The Sorrow of the Waters (Kalika Magic Book 3) Read online

  Old Man Kita seemed to read his thoughts. ‘It is frightening at first, but have courage and you’ll be perfectly safe. This is simply a doorway. It won’t take you beyond the silver veil. It leads only to Nagara.

  ‘Behind the great waterfall, near the emperor’s palace, there is a cave. At the back of the cave is a pool exactly like this one. You’ll step out of the pool and into Nagara, and not a soul will see you. Trust me.’

  Kai nodded. He could feel the low hum of magic in the air; it was making him dizzy. It was heavy and suffocating – different to the magic of the forest and the mountain. He couldn’t think properly. He couldn’t decide if this was the right thing to do.

  Sami was standing at the edge. ‘Can I leave my shirt on?’ he asked.

  The old man nodded. ‘Step into the water,’ he said.

  Kai tried to shake the fog from his mind. He put one foot in the water. There was a surge of energy through his toes, running up the length of his leg. It was painful, like a thousand tiny ants biting his skin.

  Then Indie and Sami were standing in the pool with him, and Indie was holding out her hand to him. He touched her fingers. She pulled back.

  ‘Ouch,’ she cried. ‘What was that?’

  The water bubbled around them. Kai looked back and saw the old man's face. His brow was creased in concentration. He was muttering strange words.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ said Kai. He tried to pull Indie back towards the edge. There was a low moan, and the splash and tumble of water. The moan grew louder and higher, shrieking and crying and screaming. The rock beneath his feet seemed to tilt and sway, and then it dropped away completely and the light faded and he was plunged into a world of darkness.

  Chapter 14

  The Lost Children

  It was cold, and Kai could only just make out the shapes of Indie and Sami beside him in the gloom. He was not surprised to discover his clothes were dry and he was standing in some kind of cave. It was so similar to his journeys with the shaman that he wondered for a moment if he was in Undaba, his body lying beside the gypsy pool while his spirit roamed the other realms.

  Then he remembered Old Man Kita’s words. They had travelled through a portal, like the one between the Seeing Tree and the Moon Tree. They were really here, wherever ‘here’ was.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ asked Indie.

  ‘It sounds like a waterfall,’ said Sami.

  They followed the sound along a narrow passage and out onto a broad ledge.

  ‘Ksik-si-num,’ said Kai.

  A soft glow spread from his hands to reveal a massive curtain of water, tumbling down over the rocks, throwing up sprays of white mist. The rocks were an eerie shade of green. At the far end of the ledge, closest to the water, was a staircase carved into the rock.

  ‘Careful,’ said Kai, as Indie pulled on her boots and began to climb down the stairs. ‘They look slippery.’

  ‘They’re not,’ said Indie. ‘They feel strange. Soft and spongy, like stepping onto piles of moss.’

  They followed the steps down the rock face, hidden by the cascading water. At the bottom there was another passage, leading through the green rocks and underneath the waterfall.

  ‘I guess this will take us to the palace,’ said Sami. ‘Old Man Kita said the last part is the most dangerous. There’ll be soldiers at the other end.’

  ‘How do we get past them?’ asked Indie.

  ‘There’s a spell,’ said Kai. ‘One of Chief Wicasa’s. It muddles people’s minds so that they can’t think properly.’

  ‘I know that spell,’ said Indie, her eyes lighting up. ‘When I escaped from Jabar’s father in the village of Linden, the old woman used it to hide me. She said it wouldn’t last very long.’

  ‘It won’t,’ said Kai. ‘But it’ll be long enough for us to sneak past the soldiers.’

  On silent feet they ran through the passage and stopped near the entrance, pressing their bodies against the damp wall. It was covered in the same green moss that covered the steps and the rocks.

  Indie was first. She leaned forward and peered around the rocks. Then she gave a gasp and pulled back.

  ‘What is it?’ whispered Kai. ‘Soldiers?’

  Indie shook her head.

  ‘Let me see,’ said Sami. He pushed past her and looked out. ‘Children,’ he said, turning back, his eyes wide.

  ‘What?’ said Kai. ‘In the palace of Moto? They must be the children of the emperor.’

  ‘No,’ said Indie. She was edging back along the passage, forcing Kai back. ‘This is not the right place. It can’t be.’

  ‘Would you stop!’ hissed Kai. ‘Let me look.’

  He tried to push his sister aside, but she clutched at his shirt. His foot slipped and he lost his balance. Before he could stop, he was falling forward, tumbling out of the passage and into a moonlit cave.

  A cry went up all around him, dozens of excited voices. ‘It’s a boy. Look at his brown skin!’

  Hands were grabbing at his clothes, touching his hair. When he looked up he could see children, ragged and dirty, clambering over each other to get close to him. They were painfully thin, with grubby faces and black circles under their eyes. On their wrists and arms were purple bruises and angry red blisters. On one or two of the smaller children, Kai could see yellow pus oozing from the broken skin and dripping down their skinny arms.

  ‘Leave him alone!’ It was Indie, stepping out of the passage behind him, her eyes blazing.

  One of the children, a girl, taller and tougher than the others, stood in front of Kai and poked him with a stick.

  ‘You don’t belong here,’ she said.

  ‘I said, Leave him alone!’ Indie marched over to the girl and grabbed the end of the stick, yanking it out of the girl’s hand. The other children crowded around, pushing and jostling.

  ‘Fight,’ cried one. The others took up the chant. ‘Fight. Fight. Fight.’

  Indie rattled the stick. She glared at the girl. The girl shifted her feet, stood straighter and glared back.

  ‘You’re gonna get hurt,’ said the girl.

  ‘Not as much as you are,’ said Indie. She swung the stick and it whistled past the girl’s ear.

  The girl didn’t even flinch. She sneered and squared her shoulders. ‘You won’t hit me,’ she said.

  The other children were stamping their feet and waving their arms. ‘Fight. Fight. Fight.’

  The girl leaned forward and shoved Indie in the chest. Indie staggered back a few steps. The girl grabbed the stick with both hands, but Indie held on tight. They stood facing each other, grappling with the stick, while the other children screamed and shouted.

  Then, without any warning, the girl let go, pushed past Indie and Kai, and threw open her arms.

  ‘Sami!’ she cried.

  Indie turned to see Sami caught up in a hug. He was crying.

  ‘Mari,’ he said. ‘Mari.’

  The girl was crying, too. She reached out a hand to the other children, saying, ‘Look, it’s Sami! It’s my little brother, Sami!’

  The other children gathered closer, reaching out to touch the boy. Sami grasped their hands and returned their hugs.

  ‘Are Mam and Da here?’ asked Sami, looking around.

  ‘No,’ said Mari. ‘There are no adults here. Only children.’

  ‘This isn’t Nagara, is it,’ said Indie, as they followed Mari out of the cave and into the night.

  They had emerged from a rocky hillside peppered with caves into a forest of strange bulbous trees. The moon was high in the sky, shining down on a landscape of sparse yellow grass and prickly orange bushes. Beyond the grasslands, there was an endless sea of rolling sand.

  The girl stopped and pointed with her stick. ‘It’s an island. That's all I know. If you keep walking that way, you'll come to the ocean.’

  ‘An island where?’ asked Indie. ‘Old Man Kita said he was sending us to Nagara.’

  ‘He told us the same thing. We wanted to find our parents. We we
nt to him and begged him to send us to the royal city.’

  Kai had stopped beside Indie. He shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t have brought you here,’ he said. ‘I knew it didn’t feel right. The magic. It was darker than it should have been.’

  ‘You didn’t bring us,’ said Indie. ‘We came together. Remember?’ She gave his arm an affectionate pat. ‘You say some stupid things, little brother.’

  Sami was gazing out at the sand dunes. ‘This doesn’t look like Moto,’ he said.

  ‘There was no one here when we got here,’ said Mari. ‘Just an empty hut. Come, I’ll show you.’

  She led them through the forest to a place where the land was flat and a small stream with clear water and smooth pebbles wound its way between the trees. At the base of the largest tree stood a hut with walls of mud brick and a roof of moss.

  ‘The roof was broken when we found it,’ said Mari. ‘And we had to patch the walls with dirt.’

  More children peered out of the doorway – younger children, about Sami’s age.

  ‘Did they all come here with you?’ asked Indie.

  ‘No,’ said Mari. ‘They came later, a few at a time, all looking for their parents.’

  ‘Why would Old Man Kita send them here?’

  ‘I don’t think he meant to,’ said Mari. ‘He was muttering strange words and fumbling with his hands, and his eyes were all glazed. I think he meant to send us to Nagara, but something went wrong.’

  They spent the rest of the night in Mari’s hut, curled together on the earth floor, shivering with cold. There were no blankets. The wind whistled under the door and through the cracks in the walls. Outside, the trees creaked and moaned.

  Indie woke long before daybreak, with Kai shaking her.

  ‘Those purple marks on the younger children,’ he whispered. ‘That’s how our father looked when the nightmares touched him. It spread really fast, turned his whole arm black.’

  Indie’s stomach twisted in horror. She remembered how her father had been trapped on Paapoka, the Island of Dreams. Kai had told her about the nightmares: the shadow creatures that had hunted them there, leaving her father's arm black and lifeless. It was only the skills of the old woman at the village of Linden that had saved him.

  ‘Is it the same thing?’ she asked, looking around, as if the nightmares were waiting in the corners of the hut.

  ‘I don't know,’ said Kai.

  They spoke for a long time about Paapoka and their father and the nightmares. In the morning they were hollow-eyed and anxious, and the island seemed a more difficult and dangerous place.

  After a breakfast of sour berries, Mari led them down to the stream, where the water appeared cool and fresh.

  ‘Wait! I’ll go first,’ she said, taking a deep breath.

  She knelt on the grass and leaned over the stream. As she dipped her fingers in the water, a strange thing happened. Small silver insects with buzzing wings appeared on the surface and rose in clouds around her, settling on her skin. Frantically, she scooped the water into her mouth, and then leapt to her feet and ran back towards the hut, slapping at the insects on her arms and legs.

  ‘It’s always like this,’ she said, grimacing as she scratched and rubbed at the vivid red bites the insects had left all over her body. ‘Every time we take a drink. We tried to collect the water in seed pods and our hands, but the silvers swarm so thickly that it’s impossible. So we take turns and drink quickly – there’s nothing else we can do.’

  In the daylight the children looked pale and sick. Indie understood now why they were so dirty.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ asked Mari.

  Indie looked at Kai. He shook his head. ‘Maybe later,’ he said. ‘I’m not really thirsty.’

  Sami was examining the bites on his sister’s arm. ‘This is a horrible place,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not the worst of it,’ said Mari. ‘You’ve tasted the berries. They’re the only food we can find and they never fill you up. The younger children are so hungry they cry in their sleep, but there’s nothing else to eat.’

  ‘What about fish?’ asked Indie. She was thinking about her time on the island with Aunty Mai and Aunt Sofia. There had always been plenty to eat.

  ‘The ocean is too wild,’ said Mari. ‘We have no lines or hooks, and even if we did, the waves would drag them away. You can’t swim – it’s ferocious. I’ll show you.’

  She led them past the caves and all the way up the hill. At the top they stood in silence. The other side of the hill fell away into a steep cliff. The ocean boiled and foamed at the bottom, crashing against the rocks. There was nothing to see but peaks of grey-green water, stretching on forever.

  Chapter 15

  Blisters and Bruises

  ‘Where do the blisters come from?’ asked Kai. They had returned to the hut, and he was sitting beside one of the younger children, staring at the little boy’s arms. He could see, on closer inspection, that the marks were different to the black stain that had covered his father’s arm. These marks were smaller and scattered, like fingerprints.

  The boy looked up at him, his eyes wide and frightened. ‘Mari says we shouldn’t talk about it.’

  ‘That’s stupid,’ said Kai. ‘If someone hurts you, you need to tell people.’

  ‘Not here,’ said the boy. He jumped up and ran off into the trees. Kai watched him go.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Indie, sitting on the ground beside him.

  ‘I’m trying to find out what the purple bruises are,’ said Kai. ‘And the blisters. Ugh. All yellow and filled with pus. They have them on their arms and around their wrists, but they won’t tell me why.’

  ‘I thought it was the silver insects.’

  Kai shook his head. ‘The silvers make red welts. The bruises and the blisters are different.’

  ‘Do you think someone is hurting them? One of the older kids?’

  ‘No,’ said Kai. ‘These aren’t ordinary blisters. Have you seen the colour of the pus? And the older kids have them too. Something strange is going on.’

  They spent the day exploring the island: walking under the trees and through the grasslands, following the stream and the riverbed, climbing up into the caves. It wasn’t a large island. It didn’t take long to explore. By nightfall they were back in the hut, their chins in their hands, convinced there was no escape.

  ‘What about Chief Wicasa’s flying spell?’ asked Indie, her eyes bright.

  Kai didn’t look up. ‘Shaman Yanti burned the book, remember?’

  ‘But don’t you know the words?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ha, ha. Very funny.’ Indie was standing now, so excited by this new idea she could hardly keep still.

  ‘I’m not joking,’ said her brother. ‘It’s a long and complicated spell in Old Kalika. I didn't memorise it.’

  ‘I would have.’ Indie sat down again, deflated. ‘If I could fly any time I wanted.’

  ‘It doesn’t work all the time,’ said Kai. ‘It only works if there’s no other way.’

  ‘Well, there’s no other way now.’

  ‘I told you, I can’t remember it!’

  They sat in silence for a while: Indie surprised that her clever brother, who had no trouble remembering his lessons, would forget something so important; and Kai furious at himself for relying on a book, and then handing that book over to a crazy old shaman.

  There was movement outside the hut. Indie walked over to the wall and put her eye to a crack. Outside, the forest was lit by the full moon, and standing in the moonlight in the most beautiful silver dress was her mother.

  Without stopping to think, she ran to the door, threw it open, and raced outside.

  ‘Wait!’ Mari was behind her, chasing her.

  Indie ignored her. ‘Mum!’ she cried.

  Her mother put out her long slim arms and smiled. She said nothing, but beckoned to Indie.

  Indie didn’t hesitate. She was almost close enough to fall into her mother’s arms, when
she felt the whole weight of Mari’s body crashing into her, slamming her to the ground.

  She sat up, the breath knocked out of her, so angry she could barely speak.

  ‘It’s not who you think it is,’ said Mari, panting, holding tightly to Indie’s legs. ‘It’s not your mother.’

  The silver figure shimmered in the moonlight. Arms out, beckoning. Then a cloud passed over the moon, and in the brief shadow Indie could see the figure shift and change. For a moment she thought she saw grey skin, lank green hair, and a swirling mass of silver insects. The moon shone out again, and her mother stood before her.

  Indie felt a pang of horror. ‘It’s not her,’ she whispered.

  ‘No,’ said Mari. ‘We don't know what they are. They come out of the water at night, and the silvers buzz around them and change the way they look. When you get close, they grab you.’

  As she spoke, her face grew pale and she flinched at each word. Her breath became short and sharp. She stopped and pulled up her sleeves, showing Indie her arms. They were covered in small blisters, like the other children, but as she spoke the marks swelled into angry red blotches and dribbles of pus broke through the skin.

  ‘Why didn't you warn us?’ cried Indie.

  ‘Couldn’t.’ Mari clutched her throat, as if it hurt her to speak. ‘If you talk about it, the blisters swell and burst … Hurts too much ... And the others come.’ She gave an anguished groan and fell back on the ground.

  Indie looked back at the figure she had thought was her mother. Beside it were two more creatures, flashing and silver, but with the face and form of women. As she watched, another three stepped out of the shadows.

  Indie pulled Mari to her feet. The bigger girl was whimpering, rubbing her arms. She looked dazed and disoriented.

  ‘Mam,’ she whispered, looking out at the figures.

  ‘No!’ Indie threw both arms around Mari's waist. She pulled her back towards the hut. But Mari was stronger. She pushed Indie to the ground. Indie climbed back to her feet. The figures moved and swayed in the moonlight, dancing. They were beautiful to look at, but all Indie felt was cold terror.