Cloudland (9 page)

The thought of Earth had filled Lucy with longing. Images gathered in her mind: waking late on Sunday, walking in the green-shadowed pine forest. They were memories she could hardly have described to anyone – out of focus somehow, as though she was remembering hundreds of days at the same time.

They stood watching Wist and Jovius drift down towards them. ‘So they escaped the Varactor,' said Daniel. The bitterness in his voice startled Lucy. She looked at him, a pale, wind-bitten figure. On Earth, she would have dismissed him as a privileged little mess-up, yet now, when she looked at him, her breathing settled and things took solid shape again. She shook her head, confused, and looked back up at Wist and Jovius just as Wist bent one knee and slid
the carpet through a half-circle. It skidded to a stop a little way above the cloud plain. Jovius bounded towards Lucy and Daniel and clapped their backs with his soft hands.

‘All safe!' he cried.

Daniel shrugged him off. Jovius blinked up at him with the same smile fixed, uneasily now, on his face. Stretching up on his toes, he gazed around him at the empty cloud plain. Lucy thought of her father, standing in the kitchen, staring at familiar things – the toaster and kettle, their beaten-up chopping board – with exactly that vacant expression, and something twisted in her chest. She felt sad suddenly, and impatient. Jovius annoyed her, running after everyone like a poodle; and Wist annoyed her – the way he stood rolling up the carpet now without even a greeting.

The carpet compressed as he rolled it, shrinking to the size of a fold-up umbrella. He put it into his pocket. At last, he looked up.

‘There is a matter of Comclo,' said the Megalith.

Wist nodded. ‘Six pieces, if you brought them safely down.' He assessed Lucy and Daniel.

‘So Wist bribed that thing to rescue us,' whispered Daniel.

‘Very well,' Wist nodded to the Megalith. He
pointed at Daniel. ‘You'll have to ask that one for it.'

Lucy saw Daniel frown and then stretch his mouth into a deliberate smile. She could see exactly what he was thinking. Taking the Comclo from his pocket, he counted out six pieces and then stared into the box a moment longer, wondering whether there was enough left to bribe the Megalith to carry them all the way home.

One by one, Daniel flung pieces of Comclo into the air. With a flash of its tongue, the Megalith snapped at them and gulped them down without chewing. ‘You'll eat it all now?' he said, holding up the sixth piece.

The Megalith grunted. ‘I have not eaten for a month. The Kazia has frozen the last cloud left to us after Cloudian occupation.'

‘We are crossing Cloudland to fight the Kazia,' said Wist. ‘You shouldn't need bribes to help the Protector.'

‘Hunger makes its own laws,' answered the Megalith. It pulled its weight around until it was facing Lucy. ‘Yet I will help you,' it said. ‘I will show you something.' It dragged its stomach across the cloud, snuffling and turning this way and that. Circling back, it stopped and started digging, flinging long streaks of cloud into the air behind it. Reaching
into the hole it had made, it forced back a plate of polished cloud.

‘This will lead you safely to the Mist.'

Lucy looked into a tunnel, two metres down, walled with close-packed cloud and filled with pale light.

‘What is this?' snapped Wist. ‘Made outside Cloudian knowledge?'

The Megalith made a rumbling sound. ‘Cloudian knowledge! This is one of the old ways of the Megaliths, made long before you Cloudians spread across all the clouds, forcing us into wild and barren places.'

‘You want us to go in there?' said Daniel. His voice sounded scratched. Lucy looked at his face, fixed like a mask, and knew how he felt. Already, the silence of the tunnel was closing around her, constricting her throat.

‘As you wish,' answered the Megalith. ‘Remember, a Varactor does not give up the hunt. It will have risen now into the high, cold places. When it has regained its strength, it will look for you again – and find you, if you stay on this shelterless plain.'

‘You'll come into the tunnel with us?' asked Lucy. ‘We'll give you a piece of Comclo a day,' she added, before Wist could say anything.

‘Very well.' The Megalith threw a glance at Wist, who was glittering with anger. ‘I will guide you as far as the Mist.'

‘What Mist?' demanded Daniel. There was a pause. The Megalith took a sudden interest in licking its paws clean. Jovius started rubbing invisible stains from his sleeves.

‘The only way to the Forgotten Lands,' said Wist abruptly. He flicked his hand when Daniel asked more questions. ‘No need for us to enter any tunnel,' he said, glaring at the sky. ‘The Varactor has gone.'

‘But it will come back!' retorted Lucy.

Wist swung his face so close she noticed with a flash of repugnance that his eyelids folded at the bottom of his eyes. ‘Primitive,' he spat. ‘We do not travel with the Megaliths.' Something fierce and desperate in his look made Lucy's skin shrivel.

‘We're taking the tunnel,' she answered. Wist straightened and stalked away. They watched him in silence: a pale silhouette against the sky. Lucy saw he would do what she said. Instead of exultation, his obedience gave her a queasy feeling – she imagined consequences stretching away from her feet in all directions, like long invisible shadows. She walked to the trapdoor and swung herself down. When she looked up, the sky had shrunk to a blue square.

The tunnel extended in front of Lucy as far as she could see, never turning and everywhere filled with the same even light. Staring down its length, Lucy found herself tugging at the collar of her coat. It was a relief when Daniel swung into the tunnel beside her. She saw him open his mouth to speak but he didn't say anything. He just stood, staring at the tunnel's vanishing point.

The walls seemed to float a little closer as the light in the tunnel thinned. Lucy saw the Megalith nosing down through the trapdoor, stretching its flesh out, lumpy and soft. With its front paws settled on the floor, it eased the rest of its body down in loose shrugs.
Then, with a soft, eel-like movement, it dragged itself past them.

Wist landed soundlessly. With his lips pinched together, he set off after the Megalith: kicking and floating, kicking and floating, paler than ever in the bland light. Standing next to Lucy, Jovius made a clicking sound. ‘Not easy for him,' he said, watching Wist.

‘It's not exactly home comfort for us, either,' said Daniel.

‘Let's go,' said Lucy. The tunnel's stillness nagged at her nerves. A weight of undisturbed time gave its air the feel of water. She had a sense of it eddying away if she moved her hand. ‘It's freezing,' she shivered. ‘What's this tunnel for, anyway?'

The Megalith's voice echoed back to her as if the tunnel itself was speaking. ‘Before the Cloudians, when Megaliths ranged over all the clouds, these tunnels made the pattern of our lives, from our making place to the feeding grounds, moon by moon, until at last they led us to the great Mist where –'

‘Superstition,' broke in Wist. ‘Primitive ignorance.' He stopped suddenly and stood hunched, pressing his elbows into his sides, with his hands crossed on his chest. Looking at him, Lucy thought of her grandfather, dead in his coffin in the beige light of
the funeral parlour – not himself anymore: the body emptied out and waxen. She felt again the pressure of her mother's hand on her shoulder. Her mother had turned, clutching her stomach, her whole body jerked by sobs. For a long time after the funeral, Lucy would come home from school to find her still in bed, the air in the room sweet with the smell of sleeping pills. Then, not long after the holidays started, she left.

Lucy realised now that, in all those months, she had not once pitied her mother. In fact, she had felt angry with her for the soft, persistent weeping, the heavy, pill-induced vagueness.

Lucy shook her head, trying to clear away the memory. Wist still hadn't moved. Jovius was close beside him, patting his arm and murmuring. Catching Lucy's eye, he flicked his head, motioning her to move on.

She noticed with detached curiosity how her legs worked. The muscles in her calves tightened and stretched, tightened and stretched. Ahead of her, Daniel was shifting from foot to foot. When she caught up with him, he grabbed her arm and turned to the Megalith.

‘Comclo!' he said. The Megalith bunched itself up and eased around to face him. Daniel held out
the box. ‘Eight pieces,' he whispered. He flicked a look back along the tunnel to where Wist and Jovius stood, half-lost in their stillness. ‘You can have them, all of them,' he continued, ‘if you carry us back to Earth.'

‘To
Earth
?' The Megalith swung its head and fixed its eyes on Lucy. ‘The Cloudian said you were travelling across Cloudland to fight the Kazia.'

‘They've mixed her up with someone else,' persisted Daniel. ‘It's a mistake. We shouldn't even be here.'

The Megalith ignored him. It kept its eyes on Lucy. ‘They said you were the Protector.' Images chased through Lucy's mind: Cloudians in the Citadel running towards her; the statue, chanting with its eyes closed; Fracta shrugging and saying, ‘War makes lies useful.' Her body felt weighted with sand.

‘I don't know what I am.' She heard her own voice, her words, with a sense of surprise. She hadn't meant to speak. She thought of the child Daniel had seen, kicking in the night-time floodwaters. She imagined it tiring at last, spinning down into the silence of water. The words kept jerking from her mouth. ‘The Heir chose me. January sent me. I don't see how I can fight the Kazia. I don't even know what the Kazia is . . .'

Daniel shouldered in front of her, holding out the
Comclo. ‘You said you were hungry. You can eat all this!' He felt in another pocket and pulled out a second stack of Comclo. ‘And these. All we have. But we have to go
now
!'

Lucy looked back along the tunnel. Wist and Jovius were drifting towards them.

‘This tunnel glittered once.' The Megalith was gazing at the walls. ‘Season by season, the great herds passed here. Now the air is heavy with silence. In all the clouds, only a dozen Megalith survive, scrounging on the edge of frozen cities. The Kazia has frozen our last making place. Because it is mine by ancient right, I took what Comclo the Cloudian would give. Because I oppose the Kazia, I allowed you entry to this sacred place. Did you think for a few Comclo I would take you back to Earth?'

Lucy looked down at her hands. For a moment, she felt as though she and Daniel had fallen out the wrong end of a telescope – changed into small, faroff people. But as soon as she thought that, anger flared in her chest. ‘You all keep telling us about the Kazia. If you hate her so much, why don't you fight her yourself?'

Just then, Wist and Jovius stopped beside them. Daniel shoved the Comclo back into his pocket.

‘Here we are!' said Jovius, too brightly, with an
attempt at ease. Wist was glaring at the air in front of him. There was an uneasy pause.

The Megalith dropped its snout between its paws and worked its bulk around. ‘If you ride on my hind paws we will travel more quickly,' it called.

Lucy saw a shiver run through Wist's body, but he propped on the tip of one paw and Jovius squatted beside him. Lucy settled on the other paw. It had the smooth feel of worn leather, but it was cold, and she was glad of the warmth when Daniel huddled beside her.

With a soft hunching movement, the Megalith pulled itself forwards. The walls flowed past, never changing. Lucy tried to count how many days they had spent up here: a night in the Citadel, a night in their refuge. Perhaps it was night again. She pictured the cloud plain, a few metres above her, under a blaze of stars, and wondered whether her father even knew she was missing. Maybe her mother had assumed she had missed the flight. Maybe her father was still waiting for her to call.
Missing
, she thought, and felt her flesh thin out. A girl at school had vanished after a month of rain. Her parents came to Assembly. The mother, at the microphone, had said only, ‘Please,' and then closed her eyes. Some students whispered the girl had
joined the Amphibians. Nobody mentioned other possibilities.

‘What is this Kazia, anyway?' demanded Daniel. ‘You haven't even told us what she looks like.'

Wist flicked his head back. ‘How can we tell you? If we had seen her, we'd be like those Cloudians in Altovia. Ask them what she looks like.'

Lucy pressed the memory of those maimed faces from her mind. ‘But how does she travel?' she asked. ‘How does she freeze things?'

Jovius held his hands against his cheeks. ‘They say she leaves Alkazia at night,' he whispered. ‘The shadow-mongers carry her. People say she freezes things just by looking at them.'

‘Rumours and hearsay,' interrupted Wist.

‘That's right!' cried Jovius, bobbing his head up and down. ‘We don't know! We
can't
know!'

The Megalith stopped. ‘The Mist is a little way ahead,' it called. ‘I can take you no further.'

‘Why?' Daniel straightened up. ‘Why can't you come with us? What is this Mist, anyway?'

‘It is our dying place,' answered the Megalith.

Daniel made a choking sound. ‘Like a
graveyard
?'

The Megalith didn't reply. As soon as they had climbed from its hind paws, it turned and slid past them. They saw the tunnel ended in sky. Wist stood
balanced on its very edge, arms outstretched, with Jovius huddled beside him.

‘I have given what help I can,' said the Megalith. Without pausing, without even looking at them, it slithered away.

‘There goes our chance of escape,' murmured Daniel. He stood with his hands by his side, his face expressionless.

They watched until the Megalith had faded into the tunnel's even glow. At her back, Lucy heard whispering sounds. She reached for Daniel's hand. They turned and started walking. With every step, they sank ankle-deep into the tunnel's soft floor. Dragging her feet free, Lucy forced herself to keep walking towards whatever waited for them at the end of the tunnel, just out of sight.