by Leyland, L J
I put together a small bag containing all my essentials for survival: pigskin flasks, striking sticks for making fire, a fine net, twine for snares, a small medical kit, a digging stick, a knife, and some lightweight blankets. I also added a small spile, borrowed from Matthias’s grandmother who used it to tap beech trees for sap in the early spring. I thought it might come in useful in case we needed to tap trees for drinking water: Matthias’s grandmother had told us that birch trees were particularly good for this. My hands lingered on the little golden gun that Noah’s grandmother had given me and it twinkled in the moonlight. I dropped it in. I wasn’t going to use it if I could help it.
‘How does it look, Matthias?’ I asked, in a quiet whisper.
Something about the stillness of the air warned me against speaking too loudly and I noticed that the others were avoiding making any unnecessary noise. It seemed that we were alone on this island but I felt wary about attracting attention to myself for some reason. Matthias carefully secured a plank and laid it out for us to walk across the gap between the boat and the jetty. I was the last one off the boat. I realised that this would be the first time my feet had ever stepped on any other soil apart from that of Brigadus. I took a deep breath and prepared to explore the strange, lost world.
Chapter Seventeen
The drip, drip, drip of water beat out a rhythm that sounded almost tribal against the mossy rock. Water was everywhere; dripping down the intensely green ferns, gathering in cool puddles underfoot and sliding down the rock face, making a slimy coating on the walls, but it was not enough to fill our flasks. We would need to find a spring or a pond.
The land had reverted back to the prehistoric and looked abandoned; wet, lush, and surprisingly humid considering it was so cold. Trees and plants had conquered every available surface making it difficult for us to walk quietly as vines and leaves grabbed at our feet. I had tried to make a torch using a fallen branch, but the flame from my striking stick simply would not catch on the sodden wood. I had to light one of the blankets and wrap it around a large stick in order to see. It was a blow to our supplies, especially as the Highlands would be unbearably cold this time of year, but it was necessary. We couldn’t chance walking around blindly in an unfamiliar land. There could be hazards such as cliffs, ponds, or caves anywhere and one injury could ruin our entire plan.
‘Well, I can hear the water, I just can’t see the source,’ said Noah.
‘What do you know about finding water sources, Blueblood?’ sneered Grimmy. ‘I bet you’ve never had to find water in your life. Have hot and cold on tap, I bet.’
‘Just shut your trap and keep walking,’ warned Matthias.
‘Matthias is right. Let’s just find the source, fill our flasks, and leave. I want to be back on the boat, in bed, in an hour,’ I said.
‘What’s wrong, Captain, scared of the dark?’ Grimmy taunted.
I gave a little snort of derision, meant to signify that I wasn’t scared but it came out as a stifled choke.
It wasn’t that I was scared exactly. I just felt uneasy. Logic told me that there could be nothing on this island that would hurt me. Being only a couple of square miles, there was no chance that people could have survived here; there simply wasn’t enough clear land and I had not seen the unmistakable signs of human habitation – broken trees, cultivated plants, clearings, and traps. There could be no-one waiting in the dark to attack us, human or animal. In fact, I hadn’t seen an animal at all since arriving, not even a rodent or a bird. Perhaps that was what I was finding disquieting.
I could deal with humans and animals, real-life flesh and blood threats. I had my knife for that. But this island had a strange, supernatural feeling of menace about it. It felt like we were not welcome; it felt as though the island had rejected and repelled humans – nature now reigned supreme and she was not willing to concede any land back.
As we trudged on through the darkness, pausing to occasionally listen for a trickle of a stream or the gush of a waterfall, Noah and I somehow ended up walking together, side-by-side. He looked sideways at me and I saw the glimmer of humour in his eyes.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Grimmy’s wrong. We didn’t have running water until six months ago.’
‘I thought Bluebloods were so rich that they had bathrooms made of marble and hot water on tap, anytime in the day. That’s why you all smell so nice and the rest of us stink.’
He laughed, musically. ‘That’s what we want you to think but in reality we’re just as stinking as the rest of you.’
He leant towards me so that I could catch his scent. He smelled like smoky firewood and the sea breeze. I shrugged. ‘I’ve smelled worse.’
He chuckled and continued, ‘After the Flood, the pipes in the mansion burst. When the Mayor took over, he took most of my grandparents’ money and savings to build the new Metropole regime and the Complex. We had no money to fix the pipes and my grandparents were too proud to go to the Mayor for a handout. We’ve had to fill each bath, bucket by bucket, from the well every day in secret. We boiled the buckets on the stove if we were desperate for hot water. My hands have permanent rope burn from hauling that bucket out of the well every day, twice a day. My grandmother wouldn’t share water with the rest of us so I had to do it twice.’
It sounded like hard work. In comparison, our bathing regime was much easier. In summer, we swam in the little, cool stream by the jetty every morning and in winter we filled an old tin bath with water brought in from the stream and boiled on the pot-bellied stove. I even made soap and scented oils from the plants and flowers Edie found in the woods.
‘How very romantic, “The Penniless Aristocrats”. It’s like the title of a book,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘You have no idea. It was hilarious, the way she would announce it, “darling, I’m ready for my toilette, draw my bath and use the lavender foam,” as if we had a luxury sauna instead of a bucket and a well. But six months ago, I hit the wall. I couldn’t haul any more buckets. I had just started my apprenticeship with the Mayor and I noticed that he was having an extension on the Complex, a new luxurious wing for himself, including a steam house and bathing rooms …’
‘And …?’ I prompted, already amused by the devilish grin that was beginning to spread across his face.
‘I paid one of the plumbers to help me hook up our old pipes to the Mayor’s new ones, using rubbers hoses buried underground. It works a treat! Though I bet the Mayor wonders why his water tanks drain so quickly! I paid the plumber to hook up the school in town, too. The thought of those shack-kids drinking dirty water made me feel bad, especially after that cholera epidemic recently. I just hope they don’t get discovered.’
It was so sickeningly nice that he had paid to connect the school that I was left wondering whether what he was saying could actually be true. I found it hard to believe that anyone, especially a Blueblood, could be so selfless and thoughtful. I scrutinized his face for any sign that he was lying to impress me but I didn’t see one ounce of evasion and came to the conclusion that he did it out of nothing but the kindness of his heart. He was so good that I could do nothing but marvel at his generosity.
In those few moments of staring at him, I lost my focus. We were walking over the craggy foothills of the mountain that made up the island. The rocks were covered in slippery green lichen which made keeping my footing difficult. The moment I put my foot down and transferred my weight to it, I knew something was wrong. The ground was light and spongy – nothing more than moss and roots covering a concealed hole. I yelped in surprise as the earth gave way and my hips and shoulders grazed against the rough sides as I plummeted through the hole, hands outreached, grabbing for anything to stop me and landed hard on the stony ground hidden below.
The air rushed out of my lungs with a whoomph and I keeled over on my side, writhing with the dual pain of being winded and falling from a height. I could hear panicked calls from a couple of metres above my head, asking if I was all right.
I heard Matthias and Noah get into a brief argument about who would go down after me.
‘I’m fine, I don’t need rescuing, stop arguing. I’ll get myself out.’
I tenderly stood up and assessed the situation. My torch lay extinguished and broken in two on the ground. I struggled to relight it using the striking stick from my bag but the blanket was now damp. I managed to coax a feeble flame into life from the dry inner folds of the blanket and reattached it to my considerably shorter stick. I held it aloft like a beacon, wanting to banish the dark that surrounded me.
I was in a cave that had obviously been carved out of the rock by an ancient underground waterway. The flickering light illuminated a small rounded pocket of a cave that had three large passageways spiralling off it. I could see that one passageway led to the moonlit outdoors – we would have approached the entrance to the cave as we rounded the mountain if I hadn’t decided to use the roof as my means of entry. The other two passageways were pitch black but I knew enough about caves to know that one would lead deeper into the mountain, to the source of the water, and the other would lead out to the sea.
I yelled up to the others to come round the mountain to the mouth of the cave as I dusted myself down and gingerly tested my legs to check for any sprains. As the sound of the others’ footsteps died away, the cave became deathly silent and an unsettling feeling fell over me. I hastened to follow the passage that led out to the moonlight but I stopped suddenly and strained my ears to listen.
I knew it . The source of the fresh water. It was deeper inside the cave, along the darkest passageway and I could hear it gurgling as it made its way up from the ancient bedrock below and sprung into a gushing geyser that was the mouth of the spring.
Noah’s figure was framed by the moonlight as he came dashing through the entrance to the cave and sprinted down the passageway.
Matthias’s sarcastic tone drifted through, ‘Calm down she’ll be fine.’
‘Maida! Are you ok? No broken bones? Twisted ankle? Did you hit your head?’ He sounded panicked and was out of breath.
I touched his hand and said, ‘I’m fine, really.’ Then I added in a teasing voice, ‘That was completely intentional of course; you know I’m always on the lookout for shortcuts. You should feel grateful that I’m willing to go to extremes to make sure we keep on schedule.’
‘Well, thank you, that was very selfless,’ he replied with a grin.
‘No problem, just doing my duty as captain,’ I replied.
‘Oh God, you two need sedating,’ Grimmy said as he reluctantly stumbled down the passage, an expression of disgust on his gremlin face.
I shot him a look of pure loathing and turned around to walk down the passageway that led to the spring.
‘Where are you going, Mai?’ shouted Matthias.
‘To get us our water. Come on, the source is this way.’
‘Inside … deeper in there?’ asked Grimmy, warily.
‘Yes, it comes up from the bedrock. What’s the matter, scared of the dark?’
‘No, I just … It’s just … I’m not comfortable … being trapped underground. What if this is a huge cave network and we get lost? What if there’s … if there’s creatures living in there? What happens when we disturb them and then can’t find our way out …?’
Grimmy trailed off – it was the first time I had ever seen any real emotion cross his face other than scorn, anger, or sarcasm. He’d never seemed worried about anything before and his concern frightened me. He was such a creature of the dark himself, a lone animal that lurked and wallowed in darkness, that I knew he must have had real concerns to display his fears in front of me.
‘Grimmy, there’s nothing down there. No animals of any size could survive on this island. It’s too small. They would run out of food. Plus we’ve seen no signs of any animals at all. It’s just a cave. Look, if you like, you can wait here and we’ll go. We won’t be long.’
‘Erm … Maida. I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ said Matthias.
He looked at me meaningfully and I instantly caught his drift. Perhaps this was a ruse somehow and Grimmy would sneak back to the boat and maroon us here, or engineer some sort of underground cave accident that would wipe us out. We were supposed to watch him vigilantly, not for his safety but for ours.
‘Ah right … well, we can light more torches. If there’s anything down there, it’ll be scared of our fire. Anyway, you’ve got me; you’ve seen how handy I am with a knife, I’ll protect you and make sure you’re safe,’ I provoked, knowing that he would buck against being made to hide behind a girl.
My remark hit its intended target as Grimmy snorted and said viciously, ‘I don’t need a scrawny girl to protect me; who do you think I am? Noah?’
‘I don’t care, Maida can protect me any day of the week,’ Noah retorted with a smirk.
Grimmy muttered under his breath, ‘You two make me sick.’
We gathered more sticks and tore up more blankets, lighting the fabric strips and wrapping them around the handles to make three more torches. The interior of the cave brightened considerably and some of my fears were banished to the very edges of my mind; not gone, but restrained for now.
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
I pointed out the passage which had echoes of rushing water emanating from it and we began to quickly but quietly make our way into the darkness. The smell was unfamiliar and cloying. There was an overall note of sweet dampness which was undercut by a very musky staleness, like old sweat. The further we went into the cave, the stronger the muskiness became. It was almost animal; like a wet dog on a hot day, something with matted fur and sweaty skin, unwashed for days. It set my teeth on edge.
The floor began to tilt downwards, as though it was being subsumed by the earth. We followed the downwards trajectory for a while until we reached a chamber that had various new passages coming off it. We listened carefully for the sound of the water and traced it to the passage on the far left.
‘OK, wait,’ said Grimmy, planting his feet firmly into the ground and refusing to move. ‘Is this really a good idea? We have no idea where this is going. It could go underground for miles and we might never find our way out again.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, it can’t go on for miles, the island is only a couple of miles across. The water sounds a lot closer now so I think we’re nearly there. Anyway, we can’t get lost; we’ll just follow the stream back out of the cave system. The stream must come to the surface at some point, right?’
Matthias shrugged by way of answer – not particularly reassuring. We’d explored the few caves there were in Brigadus but none of them were as deep or as dark as this one. The caves in Brigadus were little more than depressions made in the cliffs on the shoreline from where the sea had battered them. Some of the caves had springs that ran out through them to meet the sea. I had assumed that all water must eventually run out to the sea but it suddenly struck me that this might not be the case. What if this stream ran underground and never surfaced? Perhaps we would try following it and then become stuck underground forever, effectively buried alive.
I shook the thought from my head. I was becoming ridiculous. Of course it would surface, stop being such a coward. Besides, it was the only way we were going to find water and we desperately needed it. I could already sense that our movements had become slower and our tolerance for each other’s company was frayed. I knew that these signs of irritation and lethargy were early symptoms of dehydration, coupled of course with the scratchy thirst at the back of our throats.
‘Onwards we go,’ I said, gesturing to Grimmy to lead the way. He grumbled and I watched him take exasperated steps into the gloom.
I began to hum a tune that was supposed to be chirpy but in the depressing surroundings, it sounded strained, manic, like a crazy person. I stopped when Matthias turned round to give me a disparaging glare. As I was smaller than he was, my fire torch lit up his face from underneath, casting a horribly devilish mask of shadows and light t
hat highlighted circles under his eyes, elongated his nose and made his mouth thin and cruel. I looked away quickly, not wanting to see him looking so unfamiliarly wicked.
A hoarse scream punctuated the air.
Bahhh!
‘What the hell was that?!’ cried Grimmy, skittering across the passage to put his cowardly back against the wall. It had come from in front of us, from the passage which led to the water.
Again the strange cry happened again – bah! – only this time it was followed by a long drawn-out moan of uneven cadences.
‘Animal?’ I asked Matthias.
He looked astounded and shook his head. ‘… Human.’
We stared in horror at each other. No, no, no, this wasn’t right; there could be no humans here, we were supposed to be alone. Noah steeled himself and was the first to move.
‘They sound in pain, let’s go,’ he said, striding forward purposefully.
Grimmy, Matthias and I hung back, shiftily looking at our feet, the resolve that had carried me onwards so far momentarily turning to jelly.
Noah turned to face us and said imploringly, ‘They could be hurt, come on.’
It was a testament to my terror that I actually reached in my bag and pulled out the tiny golden gun that I had previously decided not to use. Well … needs must. I held it firmly in my right hand, my left holding out the fire torch like a weapon and gave Noah a nod. Matthias gritted his teeth and pulled out a short but wide knife from his belt. Noah raised an eyebrow at the sudden appearance of the concealed weapon.
‘Not for whoever’s in there, but for him.’ He nodded towards Grimmy and then put the knife at Grimmy’s back. ‘Walk,’ he commanded.
