The sea stirred and shifted like a living thing under the thunder. Its dark mass rose and fell, battering at the crags and cliffs of the little cove with increasing force, spitting salt spray into the charged air to spite the night, the gathering storm.
Etty cursed and crouched, one hand feeling the scrubby ground before her, the other wielding her lantern like a lucky charm against the night that had fallen so quickly. The flame danced madly inside the glass, as if believing that by moving about it could cheat extinction as the gale began to grow. The landscape was a host of shadows ranged around her, a focus for the sea's rage and nothing more.
She hunted more urgently for the last few clumps of rhineweed she needed to fill her basket. Storm or not, she had bellies to fill.
A sudden gust of wind whipped her shawl up and over her head, blinding her, and the sky cackled with more thunder. The lantern slipped from her grasp, and she heard its glass crack dully. The flame inside died as it broke free of its cage, leaving only the grey ghosting of the full moon to light her path. The foaming sea hissed at her, warning her away.
Etty dropped the useless lamp into her basket and shivered as the first rain started to fall. Her simple dress, threadbare, grey and forlorn under the shawl, was soaked in seconds. It was time to go back.
Smoky clouds blew across the moon's laughing face. The wind fell for a moment, and she heard the noise.
At first Etty thought she'd imagined it; she could hear only the frustrations of the holy ocean taken out as always on the uncomprehending manlands. But there it came to her again. It was a regular, pounding sound. Footfalls on rock, many of them, a heavy, marching rhythm. People coming. Coming closer.
Lightning abruptly lit up the landscape, freezing the windswept scene for one bleached-bright moment. It showed Etty nothing. The sound was coming from the stone path, just over the rise, her way back to the
farmhouse. But no one came here; no strangers had cause to come here, to the very edge of the manlands. She'd been to the City often enough, of course, but no stranger had bothered her here for years.
Coming closer.
She should run, some instinct told her, hide. She looked about. There was no shelter here, no cover. The rain was coming down harder. Her body felt so heavy, as heavy as the footfalls, but her insides felt light as butterflies, buffeted about as if the growing gale was inside her.
The footsteps stopped. Whoever was coming must be on the scrubby grass now, approaching the rise.
The basket slipped from her fingers as a shadowy shape came into view. It was man-shaped, tall and broad. The other shapes split away from that one, carefully walking down towards her.
'Who are you?' Etty took a step back, clutching on more tightly to her shawl as the men formed a semicircle in front of her. 'What do you want?'
No one spoke. The shapes stood still as statues. She could hear only the sea's ragged breathing and the wind.
'You don't scare me, you know,' Etty snapped, pulling herself up to
her full height, sticking out her chin. Rainwater had plastered her long
fringe to her forehead and she brushed it from her eyes.
No one moved. The men were poised before her unnaturally, like
walking scarecrows suddenly rooted back into the earth.
Etty took a deep breath. 'You'll let me pass, please. I've got to be
getting back -'
'You are Ettianne Grace,' said the figure in the middle, his voice
low and flat, surprisingly quiet for such a large man.
It took Etty a few moments to register his words. No one had called
her by her family name in such a long time. She had so little family left.
Her heart sank like a stone in the sea. These people knew her. They had come
here for her.
'What if I am?' she challenged.
'You are going to come with us,' the man said, his voice light and
singsong, like a child repeating a phrase it had learned by rote, any
meaning bled from it. It reminded Etty of Braga, back home. She imagined him
staring worriedly out of the window into the storm, waiting for his mother
to return and start the stew.
'What is this?' Etty said, pulling the shawl more tightly around
her. 'What do you want with me?'
The moonlight sputtered under scudding clouds as the man in the
middle took a step closer. He had a bald head and jug ears. His features
were lost in the darkness.
'You are going to come with us,' came the slow, stilted voice again.
The bald man jumped forward and giggled. 'Awake or sleeping.'
The other men started to chuckle, too. They followed their leader
and took a step closer towards her.
Etty fell back, eyes wild, an animal hemmed in by these hunting men.
The sea, confined by the rock of the cove, roared behind her in sympathy.
The noise, like her blood thundering in her ears, reminded her she was as
trapped here as were the pounding waves, however hard she might struggle.
She moaned fearfully as the men closed in on her, faster now.
'Excuse me,' another man's voice called out. 'We're looking for
someone with knowledge of the area. Could you lend us a hand?'
This new voice reminded Etty of a child too, but this time of a
breathless boy in a playground, bounding about with precocious refinement,
wanting to play with everyone at once and uncertain where to begin.
The men froze at the sound of the stranger, and turned. Through a
gap in their ranks, in a flash of obliging lightning, Etty caught an
impression of the man who had spoken: a quizzical smile on thin lips, dark
locks of hair wild about the angular face like the storm, eyes wide open and
curious, heedless of the driving rain. There was someone beside him, a lot
shorter, clutching a dark coat miserably about herself - unlike her
companion, clearly wishing she was anywhere but here.
'You're people, I see,' the newcomer said strangely. 'Humans? How
dull. I've seen so many people lately. You don't have any really good
monsters around here, I suppose, do you?'
Etty wanted to scream for this man's help, never mind the nonsense
he was spouting. But, as in an old nightmare, no sound would come from her
throat. She tried to catch the man's eye. She wasn't even sure he could see
her.
'Our friend's fallen and may have hurt himself,' the newcomer went
on, rocking on his heels and looking brightly at each man in turn, as if
this were all an exciting game. 'We need help to find him.'
The men said nothing. Etty imagined they were staring at the
newcomer as hard as she was.
'Flashlights? Ropes? Local knowledge?' the newcomer continued
hopefully.
'He was mucking around on the cliff tops back there,' the girl
beside him added, indicating behind them, her voice sterner, impatient and
confident, an adult's voice. 'How far could he have fallen?' Her voice fell
lower. 'And how many limbs might the stupid show-off have broken in this
gravity?'
The newcomer looked at her and started hopping briskly from one foot
to the other. 'I keep telling you, Anji, you're imagining the gravity thing,
it's Earth normal - well, give or take a...' He trailed off, shivered
suddenly as if noticing the storm for the first time, and turned back to the
men. 'Could you take a moment to come with us and help us look?'
'Please,' added the girl - Anji? She sounded suddenly heartfelt.
At last, Etty managed a croaking cry, and the strange newcomer
dropped to a crouch to look through the men's legs at her, cowering on all
fours in the wet grass.
He frowned at her, then smiled warmly. 'You can come too if you
like.'
Suddenly the bald man lashed out, kicking the newcomer in the head.
He fell backwards and out of Etty's sight with a surprised cry.
'Doctor!' Anji shouted, adding something lower in shocked protest
and rushing, presumably, to where he had fallen.
The bald man stalked towards the girl.
'All you had to say was "no",' she complained bitterly from the
darkness. Then she gasped, a sound almost lost as the whipped-up waves
hurled themselves furiously against the rocks below them. And suddenly the
bald man was staggering backwards, almost crashing into Etty, clutching his
groin.
The other five men started to advance on the fallen doctor and his
friend. 'Oh, that's fair odds, isn't it?' said Anji, her voice pitching
higher with fear.
Etty scrambled up. No one was looking at her now, she could run, she
could get... She stopped herself guiltily before she could end the sentence
with 'away' instead of 'help'.
And then the bald man's hand closed around her ankle. Etty struggled
to free herself, overbalanced, fell heavily on something slick and slimy
against her skin. She cried out instinctively, then realised it must be the
rhineweed. Her hands flailed out for the basket and her fingertips brushed
at the wicker, scrabbling for a grip. Her leg was cramping up. Finally she
lifted the basket and brought it down as hard as she could on the bald man's
face. He grunted but his grip didn't slacken.
'Leave us alone!' Anji shouted, distraught. 'Just leave us alone!'
Etty could hear scuffling, people slipping on the wet grass, blows
landing. The bald man got on to all fours and yanked on her leg as if
seeking to drag her along by it.
'Why me?' she shrieked, smashing the basket down on him again, but
it was hopeless, too light. 'Why?' But, deep down, she thought she probably
knew. Punishment. Punishment from the Creator, who wanted never to know her
for what she had done. Etty felt hot tears mixing with the rainwater. This
man was going to drag her away somewhere, and then he and the others would -
Suddenly the newcomer was standing over her. There was a cut to the
side of his left eye where he'd been kicked. Now he trod deliberately on the
man's wrist, the toe of his battered shoe smearing mud over Etty's leg while
the heel dug itself in. The bald man's hand spasmed open at last and Etty
snatched her leg free, scrambling away from him.
The doctor crouched over the bald man and placed a hand against his
throat. 'Go back to wherever you came from. You understand? Whatever you
were meant to do here, you've failed.'
It was the bald man's turn to scramble away now. Etty tried to make
out the expression on his heavy-set face. He just looked confused.
'Go!' the doctor shouted.
The other men staggered over to join their leader, and, without
another word, they trooped away. The moon hid its face again, and only when
Etty heard the sound of heavy boots thumping on the rocky path again did she
release the breath she'd been holding, along with a low moan of relief.
'Are you all right?' the man said, his quiet voice carrying clearly
through the storm.
'You're a doctor?' Etty said, suspiciously.
'I'm the Doctor.' He emphasised the difference as gently as he put
an arm round the girl.
Etty stared at the two of them, hugging her legs for comfort so her
knees were up under her chin. 'And you're Anji?'
'That's right,' Anji said. Her smile was bright like the moonlight.
'We won't hurt you.'
'You can fight,' Etty observed.
Anji shrugged. 'Self-defence classes. I should've brought my rape
alarm.'
'We were lucky,' the Doctor said thoughtfully, rubbing the back of
his neck. 'They could've killed us, but their hearts weren't really in it. I
don't think they'd been told to expect any trouble - certainly they weren't
banking on our being here.'
'And they didn't know what to do?' Anji said sceptically.
'No, I don't think they really did.' The Doctor seemed to notice
that Etty was still sitting miserably in the mire. 'Please,' he said,
stretching out his hand to her. 'Won't you get up? Perhaps there's somewhere
a little more sheltered we can go to?'
Etty took his hand, and let him pull her up. But his grip was
sticky. She looked at her hand and it was dark red.
Anji had noticed it, too. 'Doctor? You're bleeding...'
The Doctor slapped his clean hand against the back of his neck, and
that came away smeared nearly black, too. He patted the back of his head
gingerly. 'Ah!' He smiled, even as he winced, pleased to have solved the
mystery. 'Head wound. Feels nasty. Must've picked it up in the -'
Abruptly his eyes closed, his legs buckled beneath him and he
collapsed to the wet ground.
'Doctor?' Anji crouched beside him, then looked up anxiously at
Etty. 'Help me with him!'
Etty stood and stared. She'd met these people barely five minutes
ago, and already her entire world felt as if it had been upended, like the
basket of rhineweed at her feet. She started to shake.
Anji looked at her sternly. 'You can go into shock later, OK? But
right now, I need you. Is there a hospital near here?'
Etty shook her head dumbly.
'We need somewhere warm, and light. We're going to have to carry him
to wherever you live.'
'Carry him?' Etty whispered, terrified at the thought of bringing
such strangeness back home with her.
'And quickly. We need to see how bad this cut is.'
Anji was clearly distraught herself, forcing herself to cope. Etty could relate to that, at least.
Leaving the basket on its side where it was, she took the Doctor's
feet as Anji slipped her arms under his shoulders, and lifted.
