Joanne Harris: Runemarks

“What happened?” she said.

But before the goblin could make his reply, something shot out of the hole in the wall. Several somethings, in fact; no, dozens-no, hundreds-of fat, brown, fast-moving somethings, swarming from the burrow like-

“Rats!” exclaimed Maddy, gathering her skirt around her ankles.

The goblin looked at her with scorn. “Well, what did you think would happen?” he said. “Cast that kind of glam at World Below, and before you know it, you’re knee-deep in bilge and vermin.”

Maddy stared at the hole in dismay. She had intended to summon only the goblin, but the cry-and that fast-flung rune-had apparently summoned everything within her range. Now not only rats, but beetles, spiders, wood lice, centipedes, whirligigs, earwigs, and maggots squirted horribly out of the hole, along with a generous outpouring of foul water (possibly from a broken drain), to form a kind of verminous brew that poured and wriggled at alarming speed out of the burrow and across the floor.

And then, just when she was sure that nothing worse could possibly happen, there came the sound of a door opening above-stairs, and a high and slightly nasal voice came to Maddy from the kitchen.

“Hey, madam! You going to stay down there all morning, or what?”

“Oh, gods.” It was Mrs. Scattergood.

The goblin shot Maddy a cheery wink.

“Did you hear me?” said Mrs. Scattergood. “There’s pots to wash up here-or am I supposed to do them an’ all?”

“In a minute!” called Maddy in haste, taking refuge on the cellar steps. “Just…sorting out a few things down here!”

“Well, now you can come and finish things off up here, ” said Mrs. Scattergood. “Come up right now and see to them pots. And if that one-eyed scally good-for-nowt comes round again, you can tell him from me to shove off!”

Maddy’s heart leaped into her mouth. That one-eyed scally good-for-nowt-that must mean her old friend was back, after more than twelve months of wandering, and no amount of rats and cockroaches-or even goblins-was going to keep her from seeing him. “He was here?” she said, taking the cellar steps at a run. “One-Eye was here?” She emerged breathless into the kitchen.

“Aye.” Mrs. Scattergood handed her a tea towel. “Though I dunno what there is in that to look so pleased about. I’d have thought that you, of all people-” She stopped and cocked her head to listen. “What’s that noise?” she said sharply.

Maddy closed the cellar door. “It’s nothing, Mrs. Scattergood.”

The landlady gave her a suspicious look. “What about them rats?” she said. “Did you fix it right this time?”

“I need to see him,” Maddy said.

“Who? The one-eyed scallyman?”

“Please,” she said. “I won’t be long.”

Mrs. Scattergood pursed her lips. “Not on my penny, you won’t,” she said. “I’m not paying you good money to go gallivanting around with thieves and beggars-”

“One-Eye isn’t a thief,” said Maddy.

“Don’t you start giving yourself airs, madam,” said Mrs. Scattergood. “Laws knows you can’t help the way you’re made, but you might at least make an effort. For your father’s sake, you might, and for the memory of your sainted mother.” She paused for breath for less than a second. “And you can take that look off your face. Anyone would think you were proud to be a-”

And then she stopped, openmouthed, as a sound came from behind the cellar door. It was, thought Mrs. Scattergood, a peculiar kind of scuttling noise, punctuated by the occasional thud. It made her feel quite uncomfortable-as if there might be something more down in that cellar than barrels of ale. And what was that distant sloshing sound, like wash day at the river?

“Oh my Laws, what have you done?” Mrs. Scattergood made for the cellar door.

Maddy put herself in front of it, and with one hand she traced the shape of Naudr against the latch. “Don’t go down there, please,” she said.

Mrs. Scattergood tried the latch, but the runesign held it fast. She turned to glare at Maddy, her fierce little teeth bared like a ferret’s. “You open this door right now,” she said.

“You really, really don’t want me to.”

“You open this door, Maddy Smith, if you know what’s good for you.”

Maddy tried once more to protest, but Mrs. Scattergood was unstoppable. “I’ll wager you’ve got that scally down there, helping himself to my best ale. Well, you just open this door, girl, or I’ll have Matt Law down here to take you both to the roundhouse!”

Maddy sighed. It wasn’t that she liked working at the inn, but a job was a job, and a shilling a shilling, and neither was likely to be forthcoming as soon as Mrs. Scattergood looked into the cellar. In an hour or so the spell would wear off, and the creatures would crawl back into their hole. Then she could seal it up again, sweep up the mess, mop up the water…

“Let me explain,” she tried again.

But Mrs. Scattergood was beyond explanations. Her face had flushed a dangerous red, and her voice was almost as shrill as a rat’s. “Adam!” she shrieked. “Get in here right now!”

Adam was Mrs. Scattergood’s son. He and Maddy had always hated each other, and it was the thought of his sneering, gleeful face-and that of her long-absent friend, known in some circles as the one-eyed scallyman -that finally made up her mind.

“You’re sure it was One-Eye?” she said at last.

“Of course it was! Now open this-”

“All right,” said Maddy, and reversed the rune. “But if I were you, I’d give it an hour.”

And at that she turned and fled, and was already on the road to Red Horse Hill by the time the shrill, distant screaming began, emerging like smoke from the Seven Sleepers’ kitchen and rising above slumbering Malbry village to vanish into the morning air.

Malbry was a village of some eight hundred souls. A quiet place, or so it seemed, set between mountain ridges in the valley of the river Strond, which flowed from the Wilderlands in the north through the Uplands and the Inlands before finally making its way south toward World’s End and into the One Sea.

The mountains-called the Seven Sleepers, though no one remembered exactly why-were bitter and snow-cloaked all year round, and there was only one pass, the Hindarfell, which was blocked by snow three months of the year. This remoteness affected the valley folk: they kept to themselves, were suspicious of strangers, and (but for Nat Parson, who had once made a pilgrimage as far as World’s End and who considered himself quite the traveler) had little to do with the world outside.

There were a dozen little settlements in the valley, from Farnley Tyas at the foot of the mountains to Pease Green at the far side of Little Bear Wood. But Malbry was the biggest and the most important. It housed the valley’s only parson, the largest church, the best inns, and the wealthiest farmers. Its houses were built of stone, not wood; there was a smithy, a glassworks, a covered market. Its inhabitants thought themselves better than most and looked down on the folk of Pog Hill or Fettlefields and laughed in secret at their country ways. The only thorn in Malbry’s side stood roughly two miles from the village. The locals called it Red Horse Hill, and most folk avoided it because of the tales that collected there and the goblins who lived beneath its flanks.

Once, it was said, there had been a castle on the Hill. Malbry itself had been part of its fiefdom, growing crops for the lord of that land-but all that had been a long time ago, before Tribulation and the End of the World. Nowadays there was nothing to see: only a few standing stones, too large to have been looted from the ruins, and, of course, the Red Horse cut into the clay.