Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) (23 page)

Something dark was on the move. It was far beyond the horizon, so far away she couldn’t believe the world could be so large, but Billy could sense it. A long, thin, fuzzy-edged stain the colour of treacle, oozing across the land. She had first felt it a little over an hour before, a patch of shadow that could have lain under a wandering cloud, somewhere out of sight. But as her feet had carried her ever westward, toward the setting sun, the shadow had deepened and elongated.

Now, it could almost have been a snake, slithering across the unseen reaches of New Land—Enger Land, Daddy had called it. Enger Land. What a strange name.

Whenever she stopped, she slept. Each time, she dreamed, but on waking the dreams were already half forgotten. She was left with only muddled images. She had been standing in a street flanked by tall buildings, and the rain had been hammering down on darkened tarmac. She had stood to one side of a huddle of bedraggled people all bent over a twitching young boy. She could almost see his face under an unruly mop of black hair—

But the rest was a blur, fading fast. All that remained was a feeling, one of having touched someone, as if she had reached across a great distance and, somehow, bumped up against somebody.

But who?

She had been walking since she had left Sammy locked behind the storm drain door, and had avoided every tree as though they were hungry carnivores waiting to devour her. She was not eager to become lost to another forest any time soon. Instead, she had kept to the edges of open grassland, skirting bare rock outcrops and tracking ancient public walkways, past fallen farms, train yards, housing estates and motorways.

Just like back home, everywhere there were signs of Before—something Daddy, Ma, and Grandpa had kept secret from her until they had arrived in Enger Land. Though the rusting relics had been playgrounds since she could walk, she had never guessed there had been other people. She had only ever seen the three of them and a few passing tradesmen; all the stories, photographs, artworks and buildings had surely come from them.

But it wasn’t so. Daddy had told her that Before there had been millions, all gone now, vanished.
Poof
. Into thin air.

Her mind still reeled. She couldn’t imagine so many. And the world was so big, so very big.

She had suspected that it had been the fever, making him say those things, that all the wonders of which he told her were just dreams brought on by his sickness. But here, now, walking amongst all this, the rusted metal, crumbling homes, scattered precious jewellery, cooking utensils, photo frames, wires and the strange hulks of metal called
cars
, she had to believe it. It was all true.

And if that was true, maybe the Panda Man was real, too. It would be far less strange than the rest of New Land, the vast, unending graveyard.

The land had flattened of late. The rolling hills had given way to unceasing fields and meadows, the heather and tangles of knotted crops giving way to unbroken pasture—thousands of acres of grass that stretched toward the horizon, opening out in every direction. It was almost unnaturally flat, without a single rise or dimple in sight.

At some point she had passed a road marker upon a buckled green sign, the writing barely legible:
Salisbury - 4m

Trying to ignore the foreboding she felt when she looked in the direction of that dark smudge afar, she pressed on, following the unyielding itch that arced down her legs, pulsing through her feet and into the ground. She kept on constant watch for others, but she was no longer desperate to see another human face, not like she had been before. In fact, she often found herself hoping she wouldn’t find anyone, and that she would find herself inexplicably back at the cabin.

If other people in New Land were like the medicine women, she was better off taking her chances on her own.

Thoughts of Daddy were now ever present, a splinter growing in her mind. She had been gone too long. The Panda Man had sent her on a fool’s quest into the unknown, and there was no end in sight; by now Daddy had either awakened to find her gone, in which case he would be angry—what if he tried to look for her? If he fell down the hill leading inland from the cabin, he would never make it back.

But the alternative was worse: he hadn’t woken. And if he hadn’t woken for this long, would he ever?

Slowly, her resolve dissolved, the edifice that Panda Man had set under her being eroded by dual images in her mind’s eye: in one, Daddy clutched the cabin door, ghostly pale and spluttering bloody sputum as he toppled end over end towards the charred wreckage of the travellers’ camp; the other showed him in ruinous repose beneath soiled bed sheets, his unseeing eyes staring up at the ceiling.

Soon, not even the fear the Panda Man had instilled in her, nor his promises that the task he had set could save Daddy’s life, was enough to quell that all-consuming mental image. She had to be with him, even if that meant he was going to go away like Ma and Grandpa. The thought of doing what the Panda Man had asked, and then arriving back at the cabin only to find he had already gone, was too much to bear.

She was on the verge of turning back when the arch appeared.

One moment the endless grassy plain stretched away toward infinity, fringed by the ribbon where green met blue sky and clouds, and bordered only by distant streaks of ancient lumbering ash and oak. The next, she was facing a stone archway twelve feet high. It looked far older than anything from Before she had ever seen, half covered with creepers and ivy. The workmanship was jagged, but deliberate, the carving rough and ready. The stone was a mottled obsidian and flint colour, shining with slivers of igneous crystal and pyrite that swirled in complex vortices about its face. Atop it were patterns that looked like those Billy had seen at home but hadn’t seen here in Enger Land—Daddy and Grandpa had called them
Celtic—
and at the very top, an inset carved symbol: a swinging bob upon a string. A pendulum.

She blinked, agape, and took a leap back. It hadn’t grown up out of the ground, nor rushed up from afar; it seemed almost as though it had
slid
into view, as though she had been looking from the wrong angle before, and some trick of the light had hidden it.

But she knew it hadn’t been there before. There had been so sign of it. And there was nothing else for a mile in any direction. She couldn’t have wandered so close without noticing its presence.

Yet here it was, right before her.

At almost the same instant it appeared, the itch in her feet died, replaced by a sudden lack of certainty in direction and purpose. A lost sensation rushed in, almost nauseating.

She stood staring, all thought of Daddy gone from her mind. This was some other thing of the Panda Man’s doing, some other bastardisation of reality and common sense. For a moment, she wasn’t thinking of anything, then she realised that she was waiting for him to appear.

But nothing happened, bar a gust of wind blowing across the meadow as though only to amplify her sense of isolation. One of the pigeons that had been following her alighted atop the arch and bobbed along its ridge.

So it is real. Is that comforting, or not?

She couldn’t decide.

She about faced, scanning the open expanse for a sign of pale cheeks and dark streaks, and that disturbing wolfish smile. But there was nothing.

And, somehow, she sensed that this wasn’t
his
doing. This was something else. It felt different, somehow less potent. A shiver ran down her spine and into her limbs.

She considered ignoring it. She had been on the cusp of deciding to turn back. Daddy’s face was hovering in her mind’s eye again; even this apparition couldn’t keep him from her thoughts now. She needed to get back to him before it was too late.

The pigeon strutting atop the arch fluttered down and alighted on her shoulder, bobbing and pecking at her pack in search of food.

She hesitated, then stroked its head. It was tame enough. Almost like a pet. That meant people.

“Get help, can’t you?” she said, more to herself, stroking its head.

The pigeon cooed in reply, and cocked its head, an oddly human gesture that seemed to say, “Sorry, no can do.”

She knew that was just her mind playing silly tricks, but the bird really
did
seem to have understood her.

She sighed. “You and your friends are following me. The least you could do is return the favour,” she muttered. She smiled to herself. She was talking to a bird. It was good to be silly. It had been too long. “Go on, show me. Show me the way, birdie.”

The pigeon cooed again, and this time took wing, flying through the arch. And as it did so, it quite perfectly vanished.

Poof
.

Billy stared, blinked, and accepted what she’d seen. Too much oddity had already passed for disbelief.

The bird had disappeared just as the arch had blossomed from the ether: in the same impossible warping movement, sideways into some other space.

Enger Land is like the fairy tales Grandpa used to tell
.
All magic and spells. I wonder where the faeries and wizards are. Daddy said all that was make believe. Daddy was wrong.

The itch in her feet was gone, and she felt strange without it. It had been in her so long that to have it taken away so suddenly was like losing a hand.

But the birdie had shown her the way.

Daddy needed her, and she still intended to turn back—Daddy couldn’t wait any longer; the Panda Man would have to find those men on his own—but not yet. The arch was too fantastic to ignore.

Billy stepped up to the stone arch that could not have been there and stepped through.

She expected to come falling out through the other side and find that the pigeon had been fluttering there, just out of view behind the archway the whole time. Instead, intense cold stole across her body, like a winter gale that reached down to her bones, and her skin contracted as ice formed in a thin layer over her head and limbs.

Then the meadow was gone, along with the blue sky. She was in a murky gloom that was all too familiar. The half-light and clustered sunbeams had become etched into her memory, wrapped up with the trauma of her brush with death; she knew she was in a forest long before her eyes registered it.

Panic swelled behind her eyes.

She couldn’t be lost under the trees again! Not now with the itch gone and Daddy fading by the second.

It had all been a trap. The Panda Man must have known that she was planning to turn back.

She cursed her foolishness. If she had only kept her word and seen it through, she might have saved Daddy. The Panda Man had promised, after all.

Now, she might have killed him and herself. She failed to stop a whimper passing her lips.

But it wasn’t the same forest. That was obvious at a glance. The trees were bigger, bulkier, and much older, so old that the bark of their great trunks was like granite, and cobwebs thick and tangled as rope hung from the branches. The air, too, tasted old—not spoiled or foul, but prehistoric, so old as to have lost all life or discernible scent. From the tenebrous depths echoed a low, preternatural creaking.

And ahead, standing in the middle of a small clearing, was a low building that had long lost all paintwork or furnishings. She approached the hull of the structure, an iron-rusted brown-and-red husk with windows that had become opaque from weathering, blanketed heavily with moss and leaf litter.

A sign hung over the doorway. Though it too was rusted and covered with mud, to the point of being almost illegible, after squinting a few moments, Billy was able to sound it out.

Laurent’s
.

A few twisted metal stumps stood outside, which might once have been tables and chairs; but save for that, the building merely sprang up out of the forest, the only construction in sight bar the stone arch. She looked back through the arch, expecting to the see the plain from which she had come, but saw only the same tapestry of gnarled stone-like branches and knotted roots.

With a flutter of feathers, the pigeon dropped down onto her shoulder once more, and the two of them looked upon the strange building’s carcass.

She tried to think of something to say, but after a full minute could only come up with, “I don’t understand.”

How could I? It’s magic, like Grandpa said. Maybe the storybooks were
all
true.

And in the stories, there was only one way to go: forward.

Follow the yellow brick road.

Stepping with ginger care over the black soil, shuddering as the ice crystals on her skin melted into a cold glistening sheen, she stepped up to the door, which was coarse and jagged with a garish mauve patina. She reached out once, jerked back in hesitation, then took a deep breath and, holding Daddy’s face in her mind, pushed her way inside.

The door squealed, and Billy’s heart leapt, thundering into her throat when a rattling impact exploded at her feet. She plastered herself against the wall, gasping.

A lump of dented metal lay before her, the bell that had hung over the door. Massaging her chest, she stepped into a thick mist of dust, waving her arms before her to part the great chunky motes.

There were tables and chairs of all kinds, the upholstery rotted and lank on the bare frames. Out back was a counter with a covered display case, empty, but with enough room for a large selection of foodstuffs. Scattered around the edge were tall boxes, each with a tray set upon it dotted with dark, lumpy dust. The entire space was empty and silent, a tomb.

She approached the closest tray and picked up one of the strange lumps, holding it up to the lesser murk shining in through the door. It was soft, some kind of plant matter, maybe leaves. She frowned.

Then, from behind her, a rough yet lilting voice, “Tea.”

She whirled with a gasp and the tray clattered to the floor. The pigeon took flight in a fit of wing beats, and for what seemed an age, all she could do was stare, unseeing, and hold up her hands in defence. “Please,
don’t
!” she screamed. Then she fell, tripping over the tray’s spilled contents, and went sprawling.