The Black Room (25 page)

He bent down and knocked her hand away from her face so that she dropped the nut onto the ground. With a small, desolate cry, she threw herself out of Tom's arms and onto the earth bank, pushing her fingers into the little pile of loose earth where the nut had fallen. The earth subsided, leaving a dip where there had been a little hummock.

And then it began to rise up again.

For a second, Tom thought his eyes had gone wrong. But when he blinked, the earth was still rising, coming back out of the ground like a little spring of water. As it formed itself back into the same little mound as before, he realized what it had to be.

So did Helga. She gave a loud, excited bark and threw herself forward onto the hummock.

“Leave it!” Tom said. “Leave it, Helga!”

But it was no use. Moles were the one thing she could never resist. She was already digging her way into the ground, throwing up a shower of loose earth behind her.

33

LORN HUDDLED BESIDE BANDO, LISTENING TO THE WORLD tearing itself to pieces. She could hear deep, thundering voices, like giants yelling at each other. And the unmistakable, terrifying sound of falling earth cascading down from the tunnel roof.

And, closer than that, she could hear the panting breath of the monster. It had almost reached the den now, and the temperature was starting to rise as its great warm body pushed down the tunnel toward them.

So many ways to die. So many ways of being eaten or suffocated or trampled to death.
I'll never understand now,
she thought.
There's no time left.
Memories were flooding into her head, but she would never make sense of them. She was going to die. Now. Deep under the ground.

It was a clear decision. Until then, she had been crouching passively, in the dark, next to Bando's unconscious body. Trying to shrink down into the soft litter of rotting leaves. But as the monster reached the entrance to the den, she struggled free of the leaves and shook Bando's shoulder, hard.

“Wake up!” she said loudly. “There's danger coming. It's time to fight.”

He grunted and began to stir, but she didn't wait for him to come around. There was no time for that. Defiantly she scrambled to her feet, facing the opening above her head. She wasn't a warrior like Perdew or Ab. She had no kind of weapon except her bare hands. But she wasn't going to lie there meekly, waiting to be eaten. For as long as she could, she was going to fight.

She backed away until she felt solid ground behind her. Then she waited. There was still no light, but she could feel the baggy shape of the monster disturbing the air. She could hear the snuffling noise of its great, wet snout and the ugly scrabble of its nails. For a long second, she stood upright, trying to remember everything the hunters had ever said about how to find an animal's weakest point. She stood until the creature was there, above her, about to step down into the den. Until she could feel the heat of its foul breath on her face.

And then the roof fell in.

It came tumbling down around her, in a cloud of dust, tearing a ragged hole in the earth. There was a burst of light and a rush of freezing air, and Bando opened his eyes and screamed.

Above them was a monster a hundred times worse than the creature in the tunnel. And it was launching itself toward them with its huge yellow teeth bared to bite.

 

TOM GRABBED AT HELGA'S COLLAR, PULLING HER AWAY from the ground. But he wasn't quick enough to save the mole. Helga came up with it gripped between her teeth, shaking it ferociously from side to side.

“Poor little thing!” Emma said. “Put it down, Helga! Put it
down
—you'll frighten Hope.”

But Hope wasn't looking at the mole. She was staring down intently at the ground, leaning forward to peer into the hole that Helga had made. And there was something in her face that made Emma bend toward her. That made Tom and Robert lean forward, too. They looked over Emma's shoulder, gazing into the earth.

Helga had dug down into the mole's sleeping chamber. The neat lining of grass and moss and leaves was covered with the earth she'd scattered as she burrowed through the roof. And there ... on top of the earth ... standing tiny and upright and impossible ...

Tom knew who she was. He knew at once, even before Robert caught his breath. Because she
was
Hope. Even without the tangled braids and the pathetic, deformed limbs, she was the same person. The face that was turned up to look at them was the same as the face beside him, staring down.

 

THEY WERE VAST AND GROTESQUE. GREAT GIANT FIGURES, bending over the hole and crowding out the sky. Bando clutched at Lorn's hand, and for a second, she was like him, paralyzed with fear. Unable to think at all.

Then she caught a familiar scent.

Robert,
she thought.
Oh, Robert, it's you
—

There was no change in what she saw above her, but something in her mind shifted, radically. All the faces hanging over her were still huge, but now one of them was
Robert's.
She'd thought she would never see him again, but he was there, looking down at her. Everything that Cam and Zak had said was true—but he was
there.

She opened her mouth to call to him, but before she could make a sound, one of the other faces moved, leaning closer. The movement stirred up the air, and the scent that came down to her this time was familiar, too.

But it wasn't a person. It was a place....

The smell of that dark place was strong and unmistakable—but what was it doing out in the light, in the real world? How could it be there?
I don't understand,
she thought.
It doesn't make sense.

And then her eyes slid away from Robert, following the scent. She saw the plaited hair hanging over her—and she
remembered.

She remembered her fingers working in the dark, finding the beautiful patterns, one by one. Winding in every scrap of thread she could snatch, every possible strand of wool. She remembered the cold and the loneliness and the fear. And—as fierce and real as the icy air washing over her now—she remembered being on her own in the black room. For ever and ever.

That was her life. That was what she'd come from. And she knew she never wanted to go back there.

Every instinct told her to run away. It would be easy. All she had to do was grab Bando's hand and scramble up the fallen earth into the tunnel opening. The others were coming now—she could hear their voices somewhere in the distance—and she belonged in the cavern with them. In the place where she was
Lorn.
All she had to do was run and hide.

But ...

The face that was hers and not hers was staring down at her. She could see the red marks on its cheeks where the hands had hit, punishing every sound. She could see its wary eyes and the skin of its scalp, pulled cruelly tight by the braids. And she remembered what it was to live that life.
If she only knew what I know, she thought. If she only understood....

It was impossible to run away. Impossible to hide that knowledge without sharing it. Slowly, standing on tiptoe, she reached up her hand.

 

SLOWLY, WONDERINGLY, HOPE STRETCHED DOWN INTO the earth, holding out one finger toward the tiny shape below.

Tom held his breath and bit his lip to stop himself from making any sound.
Let it work the right way,
he thought desperately.
Let Hope be free.

He had forgotten about Mr. Armstrong. They'd all forgotten him. Nothing seemed real except the two hands moving to touch each other. The whole universe had shrunk to the tiny space between those outstretched fingers.

And then Mr. Armstrong grabbed.

He bent down and put his arms around Hope's body, gripping her hard through the blankets. Tom turned like lightning, furious with himself for being so careless. He seized Hope as well, not gently, but putting his whole weight into it. Desperate to keep her where she was, just for another second. Just long enough ...

“Let go!” Mr. Armstrong spat. “She belongs to me!”

“You can't have her!” Tom said. “She's a
person.”

And then she was running away through their hands, like water through a funnel. Sliding and shrinking and disappearing, until they were left with nothing between them except a bundle of empty blankets and a few old clothes.

34

AFTER WHAT SEEMED A VERY LONG TIME, MR. ARMSTRONG began to feel the blankets, squeezing them stupidly and fumbling among the layers.

“Where is she?” he said.

“She's not here,” said Emma, in a strange, uncertain voice. “You haven't got a daughter. Remember?”

Hope's empty clothes dropped out of the blankets and landed on the ground in a little heap. Tom looked down at them.

“There she is,” he said. “Your nonexistent daughter.” His voice was as shaky as Emma's. “Why don't you take
those
home and keep them under the floor?”

Mr. Armstrong picked the clothes up and shook them, looking bewildered. “Where has she gone? What have you done to her?”

“You were here,” Robert said. “You saw the same as we did.”

But Mr. Armstrong hadn't seen anything. They could tell that by the way he turned around, looking wildly into the woods. He didn't even glance at the ground in front of their feet or at the patch of raw earth where Helga had dug into the molehill. Instead, he stepped back over the ditch and began going back and forth through the trees, shouting Hope's name. They heard him calling for a long time, getting farther and farther away. Finally, there was the cough of an engine starting up in the parking lot, and the long gray car slid away, down the road.

When the sound had died away, Tom looked down at the hollow in the hedge bank. There was nothing there now. It was just a dip in the earth, lined with rotting leaves and moss.

All their attention had been focused on the empty blankets, on Mr. Armstrong's face, and his greedy, grabbing hands. While they were concentrating on those, Hope had slipped away from them. And the little figures at their feet had escaped back into the ground.

Helga came slinking back and put her nose into Tom's hand, and he patted her head absentmindedly.

“Did you see them go?” he said slowly. “Did you see
her—
after it happened?”

Emma shook her head. “I wasn't expecting anything like
that.”

“Nor was I,” Robert said, still gazing down at the mole's empty den. “I thought I'd understand if I found Lorn. But it's worse. Why wasn't it the same for her as it was for me? What happened?”

“Do you think she's all right?” said Emma. “I mean—” Her words tailed away.

“How can we ever know?” Robert said bitterly. “If we'd been looking—if we'd
seen
her—we might have been able to tell. But it's too late now. We'll never know.”

That's not right,
Tom thought. Somehow, instinctively, he knew that Robert was wrong. But it took him a moment or two to figure out why he felt so sure.

When he did, he almost shouted for joy.

“We
do
know! Just think what happened. The minute she had a chance to get away, she took it.
Zap!
Hope wouldn't have done that. Not the way she was before. She'd still be there, sitting in the bottom of the hole.”

“Yes.” Emma nodded slowly, taking it in. “If she's escaped, then she's all right. And that means she's
Lorn.”
She looked up at Tom and a huge grin spread across her face. “We did it, didn't we? We saved her.”

Robert nodded slowly. But he didn't smile. “We saved
Hope,”
he said. “But we haven't rescued
Lorn.
She's still down there in the cavern—and winter's almost here.”

Emma patted his arm. “Don't worry, Rob. It'll be OK. We'll look after her.”

Robert didn't reply. Tom looked at his stiff, miserable face for a moment. Then he knelt beside the hole, pushing Helga away when she tried to join him. “Here's one thing we can do right now,” he said.

He started to scoop the earth back into the hole, blocking off the end of the tunnel. After a few seconds, Robert knelt next to him and began to help, patting the loose earth flat as it was shoveled in.

Tom waited until they'd almost finished. Then he leaned sideways and muttered, very softly, “We had to do it, Robbo. You know that as well as I do.”

Robert picked up a handful of dead leaves and scattered them over the patch of earth he'd just flattened. “I suppose so,” he said under his breath. “But why does it have to be so
hard?”
His mouth twisted and he turned away, hiding his face from Tom.

For once in his life, Tom didn't try to give an answer. He just waited. It took a while, but at last Robert looked back at him.

“Well, there's one good thing, anyway,” he said lightly.

Tom raised his eyebrows. “What's that?”

“You believe me now. I finally got you to change your mind about something. That has to be a first.”

Tom made a face at him. “Don't count on doing it again.” Then he grinned and raised his voice, making sure Emma could hear. “Anyway, there's a much better first coming up soon.”

“Oh yes?” Emma had stepped across the ditch, away from them. But she took the bait—just as Tom had meant her to. “What's that, then?”