The Hundred: Fall of the Wents (27 page)

“Mama!” called Natty, once. “I thought I heard her.”

“No,” said Bax. “No, no, no. Make them stop.” He was almost sobbing.

“They’re calling to us,” said Natty, in a strange voice. “They want us to come. The children! The children. The baby, Hope.”

“You mustn’t!” hissed Copernicus, with all the force he could muster. For the snake and the bee, the voices, though terrible, held no sway. But for the children, the voices were pleading and loving, as well as terrible. In that shadow were people the children had lost.

“We won’t! We won’t!” cried Natty. Copernicus held his mouth against her ear and whispered as loudly as he could to block the voices of the shadow out. He whispered of anything he could remember of his old life: warm days on the shore of the Windermere, playing at
Skilling Stones with Tully and Aarvord, and even of his brothers and sisters. He whispered of all things bright and clear and good. He remembered the moment when they had to hide from the Shrikes, and told stories of what he had dreamed in that difficult moment.

“Keep your eyes shut tight,” Copernicus cautioned the children for he sensed that, if they saw a familiar face in the shadow-thing, they would not be able to hold back and would try to crawl out to join it.

The swirl of souls had come down low to the ground and was hovering over the edge of the crevice. Curiously, it had not come down the side of the cliff to source the children out. Copernicus realized that its weakness was that it could not break apart to travel in unusual directions and seek out hiding places such as the one where they were. At least, it had not learned to do so, yet. It had no whole consciousness, Copernicus thought and, therefore, could not think and reason. It was a dumb, blind thing of pain and anger. Later, he knew, it would become intelligent. Their only safety lay in its agony and stupidity for, while it wanted to take the children up into itself, it did not seem to know how.

The noise was ferocious now. Swirling bits of trees and grass and twigs were uprooted and came down into the narrow cliff chimney and choked them. A stray branch knocked Bax on the head and he cried aloud in pain; the shadow seemed to take renewed interest. Then, there was a moment when all became silent and a ray of sunshine shot down into the crevice. All of them, even the children, turned their heads up and opened their eyes. Like a hurricane, the storm of souls had an eye. Through it, they could see clear daylight up above, while the swirl of darkness rose higher. They could see it all now in its terrible wonder.

It rose almost gracefully, and there was something of beauty in its mesmerizing swirl, now that the anguished faces were too distant to see. The voices and shrieks had gone silent. The flowing limbs and hands and arms that had intertwined darkly over them now seemed like a beautiful pattern, receding higher and higher into the sky and, then, vanishing southward. They watched until the dark storm was a mere pinprick on the horizon, and then they crept slowly and awkwardly out of the crevice.

Natty crawled out and collapsed on the ground, bruised and cramped from bearing the weight of Bax. On her hands and knees, she cried out aloud. The ground around them was flattened—every blade of grass, every shrub, every flower—as if beaten down by the force of many angry wings. All living things were dark and desiccated—except for them. As they looked around, they saw that the devastation ran in a wide swath from the north and ended where the shadow had whirled above them. The ground around their hiding place had been burnt flat, in a wide circle.

They all stared in absolute silence. Then Bax said: “That shadow was even worse than what we saw before. It was louder.”

“Perhaps it grows in strength and power in the light,” said Copernicus grimly. “It has grown in rage and pain and…sssss.” He lost his words and lapsed into a nervous hiss, for he could now see scores of insects that had been crushed in the dark heat of the shadow, and the limp body of a little mammal that had not escaped its wrath. And there was another snake—one of the mute and stupid snakes that lived in this world, but a snake all the same. It was evidently dead. It lay in the center of the wide circle that the Hundred had burned in their wake. Copernicus flicked over to it and stared at its body in pity.

“Ssssooo,” said Copernicus, finding his voice again. “They kill and maim whatever is in their way.”

Copernicus had turned black and glittering eyes on the two little children. “Who are these things? Humans? These are your people?” he asked. He sputtered his s’s in short little hisses.

Natty had gone to the body of the little mammal. “A rabbit,” she said. Copernicus had never seen one of these things, but he felt sorry for it all the same. Natty cradled the rabbit like a doll and stroked its ears flat.

“They weren’t like that,” said Natty, crying over the rabbit. “People were good. Our parents were good.”

“Some of them may have been good once,” said Nizz. “But that thing is not human anymore. It has collected the souls of the dead and the living. It has become terrible.”

“The terrible and sad ones ate the good ones,” said Bax. He looked up at the sky.

Deressema said nothing at all. She was thinking that her master could not have anything to do with this awful and soulless thing. Yes, soulless for, although souls composed it, it had no soul of its own to guide it. The souls within it were prisoners of their own hapless misery, forever doomed to be captive to the evil that now bound them and drove them onward. This thing could not be the Hundred she knew. It simply could not, not in any form now or any form in the future. It was a ghost.

Thus Deressema wondered:
To whom had she been answering, back in that old world? For if it was not the Hundred, as she had come to believe, then what was it?

She immediately doubted her own wild imaginings. Pomplemys
had
said that the Hundred would be different here. They would be fearsome and frightening, and would not recognize her. Indeed, they would be eons away from attaining the clear and very sensible consciousness that she had come to trust. So yes, it was possible that the great swirling miasma of rage and darkness and sorrow was her beloved master. She shuddered at the thought. It could not be.

Deressema was more deeply afraid
than ever before. She wanted badly to abandon her mission and avoid any further contact with the shadow
.
Yet, she had a premonition that, if she failed it now, it would
know.
Something in it would remember. And when she went back to the old world, it would crush her. She looked at the bodies of the snake and the rabbit and—worse, much worse—the little insects, winged and toothless, that were lying smashed, flattened, and burnt all over the grass. That would be her fate. The thing had a long memory, of that she was sure. It would have had millions of years to brood on her betrayal. How it would know, she was not sure. Yet, she was terribly and mortally afraid. She must continue. She must get out of this world that had so much newborn terror in it. She must deliver the children. And she must deliver herself.

Deressema had been so lost in her thoughts that she barely noticed Bax approach her and cup her up in his palm. He held her up to his face and gazed at her. His eyes were bright and
brown and filled with concern. He thought of her as a friend. She knew that and felt ashamed.

“Are you scared?” he said.

“Yes,” said Deressema truthfully. She was glad for the chance to be honest. “I am very scared.”

“I am too,” said Bax.

Now, as they walked, they kept an eye on the sky at all times. The shadow had not reappeared. But, since they had seen what it could do, they were nervous all the time. They looked for signs on the ground as well, for flattened grass blades and blackened ground. At least, thought Copernicus, the shadow left an unmistakable trail.

At night, one of the smaller companions stood a rotating watch so that the children could sleep. First Copernicus, then Nizz, and then Deressema. Each of them had the thought that it was entirely ridiculous that such tiny creatures were the caretakers of the human children, who were so much larger and stronger physically, by comparison. But the children had not even the sense of young from the newer world from which the three little beings had come. After a day or two, they were even able to joke and laugh again, despite what they had experienced.

Foolish little things, thought Deressema, who was reconciling herself to the notion of handing them over to her own Hundred—the good Hundred—who would reward her in her world. Instead of allowing herself to warm to them further, she tried to despise them. She looked for their weaknesses and sneered at them in her own mind, while still acting pretty and merry to their faces.

Nizz and Copernicus thought more kindly of Bax and Natty. Nizz noticed that despite their laughter, they clung more tightly together. In sleep, they lay nose to nose, taking in each other’s breath. They no longer argued over stupid little things. Copernicus noticed that when they ate, they offered each other food readily, instead of greedily hoarding it to themselves. They also noticed that the children seemed pale and anxious, and jumped nervously at the slightest sound or movement.

Nizz kept a constant eye out for hiding places wherever they traveled and, when they passed over ground with no stones or shrubs, he buzzed ahead, seeking the next cleft in the rock or the next copse of trees. Nizz was worried about Deressema’s surety at finding a safe haven in the south. She had acted strangely during the maelstrom of souls but, then again, so had they all. Now she seemed excessively happy and there was an overemphasis of excitement in her words. He could not quite identify what it was that bothered him. His memory was such that it entered every data point, every movement, and calculated what it might mean. Still, he resolved to keep an eye on her, for he felt that he could not quite trust her completely.

After several days, Deressema’s excitement grew as soon as they could see a rocky promontory to the south. As they drew closer, she could identify two craggy outcroppings, circling around until they almost met at the sea. They heard the mewling and shrieking of strange creatures that circled in the air above. These looked like Scratchlings, but were more sleek and white, with black markings and longer, more tapered wings. Unlike Scratchlings, they had the power of flight. Copernicus quailed upon first seeing them and hearing their cries, but the children seemed to know what they were.

“Seagulls!” said Natty.

“What are they?” sniffed Deressema. “They are fearsomely ugly.”

“No,” said Bax. “I like them.”

“Are they related to the shadow?” asked Nizz, but the children laughed at that. “No, they are just birds, silly,” said Natty.

Copernicus and Nizz and Deressema had never seen an ordinary bird. Only a few creatures could fly, such as bees and Ells and other insects, but they were very small. Most flying beasts had been wiped out many eons ago, especially those of any size. Copernicus wondered if these seagulls liked to eat snakes. He decided that they did and he hid around Natty’s neck for safety. The birds’ cries sounded empty and stupid. How glad he was that where he came from, creatures could speak and had sense. But, he remembered, where he came from was lost to him. It filled him with sadness once again and made him look at Deressema longingly.

They had reached the start of one of the cragged semicircles of land shaped like curved jawbones, and could see that in the center of the harbor there was a strange stone, all by itself, on a great ledge of rock. It lay far below them, in calm waters untroubled by waves.

“Look how the stone sits!” said Bax wonderingly. Indeed, the massive stone seemed to perch on its most narrow end, as if someone could tip it over with a finger push. No doubt it had been dumped there by a long-ago glacier and left in its wake, strangely defying gravity for hundreds, perhaps millions, of years. It was easily the size of a small house in the city of Circadie.

“What a miraculous thing!” said Deressema. “We must get closer to look at it.”

They all agreed right away, without questioning her motives, because the stone was so beautifully and unusually perched. Natty and Bax were the most excited. They had never come this far away from home. Who knew what wonders lay beyond? Maybe the stone was something that her people had built, thought Natty.

Natty and Bax led the climb down the cliff, which was easy enough, as there was a well-worn path free of loose stones. A few scrubby branches served as handholds. Coper stayed tightly wrapped around Natty’s neck, fearing a drop into the sea below, and Nizz and Deressema buzzed ahead to scout the path for loose rocks and steep drops.

Eventually, they reached the water and were at the level of the stone, and could see how narrow was the point on which it perched. It seemed to be hanging in air by a thin cord, drawn up to the heavens by its weight and bulk rather than drawn down into the water.

“How fine! How unusual!” said Deressema, clapping. “Can we get out to it?”

“Doesn’t seem safe,” hissed Copernicus, finally feeling something ominous about the stone. The way it was balanced made it seem as if it could topple at any moment and crush them.

“Don’t be silly,” sang Deressema. “Nature made it. It won’t move now, for a few little ones such as us. See, I will fly across to it!”

And she did, zipping across the calm and protected harbor to alight on the rock. She danced there, back and forth, and then flew under the rock near its balancing point, like the troop of Ells who had often performed tricks in the city for nothing but attention. She did figure-of-eights around the base of the stone where it sat inside its bowl of rock and, then, flew back exhilarated.

“See?” she said. “It did not crush me. It is safe.”

“Hmm,” said Copernicus, who had
been watching her antics with anxiety. “What if one of the children stumbled? And knocked the rock and it were to fall?”

“Poo!” said Bax. “As if we would be so clumsy!”

“Oh please, can’t we swim out to it?” begged Natty. “Just for a few minutes?” She said it in a way that suggested that she was bigger than all of the rest of them and would do what she wanted regardless of their reply.

All of them seemed to have forgotten the terrible experience of the whirling Hundred, and what they would do if such a storm cloud were to appear while they were unprotected out on the rock. The stone was like a magnet, pulling them toward its center.

To Copernicus, the stone was more appealing yet more unnerving by the moment. He knew that he would have to visit it. Yet the thought filled him with anxiety.

“Don’t be silly,” he told himself. “It’s just a natural thing.” But the stone almost breathed with menace. Then a gust of wind came in from the sea, purling into the harbor and twitching up the waves, and the stone spun—ever so slightly—on its axis.

“Did you see that?” shrieked Deressema.

“I did,” said Nizz, who was now suspecting something that he could not put a name to.

“Ah, it moved!” said Bax. And Natty jumped up and down like she was at a party.

“Look,” she pointed out. “The sea is not so deep there. There is some kind of rocky bridge under the water.” They looked and, under the surface of the water, they could see the jagged outlines of the ledge as it dipped a foot or so beneath the surface and extended all the way to the coastline. They would be able to walk, if the children were willing to get their feet wet.

They were more than willing. Without waiting, Natty and Bax clambered down the last few feet, to where the water met the rocky shoreline, and set out along the underwater bridge of rock. Coper clung around Natty’s neck, and Nizz and Dee flew overhead. It was narrow enough such that they had to walk toe to heel, balancing carefully. Sometimes the waves came in roughly and splashed salty water as high as their faces, and they had to pause so that they wouldn’t fall.

Finally they reached the dry ledge, and stood close to the rock. It was even larger up close. They could see at once why it had been able to turn, ever so gently, in the wind off the sea. The base of the rock tapered and came to a point that almost seemed fashioned by intelligent hands, so perfectly shaped was it. That point was resting in a hollow bowl of rock, like a pestle and mortar.

They walked around and around the rock but it was tight against the bowl in which it sat. As they touched it they could see the surface of the rock was scarred and hatched with marks, and it shone blackly like something made of metal.

There were a few humped and large boulders and rocks scattered around on the ledge. Copernicus felt that same sense of dread when he saw the boulders, and one rock in particular seemed familiar to him. He thought that he had seen this very rock in the Shrike stronghold, hidden under a length of fabric. He felt somewhat lightheaded, as if his tail was very far away from his head. There was something not right about this place.

Now that Deressema was here, the rock seemed very menacing indeed. Her instructions had been to get the children into the hole. From there they would follow a tunnel that would lead them to their destination. But, she also had to wait for the right moment. She had been told to wait until the stone began spinning in the wind, which would fire the portal into active life and reveal the entryway. But the sea was suddenly dead calm, and the stone remained absolutely still.

“I don’t like it,” said Copernicus suddenly. “We should leave this place. These stones are dreadful thingssss. Whoever put them here had bad intentions, yesss!”

“Nonsense, you silly old thing!” said Natty. “How could stones be bad? They are just rocks. They don’t have bad intentions or anything like that.”

“You are the one who is being foolish,” said Copernicus to the little girl. Her childish innocence seemed misplaced after the terror they had recently experienced under the shadow. She looked chastened.

Nizz was scanning the skies, as he always did. He gave a low warning buzz.

“They are upon us again,” he said. And they all looked to the south, where they could see the dark and swirling shadow that had tormented them before. It was coming at a fast clip. In another few moments, they could hear its whine and wail start to dampen the air around them. A fierceness rode along with it—a high and whining wind. Deressema’s heart leapt. If she could but wait until they drew close she might be saved.

“We have to run!” cried Bax.

“Wait!” shrieked Deressema. She was desperate for a wind. If the stone would turn even a little bit!

“Wait for what?” shouted Copernicus. “They will eat us alive!

“I thought you said this shadow feared the sea,” he added, looking at Deressema. “Now they have sought us out twice near the water.”

“I can’t understand it,” said Deressema. Her lie was now exposed.

The humming and wailing shadow was close enough now that they could start to see forms within it, and this time the children were not protected from looking upward into the dark spiral. Natty had begun to cry, all her playful exuberance lost.

“Who is in there?” she cried. “Is my father in there?”

Bax was also searching the cloud for a familiar face among the tormented souls that flowed and swirled, each so close upon the other that it was hard to tell where one ended and the next began.

In another moment they would be lost.

The wind grew higher, a moaning roar. And then the stone began to turn. Slowly at first, but then faster. And as it turned it rose from its basin and into the air, revealing a gap—and a dark hollow beneath.

Deressema did not hesitate, even though she could feel chill air from that hole settle on her wings.

“Inside!” she screamed. And Copernicus pulled himself tight around Natty’s neck so that she could not breathe properly. Nizz flung himself against Bax’s cheek to stir him, so that the boy cried out in pain and slapped at the sting.

“Inside! Inside!” the three smaller beings called, as one, until the children listened. They climbed into the dark hole surrounding the bowled stone, and used the pillar of rock to lower themselves down and down into its depths. As soon as they were safe within the hole the shadow overhead was dampened. But the shadow was certain they were there, this time. It lowered itself toward the hole, in one screaming, dank thundercloud. It was like an animal with claws and legs.

At the base of the hole there was not one tunnel, but several, all branching off in different directions. Deressema could not remember which was the proper tunnel. Had Pomplemys said the left or the right, or something else? Her brain felt muddled with fear and fatigue. All that mattered now was to escape the awful curse in the air above. Her “masters.”

“The left!” she said, without thinking, and they ran down that tunnel. The cold was very biting, and Deressema’s wings were almost frozen. She landed on Bax’s shoulder for safety, for she feared that soon her wings would not work at all anymore.