The Black North (5 page)

Oona stopped, asking of the frigid air, her breath making cold shapes: ‘What's happened?' The jackdaw landed beside her on a branch that bobbed as though it might break.

‘The North magic,' said the bird. ‘I told you – they've brought it with them. Doing like they did up North when they ruined and made it Black. They –'

Oona had time for no more – the land might've been so changed but still she recognised it, knew that home wasn't far. She ran and didn't stop until the Kavanagh cottage came to sight, but nothing showed her a greater change than home – the place was leaning, thatch rotten and sagging, door open like a desperate mouth with a gasp. Oona ran on – over the threshold with knife in hand and calling, ‘Granny!'

The hearth was cold and there was no light from anywhere, not even at the shrine for the Sorrowful Lady. The same smell existed inside as out – sweet, like the rot of things left long alone. Oona stepped forward and many softnesses touched her face. Her fingers moved fast and fumbling to remove them – a web had been woven wild across the one room of the cottage. Briar and creeper and vine had ensnared the family table, claimed dresser and sideboard and encircled the hearth at the centre of the room. Weed and nettle and dock were as high as her knee.

‘No,' said Oona, softly. Then again, feeble protest: ‘No. Can't be like this. Can't.'

Her home was no longer her own. Oona couldn't discern her memories of the place past the thicket of transformation – no more the comfortable space her mother had tended, nor the busy place that her father and grandfather had worked hard to keep and improve. Not the happy place she'd grown alongside Morris. And if her brother reappeared just then, would he even know that he'd come home?

Oona listened but heard no sound from the chickens in the corner. She took a step to explore but felt something sharp at her ankle.

‘Don't move!' said the voice of the jackdaw, somewhere.

Oona saw a thorn as long as her middle finger threatening her ankle. Then she saw more – many longer, most sharper.

‘What's happened?' asked Oona. ‘Like a hundred years gone by.' She hated the solemn echo her words sent. She had a notion then, a memory of Bridget's words and asked, ‘Is this the Echoes they talk about?'

‘No,' said Merrigutt. ‘Not that. The Echoes aren't as simple as that.'

‘Then what?' snapped Oona, and she remembered more of Bridget's words. ‘Some
spell
or something? Isn't that what they call it?'

‘A
dispell
,' said the jackdaw. ‘Takes away, doesn't give. Gets rid of things. I'd say what's lacking and been banished from here is hope.'

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!'

‘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 Invaders 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.'