Despite everything, a smile tugged at her lips. It was as if the stars had drifted down to say hello. The young shepherd rocked back on his hind legs, sniffing at the air.
‘Careful,’ said Maeve. ‘They’ll burn you. I can’t control where they go.’ She glanced nervously around the surrounding woodland – but Floodwood was so damp there was no risk of starting a fire.
Resisting the draw of the embers, Ottilie turned her attention to Ned. The light seemed to have calmed him. He released his grip and stepped back, looking down at his shaking hands.
‘Ned?’ she said again, still not entirely sure he had come back to himself.
His dark eyes met hers. ‘What happened?’
‘We were going to ask you that,’ said Maeve, and Ottilie was bothered by the coldness of her tone. She was undoubtedly thinking of Gracie again. Even though Ottilie didn’t want to admit it, she was thinking of Gracie too. With each blink, red eyes flashed in the black.
‘I think you were sleepwalking,’ said Ottilie, and explained how they had found him. ‘We saw … Maeve showed me … I think we saw what you were dreaming.’ His eyes widened. ‘You saw it?’
She knew immediately what he meant. ‘Is that what you’ve been dreaming about, Ned? That thing in the fire?’
He nodded. ‘It wasn’t always like that. It was a person first, a witch and then … then …’ His voice shook, and he couldn’t continue.
Ottilie didn’t need him to. That creature was what had become of a witch that enacted the sleepless ritual. Alba had read that no witch had ever truly attempted it. It was all false accusations and lies. But the coven in Ned’s dream had said it was the first and last of its kind. It was so long ago, perhaps people had forgotten it ever existed. But what had happened in the end? It seemed like the coven were trying to imprison it – perhaps in the iron coffin, waiting by the well. The well that was now a ruin …
Ned coughed, and Ottilie’s eyes snapped to his arm. All thoughts of the sleepless witch flew from her mind. Something dark was oozing through Ned’s sleeve. She grasped his forearm. Ned winced and pushed back his sleeve to reveal the star-shaped burns, his fist clenched in pain.
Just like Gracie’s wyler bite, Ned’s burns were glowing like hot coals. Ottilie hovered her hand above them and felt heat, as if they were three tiny campfires along his arm. She watched, transfixed, as their light began to dim.
‘It’s just when I dream,’ said Ned, shame weighting his words.
Ottilie looked at Maeve. ‘Don’t tell anyone.’
Maeve’s face darkened and she opened her mouth to retort.
‘I kept your secret! You owe me.’
Maeve shut her mouth, her face stony.
It was Whistler doing this to him. It had to be. She had marked him for a reason and now she was showing him something – pieces of the forgotten past. But why?
A shepherd bayed in the distance. The young dog responded, then hesitated, giving Ned one last sniff before bounding into the night.
Ottilie’s eyes swept the darkened woodland, and memories of yickers scuttled into her thoughts. She remembered scrambling through the trees with Scoot in their fledgling year, running for their lives, the winged spiders swarming.
Sorrow sunk in. She blinked and saw him at Whistler’s feet – stone creeping. ‘We should get inside,’ she said.
They had just settled in Ottilie’s bedchamber when someone tried the latch. She had bolted it from the inside.
‘Ottilie,’ hissed Gully. ‘Let me in!’
She pulled him inside and bolted the door again. It was surely after midnight, but the huntsmen moved in and out at all hours, especially now that the boundary walls were so excessively manned.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ said Gully. ‘I thought you’d be awake so I came to see you, but you weren’t here – where have you been?’
Ottilie wasn’t sure how to explain. She twisted her clammy hands together and glanced at Ned, who had flopped into the chair by the window. Gully followed her gaze, his eyes sweeping Ned’s dishevelled nightclothes and muddy bare feet.
‘What happened?’
‘Sleepwalking.’ Ned mustered a half-smile. ‘They found me in Floodwood.’
‘He’s been having nightmares about a sleepless witch,’ said Maeve.
‘Maeve! I told you not to tell anyone!’ snapped Ottilie. She hurried to the window and closed the shutters, trying to lock the secret inside her room.
‘I didn’t think you meant Gully. Anyway, I didn’t say anything about his arm.’
‘What about his arm?’ said Gully, looking accusingly at Ottilie. ‘Tell me what’s happening.’
Ottilie half sighed, half growled. She had been intending to tell Gully, but Maeve’s readiness to spill the story made her anxious.
‘His wound’s not healing, and it burns when he dreams about the witch.’ She tried to make it sound like it was a perfectly normal ailment. ‘We need to find a way to stop it happening. Maybe Alba could research –’ she stumbled. Did Alba need to know more than she already knew? Ottilie didn’t want anyone else knowing. She wasn’t sure how people would react. Skip was already saying they needed to watch him. What if the directorate found out? They wouldn’t risk letting him stay at Fiory. The mere hint of a link to Whistler and any one of them would be cast out, or worse. She couldn’t handle it, not with Scoot still frozen in stone and Bill captive … nothing could happen to Ned.
She took a breath and turned to Maeve. ‘What happened to the witch book after they confiscated it?’
Months ago, on the night they first met Whistler, Skip had snatched the book from Whistler’s tower and given it to Alba, who studied it in secret until Maeve caught wind and stole it for herself. The directorate had taken the book after Maeve was accused of witchcraft. Gracie, then Maeve’s closest friend, had saved her by declaring herself a witch, even though it was not true. It was her last human act, and the only kind thing Ottilie had ever witnessed from Gracie.
‘I have it,’ said Maeve with a twinkle in her eye.
‘What?’ said Gully. ‘How?’
‘Well.’ Maeve looked pleased with herself. ‘I think they burned it. But it showed up under my pillow one night, all sooty and stinking of smoke.’
Ottilie frowned. This sounded like Whistler’s doing. Had she rescued it from the fire and delivered it to Maeve? Was this another one of her games?
‘Do you think someone put it there?’ said Ned, as if reading her thoughts.
Maeve shook her head. She didn’t seem worried. ‘No. I think the magic in the book brought it back to me.’
‘But how can you know that?’ said Ottilie.
‘Because that book was calling to me for months before I stole it from the root cellar,’ said Maeve. ‘The day I stopped that jivvie scalping Leo on the wall’ – she nodded at Ottilie, who had witnessed the whole thing – ‘I was flying around the Bone Tower, following the call. I didn’t know what it was, or why, but I was drawn there.
‘When Alba had it on her, I kept following her around. Then I heard you talking in the library and I finally knew what had been calling me. And when she hid it in the root cellar I knew where to find it. When they burned it, it must have found a way to come to me on its own and put itself back together … something like that.’
Gully’s eyes were wide. He had always been fascinated by the idea of witches and magic.
‘Why was it calling you?’ said Ottilie.
‘Just because you’re a witch?’ said Ned.
‘I think it wanted to get away from Whistler,’ said Maeve. ‘It chose me over her. It’s really special, that book … it knows just what I need to read. It opens to the right page and symbols change into letters I can understand. Sometimes I feel like it’s talking in my head, rather than me reading it at all. I’m not a good reader, usually.’ She paused, as if unsure she should continue. ‘Gracie taught me how, but I’ve never really practised.’
Ottilie remembered how much difficulty Alba had ha
d reading the book – Alba, who was the most voracious reader she had ever met. It sounded like the book really had chosen Maeve. Good. It was what they needed.
‘Maeve, will you see if there’s anything in there about blocking dreams, a potion or …’ She didn’t know the right words. ‘Something … something that will make it stop.’
‘And the sleepless witch,’ said Ned, sitting up straighter. ‘Anything about why I’m –’
‘That’s not as important,’ Ottilie cut across him. ‘If you stop dreaming it won’t matter anymore. You said your arm only burns when you dream. So, we stop the dreams and maybe it will heal. It’ll all go away.’
A streak of annoyance crossed Ned’s face. Ottilie didn’t care. She couldn’t bear it, couldn’t risk finding out more. Ned’s burn looked exactly like Gracie’s bite when it glowed. Whatever the purpose, Ottilie knew it would be terrible. They didn’t need to find out. They just needed to make it go away. At least this was something they could work towards – something they might be able to beat back.
Ned looked like he was about to argue, but Gully got in first. ‘Do you hear that?’ He slid off the bed.
Ottilie strained her ears. She could hear it too: hoofbeats. ‘It’s probably just mounts coming in from a night patrol.’
‘That’s a wagon,’ said Ned.
Ottilie opened the shutters. He was right. A wagon passed through the well-lit main gates, flanked by six mounts. As soon as the gates closed behind them, the wagon burst open and a tall figure pitched out and hurried up the path.
Ottilie thought for a moment that the person had three legs, but then she realised the third was in fact a cane. Captain Lyre had returned from All Kings’ Hill at last.
7
The Colour of Nothing
The elites found out first: the king was coming.
It should have been a comfort, but the arrival of an army guaranteed a battle. There was no ignoring it. Richter was just the beginning. They were at war.
Ottilie had seen almost nothing of the world beyond the Swamp Hollows, her tiny corner of the Usklers’ western island. But she remembered the maps in Our Walkable World. For years it was the only book she had access to, so she nearly knew it by heart. She could picture tiny stick-figure soldiers marching across a kingdom of faded ink.
The Usklers was made up of three islands that were divided by two narrow channels: Crown Canal and Pero’s Passage. Usually, dredretches could not cross saltwater. Not even in flight. Salt was poisonous to them – paralysing, if not fatal. It was why the huntsmen carried weapons of salt-forged steel. A special brand from the northern salt springs that would not rust a blade.
According to Leo, the king’s army had crossed Crown Canal and trekked the width of the western region to the edge of the Narroway. The border was land. There was no stretch of seawater to save them. If Whistler intended to attack the Usklers, they might well lose the entire western island. Everyone from the Swamp Hollows would be gone: her mother, Freddie; her neighbours, Old Moss and Mr Parch – they and everyone Ottilie had ever known, and so many more. All the towns and villages she had never visited, all the wilderness she had never had a chance to explore, it would all become dredretch territory – a withered realm.
The king’s soldiers were camped in Longwood, along the Narroway border. Once each station – Richter, Arko and Fiory – emptied the warding rings from their vaults, the soldiers would be able to enter the Narroway and begin training at Fort Arko.
Ottilie found it concerning that they just happened to have enough rings to go around. Whistler had made those rings – why had she stocked the Hunt with so many? But there was nothing to be done about it. The king’s men couldn’t join the fight without rings. The dredretch sickness would knock them down in an instant, and there wasn’t enough time to teach them how to ward. Ottilie still hadn’t mastered it after more than a year of training.
The king himself, Leo revealed, would be coming to Fiory.
‘But why?’ she asked, leaning forward to rest her arms on Scoot’s infirmary bed. Her fingers brushed a cutting of lullaby vine that Alba and Montie had scattered around his stone body. The feathery, pale blue flowers were known to bring good dreams.
Someone – Ottilie suspected Gully – had placed three fat sunnytree flowers in a jar by the bed. Apart from offering a metallic muddy smell, those flowers did little other than brighten up the room.
No-one else liked to go behind the partitions – they found Scoot too unnerving – so it was private enough to risk reading the stolen books. Ottilie liked to be there, as if just being near him might help her find a cure.
She had just given up on her book when Leo arrived. He and the rest of the elites had been called to a secret meeting with the directorate and she had been waiting to hear the news.
‘They didn’t explain why he’s coming here,’ said Leo, in answer to her question. Lowering his voice, he added, ‘But Ned thinks it’s because he doesn’t want to be where the action is. Whistler could easily attack them before they’re trained at Arko, and Richter is already weakened and too close to the Lakland border.’
‘But we’re right in the middle here,’ said Ottilie. ‘There’s nowhere to run.’
Leo shrugged and twisted in his seat, looking through the gap in the partitions to make sure no-one was listening to them.
‘You can’t tell anyone. It’s supposed to be only the elites who know. I don’t even think his men know he’s coming here. They said he’s not bringing them. We’re going to stand in as guards.’
Ottilie screwed up her nose. ‘Why bother coming at all if he’s just going to hide? Why is he even still the king? Everyone knows about all his lies now.’
The Narroway Hunt was born of trickery and deceit. To save his own neck, the king had spread the lie of the rule of innocence, claiming only children could fell dredretches. But at Richter, Whistler had revealed all.
‘Everyone in the Narroway knows the truth – not the Usklers,’ said Leo. ‘Who knows what he’s told everyone else. They probably don’t even know the Narroway Hunt exists, let alone the dredretches. Well, I guess his army must … but anyway, you can’t just dethrone a king with a snap of your fingers. It takes time, and the right people to make moves. The heir would have to step up.’
‘Who is the heir?’ She realised she didn’t know. The king didn’t have any children, just two daughters who had died young. She winced as she remembered his second daughter had died under Ramona’s care.
‘Varrio’s cousin Odilo – Lord of Rupimoon Rock.’ Leo’s face darkened.
‘You know him?’
‘I saw him once, when I was really young – but I still remember it. He was riding up to the palace and something frightened his horse. His guards got the horse under control but he jumped off and had them hold her while he beat her right there in the street.
‘I remember hearing all sorts of rumours about what went on up on the north island. When I misbehaved, my father would threaten to send me over Pero’s Passage as a punishment. So even if we did get rid of this king, it’s not as if there’s a better one waiting.’
Ottilie scowled. ‘At least he doesn’t come with a vengeful witch attached.’
‘As far as we know,’ said Leo, mustering a grin.
‘Who comes next then? There must be at least one good family member!’ Was it impossible to be born into power and not be corrupt?
Leo thought for a minute. ‘I don’t think Odilo had any sons. Before I came here, his only daughter went missing, but daughters can’t rule anyway – so second in line would be his brother, Wolter Sol. I don’t know much about him.’
She frowned. Once, it would have surprised her that daughters couldn’t ascend the throne, but now, she might have guessed that was the case. When had she ever heard of an Usklerian queen? But the bigger question was, why were so many Sol daughters having accidents and going missing?
Wearily, she rested the top of her head against Scoot’s stone arm. So, the king
was coming to Fiory. What did it matter? What use was he? His presence was putting them in more danger. If anything, he would just fix Whistler’s attention on their station. Ottilie herself drew too much attention already. She sat back, twisting her ring. Why hadn’t Whistler given up on her? What indication had she given the witch that she was still bendable?
My girl … She wasn’t Whistler’s girl. Not in any way. She was the daughter of Freddie Colter and – well, she didn’t know who her father was. But he couldn’t be connected to Whistler. Could he? Ottilie recoiled and tucked her hand into her pocket, putting the ring out of sight. She resolved to work harder at warding, determined to remove it.
Almost all her friends did without them. Gully had stopped wearing his since the wyler had bitten off his thumb. Preddy had taken his off just before spring’s end. Ned and Leo hadn’t worn them in years. Even Maeve had realised she didn’t need hers, probably because she was part bird. The dredretch sickness was specific to humans. Maeve still wore it, though, fearful that a sculkie seen without her ring would rouse suspicion of witchcraft again.
Scoot had still worn his … Ottilie grimaced, staring down at the ring on his stone thumb. Something caught her attention. The very tips of his fingers had brightened to white. White was not a living colour. It was absence, nothing. She didn’t know what it meant, but it couldn’t be good.
She tore her eyes away. It felt like water filled her up, weighting her limbs. It was all too much. Whistler reappearing, Ned’s dreams, the king coming, and now this.
Her breath was short, her head spinning. The ground was opening up. She was going to drop into the deep, dark places below where the dredretches roamed, waiting to be called, to follow the song to the surface and destroy everything living, everything good, everyone she loved.
Something gripped her, pulling her out of her chair. Leo set her on her feet, but she wilted like a soggy weed. He locked his arms around her and squeezed her tight.
8
Lullaby
Ottilie Colter and the Withering World Page 4
