The Black North

by Nigel McDowell

  ‘I am,’ said Oona. She didn’t move – she wasn’t ready, not yet.

  ‘There’s no return after this,’ said Merrigutt. ‘Once you cross, that’s it. It’s only on, my girl. Only on and into the Black. You understand?’

  Oona said, ‘Aye. I understand it.’ She looked to the bridge – so many places to fall through. Too many!

  ‘Some kind of North magic on the thing,’ said Merrigutt.

  ‘Then you need to help me,’ said Oona. She heard the plea in her own voice. ‘Will you?’ Merrigutt did her shifting on Oona’s shoulder.

  ‘Start walking on,’ said the jackdaw. ‘And I hope the Sorrowful Lady Herself is watching over us!’

  30

  Oona tried for the fabled deep breath but couldn’t get much air into herself. A gasp, bit of a rasp, and then she settled her hands on rope. And she may as well have taken hold of the bridge and shaken it for the way the thing suddenly swayed and shivered and under her fingers she felt more fibres give.

  ‘Better say a prayer, my girl,’ whispered Merrigutt.

  Oona made another attempt at a deep breath – swift gasp-sigh-gasp. Then she said, ‘All right: Sorrowful Lady, if you’re any way real and not just some miserable-looking statue we like to have in the corner of the cottage, then some help would be bloody gratefully taken right now.’

  ‘Suppose it’s better than nothing,’ said Merrigutt. And Oona took first steps.

  ‘Wait!’ said Merrigutt. ‘Stay a minute.’

  ‘Why?’ said Oona. ‘We’ve no time for waiting.’

  ‘Did you know that if you fall into the Divide you fall forever? Ever hear that story? No? Well it’s true, so just stay.’

  The jackdaw left, circling and keeping her distance from the Divide. Then she came suddenly down and settled with wings still outstretched on a place where no plank was apparent. And, strange thing – Merrigutt was held. Then away she went again, crying down to Oona, ‘There’s a place to stand there! Concealed by some sly magic, so it is!’

  Some more words Oona said to herself: ‘Sly magic. So there’s somewhere to be standing where there doesn’t look to be anywhere to stand. What does that say about where there does seem to be something to stand on?’

  So what did it look like, this now altered way ahead? Oona had a dozen (now known as seeable) steps to follow, and then she would reach that first gap, the first place where Merrigutt had found something invisible to settle on.

  ‘Right,’ she said, and then walked. Took slow steps and soon reached that first opening in the bridge.

  ‘Quickly!’ called Merrigutt from somewhere above.

  ‘I’ll give you quick,’ Oona muttered to herself. ‘Bloody bird.’

  She sucked in every breath and chewed on each lip. Then on. But it was the hardest thing to defy instinct, for Oona to move her foot to a place where there was nothing, with all her good senses screaming, No! But when she set her first foot on empty space, it held. She brought all her weight together, both feet: still held.

  Oona breathed out. Then she did the worst thing – she looked down. Silence like it could suffocate her reached up and enveloped and all Oona’s insides churned and she was suddenly snatching for any breath the way a spoon snatches at the bottom of an empty bowl. Oona wasn’t afraid of heights – in Drumbroken she had taunts and mocking for anyone who was. But this wasn’t height like she knew it: the worst that could happen if you fell from a tree was broken bones and shame, things a bit sore, but worst that could happen at the Divide was –

  ‘Oona!’ cried Merrigutt. ‘Quick – look there behind you!’

  Oona looked, but wished she hadn’t – the first dozen planks she’d crossed were softening, were splinter and dust and then falling with a slow whisper and Oona shut her eyes and stayed, expecting to fall too. No prayers came into her head quick enough.

  She didn’t fall, though.

  ‘Don’t just stand there!’ she heard Merrigutt shout.

  Oona opened her eyes – the way ahead from feet to far distance was only four planks, places between promising nothing. But were there more invisible places to stand or not, concealed by magic maybe, or not? All sense had been dispelled.

  Merrigutt returned to Oona’s shoulder. The old bird sounded exhausted as she said, ‘Thought something like this might happen.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning,’ said Oona.

  ‘I did warn you!’ said Merrigutt. ‘I’ve been warning all the way from Drumbroken! The very worst of North magic, this is. We’ll have to cross together, it’s the only way now.’

  Oona’s next step was simple enough, she supposed: somewhere visible to walk. But she didn’t move.

  ‘Look,’ said Merrigutt, some softness being attempted in her tone. ‘This is as difficult as we make it. It’s trying to make a fool out of you, make you too afraid to think right – don’t be letting it.’

  Oona Kavanagh didn’t like the idea of being outsmarted by a bridge any more than Merrigutt did. So she nodded, and then moved on. But sure enough, something strong and spiteful was at work: the bridge wasn’t getting its way so it went its own, swinging with sudden force and Oona was thrown from her feet and forwards – Merrigutt’s cry: ‘Oona!’

  Fell –

  eyes shut –

  middle of nothing and tumbling and then –

  collided –

  held what she could hold –

  tight –

  Her hearing sang shrill notes –

  heart screaming, Please!

  Pleading –

  She breathed in –

  throat dry –

  breathed-out-breathed-in.

  Cold tears stung each cheek.

  She just breathed.

  ‘You all right there, my girl?’ Merrigutt asked. The jackdaw was still on her shoulder.

  Oona didn’t answer. No energy for speech – opening her eyes was enough effort. And when she did, everything she saw was sharpened by fear: the weave of the rope unravelling, the pattern of dog-roses on the sleeve of the dress she’d made at the hearthside at home. The familiar tangle and split of lines on her palm – the detail was all too much and made her stomach want to empty what little food it had in it. Oona swallowed – another simple thing, usually, but it was such an effort. And she wanted more than much else to be somewhere else.

  Then she looked further –

  Ahead was nothing but open space. Not a single piece of wood was left to stand on. Oona lay, held her satchel tight and said, ‘Now what the (swear) am I gonna do now?’

  31

  ‘This is what it wanted,’ said Merrigutt. ‘It lures people out and then takes away all places to stand on, or seems to. Leaves you stranded. Most people probably just fling themselves off, too frightened to go on!’

  Oona heard the jackdaw’s words, but from a distance: she had too much in her own head to think of anything else. She swallowed, and said only to herself: I’m not flinging myself anywhere. And somehow Oona was on her feet again, all of her shivering but standing anyway.

  Merrigutt dropped and settled on Oona’s bare foot.

  First thing – Oona’s hands went to the rope on either side.

  Merrigutt dipped her beak towards the dark – towards nothing but that malign silence – and touched something.

  ‘Solid step, it seems like,’ said Merrigutt.

  Oona bid her hands to slide and her feet to lift and they complied, and she found somewhere to exist for a minute more.

  And the next?

  Merrigutt tried and found nothing there for standing on, but then there was something fresh to panic about –

  ‘He said to check the bridge, said the girl might try to cross into the North!’

  ‘Nah! Who’d be fool enough to do that?’

  Again! thought Oona. Fool – and this time the word from a hooligan Invader!

  But before Merrigutt could say a thing Oona breathed, ‘I know – hurry and go quicker.’

  On she went, faster in her testing and t
rying for somewhere to stand then shuffling forwards. But the voices of the Invaders, closer –

  ‘Better check anyway! If we can find the thing in this mist and don’t just fall in!’

  ‘We need more time,’ said Merrigutt. ‘Whatever happens – keep going.’

  Once more the jackdaw was off into the air. Oona watched Merrigutt turn towards the South and slip into the mist, gone. Oona listened – surely some shouts from the Invaders? Then certainly gunshots. But Oona had her way ahead – she faced the North, its wall of Black mist.

  She watched her feet, moving them faster in many steps.

  She looked up – she wasn’t a bit closer to the other side. No nearer the end of it at all! How many paces had she taken and still she was where she was? Then Oona knew the true and proper trick of the bridge, and it was this: there was no way across. And if she tried to return to the South? She’d find it just as impossible to reach that end. No way over, no way back.

  ‘Run on, Oona!’

  Mist hurled Merrigutt back but behind were the Invaders, calling and gun-firing –

  Only one thing left: Oona took the Loam Stone from her satchel and begged knowledge, craving nightmares. She shut her eyes, the Stone hot, and saw: others attempting the crossing, becoming stranded like herself then falling, surrendering …

  Invaders –

  ‘There! She’s on the bridge!’

  ‘Don’t shoot! We need to get her alive!’

  ‘How? There’s nothing to bloody walk on!’

  ‘It’s a Wander of Faith, they call it!’

  ‘I can bloody well see why!’

  One last nightmare: man and wife on the bridge, wife running across with eyes shut and not falling until she felt land under her feet, landing on the other side. But the husband was too frightened to move. Even as his wife tried to coax him over, he stayed where he was.

  Oona opened her eyes as Merrigutt fell heavy onto her shoulder. Oona said, ‘I know what to do now. Hold on.’

  The Loam Stone held high, her hands leaving the rope, Oona closed her eyes, breathing in, and ran, not thinking of anything except the wife on her way across, believing and needing and dreaming as the pointless shouting from an Invader went, ‘Stop her! She’s getting away!’

  Then something snagged and Oona stumbled and fell … flat on her front onto something solid. She opened her eyes and saw dark: the Black of the North was beneath her. Looked up: Black mist around her. A moment, and then some laughter rose in her throat, low and breathless and relieved.

  Merrigutt said, ‘I don’t know how you did that, but the tale can wait for later. Now let’s get the hell away from this place!’

  Agreed, thought Oona. And long before Merrigutt had finished with her hurry and demand for haste, Oona was on her way, running. And the Invaders – the proper fools! thought Oona – were soon left distant, all their pointless bellowing and threat dying quick on darkened air.

  32

  It should’ve been day (and might’ve been somewhere), but the scene looked closer to dusk. Darkness pressed close, clinging to everywhere: palms and lips, sneaking under eyelids, fingernails and toenails. Oona looked for her feet and thought that if she stopped they’d slip invisible, no difference between their black and the ground they were walking. She had to move with care, the ground broken and uneven, gouged with dry gullies and parched trenches. She licked her lips – foul taste. Picked her nose and what she excavated made her stomach twist.

  ‘When will it bloody end?’ asked Oona. ‘This black mist – just gonna go on and on?’

  ‘Not mist,’ said Merrigutt.

  Oona began with a few words, ‘What do you –?’ but the rest was lost to a sharp and sudden cough, her whole body making a horror of the sound – a hack like a dull blade against wood.

  Merrigutt said, ‘Don’t bother speaking. Not here. Keep the mouth closed. No mist I know chokes. Doesn’t leave such darkness on you neither.’ The jackdaw shook its wings and added more black to the air. ‘No,’ said Merrigutt. ‘This is something else, my girl.’

  Oona walked, lips bitten in, quietened.

  Then came a sound like a thousand thunders, everything shaking and Oona staggering, so unprepared for anything but her slow onward walking. She fell, tumbled and tried to hold tight – to what? Coarse grass shorn low was all her fingers could find.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Oona cried.

  A low croak from the jackdaw: ‘The remaking of the North.’

  The ground beneath Oona began to rear and she recognised the same magic Merrigutt had used to summon their solitary soldier on the approach to Innislone. The jackdaw was in the air then, crying, ‘It’s not me doing this bit of magic! Run! Follow my flight!’

  Oona’s eyes went up: jackdaw in the sky to lead her, the ground was soon a slope to scramble up, and then suddenly there was nothing beneath Oona but a long and surely-to-the-Sorrowful-Lady fatal fall –

  ‘Just jump!’ Merrigutt called.

  Oona leapt, and landed on colder and wetter and more barren ground, somersaulting, a smell like ashes clawing at her nostrils, filling her mouth. When she finally came to her stop she was shadowed. Oona looked up.

  Like the bog-soldier, a figure towered high. But unlike the bog-soldier too: this one was taller than what Merrigutt had made, a height Oona couldn’t compare with anything. Nothing in her life spent between the slopes of Drumbroken valley could have prepared her: to Oona, there, then, the figure was the tallest thing in existence.

  Merrigutt returned close but stayed in flight to shout, ‘Don’t just lie there – keep going!’ Oona crept on palms and knees until she felt far enough away to return to her feet and run.

  She couldn’t stop a glance back – a raw abyss was left in the ground where the soldier had peeled itself free …

  ‘I said hurry and stop gawping!’ cried Merrigutt, and the jackdaw came closer to pluck at Oona’s hand. But Oona had stopped. Ahead, as high as Black sky and in strides half a horizon wide, more figures summoned from the earth were wandering, staggering like things freed from unwanted graves. Arms hanging low, heads dipped, two rough wounds for their eyes shown by what little light was in the sky.

  ‘Look out!’ cried Merrigutt.

  The figure Oona had leapt from came stalking up behind and Oona threw herself sideways to avoid it. It passed, with a thud for each step that made her heart tremble and eyes quiver.

  ‘Muddgloggs,’ said Merrigutt, alighting on Oona’s shoulder.

  ‘What?’ said Oona. ‘Aren’t they the same things as you made at Innislone?’

  ‘Not a bit of it!’ said Merrigutt. ‘This is a more powerful magic than I could ever summon. This is the King’s dark work. He’s using these Muddgloggs to remake the North. Changing things so much on the Isle that no one will know where they are any more.’

  And this, Oona knew, these Muddgloggs – they were the cause of all the stirred-up Black.

  She watched as one distant Muddglogg suddenly relented, and fell with the same thunder as Oona had heard minutes before, rejoining the earth. The impact made Oona cower. So what was the fallen Muddglogg then? New hill, new mount? Part, anyway, of a newer landscape.

  Merrigutt said, ‘I’ve been in the North so much of my life, but I don’t know how we’re going to find our way anywhere now.’

  ‘Let’s keep going,’ said Oona. ‘First thing we need to find is that village Billy O’Riley talked about. Might be our only chance, or best chance anyway.’

  ‘That’s if it hasn’t been carried off somewhere else,’ said Merrigutt.

  Oona was saved from reply – some other sound was surrounding them, approaching …

  ‘What now?’ said Merrigutt.

  Oona listened. She said, ‘It’s singing.’ Then listened more: a tune and words she knew too well. She told the jackdaw, ‘It’s The Song of the Divided Isle. It’s the Cause.’

  33

  Their song went like this in the near silence –

  ‘They came in with t
he tide and up with the dawn –

  Conquered the North (that didn’t take long)!

  Put bullets in bones and blood in the ground –

  Killed where they liked (and claimed all they found)!’

  ‘This way,’ said Oona. Maybe the Cause would know things, like what had happened to the prisoners taken from the South? The children being taken to the King? Maybe about Morris? Maybe. She listened. Then said, ‘This way here,’ and followed –

  ‘So they began up North and burned it raw –

  Eyes wept red (the Black all they saw)!

  Wounded the earth and split the Isle –

  A darkness Dividing (mile upon mile)!’

  Her feet met a rise like something only newly dug, disturbed – where one of the Muddgloggs had collapsed, Oona was sure.

  ‘Be careful now,’ said Merrigutt.

  Fighting against sinking feet, Oona reached the top of the rise, breathless, and looked down.

  ‘Is this the White Road?’ asked Oona.

  ‘Used to be,’ said Merrigutt.

  White was Black – darker smear through dark enough.

  ‘Won’t be any good to follow anyway,’ said Merrigutt. ‘Not now with the King remaking so much of the place.’

  But it looked like the Cause were for following it: Oona saw shadow and smoke stirred by their slow procession. Their faces were unclear, but Oona couldn’t stop herself seeking Morris … no, still too far for spying. She considered the slope that led down to the White-now-Black Road, and wondered.

  ‘No,’ said Merrigutt, knowing well the girl whose shoulder she’d been perched on for many dark miles. ‘You shouldn’t go to them.’

  ‘They might help,’ said Oona. ‘Might know.’

  ‘No! Nothing we can’t find out on our own, my girl.’

  Oona looked again – the Cause were closer …

  ‘Stay put for now,’ said Merrigutt. ‘I’ve got a feeling about this lot, and it’s not a good one.’ Then the Cause were so close they’d soon see Oona.