by Leyland, L J
‘My mother reads the elements. She can sense when the Dark is starting to encroach on the Light and we have to decide to do something to get it back under control. We seek out the sinner. The Dark makes them do things – if they have taken from the Garden, if they have defiled the Water, if they have had bad thoughts … we know they have been taken by the Dark. So, we give them a test to prove themselves …’ she finished, slyly.
‘… A test?’ asked Noah.
I felt a rush of warmth towards him as his eyes fixed on Rhian’s unwaveringly.
‘Yes, a test. We send them to the Dark to see if they can defeat it. If they pass, we welcome them back. However, if they fail, and they cannot stand the Light and their body rejects the purity of the Water, we know that they have been taken forever and they are banished.’
‘How do you send them to the Dark?’ I asked.
She turned and pointed towards the mouth of the cave where the swarm of bats emerged from. ‘We ask them to spend five days with the Dark’s representatives … we ask them to live with the Black Swarm.’
The bone bracelet jangled on her wrist. She caught me looking at it. She twirled one of the bones coyly in her fingers, looking almost affectionately at it. It was the sharp claw of a bat. ‘For protection against the Dark. The Black Swarm comes twice a day but we protect ourselves with these.’
‘And where was Deddern’s protection when you sent him into that hell-hole?’ I was angry now.
She shrugged. ‘He had none, of course. If he was worthy, the Light would protect him. Obviously he wasn’t, so he was banished.’
I was so enraged that I suddenly had to stand up and pace the cave.
‘Maida,’ whispered Matthias, ‘please calm down.’
There was urgency to his tone. I knew he was worried that I was offending our hosts and that they perhaps would see us filled with imaginary Darkness and put us in with the bats. The cave system was winding and full of dead-ends, making it almost impossible to flee.
That poor man . I shuddered at the thought of him having to live amongst the bat faeces, the carcasses of mice they had dropped, and, oh God, the stench. I bet it was unbearable. Unhygienic, too. No wonder he went mad, I thought, bet it was full of disease. My heart began to pound as I fitted the last piece of the jigsaw in place.
Disease! Since the Flood, Brigadus had been suffering from waves of diseases, carried on the ships from mainland Europa. Diseases that had been wiped out of Britannia had now been brought back and stalked the islands of the Periphery, claiming victims mercilessly. There was one disease that people were particularly frightened of as it had no cure; death was imminent within days and there was absolutely no hope of recovery. It was the vilest disease of all as it turned people into violent lunatics, making them dangerous to their loved ones.
We were warned by the Parrots to be careful of stray dogs, foaming at the mouth, acting erratically, baring their teeth. I once caught a Parrot pointing a gun at Wolf and I only just managed to plead for his life, after assuring him that Wolf was free of the disease. We all knew that the disease not only affected dogs … but also bats. Rabies. It all made sense.
If Deddern had been bitten by an infected bat during his five-day trial in the cave, it would explain his inability to drink water. Hydrophobia was a word taught to us by the Parrots in signs put up in the Market Square explaining how to spot the symptoms of someone suffering from rabies: ‘If someone you know has Hydrophobia (fear of water), is acting erratically or violently, has a fever, cannot speak and foams at the mouth, tell an Official IMMEDIATELY’. They would then storm your house, take out the infected person, and take them to a ‘safe house’ (which was most likely a dungeon where they could live out their last days dying of thirst and driven crazy by the disease).
My heart shrunk to the size of a walnut as I let the full implications of what had happened to Deddern wash over me. They were responsible for his death. They forced him into a cave with infected monsters because of some cultish notion of Light and Dark, sin and punishment. They then used his pitiful symptoms as proof of his evilness. I was shaking from head to foot and felt a desperate urge to break out of the cave, to run in the fresh air, to escape.
Noah, noticing my agitation, stood up and said, ‘Excuse us, we have been travelling far and we would like to fill our flasks. May we?’
Elgar nodded and said, ‘Fill up by the second bridge but don’t be long. Sophia would like to read the elements in your presence and perform a ceremony to speak to the Spirit. And you can tell us where you are from, strangers. We are still puzzled as to how you survived The Reckoning… I must admit, this is a most interesting situation and we’re very much looking forward to your explanation.’
Suspicion crept into his voice. I don’t think that he bought Sophia’s story that we were from the Light. Noah nodded warily at Elgar and began to steer me away from the waterfall by my shoulders. Matthias followed.
‘Noah! They’re crazy,’ I began, when we were crouching by the bridge, filling up our flasks. ‘They killed that man. They made him go into the cave with the bats and he must have got bitten and got rabies.’
‘What? Rabies? Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ said Matthias, breathing heavily. ‘As soon as they mentioned his fear of water I knew that was it. Remember, Maida? Hogburn from the docks got it from that dog and he tried to attack his own children? Died of thirst after a week. Deddern seemed exactly the same, completely out of his mind.’ Matthias’s face sunk into a frown; he looked sad and weary.
‘All her talk of punishment and sin … it makes me uneasy. Light and Dark, as though people are just good or evil and there’s nothing in between. It’s just so hard-line. It’s like absolving people of any responsibility for their own actions. It’s as though they have no choice – they’re either taken by the Dark and forced into doing bad things or they are not. I just don’t like it. We have choices and if we make the right choice …’
I cut him off. ‘Now is probably not the best time for philosophizing. Can we just figure out how to escape this place? I can’t stand another minute with them. They make me feel sick.’
Rhian was peering over at us, scrutinizing our manner. She could see I was agitated and I knew she had taken a dislike to me. She beckoned her father over; they studied us, arms folded, faces set in a hostile yet curious expression. Their opinion of us was rapidly deteriorating and I could tell it wouldn’t be long before we were on dangerous ground.
‘Well we can’t just pick up and leave. They’d stop us. Besides they are blocking the exit,’ said Matthias, pointing towards the cave mouth.
I turned to see a conspicuous group of men milling by the passageway that led out of the cave. They were staring at us, arms folded across their chests. Rhian had obviously sent them to guard the passageway and prevent us from leaving.
‘Then we need a plan,’ I said.
‘The bat cave!’ Noah said, as though his pronouncement was so obvious and brilliant that it needed no further elaboration.
‘Sorry?’ said Matthias, bewildered by Noah’s sudden inspiration.
‘Well, what if we escape through the passage the bats live in? The bats are gone for the night, aren’t they? So we won’t get bitten if we go as soon as we can and there’s no way they’d follow us up there as they think that’s where the Darkness is. I’m sure it must lead up to the surface at some point.’
‘How can you be so sure it’s not a dead end?’ I asked.
‘Because the waterfall emerges from that passage, doesn’t it? The waterfall is too big to be fuelled solely by a bedrock stream, therefore it must be fuelled by rainwater, therefore there must be a channel from the surface that the rainwater travels down. If we can find the hole that the rainwater runs through, we can escape!’ He beamed broadly.
I shrugged, casually. ‘As good a plan as any,’ I said, but inwardly I was very impressed. The plan was cunning and used Rhian’s own prejudices as a tool against her, which was an ingredient I p
articularly relished. How well he’d slot right into our lives, I thought. Noah smiled proudly at me. ‘And what about our irritating little friend?’ asked Matthias.
A collective sigh fell from our lips. What a pain Grimmy was turning out to be.
‘We have to take him. He knows the way to the Highlands and as much as I’m loath to admit it, he might be helpful at the end,’ I said. But I wasn’t being truthful with them. I knew that my real reason for wanting Grimmy with us was much more selfish. I wanted to milk him for all he knew about Regina and the possible connection between me and her. He was the key that I needed to unlock my past.
Chapter Twenty-one
After we had returned from filling our flasks, Sophia donned a crown made of bat bones and began to prance around, flapping her arms in a bat-like fashion in order to channel the spirits. Apparently she was gearing up to some sort of trance where she could read the elements and divine the future.
I followed Matthias’s gaze up to the platform of rock where Rhian’s family ruled from. Like a mythical figure of destruction, Rhian stood there, glorious and terrible. She had painted her whole body and face black. Her jet limbs were lithe and taut, coiled springs ready to pounce should we try to escape. The whites of her eyes shone out of the blackness like search beams. They found me and, for a second, illuminated my deceit and my fear.
There’s something sinister about two hundred people chanting and moving as one that is enough to chill even the most time-hardened sceptic to the bone. The underground people seethed and swayed like an organism made of hundreds of tiny particles, all working for the same end – to make a connection with the spirits of the Earth.
Sophia wailed from the platform, directing the crowd like the conductor of a gothic human orchestra. Rhian stood like a statue, letting the waves of collective euphoria wash over her and empower her. I could sense how the noise and the movement gave her strength, both physical and mental. The chanting and swaying got louder and louder, quicker and quicker, and became drug-like in its potency; people collapsing, wailing, crying. The fires smouldered, casting a hellish gleam. The shrillness of the crowd made my limbs rigid, my hairs prickle and my flesh crawl.
‘We’ve got to go, now,’ I whispered to Noah and Matthias, who both nodded in return.
Matthias grabbed Grimmy by the arm and said, ‘I’m about to save your life, you can thank me later,’ and hauled him towards the cave wall, where we were slightly masked by the shadows.
‘Gerroff me you giant, it’s just getting good,’ Grimmy yelped.
‘Keep your voice down and listen,’ said Noah, ‘they won’t let us out of here alive. They’ll do their ritual and find us to be from the Dark and then they’ll do to us what they did to that Deddern man. Is that what you want? You want to go mad from disease and thirst and die in an underground tomb?’
‘… But we are from the Dark,’ replied Grimmy slyly, his grin stretching from ear to ear. ‘We all are in Brigadus. Haven’t I said this all along? My Regina … look what they did to her. So pure and full of light, died in the dark because of them. We should take a leaf from their book and punish those from the Dark in Brigadus. Make them pay for their sins. I’d punish all of them.’ His fists were clenched and there was mania in his eyes. He had to be stopped before he handed us a death sentence, so I did the only thing I could think of. I sang.
‘We’ll walk together down the line; and see the sun begin to shine;
the past is dead our joy divine; our dream is won, the future’s mine.’
The song drifted through the air, acting like a mist of rain over hot coals, dissipating the heat from the moment. Grimmy turned to look at me, incredulity on his face.
‘We will bring people to the Light, Grimmy, not punish them for being in the Dark,’ I said.
‘How can you even dare to use her song?’ he asked.
‘Because she would want me to. She wouldn’t want you to be like this, Grimmy. She would want you to make things better, not to punish.’
Grimmy’s face was unreadable. For a moment I almost felt sorry for him. He was damaged goods, battered and bruised by the hand life had dealt him. For one brief minute, his mask of distain and craftiness lifted to reveal a vulnerable man, hurt and confused by his situation. Something in his expression changed and, for once, he almost looked sane. He began to sing:
‘Put your hand in mine, together as one; we’ll march together, ‘til we reach the sun;
no rest until our job is done; the future’s mine, our dream is won.’
It was enough. Enough to know that, for now at least, he was on our side.
‘Let’s go, whilst they’re out of their minds and won’t miss us,’ said Matthias.
We began our ascent of the cave wall, which was craggy and rough, and provided just enough crevices to haul ourselves slowly up the wall, hand over foot. At about halfway up the wall, there was a natural ledge that was just large enough to walk on. The ledge swept around the whole cave and passed a couple of metres over the rock platform where Rhian and her parents stood. From the platform there were some crudely hewn steps that were carved into the wall. They snaked up the rock wall to the opening from which the water poured and the bats lived. From our ledge, we could skirt above the platform that Rhian stood on and join the steps as they climbed up the side of the waterfall. I shivered as I thought of the last person to have ascended those steps. It was probably Deddern, hauled up roughly by his arms and thrown to the bats for his ‘test’.
It was a tough climb to even get to the ledge. The rock face was slippery with damp and slime from the waterfall spray. I eventually managed to haul myself up to the ledge just as Matthias and Noah were straightening themselves up, pressing their backs to the wall to stop the forces of gravity dragging them head first over the edge. Their feet overhung the ledge but luckily mine were small enough to fit safely on it. The dizzying effect of vertigo rushed in front of my eyes but I managed to steady myself with a couple of deep breaths. Noah and Matthias hauled Grimmy onto the ledge by his arms.
‘Quiet as the dead, yes?’ I instructed them.
Grimmy mimed wrapping a noose around his neck and pulling it, his wormy wet tongue lolling crazily from his mouth.
‘Ha, we should be so lucky,’ grumbled Matthias.
We crept around the ledge as quietly as we could, but it didn’t matter really; the chanting below was so loud that it reverberated off the walls and made the rocks rumble. We became more confident, shuffling quicker and quicker around the ledge towards the waterfall. The ledge was gravelly and occasionally one of us would slip, sending little showers of grit onto the crowd below. Luckily, they were too preoccupied with their chanting to look upwards and discover us. My heart raced quicker as I realised that we were going to make it. If we could skirt above the platform without being seen, then climb the steps to the waterfall mouth before their trance stopped, we would be gone before they knew it! I broke into a run, my hands tracing the side of the rock wall to keep my balance. Matthias, Noah, and Grimmy weren’t far behind. Nearly there! I covered the last couple of metres of the ledge as quickly as possible as this part of the ledge was above the platform where Rhian stood.
I ran to the stone steps that snaked up the wall to the mouth of the waterfall and the bat cave. Blood was pulsing through my veins, adrenaline coursed through me as I inwardly did a little jig of joy. We had nearly made it!
‘Noah, quickly! We’re nearly out!’ I cried, only to whirl round and see Noah’s face register terror.
The crowd had fallen silent. The chanting had stopped. Two hundred people were looking at us. In my haste to get to the steps, I had a sent a spray of gravel down from the ledge onto Rhian on the platform below. She stared upwards at me, eyes burning with fury. We had been caught.
‘Yet again, I have been vindicated,’ said Rhian to the crowd.
She pointed upwards to us on the ledge. I was frozen to the spot.
‘I told my father that these visitors were not from the Light
but were tempters sent from the Dark. Am I not proved right? Aren’t they trying to flee back to the Dark? Haven’t they betrayed our trust? They have been sent here to corrupt us! They are our test and we have seen through them and passed! Be thankful for my foresight and be determined in your wrath.’
I wildly thought of some way that this situation could be saved. Deny everything? Claim we were just going for a little stroll? No, it was clear that this could not be smoothed over by fast talking; a fight was inevitable and I was determined to have a head start.
‘Just where do you think you are going, you devils, you corruptors, heathens? You are our second Reckoning and we will not fail. You will be punished!’
She leapt across the platform and began scaling the steps hewn into the wall like a giant spider.
‘Climb!’ yelled Noah and we raced to the steps. We only had a head start of about ten metres. I threw myself at them with such force that I knocked the air from my lungs. I scrambled up the steep stone steps as quickly as I could but they were slippery with years of spray thrown from the waterfall. I could feel Matthias and Noah pushing me onwards from below, Matthias’s hand groped at my ankle as he tried to pull himself onto the step below me.
‘Move, Maida! You have to climb quicker!’
‘I’m trying!’ I yelled. The recent months of hunger and worry had taken their toll on my strength. I gritted my teeth and surged forward with a burst of speed that made my muscles burn and my lungs heave.
After a minute or so of hard climbing, I could see the top step. Just a little further! Just a few more steps and I’d be there! I pulled myself over the top step and straightened up to look into the bat cave’s yawning mouth. The waterfall bubbled and hissed like it was boiling before it plunged downwards over the edge. The river that fed it snaked backwards into the cave and the gloom. There was a narrow bank that flanked the river either side. There were no glow-worms in this cave. It was sheer, unbroken darkness. I hurried back towards the steps to see how the others were doing. Matthias was close to the top, and Noah was close behind. My stomach lurched as I saw the strain on his face as he pulled himself up each steep, stone step.
