The Black North Read online

  Oona said, ‘Not no hope – more like what’s gone out the door is anything living.’

  ‘Same thing, my girl,’ said the jackdaw.

  Then there was a slow groan, and words rose from somewhere deep –

  ‘Morris? Is that you, my dear? Have you returned to me now?’

  Oona went working with her knife, quick to slash at anything that dared touch or come close as she fought her way forward. And any anger – dark confusion too – she let loose, snapping and tearing towards her grandmother. She kept careful though when it came to avoiding the thorns, thinking they were bound to be primed with poison.

  And eventually Granny Kavanagh was uncovered – still in her armchair where she’d been left maybe an hour before – and Oona kneeled beside.

  ‘You’re all right, Granny,’ said Oona. ‘I’m here now.’

  But her grandmother was so still, as though she’d been so long awaiting and so long disappointed that she couldn’t rouse herself to movement. Oona saw that the spell had been busiest on her granny – a shroud had been worked across the woman’s face and spiders had spun a delicate fortune on her one open palm, the other still closed tight and clutched to her breast. And the web that hid Granny Kavanagh’s face moved only a little, not enough, shifting again with the same question: ‘Morris? Is that you, my dear?’

  ‘No,’ said Oona. She swallowed. ‘It’s me, Granny. It’s your Oona.’

  Oona laid down her knife on bare earth and peeled aside her grandmother’s veil. What she saw behind the web? Granny Kavanagh and not Granny Kavanagh. Only a shell – a cold husk like the kind Oona used to like to collect in the forest. Her grandmother’s eyes were almost empty of anything, cheeks deep-hollowed like places relentlessly dug, and so much else of her given to shadow. Her face was a testament to what worry and waiting could do – a sad story told in too many broken lines. Oona sought her grandmother’s hand and found nails that were long and broken.

  ‘How did this happen so quick?’ asked Oona.

  ‘Was the same up North,’ said the jackdaw. The bird came to Granny Kavanagh’s chair, perching on its back. ‘They didn’t see it coming either, didn’t think things could change so quick around them. But these dispells aren’t easy things. Like weeds, they can be kept under control. No North magic comes into a place uninvited. Like I said to you – Drumbroken has been too much asleep, and your grandmother had too much bitterness and weakness and misery in her to fight this. Only pure hopelessness could’ve allowed a dispell like this in through the door, and then allowed it to thrive so thick.’

  A fierce whisper from Oona of, ‘Quiet!’ She held her grandmother’s hand tighter and said, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ said the jackdaw. ‘I’ve seen enough to know what I know, and your granny in her own lonely and bitter ways has seen too much.’

  ‘Get away!’ said Oona, and again she struck out towards the jackdaw to shoo it.

  ‘Don’t make the mistake of thinking she can’t help the way she’s being,’ said the bird, and it settled among the mass and crackle on the family table. ‘No matter what she’s been seeing in her dreams or nightmares she still has her choice about how to behave and she –’

  ‘What do you mean “nightmares”?’ said Oona. ‘And how’d you know that she –?’

  ‘I know,’ said the jackdaw. ‘And most of all – I know the ways of old women.’

  ‘Nothing can change this quickly,’ said Oona, but it was protest for the sake of protest.

  ‘Is that right?’ said the jackdaw. ‘Well, let’s see, my girl.’

  And then something more changed. Something quick, some squirm of the dark – some shiver and flicker and fall, and Oona stared, wanting to see.

  ‘What do you see of me?’ said the voice of the jackdaw. ‘Describe.’

  ‘I see just –’ started Oona. But there was no longer any jackdaw to describe. Oona was looking at an old woman, and she was perched with legs dangling and bare feet flexing on the edge of the Kavanagh family table.

  Oona stood so she might see better.

  The old woman on their table had hair all hanging – thin, some grey and some black but most white, and all loose like lots of unpicked thread. And her face could’ve beaten a barrel of off apples in a wrinkliest-thing contest. She was covered in flitters of dark cloth like feather. She smiled, delighting in Oona’s looking. Then Merrigutt (jackdaw, now an old woman? thought Oona, still not close enough to believing) plucked an apple from somewhere in the black mass that covered her and removed half of it in a bite. Chin running wet with the dribble of juice she asked, ‘Just gonna stare and stare?’

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Oona. ‘And I don’t mean names. You’re from the North?’

  ‘I am,’ said Merrigutt. ‘And why do you think that?’

  ‘Because changing shape,’ said Oona, ‘that’s not a Southern thing – we stay as we are.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Merrigutt, and she even gave a small bow.

  ‘Why have you come here, anyway?’ said Oona. ‘Why now?’

  ‘You know the reason, my girl,’ said Merrigutt. There was another crunch of the apple. ‘You know that things are on the hinge on the South. The Invaders are coming, and this is the moment it can all change and very fast, as you can see. It can all go downhill in the handcart, or some of you can be saved.’

  Oona opened her mouth with so many more questions but there was a distraction – the sound of things, many things, making more sound outside.

  ‘Ah!’ said Merrigutt, and she dropped the apple – pips, stalk, all – down her throat. She swallowed, belched, and said, ‘That’ll be the rest of the ladies now. You best go welcome them, my girl. Because believe me – they aren’t the type of creatures to be kept waiting!’

  11

  ‘No!’ shouted Oona. ‘No more bloody jackdaws in here! You can all just hoof it!’

  Oona stood herself in the doorway, what remained of the Kavanagh cottage behind her. In front, the Kavanagh clearing was a floor of shifting and fidgeting feather. A mass of jackdaws had gathered and were preening and plucking at themselves and each another, their caws such a racket Oona reckoned it could’ve woke the six-spadefuls-deep.

  Old-woman Merrigutt shuffled into the doorway beside Oona to chuckle, and then address these familiars: ‘Now good evening to you all, ladies! I’m sure you’ve been busy and have lots of bits and all else of news! Come in now and make yourselves as comfortable as you can!’

  Oona opened her mouth, disagreement ready, but the noise! The fresh fuss and surge of the jackdaws! She had to retreat, returning to protect Granny Kavanagh as birds rushed on in, such a tide of them all ignoring the dispell and breaking on cupboard and bed and dresser and family-table and hearth. With small hops – squirm and spasm and shudder – they transformed, same as Merrigutt had done, landing on dirty soles as ragged old women.

  ‘More bloody Northerners,’ whispered Oona.

  The women began what looked like a hunt, seeking out and swallowing down anything edible. Any apples Oona had stored in the barrels by the back door were soon made pulp by the uninvited visitors; any bread would be better described as breadcrumbs after they’d been at it; preserves preserved for months were opened and plucked at, and eggs were taken down whole … but the dispell had gotten rid of anything like ripeness, and Oona listened to the clamour of complaint from the women –

  ‘Apples too sweet!’

  ‘Bread too tough!’

  ‘Eggs near rotten!’

  ‘What about tay to wash it all down? Boil some water for the sake of sanity!’

  Merrigutt called out, ‘Now calm your souls, ladies! We’ve things to discuss!’

  But Oona saw that even Merrigutt wasn’t for quelling them, and the women’s words were –

  ‘The magic is moving down from the Divide, making everything Black!’

  ‘Aye, bringing death and dark to everywhere!’

  ‘And more and more Invade
rs coming down from the North with it!’

  ‘True! More Invaders by the day and even more by the night!’

  ‘And some of the ones down here are for going up there!’

  ‘Aye! Going up North to fight, or so they think!’

  ‘Challenge the King? Fools!’

  ‘That’s the bloody Cause for you! That’s men for you, too – charging in without thinking!’

  ‘Now tay! Where’s the tay we were promised!’

  ‘All right,’ Oona heard Merrigutt mutter. ‘Good for nothing without a drop of tay.’

  Oona saw Merrigutt flex her fingers, reach into the dark that clothed her and return with a pinch of scarlet powder. She scattered it slowly among the cold hearth-stones. Moments, and then they had flames – bright, high, like they’d been burning there for hours.

  ‘Bit of reliable old North magic,’ Merrigutt told Oona, and she winked. Merrigutt hung the Kavanagh kettle on its hook over the hearth.

  Oona straightened. ‘Look: you can’t just come in here and take over this house. You’re as bad as those bloody Invaders, just doing as you like with people’s things!’ Her voice had climbed into a shout, and all movement in the cottage was stopped.

  ‘As bad as the Invaders?’ repeated Merrigutt. ‘Is that right?’

  Oona nodded. She swallowed and said, ‘I’m not leaving here if that’s what you’re planning. I’ll not let those Invaders take this house. This is our home, and has been for longer than anything!’ And her hand enclosed the back of her granny’s chair.

  ‘She’s a stubborn one,’ said one of the other old women. ‘She’s a Kavanagh through and through. Look at that grim look on her face – just like the father!’

  ‘Quiet now!’ said Merrigutt. ‘You’re not to make judgements so easy!’

  Silence, and in it the kettle began its grumble, firelight blinking on battered belly.

  ‘Why are you all here anyway?’ said Oona. She looked to Merrigutt, who held her gaze. ‘Tell me the truth, cos I don’t like being lied to. I’m not a child or stupid, so don’t think it!’

  ‘All right,’ said Merrigutt. ‘We’re here to escort you South, my girl. We’re here now because those Invaders haven’t come over the Divide and down South just for the sake of it, not for their own amusement.’

  ‘Not a bit of it!’ went one of the women with her mouth full of blue-moulded loaf.

  ‘No, they’ve been looking and looking for something,’ said Merrigutt.

  ‘Children,’ said Oona. ‘I know that much. I’ve seen.’

  ‘True!’ said one of the women with half of one hand buried in a pot of gooseberry jam.

  ‘But more than that,’ said another, fingers around a tendril-sprouting potato. ‘They don’t want the children just for the sake of having them!’

  ‘They’re here now,’ said Merrigutt, still focusing on Oona, ‘because of their King’s orders. And he has no interest in cottages or kettles or anything else.’

  ‘What does he want?’ said Oona.

  The room was at its quietest, the old women all like they were waiting.

  ‘We don’t know everything of what this King wants,’ said Merrigutt. She looked away from Oona and focused instead, with sudden intentness, on the painting Oona’s mother had done. Its rough rectangle was occluded with so much web, but Oona knew it was the painting of that dreamed-up place: low hills like the softest rise and dip of the sea, the colour of wild meadow and bright blossom. ‘All we know,’ said Merrigutt, and she turned once again to face Oona, ‘is that the Invaders are keen on capturing and not killing those children. Using the Briar-Witches to snatch? Those creatures are more used to just gobbling up whole and thinking about the bones later. No, they’re keeping those children for some reason.’

  ‘Information,’ said Oona. ‘By the Torrid, they were all shouting about keeping the children alive, so –’

  ‘They’re looking for something,’ said Merrigutt. ‘A small thing, but precious enough too that the Invaders and their ‘King of the North’, as they call him, would happily turn this Isle to dark and rot if it meant getting it.’

  ‘What something?’ said Oona.

  Some shiver passed through the air. Everything in the cottage shook.

  ‘It is a something,’ said Merrigutt, ‘that we’ve been searching for too. And we think we’ve found it – we think we’re right in believing that it is hidden right here in the cottage of the Kavanaghs.’

  12

  And the ground might’ve been listening in – could’ve been waiting readied to hear just these words spoken! – because it began to seethe with something underneath and every old woman was suddenly into the air and all transformed in the same hop-spasm-shudder back to jackdaws, with Merrigutt crying, ‘Oona, quick! Quick, onto the table!’

  Quick but not quick enough –

  Oona was grabbed by the ankles and pulled down into the earth all the way to the waist before her hands snatched and closed around a table leg. She looked for her knife – where was it to slice with once more? She dropped, was pulled down further, and no help came from the jackdaws as they whirled in a frenzy, but then someone not expected: her grandmother rose suddenly rushing from her chair, trailing web, unhooking and heaving the pot of boiling water and pouring it into the hole. Such a scream from below! And at the first hint of release Oona was kicking and crawling away, finding her knife for protection. But the screaming from beneath didn’t stop – the Kavanagh cottage shook with it, the Briar-Witch racing underground, sending cracks across walls, the whole place already broken enough by the dispell but beginning to lean, the whole home folding in like a fist.

  Merrigutt shouted, ‘Out! Get out before the whole place comes down!’

  The jackdaws left in as fast a flood as they’d come out through the door. But Oona stayed. Her granny Kavanagh was on the floor and Oona took her by the hand and said, ‘We have to go, Granny! Quick now, we have to leave!’

  But the old woman wouldn’t budge. She was just as still and near-silent as she’d been in her armchair a minute before, one hand still held tight to her breast.

  ‘Leave now, my girl!’ said Merrigutt, landing on Oona’s shoulder. ‘Out! We’ve no time for waiting!’

  ‘I won’t go anywhere without her,’ said Oona, and then she tried to lift her grandmother, but still no movement. Oona decided: I won’t leave if she won’t. If this world falls in then this is where I’m supposed to be. Mammy died here, so it’s where I’ll die too, if I have to.

  ‘Oona,’ said Merrigutt, ‘we have to escape!’

  ‘Go, child.’

  It was her grandmother’s voice then, and it had no edge, no spite. Instead only a special gentleness Oona hadn’t heard for so long. Granny Kavanagh said again, ‘Go, child. But take this – you must have it … it’s your turn now …’

  And finally her grandmother released what she’d held so tight: Oona felt something pressed into her own hands, a small knot of material with something small and round and hard at its heart. Oona hadn’t time (or much care) to open or examine and she said just, ‘Granny, please, you have to come with me or –’

  ‘No,’ said her grandmother, ‘not have to any more. It was too much for me, child. It’s a burden, but I know you can bear it. And this is the most important thing – don’t lose sight of the light. Keep looking for it. Just do as I should’ve done and didn’t – don’t let the light go. Don’t just look for the dark.’

  The roof began to fall in fragments and night sky to show through –

  ‘Oona!’ cried Merrigutt. ‘Now or not at all!’

  Granny Kavanagh pushed Oona from her. And Oona went, the gift that her grandmother had given safe in her hands.

  13

  ‘Keep going now! Don’t hang about!’

  The jackdaw was on Oona’s shoulder, telling. Oona didn’t wish to but had to move. The bundle her grandmother had pressed on her in one hand, knife in the other, she fought on into the travesty of former forest. And any time Oona tri
ed to look behind to see what had become of the Kavanagh cottage Merrigutt scolded, ‘No! Don’t look back! Briar-Witches never move on their own so you can bet last Tuesday’s washing that if there’s one about then there’ll be many! Keep going on now, we’ll head for the –’

  The jackdaw stopped, like she’d been struck dumb.

  ‘What?’ asked Oona. ‘What is it?’

  The bird’s head tilted, slowly like she was listening, her yellow eyes growing. And then Merrigutt said, ‘It’s the Coach-A-Bower.’ A pause from the jackdaw, and then a panicked, ‘Run!’

  Oona tried to move faster, but a hush was settling over her senses, a softening, the world holding itself still. Only one sound existed then, and it was the faint rattle of cheap metal against cheaper. By the time Oona realised that she was running towards the sound, Merrigutt told her, ‘Get down!’

  On the fringe of a wide clearing they stopped. Oona tried to make herself small, hiding behind what remained of a once-noble Drumbroken oak. In front of her were a dozen or more Invaders, their faces the only thing seeable, the rest of their uniforms blending without seam into surrounding night. They were on guard, keeping watch over a convoy of twelve dark stallion-drawn carriages. Oona noticed what the strange rattle had been – many coins held together with fine thread, hanging from the front of each carriage. They continued their rattle even without movement, without a single snatch of wind. Dark figures sat at the reins of each stallion.

  ‘Quiet,’ said Merrigutt. ‘Quiet, or you’ll end up caught too.’

  Behind bars, in each carriage, Oona saw many faces: children. They were packed close, stacked like all that was left of them were heads. All pale and wide-eyed, thin fingers closing tightly around the bars. But when Oona looked too long at them, the hush that pressed on her hearing became stronger, heavier. She began to rise from where she was crouched, half-led without knowing it, whispering to herself, ‘Bridget? Maybe Morris?’

  ‘Stop!’ said Merrigutt. ‘You can’t run out there or you’ll get caught too, and then what good are you to anyone? And especially not with what your granny has just given you.’