Catherine Fisher - Darkhenge

And then he lifted himself up from the ground.

And flew away.

This caer. She had no idea what it was called. She galloped away from Vetch’s imprisoned shape quickly, ignored his hoarse plea. “What good is a queen without subjects, Chloe?” he yelled.

The tunnels narrowed. Red and warm. She rode faster into veins and blood vessels. Flocks of birds flew against her, a scatter of scarlet moths, a swarm of bees.

Far ahead, the bell chimed, and then a clattering grew clearer. It sounded like the clack of great needles, as if someone was knitting the castle, as if stitches were being formed and slipped and counted in some enormous chamber ahead.

But all she found when she finally burst through the last knot was a room she knew very well indeed.

Her bedroom at home.

It was exactly the same, except that the bed here was all made of antler, and bones, and rough branches tied together, with four posts of dark wood inside a ring of high, unshaven timbers.

She slithered down from Callie’s hot back, and looked around.

Her wardrobe. She could change, and wash.

Her clock. The small hands said 4:50 AM.

Her photograph of Mum and Dad and Rob on holiday.

Her notebook.

Suddenly, she was so tired. She sat on the bed and it was soft and full of feathers. The duvet was white, embroidered all over with snowflakes; it wasn’t hers, but she liked it.

She drew it around herself, and it was warm, and smelled sweet, so she curled up, kicked her boots off and yawned.

A small sleep wouldn’t matter.

And Rob was alive.

Smiling, she touched one of the embroidered flakes with her fingers, watching it detach and float up, letting sleep open under her.

Vetch gasped a ragged breath, then another. He had managed to wriggle his long fingers up to his throat; now he rubbed it and swallowed, feeling the red soreness of the tight threads.

He was shaking.

To discover the uselessness of words was too terrible a fate for a poet.

A small wetness stung his hand. Then another. He looked up quickly, his breath smoking, and despair chilled him to the bone.

He had failed to persuade Chloe. And now she was making sure they never caught up with her.

For through all the interstices and webs of the Woven Castle, through all the hollows and loops and tunnels, small white flakes were falling.

Snow.

UI. UILLEAND: HONEYSUCKLE

In the corridor, Dan’s sitting with Rosa. I wonder how she’s explaining her idea of where Rob is. And Vetch.

It’s 4:50 AM.

Her eyes are slits. Outside it’s raining. John is standing at the window, shredding ivy. On the floor are petals of honeysuckle, sweet and wet. “Look at this, Mac,” he says dully.

Three great birds, like herons, have perched up on the next-door roof. Their narrow eyes look down at me, and somehow, they’re a comfort.

Beyond, like a dark ridge, the downs rise over the town.

And I can sense Vetch, his irritating calm....

Vetch is close.

But he may be finally lost for words.

I was at the fortress

when the trees and shrubs marched…

“THE BATTLE OF THE TREES”

Someone was flying. Rob realized it was him.

His body was a creaking, lightweight framework, jointed in impossible places. He was streamlined, and currents of cold air moved above and below him, and he banked and tilted on them, as if they were solid.

Far down, lost deep inside a tiny skull, his mind looked out through wide-angled eyes, saw a concave hemisphere, its colors muted and new and unnamed. Were there words for the colors only birds could see, or the instinctive lift and balance of feathers on the wind?

In Vetch’s druid bag, maybe. Nowhere else.

Ahead flew a hawk and a white owl, who had once had names. He had no name either, but was a floppy-winged creature, green-sheened, with a quill of feathers. He searched for words and they came, but from another life far away, lying in the grass, birdwatching on the downs with Mac. Plover. He was a plover.

Snow stung him. He realized it had been snowing for a long time, a swirling whiteness that was frosting the air and almost obliterating the forest below. But through gaps, between gusts, he could see enough.

He could see that the forest was on the move.

Did it walk? Or did it just grow? He sensed its progress, the swift, purposeful surge toward the east, a million slithers and rustles and strides. There were beasts down there, migrating or fleeing; glimpses of strange-skinned creatures among the massed trees, birds that swooped and circled in flocks above the impenetrable canopy.

But it was the trees that were terrifying. Ancient oak and flimsy hawthorn, coppery stands of beech, stocky elms, streaming in movement. All the hedgerow growth, elder and blackthorn and ivy and gnarled apple. Willows along the banks of invisible streams. Rank on rank of conifer, dark armies of fir and pine and spruce.

From this height he saw that the landscape they invaded was his own landscape, the Wiltshire hills that he knew as green and sheep shorn, smothered now under the primeval forest, as it must have been centuries ago, before Darkhenge was made; that secret wildwood of shadows and magic animals, of outlawed men who lived like beasts. The forest that was mankind’s enemy and the place where his imagination was born, that he destroyed and dreamed of, burned and built in, cut down and made of its timbers entrances back into himself.

A draft from the hawk’s swoop tipped him.

Below, he saw a structure in the wood, a tormented red castle, its shape mystifying. The hawk began to drop toward it, circling deftly down eddies of snow. Carefully, the owl and the plover followed, descending through sleeting showers.

Nearer, the caer gleamed. Frozen in loops and hollows, its red wool hung with icicles. Snow swirled through its openwork tunnels. It seemed deserted.

When Chloe woke, the duvet was far too heavy and yet the room was as cold as ice. Sitting up, she felt a weight of snow slide off her and slump wetly to the floor. Shivering, she stared around.

A blizzard was howling outside. Here the dark-timbered bed had filled up with snow; it crusted the wardrobe and her dressing table, dusted the picture frame, filled the slippers that poked out from under the stool. She breathed out a cloud of dismay.

How long had she been asleep?

She had to hurry! Leaping out, she heaved the warped door of the wardrobe open and tugged out clothes. They weren’t hers. A white dress trimmed with fur, a great coat of ermine, boots. There was a muff too, and a fur hat; giggling, she pulled them on, feeling like some Cossack or the Snow Queen.

Then she hurried Callie back out into the latticework of tunnels.

They were clogged with snow. Furious, she stamped her foot and soft powder dusted her new clothes. Vetch was wrong! She wasn’t doing this. She wanted to get on, to the last caer, but it was as if something else was always holding her back. She’d ride hard now, and not stop till she reached it. She’d sort out this mess.

“No more snow!”

She said it firmly, commanding. Still flakes fell, tiny and deadly.

“I said, no more. That’s it. STOP.”

But it didn’t stop. It fell with a gentle insolence, and the realization turned her cold. The weather was not obeying her. She was losing control.

She wanted to scream into a tantrum but couldn’t;

she felt chilled, and subdued, as if while she had slept another part of her had been forgotten. Instead she climbed onto Callie and paced through the frozen mesh. Once she looked back, hearing something shiver, and tinkle, thinking Vetch had come after her. She almost wanted him to be there. But only the red tunnel twisted into dimness, snow falling through it.