Devils on Starfall Isle

19

Verity felt that she'd cried every tear that she had in her.

Eventually the things roared and left; they thundered away through the forest, their crashing progress fading as they galloped west. Carefully, slowly, she peeked out of the doorway. She knew that this hut was no protection from the creatures, from Gull; but it might be from other humans. She had no wish to see any possible survivors. She didn't want to be accosted by them again.

Father Hooper was sitting where she'd left him. He, too, was weeping. He looked up at her; he had no words. He simply shook his head.

There were a few people alive. They were calling to each other, little voices of hope in the night. The chapel itself was ablaze; something must have fallen, and the great fire lit everything, casting flickering shadows across the ruined earth and the buildings and the grey trees beyond, while black smoke boiled up into the still air.

Another star fell, but she barely noticed it.

'This is your fault,' said a man's voice. Verity froze, expecting there to be yet more hatred directed at her; but no. It was one of the townsfolk pointing at another figure, a woman.

'No it's not,' said the woman, warily.

It was Hope.

The priest wiped his eyes, and stood, slowly, wearily. When he spoke, it was slow, and without emotion, his words like stones.

'There are lies here. There are truths that are not being told. We have scant hours before they return. We must, must, must, speak the truth, or we will all fall. The girl, Verity, is not your enemy. Hope: you have done something, and you must atone. You atone by telling us, here, now; or you are lost and your soul is forfeit.'

'No that's ridiculous...' started Hope, but a rage was building in Verity, a rage at how this woman, this respectable pillar of her community, had betrayed her.

And so Verity shouted at her, spat the words like a poison.

'You liar! You liar!'

Incensed, fed up of being mistreated, she advanced from the hut; she held the priest's sharp little knife in front of her like a sword, sure that she could kill if she needed to.

Hope turned to her, and tried to martial scorn back. 'She's just a silly little girl...'

But Verity was uncowed 'You promised! And you broke that promise! You promised on your soul that you would protect me! You don't just throw that away on some little catch, some tricky little word! You broke that because your soul is already forfeit! You broke it because you are the one who brought these things here!'

She screamed the last sentence, barely comprehensible; but the dozen or so survivors understood well enough, realisation and hatred blossoming in their faces.

'Let Hope speak,' said the priest. 'In the name of the Twin Brothers, let the woman speak. Have we learnt nothing about innocence? Let her speak, before you do something rash, giver her the chance to speak the truth, I beg of you all.'

Hope walked towards them. The burning chapel lit up one side of her; the other side was stained by the night. When she spoke, her voice shook.

'I will tell you the full story, good people of Hod. I will tell you what I know, and under the Twin Brothers, you can judge me.

'Two years ago my husband and I came to this isle. We came because we worked out the pattern of the falling stars. We saw that they stopped every full moon, and that we could use that knowledge to safely land on this island.

'No one had ever been here before. People told stories about wealth, gold that fell from the sky. But people also told stories of devils that walked the isle. We didn't believe those stories, but the sailors did; they weighed anchor offshore, and made us row a little boat into the bay ourselves, and then they left.

'We agreed with them that we'd be left here for a moon's worth of time; we had enough food, just, to keep us for the twenty eight days, and we knew that there was freshwater on the isle. And so we stayed here, and we explored.

'We found the gold soon enough. You all know it, because you've all seen it, the nuggets in the rocks littered around the place. We found enough to pay for another trip back; enough to pay for you to all come here. You know that.

'But we found something else, too. Two caves. One to the west of the island, and one to the east.'

'That's where the things come from, and go to, isn't it?' interrupted Verity.

Hope nodded, and the tears in her eyes glittered in the firelight. 'I think so, yes. We found the western one first. It is down the cliffs on the island shore. We didn't think it was anything special, until Levi heard something. He was convinced he could hear someone calling to him from the cave, a voice he recognised from his past. I laughed and told him that he was a fool; that we were alone out here. But then someone called me, too. My mother, or the shade of her, just like she did when I was a little girl.'

She stopped, and wiped her eyes with her shawl.

'We both tried to walk into the cave, but we couldn't; although it felt safe, it was just impossible to get any further than a few yards in. I can't describe it; it was like walking through honey, sweet, but sticky and slow. And when we tried, the voices shouted at us to turn back. My mother said that we would meet soon enough, and now was not my time. So, after a while, we left it and came back to our camp.'

Verity remembered what Tira had said, about a cut in the earth. She shivered, and, once again, regretted not leaving with her.

'What about the second cave?' asked Verity.

'We found that later,' said Hope. 'This was the opposite of the western cave. Whereas that was just a rough crack in the rocks, this was a great round hole in the earth, in a clearing. It smelt of rot, although it glittered with gold and gems. There were lots of fallen stars nearby, smashed up, treasure everywhere. Levi and I picked up some pieces, and walked closer; and then suddenly, that devil that calls itself Gull was standing there, watching us.

'I fair screamed with surprise; but Levi picked up a rock, and stood between us, to protect me. "Who are you, and what do you want?" he shouted.

'You've seen Gull, now. You know how he talks. He gave me an offer. He said that by landing on the isle, by picking up his rocks, we owed him a debt; and that there was a price. He said that the price would be small. But it would be a price.

'I agreed. I know I shouldn't have, but I was scared. We were alone, facing a demon, who seemed to give us no choice. And he said that...' and she gulped back a sob, her steely countenance finally at its limit, '...that no one would die. No one would be damned.'

'But then he came. One night. He said that the price was due, and that he would take it. Levi shouted at him to get out, that these rocks were no more Gull's than the wind itself. That he could crawl back to hell.

'And Gull roared. He... killed Levi. In a horrible way. And then he looked at me, covered in my husband's blood; and he said that I had to pay the price now, or everyone would die. And then those things came.'

'I was just trying to do the thing that would help the most people. I'm sorry, Verity. '

She fell silent, and the only sound was the crackle of the burning chapel, and the cries of the things, far away to the west.