Authors: L J Leyland
‘What? Rabies? Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ said Matthias, breathing heavily. ‘As soon as they mentioned his fear of water I knew that was it. Remember, Maida? Hogburn from the docks got it from that dog and he tried to attack his own children? Died of thirst after a week. Deddern seemed exactly the same, completely out of his mind.’ Matthias’s face sunk into a frown; he looked sad and weary.
‘All her talk of punishment and sin … it makes me uneasy. Light and Dark, as though people are just good or evil and there’s nothing in between. It’s just so
hard-line
. It’s like absolving people of any responsibility for their own actions. It’s as though they have no choice – they’re either taken by the Dark and forced into doing bad things or they are not. I just don’t like it. We have
choices
and if we make the right choice …’
I cut him off. ‘Now is probably not the best time for philosophizing. Can we just figure out how to escape this place? I can’t stand another minute with them. They make me feel sick.’
Rhian was peering over at us, scrutinizing our manner. She could see I was agitated and I knew she had taken a dislike to me. She beckoned her father over; they studied us, arms folded, faces set in a hostile yet curious expression. Their opinion of us was rapidly deteriorating and I could tell it wouldn’t be long before we were on dangerous ground.
‘Well we can’t just pick up and leave. They’d stop us. Besides they are blocking the exit,’ said Matthias, pointing towards the cave mouth.
I turned to see a conspicuous group of men milling by the passageway that led out of the cave. They were staring at us, arms folded across their chests. Rhian had obviously sent them to guard the passageway and prevent us from leaving.
‘Then we need a plan,’ I said.
‘The bat cave!’ Noah said, as though his pronouncement was so obvious and brilliant that it needed no further elaboration.
‘Sorry?’ said Matthias, bewildered by Noah’s sudden inspiration.
‘Well, what if we escape through the passage the bats live in? The bats are gone for the night, aren’t they? So we won’t get bitten if we go as soon as we can and there’s no way they’d follow us up there as they think that’s where the Darkness is. I’m sure it must lead up to the surface at some point.’
‘How can you be so sure it’s not a dead end?’ I asked.
‘Because the waterfall emerges from that passage, doesn’t it? The waterfall is too big to be fuelled solely by a bedrock stream, therefore it must be fuelled by rainwater, therefore there
must
be a channel from the surface that the rainwater travels down. If we can find the hole that the rainwater runs through, we can escape!’ He beamed broadly.
I shrugged, casually. ‘As good a plan as any,’ I said, but inwardly I was very impressed. The plan was cunning and used Rhian’s own prejudices as a tool against her, which was an ingredient I particularly relished.
How well he’d slot right into our lives
, I thought. Noah smiled proudly at me. ‘And what about our irritating little friend?’ asked Matthias.
A collective sigh fell from our lips. What a pain Grimmy was turning out to be.
‘We have to take him. He knows the way to the Highlands and as much as I’m loath to admit it, he might be helpful at the end,’ I said. But I wasn’t being truthful with them. I knew that my real reason for wanting Grimmy with us was much more selfish. I wanted to milk him for all he knew about Regina and the possible connection between me and her. He was the key that I needed to unlock my past.
After we had returned from filling our flasks, Sophia donned a crown made of bat bones and began to prance around, flapping her arms in a bat-like fashion in order to channel the spirits. Apparently she was gearing up to some sort of trance where she could read the elements and divine the future.
I followed Matthias’s gaze up to the platform of rock where Rhian’s family ruled from. Like a mythical figure of destruction, Rhian stood there, glorious and terrible. She had painted her whole body and face black. Her jet limbs were lithe and taut, coiled springs ready to pounce should we try to escape. The whites of her eyes shone out of the blackness like search beams. They found me and, for a second, illuminated my deceit and my fear.
There’s something sinister about two hundred people chanting and moving as one that is enough to chill even the most time-hardened sceptic to the bone. The underground people seethed and swayed like an organism made of hundreds of tiny particles, all working for the same end – to make a connection with the spirits of the Earth.
Sophia wailed from the platform, directing the crowd like the conductor of a gothic human orchestra. Rhian stood like a statue, letting the waves of collective euphoria wash over her and empower her. I could sense how the noise and the movement gave her strength, both physical and mental. The chanting and swaying got louder and louder, quicker and quicker, and became drug-like in its potency; people collapsing, wailing, crying. The fires smouldered, casting a hellish gleam. The shrillness of the crowd made my limbs rigid, my hairs prickle and my flesh crawl.
‘We’ve got to go,
now
,’ I whispered to Noah and Matthias, who both nodded in return.
Matthias grabbed Grimmy by the arm and said, ‘I’m about to save your life, you can thank me later,’ and hauled him towards the cave wall, where we were slightly masked by the shadows.
‘Gerroff me you giant, it’s just getting good,’ Grimmy yelped.
‘Keep your voice down and listen,’ said Noah, ‘they won’t let us out of here alive. They’ll do their ritual and find us to be from the Dark and then they’ll do to us what they did to that Deddern man. Is that what you want? You want to go mad from disease and thirst and die in an underground tomb?’
‘… But we are from the Dark,’ replied Grimmy slyly, his grin stretching from ear to ear. ‘We all are in Brigadus. Haven’t I said this all along? My Regina … look what they did to her. So pure and full of light, died in the dark because of them. We should take a leaf from their book and punish those from the Dark in Brigadus. Make them pay for their sins. I’d punish all of them.’ His fists were clenched and there was mania in his eyes. He had to be stopped before he handed us a death sentence, so I did the only thing I could think of. I sang.
‘
We’ll walk together down the line; and see the sun begin to shine;
the past is dead our joy divine; our dream is won, the future’s mine.’
The song drifted through the air, acting like a mist of rain over hot coals, dissipating the heat from the moment. Grimmy turned to look at me, incredulity on his face.
‘We will bring people to the Light, Grimmy, not punish them for being in the Dark,’ I said.
‘How can you even dare to use her song?’ he asked.
‘Because she would want me to. She wouldn’t want you to be like this, Grimmy. She would want you to make things better, not to punish.’
Grimmy’s face was unreadable. For a moment I almost felt sorry for him. He was damaged goods, battered and bruised by the hand life had dealt him. For one brief minute, his mask of distain and craftiness lifted to reveal a vulnerable man, hurt and confused by his situation. Something in his expression changed and, for once, he almost looked sane. He began to sing:
‘
Put your hand in mine, together as one; we’ll march together, ‘til we reach the sun;
no rest until our job is done; the future’s mine, our dream is won.’
It was enough. Enough to know that, for now at least, he was on our side.
‘Let’s go, whilst they’re out of their minds and won’t miss us,’ said Matthias.
We began our ascent of the cave wall, which was craggy and rough, and provided just enough crevices to haul ourselves slowly up the wall, hand over foot. At about halfway up the wall, there was a natural ledge that was just large enough to walk on. The ledge swept around the whole cave and passed a couple of metres over the rock platform where Rhian and her parents stood. From the platform there were some crudely hewn steps that were carved into the wall. They snaked up the rock wall to the opening from which the water poured and the bats lived. From our ledge, we could skirt above the platform that Rhian stood on and join the steps as they climbed up the side of the waterfall. I shivered as I thought of the last person to have ascended those steps. It was probably Deddern, hauled up roughly by his arms and thrown to the bats for his ‘test’.
It was a tough climb to even get to the ledge. The rock face was slippery with damp and slime from the waterfall spray. I eventually managed to haul myself up to the ledge just as Matthias and Noah were straightening themselves up, pressing their backs to the wall to stop the forces of gravity dragging them head first over the edge. Their feet overhung the ledge but luckily mine were small enough to fit safely on it. The dizzying effect of vertigo rushed in front of my eyes but I managed to steady myself with a couple of deep breaths. Noah and Matthias hauled Grimmy onto the ledge by his arms.
‘Quiet as the dead, yes?’ I instructed them.
Grimmy mimed wrapping a noose around his neck and pulling it, his wormy wet tongue lolling crazily from his mouth.
‘Ha, we should be so lucky,’ grumbled Matthias.
We crept around the ledge as quietly as we could, but it didn’t matter really; the chanting below was so loud that it reverberated off the walls and made the rocks rumble. We became more confident, shuffling quicker and quicker around the ledge towards the waterfall. The ledge was gravelly and occasionally one of us would slip, sending little showers of grit onto the crowd below. Luckily, they were too preoccupied with their chanting to look upwards and discover us. My heart raced quicker as I realised that we were going to make it. If we could skirt above the platform without being seen, then climb the steps to the waterfall mouth before their trance stopped, we would be gone before they knew it! I broke into a run, my hands tracing the side of the rock wall to keep my balance. Matthias, Noah, and Grimmy weren’t far behind. Nearly there! I covered the last couple of metres of the ledge as quickly as possible as this part of the ledge was above the platform where Rhian stood.
I ran to the stone steps that snaked up the wall to the mouth of the waterfall and the bat cave. Blood was pulsing through my veins, adrenaline coursed through me as I inwardly did a little jig of joy. We had nearly made it!
‘Noah, quickly! We’re nearly out!’ I cried, only to whirl round and see Noah’s face register terror.
The crowd had fallen silent. The chanting had stopped. Two hundred people were looking at us. In my haste to get to the steps, I had a sent a spray of gravel down from the ledge onto Rhian on the platform below. She stared upwards at me, eyes burning with fury. We had been caught.
‘Yet again, I have been vindicated,’ said Rhian to the crowd.
She pointed upwards to us on the ledge. I was frozen to the spot.
‘I told my father that these visitors were not from the Light but were tempters sent from the Dark. Am I not proved right? Aren’t they trying to flee back to the Dark? Haven’t they betrayed our trust? They have been sent here to corrupt us! They are our test and we have seen through them and passed! Be thankful for my foresight and be determined in your wrath.’
I wildly thought of some way that this situation could be saved. Deny everything? Claim we were just going for a little stroll? No, it was clear that this could not be smoothed over by fast talking; a fight was inevitable and I was determined to have a head start.
‘Just where do you think you are going, you devils, you corruptors,
heathens
? You are our second Reckoning and we will not fail. You will be punished!’
She leapt across the platform and began scaling the steps hewn into the wall like a giant spider.
‘Climb!’ yelled Noah and we raced to the steps. We only had a head start of about ten metres. I threw myself at them with such force that I knocked the air from my lungs. I scrambled up the steep stone steps as quickly as I could but they were slippery with years of spray thrown from the waterfall. I could feel Matthias and Noah pushing me onwards from below, Matthias’s hand groped at my ankle as he tried to pull himself onto the step below me.
‘Move, Maida! You have to climb quicker!’
‘I’m trying!’ I yelled. The recent months of hunger and worry had taken their toll on my strength. I gritted my teeth and surged forward with a burst of speed that made my muscles burn and my lungs heave.
After a minute or so of hard climbing, I could see the top step. Just a little further! Just a few more steps and I’d be there! I pulled myself over the top step and straightened up to look into the bat cave’s yawning mouth. The waterfall bubbled and hissed like it was boiling before it plunged downwards over the edge. The river that fed it snaked backwards into the cave and the gloom. There was a narrow bank that flanked the river either side. There were no glow-worms in this cave. It was sheer, unbroken darkness. I hurried back towards the steps to see how the others were doing. Matthias was close to the top, and Noah was close behind. My stomach lurched as I saw the strain on his face as he pulled himself up each steep, stone step.
I grabbed Matthias’s wrist to haul him over the last step and then did the same with Noah. He straightened up right in front of me. He was so close that I could smell his scent of firewood and sea air, and I could feel the heat radiate off his body. We looked at each other. An invisible jolt passed between us as I realised that I had been more worried about his safety than my own. I fought an urge to throw my arms around his neck. No time for that now; that would have to wait until we were completely safe, which I was beginning to doubt would ever happen – Rhian would forever stalk me in my dreams.
‘Let’s go,’ said Matthias and we took off at a run into the darkness.
‘Maida!’ I heard a voice croak.
I skidded to a halt, throwing a cloud of gravel into the air.
Grimmy
. Where was he?
‘
Maida
!’ his voice was more urgent.
I ran back to the edge to find Rhian pulling on one of Grimmy’s legs from below whilst he desperately clung onto the rock steps. She had caught him. It was like watching a seagull pry a limpet from a rock. Grimmy was determined not to be dislodged and aimed sharp kicks at Rhian’s face from which she drew back and hissed like a cat. But still she kept on trying. The crowd below was baying for Grimmy’s blood and urged Rhian on like a gladiator moving in to kill an animal.
‘Maida! What are you waiting for you great trollop, help me!’ Grimmy yelled.
I paused. I knew how weasels like Grimmy worked. I’d slithered amongst the bottom-feeders at Nora’s before and I knew the way to handle them. I knew that there was an unspoken system of repayment amongst those types of people. No deed is ever given freely. If it is, you are seen as a soft touch, there to be taken advantage of, there to be exploited. And there was no way I’d ever let Grimmy take advantage of me.
‘Not so fast Grimmy,’ I said, ‘I’ll help you if you help me.’
‘You dirty little snake, you nasty little …’
‘That’s no way to speak to your rescuer now, is it? I’ll save your life in exchange for a little favour of my own. You have to be on our side. You have to drop your plan. Regina’s gone and you can’t bring her back. You can’t punish innocent people for what happened to her. Say you’re with us, truly with us, and I’ll save you.’
Rhian clawed at his leg with a particularly vicious swipe. Grimmy howled in agony.
‘All right! All right! Just get her off me!’
‘Promise? On Regina’s memory?’
Reluctance spread across his face. I shook my head disgustedly and began to back away.
He roared dramatically and shouted, ‘Fine! Fine! Have it your way!’
‘Promise?’
‘I bloody well promise, now help me, you useless tart!’
‘Charming manners, as always.’
I reached into my bag and pulled out the golden gun. It shimmered green under the light of the glow-worms. I pointed it into the air and pulled the trigger. The boom ricocheted off every wall and sent echoes bouncing off the rocks. It was deafening. It was followed by a strange silence that was oddly claustrophobic. All eyes were on me. In the second that followed, Rhian let go of her victim out of sheer surprise and Grimmy scrambled over the top step and scampered behind Matthias and Noah.
‘Rhian,’ I said but I was addressing the crowd as much as I was addressing her. ‘There’s something about me you should know.’
Rhian hauled herself up to the top of the steps and straightened up. She
towered
over me. She stood with her back to the drop-off of the waterfall. I sensed that Matthias and Noah were moving in to flank me on either side.
‘I’m from Brigadus. It’s an island full of people just like me who survived your ‘Reckoning’. I hate to break it to you but you weren’t the only ones saved. You’ve not been chosen. You’ve not been vindicated. You’re not special. If anything, you’re worse off than anyone else I know.’
She hissed at this and shifted her weight forward slightly, rocking on the balls of her feet as though she was about to spring.
‘You see, people in Brigadus have it tough. We live almost as badly as you do. Not much food, lots of disease. But we’re survivors in Brigadus. I’m a survivor. Do you know why that is?
Because I’m not afraid of the dark
.’ I started to sing:
We’ll walk together down the line; and see the sun begin to shine;
the past is dead our joy divine; our dream is won, the future’s mine.’
Rhian’s eyes widened.