by Sara Crowe
‘Liar!’ screamed Mark. He came at Ash again. But this time Ash sidestepped, flung his arms around Mark, clung to him. They lurched and wrestled, a weird dance in the howling chaos of the storm. ‘You know it’s true,’ said Ash. The words came out like sobs. ‘You know. You won’t kill me. You’re not a killer.’
And then it stopped. Mark stopped. Let go of Ash. He stood there in the weltering storm, his chest heaving, his eyes bright with tears.
But the hound boys came again, hurtling with the storm wind. Smashing into Mark, into Ash.
Ash staggered. Off balance, the world tilting, the wind battering about him. He felt Mark’s hand close about his wrist, felt Mark brace and strain and take his weight to haul him back from the edge. But there was nothing beneath his feet any more. He plunged through the wild air, and Mark was still holding on, falling with him.
Then came the hard slam onto rock, a quake of pain, the taste of blood in his mouth, and bottomless dark.
THIRTY
He opened his eyes and stared straight up. Sky churning with dark clouds. Rain spiking his face like nails.
For a few moments he had no idea where he was.
Then he remembered falling.
He shifted his weight. Pain knifed in his shoulder. More pain in both elbows, his right hip, his head, his ribs. Gritting his teeth, he hauled himself up into a sitting position. He ran his fingers through his hair. The stag mask must have come off in the fall, torn away by the wind. His hand came away bloody.
But he was alive. Being dead couldn’t hurt this much.
A sob shook through him. He felt it, heard it, but it seemed to have nothing to do with him. A reaction of his body. His mind hadn’t caught up yet.
Mark was lying nearby. He was on his side with one arm twisted unnaturally beneath him. Eyes closed. His mouth slightly open. A trickle of blood, diluted by rainwater, ran down his forehead and dripped from the bridge of his nose.
He wasn’t moving.
He looked dead.
Ash stared at him for a long time.
They’d landed on a ledge. To his right was a five-metre wall of rock. To his left was a sheer drop. Far below, splinters of black granite stabbed up through a sea of gloomy rain-mist.
Ash rolled his injured shoulder, stretched his arm upwards and then out. A spasm of pain but it was bearable. He checked the rest of his body: bruises, cuts, scrapes. Nothing broken, nothing dislocated.
He felt for the stag’s head pendant, as if it was a talisman. But it was gone from around his neck, lost to the storm and the darkness.
He crawled towards Mark. He tugged Mark’s hand. It felt cold and limp, wet with rain. ‘Mark,’ he said. ‘Wake up, Mark. Come on, wake up.’
Not a flicker.
He pressed two fingers to Mark’s throat to see if he had a pulse. At first he couldn’t feel anything except Mark’s chilled skin against his own. Then he felt a throb of life, faint but unmistakable.
‘Come on, Mark. Wake up. Please.’
Mark groaned, coughed, spat blood and rainwater. He rolled onto his back and screamed.
‘Don’t move,’ said Ash. ‘You’re injured. I think your arm is broken. Maybe more.’
Mark’s breath came in quick dry gasps. ‘What happened?’ he said. His voice was a whisper.
‘The hound boys slammed into us. I was too close to the edge. You tried to hold on to me but we both fell. We landed on this ledge. We were lucky.’
‘Lucky, yeah,’ said Mark. Turned his face away.
Ash shook in great slow shudders. Yet his thoughts were cold and clear, bright as ice.
He waited it out.
When the shudders stopped, he took off the backpack. He emptied its contents between his outstretched legs. Found the whistle and blew it. The wind ripped away the thin sound. Even if anyone was out searching for them yet, they’d never hear the whistle in this storm.
Useless.
He slid the empty backpack under Mark’s head as a pillow. Mark moaned, his eyes shut.
Ash sat with his back to the rock face. He drew up his knees, hugged himself into a tight ball. Rain beat on his skull, slid down his back, pooled underneath him. He stared into the murky distance. He was an ant, an atom. There was nothing he could do about anything any more. The storm would rage. Night would come. If they survived until the morning, perhaps the search-and-rescue team would find them.
Perhaps.
Or Mark would die.
Ash couldn’t let that happen. No way.
He couldn’t go down the rock face, not without ropes and proper equipment. The drop was too far, sheer and hazardous. But maybe he could climb back up to the top, fetch help.
He stood up. He walked the length of the ledge, feeling for handholds and footholds in the rock face. All he found were cracks too narrow to slide his fingers into, nubbins so smooth and slick with rain that his feet slithered off them straightaway.
An angle of rock sticking out, about half a metre above his head. He jumped for it, reaching up with his good arm, fingers scraping the rock face a hand’s breadth below it. He jumped again, and again, sobbing with the effort. But there wasn’t enough strength left in him and he knew that even if he managed to reach it, he was too weak to pull himself up.
It was impossible.
He sank back down, defeated. He watched the endless fall of rain, drops shattering in diamond bursts on the rock in front of him. He watched dark clouds as tall as mountains heave and collide and tear apart. The brief brilliant burn of distant lightning. He slept a little, woke with a start, slept again, woke.
It was getting dark now.
Someone was watching him.
He lifted his head.
A boy, sitting at the furthest end of the ledge. An impossible stag boy with his hair in spikes, his face and body streaked with white and black clay.
Ash laughed out loud at the craziness of it. A hallucination or another dream, that was all. He struggled to keep his eyes open but his eyelids felt too heavy, the pull of sleep too strong.
When he woke again, the stag boy was still there. His clay-painted face gleamed. Rain rolled down his cheeks like tears. His charcoal-shadowed eyes were deep, dark and serious.
‘Why are you here?’ said Ash. ‘What do you want?’
The stag boy was silent, watching him.
‘I’ve seen you before,’ said Ash. ‘Up on the top, a couple of weeks ago, running from the hound boys.’
The stag boy watched.
‘You’re dead,’ said Ash. ‘You’re centuries dead.’
The wind snatched away his words. But, as if the stag boy had heard enough, he stood up. Still holding Ash’s gaze. Then, slowly and deliberately, he turned to face the rock wall. He went closer to it. Then he reached up, hooked his fingers into a tiny fissure and started to climb.
‘Come down,’ said Ash weakly. ‘It’s too dangerous. It’s impossible. Come back.’
Ash grinned like a fool, shook his head. Talking to a dream, warning a ghost. Nothing was dangerous for a ghost.
The stag boy kept reaching and climbing and Ash kept watching until the boy hauled himself over the top and disappeared from sight.
Gone.
Just a dream. Just a ghost. Or some sort of memory imprinted on the land. Maybe Mark was right and that’s what ghosts are, Ash thought. Land memories, visual echoes of the past. Terrible things had happened out here and the land remembered. Earth and stone, fire and ash, blood and bone. They became part of its substance, its dreaming, its nightmares. And sometimes they broke through and became real again.
He remembered the book he’d taken from Bone Jack’s bothy. The poem printed in it.
I have been in a multitude of shapes,
Before I assumed a consistent form.
His thoughts jarred, jammed, broke apart. He raised his face to the darkening sky. Opened his mouth and tasted the rain.
I have been a tear in the air,
I have been the dullest of stars.
Not a star in the sk
y now. Not one.
I will believe when it is apparent.
Get it together. Think. Move.
He shook tears of rainwater from his eyes.
What is apparent?
That long ago the hounds had chased the stag boy up onto the Leap. And the stag boy had fallen. Fallen and landed on the ledge, just like Ash.
And he’d climbed back up.
I will believe when it is apparent …
If the stag boy had climbed the rock face, that meant Ash could too.
‘This happened to you,’ he said to the empty air where the stag boy had been, to the dark, to the storm. ‘You fell and you survived. You climbed back up to the top.’
He struggled to his feet. Shivering, stiff with cold. Every inch of his body felt battered and bruised. He stamped warmth back into his muscles, flexed and stretched. He ate two of the energy bars, washed them down with bottled water.
He crouched next to Mark. ‘I’m going to climb up out of here,’ he told him. ‘I’m going to fetch help. And I’m going to come back for you.’
Mark’s eyes opened a crack.
Then Ash stood where the stag boy had stood. The ledge was narrow here, no more than an arm’s length between the rock face and the drop. He reached up where the stag boy had reached, found a fissure in the rock just big enough to hook his fingers into. The way the stag boy had shown him, the way Dad had taught him. It came easily now, following the stag boy’s route, using the training Dad had given him. He felt calm, clear-headed. He searched for a toehold, found a small jag of rock, then a hollow for his other foot, then another handhold.
His bruised shoulder knotted with pain as it took his weight. He grunted and ignored it, hung on, reached up with his free hand for another crack in the rock. The wind slammed him against the rock face then tore at him. He clung on by his fingertips. The side of his face pressed against wet rock. Every sinew in his body strained. If he fell from here, there was no chance he’d land on the ledge again. He’d fall all the way down to the far-below rocks. He’d shatter.
His head spun with a horror of heights.
He held himself very still, concentrated on the rock face, steadied his breathing. The next handhold, the next foothold.
Again.
On and on, up and up.
Then he reached up and there was no more rock, just air and then rough grass under his hand. He dug his fingers into wet gritty turf. Another heave and he was halfway over the edge of the Leap. He clawed at mud and loose stone. His fingers scraped through wet grass. He slid backwards. Feet scrabbling against the rock face for a toehold. Then he found one, shunted himself upwards again. This time his hand closed around a tangle of thin roots. He clung on, pushed and pulled, got one knee up on the edge and hauled himself over.
Limp as a rag, he lay on his back. Sharp stones dug into his ribs. He sucked air greedily then rolled over, away from the edge. His eyes wide open. Skull full of the moan and boom of the wind.
The hound boys were nowhere in sight.
He laughed with relief.
He’d made it.
But it wasn’t over yet. Mark was still down there, injured, perhaps even dying by now. He had to find help.
He got to his feet and stood swaying, squinting into the battering wind. In the far distance, the skyline glowed fiery red through the murk of rain. He frowned at it. Not sunset. This was different, a blazing line like a tide of lava flowing towards him.
Weird, and still a long way off. There were more urgent things to worry about. He stumbled down the slope, fast as he could. Twice he fell, knees cracking down on the rocky ground. Hauled himself upright again, staggered on.
Three miles back to Thornditch. The darkness thickening into night, the storm smashing against the mountains. As weak as he was, it could take him until morning to get there. There was a good chance he wouldn’t make it at all.
But there was nothing else he could do.
One foot in front of the other. Like Dad always used to say. He’d crawl if he had to. Just keep going.
His eyes closed. He lost his balance, staggered sideways, opened his eyes again.
Something moved further down the slope. Ash stopped and peered through the rain. Now he saw them. Hound boys, pale as moonlight. They lifted their masked heads, sniffed the wind. Their eerie shriek-yelps rose above the storm.
He shivered with fear.
Too exhausted to run and nowhere to run to anyway.
He stood still and watched them come.
THIRTY-ONE
They came at Ash like a breaking wave. They raced and tumbled through the misty darkness. Their howls filled his ears, filled his skull until he couldn’t think of anything else. Their bony fingers scraped over his skin. With each touch, he grew colder, weaker, until his trembling legs could no longer hold him upright and he sagged to the ground.
He knelt there in the hard rain. No strength left. Nothing more he could do.
‘You’re not real,’ he whispered to them. But they were. As real as the wolf, as real as the rocks and the storm.
His raised his head, peered into the rain. Ahead lay burnt ground, leafless bone-white trees stark against a plain of blackened rock.
Not real. It couldn’t be real.
Get up, said a voice in his mind.
Callie’s voice.
He blinked rain from his eyelashes. ‘Callie?’
A whisper.
No one there. She was in his head, nowhere else. He was alone.
Except for the hound boys.
Get up.
He pushed against the ground, against gravity, against the dead weight of his own body.
Get up, get up.
He pushed again. He stood swaying in the wind, head down, looking out over a scorched landscape that should not be there. The distant rim of fire was fiercer now, getting closer all the time.
The hound boys circled, pressed in close again. He heard the click-clack of their bones, the moan of the wind through their fleshless skulls. The wind ripped trails of smoke from their grinning mouths.
The rain on his skin seemed as dark as blood. The air thick with smoke, bitter and foul.
And the rain kept falling.
He gathered himself. Hollered and barged into the hound boys, felt them crunch and fold. Then he was through them, out into the open.
Along the skyline, a wall of fire raced towards them.
Wildfire.
Not real, not real. None of this is real.
Around him the hound boys yapped and bayed.
Ash froze. His gaze fixed on the wildfire. A thorn tree exploded into flames. Dark smoke and gritty ash swirled in the wind. It raked his throat, brought stinging tears to his eyes. He coughed and retched.
None of this is real.
But he wasn’t sure. Maybe it was real, after all. If the smoke could choke him, then surely the fire could burn him.
Panic ran through him. Ahead lay the inferno and behind him the slope rose steeply to the sheer drop of Stag’s Leap. He was trapped.
Unless he could somehow climb back down to the ledge where Mark was. Maybe on the ledge they’d be safe from the fire.
He started to run, stumbling over the lumpy ground, slow, so slow, because there was no strength left in him, nothing keeping him on his feet now except raw terror.
Halfway back up to the top, he switched direction, cut across towards the ledge where he and Mark had fallen.
Instantly the hound boys came after him. They clamoured and swarmed, blocked his path. He veered away but they flowed around him, blocked him again. He yelled and swung wild blows at them, but he was too exhausted, too weak.
This time they didn’t fold and fall back, didn’t let him through.
‘Why are you doing this?’ he said. Teeth chattering with fear and cold. His smoke-roughened voice no more than a whisper. ‘What do you want?’
They were silent behind their masks but he knew the answer, in all its terrible simplicity, knew they only wanted to kil
l him, the stag boy, and that there was nothing more to them than this one overwhelming urge. There could be no pleading with them; there was nothing he could offer them.
In the distance beyond them, fire raced between the dirty sky and the dark land.
The wind blew hot.
He sank to his knees. Nowhere to run. Even if there was, he’d no strength left. Nothing to do except wait for the wildfire to roll over him. Wait to die.
He gazed into a blazing shimmer of orange heat.
And something moved in its depths.
Something as black as shadow, moving fast, swift and low. It reached the fire line, bunched and bounded clear.
Ash rubbed tears and grit from his eyes, peered past the hounds, through the smoke and fire-flung shadows.
The wolf.
It leaped onto a boulder and stood stock-still. Impossibly, it seemed strong and healthy, a far cry from the dying beast he’d found in the mountains just days ago. Yet it was undoubtedly the same animal. It watched him with bright amber eyes, its head lowered.
Behind it came a wild figure, untouched by the flames, striding out over the scorched ground, through smoke and storm. Long coat snapping out in the wind, gaunt face etched in shadow under his wide-brimmed hat. Eyes full of murder.
Bone Jack.
Ash blinked and stared, half blinded by smoke. Now the raw cries of rooks filled his ears. Dark within dark, against a spitting wall of flame. The wind shrieked.
Earth and stone, fire and ash, blood and bone.
As one, the hounds turned their dead faces towards Bone Jack.
Wild man, raggedy man, birdman.
Bone Jack whirled and shattered. Broke apart into wing, feather, beak until there was no longer any semblance of a man there, only rooks like black rags against the screen of wildfire. They tumbled and swooped. Every wing beat, every thrust of beak and claw, every serrated cry, drove the hound boys back.
The hounds howled, flailed at the birds.
The birds kept coming.
Smoke like a dense dark fog, sparking with fire. The hounds were shadows flickering within it, the parched grass igniting beneath them. Fire spat at them, danced up their tattered clothes, their clay-spiked hair. Briefly they whirled there, scarecrows of fire and blackened bone with charred grins, smoke misting around them. Then the wall of flame collapsed over them and they were gone.
