Engn

IIII

IIIIFinn started awake with a gasp. Metal fingers scrabbled at his bedroom window. He expected to see the mask of an ironclad peering in at him, but there was no one. How could there be when he slept upstairs?

Another tap on the window. Someone was throwing stones to wake him up. There was light outside, but he couldn't hear any of the familiar sounds from down inside the house: the silvery fanfare of the kettle being filled at the tap, the clatter of pans on the stove. Outside, birds were starting to chatter questioningly, but the sun wasn't yet up over the mountain-tops.

Finn clambered over his bed and pushed open his window. Cool, damp air breathed in at him. Connor stood among the cabbages, another pebble ready in his hand.

“Finn! Come on!” He spoke in a whispered shout that sounded very loud in the dawn hush.

“What? Come where?”

“I have to show you something. You have to come now.”

“But…”

“Come on!”

“I can't. I have to help my father in the workshop this morning. He'll be awake soon.”

“Don't be such a baby, Finn.”

“What is it?”

“Just jump down. It won't take long.”

Finn looked back into his room, unsure what to do. Everyone was still asleep. He pulled on the clothes that lay scattered around on the floor from the evening before and turned to climb backwards through the window. If he held onto the sill with his fingers the drop wasn't so great. He landed with a clump on the soil next to Connor. In the early-morning chill he could feel goose bumps all across his stomach.

“What is it?” asked Finn.

“Come on. I'll show you.”

They ran out of the garden, along the lane and up the slope into the woods. It was colder still under the trees, the black only beginning to shade into dark green. Connor led the way to one of the paths that threaded between the boughs. They ran quickly. Their feet knew the way. Neither spoke. They didn't need to speak. Finally, Connor held up an arm and stopped. He began to pick his way through the undergrowth next to the path, as if stalking some flighty woodland animal. He stopped in front of a dense clump of bushes that sat against a steep cliff of mud and stone.

“I found it last night,” Connor whispered. “Saw it from the swing when you'd gone.”

They'd built the swing a little farther down the bank, Finn edging his way along an overhanging bough to secure a thick rope. When you pushed off from the bank the ground fell away, leaving you spinning through the treetops. The trick was to make sure you had enough speed to reach the bank again. Otherwise it was a long drop to the ground.

Finn peered into the thickets ahead of them. It was lighter now, but he could make out nothing unusual. Connor bent to push his way through and Finn, shrugging, followed his friend in, eyes closed as the branches slapped into his face.

A flattened patch of grass lay within the circle of bushes. Something large had lain there, crushing the grass into a nest. A bear? Then he noticed some old scraps of clothing and a blackened circle where there'd been a fire. The faintest smell of smoke and damp ash lay in the air.

“Someone was here?”

Connor nodded. “The person the ironclads were hunting. They must be on the run and hiding in the woods.”

Finn didn't like the thought of someone else in their woods. With the bank behind them and the bushes all around it was impossible to know if the intruder was nearby. And the ironclads could still be around. His parents didn't even know he was out of the house.

“Come on,” he said. “Let's go back.”

“But there's another trail,” said Connor. “Leading on. Let's follow it, Finn.”

“Think how many ironclads were hunting them, Conn. The engine they had with them. It's not safe.”

“I'll bet it's a wrecker,” said Connor, his eyes wide with excitement. “The ironclads must have uncovered some plot to blow up one of the great wheels, or, I don't know, bring down one of the chimneys. It must be a wrecker on the run and the ironclads have chased them here. You know what they do to wreckers if they catch them.”

It was another game they often played. One of them, the ironclad, would defend an Engn built from planks or branches. The other, the wrecker, would try his best to destroy it, kicking it to pieces or lobbing stones at it from a safe distance. People whispered many stories about the wreckers and how they worked in secret to destroy Engn. How the masters could never tell who was secretly working for them.

Finn looked back down at the crushed circle of grass. He wondered what it was really like to have the ironclads hunting you. He shivered. He certainly had heard stories of what they did to the wreckers they caught. He didn't like to think about it.

“I'm going home.”

“Finn!”

“I told you, I have to help my father this morning.”

“But the trail! Look, I'm not going to follow it on my own.”

Finn turned back from the edge of the little clearing to look at Connor. There had been so many adventures over the years. They couldn't ignore this one.

“Okay. This afternoon, we'll follow the trail then. When it's properly light.” He didn't say it, but that would give the wrecker more time to get away, too.

“Promise?” said Connor.

“Of course.”

Connor grinned and slapped him on the back.

“Come on then, let's go home. I'm starving anyway.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

They raced back along the path, roaring with laughter as each attempted to barge the other into the undergrowth. Their fight from the previous evening was forgotten, their easy friendship resuming as it always did.

They parted back where the path ran nearest to Finn's house. It was later than he'd thought. The sun was rising over the mountaintops in front of him, casting impossibly long tree shadows across the valley floor. He had to hurry. If he was lucky, he might be able to climb back into his room before his father and mother noticed he was gone.

He began to run again on the lane towards home. He was sprinting so quickly he ran straight into Mrs. Megrim striding around a corner on her way up to the Switch House, black walking-stick thrust out before her. She always started work before even the farmers, priding herself on being ready for the earliest messages of the day. She was ancient, as thin as a stick and slightly bent in the middle. Still, it was Finn that was sent sprawling to the floor. Mrs. Megrim stood over him, unmoved. Her grey hair was locked into place with long, sharp pins. Her eyes were black dots.

“What do you think you're doing? You nearly knocked me over, you young idiot.”

“I'm, I'm sorry, Mrs. Megrim. I didn't see you.”

“Don't you have eyes?”

“No. I mean, yes. Of course.”

“What are you doing running around knocking people over at such an hour anyway? Up to no good again! Ida and Dan have no control over you. I'll have words with them!” She held up her stick, ready to strike Finn.

“I'm fetching something for my dad. I've got to hurry,” said Finn. He scrambled to his feet.

“I'll have words!” she shouted again as Finn hurried away from her. “And don't be late for your lessons!”

His bedroom window was shut when he got home. He'd left it open, hadn't he? He'd have to use the door. He lifted the latch as quietly as he could and slipped inside. He thought he was alone at first, but his father was sitting at the table in the shadows, sipping a mug of tea.

“There you are. Been up to no good, have you?”

His father sounded amused rather than angry. Finn's eyes adjusted to the gloom. His father grinned the grin he used when he remembered being a boy himself.

“No. Just playing in the garden. I woke up.”

“Just as well your mum's not up, eh? Come and eat.”

The morning passed quickly for Finn. The acrid smell of solder filled the workshop as his father repaired a pump used to suck water up from the river for the fields. The tip of the soldering iron glowed bright red as his father pulled it from the smouldering coals of the forge. Diamonds of bright sunlight from the high windows in the roof suffused the room in golden light. It was another hot day. They had the great double-doors flung open, but it was still airless. Finn was glad his father wasn't smelting iron or blowing glass.

A great bank of wooden drawers took up one wall of the workshop. Some were tiny, filled with pins and washers, screws and cogs. The largest could hold whole engine-casings or axle-boxes. The workshop was always a clutter of broken machinery, wiring, tools, wood being turned on the lathe, disassembled devices that Finn didn't recognize. All the parts and pieces of the machines used by people up and down the valley, all of them built or repaired by his father. His father was always busy. Today, it was Finn's task to put as much back into the drawers as possible.

He was supposed to be learning all the crafts his father was expert at. It was the same in most families, the children learning the skills of their parents. Sometimes, however, it didn't work that way. Perhaps a couple had no children, or else their offspring didn't have the aptitudes required to pick up the skills of their parents. No one had said as much, but Finn strongly suspected that was the case with him. His father's endless tinkering and hammering bored him. He wandered around the workshop, his thoughts elsewhere, picking up handfuls of items and dropping them with a clatter into drawers that contained similar-looking objects. A set of stained, wooden step-ladders allowed him access to the higher drawers. He stopped at the top and looked down on the workshop, enjoying the unusual perspective. His father ground a piece of metal into shape, sending showers of white-hot sparks all across his arms and the workshop floor.

“Stay away while I'm shaping this bracket,” his father called without looking up. “I don't want you to get burned.”

“Okay.”

Finn found a drawer for the metal springs he held and dropped them inside. It was boring working there with his father, but he liked it too, somehow. He felt safe, surrounded by the familiar clutter. He liked the smell of wood and metal. He thought about Connor, and the wrecker being chased through the woods just near his own house. Today, for once, he was in no hurry to escape outside.

When the afternoon came, he was allowed to run off and play. His mother gave him a pasty, some apples, and a flask of water.

“Are you playing with Connor?”

“Yes.”

“Enjoy yourself.”

“I will,” he replied. But he walked, rather than ran, back towards the woods.

Connor was waiting for him on the iron gate. It had once separated two fields up near the edge of the trees. Now the stone gateposts were crumbling and the rusty gate, although it still swung on its hinges, was never used. It would be useless anyway: the walls that once kept the two fields separate had long since crumbled into a low line of rubble. But you could still climb onto the bars of the gate and, kicking off from the ground, swing around, the iron hinges squealing unmusically. If you kicked off hard enough, there was a great jarring jerk as the gate clashed into the stop on the gatepost and rebounded. The usual game was to hold on while trying to shake the other off. But today, Connor jumped off the gate as Finn approached.

“You're here at last.”

“Been busy.”

“So was I, but I managed to get away ages ago. I brought these.”

In his hands Connor held his catapult and also a knife, the sort his father's men used to trim and weave the hedges around his fields. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a smaller fishing knife and handed it to Finn.

“We'd better be armed. Ready?”

Finn looked at the stubby blade of the knife Connor held out for him, then grabbed it.

“Ready.”

They ran into the trees and back to the bushes where they had found the wrecker's nest. Finn's heart thumped as they approached. But no one was there and there were no new tracks. But, just as Connor had said, quite clear now, a trail led off into the deeper woods higher up the slope.

“We'd better be quiet. In case the ironclads are nearby,” said Finn.

Connor looked at him, his usual grin absent, and nodded.

The pathways in the woods there were twisty and difficult to follow, moving around as the animals trod out new ones. Finn soon lost track of where they were, although he could tell from the sloping ground which way they must be traveling. They crept through a forest of ferns, great curving stalks as high as their shoulders. They took turns to pick one, strip off most of the fronds, and spear it through the air to see who could get one the farthest. They stopped repeatedly to examine the ground, looking for footprints or snapped grass stalks. The trail was clear enough. Someone had definitely come that way.

The trees soared into the sky, unclimbable, their lowest branches far, far off the ground. Green avenues opened between them as they walked. Finn wanted to stop and walk down one, to see what magical place it led to, but Connor hurried on and he couldn't stop.

They came to a place where the path dipped through a massed tangle of dense bushes: bramble and gorse and some plant with shiny, squeaky leaves and big purple flowers. At the bottom of the dip Connor stopped.

“I don't understand. The tracks just end here.”

It was gloomy in the little dip, colder, the sky farther away. The two of them searched around on the floor looking for some explanation.

“Look,” said Finn after several minutes searching through the vegetation at the side of the path. “Someone's been this way.”

He stepped forwards and pushed aside thick, overhanging branches, expecting to see into the denser greenery of the bushes. To his surprise, another path led up a cleft in the ground, completely obscured by the dense growth around it.

He stepped through and held the branches back for Connor to follow. They climbed for a while, then emerged onto a bank with steep sides that wound its way along the side of the slope. The ground was carpeted with a spongy layer of pine needles. They picked their way forwards, neither of them speaking, glancing at each other from time to time.

Up ahead, the path led into an open space. Beams of sunlight, solid-looking, shone down through high gaps in the canopy. That must be where the person had gone. He wasn't as good as Connor at following tracks, but even he could see the trail was fresh. There was a good chance the wrecker was still here, just up ahead.

They drew their knives and stood side by side on the path. Finn's stomach fizzed with anxiety. He wanted to run away. But they had faced many enemies over the years, real and imaginary. And Finn knew – they both knew – that if it came to a fight, each would defend the other to the end.

They stepped forwards, expecting to be attacked at any moment.

One of Finn's memories snapped into place. Sunlight and brown hair. He knew this place. He had never, in all the years since, been able to find it again. Now they were there. And he knew exactly who the person must be. She had come back, after all this time, come back to their secret place.

He pushed forwards ahead of Connor and bolted into the clearing.

“Shireen! It's me!”

But it wasn't his sister. A girl he had never seen before peered at him around a bundle of filthy blankets, her face full of panic. She backpedalled on the ground, scrambling to her feet. In her hand she held a knife of her own, long and sharp, its edge serrated. She waved it at them, ready to fight.