Ottilie Colter and the Withering World

by Rhiannon Williams

  She needed to get Bill away from her, now. Ottilie hurried towards them, but was halted by Whistler’s raised arm and cry of, ‘Ba, ba, ba!’

  Bill’s shoulders curved, and his eyes flicked here and there. When his gaze met Ottilie’s, he looked more nervous still. He blinked at the well and then back at her. What was he trying to say? That she must leave with the water? Ottilie gritted her teeth and shook her head. What had happened to Gracie was a fate worse than anything Ottilie could imagine, and she feared Whistler would do that to her, too. But Bill would not change her mind.

  He opened his hands over and over, like he was miming a book. He began to mouth something, but Gracie turned and bared her little white teeth. Ottilie wasn’t close enough to be sure, but it looked as if they had narrowed, tapering to pointed tips. Bill closed his mouth tight.

  ‘What is your decision?’ said Whistler.

  Ottilie was still watching Bill. His eyes darted to the well.

  ‘We don’t have all night.’ Whistler flicked her sleeve and Gracie twirled her knife, pointing it in Bill’s direction.

  Ottilie hesitated.

  Gracie smiled and lunged for Bill.

  His yelp of fear was like a spear through her heart. ‘BILL GOES!’

  Gracie paused mid-lunge and Ottilie ground her teeth, her heart beating wildly. She had never hated Gracie more. How could she have chosen this? She was a beast. A minion. Just another one of Whistler’s monsters.

  ‘Very well,’ said Whistler.

  In an instant, the ropes that bound Bill uncoiled, slithered across the floor and knotted around Ottilie’s wrists. She gasped as they pulled tight, burning her skin. Whistler ducked to pick up the loose end.

  Bill stumbled forwards. ‘No, Ottilie!’

  ‘Enough, Bi–’ Whistler’s cry was cut off as an arrow flew across the cave, catching on her sleeve and yanking her arm backwards, causing her to twist and fall.

  The rope tugged and Ottilie pitched onto her knees. At the same time, her head whipped to the side and she saw Gully leaping from a ledge.

  Why was he here? How did he know?

  Whistler was gathering herself. She turned to Gully, rage warping her features. Ottilie’s whole body shuddered, but the screech of an owl distracted Whistler. She waved her hand and Maeve transformed back to a girl in mid-air. Maeve rolled and crashed to the ground, skidding across the cavern floor.

  Whistler had dropped the rope. Ottilie struggled away from her, but couldn’t get her hands free. She was useless.

  Where was Gracie? Ottilie turned and saw she had stopped still, her eyes glowing brighter. Ottilie’s bowels turned to water as she realised Gracie was calling the wylers to her. She blinked and saw Scoot and Bayo. Glittering frost. Pools of red. Droplets on wildflowers. She saw tangled webwood trees. A wyler lunging at Gully. The beat of blood.

  Bill raised a tentative hand and covered Gracie’s eyes, looking inquisitively to see if it was helping. It was not.

  Whistler faced Maeve, readying her strike. Gully shot another arrow. Whistler twisted and turned it to ash. But it was enough of a distraction. With a strained groan, Maeve raised and lowered her hand.

  There was a great shuddering and cracking. The ancient ledge above Whistler collapsed and she disappeared beneath a mountain of crumbled rock.

  Everyone scurried away from the rolling stones. Dust billowed and Ottilie coughed, gasping for air.

  With a yowl of rage, Gracie snapped out of her trance and began clawing at the rocks, trying to free Whistler.

  ‘Run!’ cried Maeve.

  Gracie’s eyes snapped to her old friend. She bared her teeth, more beast than girl, but didn’t attack.

  Ottilie tried to move, but the end of her rope was caught under fallen rock. Gully hurried over and cut her hands free. ‘Come on!’ he said, pulling her arm. But she shook him off and scrambled over the loose stones – not to the passage, but to the well.

  ‘The wylers are coming!’ cried Maeve.

  Ottilie reached the well, snatched at its rusted chain and lowered the bucket. Down, down, down. How low was the water level? It seemed endless …

  Finally there was a jolt and a distant echoing thud.

  A lump formed in her throat.

  The well was dry. That was what Bill had been trying to say. Whistler had said he could lower the bucket and leave with the contents. Air. Nothing.

  Tears brimmed and a great heaving sob wreaked havoc on its way out.

  A familiar scent: puddles and rain-soaked bark. Bill’s clammy hand pressed over hers and, for the briefest of moments, Ottilie let relief lift her up; he was alive. ‘Run, Ottilie,’ said Bill.

  ‘RUN!’ cried Gully from across the cave.

  There was a great rumbling, and Ottilie whirled to see a humungous dark shape pushing from underneath the stones. A wing bent up and for the first time Ottilie saw the dark, hooked spikes hidden among the feathers. Whistler had shifted and was rising from the rubble.

  Gracie palmed her knives and started running towards Ottilie and Bill. Maeve twisted into an owl and dived, her talons outstretched. Gracie shrieked and raised her arms to shield her face.

  ‘Come on!’ cried Gully, and he, Ottilie and Bill bolted out through the passage.

  Behind her, Ottilie could hear stones shifting as Whistler struggled to rise, and the shrill shrieks of Gracie’s wylers.

  They stumbled out into the night, skidding to a halt where Nox was waiting with Maestro. Ottilie looked around, half expecting to see Leo, but there was no sign of him. Gully crawled into Maestro’s saddle, and Ottilie pulled Bill up onto Nox.

  ‘Strap yourself in, Bill!’

  As he fumbled for the leg straps, she twisted in her seat, staring back through the lightning-shaped opening. Where was Maeve?

  Gully was doing the same, dread fixed on his face. His eyes met hers, and she found hopelessness there. But they wouldn’t surrender to it. Maeve would come out. They would not move until she did.

  ‘How did you know, Gully?’ she asked.

  His lips thinned. ‘You don’t think I know when you’re lying?’

  But they were too anxious to say more. The seconds ticked by. Any moment the wylers would come and they would have to take flight. Whistler herself could be after them.

  Ottilie heard claws scraping behind them. She looked at Gully and he shook his head. Maestro shifted his feet, eager to get away. Nox emitted a low growl.

  A wyler shrieked, and a flash of orange arced over their heads. But it wasn’t leaping – it was falling, tossed from the talons of a shining black owl that shot out above as the wyler plummeted into the canyon, disappearing into its night-drowned depths.

  15

  Horror and Heartstone

  They landed in the lower grounds. High above, silhouettes of wall watchers blotted the torchlight. What did they think of Nox and Maestro going out in the middle of the night? They weren’t scheduled to, and the wrangler in the tower would certainly have taken note.

  Ottilie didn’t care. The Hunt could punish her if they wanted. Rescuing Bill was more important. She felt tingly with joy at the thought. But her happiness staggered under the weight of disappointment. The well was dried up. Their one chance to save Scoot was gone.

  She slid down Nox’s side and landed heavily on the grass. Blinking back tears, Ottilie helped Bill unbuckle his legs. Beside her, Maestro shook Gully off. Gully glared up from the ground – not at Maestro, but at Ottilie.

  ‘Leo’s going to kill you for taking Maestro out.’ She meant it to be lighthearted – a sort of joke. But it came out half-whispered, in a voice that hardly sounded like her own.

  Gully had learned the fundamentals of flying last year, but he was only a beginner. Maestro, although a difficult wingerslink, was loyal to Ottilie, and Gully knew it. She could only assume Maestro had granted Gully that single flight because he’d sensed her brother’s desperation.

  Gully was still glaring at her. Ottilie knew she should thank him for rescuing her, b
ut defiance and shame were mixing her up. She looked away from him to Maeve, who was panting on the grass.

  Ottilie hurried over. ‘Are you hurt?’

  Maeve gestured to the scrapes up her left side. Her dress had torn over her shoulder and Ottilie could see a nasty graze. Her chin and cheek were also cut up from when she had fallen from mid-air.

  ‘That was amazing, Maeve. You beat her!’

  Whistler had not come after them. Ottilie assumed she was too injured to fly, although if she was anything like a dredretch, she would heal in no time.

  ‘It was only because she was surprised.’ Maeve nodded at Gully. ‘His arrows – that was the only reason …’ She crawled up from the ground and drifted over to Bill. ‘Hi Bill,’ she whispered.

  At least Maeve understood that it had all been worth it. Ottilie glanced back at Gully and found she was scared to approach him. They had squabbled plenty of times before, but he had never been this angry with her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘If you hadn’t come –’

  ‘I know.’ He turned his back.

  Ottilie wanted to say, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for lying, for scaring you, for nearly getting myself captured. But she didn’t. She couldn’t say it because, like he said, Gully could tell when she was lying.

  None of her friends were speaking to her. Even Preddy only offered stiff politeness, which Ottilie found just as distressing as Skip and Leo’s raging, or Alba and Ned’s dark disappointment.

  She understood why they were angry. She had lied to them and put herself in great danger. If anyone else had done it, Ottilie would have been furious with them. But she couldn’t help seeing it as a triumph. They had rescued Bill and escaped Whistler! Although, the thought of Whistler turned everything a funny colour. You remind me of me – she couldn’t get those words out of her head.

  Why was Whistler so determined to lure her there? Bill was a goedl. An ancient species with unparalleled camouflage abilities and a collective consciousness. Young for one of his kind, Bill still struggled with the ceaseless storm of memory that sometimes spun his thoughts off kilter. He had access to a wealth of knowledge collected over eons. The answers to so many questions were at his fingertips, if only he could focus enough to grasp them. Not only that, Bill had a kinship with birds, and they often shared with him things they had spied. Why had Whistler wanted to trade all that away? Bill, with his marvellous mind, for Ottilie – it didn’t make sense.

  Avoiding her friends, Ottilie spent a lot of time in the wingerslink sanctuary with Maeve and Bill. On a blustery afternoon, they gathered in Nox’s pen. Nox leapt into the field with a sullen snarl and Ottilie watched her sweeping in circles, enjoying the wind. Ottilie was transfixed, jealous of her wings.

  Maeve was sitting on the floor in the corner, her knees bent up in front of her. Bill was beside her, mimicking her position. The graze on her face had flared to an angry red. She had told the custodian chieftess that she tripped on the rocky path by the apiary.

  ‘But why, Bill?’ Maeve was saying. ‘Why was she willing to give you up?’

  ‘I couldn’t give her the words she wanted,’ said Bill, wrapping his webbed fingers around his throat. ‘She said she was giving up on me, so I had to be … a worm on a hook.’ He blinked his spidery eyelashes in Ottilie’s direction.

  She scrunched up her face.

  Maeve looked her over. ‘What does she want you for?’

  ‘She says I remind her of her.’ Ottilie was ashamed of it, but, strangely, she didn’t mind confessing to Maeve. After all, who had more in common with Whistler than Maeve? ‘She says she wants to save me.’

  Maeve frowned and picked a piece of straw off Bill’s shoulder, but didn’t comment. With a breath of relief, Ottilie remembered that Whistler had offered Maeve a place at her side too. Maeve had been asked twice: once by Gracie, and the second time by Whistler herself.

  Maybe Whistler really did want to rescue them, in her own twisted way. Ottilie couldn’t consider Gracie’s transformation as anything resembling a rescue, but to survive in Whistler’s world – the dredretch-infested ruin that she threatened to bring about – perhaps becoming a monster was the only way.

  It wasn’t worth it. How could anyone believe it was?

  Ottilie knew why Whistler had been interested in Maeve. She was a fiorn, like Whistler herself. She had probably sensed it long before Maeve understood. But why did Whistler want Ottilie too?

  She and Maeve were both unusual girls – both outsiders. Perhaps that was all there was to it. Bonnie had said Whistler liked to think of herself as a champion of unwanted children, and Ottilie and Maeve were unwanted in many regards. Certainly in the Narroway – the directorate had threatened to banish both of them. And Ottilie’s mother was more devoted to bramblywine than she was to her children. As for her father, she had never even met him.

  Keen to change the subject, she turned to Bill. ‘What did Whistler want from you?’

  Bill gulped, his eyes darting around as if he feared Whistler were near. ‘She wanted me to remember about a sleepless witch.’ He shivered.

  Ottilie tensed. She had not been expecting this, although perhaps she should have been. A sleepless witch … like the one Ned had been dreaming about.

  It was as if someone had poured ice water down her back.

  Why did Whistler need that information? And what did it have to do with Ned? Ottilie shuddered. The sleepless witch had to be out there somewhere – another terror lurking, another horror waiting for its moment to pounce.

  ‘But you didn’t know – you couldn’t remember?’ said Maeve, bending a thick piece of straw. ‘Maybe that’s just because no goedl ever saw – or knew – anything about it.’

  Bill shook his head, his brow dipping low. ‘There are bits in there.’ He tapped his skull. ‘And I can feel more, but I couldn’t … can’t … find it … see it … I was too afraid.’ He shuffled his bare feet, burying them in the straw.

  ‘So she just let you stop trying?’ said Ottilie. That didn’t sound like Whistler.

  ‘She said she would have to go with her backup plan,’ said Bill. ‘It just meant more waiting.’ He gulped. ‘She was angry about that.’

  ‘Waiting?’ Ottilie frowned. Whistler had mentioned waiting to Ottilie too.

  She twisted her fingers around her elbow. Whistler could attack whenever she wished, and yet she was waiting. She must have been planning something huge. Something to do with the sleepless witch. The thought made Ottilie’s stomach turn.

  ‘Has she ever said what she’s going to do after all this waiting?’ said Maeve. ‘I mean, we all just think she’s going to attack the Usklers, but do we know how? She failed at taking Richter last year. If she’s attacking with dredretches, I don’t know how she plans to get them past the Hunt. And let’s not forget that the Usklers are islands. She could take the west, but the rest …’

  Ottilie pictured dredretches prowling through the Swamp Hollows, the withering sickness strangling the trees in Longwood Forest. The western island was only a third of the Usklerian Kingdom, but it was the largest landmass.

  Maeve was right. The rest of the Usklers would be protected by the channels. Dredretches could not cross the saltwater, although ...

  ‘Bloodbeasts will,’ said Ottilie, thinking of the knopoes she and Leo had hunted. She had thought before that they had been positioned in Jungle Bay for a reason. Someone was testing them. She remembered them leaping between the Sea Spears, under the command of an unseen bone singer.

  ‘They’ll do anything they’re told,’ she added. ‘And any normal dredretch directly controlled by a bone singer, or Whistler, will too.’ She rested her head on her knees. It was exhausting.

  ‘Still, only winged kinds will make it,’ said Maeve. ‘The others can’t just swim. The saltwater would end them.’

  ‘Heartstone,’ Bill murmured. He clapped a hand to his mouth and whispered through the gaps in his fingers. ‘She’s got lots … like Scoot … she’s been mak
ing it foryears. She’s going to build big white bridges. It’s the only thing dredretches will cross.’

  Ottilie snapped upright. ‘What?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Maeve, spitting her words. ‘Because it’s evil. It’s people turned to stone.’

  16

  A Promise and a Lie

  Ottilie returned to her bedchamber to find a note under the door. She had barely read the first line when a shape shifted on her bed. She jerked backwards, but it was just Gully, staring grimly across the room.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded.

  ‘Lower grounds.’

  He held up a letter of his own. ‘Captain Lyre wants to see us – right now.’

  Ottilie wriggled her fingers, casting off her fear. It was just Captain Lyre, not the whole directorate, and Gully had been summoned too.

  ‘Why?’ she asked, suspecting she already knew the answer.

  ‘Because we went out in the middle of the night when we weren’t rostered on,’ said Gully, shuffling to the edge of her bed.

  Ottilie had no explanation to offer Captain Lyre. No-one knew about Bill, and she couldn’t very well tell him she had left to have a midnight tea party with a witch. Before they’d rescued Bill, being in trouble with the Hunt had seemed like nothing compared to meeting Whistler. But now that it was over, punishment was a much more frightening prospect.

  ‘They saw the wingerslinks,’ said Gully. ‘No-one ever rides Nox but you, and they asked Leo about Maestro and he said it was me.’

  ‘He what?!’

  ‘Ottilie, it was me.’

  ‘He didn’t need to tell them that!’ She scrunched the letter in her fist.

  ‘What else was he going to tell them?’

  ‘Anything!’ Her nerves fuelled her anger. ‘Nothing! He could have told them he didn’t know – how did he even know?’

  ‘Because I told him,’ said Gully, with a maddening shrug.

  She didn’t understand why he wasn’t angry with Leo.