Bone Jack (19 page)

Ash grinned like a fool, shook his head. Talking to a dream, warning a ghost. Nothing was dangerous for a ghost.

The stag boy kept reaching and climbing and Ash kept watching until the boy hauled himself over the top and disappeared from sight.

Gone.

Just a dream. Just a ghost. Or some sort of memory imprinted on the land. Maybe Mark was right and that’s what ghosts are, Ash thought. Land memories, visual echoes of the past. Terrible things had happened out here and the land remembered.
Earth and stone, fire and ash, blood and bone.
They became part of its substance, its dreaming, its nightmares. And sometimes they broke through and became real again.

He remembered the book he’d taken from Bone Jack’s bothy. The poem printed in it.

I have been in a multitude of shapes,

Before I assumed a consistent form.

His thoughts jarred, jammed, broke apart. He raised his face to the darkening sky. Opened his mouth and tasted the rain.

I have been a tear in the air
,

I have been the dullest of stars
.

Not a star in the sky now. Not one.

I will believe when it is apparent.

Get it together. Think. Move.

He shook tears of rainwater from his eyes.

What is apparent?

That long ago the hounds had chased the stag boy up onto the Leap. And the stag boy had fallen. Fallen and landed on the ledge, just like Ash.

And he’d climbed back up.

I will believe when it is apparent
…

If the stag boy had climbed the rock face, that meant Ash could too.

‘This happened to you,’ he said to the empty air where the stag boy had been, to the dark, to the storm. ‘You fell and you survived. You climbed back up to the top.’

He struggled to his feet. Shivering, stiff with cold. Every inch of his body felt battered and bruised. He stamped warmth back into his muscles, flexed and stretched. He ate two of the energy bars, washed them down with bottled water.

He crouched next to Mark. ‘I’m going to climb up out of here,’ he told him. ‘I’m going to fetch help. And I’m going to come back for you.’

Mark’s eyes opened a crack.

Then Ash stood where the stag boy had stood. The ledge was narrow here, no more than an arm’s length between the rock face and the drop. He reached up where the stag boy had reached, found a fissure in the rock just big enough to hook his fingers into. The way the stag boy had shown him, the way Dad had taught him. It came easily now, following the stag boy’s route, using the training Dad had given him. He felt calm, clear-headed. He searched for a toehold, found a small jag of rock, then a hollow for his other foot, then another handhold.

His bruised shoulder knotted with pain as it took his weight. He grunted and ignored it, hung on, reached up with his free hand for another crack in the rock. The wind slammed him against the rock face then tore at him. He clung on by his fingertips. The side of his face pressed against wet rock. Every sinew in his body strained. If he fell from here, there was no chance he’d land on the ledge again. He’d fall all the way down to the far-below rocks. He’d shatter.

His head spun with a horror of heights.

He held himself very still, concentrated on the rock face, steadied his breathing. The next handhold, the next foothold.

Again.

On and on, up and up.

Then he reached up and there was no more rock, just air and then rough grass under his hand. He dug his fingers into wet gritty turf. Another heave and he was halfway over the edge of the Leap. He clawed at mud and loose stone. His fingers scraped through wet grass. He slid backwards. Feet scrabbling against the rock face for a toehold. Then he found one, shunted himself upwards again. This time his hand closed around a tangle of thin roots. He clung on, pushed and pulled, got one knee up on the edge and hauled himself over.

Limp as a rag, he lay on his back. Sharp stones dug into his ribs. He sucked air greedily then rolled over, away from the edge. His eyes wide open. Skull full of the moan and boom of the wind.

The hound boys were nowhere in sight.

He laughed with relief.

He’d made it.

But it wasn’t over yet. Mark was still down there, injured, perhaps even dying by now. He had to find help.

He got to his feet and stood swaying, squinting into the battering wind. In the far distance, the skyline glowed fiery red through the murk of rain. He frowned at it. Not sunset. This was different, a blazing line like a tide of lava flowing towards him.

Weird, and still a long way off. There were more urgent things to worry about. He stumbled down the slope, fast as he could. Twice he fell, knees cracking down on the rocky ground. Hauled himself upright again, staggered on.

Three miles back to Thornditch. The darkness thickening into night, the storm smashing against the mountains. As weak as he was, it could take him until morning to get there. There was a good chance he wouldn’t make it at all.

But there was nothing else he could do.

One foot in front of the other. Like Dad always used to say. He’d crawl if he had to. Just keep going.

His eyes closed. He lost his balance, staggered sideways, opened his eyes again.

Something moved further down the slope. Ash stopped and peered through the rain. Now he saw them. Hound boys, pale as moonlight. They lifted their masked heads, sniffed the wind. Their eerie shriek-yelps rose above the storm.

He shivered with fear.

Too exhausted to run and nowhere to run to anyway.

He stood still and watched them come.

THIRTY-ONE

They came at Ash like a breaking wave. They raced and tumbled through the misty darkness. Their howls filled his ears, filled his skull until he couldn’t think of anything else. Their bony fingers scraped over his skin. With each touch, he grew colder, weaker, until his trembling legs could no longer hold him upright and he sagged to the ground.

He knelt there in the hard rain. No strength left. Nothing more he could do.

‘You’re not real,’ he whispered to them. But they were. As real as the wolf, as real as the rocks and the storm.

His raised his head, peered into the rain. Ahead lay burnt ground, leafless bone-white trees stark against a plain of blackened rock.

Not real. It couldn’t be real.

Get up
, said a voice in his mind.

Callie’s voice.

He blinked rain from his eyelashes. ‘Callie?’

A whisper.

No one there. She was in his head, nowhere else. He was alone.

Except for the hound boys.

Get up
.

He pushed against the ground, against gravity, against the dead weight of his own body.

Get up, get up.

He pushed again. He stood swaying in the wind, head down, looking out over a scorched landscape that should not be there. The distant rim of fire was fiercer now, getting closer all the time.

The hound boys circled, pressed in close again. He heard the click-clack of their bones, the moan of the wind through their fleshless skulls. The wind ripped trails of smoke from their grinning mouths.

The rain on his skin seemed as dark as blood. The air thick with smoke, bitter and foul.

And the rain kept falling.

He gathered himself. Hollered and barged into the hound boys, felt them crunch and fold. Then he was through them, out into the open.

Along the skyline, a wall of fire raced towards them.

Wildfire.

Not real, not real. None of this is real.

Around him the hound boys yapped and bayed.

Ash froze. His gaze fixed on the wildfire. A thorn tree exploded into flames. Dark smoke and gritty ash swirled in the wind. It raked his throat, brought stinging tears to his eyes. He coughed and retched.

None of this is real.

But he wasn’t sure. Maybe it was real, after all. If the smoke could choke him, then surely the fire could burn him.

Panic ran through him. Ahead lay the inferno and behind him the slope rose steeply to the sheer drop of Stag’s Leap. He was trapped.

Unless he could somehow climb back down to the ledge where Mark was. Maybe on the ledge they’d be safe from the fire.

He started to run, stumbling over the lumpy ground, slow, so slow, because there was no strength left in him, nothing keeping him on his feet now except raw terror.

Halfway back up to the top, he switched direction, cut across towards the ledge where he and Mark had fallen.

Instantly the hound boys came after him. They clamoured and swarmed, blocked his path. He veered away but they flowed around him, blocked him again. He yelled and swung wild blows at them, but he was too exhausted, too weak.

This time they didn’t fold and fall back, didn’t let him through.

‘Why are you doing this?’ he said. Teeth chattering with fear and cold. His smoke-roughened voice no more than a whisper. ‘What do you want?’

They were silent behind their masks but he knew the answer, in all its terrible simplicity, knew they only wanted to kill him, the stag boy, and that there was nothing more to them than this one overwhelming urge. There could be no pleading with them; there was nothing he could offer them.

In the distance beyond them, fire raced between the dirty sky and the dark land.

The wind blew hot.

He sank to his knees. Nowhere to run. Even if there was, he’d no strength left. Nothing to do except wait for the wildfire to roll over him. Wait to die.

He gazed into a blazing shimmer of orange heat.

And something moved in its depths.

Something as black as shadow, moving fast, swift and low. It reached the fire line, bunched and bounded clear.

Ash rubbed tears and grit from his eyes, peered past the hounds, through the smoke and fire-flung shadows.

The wolf.

It leaped onto a boulder and stood stock-still. Impossibly, it seemed strong and healthy, a far cry from the dying beast he’d found in the mountains just days ago. Yet it was undoubtedly the same animal. It watched him with bright amber eyes, its head lowered.

Behind it came a wild figure, untouched by the flames, striding out over the scorched ground, through smoke and storm. Long coat snapping out in the wind, gaunt face etched in shadow under his wide-brimmed hat. Eyes full of murder.

Bone Jack.

Ash blinked and stared, half blinded by smoke. Now the raw cries of rooks filled his ears. Dark within dark, against a spitting wall of flame. The wind shrieked.

Earth and stone, fire and ash, blood and bone
.

As one, the hounds turned their dead faces towards Bone Jack.

Wild man, raggedy man, birdman.

Bone Jack whirled and shattered. Broke apart into wing, feather, beak until there was no longer any semblance of a man there, only rooks like black rags against the screen of wildfire. They tumbled and swooped. Every wing beat, every thrust of beak and claw, every serrated cry, drove the hound boys back.

The hounds howled, flailed at the birds.

The birds kept coming.

Smoke like a dense dark fog, sparking with fire. The hounds were shadows flickering within it, the parched grass igniting beneath them. Fire spat at them, danced up their tattered clothes, their clay-spiked hair. Briefly they whirled there, scarecrows of fire and blackened bone with charred grins, smoke misting around them. Then the wall of flame collapsed over them and they were gone.

Ash stood up. Coughs heaved up out of him. His eyes were raw with smoke.

The rooks flew back out of the fire. They hurtled towards each other, flocked into a single fluid shadow that darkened and deepened and shrank until there was only Bone Jack there, whole again, striding through swirling smoke with the wildfire rearing behind him and the wolf at his side.

Ash turned away.

Someone else, a little way up the slope, pale in the deepening darkness. The stag boy.

He was pacing, head down. Four quick strides out, sharp turn, four quick strides back. He stopped, watched Ash through his mask.

Bone Jack coming out of the shadows, moving fast, his gaze locked on the stag boy.

‘You’ve got to go now,’ said Ash to the stag boy. ‘Go on, run. Get away.’

The stag boy paced. One, two, three, four, turn. And now the wolf paced with him, shadowed him, matched him step for step.

‘Run!’ But it was too late. Bone Jack was already there, spinning out wild nets of bird and shadow.

The stag boy stopped pacing. He stared at Bone Jack. ‘Come on, lad,’ said Bone Jack.

The stag boy leaned into the wind, took a step forward.

‘Not him!’ yelled Ash to Bone Jack. ‘He saved my life! He’s not one of them!’

Another step. The stag boy was airy as a ghost.

‘Time to go home,’ said Bone Jack.

The stag boy already dissolving like mist, the dark land visible through him, the black wind howling through him. He reached out his hand towards Bone Jack and Bone Jack took it in his own, pulled the spectral stag boy to him, embraced him.

Then the boy was gone. No one there except Bone Jack, striding again towards Ash through the churning smoke, the wildfire furnace-bright behind him.

Ash sagged back to the ground. No strength, no hope, nothing. ‘What have you done?’ he whispered. ‘I don’t understand. What have you done?’

Bone Jack crouched in front of him. ‘Hush now, lad,’ he said.

‘He saved me,’ Ash said. ‘What have you done to him? Is he dead?’

‘He’s centuries dead, lad,’ said Bone Jack. ‘They all are. He had to go back. They’ve all to go back.’

‘You should have taken them back days ago. Then none of this would have happened.’

‘Ain’t that simple.’

‘Why not? Because Mark killed the rooks?’

‘Not that.’

‘What then?’

‘You ever tried catching mist with your bare hands? The hounds are like that. Most years they stay that way then, like mist, they fade to nowt in the morning sun. Death and drought made them strong this year. I waited until they were at their strongest, until they had weight and substance and they’d run you to ground. Sometimes you have to let things run their course before you make your move.’