain with no crutches and no obvious materials to make them from.
After a while the little man says, ‘Prolonging my life is a cruelty.’
‘You asked for it!’
‘I asked to be left alone!’ He waves a tiny hand. ‘Well then, let me repay your cruelty with cruelty of my own.’ She cocks an eyebrow at him. He’s no stronger than a butterfly and his body is sheened with sweat.
‘You can eat here,’ he says.
‘What?’ She stops walking. ‘Eat your miserable corpse, you mean?’
‘That too, yes. But I meant you could do as our masters do and eat roots.’
Out of nowhere, her mouth fills with enough saliva to drown in. Her head spins and she has to lean her weight against a rock. How right he is! This is cruelty indeed!
Seeing his arrow strike home, Fr Ambrosio nods, smugly. ‘You know the way some of the trees bleed when you cut them?’
‘That’s edible?’
‘By all the saints, of course not! That, my child, is the devil’s vomit! But any plant that doesn’t bleed has roots that will keep the likes of you alive.’
‘Impossible,’ she says. ‘We would know this. We have years and years of Testimonies …’
‘Really, child? Your people come here to this land of horror – of poisons – and randomly eat things?’
‘Oh,’ she says, feeling foolish, ‘I suppose not. Nobody would take the risk. We only ever stay here for a day.’ Her eyes travel over to a stand of spike bushes, harmless to all but the most foolish of travellers.
‘What about …?’
‘Yes, my child,’ he says. ‘Those ones are edible. There’ll even be water under there. And, yes, I need some too. Bless you and curse you.’
Nessa is tired enough that she cuts herself a little when pulling the first bush out of the ground. As promised, a grey root comes up with it and the centre is soft enough to chew down easily. The girl expects it to taste as bitter as everything else in this place. To burn or to poison her, to drug her or turn her guts to water. Perhaps this is the little man’s vengeance on her.
None of these things happens. Instead a mild fruity sweetness fills her mouth and every tissue of her body quivers with relief. Am I the first, she wonders, to find food in the Grey Land? Nobody else who returned from a Call was ever here long enough for nourishment to be necessary, and who would want to risk it?
Fr Ambrosio takes sips at the water the plant was hoarding, but refuses the food. Nessa is too greedy to care.
It will be some days before the consequences of what she has done become apparent to her, and by then it will be too late.
In fact, it is already too late. The food has begun to change her.
She limps off in the direction of the lava she saw, bearing the little priest in a sling, keeping him well away from her eyes.
Aoife
Aoife waits all alone, bathed in sweat. Is it supposed to be so warm here? Maybe she’s back in her stepfather’s kitchen, asleep before the range as he tinkers with the old clocks he used to fix on the side.
But no, her nose wouldn’t be streaming in his house. It wouldn’t be stinging as the air attacks her mucous membranes. Her eyes are squeezed shut, but she forces them open.
In the distance, a beak-shaped mountain stabs through the horizon from below. She’s standing on dry-packed earth in the midst of shattered rocks, while plumes of steam come belching through cracks. Is it poisonous? Maybe if she stays here, if she just lies down for a bit, the gas will finish her off. Maybe –
A horn blares. It’s halfway between a screech and the sound of nails on a blackboard. It stands the hairs up on her head. It tells her time is up, that she really should have taken the pill when she had the chance, because her hosts are on their way, happier to see her than any mere human could be. Aoife freezes, but then, her training takes charge.
Run! Run! Never stand still!
It’s all slopes here. She skids down them, falls and cuts a knee. She climbs over a leg bone as large as she is, then dodges around webbed-over rocks where a small man-faced creature struggles and cries, ‘I didn’t mean it!’ over and over again.
She runs and runs. Eyes follow her every step. She can feel them. It’s like an itch. Like needles.
And here comes the horn again! A hundred metres behind maybe. And, oh, Crom! There’s another horn off out to the left. Two parties! Two groups that know she’s here, that will race each other for the privilege of causing her more pain than any human can endure. And the sooner they catch her, the more time they’ll have to do their work.
The slope is steep here. Would she break her neck if she dived forward? But what if she failed? They’re bound to catch her then!
She skids between two boulders, yelps as a spike plant stabs her shin. The air now smells of rotting meat, of death and misery.
‘I heard her!’ cries a happy voice. ‘The thief is c
lose.’
‘No!’ calls another. ‘Drive her towards the Promise Holder! Think of the fun! Why else was she pulled here?’
‘Oh, yes! Oh, yes!’
The Sídhe are just metres downslope of her, running parallel to her course behind a line of rocks.
Was Emma this afraid during her last moments? Did they drive her too towards a promise holder – whatever or whoever that is? Did they taunt her? Oh, how they defiled that body! The only one Aoife has ever loved. How they poisoned that skin, twisting its creamy surface into pus-filled cracks and scales! They murdered her. They murdered Emma and actually found it funny! Laughing like they’re laughing now!
And Aoife screams. She has never made such a sound before, never felt such fury rippling through her sinews and bones. She surges left and, heedless of consequences, leaps. Speed, gravity and hatred lift her over the rocks, a human cannonball that smashes into a group of Sídhe on the far side.
Bones snap – but not hers. She goes rolling and skidding away. She’s still screaming though. She grabs at a branch on her way past, ripping it from a tree. Then she’s back on her feet again, surging up towards the Sídhe.
There were only two of them, it seems. The one she landed on may be dead. The other applauds even as she charges towards him, and he’s still laughing when she batters him to death with the branch and his own hunting horn. ‘Emma!’ she cries. ‘Emma!’
Every muscle on Aoife’s body is trembling. Blood covers her hands and two broken bodies lie before her, their huge eyes staring, their glittering skin bruised and torn where she struck at it. She is too tired for emotions. She wants only to lie down and sleep in the hopes of forgetting all of this.
‘Ooh,’ says a lovely, lovely voice. ‘A feisty one!’
She drops the hunting horn. Standing on the rocks that she herself jumped over only moments before is a party of eight Sídhe. Two carry spears made of bone, although why they need weapons in this home of theirs, Aoife has no idea. Another grips a bow.
‘Put an arrow in the thief’s leg,’ one suggests. It’s a man, his heroic arms bare but for an eyeless snake with human lips that twines around his left bicep. ‘We will have such a long time to play with it then.’
One of the women tosses her head. ‘No! It’s my turn and I want to see the look on its face when it meets the Promise Holder.’
‘I still say the arrow!’ insists the man. The bow wielder lazily takes aim.
Aoife, her rage spent, doesn’t so much as move until the arrow grazes her face. Then, out of nowhere, she has energy again and enough terror to fill a stadium. She never even wonders how the archer could miss such an easy shot. All she knows is that there are too many to fight and they have all day to do whatever they want.
Their joyful shouts follow her. Their feet patter so lightly on the rocks behind it sounds like a summer shower.
Over to her right, soil shifts and Aoife hears a noise such as a sack would make when dragged over sand, but larger than that – a thousand times larger.
Her breath is turning ragged. She is wasting far too much energy on panic. She leaps between stones, spins away from the grasp of slimy, smoking weeds …
And then the dragging sound turns into something more like the ripping of a house-sized sheet of paper. The soil in front of her explodes. Lumps of dirt smack her in the face. Dust clogs the air, and rising before her is something like the body of a worm or a snake. Moist blinking eyes form a line along the top of it, while a hundred mouths make up the belly, each one snapping and cursing, licking at the air with human tongues; drooling; babbling. And the stench of their carnivore breath! The stench! A pair of lips cries, ‘Over here, girl!’ Another cackles. A third pleads starvation in a foreign tongue.
The great body sways, ready to fall upon Aoife, who has nowhere to go except back towards the Sídhe. It has something resembling tentacles, but with fur. They snake across the ground towards her, twitching with anticipation, and she sees with revulsion that instead of suckers, the insides are lined with yet more clacking, drooling, hungry mouths. It will wrap her up, and rip her flesh away, all at once.
She freezes in terror, but then … the monster bursts into flame. One minute it’s there, and the next its many mouths unite in a terrible scream. Another jet of fire shoots out from behind a boulder and ends its pain.
The silence that follows is complete. Even the vents pause in their belching of steam.
‘It’s all right,’ a voice says gently.
Aoife forces herself to turn, although she knows this is the end. The Sídhe drove her here, right to this spot, as surely as the farmer’s dogs chase sheep towards the shears.
It’s a woman this time. Just one by herself. And Aoife gasps when she sees who it is.
‘Ness? Nessa?’
The relief fills Aoife’s eyes with tears and sends her to her knees. Of course, she thinks, of course. She heard Nessa was exiled here. But instead of dying, she has been using her control of fire to stay alive.
‘Nessa,’ she says again. ‘You saved my life.’
The girl doesn’t reply. She looks as though she can’t, as though her jaw is locked in place. Her eyes seem so large in the dull silvery light, glistening with tears of their own.
Aoife rises, takes a step towards her. This is the bravest girl she has ever met. A familiar, friendly face to drive away the horror all around.
Then a tiny little man with wings lands on a boulder off to the side.
‘She has nice eyes,’ he says, smiling.
‘Ignore him,’ Nessa tells Aoife, as if the creature is a friend of hers, as familiar as Aoife herself. ‘You’ll be safe with me. I don’t know how you got here, Aoife. Maybe they’re taunting me. Or you, for that matter. I don’t know. But I have a cave where you can wait out the Call. And I hope … I hope you’ll take a message back for me.’
She holds out her hand. Aoife reaches to take it. It’s the most natural thing in the world, after all. Even in this world. But with bare centimetres separating their fingertips, she hesitates. She looks up, meeting Nessa’s large, puzzled eyes. There’s something wrong with her friend. Something deeply, deeply wrong. And finally she sees what it is and her whole body goes cold with horror.
‘Oh, Crom.’
Then Aoife turns and begins to run, harder than she’s ever run in her life.
She sees … some terrible things over the next few hours, or however long it really is. But none of them is as upsetting as her meeting with Nessa Doherty, the Promise Holder.
The Trap
The moment Aoife disappears and the crows start raising the alarm, Taaft and Liz Sweeney come running from the house. There’s no point in keeping quiet now, is there?
‘Follow Nabil!’ Taaft cries. She means this command for Anto and the other students still crouching on the far side of the vegetable garden. Speed is of the essence now.
‘They’re here! They’re here!’ shout the crow-women. Liz Sweeney and Taaft barge into the bushes beside him.
‘Move! Move!’
A fist the size of a child’s head crashes through the side gate into the garden, and Anto knows there are giants on the other side. The next blow will knock it from its hinges and then the monsters will come trampling through Aoife’s lost clothing.
‘We can’t leave her,’ he says.
Taaft punches him in the side of the head. She gets him by the collar and pushes him back into the bushes even as the gate splinters. Fronds whip at his face, spraying icy droplets down his collar, with Taaft, relentless Taaft, urging him deeper into the overgrown garden.
‘No!’ He tears himself free and turns back towards Aoife’s empty clothing.
‘Don’t waste your breath,’ Liz Sweeney protests. ‘She’ll come back dead anyway. You know her.’
He does. And what he also knows is that Aoife’s braver than they give her credit for. She deserves even the tiny chance at life the Grey Land affords them all.
‘Run,’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘I’
ll slow them down for you.’
‘Thanks, kid,’ Taaft says. She’s not the type to waste breath on a lost cause. ‘Let’s go, Liz Sweeney.’
Three giants have broken into the garden and they’re standing in a circle around Aoife’s clothing. Others can be heard tearing the house to pieces.
Anto has never seen them this close before. They have tiny heads – half the size of his own, with the features all scrunched one atop the other. Thick slabs of bone armour their upper bodies and each of them has a crow-woman clinging to their shoulders, whispering in their ears.
The whisper turns to a shout when the first grenade lands right at their feet.
‘Run!’ screeches a crow to her giant. ‘Run, you clod!’
It doesn’t save them. The bang knocks Anto over and leaves his ears ringing. One of the giants crawls away, weeping exactly as a small child would: a hiccoughing, pitiful sound that tears at Anto’s heart. That could have been me. He was supposed to be one of them, after all.
The others are down and three crow-women are flapping around them in a circle. ‘Oh, no! My boy! My precious boy!’
A roar comes from the house. Two more giants burst free of the back door; one of them has the entire metal frame stuck around his shoulders, but he doesn’t care, and the pair of them come charging across the garden, through the wreckage of their comrades and the burning rags that are all that remain of Aoife’s clothes. Anto staggers to his feet as the first massive fist flies at his face. He ducks behind a tree.
‘After him!’ cries a crow’s voice. ‘Circle left!’
The second giant is waiting for the boy on the far side. Anto parries a punch with his massive left arm, but his human legs buckle. Were it not for the fact that his enemy is still wearing the rusting door frame, he would die now. It catches among the springy branches. The boy dives free while the creature scrabbles at the foliage, whining in obvious distress.
Anto doesn’t want to hurt it, the gods know he doesn’t. But the evil left arm the Sídhe gave him has no such qualms. It strikes the monster, hard enough to crack bone.
The Invasion Page 16
