Mark Chadbourn - The Burning Man

‘It’s as plain as the nose on your face or the tower in the city,’ Caitlin said in Brigid’s throaty rumble. Mallory winced at the relapse: what had brought one of her buried personalities to the fore?

‘What are you saying?’ Sophie asked.

Caitlin/Brigid gave a chilling laugh. ‘Go to a library if you want to understand. It’s all up here!’ She tapped her temple.

A noise on the edge of his perception snapped Mallory out of his reverie. He motioned for Sophie and Caitlin to remain silent. At first there was only the wind, but then came a faint sucking sound like gas escaping from a marsh. Behind it, high and reedy and drawing closer, were childlike voices, but whatever they were saying made no sense; an idiot’s chant.

Mallory peered out of the south window. The foot of the tower was lost in the darkness, yet even so he thought he could see something moving, darker still than the shadows that concealed it.

‘Stop that noise! It’s scaring me!’ Caitlin said in her little girl’s voice. The axe slipped from her fingers and clattered on the floorboards.

Mallory ran from window to window. Waves of shadows lapped all around the tower.

‘They’re coming!’ Caitlin whined.

The grind of the tower door being dragged open. Tiny feet clattering up the steps; empty, idiot voices growing louder.

Mallory slammed and bolted the trap-door that led to the stairs.

‘What are we supposed to do now?’ Sophie said.

‘You can either let down your hair, Rapunzel, or find something we can use to get out of here.’ Mallory began to ransack the chests and cupboards.

Caitlin sat against the wall, hugging her knees and rocking gently.

The clattering of feet came right up to the trap-door, the insane voices now shrill and giggling. The bolt rattled amidst a flurry of clawing with what sounded like birds’ talons.

‘How did they get up here so quickly?’ Sophie breathed.

Head deep in an enormous chest, Mallory emerged with an extensive coil of silken cord.

‘Will that hold us?’ Sophie asked. The clawing and giggling almost drowned her out.

Mallory stamped his boot on one end and tested it. ‘Yeah. Look, you need to do that thing you do. The other end has to be attached to the nearest building.’ Sophie’s face betrayed her lack of confidence. ‘You can do it, combat honey,’ he said softly.

While Mallory secured the cord to one of the iron rings set in the floorboards, Sophie leaned out of the window and silently attempted to summon one of the bats she’d seen circling the tower earlier.

The trap-door burst open with a crash. From the dark beneath erupted what looked like six-year-olds but with grey, mortuary skin, jagged, broken talons and pale eyes like saucers. Their sharp-toothed mouths snapped hungrily.

‘Any time now would do,’ Mallory shouted. With surprising tenderness, he pulled Caitlin next to him and stood between Sophie and the dead children with Llyrwyn drawn.

Sophie forced herself not to look back, but could hear the sizzle of the flames as the sword cut the air, and the sickening sound of bone and meat cleaved, and the hysterical screams and incongruous shrill laughing, so loud she wanted to scream herself.

Concentrate , she thought. Don’t be so pathetic!

The bat was so large that at first she thought it was a bird of prey. Soon the cord was unravelling out of the window. When it was taut, she yelled to Mallory.

‘You go first!’ he replied. The unnatural children swarmed at him like rats. He hacked and thrust in a blur, piling up bloodless limbs and dismembered bodies.

‘Caitlin-?’ Sophie said.

‘I’ll carry her! Go!’

Sophie paused as she took in Mallory holding Caitlin about her waist, pressed hard against him, using his own body as a shield. Caitlin clung to him with a touching hope.

Sophie swung her legs up to grasp the cord and then shinned along it like a monkey, feeling the sucking gulf beneath her once she was out of the window, forcing herself not to look down.

Bats flapped around her head, and the cord burned her hands and feet as she gathered speed, but she clung on. Soon she was on a flat roof nearby, allowing herself to breathe as Mallory dropped from the cord next to her, bleeding from numerous wounds. Caitlin hung around his neck, her face pressed close to his.

‘Thank you,’ Caitlin said, with what sounded to Sophie like breathless adoration. Just the little girl inside her friend, Sophie told herself.

Mallory steadied himself. ‘Okay, that’s put me right off having kids.’

‘Whoever’s behind this isn’t going to let us blithely carry on trying to find out what happened,’ Sophie said.

‘We knew it was just a matter of time before they caught up with us. Let’s find that library.’

While Mallory bathed his wounds in one of Decebalus’s network of secret rooms at the back of the Hunter’s Moon, Sophie sat with Virginia Dare, brushing and braiding the little girl’s hair. More resilient than Sophie could have hoped, she had recovered from the worst of her ordeal, but her eyes still held a haunted look that Sophie feared would never fade.

‘When will you rescue my mother?’ Virginia asked.

‘Soon.’ Sophie averted her eyes from a network of scars peeking above the neckline of the girl’s shift.

‘Do not talk to me about that place!’ Virginia snapped, as if she could read Sophie’s mind.

‘Darling, you’re with friends now. We’re going to look after you.’

‘Nobody can look after anybody. You are always on your own.’

‘That’s not true-’

‘It is! My mother could not protect me!’

Sophie winced. ‘I know what that’s like. To feel you’ve been abandoned by people you count on. You’re lost. You’re scared. You’re afraid you can’t stand on your own. It hurts, doesn’t it? And you never forget that hurt.’

Virginia watched Sophie intently for any sign that she was lying or patronising. ‘You are not alone. You have the Knight.’

‘Mallory? Yes, I do.’ Sophie looked around to check that Decebalus was not in earshot and then whispered conspiratorially, ‘I haven’t even told Mallory this. It’s a secret, between you and me, all right?’

Virginia’s eyes grew wide. She nodded.

‘Before Mallory came along, I felt exactly like you. I couldn’t cope on my own, and I was ready to give up. I didn’t show anybody — I’m not like that. I put on a big, brave smiling face, but inside I was clinging on by my fingernails.’

Sophie could see that Virginia understood.

‘And then Mallory came along and he saved me,’ she continued. ‘Not in an “I’ve got a big sword to kill the monsters” way. Instead he made me realise there was somebody to watch my back when I wasn’t up to the fight. He showed me the truth — that none of us are superheroes who can always cope on our own, and it’s not a sign of weakness to accept that. All we need to do is find somebody we trust and put our faith in them to look after us when we stumble. And once you give up fighting on your own — once you share that burden of struggle — you’re stronger.’

Through the open door to the next room, she watched Mallory move about, wincing when one of his wounds pulled.

‘You are very lucky to have found him.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am.’ She let her own deeper fears subside and turned back to Virginia with a reassuring smile. ‘And now I’m asking you to trust us. Can you do that?’

Virginia looked into Sophie’s eyes for a moment and then nodded, before nuzzling her head into Sophie’s neck and hugging her tightly.

To Ruth, the scenery had the look of a seventies summer holiday snapshot with colours that were too saturated to be real. A clear blue sky, verdant trees, sun-bleached grass and rolling, dusty, boulder-strewn hillsides. The white walls and pink-tiled roofs of the village glowed in the morning light.