Oksa pollock, p.26
Oksa Pollock, page 26
Oksa knew this song so well. She used to listen to it often, before, when everything was… normal. A wave of nostalgia washed over her, bringing no comfort, as Gus closed his eyes. It was terrible to hear those words again now that things were so different and so much worse.
She edged closer still and studied her friend’s face. The abnormally bulging veins in his neck and temples throbbed as if transporting powerful, uncontrollable torrents of blood. From time to time, sharp pains wracked his body and caused his face to tighten, bringing Oksa close to tears.
“You’re not going to die, Gus,” she whispered. “We’ll be back together again soon, and I’ll save you, I promise.”
The door opened slightly, its hinges creaking, and Kukka slipped inside. “What a surprise—I only have to be on my own with Gus for a minute and she shows up!” thought Oksa irritably. Yelling at her wouldn’t help though. Her antagonism had about as much effect as an air bubble. Even a ghost would be more effective right now. Kukka unintentionally made Oksa even crosser by throwing herself down on the bed and passing through the Gracious’s intangible body. Gus smiled at Kukka, who was still just as gorgeous, and whose dazzling skin and glossy hair did nothing to improve Oksa’s mood. Lying on one side, her head resting on her hand, Kukka smiled back at Gus.
“What are you reading?” she asked, gesturing to the object Gus had just put down beside him.
Instinctively, Oksa glanced over. It wasn’t so much a paperback as a school exercise book stitched down the spine to make it stronger. The pages inside were worn so thin that they looked about to disintegrate. In astonishment, Oksa recognized Dragomira’s bold, flowing handwriting. Did the notebook contain her gran’s memoirs? Her secrets from her years as an apothecary or her Gracious spells?
“Andrew found it in a chest in Dragomira’s strictly private workroom,” said Gus, turning the pages carefully.
“Did she write all this?” asked Kukka.
“Yes. They’re short stories about the creatures of Edefia which she wrote for Pavel when he was little. Reading them, anyone would think that Dragomira had an incredibly fertile imagination to invent things like that. It’s a bit different when you know all these creatures are real!”
“Just a bit,” agreed Kukka, laughing.
“They’re all there: Lunatrixes, Getorixes, hysterical Squoracles… plus a few I’d never heard of, like the Nestor and the Lusterer.”
“Amazing!”
“It really is—except I’ll never see them. Even if, by some miracle, there was a microscopic, freakish chance I could, I’d be dead before it happened.”
“Gus!” exclaimed Kukka. “How can you say that?”
An expression of deep despair appeared on Gus’s face and his deep blue eyes darkened. Oksa understood his pain. In agonies, she battled against her powerlessness. She clenched her fists, crushing the blade of Lasonillia, and her Identego swept her out of the room.
She searched the whole house in vain: her mother wasn’t there. On the brink of despair, she stood at the bottom of the staircase and screamed for her at the top of her lungs, hoping against hope that Marie would appear. But her wish wasn’t granted, despite her passionate entreaty, so she made herself comfortable on the first step and waited watchfully like a frightened animal.
The front door slammed and everyone clustered around Virginia. They were all there: Andrew, Akina, Barbara—everyone except Marie. Cameron’s reserved wife barely had time to take off her straw hat before they bombarded her with questions.
“The doctors are still confident, despite the severity of her last attack,” she announced. “They assured me she’d make a good recovery anyway.”
Hunched on the step, Oksa froze. Virginia had to be talking about Marie.
“She even told me to tell you to eat properly, because she thinks we’re all getting alarmingly thin and she hopes we’ll have put some weight on by the time she gets back!” she continued with a chuckle.
The Spurned gave a collective sigh of relief.
“That’s Marie all over!” exclaimed Andrew.
“So her face isn’t paralysed any more?” asked Barbara happily.
“Fortunately not,” confirmed Virginia. “It’s still a little swollen, but she can speak and blink again. However, she seems to be taking a bit longer to regain the movement in her right arm.”
“When is she coming home?” asked Gus.
“At the end of the week.”
There was a long silence, broken by Virginia’s final words.
“If all goes well.”
Gus cursed and stomped heavily up the stairs.
“Until the next time!” he thundered. “This is already the tenth time since the beginning of the year.”
“Gus!” Andrew shouted reprovingly.
Gus spun round on the first-floor landing.
“Marie gets worse with every attack,” he cried. “We’re both going to die and no one can do anything to stop it. Stop burying your heads in the sand and trying to make us think we’re going to get better, okay?”
He disappeared. A door slammed so hard that the walls shook. The Spurned hung their heads, looking stricken.
47
THE FORBIDDEN MISSION
THE LOYAL LUNATRIX DIDN’T HAVE A CHOICE: WHEREVER his young mistress decided to go and whatever the nature of her decisions, it was his duty to stay by her side. When he’d realized what Oksa intended to do, he’d voiced his disapproval of her foolishness in no uncertain terms, but she was determined. And, most importantly, she was the Gracious.
As soon as she’d returned from her distressing expedition to the Outside, she’d sunk into a deep depression. Tugdual had tried to find out more, but Oksa had glared at him with angry eyes and had retreated behind a wall of silence. She’d spent the entire day lost in thought and had only opened up once, when she’d revealed her insane plan to her Lunatrix during the course of a private conversation.
“I’m telling you that the bottle of elixir was at least half-full when I gave it back to Ocious! I saw it when he stoppered it and put it back in the huge metal cupboard at the back of the room, where we all were. I’ll be able to find it again easily, I’m sure.”
“My Gracious has proceeded to the shattering of her promise,” remarked the Lunatrix.
“What promise?”
“The promise afforded to her parenthood and the Fairyman to perform the evasion of danger,” replied the Lunatrix knowledgeably. “My Gracious encounters the blindness of despair. The planned enterprise is clothed in exorbitant risk.”
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” replied Oksa, her cheeks flushed. “The Portal will soon open, as you know, and our battle with the Felons is imminent. There are some difficult times ahead. Very difficult. What if the bottle is destroyed and the Diaphan dies? It’s the only survivor of its tribe, the last one left, don’t forget. If that happened, there would be no chance of saving Gus. Surely you don’t want him to die?”
Her voice cracked as she remembered Gus’s last words: “We’re both going to die and no one can do anything to stop it.” But Gus was wrong: Oksa could do something. And, what’s more, she was going to!
“We don’t have a choice anyway,” she’d concluded, taking her Tumble-Bawler from her small bag. “Let’s go.”
White as a sheet, the Lunatrix had let her lead him onto the balcony where he perched on his young mistress’s back, with his arms around her neck. Overcoming her hatred of insects—even totally harmless, magical ones—Oksa had uttered the special words in a low voice:
By the power of the Granoks,
Think outside the box
And summon the Invisibuls
Which make my form ethereal.
Paradoxically, the first obstacle Oksa had to overcome was her staunchest, and most predictable, allies. Standing in front of the only opening in the Aegis, Oksa had to wait for the verdict from the enthusiastic and discerning Squoracles. She’d promised herself never to use Granoks to force people or creatures in her clan to do anything against their will, but the prevarications of the tiny lie detectors almost made her break this pledge. Even under a thick layer of Invisibuls, Oksa’s heart was still beating and, like any other heart, it had to be examined.
“They can be so annoying sometimes!” groaned Oksa. “I’m leaving Thousandeye City, not coming in, so what does it matter if my intentions are good or bad?”
“My Gracious must not encounter the temptation to disregard orders,” said the Lunatrix, trying to reason with her.
“You’re right, as always,” she sighed. “Everyone must be inspected, on the way in and on the way out. That’s the rule. I just hope they won’t give me away to my father or Abakum. If they tell on me, I think I’ll have my knuckles well and truly rapped.”
“Keep that fear aside from your mind, my Gracious. The Squoracles accomplish the examination of hearts, not the verification of identities. Anyway, they devote obedience to the silence of specialists.”
“You mean they respect professional confidentiality?”
“Exactitude adorns the words of my Gracious,” agreed the Lunatrix. “The Squoracles achieve the development of eccentricity, but their obedience to the rules encounters no gaps in their brain. My Gracious should absorb the certainty of their discretion, no information will suffer divulgation because she alone possesses the capacity to break the silence of specialists.”
“If you say so,” conceded Oksa.
The Squoracles soon let them pass. Chattering non-stop, they opened the doorway and Oksa flew out, intoxicated by the heady feeling of freedom she’d been denied for far too long.
She’d flown through the Peak Ridge Mountains for the first time a few weeks ago on the back of her father’s Ink Dragon, escorted by Ocious and his vile son. She’d been feeling physically and emotionally drained. Zoe had chosen to sacrifice herself, Tugdual had disappeared and she’d been wracked by doubt. She didn’t have so many doubts now, although they still gave her food for thought.
When she saw the first peaks in front, an intense shiver ran down her spine, sending a jolt of adrenaline and fear coursing through her. Magnificent and intimidating, the huge rocky outcrops loomed like teeth in a monster’s maw, gaping open to devour her. The stone, washed clean by the rain, had been restored to its former glory and was sparkling in the slanting rays of the setting sun. It was so bright, in fact, that Oksa had to put on her sunglasses to avoid being blinded by the bright flashes of coloured light. This didn’t stop her from spotting clusters of antagonistic Chiropterans lurking in the pockets of shadow on either side of the cleft which marked the entrance to Firmhand territory. Oksa stiffened.
“Oh, no!” she cried, feeling nauseous. “There’s no way I’m flying through a swarm of those hideous creatures.”
“You can avoid them, my Gracious,” said the Tumble-Bawler perched on her shoulder. “In order to do so, you must veer from your current route by thirty degrees. There’s a crevice that leads into a deserted canyon.”
“A deserted canyon? Anything’s better than that!” exclaimed Oksa with one last glance at the seething multitude of tiny bats.
She suddenly slowed down, looking bewildered.
“But I have no idea what you mean by ‘veer from my current route by thirty degrees’,” she said. “Geometry’s never really been my forte.”
Fluttering its bumble-bee wings, the Tumble-Bawler covered itself with a layer of Invisibuls and positioned itself in front of Oksa.
“Put yourself directly behind me and follow me,” it whispered.
Oksa had to concentrate very hard to do exactly what the little guide was telling her. However, the invisible crew eventually headed straight for two massive outcrops standing side by side like enormous shining molars.
“Are you sure about this?” Oksa couldn’t help asking, since she couldn’t see any opening at all.
The Tumble stopped in mid-air and turned round, its wings beating the empty air. It was about to say something when Oksa hurriedly corrected herself:
“Sorry, sorry—of course you know what you’re doing! Let’s go.”
It was only when they were right in front of the rock that she could appreciate her Tumble-Bawler’s expertise. There was an almost invisible vertical crack, no more than a couple of feet wide, between the two rocky outcrops. However, what made it so hard to see was not its size but the waterfall in front of it. Only the Tumble-Bawler, who missed nothing, had been aware of its existence. Proud of its invaluable contribution to the mission, the creature led Oksa and her Lunatrix to the wall of thundering water, which could be heard for miles around. Only once they’d passed through the cataract did Oksa realize what the Tumble-Bawler had meant by a “deserted canyon”. She flew through the narrow opening and gazed in terror at the hundreds of yards of empty air above and below her. She felt as if she was in a gaping abyss or a bottomless well.
It was as dark as an oven. The fading daylight was a tiny, barely visible patch of orange a long way up. Hovering in the air, Oksa swapped her sunglasses for a Polypharus, which allowed her to examine the overwhelmingly dense black transparent rocks.
“We’re not going to get stuck in here, are we?” whispered the Young Gracious, her voice trembling.
“The width of the canyon is twenty-two inches and my Gracious is only twenty inches across at shoulder level,” said the Tumble-Bawler. “There’s more than enough room.”
Despite her severe reservations about her guide’s estimate of the available space, Oksa didn’t reply.
“My Gracious is very slim,” said the creature reassuringly. “Anyone of average build would run the risk of getting stuck in here. But my Gracious is not likely to have that trouble.”
“Okay,” agreed Oksa.
“We must fly straight ahead for two hundred and seventy-five yards, then the canyon will widen.”
“I won’t be sorry,” admitted Oksa, scanning the rocks around her. “I feel like I’m being walled up alive.”
She flew through the narrow passage with the utmost care. The Invisibuls protected her from the sight of others as well as from Granoks and spells, but not from scrapes and grazes if she strayed even slightly from her path. The transparency of the black rocks didn’t help; Oksa felt as though she were travelling through a dark jewel gleaming with deceptive shimmers. However, after banging into the walls on numerous occasions, she worked out the right technique and flew straight ahead, yard after yard, with her elbows pressed against her sides, her hands stretched out and her head up.
Just as the Tumble-Bawler had promised, the walls of the canyon eventually widened out into a valley lined by sheer cliffs which seemed to go on for ever, both above and below. Looking up, Oksa glimpsed the full moon so high that she felt as though she’d plunged into the bowels of the Earth without realizing. The deep gorge was filled with the milky glow of moonlight and the light shed by the Polypharus. The rocks weren’t uniformly dark any more—there were patches of colour which cast glimmers of blue, red, green and even an incredible amber colour which reminded her of gold glass. Below them a thin, winding watercourse resembled a silver garland. Shoals of flying fish suddenly appeared, their scales glinting like a myriad of tiny sparks. It was such a breathtaking sight that Oksa almost forgot her mission and the dangers it involved, until the sudden appearance of a Felon patrol at the intersection with another valley brought her back to reality with a start.
48
IN THE MIDST OF DANGER
THE TUMBLE-BAWLER CAME TO A SCREAMING HALT, BUT Oksa was a fraction of a second too late in stopping. Vertiflying at speed with her Lunatrix on her back, Oksa ploughed into her little scout with a curse, sending them all plunging into the group of Felons, who seemed to feel nothing except a slight vibration, no stronger than a puff of air. Fortunately for the three intruders, the collision was as silent as it was devoid of consequences and they got away with a bad fright.
“All we have to do is follow them!” said Oksa, wiping the perspiration from her forehead.
“My Gracious is right,” said the Tumble-Bawler. “They’re heading for the central section of the Peak Ridge Mountains.”
“Where Ocious and his henchman are holed up in their troglodytic cave,” added Oksa, suddenly feeling jittery for a quite another reason. “I have to have that Werewall elixir.”
The Lunatrix tightened his arms around her without saying a word. Oksa pressed his chubby hand affectionately. She turned slightly and her cheek grazed the soft down on her lovable companion’s arm.
“Everything will be fine,” she murmured.
“The words of my Gracious are stuffed with positivity.”
The Lunatrix’s remarks were swallowed up by the air. Oksa was already flying in pursuit of the Felons, her hair streaming in the wind and her heart racing. The soldiers, who had no idea that anyone was following them, were Vertiflying with a skill she couldn’t help admiring—a skill combining strength with an impression of invincibility that marked out the most battle-hardened warriors. “Only the strongest stayed with Ocious and his sons,” thought Oksa, “the most aggressive and determined Edefians.” For a second this thought dismayed her, however much she tried not to let it. Then she pictured her father, Abakum, the Runaways and all those men and women whose courage, determination and, above all, loyalty knew no bounds, and felt much better.
Loyalty was probably not a quality Ocious could depend on.
When the immense cave suddenly appeared, Oksa’s blood ran cold. The shifting light spilling out from the interior bathed the rocky slopes of Mount Humongous, and the cave mouth stood out against the darkness like a blazing archway into Hell. About ten smaller caves were dotted about the mountainside. A fierce fire seemed to be burning in their depths, projecting the silhouettes of the guards standing before each one onto the nearby cliffs. With their distorted, elongated shadows these men looked like monstrous colossuses, ready to crush anyone who came within reach. Swarms of Chiropterans were listlessly flying around—the clicking noise made by their wings in the darkness sounded like laundry being shaken out.
