Chasing the Valley (15 page)

‘Where . . .?' I take a shaky breath. ‘Where's Radnor?'

No one answers. But we all turn towards the edge of the waterfall, knowing the terrible truth. In that last rush of water, all we could do was save ourselves. No one kept a grip on Radnor's broken body.

And now, our leader is gone.

 

 

We throw our sodden bodies onto the bank.
Someone is hyperventilating – maybe it's me, I don't know – and it feels like a drum is beating inside my skull. All I can do is breathe, in and out, in and out, and try to quell the horror that's strangling my gut.

After a few minutes, a gentle hand touches my shoulder. I flinch.

‘Sorry,' says the voice. ‘Are you hurt, Danika?'

I force my eyes open. It's Lukas. He must have clambered down the edge of the rocks. I suddenly feel a surge of guilt; he just saved our lives, but I'd completely forgotten about him.

‘I'm fine,' I manage. ‘You?'

He nods and helps me to my knees.

‘Who are you?' says Teddy, staring at Lukas with a numb expression. He almost looks as though he doesn't care – and right now, I don't blame him. Radnor is dead. He's
dead.

‘I'm another refugee, from Norville,' says Lukas. ‘I've been following your crew to find my way through the Marbles.'

‘It's true.' I hesitate, then add, ‘I think we can trust him. He's been following us for days, and he hasn't hurt us. And he just saved our lives.'

Teddy nods, apparently too stunned to feel suspicious. My stomach feels as cold as stone, and my fingers tingle where I last felt Radnor's ankle against my skin. He was just here with us, a moment ago. Alive. Breathing.

Maisy is staring towards the edge of the waterfall, as though hoping Radnor will magically pop back up into view. Clementine buries her head between her knees, bunching white-knuckled fingers into her hair.

After a long moment, we venture to the edge of the waterfall and peer over. There's no way down, not from here. The cliffs are too steep, too rough. If we all had Water proclivities, maybe we could melt into the river and ride it down. But since we don't, trying to descend would just mean death.

Even worse, we can see the river far below. The river is supposed to be our guide, to lead us all the way to Gunning. But about fifty metres away from the base of the cliff, it merges into a messy swamp and disappears. Surrounding the swampland, there's only empty fields. No more Marbles, no more river . . . 

And no idea how to find our way.

‘We've got to move,' I say, when it becomes obvious that no one else is going to take charge. ‘We have to get away from here, find somewhere to hide . . .'

Maisy looks around at me, face paler than I've ever seen it. ‘Yes,' she says. ‘You're right.'

The others don't argue. We move automatically for the next few minutes, traipsing back up the river to the original ambush point. Our lone surviving foxary clings to a ledge halfway up the rocks, but Teddy manages to coax it down with some gentle murmurs and hand signals. I wonder whether this foxary knows its friends are dead. I wonder whether the deaths caused Teddy physical pain, since he's so connected to these animals. When I remember Teddy's scream in the river, it seems all too likely.

We backtrack for a while, until we find a stack of boulders that are the right height to serve as stairs. Then we clamber up out of the riverbank, onto the higher plain of rock above.

‘Where now?' says Teddy.

I shake my head. ‘I don't know. Did Radnor tell the route to anyone else?'

‘All I know is to follow the river,' says Clementine. ‘But I never heard him mention a waterfall.' She lets out a low breath. ‘We should have taken the trade road. None of this would have . . . I mean . . .' She pauses. ‘It would have been so much easier.'

‘If we'd taken the trade road, we'd all be dead.' Teddy looks grim. ‘If a plan seems too easy, it's too easy for your enemies to figure out. I've learned that much from burgling.'

There is a long pause. Now that the initial shock is wearing off, the aches are beginning to set in. The river's battering has not been kind to our bodies.

‘But now we're lost,' Clementine says. ‘Radnor was the only one who knew the way.'

‘I don't reckon Radnor even knew the way, really,' Teddy says. ‘He was just going by what Hackel told him.'

‘Hackel!' I blurt. ‘We're supposed to meet him in Gunning, right? He'll know the way to the Valley.'

‘Yeah, maybe,' says Teddy, ‘but that's not gonna do us a lot of good if we can't find Gunning in the first place.'

I turn to Lukas. ‘Any luck summoning the birds?'

He shakes his head. ‘Nothing yet. I don't think there are any birds out here. It's all so . . . well . . .' He gestures across the endless marbles. ‘So
dead
, I guess. Maybe down there in the fields I'll have more luck.'

I gaze over the edge of the cliff, thinking of Radnor. His body is somewhere below, beyond our reach. We can't even give him a proper burial.

‘Come on,' I say, when it becomes obvious that no one else is ready to speak. ‘We've got to keep moving.'

 

For the rest of the day, we traipse along the
edge of the cliff, searching for a route down to the plains below. My body throbs and my mind aches. But there's no way down, nowhere safe to climb: just steep, crumbling cliff face.

We set up camp about twenty metres from the edge, inside a protective cluster of boulders. Our surviving foxary carries three packs – two large ones and a smaller one – but the rest of our supplies went over the fall. Mercifully, our magnets have survived the ordeal, but we've lost all the food and half the sleeping sacks. Teddy gives a bitter snort as he fishes through our supplies.

‘Of all the packs to survive . . .' he mutters, holding up a sparkly evening gown. Clementine, at least, has the good grace to look as disappointed as the rest of us.

I use a knife to slice open the remaining sleeping sacks. It's a bit like gutting fish down the side, and bits of fleece spill across our campsite. But this way, each sack becomes a large blanket for two people.

Teddy slips beneath a sack and forces a grin. ‘Just like those fancy mansions on High Street.'

‘We'll need to find some food tomorrow,' I say.

Lukas crosses to a pile of boulders, arranged higgledy-piggledy in the shadows of a rock ledge. He squats and bends to peer underneath, as though he's dropped something.

I frown in confusion. ‘What are you doing?'

‘Looking for seeds.'

‘Oh!' says Maisy. ‘Of course – there must be rock-fig seeds under some of these boulders.'

‘What?' says Teddy.

Maisy rises to join Lukas by the pile of rocks. ‘In springtime, the Marbles are covered with rock-figs. The plants spread their vines and flowers everywhere. I saw a picture in a book once; it was beautiful.'

‘So what? It's winter, not spring.'

‘So rock-figs grow from seeds,' says Lukas. ‘The seeds from last year's crop are scattered all over the place, waiting for spring. Most of them probably blew away months ago, but there are plenty under the rocks. That's all I've been eating for days.'

‘Doesn't seem to have done you much good,' says Clementine, eying Lukas's underweight frame.

‘Better than nothing,' I say, and join the others at the rock pile.

After twenty minutes of careful picking, we've amassed a handful of seeds. They're tiny and hard – half of mine get stuck between my teeth – and by the time I've finished, I'm hungrier than I was before. It's funny how that happens. If you don't eat anything for a day or so, sometimes you're lucky and your stomach will stop bothering you for a while. But if you sneak in a little snack, you've suddenly got a full-scale stomach uprising to deal with.

My belly gurgles impatiently, awaiting more food, but all I can do is scavenge for a few more seeds around the campsite. ‘How did you know to look for seeds, anyway?' I say to Lukas.

He shrugs. For the first time, I notice the colour of his eyes: a vivid twist of green. ‘I've spent a lot of time looking at the world through birds' eyes,' he says. ‘You get a good idea of where seeds and stuff might be hidden.'

The evening passes in a haze of hunger and grief. I wish someone would start talking again. Even mindless chatter would be fine – anything to break this silence. I keep hearing the scream of the waterfall, and feeling the touch of Radnor's ankle as he slips between my fingers. A flash of crimson in the water. I hug my knees and scrunch up my eyes, shielding my body against the night.

I've seen death before, of course. Back in Rourton, the winter took dozens of scruffers' lives. People froze in alleyways, or starved in the gutters. Sometimes I found their bodies: curled up and broken, like withered tree-limbs in the frost. A couple were people I knew. The old man who taught me which alleyways to scour. The girl who once traded me an apple for a stale chunk of bread.

And, of course, my family.

After all these years, I know how to push aside my grief. Tomorrow I will lock away these emotions, deep inside me, to deal with later. It's the only option, when you grow up on the streets. The only way to survive. But for now, it's all I can do to fight off the shake in my limbs and the ache in my bones.

No one has the energy to keep watch except for Lukas, who volunteers to take the whole night. Teddy gives him a distrustful look, until I sigh and offer to stay up with him.

‘I'm not too tired, honestly,' I lie.

Teddy doesn't look like he believes me, but the twins are already asleep – or passed out – and he clearly can't fight his body's cry for rest.

About halfway through our watch, I turn to Lukas. I still can't shake the tingle from my fingers and I need a distraction. Anything to break the silence. ‘How did you fight those hunters?'

Lukas pulls a chain from beneath his shirt. Half a dozen silver charms dangle from the end. I suddenly remember the hunter Hackel burned to death, and the necklace of charms that Hackel pilfered from his body.
Alchemy charms.
Portable spells, baked into the silver. My breath catches.

‘Are they . . .?'

Lukas nods. He pulls the chain from his neck and shows me the charms. ‘This one is dizziness,' he says, pointing to a tiny silver goblet. ‘And this horseshoe means luck, and the padlock is for unlocking things. The rose can hide my scent from animals, which is why your foxaries never sensed me following you.'

‘But they must have been so expensive!'

‘My grandparents collected them, and they were passed down to me,' says Lukas. ‘Just like the kite. My family used to be rich.'

‘So, if you've got all these family heirlooms, why haven't you sold them off by now? You could buy a lifetime of food with those charms.'

Lukas shrugs. ‘They were gifts from my family.'

‘Sentimental value?'

‘Something like that.'

I hesitate, then pull up my sleeve to expose my mother's silver bracelet. It slips down from my elbow to my wrist, and the metal seems to wink beneath the moon. ‘I know what you mean.'

He smiles. And despite everything, I smile back. I think I'm starting to get a better idea of Lukas. He grew up a scruffer, just like me. Most scruffer kids would sell a fistful of silver in seconds for a bite to eat. But Lukas couldn't let go of this memory of his family . . . and neither could I.

I touch the nearest charm on his chain: a tiny silver star. ‘What's this one for?'

Lukas smiles again. ‘My grandma gave me that one personally. It doesn't have any powers – it's just a trinket.'

We sit in silence for a while, staring at the stars. Now that it's dark, the edge of the cliff looks like the edge of the world. I can't see down to the fields beyond, or the line of earth that marks our distant horizon. There's just twenty metres of rock, then blackness.

After a while, Lukas starts to fiddle with the clasp of his necklace. He opens it gently, then slips a charm off the chain.

‘Here.' He hands me the tiny silver rose. ‘I want you to have this, Danika.'