The Bone Door, page 5
The beast rushed around on all fours, tongue lolling as it snuffled at the entrance of the hole. It was almost as if it was following a very particular scent.
Blood. Amber’s blood.
Hop wiped his hand, wet with Amber’s blood, on a rock nestled in the dirt. Then cast it out of the hole. It flew and landed with a distant thud.
The creature reared up and then scuttled away, vanishing between the trees, quick and silent.
‘Good throw, Bunny.’
Hop lay frozen beside Amber, his hand cupped over her mouth. He waited until the forest breathed again. Until birds tweeted and insects chirped. Until life returned. Only then did he remove his hand.
Amber shuddered furiously.
He wrapped his arms around her, pressing their foreheads together. ‘It’ll be okay.’
‘It ate my finger.’
‘I promise. I swear . . . I’ll get you another finger. I’ll get you ten fingers. Twenty! How many fingers do you want?’
She buried her head in his shoulder, shaking. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say.
Amber made a strange hiccupping noise. She wasn’t crying. She was laughing. She pulled back, wiping her nose and smiling softly. Her smile fit her face so wonderfully that the thought of life without it left Hop feeling utterly bereft.
Something soft brushed his cheek.
A daisy. The same one he had pressed to Amber’s face earlier, a little crushed but still good. She had kept it.
‘I’m glad,’ she whispered. ‘So glad it was you I found in that entrance chamber.’
5 Room One – The Ancients
‘Smoke.’
Skully’s panicked tones woke Hop from a deep slumber. He opened his eyes to darkness.
A woody, pungent scent attacked his nostrils. As he gasped, tendrils of hot smoke clawed at his lungs.
‘Get your arse up!’ Amber shook him hard. ‘There’s a fire!’
‘I can’t see a thing!’
‘My heart bleeds for you.’
‘Little?’
‘Couldn’t find her. Think she abandoned us.’
‘She wouldn’t—’ He coughed furiously.
‘She would. Now follow me.’ Amber climbed over him, jabbing him with sharp elbows and knees as she squeezed through the narrow hole.
Hop’s eyes were streaming by the time he shifted his body through the tightly packed earth. Sweat stuck his curls to his forehead.
Sudden blazing sunlight dazzled his vision. It was morning already.
A high-pitched scream.
‘Amber? Little?’ He staggered to his feet.
‘Don’t mo—’
He took a step.
The world spun. Everything twisted upside down. The earth was beneath his head and the sky at his feet. He was flying. Granted, he was upside down. But he was flying.
‘I can fly!’
‘Wrong.’ Amber was beside him. But she wasn’t flying and, now he realized, neither was he. They were suspended by ropes wrapped around their legs. They dangled from a tree like apples. She tried to swing her body to untie her legs but couldn’t reach.
Something came into view below. At first, Hop thought it was an animal due to the thick grey mud caking its skin, but it was a girl wearing clothes, of a sort – dried-out animal skins held together with messy stitching. Her mud-brown hair was chopped at uneven lengths. Maybe she’d attacked it with a knife.
Also, she didn’t have a face. Or rather, the face she had was the hard bark of a tree. A rough, flat brown circle with dark holes for eyes and a jagged slice of a frown, fixed and unmoving, even as she spoke.
‘Ooooooh!’ Her high-pitched voice echoed through the trees. ‘Look how big these rabbits are, brother!’
A figure slunk out of the trees as if he had been birthed by the forest. He wore a robe of woven grass sprouting flowers and mushrooms, and layered lengths of animal fur. His hair was long and matted, woven with twigs and shells. His face was like his sister’s, but instead of a frown, it displayed a constant grin.
‘What’s happening?’ Amber asked. ‘Who are they?’
‘We’ve been strung up in a tree by these siblings. They have lovely hair and no faces,’ Hop said.
‘WHAT?’
‘You see?’ the girl exclaimed. ‘I told you I could smoke ’em out if I lit a fire the other end of the hole! I said I’d get you food and I did! I’ve got us two juicy rabbits!’
The boy stared very hard at Hop.
‘Get away from us, monsters!’ Amber’s body swung wildly as she punched the air.
‘Look at that rabbit go! I love it when they wriggle. Makes the meat firmer.’ The girl withdrew a sharpened stone knife from her belt and approached Hop, running the blade beneath his chin.
His body went cold, but he pushed the fear down. Find the good. This had to be some sort of misunderstanding. They didn’t really want to eat him.
‘Hi.’ He gave an upside-down wave.
‘Hi. Would you prefer to go in a stew, or served up as steaks?’
Hop thought it over. ‘Neither, I think. If that’s okay?’
‘That’s a pity.’ She tapped the knife against his chin. ‘Because it’s gotta be one or the other.’
‘Sister,’ the boy slurred in a sleepy murmur. ‘I don’t think they’re rabbits.’
The girl cocked her head at Hop. ‘You’re not a rabbit?’
‘I don’t think so. Though Skully likes to call me “Bunny”. But my actual name is Hop!’
‘Hop!’ Amber hissed. ‘Can you interrupt this nice wee chat to, I don’t know, attack the monsters who have tied us up in a tree and plan to eat us?’
Hop looked at his hands, and then at the girl with her unmoving face. Maybe he could grab the knife. But then what? He didn’t have it in him to attack anyone, let alone creatures whose one fault was being hungry. Everyone had to eat.
The boy shuffled closer. ‘They’re humans.’
‘Thank the Gods, finally someone with sense,’ Amber said.
He poked Hop’s stomach with a sharp stick. ‘This is better. They have more fat. They will serve us for many meals. Especially the blond one.’
‘Hey!’ Amber snapped. ‘Don’t be cruel.’
Hop didn’t find it cruel. He was rounder than Amber. There was more of him to eat. That had to be a positive?
‘I’ll do the cutting,’ the boy said, whipping open his robe to reveal an impressive array of spiky objects nestled within. Maybe he was responsible for his sister’s haircut. ‘But first, we will need fire.’
‘Yay! Fire!’ she squealed as they hurried away to gather sticks and twigs.
‘Didn’t you already make a fire the other end of the hole?’ Hop asked.
‘That’s aaaaages away!’ she said.
‘Hop,’ Amber hissed. ‘Stop helping our captors and do something. I can’t die here. Not like this.’ A sheen of sweat shone on her forehead.
His own fear flickered like a distracting fly around his head. He could ignore it. He was good at that. But he wasn’t good at ignoring Amber’s.
There had to be a way out of this: he just had to find it.
The siblings stacked the firewood strangely, each holding one branch and balancing them together in perfect unison. There was no reason to stack firewood like that. Unless . . . ‘What are your names?’
‘Don’t have any,’ the boy said.
‘Of course they don’t!’ Amber snapped. ‘Monsters don’t have names.’
But Hop didn’t have a name either, not until Amber gave him one.
‘Do you only have one hand?’ he asked. ‘Both of you?’
‘Uh-huh!’ The girl leaped up and waved her left arm, of which the wrist ended in a brown stump.
‘Wow!’
‘You think that’s awesome? Check this beauty out!’ She plucked off her right leg from below the knee with an audible pop.
‘Please tell me that noise wasn’t what I think it was?’ Amber groaned.
‘She took off her leg!’ Hop said. ‘Incredible.’
‘Thank you!’ She bowed and almost toppled over, then clicked her leg back on. Now Hop was actually looking at it, it seemed obvious it wasn’t a flesh leg. It was mainly white, compared to her brown skin, with shiny parts that looked like metal. It was also smeared with black charcoal drawings.
‘What’s on it?’ Hop asked.
She thrust her leg forward. ‘This is a human-eating lizard chasing a screaming woman. She’s pregnant so it’s killing two in one go! And this is a unicorn lit on fire! And these are all skulls, like the one strapped to your chest.’
‘Their name is Skully,’ Hop said.
‘Maybe I can wear Skully on my head like a badass hat.’
‘Get me away from her.’
‘My brother’s missing both too. But the other way around. His right hand and left leg. It’s good cause it means we can still hold hands when—’ Her voice snagged. ‘H-He’s the one who likes to hold hands.’ She glanced to her brother, who was bent over the firewood. In the pits of darkness, Hop could have sworn he saw a flicker of emotion. It almost looked human.
‘Fire’s ready,’ the boy said.
She dashed behind Hop, and then sang merrily as she sawed the rope holding him up: ‘Cut the throats, take out guts, suck the bones and wear the skins! That’s the way to have din-dins!’
Hop landed in a tangle of limbs. Before he could scramble away, the girl leaped on top of him, pinning his wrists with her legs.
‘Hold still,’ she said. ‘This won’t hurt. Much. Probably. I don’t know. Our other meals only squealed for a minute or two. Five max.’
‘Apart from the first,’ the boy said, bringing a blade to Hop’s throat.
‘Apart from the first,’ she said solemnly.
‘Wait!’ Hop said. ‘Before you slice me, can I see your faces?’
They glanced at each other.
‘We don’t know what you mean!’ the girl said. ‘These are our faces!’
Hop smiled. ‘I know you’re human. I saw your eyes when you spoke about your brother.’
She recoiled. ‘I’m a mighty—’
Her brother slipped off his mask, staring at Hop with the one eye that was not covered by his masses of hair. He was a child, younger than Hop but older than Little.
The girl sighed and removed her mask too. Their features were remarkably similar: the same soft brown skin; the same long curved noses, sunken cheeks and chapped lips.
‘You don’t have any names, and you’re missing body parts.’ His lingering fear vanished. Here was his answer. Here was the good. ‘I think you’re trapped in this labyrinth just like us. How old are you?’
They looked at each other. Maybe they could communicate without speaking. They were twins after all, he was sure of it.
‘Ten,’ they said together.
‘It must’ve been scary, waking up here without your memories,’ Hop said.
‘Memories?’ the girl asked.
‘The blackness,’ the boy said emotionlessly. All his words were uttered in the same monotone. ‘The nothing. The great screaming oblivion.’
‘Exactly!’ Hop said. ‘So you see, you shouldn’t eat us. We’re like you. Amber and our friend Little are both missing body parts too: eyes and tongue. And none of us have any memories either, or names!’
‘Which part are you missing?’ the boy asked Hop, curious.
‘None,’ Hop replied at the same time as Amber said, ‘Brain.’
Hop was pretty sure that was a joke. He was the only one of them not missing any body parts. Why was that? He supposed that was a good thing. But for some reason, it made him uneasy.
‘Did Dolores give you a mission too?’ Hop asked.
The boy lifted an eyebrow. ‘Who?’
‘You didn’t meet the uptight old owl?’ Amber asked.
‘In the room that smells like cinnamon?’ Hop added.
‘No. We just woke up here a couple of months ago, no mission,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s all we can remember.’
‘Maybe it’s different for everybody, or you failed your mission and forgot?’ Hop mused. ‘Either way, we should work together.’
‘What do you think, brother?’
The boy stared at Hop, unblinking. ‘Everyone needs to eat.’ His blade drew closer.
‘Wait! I can get you more food! I’m on a quest to get Little and Amber out of here.’
‘Little? Is that the skull on your chest?’
‘No! The skull is Skully. Little is a little girl. She doesn’t speak though. But Skully does.’
‘Right . . .’ The twins exchanged a long look.
‘Anyway, I have to find the Bone Door. And to do that I need to complete some missions. See the writing on my arm? That’s the first one.’ As Hop glanced at it, he noticed a curved section of the moon had filled in with white light overnight. A crescent moon. Time was ticking. ‘Once I finish all the missions and find the Bone Door we can escape this place. If you don’t have a mission then you can’t open the door and get out. You need my help, and there will be loads of food outside.’
Hop had vague memories of it. Buttery heels of soda bread, steaming mutton stew and spiced apple cake.
The sister smirked. ‘Why would we leave for other food when food is talking to us now?’
‘For feck’s sake!’ Amber raged, swinging overhead. ‘Think with your brains if you actually have them, or do you want to stay in this hellscape forever?’
‘Hey!’ the girl snapped. ‘This is our home!’
‘It’s really pretty. You have the most beautiful flowers,’ Hop said. ‘But also I think maybe this place is not all flowers and prettiness. We’ve seen what lives here. We met one yesterday. It hurt Amber.’
The boy’s knife dipped. ‘What did you see?’
‘A monster. Half rotting and half fresh. It moved silently then attacked us. It tried to eat Amber.’
‘It did eat me! It got my finger.’
‘I had to use her blood to distract it.’
The boy’s hair fell forward, hiding his face entirely. ‘Another.’ He dropped the knife and reached for his sister’s hand.
She held it strangely, her sleeve draped over her palm.
‘You’ve seen it too?’ Hop asked.
‘Not that one,’ she said. ‘Another like it. It looked like it was on fire, its bones crumbling to ash as it moved.’
‘A tracker,’ the boy said. ‘A haunt, we call it. Because it follows you like a ghost. It . . .’ He retrieved the knife and clutched it, as if a haunt would emerge from the trees that moment.
The girl glanced at her brother.
‘It hurt him, didn’t it?’ Hop said.
She winced and nodded. ‘I had to use his blood to draw it away too . . .’
Hop realized then; she didn’t really care about food for herself. What was it she said when she first found them strung up? ‘I said I’d get you food and I did.’
This girl cared about her brother.
Hop’s chest warmed. ‘If you want to get him to safety, you should come with us. We can find the Bone Door together.’
The pressure on his wrists lifted. ‘Will it . . . be safe outside the Bone Door?’ she asked.
‘Of course! There’re no monsters there.’
‘How do you know?’ The boy’s eye dug into him.
How did he know?
He must have come from beyond the Bone Door, and he remembered only happy things. Secret biscuits, a distant chime of a bell that made his heart sing, and someone’s fingers lacing through his hair.
Other hands, holding him down. A scream. The clash of metal.
He shook his head, blinking the bad memories away. ‘I just know it’s good out there. It’s filled with wonderful things.’
The girl gripped her brother’s hand. ‘You promise? Cross your heart and stab out your eye and eat it?’
‘If I’m wrong, you can eat me.’
She grinned. She was missing her front teeth. Her tongue shot out, licking at the bare gum. ‘You got yourself a deal, rabbit!’ Finally, she released him.
‘If there’s anyone that needs stabbing on the way . . .’ the boy said, his knife vanishing into his cloak. ‘Point me at them.’
Hop shook both their hands.
They froze. The girl stared down at their touching palms.
‘Not supposed to.’
‘Can’t touch,’ her brother added. ‘Can’t ever touch skin to skin.’
But they were not pulling away. The girl stared at their hands with fascination. A twitch of a smile lit up the boy’s face, like sun through a cloud.
Hop felt fleeting power in that touch. Something he did not understand.
‘Do not,’ a deep voice said. ‘Do not ever do that again.’ A white shape flickered behind the twins. The Shadow-man.
Hop yanked his hands back. ‘Sorry. Sorry.’
‘You’ve gone pale,’ the boy said in his monotone. ‘Even more so. Did the skull say something traumatizing?’
‘No!’ Hop waved his hands.
‘It’s not just Skully that only Hop hears. There are other, less nice voices,’ Amber said. ‘Are you okay, Hop?’
‘It’s fine!’ He laughed. ‘It’s great. Everything’s great. You two need names!’
‘Why don’t you name them after you cut me down?’ Amber yelled.
As the boy hacked at Amber’s rope, Hop stared at his palms. He had only touched his skin to the twins’. But they had reacted as if he had done something incredible. Something powerful.
‘You do not possess power.’
The Shadow-man in all his terrible shifting edges loomed before him. Not solid like Amber or the twins. Not there. Not really there. He was like frost on a glass, or steam rising from boiling water. Hop only had to wave his hand and he would dissipate into the wind. Hop had power after all. And what was he, except a shadow?
But as those ice-blue eyes bore down upon him, Hop’s body went cold and still, and he felt as powerless as a bunny before a wolf.
‘So, what do you think?’
‘Huh?’
Amber was on her feet and the twins were staring expectantly.
‘Our names,’ the girl said. ‘I want something super badass or disgusting. I want people to vomit when they hear it.’
When Hop looked back, the Shadow-man was gone. He pushed himself up. ‘You’re wild, and intense. And wonderfully noisy! I think you should be Storm.’
