The Black Room

IN THE CAVERN UNDER THE COLD GROUND, LORN WAS AWAKE and shivering. Damp air came filtering down the entrance tunnel and slithered under her fur blankets, licking at her face and crawling across her back. She rolled onto her side and curled up tighter, pulling the blankets over her nose.

All down the cavern, restless shadows moved across the bare earth walls, arching up to the roof and huddling small again as people stirred in their sleep. Only Bando and Perdew were awake, stoking the brazier at the far end. Lorn watched as Bando bent to pick another log off the woodpile. He lifted it up to the ledge where Perdew was lying, next to the brazier, and Perdew slid it gently into the flames. Then Bando bent down, and the quiet, steady sequence began again.

Lorn lay and listened to the spit and crackle of the fire. Gradually her eyes closed and she started drifting into sleep....

She sat up abruptly. It wasn’t a loud sound, but it was harsh and unfamiliar—and close. She saw Perdew sit up on the ledge by the brazier, turning around to listen.

Whatever it was, it was coming down the entrance tunnel. Lorn scrambled free of her blankets and knelt down, putting an ear to the ground to hear more clearly. This time she recognized part of the noise as the scraping sound of branches against earth. The knot of branches that they used to block the entrance was being pushed slowly down the tunnel toward them.

But what was pushing it? What was scratching at the tunnel walls and grating against the small stones in the ground?

Perdew was beside her now, crouching down to whisper in her other ear. “What should we do?”

Lorn waited another moment, still listening, trying to match the scratching sound to something that she knew. Twice before, they had heard claws scraping at the earth around the entrance. And once a hedge-tiger had crouched there for hours, filling the cavern with the reek of its hot, hungry breath. But there had never been anything quite like this.

It started again. Scratch-scratch-scrape. Now she could see the tips of the battered, knotted branches moving slowly out of the tunnel, into the cavern. Whatever was making the scratching noise had to be close behind those branches.

Perdew nodded and shot off around the cavern, quietly and very fast. He tapped at shoulders and whispered into sleeping ears, and as he passed, people sat up suddenly, not blinking and stretching, but instantly alert. There was no sound except a whimper from Bando as he turned to look toward the entrance. Annet cut the noise short, putting a hand over his mouth and sliding her other arm around his bulky shoulders to reassure him.

Perdew padded over to the corner where they stored the blades. The others moved into position, crouching in a half circle around the entrance, and Perdew ran back and forth, handing out blades until everyone was holding a heavy piece of metal with a raw, sharp edge.

There was one more scrape, and then the knot of branches came free of the tunnel, expanding suddenly as the ends uncurled. Bando jumped forward nervously and snatched it up, clutching it tightly and holding it in front of Lorn, like a shield. For a second, there was nothing. Only a steady flow of cold air out of the empty tunnel.

This one was gentler, sliding lightly over the rough earth. Lorn closed her eyes and concentrated on sounds and smells and the way the air moved against her skin. Letting them make a dark image in her mind.

A soft, bulky shape was coming down the tunnel toward them not moving and changing like something that propels itself, but like something being pushed along from behind. It carried a sharp, strong smell, strange but not animal.

“Shhh!” This time it wasn’t only Perdew. The sound came from all over the cavern. Lorn opened her eyes and looked around the half circle of tense, frightened faces. They were all staring fixedly at the entrance. Waiting for some kind of monstrous predator.

Slowly, the great, soft shape began to emerge into the light. It was pale and tall with flat, sloping sides. A long, curved wedge, lying on its back. Lorn didn’t know what it was, but the scent was much stronger now, filling the whole cavern. It smelled sharp and fresh and disturbing.

For a second there was complete silence. Then Annet laughed. She sounded startled and delighted.

“How did it get here? Who brought it?” Perdew started to walk around the huge wedge, running his hands over its sides with a look of happy astonishment. It was as tall as he was, and it was covered with a coarse, pale membrane.

What is it? Lorn wanted to say. Is it food? But her mouth wouldn’t make the words—because all the others knew the answers already. She could see it in their faces. Nothing like that great, pale wedge had ever come into the cavern, in all the time she had been there, but everyone had recognized it immediately.

Perdew was using his blade now. He sliced carefully into the membrane and stripped it back, as if he were skinning an animal. The membrane came away easily and the firelight gleamed on long, translucent tubes, hanging one against another, closely packed together.

Perdew laughed and reached up with both hands, separating one of the tubes and cutting it free. As his blade went in, juice spurted out, and Lorn caught it full on in her eye. Her mind flared suddenly, exploding with images. Not a wedge, but a different shape altogether.

For a second it was more real than anything around her. She felt her brain stir and stretch, like someone waking from a long sleep. Her mind reached out in amazement. I remember....

Then something dark and solid clamped down hard. No. It was like a hand slammed over her face, stifling and choking, shutting out light and sound and feeling. I remember, she thought again, forcing her brain to form the words. Trying to hold on.

But this time remember trawled up nothing except the pictures that it always brought. The moment when Zak found her wandering in the woods. The moment when he led her into the cavern for the first time.