by Kim Cleary
"Spirits. But they are different to those I usually meet." How could I explain to Del, the difference between an undead she would kill as easily as any vermin, and these living dead who thought, dreamed and feared as much as anyone alive. Fortunately, none of the living dead walked close to the cart, so she hadn't noticed them… yet.
"What sort of witch are you?" She snorted as if something foul filled her nostrils.
"She's a necromancer," a young male, his voice at the croaking stage of growing up, said.
Del shivered. Her cold eyes stared into mine.
I steadied her arm, felt the goosebumps rising as I touched her skin. "I hope I'm as compassionate to the dead, as I am to the living."
One of the spirits in front of us sniggered. Del's body tensed. She recoiled as if I'd slapped her.
"Can you see and hear them Del?"
"Sort of." She braced herself into the corner. "Why can I hear the mutterings of a bunch of ghosts? What the hell is a necromancer?"
"She controls the dead. Against their will." The young man peered into the cart.
Del blinked rapidly, her mouth moved, but she just shook her head.
Evie and my father drew their strength from me and from Ravenswood. But what was sustaining these creatures? They looked little more than clouds, yet they moved this handcart, and presumably filled and emptied it as well.
Del gripped my wrist again. "Is my husband alive? Ask her."
Liliwen didn't wait for me to repeat the question. "His group attacked us at Westmead Station, he was hurt then."
"You've infected him?"
Liliwen sighed. "You assume the worst of us. He was injured—"
"Injured?" Del pushed me away. "How? I need to see him."
"Shot in the arm. Let me finish a sentence. I don't know by who. It was dark, confused. But we don't use guns. Your soldiers do when you come to harass us, but we do not shoot back."
Del let out a low sigh. Shot in the arm was probably not as bad as some of the possibilities she’d been living with since he went missing. She lifted her hand to her throat. "He's with you… and my son? You’ve treated him?"
"Yes, he's at our base and recovering. We had to make a decision between leaving the injured soldiers to die or bringing them back for treatment."
"They are both alive." I squeezed my arm around Del's quaking shoulders. "Please lie still, or it will be they who grieve for you."
Del swallowed hard, as if choking back a lump in her throat, and squeezed her eyes shut. The horrors surrounding her must have been getting to her.
The unending suffocating blackness set my nerves on a razor’s edge. With Del lying still, I alternated pressing down on Del's wound, with flicking the torch on for a few seconds. The tiny patch of light emphasized the blackness around us. The spirits had no trouble seeing or sensing what they were doing in the dark.
With my palms pressed together I whispered a prayer. "Whatever base they are taking us to, please let it be light and airy."
Up ahead, a circle of gray stood out in the blackness.
"Not long now." I squeezed Del's hand. The tension across my soldiers eased. The cart rumbled a little faster, as if the spirits were eager to get back to base as well.
Before we reached the circle of gray, we stopped and turned a sharp right.
"It's a little steep. Hold on," Liliwen called out.
I knelt at Del's feet and steadied her as the gradient of the descent sharpened and we were plunged into blackness again. We leveled out, then turned a sharp left and descended again. We were nowhere near Westmead Station. We’d twisted and turned like a roller coaster. Glynn and his troops would be lucky to find us.
Chapter 13
Liliwen slowed her pace to come alongside the handcart. "Owen won’t be happy I've brought you to our haven." She spoke to me in a hushed whisper. "I will speak with him, and I expect he will want to speak with you."
I nodded. Owen must be the leader of this undead group, or at least their spokesperson. As soon as they saw to Del, I'd find out what they were doing, and why. And what the army was doing to them. We turned another corner and headed towards the pale-yellow light pouring from the wide opening of a vast cavern.
I'd wanted to explore on my own, but it looked like I'd stumbled into the very place I needed to be.
My pulse quickened as our pace slowed. I liked nothing better than a challenge to solve, clues to chase down, and information to pounce upon. The tracks leveled out and inclined upwards in places, but the spirits and living dead surrounding the cart pushed ahead. Their relief at getting back to home base pattered into my head like refreshing spring rain.
My eyes grew accustomed to the blackness. I blinked rapidly at the light as a shiver shook my shoulders. Pervasive coldness penetrated every pore. Del's skin felt warm and clammy. I felt for her pulse and her eyes flickered open.
"We're almost there."
She grabbed my hand, her gaze flicking back and forth from my face to the roof tunnel. She struggled to sit up. "Aidan?"
"Treatment for you first." I squeezed her fingertips.
She moaned at me, but weakly. She'd lost a lot of blood and pushed herself too hard. I felt no malice in Liliwen. A hospital existed. We'd find out soon enough if they had the inclination and ability to heal Del. My feet drummed a fast march against thick wood at the bottom of the cart. It was the beginning of an adventure, into a dragon's lair, drawn into an enticing glow.
The tracks ended abruptly. Spirits drifted into a cavern full of light and murmuring voices, while the living dead muscled the handcart off the tracks.
Liliwen spread her arms in a warm invitation. "Welcome to Echo Den."
I acknowledged her greeting with a nod and stared around the cavern. The living dead busied themselves in all kinds of work. Fifty or sixty people, at least. I openly stared, let out a small gasp. So many sentient dead gathered in one place, spirits and living dead working together, busy in shared tasks.
Glowing lights hung from the high ceiling, square like the ones that lit the pathway when we'd cycled through the suburbs. The sun couldn't power the solar batteries here, could it? I checked Del again. She was out cold.
"My friend needs help and quickly." I stumbled out of the cart.
A man approached us, tall and lithe. Thick dark curls hung against leathered skin. As he neared, a smell of clean earth filled my nostrils.
"Who have you brought here." He addressed Liliwen, his voice commanding.
She looked more solid here. A short brown fringe emphasized clear chestnut eyes. She wore cutoff jeans above her blue ballet pumps. "Aidan's mother is searching for her boy. We don’t need someone else bumbling around the tracks above." She nodded towards me. "I didn't want to let the other one go."
I couldn’t help lifting my eyebrows, but I stayed silent. Liliwen conveniently forgotten to mention I’d come with her willingly. I’d yet to test myself on a platoon of living dead, but no doubt I could command a whole cemetery of spirits.
The man in front of me was as solid and corporeal as any man I’d ever met. He stood with the bearing of a man used to physical training and sport, beaming out the impression he would handle any situation calmly and decisively.
My teeth rattled with cold as I stretched out my hand. "Meagan Greystone. I'm not here to cause any harm."
"Owen Maddox." He took my hand in a firm grip and enveloped my fingers in a glove of ice. "And yet harm is usually the result when a necromancer and the dead intersect."
A slow current climbed up my arm. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. Was he a sorcerer?
"Liliwen get her a lab coat." He released my hand and strode to the handcart.
At the cart, he shook his head, blew out a sigh and called a couple of the living dead to him. Between them, they gently lifted Del out.
The men held her gently. One with his hands under Del's shoulders, the other lifting her feet from the ground. I traipsed behind them. Both looked recently dead, their bodies in goo
d shape. The spirits were solid, strong, and able to connect with objects as if still alive. The living dead were well preserved, gentle, as if they remembered who they'd been and had lost none of their humanity.
I turned to Owen. "What's happening here?"
He returned my gaze. "We will talk, later. Liliwen will take you to Aidan."
He strode away, quickly disappearing in the huge cavern. Several smaller rooms had been carved into the rock. A long and well-lit tunnel led into the distance. I let out a heavy sigh. So many questions, I didn't want to wait to speak with him, but Del needed treatment. I needed to find Aidan, and his father Ed, and find out about the other men who'd gone missing. The weight of responsibility settled on my shoulders. Whether at Ravenswood or away, I couldn't escape the chains.
My mouth fell open, I stumbled, and jolted to a stop. I didn't want to escape the responsibility. Not here or at home. It hit me that the mayor and Evie both knew me better than I knew myself.
"Bring her to the surgery." Liliwen paced ahead.
The men bent their heads to follow Liliwen through a low door into one of the smaller rooms. I gathered my thoughts, scooted after them, and found myself in an empty waiting room. Chairs lined one wall; a compact desk faced the chairs. I followed the men through another carved doorway into a much larger room lined with mattresses on the floor.
Del groaned as the men lowered her onto one of the empty mattresses. I rushed to her side, dropped to my knees, and took her hand in mine.
"Aidan," she muttered.
"I will find him now," I whispered back. "They’ll look after you here. I'll be back soon."
A woman, clad in a white coat and very much alive, walked towards us. This must be the doctor Liliwen spoke of. My eyes widened. I hadn't expected anyone alive to be working with the undead here. The doctor opened Del's vest and inspected the injury.
She lifted her head to face me. "I heard we have a necromancer among us. You have partially healed her?"
My face heated. "We didn't have time for me to finish. She didn't want me to touch her—"
"I'm not criticizing you. I need to know what you did and how."
I fumbled my satchel open, withdrew the healing wand that came to me from my mother's side of the family. The polished green crystal, flecked with mottled dark red splashes, was set into a copper clasp, with two bronze dragons breathing fire towards the crystal as if to warm it. Their tails curled around the long slim handle and around each other. The whole beautiful item, no fatter than my finger and the same length as my hand, fit snugly against my palm.
The doctor took it, rotated it in her fingers then handed it back. Her brow lifted. "It is unusual for a necromancer to also heal?"
"Tell me about it."
"You used death energy, yet I see no harmful effects."
Except the pain thrown back at me, but she didn’t need to know about that. "You know about such healing?"
"Several witches live here. I enjoy learning from them." She returned the wand to me, and held out her hand. "I’m Doctor Graham. You are the first necromancer to join our group."
After shaking my hand quickly, she turned back to Del and peeled off the patches Glynn had stuck all over her shoulder. "These have lost their effectiveness. I'll get her on a drip with antibiotics and painkillers."
"You're not dead. Are you a prisoner—"
"Well spotted, and no." Dr. Graham busied herself with a needle in Del's arm. "All kind of people live at Echo Den. We make it work."
All kind of people, making it work together. It sounded too good to be true.
"I think her veins are healed and her bones are knitting together."
"If they weren't, she'd be dead by now." Dr. Graham pressed her fingertips around the edges of the wound.
"Her arm. There's a cut on her arm too."
"Don't worry, minor wounds won't pose a problem."
Liliwen handed me a large white coat. "I'll take you to Aidan."
She sped to the door. Dr. Graham seemed professional and capable. I could leave Del in her hands. I squeezed Del's fingertips again, wriggled into the oversize lab coat, and darted after Liliwen.
I followed her past busy hives of people, some working on machinery, others in something that looked like a school chemistry lab, then through a small room, a long narrow tunnel, and finally into another room, filled with delicate foliage that reminded me of the huge greenhouse at St. Stephen's orphanage.
Warm air drifted across my skin. The bright light accentuated air misty with water droplets.
"Aidan," Liliwen called, "you have a visitor."
Shuffling steps sounded from the far end of the room. I stepped forward.
Liliwen grabbed my arm, her wispy fingertips icy cold against my bare skin. "Wait. No need to startle him."
A young man edged his way toward us. Thick blond hair hung over his eyes, his startled gaze flicked from Liliwen to me. He looked older than the 14 years I knew him to be, but he gazed through his mother's eyes. No doubt this was Aidan.
He stopped about three feet away, stared at the ground. "I don't know her."
Liliwen drifted closer to him, clasped a misty hand on his shoulder. "This is Meagan. She brought your mother here."
"Mom?" Aidan glanced at Liliwen.
"She's okay," I said. "She's in the hospital, but she'll be okay."
"See her now?" Aidan glanced at Liliwen again.
"Later my dear, she is resting now. Meagan wants to see for herself that you are well."
Aidan fixed a steady stare just below my eyes. "I'm well."
"Your mother was worried. Your medication..."
"I'm okay. It's good here."
"Your father—"
"He's okay too."
Ed alive, and okay. My face burst into a smile that I quickly erased. If only Glynn were here, but at least I'd soon be giving Del double-barreled good news.
Aidan shuffled his feet. I reminded myself of his youth and autism, he might not be comfortable with conversation. I pointed at the greenery. "What are you doing?"
"Can I show her?" he asked Liliwen.
"She's not going anywhere." Liliwen fixed a cold stare on my face. "You can show her."
He turned without speaking and walked towards the back of the room. Liliwen didn't move, so I darted after him.
At the wall he turned right, and I scurried after him. We traipsed along a corridor with carved rock on one side and a wall of living green on the other. Pipes, screwed into the stone, traveled the length of the wall.
"I had no idea you could grow such healthy plants so far underground." I caught up to him.
He grunted a low response.
"Do you enjoy gardening?"
"No." He turned sharply into a narrow pathway through the greenery. "I like the engineering stuff better. But Owen asked me to help out in the garden."
At the end of the foliage, we came to another stone wall. He stopped at a small shed, beckoned me closer and showed me a metal box covered in dials. Pipes from the walls, from across the floor, and running down the wall from the ceiling fed into this box.
"It's clever." Aidan's voice came alive, his face shone with interest. "I control temperature, water, and light. Professor Warburton is teaching me how the plants grow best."
"What powers it?" Something preserved the living dead here. Did it also power this subterranean garden?
"The sun, wind, some sort of gas too. But I haven't learned about that yet."
"Where is your father, Aidan? Do you know anything about the other soldiers?"
He leaned back on his heels, rocked back and forth. "I told you, he is okay."
No point in distressing Aidan. I turned the conversation back to the plants he tended, until Liliwen returned to let me know Owen was ready to speak with me.
Running to keep up, I followed Liliwen back down the long corridor. The cabling along the walls ended and we crossed through a succession of dimly lit small rooms.
I was completely lost.
>
Oil lanterns fastened at irregular intervals along the walls cast odd shapes of yellow light and emphasized the lost-in-a-tomb feeling. Finally, at a T-junction, we turned into a wider tunnel where light spilled from a natural cave within the rock.
Liliwen gestured for me to wait in the corridor and darted into the cave.
Shivering, I hugged the lab coat around me, stepped back against the wall and waited.
A few seconds later, she returned for me. At the entrance to the cave, she pointed to a chair against the opposite wall. She dashed out again as if in a hurry to get back to whatever I'd interrupted. I sat and waited. Bookshelves lined the walls, but most were empty and the contents filled boxes stacked neatly against the door.
Owen sat in profile at a small table covered in books and journals. He wrote in the last few pages of a leather-bound notebook, his strokes broad and confident. His strong shoulders lifted to his ears once or twice as he tapped the pen to the side of his face. When he frowned, fine lines around his eyes creased into salt and pepper hair at his temples. In profile, his straight nose and firm jaw radiated power. I guessed him to be in his mid-40s, maybe older but still devastatingly handsome. Was it a useful trait for leadership? I was glad of the silence. It gave me time to consider my questions.
Del lay in a hospital bed, treated by a living doctor who understood magic healing and seemed to know her stuff. I'd met with Aidan and he seemed happy. It was as if he'd found his tribe, a group of people so different they had no issues accepting an autistic kid into their midst. Ed was alive and well. Three huge ticks. Now finally I would meet the man in charge.
After a couple of minutes, he spun the chair around to face me. His penetrating eyes scanned my face, his fingertips beat a steady rhythm on the tabletop. "You arrive in a rush. Demand to see people who are here under my protection." He brought his fingertips together in a steeple. "Who do you think you are?"
Chapter 14
Seconds passed, though it felt longer.
Sitting in the private sanctuary of Owen Maddox, the leader of this intriguing group of living dead, the question he’d just asked rang in my head. What gave me the right to march into Echo Den and demand both assistance and information? He deserved as many answers as I wanted.
