Night Witches (3 page)

‘
T
here’s no such thing as witches,’ I say straight off.

‘Of course not,’ Reef replies. ‘Stories and fey-tales were the Old Nation way of making sense of things they didn’t have the proper education to explain scientifically. We know better now. My job is to prove these things don’t exist. It’s the only way to stamp out superstitions from Old Nation days.’

‘Like people believing in witches?’ It feels bad just saying such a word to a Scrutiner. I remember the night they came for Pedla Rue’s husband, all because he kept going on and on about smelling witch-sweat in the stairwell.

Reef’s eyes darken. ‘Exactly. Civilisation can’t survive if imagination is allowed to run riot. Science can prove that wolves are just wild meat-eaters, for example, not fey-tale monsters. The trouble is, stories don’t die easily. Despite all the education Aura’s given us, people still insist on believing in things that can’t possibly be true.’

Some emotion roughens his voice, but he’s walking too fast for me to see his face. His legs are longer than mine and I have to leap to keep within his bootprints in the snow. My fingers twitch to access Aura for answers to all my questions. How do people even
know
things if they can’t connect? I try to keep quiet by concentrating on counting the birds flying alongside the path.

‘They’re called corvils.’ I jump as Reef speaks, answering a question I haven’t even asked out loud. ‘They’re carnivorous – meat-eaters. They like their meals fresh.’

‘The forest must be hungry.’

‘What?’

‘Sorry. Nothing.’

I just had this impression of a starving land, with birds, wolves, trees and water even, all greedy to eat, to lap up, to swallow and stay alive. Fortunately, Reef doesn’t seem to have heard me properly. He pulls a food bar from a pocket and throws it back to me.

‘This will take the edge off your hunger. It isn’t safe to stop to make something hot. Wolves won’t be far behind us. I’ve already come up against one pack who were tracking a Lim girl lost in the forest.’

‘The one you called Haze?’

He pauses to bend a branch out of my way. ‘Are you sure you don’t know her?’

I shake my head.

‘You don’t have any family in the foodlands? No Lim relatives out in villages near the forest?’

‘No, it’s just me and my parents.’

‘And your friend? Zoya Mentira?’

‘She’s my cousin. Her father’s a famous scientist, Cramer Mentira. He works—’

‘. . . for Aura. I know. But you don’t have any siblings? No sisters?’

‘Mama said one kid was enough. She’s kind of protective. Something about when I was a baby I nearly died.’

Reef glances at me. ‘You’re obviously used to escaping death.’

Is that good? Bad? Normal? I just say, ‘Mm.’

‘When I saw you back at the lake edge I thought you were Haze, come back to the forest despite the wolves. The likeness is uncanny at first.’

I bite my lip nervously.
Uncanny
is not a word you want Scrutiners to use about you. ‘I guess I look pretty average.’

He stops and examines me properly, and that’s enough to make me burn inside. When do people ever notice me? Never. I’m just Pip. Just
One of Many
.

‘Not average,’ Reef says eventually. ‘No, not that.’

Our breaths blow out and mingle. Even though we’re not moving, we seem to circle each other. We set off again. The interrogation isn’t over.

‘Do you live somewhere in the Lim lands?’ he asks next. ‘Sorrowdale, perhaps, or Rimm?’

‘No – we live in Sea-Ways.’

‘You’ve always lived there?’

‘Y-es.’ Why the pause? Of course we’ve always lived in the city. Always in the same apartment. Always with the same neighbours, except when someone gets arrested, like Pedla Rue’s husband.

‘Do you like it there?’ Reef asks.

I hate it. I hate the busy rush of the river that divides the city, the shadows cast by the vast factories, and I absolutely loathe the salty noise of the sea. ‘Yes, it’s nice.’

‘And you’ve been in the Air Cadets long?’

‘No, I just joined. It was my first time flying.’

I am so grateful he doesn’t turn round at that point to see me blush. He must think I’m an utter ineffectual to crash on my first flight.

There’s a long pause while he steps lightly across some moss-covered boulders and I scramble after him, refusing help in case he thinks I’m just some kid who can’t cope. He stands on the highest rock to get his bearings. We’ve been climbing steadily so we’re above the tree-tops of the valleys. There’s not much to see even from this height. A few stark branches poke up through a dense mist, and there are mountains further west, near the Crux border. These mountains are high, but the greatest defence against invasion from the Crux has always been the measureless Morass.

Apparently, not any more.

If the Crux have dared to invade the forest, what else might we find once we’re back in civilisation again? A sense of urgency drives us both on. There can’t be a lot of daylight left. Night in the forest would be unbearable.

The path gets wider, so Reef and I walk side by side. I can see more of his face now. Sometimes our arms touch and our gloved hands knock together. He starts asking about the crash, especially about the Crux plane wreckage, and the Crux body in the lake.

‘And you’re sure you lost contact with Aura before you reached the Morass?’

‘We were nowhere near the Morass. It was just a regular Air Cadet training thing. I lost track of how many klicks we flew off course while I was chasing the Crux plane.’

Reef stops dead. ‘You
chased
it?’

‘I’m sorry, was that bad? There was no Aura. We didn’t have guns to defend ourselves, and I was mad that it shot our instructor, and scared it would kill us too . . .’

My explanation trails off. Reef’s got a funny look on his face. Surely not admiration? No one’s ever admired me – why would they? I’ve never done anything or been anywhere.

What about Reef? Where’s he from? How old is he? Why did he train for Scrutiny when he could be in school? He’s not really a boy; not quite a man. Zoya’s age? Young enough to have night-vision still? Children and teenagers have enough to make out shapes and movement in the dark. Or is Reef too old for that? Reaching adulthood means losing even minimal night-sight, although no one can predict exactly when this will happen. Grown-ups go blind in the dark. Utterly. Completely.

When will it be dark in this winter wilderness? I daren’t ask. I really, truly hope we won’t still be in the forest when the sun sets and Planet Umbra rises to cross the sky. I’ve never known a time when rooms and roads weren’t as bright as day from dusk to dawn. It’s one of the first things you learn as a child – love the light and leave it lit. The last Long Night – the last total solar eclipse – was when I was born. As for the next, it’s due in a few short months.

How many hours do we hike? Impossible to tell without Aura. There’s no sign of sun or stars, only shadows gathering under the trees.

‘We’re not lost,’ Reef says eventually. ‘We just can’t get straight to where we’re going.’

It’s true. Every time he says we need to bear right or head to lower ground, the way is blocked by thorny thickets, or rocks bulging in the snow, or trees clustering so closely they look like they’re squeezing themselves to death.

It’s as if the forest doesn’t want us to leave.

Reef picks up the trail only to stop dead at the edge of a pool that’s frozen chill-blue solid.

‘Can you make it over?’ Reef asks.

Automatically I connect to ask Aura, but of course there’s no reply. Who knows what I can do without Papi around to tell me I’m to be careful; without Mama here to flutter and flap. I quite like the idea of a challenge and it hardly seems dangerous, the ice is so utterly still.

‘Are there rivers in the Morass?’ I ask.

Reef shakes his head. ‘If there are, our surveys haven’t found them. Water wells up to make pools and lakes. In spring the snow-melt just soaks into the ground.’

What was it Pedla Rue once said about water? It was during a really bad rain-storm when the streets of Sea-Ways were flooded and the harbour walls were broken by giant waves. I remember her pointing from the window of her apartment.

‘
One thing witches hate
,’ she lectured, ‘
is running water. Streams, rills, rivers
–
they won’t cross them willingly. So if a witch comes for you, ring your bells and run to a river. Or to the sea
–
they hate salt almost as much as bane-metal. Do you understand?
’

Of course I didn’t understand. I still don’t. It’s just stories.

I don’t ask Reef where we’ll run to if witches come for us, because witches don’t exist. I step down on to the ice, arms out, like a dancer. I didn’t know it would be so slippery. We never get ice in Sea-Ways. Is it safe? Will it hold? I grab Reef’s sleeve and we skid together halfway across the pool, then I stop. I sense movement. Smell blood. Hear a strange creaking, twisting noise . . . metal rubbing, fabric stretching, someone breathing. There – beyond the stretch of ice – something wrong is bleeding.

Two black corvils fly in that direction, swift and low. I stop to hear better. Reef stretches back to grab my jacket but I’m already gliding towards the sounds.

‘
Don’t step off the path!
’

‘Listen, can’t you hear that?’

Instantly he slips his gun from its holster, slides off the ice and scans the trees. ‘What? Where? Traptions? Creepers?’

‘Something over there – high up.’

We walk softly, softly in the snow, leaving two tracks of bootprints side by side. Ahead, something is swinging from a tree. A parachute is caught in the branches. Under it an airman is swinging like a toy to tease a baby. His face, his uniform, his
smell,
they’re so strange he’s got to be Crux. Disgusting! A corvil flies down to perch on his head. Reef wasn’t wrong when he said the birds like their meat fresh . . .

‘Hold this.’

Reef passes me the gun, then he’s off, climbing the tree like . . . like some sort of animal I can’t think of a name for because we don’t have real animals back in Sea-Ways, except for the great sea elephants that sometimes swim in the harbour, and they would flatten a tree if they ever tried going up it. Startled, the corvil hops away, with an indignant
caa-caa
cry.

I clutch the gun and wonder if I can remember my lessons on the school firing range. I also wonder if this is one of the weapons Mama and Papi make at Glissom’s, back home – the People’s Number Forty-two Gun Factory. I never really thought about people using them. Shooting them.

Reef unsheathes a knife – the first one I’ve ever seen for real. In the communal kitchen at home the meal packets all have seals you can tear open by hand once they’re heated, and it’s all food you can just fork up. Cold metal cuts a parachute strap. The pilot lurches lower. Reef sets the blade to the next strap. The pilot’s head lolls to and fro with the motion. When he eventually falls he’s a dead weight. I don’t so much catch him as cushion him. His face knocks against my face. Skin against skin. My mind flashes. A vision dazzles me, brighter than snow.

I see this Crux pilot, absolutely
see
him, his grey eyes open, his mouth open, his hands reaching out to fend off death – to fend
me
off. What’s the place we’re in? Some kind of massive, stone building. A god-house? A fire is burning but that’s not what kills him. In the vision I am the one who rips the life out of his eyes. I am his death.

R
eef leaps down to my side and hauls the pilot off me.

‘Are you OK?’

OK? How can I be OK? Shot at, crash-landed, wolf-warmed, traption-hunted, rift-hung and hallucinating – what’s
OK
about that? I want to be home with my mama, curled up eating cake and watching streams without wolves or weird visions. I want to be normal, normal,
normal
.

Nothing normal in the Morass
.

‘Rain?’

‘I’m fine. He was heavy, that’s all.’

Reef yanks the pilot’s head back so we can see his face clearly. I don’t need to look long. My vision was enough. I know every feature. Now I can’t believe there’s a real, live Crux, sprawled at my feet of all places! Someone who believes in a god and worships the sun. Aura’s always telling us what backward people they are. How they’re stunted intellectually. Hardly fit to be called the same species.

I didn’t think he’d look so . . . normal. Almost like a person.

He’s young, like Reef, maybe a few years older, tops. Perhaps still young enough to have sight at night. The Crux are the same as us in one way – they lose their night-vision in young adulthood too. His hair is close-shaved with a white diagonal cross dyed on to the stubble. His face is angular, with a sharp nose and high cheekbones. His neck is thick, or is that just his silky white scarf bulking it out? The rest of his clothes are good quality as far as I can tell – a slim-fitting tunic and trousers with white braces looped over his shoulders and heavy, metal-reinforced boots. Nothing he’s wearing is made of bioweave.

He’s deathly pale from the cold. His eyes open when Reef shakes him hard. Yes, they’re concrete-grey, just like the ones I hallucinated.

‘Who are you?’ Reef demands. ‘What are you doing in the Morass?’

No answer.

Then, before Reef can speak again, the Crux explodes into life with such a stunning burst of energy I can’t tell where to point the gun. There’s a crack of bone on bone from a head butt, the thump of a fist in Reef’s gut, the crunch of another fist on Reef’s jaw. Reef staggers back. Red blood sprays the snow. The Crux has his fists up to fight again. He makes a savage swing with his right arm. Block, grip, twist, shove, throw . . . in five smooth moves Reef has the Crux face down in the snow with both arms trapped. The Crux rages and kicks for long moments until the last of his strength seeps away.

Reef ties his arms and hobbles his legs tight enough to allow only walking, not kicking.

‘Not my eyes!’ the Crux snarls as Reef unwinds that white scarf to blindfold him. His accent is distorted, rougher than the proper Rodina way of speaking.

Blinding someone is a form of torture. It’s what they do to traitors. They seal their eyelids permanently shut so they’ll never see light again. For a god-of-light worshipper this would be a nightmare torment.

‘You deserve far worse than blinding and you’ll get it.’

Next, Reef takes the gun from me. I’m surprised he doesn’t say anything about how useless I was with it. He searches the pilot and finds nothing but a silver god-book, which he tosses into the snow. I nudge it with my boot.

‘I don’t understand. It doesn’t switch on, and there’s no keypad to connect to it. What’s it made of?’

‘Paper. There are sheets of it, called pages.’

Reef’s right. The book has leaves inside that darken with damp as they touch snow. I vaguely remember this sort of thing from early days in infant school, before Aura was fully operational. I bend down for a closer look. The brainless god-follower has written his name on the first open page.

‘It says
Property of Steen Verdessica. Praise the Light Bringer!
’

Underneath there’s a picture that doesn’t even move, of saynts praying beneath an image of the Crux god, with hair like white sunbeams and eyes that burn. It reminds me of . . . of nothing, because that’s all Old Nation lies. Idiot Crux – worshipping light. In Rodina we just say
lights
and let technology do the rest.

‘Leave that alone if you can’t respect it,’ Steen Verdessica snaps.

‘What are you doing in the Morass?’ Reef asks.

Steen scowls. ‘Looking for God.’

Reef is all cold scorn. ‘In the forest?’

‘There were god-houses here once.’

‘But no god to live in them! Everybody knows science is the only way to achieve civilisation.’

Steen dares to laugh. ‘Oh yes, just as cannibalism is one way to get a high-protein diet. The whole of Rodina has crept into spiritual darkness. Be glad we’ve made the sacrifice of coming to your rescue.’

‘With war planes and traptions?’ Reef snaps back at him. ‘That reeks of invasion.’

‘Was it you?’ Steen turns to me abruptly.

Alarmed, I step backwards and almost fall over.

‘Me?’

‘Were you the one who chased me out of the sky in your little training plane – your People’s Number Fifty-nine Tutor? You put up a good fight, I’ll give you that. They’re like midges, the rest of the Rodina Air Force, buzzing around waiting to get slapped. But you, cadet girl, you’re good. Don’t look so surprised at the compliment. You’d have to be good to best me.’

I flick a glance at Reef. Has
he
got any idea what the Crux is talking about? I certainly don’t!

Steen just keeps on talking. ‘Look, on my wrist, there’s a bracelet. I suppose Captain Normal here won’t let me offer it myself, but it’s yours. It’s valuable in ways you’re both too blind and godless to understand. Take it.’

I see a glint of metal between cuff and glove. I don’t want it. More than that, the very sight of it makes me feel sick. The metal is the colour of dried blood and it smells like blood too. Who does he think he is to offer me something so nasty?

‘Keep your trash, Crux!’

He flinches. ‘So you won’t take it?’

‘We do not accept gifts from the enemy!’

Reef breaks the bracelet from Steen’s wrist. It’s got tiny bells and white crosses twisted into a cluster of metal strands. It rings with a nasty chime, like the bells hung on the Crux traption that chased me.

Reef takes one look at it and says, ‘A bane-metal god-token. These trinkets are banned in Rodina. They’re all Old Nation. Worthless junk.’

‘If you say so.’ For a moment Steen’s voice loses its arrogance. ‘I’ll have it back if
she
won’t take it for protection. There are things in these woods that can’t be stopped by guns . . .’

‘I’ll be sure to let them feast on you first,’ Reef promises. ‘Now, get to your feet and
move
.’

A dreamy purple-orange light begins to seep through sky-grazing branches. It’s nearly dark but not quite. I keep flicking looks at Reef. Does he really think we’d survive a night out here without lights, or could he make a fire – that flickering, air-licking, light-living thing I’ve seen on news-streams but never for real? And I hope I never do. I’d rather be cold than go near flames. Fire looks dangerous. Just pictures of it make my scalp prickle. I’d rather wrap myself in a wolf to keep me warm.

With Steen stumbling along in front we follow a road of sorts. It winds through the trees with deep ruts where wheels once rolled. Signs of civilisation!

Don’t go 
.
 . . 
whisper frost-crisp leaves in a light winter breeze.

Don’t go 
.
 . . 
caw the corvils, swooping low to the snow.

Don’t go
 . . . howl wolves deep in the darker wilds.

Do I imagine the sorrowful sigh of someone unbearably old? Someone who murmurs my name before surrendering to silence?

I can’t wait to get back to normal again, to see Zoya and know she’s all right. Mama and Papi will be going crazy, not knowing what’s happened to me. Pedla Rue will be camped out at our apartment waiting for news, the worse the better . . .

We speed up, all three of us scrunching closer together as shadows deepen. Soon I hear the welcome hum of technology – heat machines that burn off ice and snow, lamps that defy the darkness, saws that slice through silence and wood. There’s something else – a spray, a spatter, a rain of black – ugh! I hide my face as a foul stickiness spurts towards us all.

‘It’s all right,’ shouts Reef, neatly stepping away from the spray. ‘It’s Slick, a new normalisation compound. Your uncle had a part in creating the formula.’

Through red-watery eyes I watch as sexless, faceless figures in hooded white move past us, spraying great swathes of thick, dripping chemicals that leave Morass plants wilting into a bad-smelling mush.

‘Is it poisonous?’

‘Only for the forest,’ Reef replies, and just for a moment I can’t tell if it’s the smell that’s making his lip curl or the sight of so much destruction. ‘Once perfected, Slick will kill anything abnormal, leaving room for new towns and foodlands . . .’

I miss the rest of what he’s saying. To my utter, total embarrassment I’m on my knees being sick.

‘Go away,’ are the first words I manage, though I accept a flask of something hot.

Reef takes to his keypad instead. Eventually he halts and gets that faraway look on his face that shows he’s connected. I’ve never told anyone, but I sometimes wonder if that expression is what sex looks like. Or would he keep his eyes open and gaze into mine as we . . .

Enough!

I shut my eyes. When I open them Reef is looking straight at me. Into me. A Scrutiner.

‘Better now? Did you get your updates OK?’

Na – I didn’t even think of connecting myself! Where’s the keypad gone? Here it is . . . Connection again! Hello, Aura . . . where were you when I needed you?

welcome rain aranoza – updating – location: sorrowdale district, lim lands grid ref. 23:4072 – you have 15 messages – keep alert for action-requirements – please wait for action-requirements – updating – please wait please wait please wait please wait

‘Don’t worry,’ says Reef. ‘Connection strength improves the further we go from the forest.’

I glance back at the wasteland of Slick-ridden trees. No wonder Aura’s ordered normalisation. The forest swallows the safe rules of science.

Steen doesn’t have a keypad to get connected. I wonder who he’d message if he could? He hasn’t said a word through all our march, though his lips are moving – some kind of prayer, I suppose. Is there a kind of Slick that would cure him of faith? He catches me looking at him.

‘Gloating?’ he asks.

I want to ask – why did you attack us? I can’t believe it was only this morning that I flew with Zoya and we got shot. We took off at dawn, as Planet Umbra sank and the sun rose. Now I’m escaping from a story-like land with the guy who shot me as prisoner.

We burst out into open sky and gulp in great lungfuls of fresh air. It’s so good to see the red circle of Umbra again, rising to begin its night-long journey across the sky. Light blinds us – the gorgeous, glorious glow of proper lamps strung round real, bioweave buildings. If I was a Crux I’d thank god for civilisation.

I turn to Reef.

‘You’re safe now,’ he says. ‘While you’re waiting for updates go and find your friend, she’ll be worried about you. Aura can guide you to the medical centre.’

That’s it then. Back to normal. I’ll just go and never see him again. He’ll probably forget about me anyway, the moment I disappear from view . . .

‘Wait! Rain . . .’

Heart leaps to mouth, making me too mute to ask,
Yes?

Reef bites his lower lip; not a very Scrutiner thing to do. ‘Back there in the forest you were . . .’

Disobedient, crazy, abnormal?

‘. . . very brave. The way you handled the traptions, the Crux, everything. I’ll mention it all in my report to Aura.’

I suddenly find my boot-caps unutterably interesting. Mustn’t get excited at compliments. Mustn’t take his praise too seriously. Remember what Papi always says –
The weed that sprouts up gets yanked out.
I want to stay nice and average. Normal.

I also want to reach out and touch Reef’s face.

I shove my hands in my pockets instead.

‘I’ll connect soon,’ he continues. ‘No, don’t tell me your Aura code now. I’ll find you.’

He leans in, and I guess he’s going to do that Lim thing I’ve heard about, where they kiss cheeks to say
goodbye-and-go-well
, but I’ve still not shaken off the sensation of seeing that Crux’s death and I
do not
want a repeat with Reef. I flinch and step back, leaving his lips to brush air, not skin. We both say sorry together. I swallow my heart down. His eyes shadow a little.

‘Pip, Pip, Pip!’ Zoya’s voice cuts through the muddle of other noises. There she is, waving from a brightly lit building. ‘Over here!’

I trot over and we hug, which is awkward, because I’m anxious not to touch her skin either.

‘Aura said you were back. I was worried sick about you until the guys told me you were probably with the Scrutiner. That’s him, isn’t it, over there? The one who was shooting the Crux creepers. He was amazing.’

‘Did they heal all your wounds?’ I ask.

She grins. ‘Sprayed, sealed and sound again, with my ankle all strapped up. I had this Lim girl looking after me. Weirdest thing – she’s like your twin, but taller and stronger. I told her and she said she doesn’t have a sister but she asked what you were like. Hey, look at you – you’re not even scratched or bruised.’