Tall Tales From Pitch End

by Nigel McDowell

  Then the Enforcer went further – ‘Why doesn’t himself do it?’

  ‘Would ye be quiet,’ said the other, the one bearing Nic. ‘Ye saw what he did to them statues? That’ll be yer head if ye’re not careful.’

  But, Bruno on his back, the Enforcer went on with, ‘He can’t hear ye!’

  ‘Ye don’t know that.’

  Small pause.

  ‘So bloody heavy.’

  ‘Heavy for you, Dennis,’ said the other. ‘Not me. I could carry anything.’

  Dennis Wire? thought Bruno.

  ‘Oh aye,’ said Dennis. ‘Sure ye could. Always acting the big man, eh?’

  They laughed a little.

  ‘That one ye’re carrying is skin and bone – try carrying stupid bloody Atlas,’ hissed Dennis.

  Definitely Dennis Wire. Is the Temperate so needful, Bruno thought, that he’s recruiting from those not even Come-Of-Age?

  Dennis swore, adjusting Bruno on his back who was given a glimpse ahead – a choice of tunnels three. Bruno remembered this crossroads; he and Nic had come from the way in the middle, that lead to the cascade, and then on to the Cavern of the Forgotten…

  Dennis made a decision – ‘No further’ – and Bruno was dropped, head striking rock, mask biting into his face. ‘Wait here five minutes,’ he heard Dennis say. ‘A wee break just.’

  ‘That weren’t the Marshall’s orders,’ said the other Enforcer, looking ahead. ‘I’m keeping going, not getting left behind here. I don’t wanna be—’

  The Enforcer’s words ended.

  Bruno felt a shudder beneath him and he squirmed onto his back, facing the wall. He watched as a crack began there, small shoot, then snaking, arcing up and over and he struggled more to turn and see – it widened, watched by the Enforcers. They looked at each other, and then raced towards the passageway on the right –

  ‘Quick-smart!’ cried the Enforcer with Nic, and he dived into the opening as rock fell, closing the tunnel behind him. Dust ballooned and trickled through the gaps of Bruno’s mask, applying rough kisses to his lips, eyes.

  He listened to Dennis cough, swear again and then revert to complaint: ‘How the hell are we gonna find a way back into town now?’

  The single sense Bruno had was hearing – he listened, and heard something other than Dennis’s harsh breathing. Voices, some furtive movement?

  ‘Who’s there?’ asked Dennis. ‘Atlas, that you muttering?’

  But Bruno couldn’t reply, jaw screwed so tight behind brass. He attempted to struggle, testing the bonds around his wrists, but immediately came pain, sure bleeding. Then things began to clear, some seeing allowed in the space they occupied.

  ‘If that’s ye talking, Atlas, ye better be stopping,’ said Dennis. ‘I’ll be bloody putting a few bullets in ye, don’t think I won’t!’

  ‘Excuse me, son, but we’ll be having none of that.’

  Dennis’s head snapped around and he stumbled on stone, looking for the source of the voice, rifle flapping on its strap, evading his hands.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he said. ‘I’ll shoot if ye don’t show yerself!’

  ‘I said there’ll be no need for that,’ said the voice. A female voice.

  ‘Show yerself!’ shouted Dennis.

  Bruno tried to move, see more, but couldn’t. He couldn’t help but think of the Undying Voices … Then once more the threat, and the answer –

  Dennis: ‘I said bloody well come out or I’ll start shooting!’

  Voice: ‘No need. Not for the sake of a lowly, rightly-obedient Widow.’

  Curiosity pushed Bruno onto his front. He looked up and saw a figure in black.

  ‘Back!’ shouted Dennis, but he stumbled back himself, hand going to the wall. ‘Ye’re supposed to be locked up,’ he said.

  ‘Seems we’ve escaped.’

  This was another voice Dennis twisted on the spot to see. Another Widow, standing in the passageway to the left.

  ‘Ye think ye can be scaring?’ said Dennis. He wiped his top lip. ‘Is that what ye think?’

  ‘Yes,’ said a third voice, another appearing Widow. ‘It is indeed.’

  ‘Well,’ said Dennis. ‘I’ll tell ye how it’ll be going: come quietly and I’ll say ye were rightly-decent and gave yerselves up without a fight. Either that, or …’ He cocked the rifle.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the Widow who’d first appeared, ‘this isn’t working out as we’d hoped at all, is it, ladies?’

  As though they’d been hewn, each stepped from blank stone, five Widows emerging from all passageways, surrounding Dennis, all agreeing with the first Widow: ‘Indeed, not as we’d hoped.’

  ‘Thank you for yer rightly-decent offer,’ said the Widow who’d first appeared, ‘but under the present circumstances, we’ll have to be on our way.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Dennis, and Bruno heard a satisfaction. ‘Ye asked for it.’

  Dennis aimed at the first Widow, shut one eye and tightened his finger around the trigger.

  Behind his father’s mask Bruno tried to cry out as the Widow lifted her hand, free of its traditional lace bindings. The bullet that left the barrel of Dennis’s rifle went barely an inch before it was reduced. In a tick it was dust, the memory of any threat coiling in the air like a failed insult.

  She used her Talent, thought Bruno.

  ‘Ye devious hag,’ said Dennis, but any venom in his voice was diluted. ‘If ye think I’m bloody well gonna let some stupid Widow get the better of me then by Pitch ye’ve another thing coming to ye, so ye better just—’

  A thud. Dennis fell beside Bruno, who looked up and saw a Widow standing with a large rock in her hand.

  ‘Widow Yeats,’ said the Widow who’d ended the bullet from Dennis’s rifle. ‘Was that rightly-necessary?’

  ‘My apologies,’ replied the Widow holding the rock. ‘But he was really starting to hack me off.’

  Bruno heard a murmur from the Widows – it took him a moment to know it as laughter. Then he felt hands lift him, settling him against the wall.

  ‘What have they done to ye?’ said one Widow that kneeled before him. Bruno wanted recognition of a voice – there were five Widows, not six, so was one of these his mother?

  ‘Help undo the bonds, Widow Grafter,’ the Widow in front of him said. ‘Widow Bowen, Widow Friel – keep watch at the tunnels. Widow Yeats, tie that Enforcer up.’

  Wordless agreement. Widow Grafter crouched behind Bruno and he felt not fingers but surely a careful Talent working to unpick the brass threads that held him. Bruno felt her soft breath on the back of his neck, and words – ‘I meant to trap them both in here. What are we gonna do about the other one that got away?’

  ‘That’ll have to wait,’ said the Widow in front of Bruno, the evident leader. ‘But this mask can’t be waiting.’

  Then something – some small weakening in the Widow’s tone that told of concern close to hurt. Was this her behind the veil? He watched her shake the sleeves of her robes down, wrists revealed – a white too delicate in the gloom – and she began to search the edge of the mask for some release.

  Bruno waited. Had never felt less like waiting.

  ‘I think,’ said the Widow, ‘this might be it.’

  A momentary tightening around the jaw and Bruno tensed, mask squeezing until he would’ve shouted Stop! if he could. Then his father’s face fell away, two halves landing hollow on stone, at the same moment the brass threads leaving his wrists.

  ‘It’s alright, son,’ the Widow who’d removed the mask told him. ‘It’s all going to be alright now.’ She held her arms open.

  Bruno opened his mouth, wanting to shout but settling instead for falling into the embrace of his mother.

  ‘Ye’re safe,’ she said, laying a hand on his forehead. ‘I have ye.’

  Bruno’s first word – ‘Nic.’

  ‘He’ll be long gone now with that other Enforcer,’ said his mother. ‘But don’t be worrying. We can leave now, get outta Pitch End forever and never be com
ing back.’

  Bruno eased away from his mother. His second word – ‘No.’

  His mother rose, stood tall above him – the forbidding, unknowable presence of a Pitch End Widow returned.

  ‘We must leave,’ she said. ‘Perhaps ye don’t understand. We had to fight our way out of the town hall where they’d been holding us. One of us, Widow Beckett,’ she paused, breathed in, ‘was killed in the escape. We can’t ever go back. I know ye feel ye need to help but this Rebel idea is long dead, Bruno.’

  ‘No,’ said Bruno, again. ‘It’s not the Rebels.’

  His fingers felt for the medallion at his throat, and at his touch it came away in his hand, chain broken. He held it, wondered about it. He felt the presence of the other Widows pressing close.

  ‘Then why?’ said his mother.

  ‘Because,’ said Bruno.

  ‘Because wouldn’t be enough for Bruno Atlas,’ said his mother. She sighed. ‘Not for my son, the boy with all the questions all the time. To be giving up on the chance to leave Pitch End for good? There must be a rightly-proper reason.’

  Bruno wondered at her tone: was it pride she was feeling for her disagreeable son? Or disbelief? Wry ridicule?

  ‘Because,’ Bruno said again. He paused, and then finally – ‘Nic is my friend.’

  He looked to his mother then. Her veil didn’t shift, didn’t indicate.

  ‘He’s my only friend,’ said Bruno. ‘The only one I’ve ever had.’

  And he stood, matching his mother’s height.

  A last pause, last sigh, and then she lifted her veil. Beneath she was younger than Bruno had come to imagine. And she was smiling. She said, ‘Well, that’s good enough reason for me. Change of plan,’ she told the other Widows. ‘We’re staying. Staying to fight.’

  More murmuring from the veils, but not laughter.

  ‘Bruno,’ said his mother. ‘It’s time ye met the other Widows of Pitch End – Widow Yeats, Widow Grafter, Widow Bowen and Widow Friel.’

  ‘Widow Atlas,’ said the one called Widow Grafter, immediately drawing closer, ‘how on earth do ye propose we move against the Temperate?’

  ‘Ha!’ went Widow Bowen. ‘How can we be planning anything against that man?’

  ‘Oh don’t,’ said Widow Friel. ‘We can be planning plenty – he’s nothing but big words and putting-on-airs!’

  ‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ said Widow Yeats, the one who had knocked out Dennis, and who stood closest to Bruno’s mother. ‘He has a Talent in him for words, Sara.’

  It took Bruno a moment to realise that his mother – so long known just as ‘Widow Atlas’ – was, before her husband died, called ‘Sara’. She said, ‘All fair points, ladies.’

  Bruno admired the debate of the women – fierce yet respectful; a discussion with fear and worry, but not trite disagreement for its own sake.

  ‘How will we even be getting back into Pitch End is another question,’ said Widow Grafter. ‘He’ll have the whole place covered, every nook and crack.’

  ‘Aye, every crack!’ repeated Widow Bowen.

  ‘We can fight well enough,’ said Widow Yeats, ‘but five Widows and a boy aren’t a match for the Elders and who knows how many Enforcers.’

  ‘Quiet!’ said Bruno.

  The word came out of him before he wanted it to, and loud. He shied a little, but a silence was brought anyway; a kind of attention Bruno had not known since he was ten turns, had stood in a playground ready to read, to be listened to.

  His mother was looking at him, waiting.

  ‘It’s for the children of Pitch End,’ Bruno told them. ‘What he’s planning to do to them all – that’s why we have to do it, no matter how difficult it is.’

  The Widows stood, quiet as though chastened, and still waiting.

  Bruno swallowed and said, ‘I have a plan.’

  XXXI

  The Imagination of Temperate Thomas

  ‘Why didn’t ye tell me that Da was a Rebel?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘Because, Bruno.’

  ‘Not good enough.’

  His mother smiled. ‘Because, I knew ye would’ve wanted to fight. And I wanted to save ye from all that. If I could.’

  Bruno held back for a moment, and then had to say: ‘Much good it did.’

  His mother didn’t reply. Her smile subsided.

  ‘It was too dangerous,’ she said. ‘Ye’ve no idea how afeared I was about it all coming out. About yer father being a Rebel with his mate Nic Delby. That the two of them had been scheming since before me and yer father married, even long before Saint Jonathan Bloom led them astray.’ She shook her head. ‘Not that they needed much leading, but they worshipped that man so they did.’

  Bruno said nothing. He held the Rebel medallion in his fist and glanced behind – the Widows were their usual single line, Sara Atlas leading, Bruno beside. The tunnel narrowed when it liked. Every step meant they had to move in more of a hunch, the ground rising, sloping towards the surface.

  Bruno worried that his time for questions was draining away: ‘Were ye ever a Rebel yerself?’

  ‘No,’ his mother said.

  ‘Did they not let ye join?’

  ‘I didn’t want to be,’ she said, with such certainty, like each question Bruno put had been long-expected, answers long-prepared. ‘I didn’t want the Elder way, but didn’t see sense in fighting either. Especially not when I had you to think of. But in the end it was yer father and the way of the Rebels, or none.’

  In the end, Bruno mouthed. He looked ahead and saw meagre light.

  ‘The last time I saw yer father,’ his mother said, the space between them brightening, ‘was a week before the fire. It was the last push, Bloom wanting them to fight stronger than ever, try and overthrow the Elders. They knew they were losing, knew they had maybe one last chance. Why else did they prepare so well? Putting that army of Sentries in the mountains, doing what they did to those children.’

  ‘Ye know about all that?’ asked Bruno.

  ‘I knew. It was what yer father talked about most in the end, wanting to make sure younger ones could keep on fighting even if they couldn’t. He wanted to do it to you.’

  His mother stopped before Bruno did. They let the other Widows pass, and waited until they were alone.

  ‘I wouldn’t let him do that to ye,’ said his mother. ‘Sulked like a child about it, then walked out, never came back. I never saw him again.’

  Her face might have been veiled again for all the emotion it betrayed. Bruno saw how far his mother had travelled from showing hurt, how she’d distanced herself – the past was a place better left. And there was nothing Bruno could say that would lead her back there.

  ‘I welcomed being a Widow after that,’ she said. ‘Kept me hidden, safe, and kept everyone in Pitch End out.’

  ‘Including me,’ said Bruno, and a spark of anger made him say, ‘In the town hall when I was being accused, ye just kept quiet.’

  His mother looked away.

  ‘No one can see what a Widow is thinking,’ said Sara Atlas. ‘Not even those Elders. We kept silent because it was the only thing we had. It’s not such a terrible thing sometimes to be ignored – no one expects anything from ye.’

  ‘And what do children do when their mothers ignore them?’

  ‘All the Widows lost their children,’ said Bruno’s mother. ‘That Temperate took them. Don’t ask why – ye know the answer, Bruno. He knew that no one would care. And would a Widow ever be for saying?’

  ‘He didn’t take me,’ said Bruno.

  ‘Because he knew,’ said his mother, ‘that maybe ye could be put to a use someday. Son of the last man killed by the Rebels – a rightly-powerful symbol. Ye could be a thing of hope for Pitch End. Or not.’ And Bruno knew what his mother was thinking, for once: the Discussion Chamber, and what he had been used for, in the end, by the Temperate.

  They had a few more moments – silence, stranded – and
then Bruno’s mother began to move.

  ‘Why did Da leave us?’ asked Bruno. He still stood, not following, and then asked, as though somehow they were part of the same riddle, ‘Why does that Temperate do these things?’

  ‘Why else?’ said his mother, her tone the same – resignation, things already long-decided. ‘The same reason all men do foolish things: they think they’re making the world a better place.’

  Again, she walked. This time Bruno followed. And moments later, when he thought back – when he realised its absence and wondered – he knew that somewhere in the tunnel he had stopped holding his father’s Rebel medallion. He had left it behind, and he didn’t consider going back to seek it.

  Only minutes more underground, and then they were free.

  Bruno pulled himself from the tunnel – into a hollow tree with insides damp and rotten. Then out, and he stepped into morning, but to see the darkest sight –

  A single storm cloud was suspended over Pitch End, and it was a nightmare of a thing to Bruno’s waking eyes. Swelling, a vast heart furious with noise and threat, it was expanding to the east, west, north and south. He murmured, ‘No,’ and the storm answered – boasting with black and thunder. Lightning surged inside like excitement. Bruno doubted it could grow any more. And again it answered – towering further, accumulating in peaks and cliffs, towers and spires, claws, teeth – mountain, fortress, monster.

  Bruno watched. All they could do was watch, shrouded Widows like snippets of what was above. Bruno noticed they still held their customary Pitch End formation on the mountainside – polite line, polite-looking. The storm roared, and they obediently cowered.

  Bruno felt his mother beside him.

  ‘It’s him,’ said Bruno. He had to raise his voice to hear himself. ‘The Temperate is imagining this storm. He has enough Talent in him to make it real. Just like The Book of Black & White taught.’

  Bruno watched the Widows turn, veils in a fluster of flapping, and he turned too, facing his mother. She’d shut her eyes to it all.

  ‘Mam,’ said Bruno. ‘We can’t leave. Please. We have to stop him.’

  He watched his mother breathe in, and then nod. She opened her eyes.