‘Now she is the poisoned one. She sought to escape me. She ate the frogweed witches grow. But no one escapes. I will burn her all the same and her evil spirit will feel the flames . . .’
‘Mam, Mam,’ Hana whispered.
Yes, my dear, I’m with you, Mam replied. Take no notice of these men. They’re only making noises.
‘Bring her followers. Bring the other witches,’ the crier bellowed.
The crowd by the gate parted again and guards came through, leading five women on ropes tied round their waists. Deely fought and spat, Morna walked blank-eyed, stumbling now and then. The three who came behind were from another burrow. It was part of the Limping Man’s teaching that there were witches everywhere. One was a woman who fought like Deely. The others were girls scarcely older than Hana. One wept as she was dragged along and one, the younger, darted to the left and right, pleading with the men who lined the path through the crowd. They jeered at her.
The guards stopped at the foot of the steps. Deely raised her eyes and saw the Limping Man. She spat at him. He smiled his red sloping-toothed smile and raised his hand.
‘Tie the evil ones to the posts,’ the crier bellowed.
Hana saw them drag the women to the execution place, where men with chains waited, and others with burning brands. Four men bent to lift Mam.
‘That’s not you, Mam,’ Hana whispered.
No, I’m here, Mam replied, in a broken voice that meant Morna and Deely were still alive, and the other woman and the girls. Hana turned her eyes away. She turned clumsily in the chimney. There was no way she could help. All she could do was run.
So she climbed down the chimney and ran through the empty streets of Blood Burrow. Behind her, in People’s Square, the crowd roared and hooted.
Brown smoke rose into the air.
It took her three days to find the place called Country. She came to Sea first and passed between it and the broken buildings of Port. For one whole day, dawn to dusk, she scrambled at the base of cliffs running to the north. Sometimes she climbed, sometimes waded in the salty water. If the sea had been rough she could not have passed. Hana had learned to stay afloat and then sink and pull herself along the bottom while hunting for food in the ponds and underground pools of Bawdhouse Burrow but she could not swim for any distance. The sea frightened her. It might pull her out into the shining place where it met the sky. She was careful not to go deeper than her waist and drew back when small waves lapped against her chest.
Sea gave her food, creatures with soft flesh that lived in shells fastened to the rocks, and small fish trapped in ponds. They were saltier than the fish from the underground pools but did not have the taste of mud or need to have slime scraped off their skins. She crunched them between her teeth and spat out their heads. The only fresh water she could find was a thin trickle running down the wall of a cave where she sheltered from the midday sun. When she left the cliffs behind at dusk she was too dry with thirst to look for danger. She ran to a stream flowing from shallow hills and threw herself face down at the edge, where she drank until her thirst was satisfied.
Dusk was turning to darkness. She crept away, looking for a place where she might be safe, but found only a hollow between two mounds of sand. She lay down and slept, curled into a ball against the chill of the night.
When she woke seabirds were screeching and a hawk circled high in the air. She knew what it was. Sometimes a hawk had made a few lazy turns over the burrows, then flown away as if there was nothing to interest it. She watched this one fly away too, then set off on her journey again.
Country opened out on her right. It frightened her even more than Sea. There were hills, there were trees, there was a long green line stretching away – it must be forest – and mountains rising like a wall at the back of it. It was too big for her. There was nowhere to hide. So Hana ran, high on the sandy beach; ran for the whole of the day. She stopped only to drink from streams, following them back until salt water turned to fresh. She chewed weed washed up on the beach. But as she lay down to sleep that night she knew she could not keep travelling this way. She must find other food. She must find flints to make a fire. And somewhere she must find a knife.
Mam? she asked. But Mam was not with her any more. Mam was a memory and only her lessons would help. What were they? Be still. Be watchful. Think what you do.
‘Thank you, Mam,’ Hana whispered, and slept.
In the morning she turned inland. She saw no animals or humans and no sign of human habitation. There were trees. She had never been close to a tree. Some had yellow balls hanging from their branches. Fruit? In the stories Mam had told about Hari and Pearl, stories she had learned from Deely, they had eaten fruit as they escaped through the jungle. Hana pulled off one of the balls, bit it cautiously and waited for a burning in her mouth. There was none, only sweetness, so she swallowed – and waited for a pain in her stomach. But the sweetness stayed, so Hana ate. She carried away one of
the balls in each hand.
The next day she followed the beach, rounded a headland and saw a new beach running into a blue haze in the distance. She lost heart. The seabirds screamed.
‘Birds, what do I do?’
The hawk, or a different one, turned in the sky.
‘Hawk, tell me.’
No answer.
She found a place to sleep, dreamed sad dreams all through the night and woke with tears on her face. That day she did not travel but hunted below the cliffs and up a stream, looking for a place where she might stay longer – a cave, a hollow – and looking for the sort of stones that she might use to strike a spark and make a fire. None were hard enough. She found shellfish. She found more fruit. But she could not live off these forever.
She lay down in a sheltered place where the sand ran into trees but could not sleep. Stars came out. There had been only stars straight above in the burrows. These spread down the sky to where it met the sea. Stars in strings and loops, blue stars, red stars and huge yellow ones. What were they? Mam had never told her. Hana thought they might be alive and watching to see she came to no harm. ‘Thank you, stars.’ She turned over on the sand, following their spread along the horizon, then turned her eyes inland and saw another shining there – and that could not be. Unless one had fallen, a star could not shine in the trees.
A fire, Hana thought. People there. She wanted to burrow into the sand and hide, but night was the safest time to spy. When she knew exactly who was there, then she could run. And underneath her fear was the hope she would find women who had fled from the Limping Man.
She left her place at the edge of the trees and moved along the beach. She lost the fire for a moment, then saw it again, flickering beyond the crowded trunks. Hana had learned creeping as a way to survive in the burrows. Her eyes were used to the dark and even though trees were unfamiliar she approached without stirring a leaf or cracking a twig. The fire was burning in a small clearing and throwing its light into a shelter built on the far side. No one was there – no one in the shelter, no one at the fire, although a pot sat on burning logs, with steam rising from it. The smell brought saliva into Hana’s mouth. She crept closer. If no one was here she could steal the pot.
A voice behind her said, ‘Hana, you’re welcome to share what I have.’
Hana squealed with fright and rolled to the side. She felt for the knife Mam had sometimes let her carry. No knife. She rolled again, sprang to her feet and started to run.
‘Hana,’ said the man standing in the trees, ‘stay still a moment. Don’t run away.’
It was a calm and patient voice. She stopped well out of his reach – but not, she remembered, out of the range of a thrown knife. She stepped behind a tree trunk.
‘I don’t have a knife,’ said the man.
‘How,’ Hana whispered, ‘how do you know my name?’
‘You carry it with you. I heard it as you came through the trees. Now, you’re hungry, I can tell. Come and sit with me and share my meal.’
He walked past the fire, stooped into the shelter and came out with two bowls. He dipped one into the pot and laid it on the ground. ‘Fish stew, Hana. That’s yours.’ He filled the other bowl and sat down.
Hana watched him from the shadows. He was dressed in a hooded cloak, belted at the waist. She had not seen his face, but his voice was friendly, with words separated by a pause, as though he did not speak very much. There was nothing to do but trust him – her hunger was too great. She stepped into the firelight, then saw his hands as he picked up his bowl, and jumped backwards with a grunt of fear. The fingers were too long and there were only three.
‘You,’ she managed to say, ‘what are you?’
‘Just a person, like you,’ he said.
‘No you’re not. Not a person.’
‘Yes, Hana. Of a different kind. My people are Dwellers. We live in the forests north of here.’
She had heard of Dwellers. Mam had told her, although she had never seen one. Mam had said not to be afraid of them.
‘Your mother was right,’ the Dweller said. ‘But I’m sorry. ll try not to hear what you think.’
‘Is that how you knew my name?’
‘It sits on your tongue like a whisper. Now sit down, Hana. This stew is better hot than cold.’
She sat across the fire from him and ate thick pieces of fish with her fingers. He went into the shelter and brought out a jug. She drank fresh water.
‘You know my name,’ she said. ‘So what’s yours?’
The Dweller laughed, a creaky sound. ‘You have a right to know. It’s Danatok.’
‘I can see your eyes. They’re different too.’
‘Yes. We see like cats. But that’s all. Hands and eyes. All other things are the same.’
‘I’ve heard your name. Mam told a story . . .’
‘About what?’
‘Men called Keech and the Clerk. And a thing called gool. There was a girl . . .’
‘Xantee,’ Danatok said.
‘She killed the gool. You helped her. You killed Keech and the Clerk too.’
‘Others killed them. But it’s true. Xantee killed the mother gool. Pity was her weapon. Did your mother tell you about what came before? Company and Ottmar and Hari and Pearl?’
‘The poison salt. She told me. There was someone called Tealeaf too, and Tarl and his dogs. But I only believe in the Limping Man.’
‘Ah, the Limping Man. You’re running away from him. Tell me what happened, Hana.’
‘If you can see in my mind you can find out for yourself.’
‘That wouldn’t be polite. Besides, I don’t do it very well any more.’
She felt his sadness, his curiosity too, and his need to know. So, between bites of stew and mouthfuls of water, she told him about Mam, about the frogweed, about climbing the chimney at People’s Square and seeing the burning-posts stacked high with wood, and Mam then, carried in, Mam dead, and Morna and Deely and the others, alive, pulled on ropes to face the Limping Man.
‘I climbed down and ran,’ she said.
‘And you’ve been running ever since. Where to?’
‘Away,’ she said. ‘Just away.’
‘There’s nothing there, Hana.’
‘There was nothing where I came from. Only Mam.’ She would not cry. She would only cry inside herself.
Danatok felt it and turned away. He went into the shelter and came out with two yellow balls of the sort Hana had picked from the trees.
‘Bellfruit, Hana. Although I don’t know why. They’re more like the clappers in a bell.’
She had no idea what he meant, but bit into the ball he offered, enjoying the sweetness and the juice.
‘The story says you were in the city, and now you’re not, so you must have run too. This place is away.’
He smiled at that and seemed to agree. Then he said, Hana, but not aloud. He spoke her name inside her head.
She was so startled she almost dropped her bellfruit. Then she was angry.
‘Was that you?’
‘Yes, Hana,’ – this time aloud. ‘You could speak if you wanted to.’
‘I can speak. You hear me. What do you mean?’
‘The way Dwellers speak, mind to mind, without saying.
Over distances, Hana, many miles. Over the sea sometimes, over the mountains. There are humans who know how.
Xantee knows. Pearl and Hari know. I can teach you if you like.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s what the Limping Man does. I don’t want to know that. I’ll talk the way Mam talked.’
‘I think she could have learned.’
‘Well, she didn’t. I don’t want you to do that any more – go inside my head. Or hear what I think.’
He smiled sadly, and nodded.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘you don’t do it very well. That’s what you said.’ She knew as she spoke that it was where part of his sadness came from. ‘But you don’t have to tell me,’ she added.
‘You’ve told me your sorrow,’ he said, ‘so here is mine.
It’s smaller than yours, Hana. I’ve lost no one like Mam.
But what I’ve lost is the thing that made me Danatok. All Dwellers speak but my voice was one of the strongest ever known. Tealeaf was strong – she still is. And many others.
But I could speak over mountains and the sea. I could speak with Tealeaf in Stone Creek as though she was sitting on the other side of the fire. No other Dweller had my strength.
Only . . .’ he paused and smiled, perhaps a little sourly. ‘Only two humans.’
‘Humans?’ Hana said.
‘Blossom and Hubert are their names. Have you heard of them?’
‘No.’
‘They’re twins. They’re the children of Pearl and Hari.
Xantee is their sister. When they speak they chime like bells in my head. Or so it was once . . .’
‘Do you mean they’re dead?’
‘No. But dead to me – and I to them. Hana, I need to be close. When I try to send my voice over the hills it floats away like clouds and disappears. Over the sea it falls and sinks.
When you came here tonight I heard nothing until you were in the trees.’
‘I didn’t make any noise.’
‘I mean your thoughts. When I listen now, and hear, it’s like the buzzing of a fly. And when I speak I croak like a frog.’
‘You sounded all right to me.’