Finally, when afternoon met evening and everything slowed, Ottilie had headed for home.
‘Why do people say that? About the Laklanders?’ said Ottilie.
Mr Parch had taught her almost everything she knew, except how to read – Old Moss had taken on that responsibility. Moss was the proud owner of one single book: Our Walkable World, Volume Six: The Usklers and The Laklands. It was very valuable, made from real parchment. Not like the ones in Market Town with pages made from compressed old rags.
The book was her most treasured possession. Mr Parch’s most treasured possession was his pair of eyeglasses. Both refused to sell either for anything, not even food or better lodgings, and their stubbornness on the subject was a perpetual point of contention between the two.
‘It’s just a story, Ottilie. No truth to it,’ said Mr Parch.
‘But where did it come from? It’s just about boys, isn’t it? The Laklanders take boys. But what for?’
‘They chop them up and feed them to the birds.’
‘Moss!’
‘They creep around at night and snatch little boys for bird meat,’ said Moss.
‘No truth,’ said Mr Parch, shaking his head.
‘But boys do go missing?’ whispered Ottilie.
‘People of all kinds can go missing,’ said Mr Parch. ‘It’s the way of the world, but it doesn’t happen very often and it’s nothing for you to worry about.’
‘Little boys more than others,’ Old Moss said. ‘Every year or so a couple vanish from around the Hollows or the villages nearby – but plenty more disappear from more populated areas. My horrible sister, may she not rest in peace, lived in Wikric Town and she said common as corn, the disappearances are. People treat the stories like they’re real. Makes you wonder.’
Ottilie didn’t want to wonder.
‘Moss, enough! You’re scaring the girl,’ said Mr Parch. ‘Don’t listen to her, Ottilie. Tell you what, if he still hasn’t turned up by nightfall I’ll go see the keeper about it.’
Old Moss snorted loudly. ‘What do you think that slimy old chomper’s going to do about it?’
‘Moss –’
‘He probably sells them off!’ said Moss, hooting with laughter.
‘Moss, will you shut up!’
‘Don’t you tell me to shut up!’
‘I will tell you to shut up if I want you to shut up, you insensitive old tortoise!’
Moss let out a wheezy roar, grabbed her walking stick and pointed it at Mr Parch like a spear.
‘Moss!’ Ottilie wrenched the walking stick from Old Moss’s surprisingly strong grasp.
‘Oi! Ottilie, you pass that back!’
‘No. You can’t threaten people with walking sticks, Moss.’
‘I wasn’t going to touch him!’
Ottilie was feeling panicky and irritable, and she’d had enough. ‘I’m taking this.’ Without another word Ottilie marched away, Old Moss’s walking stick tucked safely under her arm.
There was only one place left to look. Ottilie took the back way to Longwood, skirting the edge of the swamps. The Brakkerswamp was a funny place and Ottilie liked it a lot. There was no point in searching there, though – Gully never went into the swamps. But Ottilie would have loved to venture out. She knew exactly where to step along the mushy, hidden paths. She liked clambering onto mossy islands, crawling along slippery fallen gum trees, and stirring deep puddles with forked sticks the way ancient sea witches had stirred their rock pools.
Probably most of all, Ottilie loved balancing on the low branches of the freshwater fig trees that grew up out of the water, holding fast and leaning out, waiting to catch sight of lights glowing far down in the deep.
There was a crunching noise up above. Ottilie swung around. Her ribs locked, and her shoulders curved in defence. She took a breath; the feel of Old Moss’s walking stick tucked beneath her arm offered a scrap of comfort. The Hollows stretched up behind her, dotted with fissures and small holes that led to tunnels no-one could reach. Gully was always trying to get up there.
‘Gully!’ she called, sure someone was nearby.
There sounded a faint scuffle, followed by a quiet sigh.
It wasn’t Gully. That much she knew. For one thing, the sound came from the opening high up above. No person could get up there.
Ottilie clutched the walking stick so tightly her fingers turned white, and pushed herself onwards. As the wetlands thinned and the ground grew firmer beneath her feet, her heart began to race. She hated Longwood. Hated it! The temperature dropped and she hugged herself in the cold.
She had heard rumours of secluded Laklander camps buried in the deepest corners of Longwood – but Ottilie had never really believed them. It was Longwood itself that spooked her. There was something about the air in the forest. It whispered dark words to her senses, raising the hairs on her neck and setting her jaw so that her teeth ground together.
She wasn’t the only one. Despite the wealth of wood, nuts, fruit and plump birds that Longwood had to offer, people stayed away. Even the poorest of the Swamp Hollows folk only ventured into the forest when truly desperate for a meal, or something to trade to pay their monthly boarders’ toll to the keeper.
The moss-covered trunks grew thicker and closer, and the light began to fade. She took a deep breath and tried to speak.
‘Gully.’ It was little more than a whisper.
Ottilie shivered. It was like being trapped in a nightmare, fighting with weak limbs and feeble fists and crying out with voiceless screams. Ottilie screwed up her face, not quite closing her eyes. This was not a nightmare. Of course she could speak.
‘Gully!’ Her voice was perhaps a little higher than usual, but perfectly loud.
There was no answer.
Knees quaking, she took a step backwards. She had to get out.
It was growing too dark to see her feet in front of her, and by the time she made it back to the Hollows the stars were in full bloom. Breathing hard, she rushed back through the tunnels.
‘Any sign, Mr Parch?’
‘Sorry, Ottilie.’ Mr Parch shook his head. ‘I’ll talk to the keeper first thing.’
‘Can I have my stick back?’ snapped Old Moss.
‘No.’
Ottilie slipped into her hollow and pulled the door shut with a thump. Leaning against the chipped wood, Ottilie closed her eyes and made a wish. She wished harder than she had ever wished before. She wished that when she turned around she would see Gully asleep in his bed. She wished that he had slipped past Old Moss during her afternoon nap, and that Mr Parch had missed him because Old Moss knocked his eyeglasses off last week, and they didn’t fit on his big nose anymore. She wished that Gully was exhausted from his adventures and had fallen asleep before sundown.
Ottilie counted to three. She turned around. She opened her eyes.
Their hollow was empty.
3
Bill
Ottilie’s eyes flicked open. Something was different. It was after midnight, she was sure. Freddie was absent. Gully hadn’t returned. She should have been all alone, but there was a new smell in the air, a scent like puddles and rain-soaked bark. There was something else, too. She was only halfway home, one foot still in a dream, but slowly it came – the subtle but sure sense that someone unfamiliar was in the hollow.
Ottilie lay stiff as a board, one thought spinning round and round in her mind.
Laklander.
That was when she heard it. That strange, wet breath from the day before. Heart battering against her ribs, Ottilie sat bolt upright. She could see a shape in the dark, bending over Gully’s empty bed.
At exactly the same moment she and the Laklander leapt up, emitted yelps of surprise, and scrambled to opposite sides of the hollow, breathing in panicked unison. Ottilie grabbed Old Moss’s walking stick and held it aloft.
She took a breath, wide eyes fixed on the dark shape cowering against the wall. It occurred to her that the Laklander was afraid of her. It didn’t make sen
se. A scream surged up through her body, but just before it escaped she clenched her jaw shut.
‘What are you doing over there?’ she demanded, walking stick in hand, ready to swing.
‘You frightened me,’ he said. The voice was strange, like he had a winter chill. It was throaty but wet, and somehow blocked.
‘I frightened you?’ Ottilie jabbed the stick in his direction.
She squinted at him. There was something strange about the way he was standing, even his smell. She couldn’t be sure, but Ottilie was fairly certain that this intruder wasn’t human – which meant he couldn’t be a Laklander after all.
‘What are you …’ Realising that she may have been asking a very rude question, Ottilie added, ‘doing … in … here?’
He swallowed audibly. ‘I was just seeing.’
Ottilie could only just make out his silhouette against the wall. ‘Seeing? Seeing what?’
‘Seeing if the boy was in his bed.’
She gripped the walking stick very hard. ‘What?’
‘My head gets muddled. Sometimes I remember something from long ago and forget where the memory belongs.’
‘What do you know about my brother?’
‘That’s just it,’ he mumbled. ‘I wasn’t sure. I had to see.’
‘Don’t move,’ said Ottilie. She pointed the walking stick at him like a sword and backed out of the hollow. Old Moss and Mr Parch were sleeping soundly. Ottilie slipped past. With a shaking hand, she pulled a flaming torch from the nearest wall-bracket and hurried back.
She pushed the door open with her shoulder and entered the hollow, flame first. A bead of sweat trailed slowly down her neck as she studied the intruder.
She did not know what to make of him. He was the strangest creature she had ever seen. His strangeness came not from the differences, but the similarities he bore to a human being.
The creature was taller than Ottilie, and rather thin. He was dressed in an old grey shirt and trousers with a cracked leather sack slung over one sloping shoulder. His skin was very unusual. In fact, it was – well, she thought it might be … fur. It was very short and thin and sleek, like how she imagined the shiny hair on sea creatures. The colouring was pale and pinkish like human skin, but there was a distinct grey tinge.
He had a narrow nose and his eyes were very close together, framed by spidery eyelashes, which were a muddy colour to match the fine hair atop his head – beneath which poked two blunt horns. He shielded himself from the flame, and Ottilie could see slight webbing between his long, knobbly fingers.
Ottilie narrowed her eyes and took a breath. ‘What – I mean, who are you?’
‘No-one … bad,’ he said, his eyes darting back and forth between Ottilie and the flaming end of the torch.
Ottilie squared her shoulders. She was determined to look much braver than she felt. ‘Why were you looking for my brother?’
‘I wanted to tell … about the boy. But I got muddled and had to be sure …’ He squinted away from the light. ‘That the swamp picker got him.’
‘The who?’
‘The swamp picker takes boys from the villages along Longwood and around the Brakkerswamp.’
Ottilie felt like someone had placed a sack over her head. ‘Takes them where?’
‘Down through the tunnels under Wikric Town. That’s as far as I’ve ever followed.’
Wikric was the largest town in the west. Why would anyone take Gully there?
‘How come you saw?’
‘I live nearby, in the caves up there.’ He pointed awkwardly upwards.
Ottilie followed his finger, staring up at the craggy ceiling of her hollow. ‘How long have you lived up there?’ ‘I can’t remember.’
‘But – how old are you?’ He didn’t look much older than she was.
‘I never kept count.’
Ottilie gazed at him. His small, dark eyes were stretched wide in distress. He seemed genuine. She was regaining control over her breath and something clicked into place. ‘You were following me yesterday,’ she said, finally lowering the torch.
Relaxing his arms, the creature freed an uneven sigh of relief. ‘I was trying to figure out … if there used to be two of you.’
‘There did.’
His eyes widened as he sucked in a long, wet breath. ‘Oh dear. That’s no good. I was afraid of that.’
‘My brother. He’s missing.’ Ottilie was surprised by how steady her voice had become. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she added, more to herself than him. Mostly what she wanted to do was sleep. She had a sudden overwhelming urge to lie down and close her eyes.
Ottilie realised the creature was still leaning away from the flame. She took a step back. He seemed to relax a little more, but his webbed fingers wound together and he started shifting from foot to foot.
‘Can you show me where they took him?’ That seemed the obvious thing to ask.
‘Oh no. No …’ He stared at the floor. ‘I … I could tell …’
‘No, I need you to show me.’ She would follow after him. It was all she could do. ‘I don’t know anything about the Wikric tunnels and I don’t have time to get lost. Please. Please, I need your help.’
He blinked hard and rubbed his nose. ‘Alr– no – ye–yes. I can show you part of the way.’
‘Thank you.’ Ottilie frowned, thinking hard. This was it, wasn’t it? It was the only thing to be done. Her attention was all off-kilter. She couldn’t think far ahead. There was only the immediate – only the now. Gully was gone. This creature knew where. It was enough. This creature …
‘What’s your name?’
He looked confused. ‘I just call myself me.’
She blinked. ‘Someone must call you something. I can hardly call you me.’
‘The birds call me Bill.’
‘The birds call you Bill?’
He nodded.
‘You can talk to birds?’
‘Can’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
There was a rather long pause.
‘All right, Bill it is – and you can call me Ottilie.’
4
The Duck Door
Ottilie packed quickly. She had already lost an entire day, and she wanted to get to Gully before they took him too far. She didn’t pack much: a waterskin, two apples, a chunk of stale bread, some shrivelled beans, and a handful of pale gold brakkernuts she and Gully had collected from Longwood a few days before. She was careful to leave enough in their food chest for Freddie. She didn’t know when they would be back, and without Ottilie and Gully Freddie would have to survive on what she could afford to buy, which was almost nothing. It was more likely she’d settle for the scraps the keeper handed out.
Ottilie considered taking Old Moss’s walking stick as a weapon, but she didn’t have the heart to leave her without it any longer. Instead, she took Freddie’s only knife and tucked it carefully into her pack. Just in case. She really would have preferred the walking stick.
Hoisting the pack over her shoulder, Ottilie gazed about the hollow, searching for something she might have forgotten. It felt strange, even … good. In the space of a blink, she felt a prickle of excitement.
The door creaked ominously as Ottilie pulled it shut. She was just about to place Old Moss’s walking stick back down beside her when Bill lunged backwards, stumbling into her and causing her elbow to hit the rock wall with a crunch.
She swallowed her growl and hissed, ‘What!’
Bill gestured to Mr Parch, who was lying on the floor in a cocoon of blankets, his eyes wide open. ‘Sorry,’ whispered Bill. ‘But I think … I think he’s dead.’
They both stared. Mr Parch snorted and rolled over, snoring loudly.
Ottilie rubbed her elbow and glared at Bill. ‘That’s just how he sleeps.’
‘He should put up a sign,’ said Bill. ‘Sleeping. Not dead.’
Ottilie had to clap her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. It was the first time she had
smiled in hours.
‘Where do we go?’ she whispered.
‘There’s a shortcut, but you won’t fit. We’ll have to go out your entrance and take the road for a bit.’
‘What do you mean I won’t fit? You’re bigger than me.’
‘I sort of … fold.’
Ottilie looked him up and down in the dark. ‘Right.’
Market Town was the furthest Ottilie had ever travelled. Once or twice a month she and Gully travelled south, down the winding dirt road, to see what they might get for whatever useful things they had managed to collect. Krippygrass was quite good for weaving, and there were always waterfigs and brambleberries in the warmer months. They used to sell a bit of firewood, but two seasons ago they had sold their barrow to buy a remedy for Freddie, and now they had no way to transport anything heavy.
Ottilie and Bill crossed the River Hook at Drifters Bridge and marched down the bumpy road, winding through a meadow of krippygrass and up the slope of the grey and pointy Brakkerbend Hill. There shone only the thinnest sliver of a moon. The darkness was thick as smoke, and the ground below was uneven. They passed over the peak and Ottilie slowed her pace. She knew there was a steep drop somewhere to her left, but she couldn’t see the edge.
‘Here,’ said Bill, pulling a jar from his sack. ‘You have water?’
Ottilie passed him her waterskin. Bill uncorked the jar and filled it to the brim. A light flickered, and another and another, until what appeared to be three feeble twigs glowed with a bright greenish light.
‘Glow sticks,’ said Bill. ‘From the swamp.’
Ottilie remembered the lights in the water – bright eyes winking in the deep. She held the glow sticks aloft like a lantern to navigate the rocks and craters ahead.
Ottilie had never seen the road empty before. On market days the way was usually dotted with faulty peddlers, birds tethered to their wrists and floppy hats pulled low, offering their allegedly magical wares. There was no end of potential customers. The road was always busy with folk from the nearby villages: pulling weighty barrows, leading black goats with curled horns, lugging barrels of silver salt from the River Hook, passing stories and gathering the latest news from Wikric, the biggest town in the west.
Ottilie Colter and the Narroway Hunt Page 2
