Mountainfell, p.5
Mountainfell, page 5
Careful but quick. Careful but quick. And concentrate. Definitely that, too.
Erskin wondered what Birgit would do if she could see her now. She would absolutely lose it, that’s what. She knew exactly what Birgit would say as well. “Why do you have to be so reckless and foolish all the time? You never listen. Why can’t you just be normal?”
In spite of herself, a fog of anger descended over Erskin. It filled her head from the bottom up like a cup. For as long as she could remember, Birgit had treated her like an irritation who only existed to make life difficult. Well, she could look after herself. And she would prove it right now. When Birgit learned what she’d accomplished in order to reach her, to save her, she’d have to give Erskin credit.
Inside her satchel, Scrat shifted.
“Stop that, Scrat,” she muttered. Her thoughts about Birgit had left her feeling bitter, unsettled. When the wriggling subsided Erskin reached down and tied her satchel shut, taking care to make sure Scrat didn’t notice. Erskin knew from past experience how much he hated to be shut in, but if he leaped out or climbed onto her shoulders it could be disastrous, and she didn’t have the energy to worry about that too.
Erskin crouched and leaned across the next gap so she could place her hands firmly against the rock on the other side before stepping across. She was really getting the hang of this now.
The side of the satchel bulged as Scrat moved around again. There came some scratching sounds, followed by a pause. Then a long, angry mew. That’s when Erskin knew Scrat had discovered she’d tied the satchel shut.
I’m sorry, Scrattletak, but it’s for your own good and it won’t be for long…
She was higher up now, and the gaps between the rocks were getting much wider and harder to cross. If she could figure out the best route, she’d be fine, she told herself, but deep down she wasn’t so sure. Dark shapes flitted around in the air – every now and then Erskin caught the sound of a flutter overhead. With a lurch of fear, she realized what they were: some sort of horrible, leathery-winged bats that were coming up from the dark voids. Every time she heard them squeak or one came too close it made her flinch.
Their high-pitched sounds bothered Scrat, too. He wriggled even more wildly. A paw poked through a gap in the satchel’s lid, claws drawn, and raked at the material. He really wanted to get out. Tough, Erskin thought. It’s too dangerous right now.
Erskin wove along the tops of the sturdiest-looking rocks. She was almost across. Just one more chasm to navigate, the biggest gap yet, and then she’d be on firmer ground. Erskin’s legs trembled if she looked down into the dark depths, so she tried not to. The gap was too wide for her to reach across to steady herself, so she’d just have to jump. She wiped her sweaty palms against her clothes and held her breath, ready to make the leap.
Scrat scratched at the inside of the satchel and hissed. One end of the strap tore a little. Panic welled in Erskin’s chest. She had to go quickly before he broke free and hurt himself.
Erskin took the jump. She made it – just. For one heart-stopping moment, she teetered on the edge of the chasm. Stones dislodged around her feet and skittered down and down into the darkness. She didn’t hear them hit the bottom. Erskin finally caught her balance.
The ground started to shake. Oh, no. Not the dragon… Not now. For a moment Erskin felt frozen to the spot. The shaking was getting worse and worse. That meant it wasn’t the dragon’s booming footsteps, but another of the violent tremors, just like last night’s. Her heart leaped into her mouth, but the previous tremor had lasted less than a minute. Perhaps if she just stayed where she was, she could wait it out?
Straight away Erskin knew she’d made a terrible mistake. A cloud of screeching double-winged bats flooded out of the chasm like a swarm of flies. Erskin screamed and flapped her arms. Just as the tremor reached its most violent peak, her satchel tore open and Scrat streaked out, saw the bats and the chasm, and scrambled desperately to cling on to the satchel.
At the same time a squealing shadow whizzed close to Erskin’s eyes: another bat. Erskin screamed again and stepped back. There was a loud crunching, crumbling noise and with a sick thud in the pit of her stomach, Erskin realized that the ground was giving way.
Erskin threw herself towards the rock in front of her but missed by a long shot. Instead she clawed the crumbling ground, managing to cling to a tree root as everything else tumbled down. She dangled over the darkness as a chain reaction spread along the entire crag. Scrat let loose an unearthly shriek as he clung on with all his might – and claws – to the outside of Erskin’s satchel.
But the jolt of it all and the weight of Scrattletak tore the rest of the satchel’s strap. It came off her shoulder and dropped away. The last thing Erskin saw was the horror in Scrat’s round amber eyes as he fell with it – disappearing into darkness.
“SCRATTLETAK! SCRAT!” ERSKIN SCREAMED INTO the depths of the chasm, against the terrible rumbling sound as it opened into a wide, jagged, gulping void that stretched as far as the eye could see. But no answer came. At least, not from Scrat. A strange noise seemed to echo out from deep inside the darkness, beneath the squeals of the bats. Faint, but definitely there: a garble of angry words.
It was the same voice she thought she’d heard before: the woman’s.
It echoed from all sides until Erskin couldn’t tell if it was real or just in her head. Nor could she make out the words, only the wrath behind them. A coldness radiated outwards from Erskin’s core until every part of her felt like ice, except for her hands, which burned with the effort of clinging on. Her grip around the tree root started to slip. She couldn’t hold on much longer. With tears in her eyes, she turned her face to the sunlight above her, speckled with the last of the fleeing bats. It was the last time she’d ever see it.
A young face poked over the edge of the chasm, peered down at her, and blinked.
“Hold on!” said a boy’s voice.
Two arms shot down and gripped Erskin tight. She gasped. How could this be real? Surely she had to be imagining it? But the hands that now wrapped around her forearms felt real enough.
“You’ll have to use your feet too,” said the boy, grimacing. “I’m not strong enough to pull you out on my own.”
Erskin snapped back to reality and clung hard to the boy’s arms so they were locked together, the tree root abandoned. She scrambled against the side of the chasm until she found her footing and used her legs to help push herself up. With that and the boy’s help, she was soon lying on solid ground again, exhausted and gasping.
“The shaking started and I heard a shout,” said the boy as they both recovered. He was sitting next to Erskin as he caught his breath. Beads of sweat edged along his hairline. “And then,” he went on, “just as I arrived around that rock – I saw you drop in.” He fell silent again, watching Erskin.
“You’re lucky I was here,” he added.
Erskin’s stomach lurched, remembering how Scrat had fallen. Instinctively she reached down to touch the satchel that usually rested against her hip – her satchel that was no longer there. “Scrat.” Erskin’s eyes filled with tears. Scrattletak, can you hear me? she thought desperately. Are you alive? But she couldn’t sense him any more. He was gone.
“Are you … all right?” the boy asked gently.
“Scrat … he fell in,” she said. “He’s down there.” She nodded towards the chasm.
“Oh,” said the boy, his shoulders sinking. “Sorry. That’s… I’m sorry.” He hesitated, rubbed his head. “Is that your cat? The one from the market?”
Erskin nodded. She recognized him now – it was Leif, from the village. The boy she’d caught staring at her in the market. What was he doing here?
“You know, cats are good survivors,” he went on. “There’s this old saying I’ve heard that they actually have nine lives. It would be nice if that was true, wouldn’t it?”
Erskin sniffed. “Do you think it is?”
“We’re on a magical mountain. I’d say anything can happen.”
Erskin smiled weakly, feeling a little better.
“Why are you here?” Erskin wiped her face.
Leif shifted and his ears went pink. He mumbled something about getting lost.
“Lost?” Erskin narrowed her eyes at him in disbelief. “How?” Was that even possible? The boundary between the village and the mountain was obvious. There was miles of wall between them. No one could wander past it by accident – and in the opposite direction to the village, where all the people lived.
His pinkness spread. “I … thought you might need help. When I saw your sister get taken, I…”
“But how did you see that? Could you tell from the village?” All at once she remembered the dark shape lurking in the shadows on their way home from the market, and then again on the mountain. “Wait a minute,” said Erskin. “Have you been … following me?”
A million expressions rolled over the boy’s face. For a moment he settled on offended, and puffed himself up as if he was about to object. But then all the air left him, and he rubbed the back of his neck.
“Yes.” He sighed. “I did. I followed you. It was kind of an accident.”
“An accident?” said Erskin. “You followed me home and then onto a dangerous mountain by accident?”
Leif huffed and looked even more embarrassed. “Now you’re making it sound silly.”
At any other time, Erskin would have laughed. But right now she felt too hollowed out inside. She remembered the look in Scrat’s eyes as he fell. School, and the normal village life that Leif reminded her of, seemed like for ever ago. Like a distant dream, from before she lost her sister, and now her best friend.
Leif seemed to notice that her thoughts had turned dark, because in a small voice he said, “Um. I’m sorry about what happened to your sister and your cat. I love cats.”
Erskin sniffed. “You – love cats? Really?”
Leif nodded, and then frowned. “I don’t like it when they catch birds, though. Or mice. I like birds, and I sort of like mice too, though not really as much. I especially like birds and I don’t like it when they get killed.”
Erskin was confused. She’d never heard anyone speak about animals like this before. “But … catching pests is what cats are supposed to do, isn’t it?”
Leif shrugged. “Doesn’t seem right to me. But I guess they can’t help it. Just their nature, I suppose.”
But Erskin’s heart sank further, as she thought about Scrat’s daft, loving nature and how most of the time he wanted nothing more than to sit on his perch around her shoulders and be given fuss. She couldn’t bring herself to reply, so she changed the subject. “Why did you follow me all the way up here?” She eyed him – his short, neat black hair, his green eyes and faint freckles – but he didn’t meet her gaze.
Eventually he sighed and scratched his forehead. “Well I always thought we could be friends,” Leif said. “You don’t really seem to fit in around the village. And that’s great!” he added in a hurry. “Because neither do I.”
Erskin frowned, but Leif carried on. “You always avoid me though,” he said, scuffing the ground with his shoe. “And then I saw that creature at the market – Scrat. I’d never seen anything like it before. I just wanted to see it again, that’s all. Find out more about it, you know? But then, the dragon came and, like I said before, I saw what happened to your sister. So, one thing sort of led to another – accidentally. When you ran onto the mountain, I thought you might need help.”
“How did you stay hidden for so long?” she demanded.
Leif just shrugged. “Trees,” he said.
“You hid behind trees?”
Leif nodded.
“And those creatures, back there. The ones that chased me. How come you didn’t get attacked?”
“Er.” Leif rolled his eyes, but not in a sarcastic way, more a “thinking” way. “I … climbed a tree.”
“And how did you cross the chasm without me noticing you then? Hmm?” Erskin raised an eyebrow. “That can’t have been trees.” She was actually beginning to feel quite impressed at how well he’d managed.
“I didn’t,” Leif said simply. “Looked far too dangerous. So, I followed the markers instead. You know. The cairn thingies. With those faded old symbols carved on them. I came out on a hidden path on the other side of all that just as the tremor started – and that’s when I heard you call out.”
Erskin gasped. “You found another one of the cairns? How?”
“I—”
But Erskin interrupted him immediately. “Let me guess. You climbed a tree?”
Leif nodded. “If in doubt,” he said, “climb a tree. That’s what I think.”
For a while Erskin studied Leif in silence, unaware of the smile forming at the corners of her mouth. He was so unusual. Didn’t it bother him, to be that way? Leif had been watching his surroundings, but when he turned back to Erskin his face was serious.
“Listen. No one knows this,” he said, “so don’t tell. But sometimes I sneak onto the other side of the wall.”
Erskin’s eyes widened.
“Not far,” he added quickly, “only to a place where there’s a nice field and some big trees. It’s right next to the wall on the other side, and that part’s not even the mountain – it’s just a field, split in half. How can one part of the field be safe, when the other part isn’t? Just because a stupid wall cuts through it.” Leif puffed out his cheeks. He seemed to have startled himself with his own rant.
Erskin was aghast. “Why would you do that?”
“Because it’s quiet.” Leif shrugged. “I like people a lot, but sometimes I need a break from them, you know? I need thinking time.” He drew out the words as if talking about something sacred. “There’s no one around in the field wanting me to play or do stuff with them, no one to give me chores… I like to lie down in the grass there, listen to the birds and the wind in the trees. Sometimes I think so hard I even have a nap,” he added. Then he flushed and scuffed the ground again, causing a plume of dust to rise.
For a while Erskin lost herself in thought. She couldn’t believe Leif had willingly crossed the wall. What would the other villagers say? That he was hex-addled, for sure. But she understood it too, in a way. She’d been scared of the mountain her whole life, but also, secretly, fascinated by it. And she definitely understood the need to get away from people sometimes. A lot of the time in fact.
“That’s what I always loved about Scrat. He understood me. Not like people in the village. Any of them…” Erskin bit the inside of her cheek as she remembered. Leif was so easy to talk to that she couldn’t help but give away more and more things about herself. “Birgit didn’t think it was right when she found out about me having him. She said it wasn’t normal to…” But she couldn’t go on: sorrow choked her words away.
Leif looked down and rubbed his arms. “Sisters,” he said, shaking his head. “My sister and I are best friends – we do everything together. Well, not everything, but a lot of things. But sometimes she doesn’t get me either … you know. Like” – he dropped his voice – “I’m not sure she’d understand why I like hanging out on my own in a field.”
Erskin’s chest felt squeezed. She knew Leif was just trying to make her feel better by suggesting it wasn’t just her sister who didn’t get her – but it was actually working a little bit.
“Your sister’s called Yasmin, isn’t she,” she said. Erskin knew Leif’s sister vaguely from school – but she’d only ever seen her from a distance, chatting with her friends.
At first Leif looked surprised that Erskin had noticed something about him – albeit only his sister’s name – and then he beamed. “Yas is great. Hardly anything fazes her.” Leif’s relationship with his sister sounded so perfect. Erskin and Birgit didn’t always see eye to eye. In truth, they didn’t often like each other much at all. But that didn’t mean Erskin wouldn’t do anything to get her back.
“But, we don’t get on all the time, obviously,” he added, seeing Erskin’s face. “She gets stressed out with me for doing the littlest things sometimes – like, climbing a tree.” Leif rolled his eyes. “Says it’s dangerous and I’ll break my neck.”
Erskin smiled. “Yes. Mine does that too.”
“You must be really worried about her,” said Leif, scratching at the old stump with his fingernail. “I know I would be. For what it’s worth, I hope you get her back. I really do.”
“Me too.” Erskin sniffed. “Thanks,” she added with a smile.
Leif cleared his throat. “We should really get away from the edge,” he said, changing the subject. “In case there’s another, I-don’t-know-what-you-call-it. Landfall? If that’s what they are. I didn’t really believe what the Lordsson was saying about the tremor being natural – did you? And what about the dragon?”
Erskin could suddenly see why Leif’s “thinking time” was so important to him – he had a lot of questions. But perhaps he was right. Since the dragon took her sister away, she hadn’t really thought about anything apart from getting her back. Which meant she hadn’t actually stopped to wonder why it had chosen now to come down the mountain, either.
Erskin nodded, frowning. “Something must have happened to make it turn up at the village,” she said, puzzling it out. “Why now, after so many years?”
“Exactly.” Leif’s eyes widened, and he shuddered. “I couldn’t believe it when it appeared round the big ledge. No one has ever seen it so close up – at least not in our lifetime.” He shook his head. “You think you’re safe, that it’ll just be a normal, boring day, and then bam! A dragon. I thought…”
They moved further up the path as they spoke, but Erskin couldn’t help glancing back across the maze of cracks and drops to where Scrat had fallen. A wash of pain rolled over her, remembering. But Leif was right – this whole place was too unstable. Much of the ground had fallen away, and the nearest split had widened. She could see now that there was no way past the chasm back to the village. But in spite of how dangerous it was to stay, she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the place where she’d lost Scrat.
