Skin and Bone Read online

  SKIN AND BONE

  By Stephen Moore

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright © 2013 / Stephen Moore

  First published in Great Britain in 1998

  By Hodder Children’s Books

  Background image courtesy of:

  http://joannastar-stock.deviantart.com/

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Stephen Moore would rather be writing books than writing about himself. But here goes:

  Stephen hails from the North East of England, a land he never tires of exploring; full of ancient Roman history, fantastic castles and remnants of the infamous Border Reivers.

  A long time ago, before he discovered the magic of storytelling, Stephen was an exhibition designer and he has fond memories of working in the strange old world of museums. Sometimes he can still be found in auction houses pawing over old relics!

  Stephen has shared his house with several of the animals that frequent his books, though not the flying pigs or foul-smelling brugan. He loves art and books, old and new. He’s into rock music and movies and theatre and video games! But mostly, he likes to write, where he gets to create his own worlds. If pushed very hard to name his favourite book of all time – there are many contenders – he’d have to say . . . Today, it’s a dead heat between, Robert Westall’s The Machine Gunners and Robert Louis Stephenson’s Treasure Island.

  Maybe, his own books are OK too?

  Book List

  Dead Edward

  Fay

  Fiddlesticks and Firestones

  Skin and Bone

  Spilling the Magic

  The Brugan

  Tooth and Claw

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

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  For Jenny, who is the real Bryna,

  and Kim, who I grew up with.

  CONTENTS

  Part One

  Chapter One: Drought

  Chapter Two: Skrinkle

  Chapter Three: The Council

  Chapter Four: The Fox Again

  Chapter Five: The Outlands

  Chapter Six: The Green Metal Men

  Chapter Seven: From Bad to Worse

  Chapter Eight: Treacle in the Dark

  Chapter Nine: A Gruesome Hoard

  Chapter Ten: Homecoming

  Chapter Eleven: The Gorging

  Chapter Twelve: Lambs to a Slaughter

  Chapter Thirteen: The Firing

  Part Two

  Chapter Fourteen: Bryna and the Mad Dog

  Chapter Fifteen: Sugar’s Funeral

  Chapter Sixteen: Strange Meeting

  Chapter Seventeen: Bryna’s Nightmare

  Chapter Eighteen: House-hunting

  Chapter Nineteen: Howlers and Looters

  Chapter Twenty: The Beacon

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Army that Never was

  Chapter Twenty-Two: The Battle that Never was

  Chapter Twenty-Three. Tail Ends

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Drought

  Drought.

  No winter snow. No spring thaw. No April showers or summer rain. A mountain lake become a puddle. A running river, baked dry all but a sliver.

  Drought.

  All things carried the scars of its passing.

  A sky endlessly blue, relentlessly flat and cloudless. A brutal, hard white sun beating down day upon day without relief: nothing alive, nothing left whole beneath its pitiless stroke.

  Drought.

  In open countryside the summer grass stood stiff and brittle, and bleached white; or else was burned black where the sun’s heat had been so intense it had erupted into swathing flame. Everywhere, tired trees held up their bare branches in protest to the sky. The few leaves that still clung to them were dry and twisted, and bristled and crackled when the wind blew.

  Drought.

  The empty buildings of the town, that had seemed for so long to be beyond change, stood sun-scorched. Paint peeled from doors and windows; in places dried-out timbers turned and snapped in their settings, showering the streets with broken glass. Steel warped. Concrete cracked. Walls bulged uneasily in the heat of the day.

  Between the buildings, out on the streets, the roads blistered, their tar melted and ran together in dangerous, stinking-hot pools: liquid death to an unwary traveller.

  The garden hedges, the public lawns, the wind-blown weeds upon the riverbanks, the open pastures of the Town Moor: they were all dead (or at best dying). And the great black-and-white gawp-eyed beasts, the bullocks, that had for so long fed upon the Town Moor? Dead too. Their meat, what little there had been of it, had come as a welcome winter’s feast to starving animals – the dwindling numbers of town cats and dogs who somehow survived there still.

  All that was left of the cattle now was their scattered bones: to serve as a reminder of an endless, unsatisfied hunger, to serve as a reminder of . . .

  Drought.

  It was early evening. The sun still lingered in the sky, stood full and red above the far horizon as if it was reluctant to set; but at least the worst of its fierce heat had gone for the day. Blind Bryna walked slowly across the empty barren fields of the Town Moor. Let the unforgiving stone surface of a narrow, man-made road guide her paws as she moved downhill towards the riverside.

  She was not alone. At one shoulder walked a large, black, heavy-boned she-cat, and at the other hobbled an equally large, three-legged, ginger tom. (From their stance and build it was obvious that Bryna’s companions were brother and sister.)

  Kin or not, all three cats showed the same tell-tale signs of near-starvation. Their tongues were swollen, their bruised eyes sat deep within their heads, their fur was dull and patched, their skin hung loose upon their bones. And they moved slowly, deliberately, each step carefully chosen so as not to waste their body strength needlessly.

  “Must we drink from the river so close to the crossing, Bryna?” asked the tom, Ki-ya. “It will be well guarded. Surely, Dart could find us an easier spot farther upstream—?”

  “Pah,” spat Bryna, not letting him finish. “This is our prowl. This has always been our prowl. Why should we go out of our way to try and quench our thirst?”

  “Aye,” said the she-cat, Dart. “And anyway, there isn’t a single stretch of water not bursting with foolish animals keen to do murder to keep it to themselves.”

  Ki-ya shook his head, sadly. “I’m only saying . . . It’ll be dogs. And there’ll likely be a fight.”

  “Aye, well, then it’s more fool them,” said Dart.

  Bryna stood still a moment, lifted her nose; the slope of the hill had lessened beneath her paws and the slight, sweet, tantalising smell of running water came to her. They had come off the Moor and before them now, between lines of empty houses and heavy grey industrial buildings, was the river; what was left of it.

  At the place of the crossing the fallen stones of a broken bridge stood high and dry off the river-bed. Once the river had hardly noticed the stones there as it rushed on by. Now, almost comically, a thin single thread of water struggled to find a way between t
hem.

  Ki-ya was right about the dogs. Quickly he counted eight: a mix of common mongrels lying carelessly in the dry dust at the edge of the river. And if they were more empty bags of bone than solid muscle, they were still full-grown animals; who did not bother to move themselves when the cats walked between them to reach the running water.

  “You’re not welcome here, moggy,” growled some dog under his breath. There were howls of laughter, as if it was all some big joke, and eyes turned their way. But still the dogs did not move.

  “Where else, but the river, would you have us quench a thirst?” said Dart, with a flick of her tail. “Doesn’t water come free?”

  “Aye, well, now that you come to mention it – it’s not so free for some of us any more,” said the dog, “least ways, not for moggies!” Again there were howls of laughter.

  “You cannot deny us a drink, brother,” said Ki-ya, deliberately walking to the water’s edge and stooping as if to take one.

  “I am no brother of yours, cat. And I’ll deny you whatever I like if you cannot pay for it.” Suddenly the dogs were sitting up. They were large animals in spite of the obvious effects of the drought, and loomed over the cats. Tails among them were wagging. It was obviously a game they had played before, and they thought themselves clever at it.

  “Pay for it?” spat Bryna. She lifted her nose to scent out the dogs; wanted to be certain of their positions in case they attacked.

  “Times are hard if you hadn’t noticed,” said the dog, who by his bold stance was obviously the leader of their makeshift pack. “You’ll get nowt for nowt here. So . . . What have you got in exchange for your drink of water? And if it’s an empty bag of wind, then you can bugger off back to wherever it is you came from. Before we decide to take ourselves a piece of cat for breakfast.”

  “I’ll give you bags of wind!” Dart’s hackles lifted, she began to spit and pawed the ground with her open claws. Dogs began to growl; to bare their teeth.

  “Not so fast, sister,” said Ki-ya, “not so fast. Eight against three wouldn’t exactly be a fair fight now, would it? And who would it serve to get into a fight? There’s not one of us here – not a dog or a cat – with the body strength to heal an open wound.”

  The dog pack seemed to hesitate, and they fell silent. But the lead dog stood his ground, lifted his tail high, called Ki-ya’s bluff.

  “Nowt for nowt,” he said again. “Nowt for nowt.”

  Bryna tried to move to one side of him, only to find him moving with her, blocking her way with his body. And the other dogs, less brave than their leader, fell in behind, copied him like shadows.

  “Oh, I’ve had enough of all this nonsense,” cried Dart. She lifted her claws and raked the first nose that came within her reach. Struck out again and again before the stricken animal had time to react. Had these dogs been seasoned fighters, then things might have gone badly for the cats in their weakened condition. Luckily the dogs were not. Full grown they might have been, but they were young still, and unpractised at the kill.

  Suddenly the cats puffed up their fur and seemed to double in size. And they moved with such speed, surely there weren’t just three of them now, but half a dozen at least!

  The dogs turned and bolted without making a proper fight of it. Squealing as they ran like frightened pups.

  And so at last, Bryna, Dart and Ki-ya took their drink of water and quenched their burning thirst. But there was no real pleasure in it. They sat uneasily together at the edge of the river, their bodies still nervously agitated; the kick of their breath heavy and uneven after their run-in with the dogs. Had their world become so bad they were reduced to fighting overgrown pups for a lap of water?

  Not for the last time, blind Bryna’s thoughts drifted back to a time, long ago, when men had walked the streets of the town. A time when, as a kit, she had been content to be the lazy lap-cat of a doddery old woman called Mrs Ida Tupps. She had lived in a house, been fed and watered on demand.

  Then she remembered that long dark winter’s night when mankind had abandoned the town, abandoning their pets with it; leaving them behind, without pity, to fend for themselves. She remembered the almost impossibly hard struggle to stay alive; and those dogs and cats who, had learned to survive together. (Indeed, who, together in unity, defeated in battle the creature Dread Booga – the most vile of all their, two-footed enemies.) And once truly free of men, they had lived as it pleased them to live. They had hunted side by side as equals. Whelped their kits and pups together. Did not fight each other for the spoils of territory. Did not kill each other for sport. And there had always been food enough to share, water from the river in abundance.

  Ah, but this was all ancient history now . . .

  Because then had come the drought. The endless, unforgiving drought: that could not be battled with, or run away from; that had crept upon them slowly, and bit by bit stolen away . . . everything. By day there was only the murdering sun and the sun-scorched wind. By night only the bitter cold of a cloudless starlit sky.

  The changes in the behaviour of the cats and dogs came as slowly as the drought. At first it was just young kits and immature pups picking silly, mindless arguments with each other. Bad-tempered bickering and name-calling. But then the adults had begun to fight openly in the street. To kill even; and claim it as an act of self-defence.

  Suddenly, animals were prowling warily, and seldom alone. They began to move about in huddles or family groups, often waiting for the relative safety of nightfall before venturing out in search of food.

  As the drought worsened, the unrest spread. The huddles became more organised; formal gangs or packs with leaders and seconds; with formidable territories and un-crossable boundaries, to be envied and fought over. And the riverside, with its failing supply of water, was the most prized territory of all.

  Older, wiser animals had tried to make the others see the foolishness of it, to see sense, but to no effect. No sensible animal was listening. Endless thirst, endless hunger, and bitter, selfish rivalry has a way of hardening the softest of hearts. Soon, even the oldest of allies had found themselves choosing opposite sides. The broken bones of the long dead, which still littered the streets from ancient battles, were easily forgotten beneath the growing piles of new.

  The three cats were not left to themselves for long. A small group of animals suddenly appeared between the fallen stones of the bridge on the far side of the river. Cats this time: two pairs. Ki-ya looked wearily between Dart and Bryna. He did not have the body strength, or the spirit, to face another fight so soon.

  As the newcomers approached, it became clear – for those with eyes to see – that these cats were in no better condition than they were themselves. Slow-moving, gaunt and empty-bellied. But there was something else about them; they were all exactly the same peculiar colour. A disturbing brown. Not the brown of natural fur, but a permanent stain from ground-in dirt. And if the strangeness of their colour was not enough to worry an animal, their bodies stank – reeked of some foul unnatural scent. Bryna, blind, did not see their approach. But she smelled them all right, and, odd though it might seem, their awful stench lifted her spirits and brought a gentle purr to her throat. You see, these were sewer cats, the last of their kind; animals who, up until the drought, had survived by hunting the rats that once thrived in great numbers in the drainage system beneath the town. (The vermin were all but gone now. The sewers had long run dry and become dangerous, often blocked, prone to sudden rock falls and cave-ins. Only its ancient smells lingered to remind a cat’s nose.) Among these sewer cats came the oldest of Bryna’s friends. A big, gangly tom called Treacle.

  “Oh, B-Bryna, there you are. W-We’ve been looking all over for you,” he began excitedly.

  “All over, Captain,” echoed Lugger, a smaller sharp-eyed tom who always stood at Treacle’s side.

  “You’ll never guess what’s happened—”

  “Never guess, Captain—”

  “Welcome stranger,” interrupted Ki-ya,
with mock formality, and a pinch of his nose.

  “What? Oh, er, y-yes, yes, welcome stranger.”

  With that, all the cats were purring and cuffing each other playfully, rubbing heads and tails in a simple display of open-hearted affection.

  “But now, now you must listen to me, Bryna,” Treacle continued at last, when their welcome was done and a second, extravagant drink shared between them. “It’s Kim . . . Kim. He has called a Council.”

  “A Council, Captain,” echoed Lugger.

  “The daft old dog has called a Council?” spat Dart. “But what on earth for? What animal will even bother to turn up these days?”

  “It’s a gathering for all animals who have a voice to speak or a leg to stand on,” went on Treacle as if he had not heard Dart’s rebuff. “Word has it, some cat’s got himself an idea he wants to share—”

  “Idea, Captain—”

  “A way to save us from this awful drought.”

  “Save us, Captain—”

  “Oh, is that all . . . an idea,” said Dart, dipping her tongue into the thin trickle of river water.

  “Yes, yes— and I told him you would all come. And I mean, I mean – you will come, won’t you?”

  “Won’t you, Captain—?”

  Blind Bryna lifted her nose to the sky, stood stock still. And in that moment felt a strange, unsettling coldness as the slightest of fleeting shadows passed across her body. Far away, a lone bird had flown across the face of the sun. Bryna shuddered with a sudden sense of deep foreboding. Why? She did not know, but the feeling of dread was real enough and would not pass away.

  “Yes,” she said, firmly, answering Treacle’s question for them all. “Yes, we will come to the Council . . .”

  Chapter Two