6
Feeling as though she’d left her stomach behind in the chirot tower, Noon lifted her face to the sun as the giant bat propelled them up into the empty sky. The cold wind stung her skin and forced tears to gather at the corners of her eyes. She was outside, finally – ten years of bars and silence and hopelessness, and already the Winnowry was falling away behind her. She felt caught between laughing and crying. Below her the strip of sea that separated the Winnowry from the mainland was streaking past, the colour of beaten steel, and she thought she’d never seen anything more beautiful. Beneath her bare hands she could feel the living force that was Fulcor; hot blood, thrumming muscles, a thundering heart. Freedom.
Faster than she would have believed possible, Mushenska was looming close, its busy port bristling with ships, the taste of sea spray in her mouth. With a lurch, she realised she hadn’t thought about what she would do next at all. Her need to be outside of the Winnowry’s walls had driven everything else from her mind, and now she had decisions to make that would likely mean her life or death. Abruptly, she was certain that Novice Lusk had sounded the alarm the very second she had left the chirot tower, and she twisted around in the saddle, squinting her eyes against the wind to peer at the Winnowry. It was as ugly as ever, the twisted black scalpels of its towers ripping at the sky, but all was still. Nothing flew in pursuit of her as yet, but even so, she needed to get out of sight while she decided what to do next.
Fulcor was taking them over roofs now, a confusing collection of brown and grey and black shapes, obscured here and there with smoke. Hoping she was doing the right thing, Noon leaned forward and spoke a single word into the bat’s ear.
‘Down.’
Fulcor dropped, causing Noon to press her thighs desperately to either side of the animal’s back, and then, with a whirring of leathery wings, they were still. The bat had landed them on top of a surprisingly crowded flat roof – the place was littered with crates and there was a long, well-maintained garden. Noon unstrapped herself from the saddle, slipping off the bat while keeping her eyes on a small shed-like construction on the far side of the roof. It would lead, she guessed, to the interior of the building.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’
She wasn’t, though, and as she gained her feet her legs turned oddly boneless, tipping her into the dark dirt of the narrow garden. A smell so ancient she had half forgotten it, of deep rich earth and growing things, rose to engulf her. She made a choked noise, half a sob, and, as if in answer, Fulcor chirruped.
‘I’m fine,’ she said again, her whole body shaking. She reached out a hand to the plants growing in their neat rows and saw with wonder that she had slumped next to a tomato plant. There were tomatoes growing on it, tight in their skins and perfectly red. After a moment, she reached out a trembling hand and plucked one from its stem, jerking a little as she did so. She had entirely forgotten what it felt like to pick something from its branch, had entirely forgotten the smooth feeling of tomato skin under her fingers. There were no fresh fruit or vegetables in the Winnowry – too dangerous. Fell-witches only ate food that had been cooked and cooked into a hot grey paste.
Laughing quietly to herself, Noon raised the tomato to her lips and bit into it. Flesh and juices exploded onto her tongue and she jumped as though someone had pinched her. It tasted like . . . she had no words for how it tasted.
‘Like life,’ she murmured. ‘It tastes like life.’
Oblivious now to the curious bat watching her, or the possibility of pursuit, Noon picked a small handful of tomatoes and slowly ate them all. After a little while, she realised she was crying as she did so, hot tears turning the pale ash on her face to sticky grit. With a hand covered in tomato juice she pulled up the bottom of her shirt and rubbed her face with it.
Shivering slightly against the chilly breeze blown straight in from the sea, Noon looked around, forcing herself to pay attention. Mushenska spread out in all directions, the confusion of roofs and chimneys completely alien to her. There was a great deal of noise too; a soft roar, not unlike the ocean at night, only this was punctuated with the shouts and cries of people living their everyday lives. Somewhere below, a man was shouting about fresh bread, and a woman was remonstrating with another woman about the shoddy work her son had done on a fence. Out here, beyond the towers of the Winnowry, people were getting on with their lives, in a city that was just waking up for the day. It seemed impossible.
And then, as if she’d summoned it, the door to the outhouse clattered open and a stout red-headed woman with sun-weathered skin stepped out onto the roof. She had an empty basket on one arm, and it occurred to Noon that the woman had probably come up here to harvest the tomatoes. For her breakfast. The woman’s face jerked, first with surprise, and then with anger.
‘Oi! What do you think you’re bloody playing at?’
Noon fell back, her hands in the dirt, and, instinctively, she pulled the life energy from the plants behind her. The hot green flame kindled inside her for the briefest moment, and then it jumped from her hands in a bright blossom of fire. It passed harmlessly upwards, doing little more than adding an extra brightness to the morning, but the older woman let out a warbling shriek and fell back against the door, clutching at her considerable chest.
‘Shut up.’ Noon swallowed. It felt strange to be talking to someone who was neither a fell-witch nor a custodian of the Winnowry. The effort seemed to suck all command from her voice. ‘Shut up, don’t move. Just . . . stay there.’
The woman stood where she was. The fright on her face had rearranged itself back into anger. Slowly, Noon stood up, trying to act as though her legs didn’t feel like they were made of water. She was very aware of the black dirt under her fingernails, and her dirty face.
‘I own this place,’ the woman said, holding her chin up. ‘If you people want to come here and eat, you walk in the front door the same as everyone else. The Frog and Bluebell isn’t your larder, missus.’
Noon blinked. The woman thought she was here on official Winnowry business. She must have seen the Winnowry agents flying over the city on their own bats, and she had assumed that Noon was an agent with a sudden taste for tomatoes.
‘I am sorry.’ Would a Winnowry agent apologise? Noon doubted it. She attempted to scowl at the woman. ‘But I will take what I need, when on official Winnowry business. Is this place –’ For a moment the word danced out of her reach – the plains people did not have such things, after all – but she had listened to the other fell-witches talk about them – ‘a tavern?’
‘Aye, it’s a tavern.’ The barkeep looked less angry now, and her eyes moved over Noon’s face with more care, seeming to take special note of the bat-wing tattoo on her forehead. Noon resisted the temptation to cover it up with her hands.
‘I am travelling north,’ said Noon. Behind her, she could hear the snuffling of Fulcor. She suspected the bat was eating her own share of tomatoes now. ‘Can you tell me what is north of this city?’
The barkeep frowned, pushing her jowly cheeks into loops of wrinkles. ‘Nowt but Wild beyond Mushenska. Some small towns and settlements dotted here and there. Worm-touched in the head, the people who live out there, if you ask me. Give me good solid walls any day.’ She tipped her head to one side. ‘Surely you know that, witch?’
Noon lifted her chin slightly. ‘Can you give me some food to take with me? I mean, you will give me food. The Winnowry will give you coin for it.’
For some moments, the barkeep just stared at her. The city around them was growing louder all the time – the roar was not like the sea after all, Noon realised. It was like a great beast; a slowly waking beast they were all living on.
‘Wait here.’
With that, the barkeep disappeared back through the door. Noon stood rooted to the spot, feeling panic fill her like icy water flooding a well. The woman had gone to alert the Winnowry authorities, and she would lead them right here, where she would still be waiting, like an idiot, and then they would take her back – screaming, just as she had done when they had first captured her – but not to her cell. They would take her straight to the Drowned One, and she would face that pale, dripping horror and her tank, or perhaps they would burn her on the spot, not caring for the barkeep’s precious garden . . .
The door opened and the woman stepped back through. She had a small hessian bag in her arms, which she thrust at Noon.
‘Ale, some cheese. A nub of yesterday’s bread. Take it, girl, and get away from here.’
The woman was close enough to touch, her brawny freckled arms bare of sleeves. It seemed impossible that someone should be so careless, and for a moment Noon couldn’t breathe. I could kill you now, she thought. In seconds.
‘What are you waiting for, you daft creature?’ The woman scowled at her. ‘Go!’
Noon hurried back to Fulcor, tugging on the animal’s reins so that she left the remains of the plants alone, and swiftly strapped herself back into the saddle. She secured the sack the barkeep had given her behind her, and it really did seem to contain food and drink – she could hear the sloshing of the ale inside some sort of flask. It was only when they were back in the air, and heading to the outskirts of the city, that Noon realised that the barkeep hadn’t believed her story at all, and why would she? A lone Winnowry agent on her knees in the woman’s vegetable patch, scoffing tomatoes like she hadn’t eaten anything in weeks, her face streaked with muddy tears – she was hardly convincing as a feared and respected agent of the Winnowry.
Why the woman would give her supplies regardless, she couldn’t possibly guess.
Beyond the city of Mushenska the Wild spread out across the land like virulent mould. Even flying so far above it, Noon could see the difference between it and the normal patches of forest; the Wild was thicker, stranger. The shadows seemed deeper there, and she could see twisted sections of bare bark as trees curled around each other, fighting for space. It was late morning by then, and the sun was beating down on the top of her head, but something about the stretch of dark forest below made her feel cold. Her feet tingled, and she felt exposed. Even Fulcor seemed less comfortable, the small huffings and chirrups Noon had grown used to absent. Instead, the bat flew slightly faster, as though determined to get the Wild out from under them as swiftly as possible.
‘We have to stop somewhere.’ Noon’s words were snatched away by the wind, and she grimaced. The very idea of landing somewhere within those worm-touched trees made her skin crawl, but the longer they were in the air, the more chance that the inevitable patrols – Winnowry bats carrying real Winnowry agents – would spot her. Besides which, her entire body was chilled and aching, and her eyes were sore from watering in the constant wind, which, in turn, was giving her a headache. ‘I just need to sit for a while,’ she told Fulcor. ‘Eat this food, make a fire, and think what to do next.’
The bat gave no indication as to whether she thought this was a wise idea or not. Ahead of them, the landscape of twisted greenery gave away to a stretch of land so strange to Noon’s eyes that she sat up in Fulcor’s saddle, trying to see it more clearly. It looked to her almost like the surface of a pond crowded with lily pads, only the circular growths were huge, the size of the roofs they had passed over in Mushenska, and tall, on the same level as the tree canopy. Each circular mound was brown, or beige, or a pale cream with dark grey spots, and as they passed overhead and Noon caught a whiff of a deep, earthy and somehow lively scent, she realised that they were the caps of enormous fungi. It made no sense to her at all, but they were somehow less alarming than the clinging trees, so she leaned forward to speak into Fulcor’s great crinkled ear again and the bat took them spiralling down through a chink in the caps. Beneath the surface of this strange, fleshy forest were more of the enormous toadstools, their caps smaller and in some cases more colourful; Noon saw pale pink, deep ochre and some examples of a dusty blue. White and grey stalks feathered with fringes of creamy white flesh twisted up all around, and the shadowed spaces were shot through here and there with shards of weak sunlight, dancing with motes of dust. It was all eerily quiet.
Fulcor landed on a craggy hill of black dirt, lifting her feet off it one at a time and making discontented squeaks. Noon unstrapped herself and her new hessian bag and just about had time to step down onto the damp ground before Fulcor flapped her leathery wings and was away again. Noon watched as the bat flew agitatedly from one stalk to another, looking for all the world like a moth battering a lamp, and then she found a space amongst the caps and was gone.
‘Oh.’
Noon stood staring up at the place where the bat had vanished, trying not to feel the weight of shadows all around her. After a moment, she hesitantly blew on the silver whistle, feeling vaguely foolish, but the bat did not return.
‘Fuck.’
Slowly, Noon realised that the place was neither as quiet nor as still as she’d initially thought. The shadows contained tiny points of movement, creatures native to this dank underworld skittering away from her intrusion, while a dry ticking, like bone dice being lightly thrown together, seemed to come from all around. Trying not to imagine what might live in this strange offshoot of the Wild, Noon swiftly gathered an armful of bracken and sticks, sucked the remaining life energy out of them, and built a small haphazard fire on top of a dirt mound. The sticks were still too damp, but she blasted them with winnowfire until she had a small, smoky blaze, and she crouched next to it, shivering.
‘Here I am,’ she said. The dry ticking noise had grown quieter, and she guessed that whatever had been making it had moved away. ‘Here I am, then.’
It was strangely mild down under the fungi, and the air was thick, but the damp of the soil had quickly soaked through her Winnowry-issue slippers and a deeper kind of cold was seeping into her bones. Presently, she began to shake all over.
‘I don’t know where I am,’ she said to the lively shadows. ‘But I am free. I don’t have much food, and I have no idea where I am, but I have escaped the Winnowry.’ She picked up the hessian sack and clutched it to her chest, recalling the bustle and the noise of Mushenska. ‘Free to starve to death under a fucking mushroom.’