Tom Pollock: The City's son

‘Glas, this Railwraith-’

‘Doing these stitches has destroyed my fingers,’ he moans. ‘Have you no heart at all for a poor old rubbish-spi-’

‘Glas!’ I snap, a little harder than I mean to, and he recoils and shuts up, staring at me reproachfully. I exhale hard and then just say it. ‘The wraith got loose from the tracks. It got free.’

For a long moment the only sound is the patter of the breeze on the surface of the river. When Glas finally speaks, his voice is flat. ‘That’s not possible.’

‘Glas, I’m telling you-’

‘It’s not,’ he insists. ‘Railwraiths are electricity: its memory, its dreams. The rails are their conductors. They can’t survive away from them for more than a few minutes.’

‘Well, take it from the son of a Goddess whose bony arse it kicked around the block, three miles from the nearest stretch of track: this one can!’ My shout echoes off the bridge’s foundations. I squat down, trying to work the tension out of my temples with my fingertips.

‘Glas, it was so strong,’ I say quietly. The memory of the fierce white voltage of its teeth is seared into my skin. I shiver. ‘I wounded it, but- It must have left me for dead. I’ve never met a wraith like it. It didn’t even try to run, just came right at me…’

‘… as though it was it that was hunting you?’ Glas asks, and I look up sharply.

Because that’s exactly what it was like.

Gutterglass’ voice is very quiet. All of the rats and worms and ants that animate him go still and for a moment he looks dead. ‘Filius,’ he says softly. And he doesn’t sound confused any more. He sounds very, very frightened. ‘Did anyone see you hunting that wraith?’

‘What? No. Why?’

‘Filius-’

‘No one saw me, Glas, I was just hunting. I was-’ Then I falter, because that isn’t quite true: somebody did see. A sick feeling swells in my stomach as I realise what he’s asking.

‘It went through St Paul’s,’ I whisper.

‘The Railwraith entered Reach’s domain,’ Glas says.

I nod as I feel the cold seep through me, like my bones are blistering with ice.

‘… and emerged on the other side,’ he continues, his voice grim, ‘loose from the rails, more angry and more powerful than it had any rightful way of being, and coming after you.’ I can hear the strain of forced calm on his borrowed vocal chords. ‘Filius,’ Glas says, ‘there’s an ugly possibility here you need to face up to.’ He sinks down until his shells are level with my eyes. ‘What if that wraith didn’t “ get loose ”? What if it was set free-?’

The question hangs in the air unfinished. I complete it in my head: What if it was set free by Reach?

Across the river, the boom and clang of construction drifts from the St Paul’s sites. His cranes grasp at the Cathedral like it’s an orb of office.

Reach: the Crane King. My mother’s greatest enemy. His claws have been part of my nightmares for as long as I’ve been dreaming.

He could do it. It dawns on me now, as it must have done on Glas, that Reach is an electric expert. His cranes and diggers, his pneumatic weaponry, they’re all powered by it — so he could have found a way to channel that power into a wraith, to set it, frenzied and burning, on my tail: an opportunistic attack.

‘What if it’s finally happening, Filius?’ Gutterglass whispers, half to himself. ‘What if Reach is coming for you?’

I grip my spear so tightly it feels like the skin on my knuckles could split

‘We have to get you home — now,’ Glas says. He’s wheeling himself round and round in circles, suddenly all urgency. ‘I need you back at the landfill where it’s safe, until I can find out what’s going on. If this is Reach, he won’t stop with a Railwraith.

‘Soon there will be wolves and — Lady save us,’ he murmurs fervently, ‘ wire.’ He begins rolling towards the edge of the bridge, yanking me by the arm, and I have to drag my feet in the sand to wrench myself free.

What if Reach is coming for you?

… Reach is coming…

The mantra goes around and around in my head, dizzying me, but it makes no sense: why now? I’ve been here for sixteen years without my mother’s protection. What’s he been waiting for?

But the longer I think about it, the more horribly easy it gets to believe. Reach has been the monster in every fairy-tale I’ve ever been told. My mother hated him, and Glas hates him, and I hate him too. I can feel that hatred clotting around my heart.

Reach is coming… and deep down, I always knew he would.

‘Filius?’ Glas beckons impatiently. ‘We need to move.’

I straighten up, wincing at a fresh wave of pain from my burns, and shake my head.

Glas arches a dust-drawn eyebrow. ‘This is no time to be stubborn, Filius. In case you’ve forgotten, that wraith is still out there. It almost killed you last night.’

‘So imagine what it’ll do to the rest of the city,’ I say slowly. In my mind’s eye I’m seeing the blackened corpse of the boy from last night, multiplied: one for every gutter. That impossibly powerful wraith is wild and indiscriminate and free.

What if Reach is coming for you?

The thought is too big; I can’t grasp it. But if I let fear freeze me, then tonight it’ll be me, lying charred by the roadside. Reach is still a ‘what-if’, the wraith’s a certainty: the immediate threat. I seize on it, almost gratefully. I can focus on that.

‘I have to finish the hunt.’

At the front of the class Mr Krafte was rambling on about The Lady of Shalott, but Beth wasn’t listening. As she doodled, a punked-up warrior princess emerged from under her pencil, blowing a mirror into fragments with her bazooka. Out of the window, she could see the tarpaulin the staff had draped over last night’s work. The portrait had still been uncovered when she and Pen had arrived, other students had been crowded around it, whooping with laughter and snapping it with their phones.

Beth had felt a hot rush of victory and squeezed Pen’s hand. Pen had squeezed back nervously.

‘It’s okay,’ Beth had said, ‘there’s no proof it was us.’ They’d even buried their backpacks and paint-stained hoodies under a tree near the railway, in case of a locker search.

‘We’re safe. I’ll find you at the end of the day,’ she’d promised, before letting Pen go.

‘Miss Bradley!’ Mr Krafte’s voice jarred her out her reverie and her pencil snapped.

‘Yes, boss?’ She looked up warily.

The old English teacher eyed her with mild perturbation as he folded a piece of paper between his fingers. His face was as dark and wrinkled as the skin on old gravy. ‘Go to Mrs Gorecastle’s office, please. She’d like a word.’

A muttered ‘ooooh’ went round the classroom and Beth’s throat tightened, but she shrugged, trying to look unflustered. She spent a few seconds folding the warrior princess drawing into a paper plane, and sent it on a kamikaze nose-dive into the bin before she got up.

Okay, Beth: here goes. Time to put on your innocent face. She glanced at her reflection in the window and sighed. If she’d been holding up a board with a date and time of arrest on it she couldn’t have looked guiltier. She grimaced and swung out into the hall.

The door to the headmistress’ office had a little round window in it and Beth glanced through it as she approached — and stopped cold.

She could see three figures behind the wired glass: the headmistress, Gorecastle herself, gaunt and dressed all in black, Dr Salt, who, frankly, looked better flat on the tarmac, rotting flesh and all…

… and a tall, slim girl standing in the corner, worrying at her headscarf.