Free The Black North by Nigel McDowell

behind was waiting the vision of the Big House, its burning, and men drawn in towards flame … how had she seen these things? Must be imagined, she decided, but where had these notions come from? And the voice – those same commanding and beckoning and burning words?
    Oona opened her eyes again, needing to be up, and not thinking. But when she shifted she felt a hard hot weight against her side. It took more moments for her to remember, to recall more words: ‘
Keep it with you. It’s a burden, but I know you can bear it.
’
    Somewhere close something howled.
    Oona returned to the ground. She pulled her mother’s cloak closer, fingers finding the bound bundle she’d been given as a final thing before leaving the Kavanagh cottage, and decided: it’s about time I saw what exactly Granny Kavanagh has given me.

19
    Oona’s trembling fingers tried for many minutes to unpick the knots of the cloth, and in the end she got her teeth involved to bite and tear and rip. And with a bit of scattered swearing, eventually the rags fell aside.
    Inside was a stone the size of a plum, and not far off the same colour – a bruised-looking thing, crimson dark. She let it slip into her palm and it was like holding a stone not long out of the hearth, warmed to only just holdable heat. Oona brought it closer. In its depths lived some slow, solemn flicker of light – not a reflection of anything, the moon too faint and stars too small. And when Oona tried to examine the light more closely it squirmed away from seeing. The longer Oona looked, the heavier the stone became in her hands. And the more she sought that small sliver of light that was finer than a single fair hair, the more it retreated, and the more something shook and trembled inside her.
    Her grandmother’s words returned: ‘
And this is the most important thing – don’t lose sight of the light. Keep looking for it.
’
    Like some second heart suddenly awoken, something inside Oona fluttered, frightened. Like some unbidden voice burning in her mind, she felt addressed. And for more unknowable moments, Oona was shown again the sight of the burning Big House and heard screaming and saw men rushing towards death and –
    She shut her eyes and dropped the stone.
    But all that made up Oona Kavanagh – thoughts, feelings, senses – were like leaves upset by a gale, or hard earth being broken open. She stood and took a step backwards from her grandmother’s gift. Breathed in. She wondered again about her grandmother’s words: ‘
It’s a burden, but I know you can bear it.
’ Breathed out.
    Then a step forwards and Oona tried to be definite in it, feeling as though this stone was something that needed showing who was in control. She kneeled and took it up, and then looked again –
    The small shred of light brightened to a blaze, widening as slow as a fish-eye, and Oona was shown a single image – a wooden shrine for the Sorrowful Lady …
    Oona lifted her gaze – the same Sorrowful Lady stood before her, the same shrine.
    â€˜So the house I saw is close?’ said Oona. The stone grew warmer in her hand, as if in agreement. ‘It’s close,’ she said. And not knowing what force was leading her or why, she decided: ‘It’s near. And there’s something in that Big House that I need to see.’
    Still no sight (or more likely
sound
) of the jackdaw, and Oona started uphill. The stone her grandmother had given held in her hands like an offering, Oona once more was climbing – out of the valley, out of Drumbroken, and feeling led into she didn’t know what dark.

20
    Knowledge made Oona bold: she had the stone and her knife too, and she knew the Big House wasn’t far, though barely knew how she knew it. Something dreamed? Surely an imagined thing, but stronger – like something that clung close to memory, like an echo. But Oona didn’t have time