The Black North Read Online Free

it.
    â€˜When’s your granda planning to go from Drumbroken if he’s going?’
    â€˜They’re having a meeting tonight,’ said Bridget. ‘At midnight, all the grandfathers from all families in Drumbroken. Going to decide what to do.’
    â€˜Where?’ asked Oona.
    â€˜At the Tower,’ said Bridget. ‘But now – don’t tell anyone about it. I heard Granda talking to Mammy and he’ll kill me if he finds out I said anything to anybody.’
    Oona spoke nothing, just took the remaining piece of potato-bread and tore it in two.
    â€˜Oona?’ said Bridget. ‘Do you hear me now? I’ll be such bother if he finds out I said. Sorrowful Lady herself won’t be able to stop me getting slapped!’
    â€˜Oh, calm down woman!’ said Oona. ‘I hear you well enough. And here – share this last bit of bread with me. I know if I don’t give it you’ll have the hand eaten off me anyway.’
    They had some final moments of sharing, and then Oona saw something. She half-stood, and Bridget half-upped too, and together they watched. Like the opposite of dawn, a shadow was being cast, slipping slowly into the valley.
    â€˜What is it?’ asked Bridget.
    Oona shook her head. ‘Like a shadow of something.’ And she even looked to the sky, like it might harbour a cloud large enough to cause such dark. She almost shivered.
    â€˜Like a
dispell
,’ said Bridget.
    â€˜What are you on about now?’ asked Oona.
    â€˜Kind of North magic,’ said Bridget. She swallowed, did shiver. ‘Now what? Go tell the grandfathers?’
    Oona said, ‘No. But we can’t just sit about here either. We have to do something.’
    â€˜â€œ
We
?”’ said Bridget.
    â€˜I,’ said Oona.

7
    Near enough midnight and Granny Kavanagh was asleep and snoring in her armchair.
    â€˜Whether she thinks she needs it or not,’ whispered Oona, dropping a blanket over her grandmother. Oona had changed into a fresh dress, one she’d hurried to set the last stitches of that afternoon after doing so much – sweeping, churning butter, turning the heel on a pair of stockings, cracking the neck of Ethel (one of their fatter chickens) and plucking and boiling the bird for soup.
    â€˜Sorry for leaving you, Granny,’ Oona whispered, ‘but there’s things important that need doing.’
    From under the bed Oona took her mother’s old cloak, where it’d been bundled and kept safe – rabbit and hare pelt, warmest they had in the house. What else before setting out? Only other thing: Oona made sure to take her knife. She dropped a few more sods into the hearth to keep it going, gave a swift bob to the Sorrowful Lady, pressed a kiss to her granny’s forehead, and then entered the night.
    To keep herself warm she kept moving, climbing the Eastern slope of the valley fast. At certain times Oona scrambledquickly up an oak to have a look, and soon the men of Drumbroken appeared: their journey slow, a trail of lanterns rambling up the Eastern slope. And Oona thought,
Do they not know better? Too obvious in the dark! What if the Invaders are watching?
    She returned to the ground and went on in a hurry.
    How to get to the Tower – even without the wander of firelight to follow – wasn’t difficult. It was a forbidden place for women and children, so it was somewhere of which every child and woman in Drumbroken knew the whereabouts. And Oona knew she could get there well before the men. But a single thing was trying to slow her: the Briar-Witch wound. Each touch to a tree was a sting, whole hand sharp like she’d added needles to it. No time though for pain. Oona kept on climbing.
    When she emerged it was under a moon so full it looked overflowing – grey-white spills on a bald rise, snow shrunken up but not gone. A wide circle of birch was the forest’s last outpost, the bark peeling like