Dotty and Daisy were standing with mouths agape.
‘Look, Daisy,’ Mirabelle shouted. ‘I can do something.’
She raised her arms, then drove the birds downwards. The ravens responded like musicians to a conductor. It looked as if they were attempting to hammer the Malice right through the earth. They became a black tornado of whirring feathers and snapping beaks, a maelstrom of fury and flashing eyes. Mirabelle watched them, willed them on. Down they came again and again, snapping and biting and pounding. Then finally Mirabelle closed her eyes and nodded, and they rose up as one, flew up into the night sky and dispersed.
Mirabelle opened her eyes. The eerie silence was broken only by the fluttering of the raven on her shoulder, and the wet gug-gug hissing and gurgling sounds of the creature that lay before her.
She advanced towards it. All that remained of the Malice was a skeletal thing with bits of white flesh hanging from it. It looked like the carving on the door with even more flesh sloughed off its body, except it still had its vile head with its grey slimy eyes and yellow teeth.
Mirabelle stood over it. It raised its one remaining claw as if begging for mercy. Mirabelle went down on one knee and took its head delicately between her hands and looked into its eyes.
‘I’ve been feeling this terrible pain ever since we first met.’
The creature tried to turn its head away, but it was too weak. It made a moist choking sound, as if it were trying to speak.
‘Shush now. I think I know what the pain was. I’d never felt it before, you see.’
Mirabelle closed her eyes and opened her mouth and took in a great lungful of air through her nose. The Malice started to tremble, and a black mist started to rise from its body, collecting into a round revolving core above it, which glowed with an eerie grey light. Mirabelle took that strange black light in her hands. She brought it towards her mouth. The creature keened and wept, but Mirabelle paid it no heed.
She swallowed its black soul.
The remains of the Malice collapsed into a spiky wet mush of bones and melted grey flesh. Mirabelle wiped an arm across her mouth. The raven cawed. She stood up and turned to her family. She smiled at them.
‘I was so hungry. But I’m not hungry any more.’
Part 5
Where and When
Jem
Jem and Tom were in the garden, helping Mirabelle plant flowers.
It was mid-morning, and they’d sown at least a dozen. One or two had started sprouting, and one in particular had already reached a height of two feet and begun snapping at them. It dived at Tom, and he barely twisted out of the way in time.
‘Be careful,’ said Mirabelle. ‘You have to keep watching them. They’re young and haven’t learned any manners yet.’
The seeds were huge and to Jem they looked like veined and overgrown apple pips. They were so large they had to be held with two hands. The air took on a metallic tang, and the hairs on Jem’s forearms stood on end. Odd appeared beside her, clutching half a dozen more seeds to his chest. He was panting slightly. Jem was delighted to see him back on his feet. He’d made a quick recovery and, in the week since Mirabelle had defeated the Malice, Odd had come on in leaps and bounds and was back to his old wandering ways.
He handed Jem two seeds. ‘These ones are just about to pop, so I would suggest planting them quite soon.’
By ‘quite soon’ Jem knew Odd meant ‘right now’.
Odd doled out the seeds, then stood with his hands behind his back, surveying everything, rocking back and forth on his heels.
‘You could help, Odd,’ said Mirabelle on her knees, shovelling soil aside.
Odd gave the subtlest shake of his head, as if he’d barely heard her. ‘I source things, Mirabelle. That is my unenviable task.’
Jem frowned at him. He looked pensive, as if his mind wasn’t really present. She tilted her head and looked at him. It took him a while to notice, and he just gave her a quick nod, then he went back to rocking back and forth on his heels, occasionally saying something like, ‘That pod is going to be trouble – I can tell.’
Jem reasoned that he was probably worrying about the meeting between Enoch, Eliza and the council. They were discussing what Enoch had called a ‘new Covenant’. Jem had no idea what that entailed, but Mirabelle seemed optimistic about it and told her there was nothing to worry about thanks mainly to Piglet. Because of Piglet everyone understood each other now, she said. There were no barriers, no lies, no pretences, no hatreds. Meanwhile, Piglet was safely back in his room, presumably content because his ration of meat had been almost doubled. It was being sourced mainly by Odd, who was now also providing some supplies to the village.
‘Where do you get them?’ asked Tom.
Odd’s mind still seemed to be elsewhere, but he managed to answer. ‘I can’t tell you that. If I told you that, your mind would be overthrown, you would go mad, the world would seem to you to be nothing but—’
‘Odd,’ said Mirabelle sharply.
‘What?’
‘Stop talking.’
Odd nodded, looking so serious that Jem almost laughed.
There was a caw from a tree branch overhead where the one-eyed raven looked down from his perch. He always seemed to be with Mirabelle now.
‘You see,’ said Mirabelle. ‘Lucius agrees with me.’
Everyone laughed, except Odd, who just frowned at the raven. Mirabelle had christened him Lucius after a Roman general. Odd didn’t like it, but Jem thought it seemed to suit the raven with his haughty bearing.
The back door opened, and Freddie came out towards them.
‘They’re finished,’ he said.
‘What did they decide?’ asked Mirabelle, straightening up and brushing soil off her dress.
‘To continue as before,’ he said, ‘but that there should be
