Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 83

I open my eyes and nothing happens. It's pitch dark. I try to move but I can't. I'm tied up again. I smell wood. I'm in a wooden box. And by the flat sound of my breathing, I'd say it's small.

And I can hear magpies chattering. And a couple of gulls. It reminds me of something. The sounds I used to hear in the school yard. And I wonder if I'm near the school. And I start to get anxious, because I realise how dangerous this situation is. I don't know who brought me here or why. But I remember that they were planning witch-night bonfires all over London.

I remember them building the big wooden effigies, of people and things that they hated. Saw one of a giant seagull, one of the King of Mercia. Saw more than one of a witch, cyber witch. A woman with grotesque implants all over her body made into a big hook nose green skinned witch.

And I can hear the mutter and mumble of a crowd some way below me, and there is music, and a voice on a microphone through a PA, doing that kind of monologue that people do at state fairs and events like that.

And I start to shiver, and whimper. I'm so scared I can barely think. And then the fireworks start, popping and shattering on the wind above me, I hear the oohs and the aahs. There must be children here. I can hear the shrieks and giggles. And smell the smell of hot apples and spiced wine.

And then the voice on the loudspeaker starts to build up its speech and tone, whipping the crowds up into a big cheer. And I can smell drifting up through the cracks in the wood, the first hint of woodsmoke.

And I'm shuddering, my teeth chattering, my mouth is stuffed with rags and my teeth are grinding away at the rags, swelling but my throat is so dry. I'm crying hot tears. Think Ursula, think. They don't know, they don't know I'm in here. Sadie is in me, urging me to do something. Marketta is in me, just watching.

They can't do this, can they?

Not all people are like this, nobody brings their kids to watch a human get burned alive, not outside of the worst slums, surely? I've got to communicate with them somehow.

But I if I use the rhizome, they'll know for sure what I am, they'll see it plain as day.

And I try to shout and stamp my feet, but the plumes of smoke filling this little box just grow slowly but surely thicker, and then the coughing starts. And I can feel the glitch, then I can see it, as the lights under my skin grow louder, I can almost make out the extent of the wood box by the light from my own skin.

But I can also see how damaged it now is, as I look at my own arms, how much blackening has occurred along the pathways, the rhizome is killing me just like they told me it would.

And it's all so hopeless, can't I just give in to it, let myself go down the river toward the end of all pain, end of all fear? That's Marketta talking. Ursula wants to live.

And I'm coughing harder now, I know the smoke will kill me before the flames ever touch my body, surely that can't be so bad? But the glitch is howling out a loud and unholy prayer and I feel like a bomb that is about to explode, and I wonder what it will do, when it finally melts down, what kind of informational nuclear winter I will cause when the glitch finally tears my mind apart and flings me across the Gap, the web, the rhizome.

What did Marketta think she would achieve by setting me loose upon the world, what would I destroy if I surrendered to the glitch? Just how far does the rhizome go?

And how much do these people deserve it, could I make myself their plague? Could I send them running in terror? Those smug, filthy, ignorant peasants, always cutting down the tall poppies, always desperately dragging everything and everyone down to their myopic, terrified little prison of thoughtlessness. Reeking of self-satisfaction and moral idiocy.

They all know, they all know exactly what they are doing. They deserve my Armageddon.

But I remember then, suddenly and clearly that the twins are alive, lost and alone in a terrifying new world. And I have to try. I am Ursula. No matter how many souls ride the pathways in my body and mind, I am Ursula and I love them and I will not let them down.

So, I bind the voice of the glitch, and I use it, I subdue it to my will with sheer force, concentrated rage, I am descended from creatures that survived ice ages. That's the wordless song of the crone. Life at all costs.

I summon the one who comes before all, the relentless drive to life hard-coded into every strand of my DNA, life at any price, la antes que todo, she who throws herself forward into the agony of the void in the name of life at all costs.

And I feel her so close, the god of all gods, the one who came before all, la ANTESQUETODO. The crone. She's so close I can reach out and touch her. Her disfigured face radiates majesty. Peace within chaos. Madre mia. I am yours.

And she hands me control of the school, because I see now that we are truly outside my old school, and she hands me the school, because it is simply her disguise, her crown, she lives under it, and she hands it to me.

And I make all the broken plasma screens come alive and I broadcast to them all, there is a girl on the fire, there is a girl on the fire. And I wait, it's all I can do. Hope beyond hope that there is someone in the school.

I'm coughing so much now I'm retching; I'm choking, I'm drowning in this black fog. But I just about hear her voice. It's the head teacher. "Stop the fire!" "There's a child inside the bonfire!"

Then the smoke turns to steam.

The noises turn to silence. Up there! Someone shouts, and I realise I'm still coughing, and they've heard me. They're clambering up the bonfire. Then there's an axe head appearing through a split in the wood. And then I see the stars.