Daywards (20 page)

‘Ma? Are you all right?'

Her face stricken in the firelight, Ma turned her eyes to meet Dara's, and, for the first time in Dara's experience, there were tears there.

‘Ma Saria, talk to me! What's happened?'

‘They're …' Ma hesitated, and her voice sounded old. ‘They're … gone.'

‘Ma, calm down!'

Dara's plea fell on deaf ears. Ma continued flinging various items into her woven bag as quickly as she could.

A couple of metres away, the firelight exposing the fear in her eyes, Eyna stood silent as a stone, observing as Ma Saria, the most unflappable woman they knew, seemed oblivious to anything other than her own haste. Dara stepped forward and took the old woman firmly by her shoulders, pulling up just the tiniest touch of earthwarmth and trying to reach towards Ma Saria's mind, just a fluttering, calming touch to try and restore some balance in the woman's demeanour. It was something she'd never tried before, physically touching another mind, but she'd seen Ma Saria do it and was certain it wouldn't be too difficult. So she was totally unprepared for what happened next.

The whole episode took less than half a second. As she first stretched her mind towards Ma Saria's, there was nothing there, only a maelstrom of confusion, into which Dara probed gently.

Then a swamping, angry wave of fear pushed back into her, a hot wedge of consciousness, fuelled by terror, which swept her own feathery reaching aside with the contempt that one might use to slap the life out of a mosquito, and drove down into her, coursing through and filling her with a terrible, overwhelming sense of nothingness; of long-held ties completely and unexpectedly severed, leaving only perfect void behind in their place.

Dara gasped and staggered backwards. Only some deep-buried instinct for self-preservation enabled her to tear her mind away, dragging it from the fast-moving current of Ma Saria's fear before stumbling over her own feet and tumbling hard onto the floor.

‘Shi, Dara! You okay?' In a flash, Eyna was kneeling beside her. The girl's hands felt cold against Dara's fear-crawling flesh.

‘I … yeah.' Dara tried to clear away some of the fogginess in her head.

‘Girl!' Now Ma Saria was kneeling there, too, her face etched with concern. ‘Night spirits, Dara! You all there?'

‘Yeah. I think so …' Dara pinched the bridge of her nose with a thumb and forefinger. Behind her eyes, she could feel blood pounding, causing a ringing pain behind her temples. A new wave of grief crumpled across Ma's face.

‘Earthmother, child! Don't you ever do that again, eh?'

‘I … I just wanted to help you.'

‘I know that, child. An' in a way you did. But touching another mind like that – it's not something you want to do without a lotta practice, and without knowing exactly what you're getting into. Otherwise …' Ma Saria stopped abruptly.

‘Otherwise what?' Eyna prompted, and when she replied, Ma's voice was reluctant.

‘Otherwise you can end up getting pulled or pushed into places you never want to go. Into doing things that'll change who you are.'

Gradually the savage pounding in her head shrank to a constant dull thump and Dara allowed the other two to assist her back to her feet, recalling as she did so that sudden moment of clarity, that brief bolt before the pain had taken over, when everything was suddenly, yawningly empty.

‘What was that, Ma?'

The old woman dropped her eyes, staring down at her gnarled, bare feet, black against the pale sandy floor.

‘That was where the clan used to be.'

‘Our clan?'

Ma Saria nodded.

‘All these years I've been – not
tracking
them, exactly – but always aware of ‘em, always in touch. Just like you are when you're reaching. I even managed to get through the Nightpeople's skyfire and find them these last couple of weeks. Just so I knew they're all okay. But then, just before, while we were talkin', they just went. One second they were all there as usual, up near the Eye, then … gone.'

Dara and Eyna exchanged a worried glance.

‘Gone where?'

Ma Saria made a small, hopeless gesture with her hands. ‘You felt it, child. Just gone. Off the Earthmother. Disconnected.'

‘You mean … dead?' Eyna struggled to keep her voice from catching, and a cold lump of fear rose in Dara's throat.

‘Don't know.'

The answer, unsatisfactory as it was, seemed to be all Ma Saria was capable of giving them. Dara turned back to the fire. Her legs were still shaking and she felt dangerously light-headed, but she forced herself to crouch and resume the packing that Ma had started.

‘What are you doing?' Eyna demanded

Dara looked up. ‘Ma's right. We gotta go. Now.'

‘Where?'

‘Back to the caves. We have to find out what happened.'

‘But what if they're all dead?'

Eyna's words echoed around the dark chamber, ringing into slow silence. Dara didn't reply, but kept packing up the cooking and hunting gear. Ma joined her and soon after that so did Eyna.

A few minutes later the three stepped around the rockfall, into the entrance cavern. The rain seemed to have eased slightly. It was hard to tell, though, because the night was now fully established and the cavemouth was nothing more than a pale, jagged circle against the black of the stone roof and walls.

Wordlessly, the two girls and the old woman paused for a moment before starting their climb up and out into the open. Ma Saria stood between them and took one of their hands in each of hers. The contact sent a brief shiver through Dara and she almost pulled her hand back, instinctively reacting to the savage battering her mind had taken from Ma Saria's earlier. But the moment passed and then all she was aware of was the dry tingle of Ma Saria's old skin touching her own.

Carefully, they clambered up the rocky slope and stepped out into the rain-whipped night.

In moments all three were soaked and Dara sighed as the rain caused her clothing to cling to her arms and legs and her hair to fall lank across her face and shoulders once more.

‘It would have been nice to stay dry a little longer. I feel like I've been wet forever.' She attempted to sound light-hearted, but didn't altogether succeed. Eyna shot her a sympathetic glance and Ma Saria, who'd taken the lead, didn't even break her stride, let alone comment.

Under the canopy and the clouds, the night was dark, but Ma led them unerringly between the trees, effortlessly navigating a tangle of intersecting game trails and half-formed tracks. Walking kept them from getting too cold, and after a couple of hours the forest began to feel vaguely familiar to Dara.

‘We're getting closer,' she muttered to Eyna, who nodded.

‘I know. The pool's just up ahead a little to our left.'

Dara glanced at her cousin in surprise, and Eyna allowed herself a slight smile which Dara could feel rather than see in the dark.

‘Ma Saria's been teaching me a few things about reaching while we were waiting for you,' she explained.

‘Good you!' Dara grinned. Now that she was aware of it, she realised that there was indeed something different about Eyna's spark. It was still as familiar to her as ever, but now even more connected.

Ahead, the trail opened up and they stepped into the clearing beside the pool. With all the rain, their bathing spot had swelled to five or six times its normal size, fuelled by a raging torrent of water pouring down the escarpment. The flat rock where they usually sunbathed was completely submerged and they had to wade in up to their knees a couple of times as they skirted the edge of the pool to reach the trail.

‘Brrr. You feel like a swim?' Eyna asked.

‘After you.'

Then they were back in the forest again, moving more quickly now on the familiar ground, along the meandering path beside the cliffs. Overhead, the escarpment loomed, dark and monolithic, its top cloaked in weeping cloud. As they came closer to the home trail, Dara kept an ear cocked upwards, listening to the sky for the telltale vibration of a hummer over the noises of the storm-thrashed forest.

Nothing came. The unnerving silence above continued until they reached the bottom of the trail, stopping where the path angled upwards into the cloud and the night.

‘How're you two feeling?' Ma Saria asked.

‘Okay,' both girls replied.

‘Good, then. We stick together up here, all three of us. Okay? No matter what we find, or what we see.'

Dara nodded.

‘And no reaching, either.'

‘Why not?'

Ma glanced nervously upwards, tracking the trail up the hill briefly.

‘There's no way to know what that New London mob might have left waiting for us up there. I can't feel a thing, which isn't a good sign. It's dead land up there now, just like the Eye and the skycity. And where there's been that sort of skyfire, it's never a good idea to reach too hard, in my experience. So you two just keep to yourselves and leave any reaching to me, understand?'

‘Yes, Ma.' Ma Saria didn't often talk in commands, but when she did it was impossible to argue.

‘Good then.' Ma took a few steps up along the trail before stopping again and looking back over her shoulder. ‘And if something happens to me up there, the two of you don't hang around, okay? No trying to save me or find me or any of that shi. Something happens, both of you get back down here quick smart and take off nightwards.'

Then she set off uphill, maintaining a startling pace for someone her age. Dara quickly felt her breath begin to tighten in her chest. Briefly, she considered reaching, just a little bit, and pulling up enough earthwarmth to loosen her still-aching muscles, but Ma's warning was too absolute for her to risk it. Instead, she steeled herself against the pain, and plodded onwards and upwards.

At least the rain was stopping. That was one small mercy. As they'd made their way along in the shadow of the escarpment the soaking downpour had slowly given way to a kind of drifting drizzle, which settled, rather than pounded, down on them. They marched upwards into this, the thickening fog of the cloud layer enfolding them until they stepped onto the broad, flat ledge outside the clan cave.

Through the swirling night, Dara caught a glimpse of the dark opening of the cavemouth, just a few metres away, and something caught in her throat.

It was all so familiar. The sweep in the arc of the rock arch, the pitted stone platform littered here and there with bits of rockfall from the cliffs above, the shapes and sights all utterly known to her. This was home, the world she'd belonged to for as long as she could remember, and she knew by heart every tiny fissure and lump.

But at the same time it wasn't home. Not any longer.

No voices echoed from inside, no laughing children and adults, no singing, no bickering. The outside firepit was a wet, circular smudge on the grey rock, and the cavemouth was dark. In her experience there had always been fire in the communal firepit inside, casting red and yellow shadows on the roof and walls and throwing a welcoming pool of light out onto the stone ledge where they now stood.

Now, though, there was only darkness, silence and the all-pervading damp hanging suspended in the air.

Even the wind had gone, leaving only a restless, chilly shifting of air which set her bones aching.

Home had gone, Dara realised in one terrible second of revelation. Home had gone and everything and everyone she knew had just … vanished.

And in that moment she understood the terrible emptiness that had overcome Ma Saria back at the cave. She understood that yawning, inexorable feeling that had almost swamped even tough old Ma.

The cloud swirled across the ledge, cloaking the cave entrance once more.

‘Come on, girls, let's have a look, eh?'

They stopped inside the threshold. It was nice to be out of the weather, even if just for a couple of minutes. But the pleasure was short-lived.

With no fire smouldering in the firepit it was almost completely black inside the cave. Dara knew the space well enough that she could have walked around it with her eyes closed, but now she was unwilling to step any further into the darkness. Beside her, she felt Eyna shift a step or two closer, until she was near enough to take Dara's hand in her own.

‘Hello?' Ma Saria's call echoed back at them.

‘It's empty.' Dara tried to keep the disappointment from her voice.

Leaving the two girls, Ma Saria walked further in, her pale form looking like a night-spirit as she crouched beside the firepit and shoved a hand into the grey ash and coals. ‘Cold. Nobody's been down here for days,' she announced.

She moved towards the back of the cavern, where the clan's food and wood and water would normally have been stored. The darkness swallowed her, and only the sound of her footfalls on the sand-covered stone gave any indication of her position.

Then she grunted softly, ‘Come and have a look at this.'

Reluctantly, still holding hands, Dara and Eyna made their way forward. There was just enough glow coming in from the cavemouth behind them to let them keep their bearings, but not enough to actually see anything.

‘Over here.'

Ma Saria emerged from the gloom, a bare shadow against the dark, beckoning them over to one side of the cave, where a featureless shape, almost as tall as she was, stood on the floor. As they made their way towards it, Dara felt a cold shiver, heavy and slow, tremble through her muscles, followed by a dull, distant buzzing.