Chasing the Valley (22 page)

Our descent is slow. This mountain wind seems harsher than even the rapids in the river, and doubly cold. Everything is white, as though I'm climbing through a cloud. In a way, I suppose I am. It's a risky thing to imagine, because the whole world begins to feel like a dream. My only link to reality is the cold rungs of the ladder right in front of my eyes. There is nothing up, nothing down, nothing to my sides. Just white.

Maybe it's disorientation, or maybe the air up here is too thin, but – for whatever reason – I want to let go. I want to float away into the clouds like a bird. I have to shake my head, grit my teeth and remind myself that this is real
.
This is not a dream. If I let go of this ladder, I will die.

My toes turn numb with cold after several minutes of climbing. After a while, I can't even feel the itch in the back of my neck. If I didn't know better, I might welcome the numbness as a relief from the pain. But I've survived enough winters to know the perils of frostbite. I don't want to end up like the girl I shared a doorway with once, who peeled off her boots and left her toes inside.

As we descend, the fog begins to clear. The morning sun grows strong enough to burn the mist, and I start to see Teddy's figure below. Then I make out Maisy, and finally Clementine. I'm no longer lost in a sea of white. We clamber down one leg of the pylon, which props up the main pole, forcing us to climb at a diagonal. The ladder falls into a brownish mess of trees below.

Finally, we reach the bottom. I collapse into half-frozen sludge and undergrowth. The others already lie nearby. Their chests rise and fall in steady huffs, gasping clouds into the frost. And I just lie there, relishing the cold of mud beneath my spine. It's solid. The world is solid again. I'm no longer in danger of floating away.

 

 

 

 

As
my senses return to normal, I realise the
undergrowth is coated with mucky snow. We are up in the mountains, not down in the fields, and the cold here could kill us on a whim. If we hope to survive this trek, we must always be prepared to defend ourselves – not just against hunters, but against the climate.

There is no real shelter here: just the railway cables, swallowed by cloud above our heads. And once the guards figure out how we escaped, the first place searched will be the base of these pylons.

I force myself onto my knees. ‘Come on. We've got to move.'

Clementine moans and the others just ignore me. I want desperately to join them, to close my eyes and pretend that none of this is happening. But one of us has to get the crew moving. Radnor is dead. Hackel tried to sell us to the hunters. So if no one else wants the job, it looks like I'm stuck taking charge.

‘Come on,' I say again. ‘You can rest soon, I promise.'

No response.

‘We've just got to find a safe spot, that's all, and then we'll set up camp and –'

Teddy runs a hand through his hair. ‘Yeah, all right, Danika. No need to ramble on about it. We're coming.'

I help pull the others to their feet. We sling the packs back on and stagger forward into the snow. Our only luck is the bristly undergrowth, which stops us leaving any obvious footprints.

Hours fade together in an endless haze of white and brown. Snow and trees. The only variety is occas­ional wildlife: birds above the canopy, and a startled rabbit in the undergrowth. Clementine mutters that we should have caught it for supper, but none of us has the slightest clue how to hunt. We're city born and bred, and the only food I've hunted for was found in a restaurant rubbish bin. Besides, I don't think I could bring myself to kill the rabbit. Not when it's out here, like us, just fighting to survive. I know how it feels to be hunted.

The sun treks across the sky, melting away the rest of the fog. As the horizon clears, I'm relieved to see that Teddy's earlier guess was correct. We've already passed over the highest peaks, and we're head­ing down through the southern slopes. Even so, the air is cold enough to sting. I don't want to imagine what would have happened if we'd ditched the train an hour earlier. Up in the bite of the highest peaks, lashed by wind and frostbite, we would already be dead.

In early afternoon, Maisy points out one of the mountaintops. When she speaks, her voice is oddly tight. ‘I think that's Midnight Crest.'

At first I think the peak's completely bare: just rock and snow, silhouetted against the sky. Then I squint, and realise what I'm really staring at. Ruins. The ruins of a fortress, perhaps – perched like a broken bird on the summit.

‘I didn't realise we were so close,' Maisy says quietly. ‘It's from the time of the earliest Morrigan kings, hundreds of years ago.'

‘Why would anyone want to live up
there
?' Clementine says.

‘It wasn't for living. It was death row for traitors. They were bound inside magnetic cells, and left to slowly die in the cold.'

I stare up at the ruins. There isn't much left now: just broken stone and blackened wood, half-buried in snow. But my imagination fills in the details. I picture walls of oak arching high over stone. Metal bars. Frostbitten fingers. Frozen breath and faltering heartbeats.

‘Why'd they shut it down?' Teddy says.

‘Some of the prisoners escaped,' Maisy says, ‘and burned it to the ground. That was when they trained the first official platoon of hunters – to hunt down those prisoners in the mountains.'

I blink. I've never thought about the start of the hunters. It seems like they've always been there – like wind or rain or fire. It's unsettling to think that this is the place it all started: right here, in the Central Mountains. I think of prisoners running, screaming, their blood on the snow.

Then an even worse thought hits me. This place . . . this is what the hunters exist for. This is what Sharr's predecessors were first trained for. Do we really think we can outrun her
here
? Here, where it all began?

‘Come on,' Teddy says. ‘Better keep moving, I reckon.'

No one argues.

 

The day wears down, and so do our bodies.
O
ur
muscles ache and our faces sting. We put one foot in front of the other, again and again, and struggle until we can't go any further.

Finally, I choose a ledge beneath an overhanging section of rock. It's not a perfect shelter, but it's the best place I've seen so far; at least there are trees nearby to muffle the wind.

I use the remainder of my strength to scoop away the snow, clearing a patch of dirt for us to sleep upon, and lay out our magnets to cast my illusion. The back of my neck is itching again, to the point where I suspect my proclivity might be Mosquito. But I've got no energy to worry about that now. The twins gather twigs for a fire while Teddy rolls out the sleeping sacks. Starting a fire is dangerous; the smoke will be a beacon to any nearby hunters, and I doubt my illusion reaches high enough to erase all traces from the sky. But if we don't light one, we'll never survive the night. I'd rather take a chance of capture than a guarantee of hypothermia.

‘We haven't got any matches,' says Maisy.

I'm too tired to think straight now. She's looking at me for answers, and for some reason it irritates me. Haven't I done my share today?

‘Your proclivity's Flame,' I snap at her. ‘Don't try to deny it – I saw you snuff out Hackel's candle back in Gunning. Can't you just make a spark or something?'

Clementine glares. ‘You know she can't, Danika. There has to be a flame already present for Maisy to work with. She can't just build a fire out of thin air, any more than Teddy can conjure up a pig for us to roast.' She gives a haughty sniff. ‘If you haven't figured out how proclivities work by now, I'm a little worried about your mental faculties.'

‘At least I'm not –' I start.

‘Whoa, calm down!' interrupts Teddy, throwing up his hands. ‘I reckon we're a bit too tired to waste energy on arguing, aren't we?'

I want to snap back at him, at Clementine, at the whole world. It would feel good to rage and storm and act like a sullen child. But I know he's right. It's my exhaustion talking, and the argument is my fault. I shouldn't have snapped at Maisy, not when she's already been upset today.

‘Sorry,' I mutter.

‘Yeah, me too,' says Clementine.

I look up at her in surprise, but she's turned to busy herself with the fire. No one meets my gaze, so I slouch across to help with the twigs. Maisy tries to rub a few sticks together, but all she manages to do is peel off a bit of soggy bark.

‘If we had a match, I could build up this fire in no time,' she says, looking frustrated. ‘I just need a spark to work with.'

‘Shame you can't just light another flare, Danika,' says Teddy. ‘I reckon that'd start a fire going all right, even with this lot.'

He gestures at the snow-sodden twigs, and his words spark a memory in the corner of my mind. A flare. I remember crouching atop the wall in Rourton, pocketing the guards' supplies. After the trauma of the last few days – and in the haze of my exhaustion – I'd almost forgotten those supplies. An extra flare, a pair of climbing picks, and
a box of matches.

‘Matches!' I say.

‘Yeah, Maisy already said that,' says Teddy. ‘We haven't got any.'

I unbutton my stolen coat and fish through the pockets of my own clothes underneath. I know I stashed the matches somewhere, in one of the pockets that line my shirt. Did I ever take them out, or put them into one of the foxaries' packs? I know I shoved the second flare into a pack, but I don't remember taking out the matchbox . . . 

And suddenly my fingers find it. A tiny wooden box, half-crushed by the weight of our adventures, in a pocket on my hip.

‘They might be wrecked,' I say, as I hold them out to the others. ‘They've been soaked so many times.'

Maisy takes the box. She bites her lip, as though trying not to get her hopes up. There are only three matches inside. One has a crumpled head, as though mildew has dissolved it. Maisy tosses it aside, leaving two options. She selects the healthiest remaining match and glances up at Clementine.

‘Can you make a shield?' she says.

Her sister cups her hands around the match, protecting it from the outside air. Maisy bends down to light the match. My view is obscured by Clementine's palms, but I hear the strike of the match-head against the side of the box. Nothing. Maisy takes a quavering breath and tries again.

There is a strike. There is a sizzle. Faint light shines between Clementine's fingers.

I want to shout out in triumph, but I clap a hand across my mouth just in time. A stray gust of breath could be enough to extinguish the flame, so tiny and fragile on the head of the match. It's barely alight as it is.

‘I need a stick,' whispers Maisy, not taking her eyes away from the match.

Teddy wordlessly offers a twig from the pile. He prods it closer towards the match, clearly holding his breath. His face is empty of its usual bravado. I suddenly notice his fingers are trembling. Teddy Nort is out of his depth. This isn't a richie for him to steal from, or a city guard to bluff. This enemy will not be impressed by a confident grin. Either the match will stay alight or it won't.

Maisy stares at the flame.

There is a flash of brighter light, and then fire
spits
itself up to meet the end of the twig. With a rush, the twig is alight. Clementine shrieks and the match is knocked into the dirt, but it doesn't matter any more. We have fire. And best of all, we still have one match left, ready for future emergencies.

Teddy places the twig in the pile, setting our campfire aflame. Maisy coaxes it up into a crackling little blaze and soon we're munching biscuits in the warmth. I melt some snow to make water and we fill our pot with dried fruits and spices. The fruits plump up and turn into mush as the water heats; we scoop it up with our fingers and smear the warmth inside our cheeks. It's amazing how much better I feel, now that my belly is filling again.

Maisy is the first to go to bed, followed by Teddy. When about twenty minutes have passed, and Teddy has started to snore, Clementine looks at me. ‘You go to sleep, Danika. I'll keep watch tonight.'

‘But you need rest too.'

Clementine shakes her head. ‘I'm not going to sleep tonight anyway.'

She stares into the fire. I've never seen her look so miserable. It's not the sort of misery I'd expected from a richie; she's not whining about life's unfairness or anything. It's more a quiet sort of reflection, coupled with slow breaths and clenched fists. Something has shaken Clementine Pembroke to the core.

‘What's wrong?' I say quietly.

She blinks. ‘Nothing.'

I poke a few more sticks into the fire. They take a while to defrost, but soon the bark starts curling into black. Maisy has done a good job for someone who isn't too experienced at using her proclivity.

‘Today on the train,' I say, ‘when that man grabbed Maisy, you said you ran away to escape from creeps like that.'

It's not really a question, of course, but Clementine knows I'm angling for information. She twists her fingers together, then looks at me. ‘You know our mother's dead.'

I nod.

‘She died in a bombing, years ago,' says Clementine. ‘She was working late at her studio, breaking curfew, but then the biplanes struck . . .'

I feel a sudden surge of camaraderie with the Pembroke twins. ‘My family died in the bombings too.'

Clementine fishes a burning twig from the fire and turns it between her fingers. As we watch, the end smoulders and flakes into dust.