A Whisper of Horses

by Zillah Bethell

  chapter 19

  BIKES

  “YOU EVER RIDDEN one?” Tab asked, eyeing the bikes in the dusty shop window.

  I’d seen Cus in Lahn Dan riding them, of course, their legs pumping up and down as they whirred along. But I’d never ridden one myself. No Pb ever had, to my knowledge. So I just shook my head.

  “Wanna learn?”

  Before I knew it, Tab had picked up a bumpy piece of debris from one of the smashed-up houses nearby and was running towards the glass.

  “No!”

  Too late. The glass stuttered into a squillion slices and fell to the ground. I looked around nervously to see if anyone was rushing out at us, but the village was completely dead. As the sound of the tinkling glass faded, the only noise that could be heard was the patter-patter and yap-yap from Mouse’s and Tab’s out-of-breath puffing.

  “Come on.” Tab brushed the spikes of glass out of the window frame and climbed into the shop.

  “You can’t do that.”

  His head peered out. “Why not?”

  “Well … it’s stealing.”

  “Who from?”

  “What?”

  “Who would we be stealing from? Nobody lives here anymore. Everyone’s dead.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Oh. What is the point then?”

  I shifted from foot to foot. “It’s just wrong. Those things don’t belong to us. They’re not ours to take.”

  Tab sighed. “And if we don’t take them? What’ll happen to ’em then?”

  “Er…”

  “Nuthin. Tha’s what. Nuthin. Which is a pity, cos these bikes were made to be used. Whoever made them in the old days made them to be used. Not to sit getting dustier and dustier in a shop window. The bikes’re ere. We’re ere. And we need to get away from ere. Tha’s all you need to know. End of. Now come on.”

  I shook my head and muttered, just loud enough for Tab to hear, “Once a thief, always a thief.”

  * * *

  Admittedly, the first time I fell off, I didn’t feel like getting back on again. Tab laughed out loud as I wibbled over to one side and the bike seemed to twist away from under me. My arm scraped along the rough of the road, and my leg got stuck under the pedal. It hurt.

  “Not like that. Like this.” Tab wheeled around me like I was some sort of useless idiot, giggling as he did so.

  After the fifth and sixth fall, I found myself getting madder and madder and desperately wanting to beat this hunk of metal that was making me look so foolish. It only took a couple more slips and I was away. I was cracking it. I pedaled and pedaled, turning the handlebar as gently as I could. I cycled up the road and came back down, speeding more speedily than I’d ever sped before. Tab looked on in amazishment as I swooped past him, swerving just in time as I approached.

  “It’s easy!” I called out.

  “Yeah, yeah. Very good.” He sounded a little deflated. “Now you’ve got to learn how to use the gears.”

  “Gears? What are they?” The wind was racing past.

  “Turn the lever. On that side. The one near the middle.”

  “What?”

  “The lever. On that side.”

  “You mean this one here.” I lifted a hand to point and felt chuffed that I could cycle one-handed.

  “Yeah. That one. Click it forward.”

  I shoved the stumpy lever forward and the chain clunked awkwardly beneath me. The whole bike jerked and my legs suddenly found it difficult to pedal. I wobbled from one side to the other before falling again.

  Tab snorted.

  “You did that deliberately.” I stood up and wiped myself down. “You ruined it for me!”

  “Don’t be bonkers. You just have to learn to ride properly, that’s all.”

  Mouse barked as if he was laughing too.

  chapter 20

  THE VALLEY OF THE WOLVES

  THE HILLS WERE tricky. My legs strained and ached as I forced the bike up over them. And there were more hills now. More and more of them. Little ones and big ones. Hills with sweeping, snaking roads that made it awkward not to have to put your foot down on the ground every now and then to stop yourself tumbling over. Hills with weeds pushing themselves up through the tarmac, trying to grab hold of the wheels of our bikes, trying to trip us up. Lots and lots and lots of tricksy, exhausting hills.

  Going down the hills was a simple matter, though. We’d freewheel down them as fast as we could, Mouse sprinting alongside, the air brushing our faces. Sometimes I’d lift my feet off the pedals and stick my legs out to the sides as I accelerated downwards, balancing the bicycle beneath me.

  It was at the top of one longish hill at the edge of a dense wooded valley that I heard Tab’s brakes screech behind me just as I was about to let it all rip. I pulled my brake tightly and turned to look at him.

  “What?”

  His eyes were scanning the valley ahead of us. “I know this place. I been ere before.” He rolled over to the side of the road and stared at a crumbling wooden sign that had been stuck on a post shoved into the ground. “I can’t read very well, but I know what this says.”

  The letters on the sign had been sprayed on in a purplish color many years before and were fading away. It took all of my reading skills to piece together the two words that were still readable.

  “Beware … W-O-L-V-E-S … Wolves?”

  Tab nodded. “Yeah. Wolves.” He looked back at the wood that lay beneath us. “This is the Valley of the Wolves.”

  “You mean … wolves live down there?”

  “That’s what they say. After the Gases, the animals in Lahn Dan Zoo were set free. I don’t know what happened to most of them. Probly died. The story might not even be true, fer all I knows. But the wolves … the wolves they came out ere. And people say they live”—he pointed—“down there.”

  I was suddenly smacked in the chest with a sorry sense of hopelessness. Behind us were smugglers who wanted to sell me back to the Minister; modpods filled with Lahn Dan police men were swooping around the whole area like flies, hoping to hunt us down; and now wolves were standing in our way, teeth all shiny and hungry and ready to gobble us up. The world outside the wall was proving to be every teensy bit as dangerous as the world inside it.

  “There was nothing about wolves on the map,” I said, trying to wish the whole wolf thing away. “My mama’s friend drew nothing about wolves.”

  “I been thinking”—Tab looked at me with quizzing eyes—“about that map.” He repositioned himself on the seat of his bike. “Are you sure it’s real? It just looks like summat someone’s scribbled on a piece of scrappy paper to me. Are you sure it shows you that horses are in Whales?”

  I gave him a hard stare back. “Of course it’s real. My mama left it to me so it must be real.” But secretly inside I was wondering the same thing. What if it wasn’t true? What if Mama had been holding on to the map for no other reason than it reminded her of her best friend? What if I’d got out of Lahn Dan, put the Professor at risk and broken Tab away from the only family he knew for a piece of tatty, pointless paper? It was all too horrible to think about.

  It was Tab who broke the silence in the end. “Don’t spose it matters.”

  “What?”

  “Well, if you can’t turn around and go back to summat then yer might as well just push on and try to get to summat else. Stands to reason. No use looking behind yer all the time.”

  And it was true. Neither of us had anything to go back to. So why not chase a dream that might turn out to be as fake as the plastic people at Two Swords? I had, after all, nothing but the air in my lungs to lose.

  Annoyingly, Tab could say the right things at the right time, and part of me wanted to throw my arms around him whilst another part wanted to thump him one.

  “Is there another way around?” I asked. “Can’t we just go around the wolves and get to the Emm Four?”

  “Might be. Problem is it’d be a long, long way. And I mean a long, long way. Be ea
sy to slip into the fingers of the Minister’s police.”

  “But we can’t just go whizzing through the wolves.”

  Tab fiddled with the gears on his bike. “Why not?”

  “Well, I’d’ve thought that was obvious.”

  “Look, I’ve never seen a wolf, have you?”

  “Of course I haven’t.”

  “That might be because they don’t exist anymore.”

  “But you just said—”

  “Listen, you might believe everything that everyone tells you—that Minister of yours did a very good job of that—but I don’t. I grew up with smugglers and I know what bilge they all chat.” He pulled a squinted-up face. “Wolves? Bah! Load of old crab. Nuthin down there but rats and ants.” He pushed off and started pedaling down the hill, calling over his shoulder. “Trust me.”

  * * *

  The road leading through the wood was weirdly quiet, like the wind couldn’t bring itself to blow its way around the trees, and even though it was only the afternoon, the whole area was packed in with a kind of evening gloominess and a slight mist drifted around us. The trees lining the roads were nothing more than bare brown sticks that stuck out of the ground like rows upon rows of soldiers standing to attention. The only sound that I could hear was the whirr and whoosh of our wheels. Tab pedaled up ahead of me with Mouse lolloping alongside, and every now and then I cast my head backwards to see if I could spot any wolves. Each time I looked I could see nothing but the broken tarmac along which we had just cycled. If anything, I was a little disappointed.

  After a while the trees thinned out and the outskirts of a town began to appear. All towns followed the same pattern as Lahn Dan I was beginning to realize. Every single one of them. Exactly the same pattern, over and over and over again. Firstly you had the trees and the fields that hovered around the edges, holding the town in position and stopping it from spilling too far away from itself. Then come the farms and the barns, dotted on the dying breaths of hills, the first signs of human interference. Suddenly the ground flattens out and the factories and warehouses, shops and glass buildings erupt out of it.

  Tab let his tires skid to a sudden stop, and I slowly rolled alongside him.

  “See! What did I say? No wolves. We’re outta the woods and we didn’t see a single wolf. Told you there was no such thing as a wolf, didn’t I?” He had a relieved, smug look stapled to his face. “I knew all that stuff they said about wolves was rubbish. I just knew it.”

  “So what happened to the animals that escaped from Lahn Dan Zoo all that time ago?”

  “Dunno. Musta just died out, I guess. Who cares? Come on.”

  * * *

  The town was as deadly quiet as every town and village we’d ridden through or seen from a distance, and the buildings jutted up against the sky, just like they did in Lahn Dan. Crowding you in like giants, staring hard down at you, like they’d like nothing better than to squash you and to kick your remains under the pavement.

  We cycled uphill out of the center, past some scruffy-looking shops. The mist was thickening fast now, and everything was beginning to look hazy—the edges of buildings no longer sharp and pointy but blurred and difficult to pick out. We rolled to a stop outside a large church and took swigs from our water bottles.

  “Getting dark now,” Tab said, twisting the top back on his. “Better find somewhere to kip soon.”

  I looked up at the church. The long-dead clock face showed the time at which it gave up the goat, its bells clanging to an end. The tiles on its roof were all buckled and broken and cracked, the walls all mossy and blackened. It gave me the shivers. There was something creepy about it. The headstones in the churchyard were long and gray and scattered about. I pointed them out to Tab.

  “S’funny,” he said, screwing his eyes up tight to try to see. “I always thought people had statues of angels made for them when they died. That’s what yer see in other churchyards.”

  “What?”

  He pointed at the headstones. “All the dead people in that one had statues made of dogs. Weird.”

  “Dogs?” I strained my own eyes to see.

  And then one of the headstones moved.

  And then another.

  Tab looked at me—his mouth like a cave—and I looked at him. They weren’t statues of dogs at all. They weren’t statues of anything. They were wolves. Real, breathing, living wolves.

  “What were you saying about them dying out, Tab?”

  Slowly they came out of the churchyard past the gate that had been ripped off its hinges. One by one. Three. Four. Five. Six of them. Their yellow eyes staring as they padded all the way around us until we were surrounded.

  Mouse barked. Tab scooped him up and clamped his hand across the dog’s muzzle. “S’hup, you stupid mutt. D’yer wanna get eaten?”

  Tab was scared. I could tell. So was I. We stood there with our bikes and watched them as they circled us. Never rushing. Always staring. Softly. Softly. Taking their time.

  “Wha’re we gonna do?” Tab whispered. “I don’t like this one little bit.”

  “Just stay still,” I whispered back. “Don’t do anything.”

  “But … they’re going to eat us, ain’t they?”

  I didn’t answer. I stood iced to the spot as the wolves kept revolving calmly around us.

  Suddenly, a snort and a growl came from the churchyard and another wolf strode out. This one was much, much larger, with a beautiful coat of thick, silvery fur and eyes that gleamed bright in the quickly dimming light. It moved so gracefully. So elegantly.

  “He’s the boss,” Tab gabbled on nervously. “I can sorta tell. He’s the boss wolf.”

  “Sssh. Keep quiet.”

  The silver wolf came to the line of wolves and goggled at us, twisting his head one way and then the other. Weighing us up.

  It was at that point that something jangled inside my head. It was something the Professor had once said in a storytelling session many years ago when I was tiny. Something I hadn’t forgotten.

  “Don’t be scared,” I said to Tab.

  “Eh?”

  “I said don’t be scared.”

  “Well, that’s easier said than done, ain’t it?”

  “If he sees you’re scared, he’ll attack. The Professor told me. Sometimes, if they think you’re not scared, animals will leave you alone.”

  “The Professor?” Tab sighed. “Excuse me for not getting too excited, but when was the last time that dotty old brainbox had to wrestle with a wolf?” He shuffled Mouse tighter under his arm. “If they do start eating us, can I just say it was nice knowing yer.”

  “Look, just listen to me. Stare the boss wolf in the eye. Tell yourself you’re not scared and stare him in the eye.”

  Tab picked up on the seriousness in my voice. “Okay.”

  The silver wolf watched us straighten ourselves up. It was hard peering directly into the eyes of something so dangerous, knowing that the tiniest slip could make everything worse. But both Tab and I stood there and tried our hardest to look as strong and as brave as we could. After all, there was nothing else we could do.

  The mist wisped across the scene and time seemed to stand like a statue. The wolves stopped moving and I think I stopped breathing.

  “Gurrraa.” One of the other wolves roared and bared its teeth, making me jump slightly.

  “RRRooooohh.” The silver wolf roared even louder, and the first wolf seemed to skulk off back to the churchyard, its head bowed low.

  My hands were white around the handlebars of my bike, but my face remained still. Unswerving.

  “Wha’s going on?” Tab spoke out of the side of his mouth. “I’m staring so hard, me eyes are weeping. Wha’s happening?”

  I didn’t answer. I breathed in deeply and filled myself up to my fullest, my cold eyes fast on those of the large silver wolf.

  Suddenly, another one of the wolves turned and peeled itself away from the circle, slowly padding through the gate towards the church. Then another
did the same. Then another. Like gray angels drifting back into the graveyard.

  “Are they—”

  “They’re leaving us alone,” I said, hardly able to believe it. “They’re going away.”

  The last two walked alongside each other—their bodies solid walls of muscle and fur—following the others.

  There was only the silver left.

  “You sure he’s not just saving us for himself?”

  I glared hard, my heart more alive than ever, my head more determined. I kept telling myself that I was strong and I was brave and that I was definitely going to see the horses. No matter what. Nothing was going to stop me.

  The silver looked from Tab to me then back again. A small grumble from the back of his throat, and then …

  He walked away. Steadily and deliberately, he joined his pack without turning to look at us.

  “I don’t believe it.” Tab was still talking out of the side of his mouth.

  “Come on,” I said. “He’s let us go.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And we’d better show him respect by going right now. Not too quickly, though. We don’t want them to catch on to just how nervous we really are.”

  Tab dropped Mouse to the ground and we both started to push our bikes slowly away. The wolves in the churchyard paid us no more attention as we worked our way gently out of the town in the dying light of dusk. As we went, I began to think how dignified and noble some animals were. Creatures of honor.

  So unlike many humans.

  chapter 21

  THE DRAGON

  WHEN THE RAIN started, I panicked.

  “We need to get inside somewhere.” I waved at Tab. “Somewhere safe.” The first few drops had started to hit the road and the rumble in the darkening clouds directly above us suggested there was a great deal more to follow.

  “Safe?” Tab asked. “It’s only a drop of rain.”

  “But the rain is dangerous.” We were out in open countryside and there were no houses nearby. “We need to hurry! We need to find somewhere to hide.”

  “Calm down. It’s not going to hurt you.”