Catherine Fisher - Darkhenge

He lowered it slowly. “I’m an artist. I don’t know about words.”

“But the poet isn’t here, and we must do what we can.” The King stood. “I would suggest you put your hand in, take a handful of sound and meaning, and lift it out.”

Feeling lost, Rob put his hand in. There was nothing to lift but he lifted it out, and as it came he felt it slither in his fingers, harden, twist, clatter onto the chalky floor. Briefly the things were ogham sticks, but as they touched the soil they became a cascade of antlers, flint knives, the wide shoulder blades of cattle.

The King groaned and picked one up. “Antler picks. Used to build this tomb, millennia ago.”

Rob lifted another and tested it against his palm. The tines were sharp, the grip smooth, as if many hands had honed it. He looked up at the stones of the corbeled roof. “Then we’d better use them too,” he said.

It was brilliant to be riding again. She could only gallop if she made the trees stand aside, and that wasn’t easy. The trees resisted, they didn’t want to do it; they closed up tight again behind her. But for a few moments she let Callie run across the cropped turf of a hill slope, the moon high and full overhead. It was like the downs at night, and there were moths and bats and an owl that flew from tree to tree, and in some places where the ground was low were fireflies, their tiny glimmers lost among bracken and heather.

But keeping the trees away was a strain, and when she forgot, they closed in again, and it was too tiring to stop them. They seemed to be guiding her, forming a long avenue with smooth grass down the center, so that she rode the way they wanted her to ride, always downhill, the wind dying away and a midnight stillness falling on the land.

The sixth caer must lie ahead. She knew that each circle led farther in, and yet each was larger, the forest within it denser. And the wood was not so empty now; creatures were stirring in it. She had heard wolves, and a boar had grunted in a thicket as she passed, its bowed back spined. But that didn’t worry her. Why should it? She was Queen of the Unworld.

Rob was far behind. She didn’t want to think about him. Clare must have dealt with Vetch. Neither of them would be seriously hurt, surely. And yet she tugged on the reins and drew Callie to a walk, glancing back down the eerie avenue of trees.

Then the enormity of what she had ordered the King to do swept over her like a cold dread. She imagined Rob’s terror as the knife slashed the vines, his scream as he fell.

She stopped the horse.

What was happening to her? She put both hands up to her face, felt her cheekbones and eyes, the reins slipping so that Callie cropped the dark grass.

Rob.

She’d always looked up to him. He was older, had always been there, in school, holding her hand on her first day. She remembered how cross she’d been when she realized she’d always be younger, that she’d never catch up with him. How Mum always cut him a bigger slice of cake, because he was a boy.

Stupid things to be jealous of.

But you couldn’t kill someone in a world that didn’t exist.

Could you?

She looked back.

Maybe she should go home. Vetch would know how. And Mac was back there. If she found the Chair in the seventh caer, she would never see Mac again, or Mum or Dad, or the girls at school. Or even Tom Whelan. For a moment anguish filled her up; then the trees rustled in the Unworld breeze, and all their faces faded.

They seemed distant, unreal. Perhaps she had only ever been asleep and dreamed them. Perhaps there was no world out there.

The harness chinked. Callie blew through her nostrils, dipped her head.

Chloe patted her neck and leaned down, rubbing the familiar white coat. “Don’t worry. It won’t be far now.”

If she was Queen, surely she could make the sixth caer come to her.

But when she lifted her head, she saw it at the end of the avenue.

Spun from tree to tree, like a web.

“It’s coming! Look out!”

The stone tipped. A shower of soil fell onto Rob’s upturned face; he coughed, shook it away, his arms straining up. Heavy on his shoulders, the King’s weight made him stagger; the man’s fingers dug into the widening crack, forcing the pick in, working it up and down.

Fine gravel crumbled; then with a crack the stone gave. The King hauled it out and tossed it down; he shoved the antler into the gap and pushed, ramming it upward until it went through so suddenly he lurched, and Rob had to stagger sideways to hold him steady.

“We’re out!”

Cold wind gusted in.

The hole was tiny; the King’s shape filled it. He worked fiercely, tearing down stones and rubble, and Rob gripped his legs and grimaced at the pain in his chest and thought about Clare, how furious she would be at the damage. This was an ancient monument, after all.

But then this was the Unworld, and nothing was the same.

“I can get through now. Push me up.”

As the King scrambled and swore and shoved his boots into his face, Rob’s worry about Vetch resurfaced. The poet was no longer ill or frail; the Unworld had strengthened him, but it had transformed Clare too, and she was ruthless. What was happening to them?

The King’s weight jerked and mercifully lightened; with a sudden slither he was through the hole. After a moment he leaned back through, reaching down. “Right. Pass the bag up first.”

“No chance.” Rob slipped the strap around his neck. He piled the fallen stones together and climbed, wobbling, onto the heap, squeezing head and shoulders into the gap. The King’s voice was rueful. “Suit yourself.”

It took an age to get out, being pulled and scrabbling and hauling himself up by his arms, and when he had finally climbed onto the roof of the ruined barrow, he was exhausted, and wanted only to lie on the dark leaf drift and rest.

But the King was urgent. “She’s getting away from us. We have to run!”

They ran till they were breathless. The wood had a new, silver glimmer; after a while Rob saw the moon through the dark mesh of treetops. It made things easier, but it had brought out animals, or Chloe had.

The King grew more and more nervous; as they burst through into a place where the trees lined a long track, he drew closer to Rob, grabbed his sleeve, stopped him.

“Be careful. She’ll have left traps.”

He was right. They found two chasms opening in the ground, as if Chloe had slashed the avenue as she had the paintings, and then a dangerous gushing stream they had to wade across, fast and deep, its bed of chalk and streaming weed.

Once over, they found a strange bogland of tussocks and hollows; it was hard to struggle through, and looking up, Rob knew that the trees had closed in around it. The King dragged a mired foot from the soft ground and toppled. Rob had to steady him; for a moment they were chest to chest.

“Why don’t you take that stupid mask off?” Rob breathed.

He’d thought the King would pull away. Instead his voice came soft and sly. “You do it, Rob. I won’t stop you.”

Startled, Rob put his hand up to the face of blackthorn. Then he stopped. And drew back.

The King’s mouth widened into a smile. “Exactly. Because you don’t want to know who I am. Who it is that Chloe loves.”

“She loves me.”

The King shrugged. “Does she?” His face came close to Rob’s ear. “She ordered me to cut the beanstalk. With you on it.”

“Liar!”

“I’m afraid not. She’s not the Chloe you know, Rob, or the one you’ve invented. This Chloe has never existed before.”

A growl, close behind. They both turned.

An animal was squatting under a low bough of oak. Its eyes were small and red, and in the moonlight its muzzle pointed straight at them, intent.