Law of the Wolf Tower: The Claidi Journals Book 1 by Tanith Lee (black authors fiction txt) 📕

When we reached the plain – if it was – the ground was like screwed-up parchment, sprinkled with powder.

Dusts rose from our footfalls as we walked. We coughed, and then the dust seemed to settle in our throats. We got used to it.

The sun was higher. Far off, the blistered ghosts of the hills. The House walls had disappeared. I’ll never see them again.

It was hot. Already.

I have become so used to holding anger at unfairness inside.

And then, well I’ve told you, I’m in love with him.

And also, here we were, and he seemed to know the way. (Did he?) I knew nothing.

But that first day, it was murder.

In my sack, now tied to my shoulders, the way wrong-doers carry their crimes in the House pictures, bounced this book. I hadn’t the heart to write in it, and anyway had no chance, and then was too worn out.

He’d been right. I might be tougher than he reckoned, but I’d never had to do anything like this.

The ground was so hard. That sounds stupid. But it was as if, every time you took a step, the ground whacked your feet, and the jolt shot right up your back. The sun thumped down on your head from the other direction.

The landscape was featureless, as it had seemed to be from the hill. There were a few nasty-looking rocks. (They did look nasty, like bad things changed into rocks that might suddenly turn back.)

I saw a lizard. It was pink with a black wiggle on its spine. Nemian never noticed, or he was just used to such sights.

There were some birds in the sky, too, big black ragged things. They seemed interested in us, but then veered away.

We had a rest by a particularly bad-tempered-looking rock at noon. We drank some water, and Nemian went to sleep.

I don’t often cry. It doesn’t do much good. But I felt rather like it. And then I thought of my parents having to make just this appalling trek. I hoped and hoped they’d succeeded, and got to somewhere, because presumably there was somewhere to get to—

If I hoped they’d done it, I must too. I wished, childishly, Nemian had been nicer to me. I wished, instead of saying he wouldn’t carry me (as if I’d have asked) he’d have said, ‘Claidi, you’ve saved my life. We’ll see this through. I’ll help you.’

But I gazed at his face, and once he had a dream or something and he stirred and frowned and shook his head on the pillow of his rolled-up coat. I leaned over him and whispered, as I used to with Daisy when she had worrying dreams, ‘It’s all right. Yes, it’ll be fine.’

I hope Daisy is. And Pattoo, and the others. I’ll never know, will I.

That day truly was awful. The land never seemed to alter. The far hills got no nearer.

The sun went over and behind us. At last a glimmering, gold-stitched sunset, with birds arrowing like the stitching needles, hundreds of them it seemed.

Then thankful coolness with the dusk, which quickly turned chilly.

We’d reached a weird place by then. Distance had hidden it that morning, or the slope of the land. There was a small pool in rocks, with a waterfall, quite elegant, the sort of thing they make in the Garden. But this pool was a dull ancient green, and the waterfall was the same colour.

‘How foul,’ said Nemian. ‘Whatever you do, don’t touch that water. It’s undrinkable. Lethal.’

I was thirsty, and starving hungry. Sometimes I’d been made to miss meals (like Daisy) but never all of them for a whole day.

We sat down near the pool. The fall made a soothing noise that somehow stopped being soothing, thinking of the poison. This was just the sort of filthy thing they’d always told me was in the Waste.

However, Nemian took a narrow enamelled box out of a pocket. Undoing the box, he offered it to me. There were little sugary stems in the box.

‘Take one,’ he said. ‘It has all the nourishment you’d get from a roast chicken with vegetables. Or so they always say.’ I did take one, cautiously. He did too. He ate it quickly and leaned back on the rock. ‘Not as interesting, definitely, as roast chicken. Or do you think it is?’

I crunched the little stem. It tasted spicy and sweet, like one of Jade Leaf’s candies. But once it was down, I stopped feeling hungry. And I wasn’t tired in quite the same dragging way.

We shared the last water.

‘I’m sorry, Claidi,’ said Nemian, as the blackening sky filled with whitening stars. ‘I’m not, right now, marvellous company. I’m angry at what’s happened – but then, I’m also glad, because I’ve met you. That was something – almost miraculous. You’re—’ he faltered and so did my pulse. ‘You’re a wonder, Claidi. Please forgive me for being such a dupp.’

I blinked. What was a dupp? Never mind. I was warmer. How bright the stars. He didn’t loathe or regret me.

I fell asleep listening to the poison pool, and dreamed I fell in, but Nemian rescued me. The sort of dream it’s lovely to have and embarrassing to tell. You know.

Next day, everything changed.

STORMY WEATHER

Sometime I must have half woken. The stars were bright red. I sensibly thought I was dreaming, but I wasn’t.

When I woke again, it was daylight.

Only, not really.

Nemian was shaking me. One should never wake anyone like that, unless it’s a matter of life and death. But I suppose this was, in fact.

Dust storms had come over the House, but mostly by then blown-out, repelled also by the changed atmosphere, the different climate-in-little of the Garden. They’d never been anything like this.

Slabs of air were tumbling on me like walls. They were marigold-colour or blood-red, and in between a shifting, spinning greyishness.

Spirals whirled. The light flashed off and on, then was gone, smothered in redness, then broke again like lightning.

You couldn’t breathe, or it felt as if