Flight of the Outcasts

by Alister E. McGrath

  “Are we—oh,” she said. “Still on the bird, are we?”

  “Afraid so,” said Peter. “But something’s beginning to happen, I think. Look.” He pointed to a spot just below the horizon, and Julia could make out a flock of birds swarming above the waves. Gulls. “They wouldn’t come this far out to sea unless there were land nearby,” said Peter. A sudden inspiration striking him, Peter reached into his pocket and retrieved the compass he had been given by his father. He flicked open the top and squinted in the dim morning light. “North,” he said. “North by northeast. What’s north of Aedyn?”

  “Khemia,” said Julia. “It must be Khemia.”

  They watched silently as the sky began to brighten. Peter’s eyelids were heavy and might have begun to droop had they not seen something new on the horizon: a huge bank of clouds, tinted red by the dawn. As they drew closer they could see the jagged tip of a mountain jutting through the clouds like a knife.

  The falcon banked to the left as they approached, beginning a steep descent that brought a new round of screaming from the direction of its talons. Peter held tight to its neck and Julia held tight to Peter as they fell from the sky. They seemed to be heading straight for a forest—straight into the trees. Julia squeezed her eyes shut and screamed straight into Peter’s ear, quite certain that they were about to crash. She felt the rushing of leaves and twigs around her and was shaken by a thump! as the falcon landed, and she and Peter tumbled off its back onto soft, cool sand. Louisa lay a few feet away in a clump of reeds—it looked as though she’d been dropped just before the falcon landed. She had fainted again. Seeing her stepsister collapsed in a heap on the ground, Julia breathed a sigh of relief. At least she wasn’t screaming … for now.

  Peter had tumbled onto his stomach in the sand, and he raised himself to his feet to have a look around. The place seemed deserted enough: a natural harbor, close to the sea and surrounded by a grove of trees. They could conceal themselves quite easily here if the need arose. He stretched his arms above his head, then reached out a hand to help Julia to her feet.

  “I suppose we ought to try to wake her,” said Peter grimly, nodding in Louisa’s direction.

  “It’s been rotten for her,” Julia agreed, and picked her way through the reeds to the water’s edge. She peered carefully in both directions. There was no one in sight, and she cupped her hands together and bent to scoop up a handful of water. She trod carefully back the way she had come and dumped the water unceremoniously all over her stepsister’s face.

  Louisa woke with a splutter and a gasp. Peter, seeing that she was likely to start screaming again, clapped a hand tight over her mouth. “Now look here,” he said, teeth clenched. “I’ll take my hand away if you promise to be quiet—very quiet. We don’t know exactly where we are and we don’t know who our friends or enemies are, so we need to stay hidden, and most important of all you are not to scream. Understand? You have to be very, very quiet.”

  Louisa nodded beneath his grip, and Peter took his hand away. “Very quiet,” he said again, and Louisa pushed herself up and wiped a hand across her eyes. She’d been crying.

  “I didn’t want to come here,” she said. “I never wanted to come to this beastly place. I only wanted to see where you were running to.”

  “You were trying to get us in trouble,” Julia corrected, but Louisa ignored her and went on.

  “And you brought me here, not a soul for miles, no one who knows how to get me home, and maybe enemies, and that horrid bird taking me all across an ocean in its claws—oh it’s awful, just awful!” And she began to cry again. They were not, it must be noted, quiet tears.

  Peter heaved a world-weary sigh and looked over at the falcon, who had been waiting very patiently at the edge of the clearing. It had cocked its head and was watching Louisa in a curious manner. It opened its beak and gave another one of its shrill, screeching squawks.

  “I wish it could talk,” Julia said. “I wonder what it might tell us about all of this.”

  “Nothing!” sobbed Louisa. “It wouldn’t say a thing, because it’s a horrid, beastly bird and if Bertie were here he would shoot it!” Her voice was getting louder, and Julia thought she had probably forgotten the part about remaining silent. The falcon flapped its wings once, twice, cocking its head to the other side, and Louisa gave a soft whimper and scrambled away to the cover of the reeds. Peter sighed again and ran a hand through his wind-tousled hair. He had absolutely no idea what to do.

  “I suppose we’ll have to scout out the land,” he told Julia. “We can find out if the ship has arrived with the prisoners, and what they’re doing with them.” Julia nodded, then hesitated as they both looked at Louisa’s weeping form.

  It was quiet for a long moment.

  “We’ll help her,” Peter said finally. “We can’t just stay here.” He took his father’s compass out of his pocket, flicked it open, studied it for a brief moment, and pointed to the right. “That way,” he said. He picked up the satchel of food—what remained of it — and Julia, deciding not to question Peter’s sense of direction, went over to the reeds to help Louisa to her feet.

  “Come on,” she said to her stepsister. “It’s time for us to go.”

  The going was hard—much harder than it had been back in Aedyn. There was no path to speak of, and all they had to go on was Peter’s compass. They found themselves crawling over huge boulders and ducking under fallen trees, and it wasn’t long before all three of them were covered from head to toe in mud and scratches and bites from the insects that swarmed around them. Louisa’s complaints had taken on a desperate, screeching tone that meant she was not far from tears. Julia, who had believed she hated nothing in the world so much as heights, was discovering that in fact she hated the buzzing whine of Khemia’s insects a great deal more, and did not spare a thought for her stepsister. And Peter stayed focused on the terrain, moving slowly but always to the east.

  As they walked they began to smell something rotten in the air. It grew worse as they continued trudging over the rough terrain, and the children found that they were all holding their breath, taking gasping breaths of stagnant air just when their lungs were ready to burst.

  “Oh, it’s horrid,” cried Louisa at last. “It smells like something rotten and dead.”

  “It’s sulfur,” said Peter. “It must be coming from the mine. Here …” He stopped and took the satchel he’d been carrying off his shoulder, rummaging about in it for a moment before retrieving a bright green woolen scarf. He thrust it at Louisa. “Tie this around your face. It’ll be warm, but it’ll cut some of the smell.” She took it without a word and tied it in a clumsy knot at the back of her head. Julia noticed that she’d managed to tie a great deal of hair into it as well.

  The smell grew even more dank and choking as they continued, and the wet heat hung around them like a blanket. Peter, Julia, and Louisa all privately thought that they had never in their lives been quite so miserable. And just as they were thinking it, the situation became a good deal worse.

  A fallen tree trunk was lying across their path. There was only a narrow space between the tree and the ground, but the trunk must have been six feet across—too thick for any of them to easily climb over it. Peter was just about to drop down and crawl underneath when the earth opened up in front of him.

  There was a sound like screaming as the ground broke away and steam poured out of the fissure. It smelled of something rotten that had been concealed in the earth far too long, and Julia thought—though she did not remember it until later—that she had heard words in the screaming.

  Peter had, not for the first time, gone absolutely white with terror. A few more feet, a bit quicker under that fallen tree trunk, and the fissure would have opened right under his feet. He closed his eyes and tried to steady himself, forcing down the wave of nausea that was rising in his stomach. He cleared his throat and stared straight ahead, not wanting to look back at the girls and let them see how frightened he was. He could hear Julia and Lo
uisa’s gasping breaths behind him, and he inhaled deeply to settle himself.

  “We’ll go around that way,” Peter said, pretending to look at the compass. He started forward and heard the girls’ quiet footsteps behind him. He wanted to run—wanted to get wherever it was they were going before the earth opened up again—but Julia and Louisa might not be able to keep up, and anyway who was to say that the ground was any safer closer to the volcano?

  But there were no more earthquakes or fissures, and after a time Peter’s face returned to its normal color. They continued east, and after a few miles they found themselves in a clearing at the top of a hill. They looked out over the forest and saw, under a red sky, a great plain laid out before them. And in the center of the plain was the volcano.

  It was massive—far greater than it had appeared when they had first seen it from the falcon’s back. At its base there was a huge gash in the earth, and even from this distance the children could see hundreds of people swarming around it, all of them bent under heavy loads and the whips of their masters. The wave of nausea returned to Peter’s stomach, and he bent over and was violently sick into a patch of bushes.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Julia watched the scene before her, tears swimming in front of her vision. Smoke poured forth from the great scar in the earth, and even from this distance they could hear the groan of machinery. Peter returned from the bushes, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, and stood beside his sister. And as they watched they heard Louisa behind them.

  She was humming again—that same song she always seemed to have stuck in her head—but standing here before the volcano, looking at the task that lay before them, the song seemed different. Haunting, almost. It unnerved Peter almost to the core, and he shivered despite the heat.

  “Stop that,” he said, and Louisa’s humming stopped as quickly as it had begun. “We can’t be heard. Come on. Follow me.”

  The compass wasn’t necessary now—they were headed toward the volcano, and there was no mistaking where it was—but Peter still led the way, his father’s gift firmly in hand. They walked out of the clearing and down a steep ridge. The going was hard, over the same rocks and thorns that had plagued their steps before, but despite the terrain and the heat and the constant whine of insects there were no complaints. All three of them were intent on getting to the volcano, and getting there quickly.

  The smell of sulfur was becoming unbearable. Louisa seemed to be the only one who wasn’t badly affected—perhaps because of the makeshift mask Peter had fashioned for her out of his scarf. Julia was almost choking on the stale air, tripping over fallen logs and sharp rocks as she tried to catch her breath. And then she stumbled into Peter’s arm, held out as stiff as a suit of armor. She looked up through stinging, red-rimmed eyes to see that they had arrived.

  The volcano loomed before them, its mouth yawning open and belching acrid smoke. Miners moved back and forth across the gash in its southern edge, all covered from head to toe in black dust. The men dug and shoveled as the women carted away buckets full of soil to a group of children, who were pawing through the dirt as if searching for something precious. The older children, Julia saw, were moving among the miners with buckets of water, holding dripping ladles up to the lips of the grown-ups. And there was something else—something that was not a man.

  There were dozens of these creatures moving among the miners. They were perhaps twice the size of Peter, each one thick and hulking and with arms the size of small trees. Their skin was dark and swarthy, blistered by the sun and by innumerable scars. Peter, who prided himself on never being afraid of anything, felt himself shrinking back in revulsion. The eyes under those massive brows were small and dark, but there was intelligence in their faces. These monsters were not just dumb animals.

  Louisa gave a small cry as she saw them. Julia, not stopping to think, grabbed her stepsister’s hand in hers and squeezed as tight as she could. Louisa was still, but Julia could feel her shivering as they watched the creatures. They moved to and fro among the workers, and as the children watched, one of them swung its arm back and knocked a man to the ground. He lay still, not moving even after the creature had passed. The work went on around him; no one stopped to help.

  Julia shifted her gaze and found herself focusing on a child — a boy, she thought, not much younger than herself. He was walking along the edge of the workers, close by the clearing, offering his water to the women carrying their loads of dirt. He handed up his ladle to a bedraggled, beaten woman with ragged clothing—more ragged than most. The woman released her load and gratefully accepted the ladle, drinking slowly and deeply. And as she raised her face to drink the last cool drops, Julia gave a little cry.

  Peter shot her an accusing glare and put his finger angrily to his lips, but Julia shook her head. “Alyce,” she said in a voice that was barely a whisper. “It’s Alyce. That woman, over there—no, there.” Peter squinted his eyes and peered in the direction indicated.

  “Are you sure?” He squinted harder. “It might be. She’s so much older …” He shook his head. “I can’t tell.”

  “Who’s Alyce?” Louisa had removed the scarf from her face and was trying to look over Peter’s shoulder at the woman. Her voice was a good deal louder than a whisper, and Peter shot her a furious glance.

  “A friend from before,” murmured Julia. “She’s not far. I can get her.”

  “Get her? Are you mad? You’ll be seen.” Peter gave a shake of his head and considered the matter final.

  “No one’s watching,” protested Julia. “Look—she can’t be a stone’s throw away. The guards are turned away—I can reach her …” And, just like that, she had darted out from behind the cover of the trees, deaf to Peter’s hoarsely whispered protests.

  The landscape was barren but for a few of the same boulders that had littered their path to the volcano. Julia, keeping a wary eye on the guards, crouched behind the largest one she could find.

  “Alyce!” she whispered huskily. “Alyce!”

  The woman who had drunk from the child’s ladle turned, the heavy buckets she had just picked up quivering in her hands. She looked around for the source of the voice, and when she saw where it had come from her eyes opened wider than Julia had ever seen them. Something changed in her face, the burdens of the past weeks fading into relief. Alyce dropped her load and started forward.

  Just as she did so, one of the creatures turned and saw that Alyce had stepped out of the line—saw that she had put down her pails. His fist clenched as he changed direction, heading straight for Alyce.

  Julia tried without words to warn Alyce of the danger, but the creature’s fist caught her before she could react. It was attached to an arm the size of a small tree, and she fell to her knees with a startled cry of pain. The creature moved away with a growl, off to find his next victim, and a guard came up to Alyce, watching her still figure as he coiled a whip around his meaty hand. Julia cowered behind the rock, willing herself to become invisible. The guard was so close she could have reached out and touched his feet. She forced herself to breathe slowly, feeling the gazes of Peter and Louisa on her back.

  The guard looked at Alyce for a moment, then reached out his foot and gave her a swift kick in the ribs. “Scum,” he muttered, and then turned and was gone.

  Alyce wasn’t moving. Julia didn’t dare to whisper her name again, so she watched and waited, not daring to go out in the open but unwilling to go back to the forest without her. And then she heard footsteps behind her, running quickly and urgently. Peter.

  He tapped her on the shoulder and ran out from behind the boulder. He grasped Alyce’s motionless body from beneath her shoulders and started dragging her back toward the trees. Julia, suddenly understanding, ran out and took a firm hold of her ankles, and together they hauled her back to safety like a lumpy sack of so many potatoes.

  They laid her down once they were about fifty feet into the woods, where they could be certain of not being seen. The blow
had knocked the breath from Alyce’s body, and her breath came in low, shallow gasps. The left side of her face was smeared with dirt and blood where she had fallen, and Julia wiped at it with the cleanest part of her skirt. It did little good.

  “That guard almost saw you!” Louisa was hissing. “The same one who kicked her—he was turning to look just as you got back into the trees!”

  “Yes, and if we’d been seen we jolly well would have been beaten—or worse,” said Peter. “Just had to go out there, didn’t you Julia? Had to see how close you could come to getting us thrown in another dungeon!”

  “It’s Alyce! We couldn’t just leave her out there!” And any further argument was cut off, because Alyce was waking up.

  She groaned and lifted herself up to a sitting position. She cringed as she twisted her shoulders, still feeling the blow from the monster, but gave a crooked smile nonetheless. “You’ve come,” she said. “My dear friends. You’ve grown, Julia. And Peter”—she reached out and took Peter’s hand in hers. “You are becoming a man.” She smiled, and a faraway look came into her eyes. “We called, and the Lord of Hosts has answered. He has sent you once again.” Julia took her hand and squeezed it.

  “We’ve come,” she said. “Seems you can’t manage without us anymore.”

  This brought a laugh to Alyce’s lips, and then another wince. She put a hand up to her face and looked as if she was trying very hard not to think about the pain. “And it seems you’ve brought another with you,” she said, looking at Louisa.

  Louisa, for once, was neither crying nor fainting nor humming, but watching Alyce with her eyes wide, her gaze focused on the blood oozing from her cheek. Peter thought that he had never seen her so transfixed.