9 - Following the Bird

In sombre silence, Rye, Sonia and Dirk built the pyramid up again. Then they set off across the snail-covered stones, trudging in the general direction the monster bird had taken.

At first they had hoped that the red feather would help them glide above the rocks, but that idea had been quickly abandoned. The feather had lifted the three of them a little way off the ground, but with no wind to help them, and no trees they could use to pull themselves along, they had merely floated helplessly in one place, unable to move.

They could not use the horsehair ring, either. Dirk insisted that speed would be dangerous.

‘It is not just that the rocks are treacherous,’ he said as they began walking. ‘The earth in the bare patches, where the holes are, crumbles and caves in at a touch. And there are obstacles everywhere. The settlers use this wasteland as a rubbish dump, it seems. See here!’

With the toe of his boot he nudged at a snail-covered object that Rye had taken to be a stone. As the object rolled, Rye made out a spout and a handle. He realised with astonishment that it was a kettle, just a little larger than the kettle his family had always used for heating water on the stove.

He shook his head in disbelief. The kettle was dented on one side, and there was a hole in its base, but what did that matter? It could be mended.

How could anyone throw away something so precious? The kettle at home in Southwall was a family heirloom, hundreds of years old, and polished and prized above anything else in the house.

‘No doubt the snails eat the rest of the waste,’ Dirk said, kicking the kettle aside and moving on. ‘Only objects made of metal remain. When I was cleaning the skimmer hook I saw all manner of things—old tools, metal pipe, lengths of roofing iron …’

‘But why would the people abandon such treasure?’ Rye exclaimed.

Dirk laughed without humour. ‘In Weld it is treasure, but outside the Wall it is not. That was one of the things that most amazed me when I first realised it in Fleet. There is little metal in Dorne’s earth, but metal is plentiful here all the same. Ships from other islands bring loads of it to Oltan, and they bring ready-made goods, too. Pots and pans, knives, nails, belt buckles, fish hooks, packets of pins and needles …’

He and Rye exchanged glances. Both were thinking of their mother’s one precious steel sewing needle, handed down to her through the generations. It was worn fine as a hair, and kept for only the most important of mending tasks. Needles made of goat bone were used for everyday darning and patching.

The shared memory seemed to draw them closer, and apart from Sonia, child of the Keep. As if she sensed this, and resented it, Sonia looked at them sharply and spoke, shattering the mood.

‘Well, if there is a lot of metal here, one mystery is solved, at least,’ she said. ‘We know that metal—especially iron—affects the magic of the powers in the bag. That is why the hood did not work as well as it should, even before Dirk came along with his hook. And that is very good news! It means that the snail shell will be even more powerful as protection once we are away from this place.’

Rye nodded, frowning slightly. He had already worked that out, and did not want to talk about it. For now, he did not want to think of the magic he carried, or of what the future might hold.

The warm memories of home had given him a moment’s comfort, but they had brought Sholto vividly into his mind, too—Sholto as he had been, in the old days. Rye was haunted by the words he had read on the notebook fragments. It was terrible to think of his calm, clever brother crazed by hardship and loneliness, suffering delusions, fearing imaginary enemies, doubting his own sanity.

They trekked on, watching their feet and speaking very little. Giant insects soon came buzzing around them, and they were forced to walk awkwardly, with their hands linked, so that the snail shell on Rye’s finger could protect them all. As Dirk had warned, countless obstacles lay strewn among the rocks, covered in snails and very hard to see. For all their care, Rye and Sonia stumbled often, and Dirk himself fell sprawling when his boot caught in a tangle of wire.

Strangely, this fall proved to be a stroke of good luck. As Dirk began clambering painfully to his feet, he suddenly stiffened and pointed to something ahead.

‘There!’ he gasped. ‘Rye, look there! I think … is that not another pyramid?’

It was. It was smaller than the one that had contained the remains of Sholto’s notebook, and there was nothing inside it, but otherwise it was the same.

‘It is a marker!’ Dirk exclaimed, replacing the stones they had pulled from the top. ‘Sholto built markers so he could find his way back! What a miracle I saw it! By the Wall, Rye, we might have already passed a dozen of these without knowing it!’

‘Hardly a dozen, if your brother did not spend more time building than walking,’ Sonia commented, rather tartly.

But nothing could dampen the flame of hope that the second pyramid had raised in Rye and Dirk. It was not just that the marker proved that they were moving in the right direction. It was the knowledge that however disturbed Sholto had been he had not lost his natural caution or his instinct to plan, at least.

After this, they kept a sharp eye on the rocks ahead. Now and again they would be rewarded by the glimpse of another little pyramid, and they would vary their path to reach it.

At the sixth marker they stopped to eat, perching uncomfortably on a snail-covered rock only just big enough to seat them all. The food Sonia had stolen from the Keep kitchen tasted salty and faintly sour, as if the snails or the curling yellow mist had somehow tainted it. Rye had to force himself to take his share, and when they set off again the meal seemed to lie like a heavy lump in his stomach.

They trudged on and on, following the pyramid trail. Slowly the light began to dim.

Rye noted the change, but he was too weary to feel more than a dull pang of fear. His whole body was aching. He longed to stop, to sit down and rest, but his pride would not allow him to do it. Sonia was ahead of him now, pulling him impatiently along. She seemed to have a new surge of energy. It was all he could do to keep up with her.

He saw Dirk glancing at the sky, and knew what his brother was thinking. In an hour or two the sun would set and the skimmers Sholto had seen would come out to hunt.

As if he had felt Rye’s gaze, Dirk looked round. ‘We should stop and build a shelter for the night,’ he said.

Before Rye could answer, Sonia looked over her shoulder at them, shaking her head vehemently. ‘We cannot stop now!’ she cried. ‘We are nearly there.’

Dirk regarded her quizzically. Rye looked ahead. There was nothing to be seen but drifting veils of mist and endless, snail-covered rocks glimmering very faintly in the fading light.

‘We are nearly at the end of the wasteland,’ Sonia insisted. ‘Do you not feel it?’

‘Feel it?’ Dirk repeated blankly.

Sonia made an impatient sound. Her face was pale with exhaustion, but her eyes glowed with purpose. She tugged at Rye’s hand.

‘Come on!’ she begged. ‘Just a little further!’

‘No, Sonia,’ Dirk said, calmly but very firmly. ‘Your longing to get out of this place is deceiving you. There is no sign whatever that the wasteland is coming to an end. We must stop and prepare for the night and the skimmers. It is too dangerous to do otherwise. We will have little enough time as it is.’

‘If Rye’s shell could protect us from that giant bird it can surely protect us from skimmers!’ Sonia argued, her voice rising. ‘We cannot stop so close to the end! We must go on! We must!’

Rye hesitated, torn, glancing from one to the other. Dirk was eyeing Sonia with concern. Clearly he thought she had taken leave of her senses, and certainly she looked wild enough, with her strained face and burning eyes.

Dirk’s way was best, and safest. All Rye’s commonsense told him so, and all his instincts urged him to trust the brother he had looked up to all his life. But still he hesitated.

Sonia had been right before. She had been right in the Fell Zone.

He met Sonia’s desperate gaze. He took a breath, and suddenly noticed something.

‘I think the air has become a little fresher,’ he said slowly. ‘Easier to breathe. As if—’

‘Yes!’ Sonia cried. ‘It is as I told you! The mist is ending! The snails are ending!’

Dirk shook his head. He, at least, had noticed no difference in the air.

But Rye had. He was almost sure of it. ‘Let us go on for a short while, Dirk,’ he coaxed. ‘Half an hour will not hurt.’

‘I will remind you of that when we are still building our shelter at sunset,’ Dirk said grimly. But as Sonia set off again, pulling Rye behind her, he followed.

As the minutes passed and the light continued to fade, Rye felt increasingly jittery. He was tormented by the fear that he had been wrong in taking Sonia’s side. And he had begun to feel he was being watched.

I am just very tired, he told himself, as for the fifth or sixth time he jerked his head up and saw nothing to fear. This place is affecting me. I am imagining things, as Sholto did.

But the feeling would not leave him. His vision blurred as he peered into the misty distance. Then his mouth went dry. He could swear that the land ahead had begun to quiver!

He rubbed his eyes, but it made no difference. It was only when he looked down at the rocks beneath his feet that he realised what was happening.

Slender tentacles were emerging from all the patterned shells. The tentacles were waving like blades of grass stirred by a breeze, making the rocks appear to tremble.

‘The snails are waking,’ he murmured.

‘They sense the day is ending,’ Dirk said, his voice full of meaning. ‘No doubt they feed in the coolness of the night.’

‘All the more reason why we should not be here when the sun goes down,’ Sonia snapped. ‘I do not like the idea of sleeping in a shelter crawling with snails that will eat anything and are impossible to kill!’

‘If Rye’s shell can protect us from skimmers it can protect us from a few snails!’ Dirk snapped back.

‘A few!’ Sonia jeered, and hurried on.

As Rye stumbled after her, he could not stop thinking about what she had said. The thought of being overwhelmed by snails in their millions made his stomach heave. It was almost worse than the idea of skimmers. At least that death would be quick.

He smiled grimly. Snails and skimmers—what a choice!

‘There!’

Sonia’s triumphant cry rang out, startlingly loud. Rye looked up quickly.

A new pyramid lay ahead. It was taller than the last few they had seen. Only a few snails dotted its surface, and none of them were moving. Beside the pyramid a post that might once have supported a sign leaned drunkenly to one side. And beyond it there was a dusty plain, bare and unwelcoming but blessedly free of rocks and yellow mist.

The companions scrambled over the last of the treacherous stones and slid with relief onto clear ground. The pyramid rose before them, dark against the treeless landscape. Only then did they see that the tilting post beside it marked the beginning of a deeply worn pebbled track that stretched away to the dim horizon.

‘The end!’ Sonia crowed, clapping her hands. ‘We have reached the end!’

A figure unfolded itself from behind the pyramid. It was a man, extremely tall, and so thin that he might have been a skeleton. He was wearing nothing but a faded piece of cloth roughly tied around his waist and several strings of oddly shaped beads. His hair stood up in white spikes all over his head like the crest of a stalker bird.

The companions yelled in shock. Dirk’s skimmer hook was in his hand in an instant, and Rye snatched the bell tree stick from his belt, forgetting all about the armour shell.

The stranger laughed. His mouth was so enormously wide that it looked as if his face had split in half. Rye saw in horror that he had no teeth.

‘The end!’ the skeleton man shrieked. ‘Yes, oh, yes indeed, my lords an’ lady! See here!’

He bent from the waist like a folding ruler. When he straightened, he was holding up a rusty metal sign that had no doubt fallen from the crooked post.