The Black Room

She said it for them all because no one else could speak the word out loud. The cavern was silent with the shock of it.

Cam nodded and closed her eyes for a moment, exhausted by the effort of telling them. For almost half an hour she had been talking about the journey, ignoring questions and explaining everything that had happened, in order. She was very pale, except for the jagged red wound running down her face.

Bando wriggled closer to Lorn, and Annet began to cry quietly, with her face in her hands. Twisting her fingers together, Lorn tried not to picture how Nate had died. Tried not to think about the hot, stinking breath of the hedge-tiger and how its black eyes must have sharpened suddenly as its yellow teeth snapped together.

Cam rolled her head sideways, looking to Zak for an answer. He let his eyes travel around the cavern, from the big stack of new wood to the padded blankets Lorn had made out of white floss. He gazed at the fresh green leaves they were eating and the little sacs of juice piled into snail shells beside Annet. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and dry.

For a moment it sounded as though he was talking about something completely different. People glanced uneasily at each other, and Perdew shifted impatiently, wanting his question answered.

And then—Lorn understood. The thought came so suddenly that she realized it had been there all the time, at the back of her mind. She’d been pushing it away.

“No, it’s not.” Lorn struggled to keep her voice steady. “Don’t you remember why they all went on that terrible journey? Robert was trying to get back to—what he was before. And he’s done it. He’s stopped being small.”

There was a breathless, disbelieving silence. Then Cam nodded slowly—and the cavern exploded. People pushed forward, talking and laughing and shouting, breaking the circle to get as close as they could to Zak and Cam.

Lorn found herself on her own, outside the crowd, looking at people’s backs. Why are you all so desperate to be big? she wanted to yell. Why can’t you stay like this?

Their heads were full of pictures from before, from the lost time that was too dangerous to think about unless Zak made them do it. But inside her own head, there was nothing. Only darkness.

We don’t remember, she wanted to shout. We look forward. But she knew that no one would listen to that now. For the first time since Zak brought her into the cavern, she felt as if she didn’t belong. As if she would never belong again. Robert had left and gone where she couldn’t reach him, and now all the others wanted to leave, too.

She slid backward out of the broken circle, desperate to get away from the voices and the questions and the terrible desire. Grabbing a bundle of bat furs, she made for the entrance tunnel, not following any plan, but acting instinctively. Taking the nearest escape route.

As soon as she pulled out the branches, she began to feel the cold. By the time she was halfway through, her skin felt as though it was shrinking around her. She was shivering uncontrollably, and her teeth knocked together, every breath drawing icy air into the very center of her body. When she came out into the woods, she was already chilled, right through to her bones.

Outside, it was even colder. The earth was covered with sharp white crystals that hurt her feet as she clambered over them. I can‘t, she thought. I can’t—And she nearly turned back.

Then a breath of wood smoke came drifting down toward her, and she realized where she could find some heat. Following the scent of the smoke, she turned and clambered up toward the little hole where it escaped from the cavern.

Even there, the ground was very cold, but it was warmer than anywhere else. Spreading a couple of furs underneath her, she wrapped the others around her body, drawing a fold across her face to keep in the warm breath. Only her eyes were left uncovered. She stared out at the cold from inside a cocoon of fur.

The woods were beautiful and strange. The cold white crystals edged each separate clod of earth and every bare twig. They outlined the stray, brittle leaves still hanging on the great trees and coated the dead stems of the small ones.

If she lifted her chin out of the fur, she could see her own breath eddying out into the air, like the smoke from the brazier. For the first time, she wondered where it came from, thinking how it went in cold and came out warm. She imagined a labyrinth of dark tunnels inside her body where the change happened slowly, magically. Time after time.

Drawing another breath of the icy air, she lowered her head to blow it out over her cold fingers. And as she did that, something came drifting up from the bottom of her mind. Something fainter than the smell of wood smoke, harder to grasp than the breath itself. A voice that spoke right from the center of who she was.

Warm breath in the cold black room, blowing onto
stiff fingers ... The warmth is a thing you can trust,
like sweetness in the mouth and strings that wind
together....
Like the colors that move in the air and the sounds that
come from up above ...
... life, Jim, but not as we know it ...
... where everybody knows your name ...
The sounds come down, and the lips and tongue move in
the dark, trying to make those patterns ...
But without any noise... shhh, hands over the mouth ...
No noise, only the patterns ...

She opened her eyes and came swimming up out of the dark place where she had been. Zak was standing over her, propping himself on a stick. His face was yellow and tired, and he was leaning heavily, swaying slightly as he looked down at her.

“You shouldn’t be out here!” The shock of seeing him sent Lorn shooting back into the ordinary world. “You’re not strong enough. You should be in the cavern.”

She jumped up and took it quickly because she was afraid that he would fall. But he was looking hard at her, and his blue eyes were sharp and clear. She knew he wouldn’t be distracted into thinking about himself.

“Can’t bear what?” he said. But she could tell that he knew. That he was pushing at her to say what she meant.

And because it was Zak, she told him. “I can’t bear the way they’re all remembering. Wanting to go back. How can I share that? There’s nothing in my head except here. If I’m not in the cavern—then I’m nothing.”

She stopped because she wanted him to finish the sentence for her. She wanted him to tell her about the voice in her head, to say that it was nothing to worry over.

The moment she had them, he began to move down the slope, very slowly, leaning on her arm so that she had to go with him. Step by step they made their way back to the cavern entrance, but as they knelt down to go in, Lorn caught the noise from inside. The others were still talking all at once, laughing with excitement. Letting go of Zak’s arm, Lorn tried to draw back, but he caught hold of her hand and wouldn’t let her go.

“If things don’t make sense, that means you need to find out more,” he said. “If you run away, you’ll never figure it out.”

His voice was so weak now, that she could hardly hear it. Getting him back into the cavern was more urgent than anything. She waved her hand at the entrance tunnel. “You go first. Then I can give you a push if you need it.”

He gave her a wry, sideways smile, but he didn’t argue. Going down onto his belly, he slid into the tunnel, pulling himself forward with his arms. He managed without any help, but when he stood up inside the cavern, he was staggering with exhaustion. Lorn slid out after him and jumped up, putting a hand under his elbow.

She knew he was right. She would have slipped into a frozen sleep, with that strange, familiar voice going on and on in her head. One of the patterns you can trust... Like sweetness in the mouth and strings that wind together... It wouldn’t have taken long to die out there in the cold. Zak had saved her life.

But it had taken all his energy. He was leaning heavily on her arm now, looking toward the corner by the brazier.

“There you are.” Perdew looked around as they went past. “So you weren’t in the storeroom after all?”

“Oh, it was Bando.” Perdew grinned. “You know what he’s like. He noticed you weren’t in the cavern, and he got it in his head that you had to be down in the storeroom. For some reason he went charging down there to get you back.”

Perdew shrugged. “Still down there, probably. Blundering around and knocking over all the grain heaps. Do you want me to go and find him?”

She was off immediately, not waiting to explain to anyone. They could ask questions when she came back. What she had to do now was find Bando, as fast as she could.

She had no idea how long he’d been down there. But she knew exactly why he’d gone. The moment he thought she was in danger, he would have been off to rescue her.

He couldn’t have found the opening. He couldn’t. Not in the dark, with no one to show him the way. He would have had to feel his way all along the wall to find the right stone. Surely he wouldn’t have done that?

But when she ran down into the storeroom, she knew at once that she was wrong. There was no one else in there. And even from the bottom of the ramp, she could feel the cold air seeping in.