She was woken, just as it was getting dark, by a cry of loss and anger.
She sat up with a start, caught her hair in the thorny branches above, and quickly ducked down again. She calmed her breathing: Crows hadn’t found her, but he’d discovered her, and the maps’, absence from the cobble beach.
That meant she still had time to make her escape, get to the city before him, even though she’d been careless in falling asleep and was now going to have to make her way at night. She crawled out from under the bush and stood up in the twilight, trying to orientate herself. The sun was setting, and was almost gone, just a red line on the horizon with pink clouds above it. Apart from that, she couldn’t see anything◦– no lights, no smoke, no walls. All she knew was she had to head inland.
She slung the bag over her shoulder, blinked in the gathering gloom, and set off, the sea at her back.
It was impossible to steer a straight course, because trees didn’t grow like that. The scrub of the cliff-top gave way to a light, open woodland as the land descended, and the canopy began to obscure the sky. Robbed of sight lines and cues in an unknown landscape, she slowed, and then stopped. She was already lost.
‘Fuck,’ she breathed. Crows knew the way, didn’t he? Didn’t he? He could already be at the top of the cliff again and striding out while she was blundering from tree to tree and swearing at the night. Holing up somewhere and waiting until morning, or waiting to take advantage of the late moonrise, seemed to be her only options.
She slumped down against a tree trunk and realised just how tired her legs were. Then she hauled herself up again. No. She wasn’t going to do that. She was the Red Queen and she wasn’t giving in.
The ground was sloping away, but there was no guarantee that if she followed the gradient, she’d end up where she needed to be. If the moon wasn’t going to be up for another four or five hours, then it was going to get properly dark. Neither she nor Crows could use magic to light their ways: she couldn’t fly, and he couldn’t send his crows up. They were suddenly mortal, the pair of them. He had more experience of Down, but was much more cautious. He’d wait for the moon.
She could use that time, if she dared, to beat him.
The maps weren’t going to be of any use: they only showed portals, and there were none here. It wasn’t as if she was going to sort through them anyway, not now.
Then she remembered. She loosened the fastenings on the neck of the bag, and delved for the compass.
She could only assume that it was tiredness, hunger and thirst that meant she hadn’t thought of it earlier, but it was obvious really, even if she’d never used one before. Once she’d wrestled the lid off, she held it up to the last glimmer of light. Behind the glass, the dial turned slowly, and the one thing she did know◦– that the sun set in the west◦– was confounded by the direction the compass showed. West wasn’t over there, deeper into the forest, but pointing along the coastline.
She tapped the tin and turned it, but it was resolute, and wrong.
‘Well, fuck you too.’ It didn’t work. Or she couldn’t work it. But compasses were supposed to point north whoever was holding them, even ones where north wasn’t marked and only west was. Unless the W was north, in the mind of Down. It had given her the compass: of course it worked, because what kind of shitty gift would it be otherwise?
She took a sightline down the dial, shouldered the maps and started walking. There was so little light to see by, though. She wished she’d started so much sooner. The trees closed over her, and killed even the ephemeral skyglow.
Anywhere else, she would have snapped her fingers, lit a dead branch or something. Here, so close to the White City, that wasn’t going to happen. She felt for the lid of the compass, to put it back in the bag, when she realised that she could still see the dial. A pair of tiny green dots, invisible by day, marked the cardinal point. Why not? How else was a navigator going to steer during the dark hours, without stars or other reference points?
It was still painfully slow going. She walked, compass in one hand, close to her body, the other outstretched in front of her, feeling for the trees. She’d had to tie the maps to her like a tail so they wouldn’t drag on the ground.
Everything was black, but those two little flecks of light. They swam before her eyes, and it was a struggle to keep them still. At first she headed downhill, then it levelled off into a series of small rises and falls, alternating boggy ground and dry leaf litter. She could see nothing, going only by the sounds her feet made and the textures they encountered. She could walk off a cliff and only realise as she was falling, so she strained every other sense, even the difference in the echoes and the change in pressure around her.
There were flying things. Little buzzy insects and, chasing them, the high-pitched squeak of bats. They were distracting, and she couldn’t afford to be distracted.
She pressed on, and there was a new noise, the low, slow sound of a river.
Water. But she resisted the urge to run towards it. If she fell in, she could drown. Even if it wasn’t that deep, she’d ruin the maps and get the compass wet◦– it should probably still work after that, but she could drop it and lose it as she floundered and splashed.
If she had gone tentatively before, she ended up on her hands and knees now. The river grew louder as her fingers crept forward, her legs shuffling along after. Then, suddenly, nothing. She could smell the water, though, just below her, and hear it gurgle as it rolled along the bank.
Mary put the compass behind her, where she could see the dial but not run the risk of knocking it flying, and reached down. The cold against her fingertips was surprising, shocking even. She jerked her hand back, but when she licked the moisture still clinging to her skin, she went back for more, cupping her palm and drinking until she was slaked.
Her belly was full to sloshing as she knelt up. She gasped and wiped her mouth, and saw another light.
It was tiny, and impossible to tell how far away it was◦– just a chip of yellow in the utter blackness that surrounded her. She groped for the compass and held it out. The dots swung around and settled. They pointed at the light which, as far as she could tell, was on the far side of the river.
So close, so much still to go wrong.
The slot of sky above the river showed no detail. Moonrise was still at least an hour or two away. She didn’t feel she could afford to wait◦– Crows didn’t have to worry about crossing like she did. She wasn’t a good enough swimmer to hold the maps over her if it got too deep. Either she found some shallow stretch she could ford, or she’d have to wait. Crows could be miles behind her, or very near. Or ahead of her, waiting. She couldn’t control that, only her own progress. She was going to have to try and reach that light, no matter what.
She collected the compass, adjusted the map bag and turned left. One step, listen. Another step, listen, and compare it with what she’d just heard.
And it did change, gaining a note of hollowness that grew, then faded. She retraced her steps, slowly, so very slowly. Her fingers felt something rough, when they should have touched only air. She dug her nails into its slightly yielding surface. Wood. Cut wood. She sniffed at it. It wasn’t new, but neither did it smell of decay. Beyond that, there was another… what? Plank? Half-log?
Was it a pier sticking out over the bank which would end abruptly mid-stream, or might it be a bridge? She didn’t dare hope. She crept out, aware of the water all around her, feeling for the sawn edges to either side of her. No hand rails, no parapet, no margin for error. Her heart banged in her chest, and she could barely breathe. She swallowed hard, and reached out for the next rough section.