B00DW1DUQA EBOK (3 page)

‘Water-wheel will need recaulking,’ said his father. ‘I’d better strip down the generators before winter, too.’

‘That’s supposed to be Matt’s job,’ said his mother.

His father grunted in amusement. ‘Best do it myself.’

He waved towards Finn with a triangle of the bread.

‘Finn? Want to give me a hand tomorrow?’

Finn felt reluctant. His father would grow cross with some technicality of the task at hand and Finn, unable to help, would just be in the way. But he’d probably be able to wander off, then, without his father minding. And, if he was lucky, there would be time for a game of chase or hide on the way.

‘Yes, father.’

His mother picked up one of the apples, assessed it for a moment, then bit into its shiny skin.

‘Nice and sweet,’ she said. ‘Time we got them in. Without Shireen to help I’d better get started soon.’

The wind rose again, rattling the door this time, hissing through the gap underneath.

‘Why did they take her?’ asked Finn. ‘The Ironclads.’

His mother looked at his father. They had been waiting for him to ask.

‘Finn, it’s an honour to be called to work upon Engn,’ said his mother. ‘It’s a sacred duty. Few are taken.’

‘But I want her to play with me. Will she come back?’

‘No, love. You are called for life.’

‘Can we go and see her?’

‘No, no. That isn’t allowed.’

‘But you went once, father. You told me about it. You said there were huge wheels as big as the setting moon. And chimneys far higher than any trees. It was bigger than our whole valley and at night it sparkled with light. It made the ground shake even from miles away. You said it was wonderful.’

His father put down the bread he was chewing.

‘Yes, I said all that. But no-one is permitted to go so near now without being taken by the Ironclads.’

‘What’s
permitted
?’

‘It means you’re not allowed to go there.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s the way it is. Engn is a forbidden place.’

Finn thought about this. They said the great machine spread farther across the land every year. How big would it eventually be? Would it reach them, there in the valley? They ate in silence for a time.

‘When I’m bigger, will I be taken too?’ asked Finn.

His father looked hard at him. There was anger in his eyes but his voice was soft when he spoke. His anger wasn’t with Finn.

‘No. You will not.’

‘How do you know?’

‘They can’t take more than one from the same family,’ his mother said. ‘It wouldn’t be right.’

‘Finn, I promise you,’ said his father. ‘You won’t be taken. I won’t allow it. Now eat up.’

They ate the rest of their meal in silence. When he’d finished, Finn scrambled up the wooden ladder to his bed, to read to himself.

Winter came early that year. The soil froze to stone and was then buried under snow. Each morning brought a fresh fall, covering up the tracks and marks of the previous day as if the whole world had been renewed. The air was as sharp as knives on Finn’s cheeks when he went outside to play.

He chewed his breakfast, now, deciding what to do that day. There was a sudden pounding at the door. He gasped and looked up. His mother, scrubbing a pan at the kitchen sink, caught the look of alarm on his face. His father, scowling, crossed the room from the fire he was tending, to haul open the door. In a great plume of windblown snow, Matt Dobey stepped into the room.

The lengthsman was dressed in thick, inside-out furs that inflated him to twice his normal size. He stamped snow from his boots and pushed back his hood to reveal his familiar smile: eyes wide, expression exaggerated, the smile of someone perpetually addressing young children. He reminded Finn of one of the cows on the farm: large, docile, bemused. He was bald like a baby, the dome of his head shining. His soft face resembled the formless lumps of dough his mother slid into the oven each morning.

‘Well, any more of this and we’ll be stranded in our own homes,’ he said brightly. ‘Hello, young man. Grown again, I see.’

Finn smiled, excused from replying by a mouthful of bread.

‘Sit down,’ said his father to Matt. ‘I’ll be ready soon.’

Matt sat in the fourth chair: the one they kept at the table but which no-one used. He rubbed his hands together and blew into them.

‘Where are you going today, Matt?’ His mother stood at the kitchen door, drying her hands on a cloth. ‘Not far I hope?’ She was thinner these days, shadows under her cheeks. Now when Finn hugged her, the soft bulk of her body was turning to bones.

‘Old Mrs. Hampton has a broken connection,’ said Matt. ‘Been without light nearly a week.’

‘She didn’t say anything.’

‘Then the path up to the Switch House needs clearing. Mrs. Megrim keeps telling me how dangerous it is. If I don’t get round to that today there’ll be trouble, eh?’

‘Well, she’s not one to stand any messing, Mrs. Megrim.’

The men left on a blast of chill air. His father often grumbled about how useless Matt was at mending the roads and keeping the electricity flowing, but when they were together they were the best of friends. It was strange. Finn could hear their laughter fading as they trudged away from the house.

When his breakfast was finished and he was bundled up in enough clothes to satisfy his mother, Finn followed them outside. The snow had stopped falling. The sun lifted over the hillside, sparkling off the fields and roofs, gold glints in the perfect white. Finn scooped up a handful of snow, his fingers tingling with the cold of it. He crushed the snow into a ball and hurled it as far out into the field as he could, where it landed with a satisfying
crump
.

It was, he decided, a perfect day for sledging.

His father had built the toboggan for him the previous winter: polished wood, light and strong. He pulled it by its cord across the garden. The explosion of summer flowers was long gone now. The garden was a plain of white apart from a few bony sprout stalks, like sheep’s spines, writhing out of the ground.

‘Stay away from the water!’ his mother called after him.

He looked back to see her framed in the doorway of their stone house. The double lines in the snow made by the sledge led all the way back to her feet. Finn smiled and waved to her, before pushing on out of the garden.

A line of wooden posts, each topped with a stylised bolt of lightning, led away towards the river. These marked the line of the underground cables that carried electricity from the water-wheel. Lines of posts ran throughout the valley, up to each building. His mother and father had told him many times never to dig anywhere near them.

He followed the posts now. Each day there was more ice on the water of the mill-pond and he wanted to see if, today, it had finally frozen all the way across. The snow was deep, covering his leather boots completely, cracking underfoot with each step. Apart from the footprints of birds, lines of scattered letter Y’s and W’s, the snow was untouched. He was the first person in the whole world to walk in it. He almost felt like he shouldn’t.

Water gurgled down the leat that powered the wheel but otherwise the world was completely silent, the air muffled, like being under blankets. Nothing moved. The pond had frozen over more but there was still a circle of open water in the middle. His father had explained that water froze from the surface downwards; that even if it froze right across it would still be flowing underneath. Finn skidded stones across it. The ice echoed with a weird, metallic sound. He tried to make the stones stop on the very lip of the ice, then tried to hurl them directly into the water without touching the sides.

When that game was exhausted he picked up the cord of his sledge again. He had tried with it yesterday but the slopes had been too gentle. He’d sunk into the soft snow. He needed somewhere steeper.

He crossed the footbridge, fanged with icicles, and began to climb up into the woods. The paths had all vanished, of course, the whole land rubbed clean of detail, but he knew exactly which way to go, knew which trees the trails wound around. He worked his way up the sides of the valley, the snow deeper and deeper all the time. Occasionally a branch, warmed by the sun, dropped a line of snow near him with a soft
wumph
. Other than that the only sounds were his own breathing and the shush of the sledge behind him.

Then he stopped. He thought he’d heard something else too: someone moving through the woods behind him as he climbed, the sound of something pushing through the undergrowth. He could hear nothing now. Perhaps it was just his own echo bouncing off the trees. Everything sounded strange in the snow. Small birds hopped around in the high branches, spots of black against the blue sky. Nothing else moved. There were wild animals in the high woods, of course, black bears and wolves, but none had ever been seen close to the village.

He wondered again where Shireen’s glade was, whether it was nearby. He had often tried to find it. It wasn’t anywhere here, anyway.

Shrugging, he set off, angling up the slope to make the ascent easier. Each step was an effort now, more of a leap, the snow up to his knees. He waded forwards for a time then, abruptly, stopped again, whipping round to see if he could catch a glimpse of a pursuer. This time he caught a clear flicker of movement behind him: a detached shadow melting into the trees.

Someone was definitely there. Tall: a person, not an animal. These were
his
woods. Now that Shireen had gone no-one else came here. He didn't like to think of someone else sharing them. He thought about the Ironclads. They came for him in his dreams most nights: clanking machine-men that kept on coming no matter what you did to stop them. If you smashed them into pieces the broken fragments crept on towards you. You could never rest. Had they followed his trail to find him, alone and helpless out in the woods? Had they been out here all along, waiting for him?

He was nearly at the upper edge of the woods now. Above him the hill grew steeper and became the flank of the mountain. He had planned to find a long, steep slope up there he could sledge down. Now he only thought about hurrying back to the river. Whatever followed him wouldn’t dare pursue him all the way home. He considered hopping onto his sledge. But the ground here was steep. If he lost control and crashed into a tree his pursuer would surely catch him.

Panting heavily, lungs burning from the climb, he strode back into the woods instead. If he didn’t run, his pursuer might not realise Finn had spotted them. There was a place lower down where the trees thinned out and the hill became the bank of the river, a little upstream from his home. If he could reach that he would be safe. His toes felt numb and swollen. The sledge, still gripped in his left hand, slipped down the slope ahead of him, pulling him forwards.

He heard a vast
crack
, then, as loud as someone firing an enormous gun nearby. It echoed off the trees. Finn looked round in shock, thinking he had been shot at. Even through his numbed feet he felt the ground shake. The trees around him shivered, shedding snow and ice in great curtains. What was going on?

‘Finn!’

His pursuer bounded towards him, a single figure dressed in black, loping over the snow at speed.

‘Finn! It’s an avalanche! Run!’

It was Connor. The older boy had followed him all this way. Finn tried to get away, bounding down the slope, half-falling, stumbling and weaving between the tree-trunks.

He was too slow. Connor caught him and flipped him around by the arm. Finn tried to pull himself loose and they both rolled to the ground. Snow filled Finn’s mouth, cold and gritty. He tried to beat the bigger boy off with his fists but Connor didn’t fight back. Instead he was shouting something.

‘Finn. It’s an avalanche. Come on!’

He hauled Finn up and set off down the slope, towing Finn with him. From behind them, a growing rumble filled the air, like thunder but becoming louder each moment. Finn looked that way. The hillside beyond the last of the trees was gone, as if a white cloud had descended. What did it mean? He had never seen anything like it. Shock staked him to the ground.

‘Finn, we need a tree. A big one.’

‘A tree?’ he said, not understanding. ‘Why?’

‘Just take us! We need a big tree to climb. We’ve only got a few seconds. We …’

The roaring drowned out the rest of Connor’s words. Finn felt drops on his face as if it was snowing again, but there was only blue sky overhead. The snow had come alive, turning into a roaring beast, chasing them down the hillside.

Now Finn ran, Connor close behind him. There was a big tree a little down the slope, one he had climbed a few times. They might be able to reach that. It was hard to keep his footing in the deep snow. Twice he tumbled over. Each time Connor picked him up, only to stagger himself a few paces on. Finn felt cold biting at the back of his neck, jaws of snow snapping at him.

He saw the tree, an old oak, its bulky trunk wide and tall, an upturned wrist and hand grasping at the sky. Once you reached the palm it was easy enough to climb. He just hoped the trunk wasn’t too slippery with ice.

‘This one,’ shouted Finn. Connor couldn’t possibly hear him but he nodded as Finn pointed. They ran around the tree, downslope from the thundering snow. Connor looked up into the branches then cupped his hands to give Finn a leg-up. It struck Finn that Connor was terrified too. He had thought, somehow, that all of this, the snow coming to life, the avalanche, was Connor’s doing. A trap he’d planned all along. But the other boy’s eyes were wide with fear.

Finn stepped into the offered hands and Connor boosted him up to the lowest branch. Finn hauled himself into the tree and, lying wedged between the forking branches, reached back down for Connor.

The world was a blizzard now, the ground and the other trees gone, only Connor’s hand visible reaching though the teeming white. Finn could feel the whole tree shuddering as a mountainside of snow slammed into it. He reached down and grasped Connor’s hand, pulling him up with a huge effort. They sat there together for a moment, both out of breath.