The Black North by Nigel McDowell Read Free Book Online

into a shout, and all movement in the cottage was stopped.
    â€˜As bad as the Invaders?’ repeated Merrigutt. ‘Is that right?’
    Oona nodded. She swallowed and said, ‘I’m not leaving here if that’s what you’re planning. I’ll not let those Invaders take this house. This is our home, and has been for longer than anything!’ And her hand enclosed the back of her granny’s chair.
    â€˜She’s a stubborn one,’ said one of the other old women. ‘She’s a Kavanagh through and through. Look at that grim look on her face – just like the father!’
    â€˜Quiet now!’ said Merrigutt. ‘You’re not to make judgements so easy!’
    Silence, and in it the kettle began its grumble, firelight blinking on battered belly.
    â€˜Why are you all here anyway?’ said Oona. She looked to Merrigutt, who held her gaze. ‘Tell me the truth, cos I don’t like being lied to. I’m not a child or stupid, so don’t think it!’
    â€˜All right,’ said Merrigutt. ‘We’re here to escort you South, my girl. We’re here now because those Invaders haven’t come over the Divide and down South just for the sake of it, not for their own amusement.’
    â€˜Not a bit of it!’ went one of the women with her mouth full of blue-moulded loaf.
    â€˜No, they’ve been looking and looking for something,’ said Merrigutt.
    â€˜Children,’ said Oona. ‘I know that much. I’ve seen.’
    â€˜True!’ said one of the women with half of one hand buried in a pot of gooseberry jam.
    â€˜But more than that,’ said another, fingers around a tendril-sprouting potato. ‘They don’t want the children just for the sake of having them!’
    â€˜They’re here now,’ said Merrigutt, still focusing on Oona, ‘because of their King’s orders. And he has no interest in cottages or kettles or anything else.’
    â€˜What does he want?’ said Oona.
    The room was at its quietest, the old women all like they were waiting.
    â€˜We don’t know everything of what this King wants,’ said Merrigutt. She looked away from Oona and focused instead, with sudden intentness, on the painting Oona’s mother had done. Its rough rectangle was occluded with so much web, but Oona knew it was the painting of that dreamed-up place: low hills like the softest rise and dip of the sea, the colour of wild meadow and bright blossom. ‘All we know,’ said Merrigutt, and she turned once again to face Oona, ‘is that the Invaders are keen on capturing and not killing those children. Using the Briar-Witches to snatch? Those creatures are more used to just gobbling up whole and thinking about the bones later. No, they’re keeping those children for some reason.’
    â€˜Information,’ said Oona. ‘By the Torrid, they were all shouting about keeping the children alive, so –’
    â€˜They’re looking for something,’ said Merrigutt. ‘A small thing, but precious enough too that the Invaders and their ‘King of the North’, as they call him, would happily turn this Isle to dark and rot if it meant getting it.’
    â€˜What something?’ said Oona.
    Some shiver passed through the air. Everything in the cottage shook.
    â€˜It is a something,’ said Merrigutt, ‘that we’ve been searching for too. And we think we’ve found it – we think we’re right in believing that it is hidden right here in the cottage of the Kavanaghs.’

12
    And the ground might’ve been listening in – could’ve been waiting readied to hear just these words spoken! – because it began to seethe with something underneath and every old woman was suddenly into the air and all transformed in the same hop-spasm-shudder back to jackdaws, with Merrigutt crying, ‘Oona, quick! Quick, onto the table!’
    Quick but not quick