Queens of the Sea

by Kim Wilkins

  Rose’s guts clenched.

  ‘But I didn’t tell him I have you. I merely said that you were seen on the road … with a boy who looked precisely like him.’

  The arches of Rose’s feet felt hollow, as though she were standing on the edge of a precipice. Of course Tolan had noticed. He was blazingly sharp-witted.

  ‘You can imagine how very keen he is to find this boy.’ Tolan glanced at Linden. ‘But I am keen to find something myself, so I won’t be calling him back here any time soon.’

  ‘You want my son to draw you a treasure map? Is that it?’ How she hated Linden being used against his will. ‘And on these terms you will keep my secrets from Wengest?’

  Tolan gazed at her with those pale eyes, and she was surprised to see compassion in them. ‘Yes, all of that is true and I admit it. But, Rose, I assure you none of what I said about Blicstowe is a lie. Thyrsland is at war. You are much safer here. My decision to keep you suits us both.’

  Rose experienced the first glimmer of fear that the story about Blicstowe’s fall was true; a moth fluttering dully against her ribcage.

  ‘I’ll send some more paper and pens and ink over for your lad. What a remarkable boy he is. You must be very proud of him.’

  Rose didn’t answer. Tolan ruffled Linden’s curls, and Linden didn’t seem to mind. He was too busy drawing.

  It was Rowan’s night to cook. She and Heath took it in turns now, though he often reluctantly and half-heartedly. She had been to training with Heath every day, and had started to learn battle strategy. She was only half-good with a sword or spear herself, and as an archer she usually started at the side of the war hedge then fell back in behind. Yesterday, Heath let her practise leading from the rear, calling out the orders until her voice was hoarse. It was a small army – forty men and two women – nimble and fast. She ran them and herself ragged, and had slept leaden-limbed that night, dreaming battle formations in her head. Now, she appreciated the mindlessness of mixing and rolling out oatcakes.

  She was adding the first to the pan when Heath came in and removed his cloak, closing the door on the thickening twilight.

  ‘Any word from … anywhere?’ Rowan asked. A messenger had come that afternoon as they were leaving training. They were so remote up here and news from the south was always welcome.

  ‘Wengest isn’t coming,’ Heath said, leaning back and stretching out his neck and shoulders. ‘He diverted direct to Æcstede, under the terms of their treaty with Ælmesse.’

  ‘We should send to Mama to come home.’

  ‘Not now. The roads are dangerous. She’s safer tucked away with Yldra. Also, Renward sent word that he wants to take the tribes to Blicstowe to help get it back. He won’t go without us; his army is too small.’

  ‘Will we go?’

  But Heath was already shaking his head. ‘The tribes have not sent the soldiers we asked for, and asking them to fight for Ælmesse is doomed. You think Niamma the Bold cares about Blicstowe?’

  Rowan remembered Niamma’s words to her. Take the horns. Do what you must. She didn’t say what she wanted to say: ‘I can make Niamma care about Blicstowe.’

  Heath sat at his regular bench by the fire and eased off his shoes, spreading his toes towards the flames. ‘That food smells goods.’

  ‘Oatcakes with lemon and sage,’ she said, flipping one over with a wooden spoon. ‘Do you want me to hunt a rabbit for you to roast tomorrow? We haven’t had meat in four days.’

  He was about to answer when a frantic knocking at the door interrupted. Heath frowned and, barefoot, walked to the door to open it.

  Rowan recognised Llyran, one of the soldiers she trained with most days. He was tall, with close-cropped ginger hair. His face was white with fear.

  ‘My boy!’ he gasped.

  ‘Your?’

  ‘My boy, Irtex. He’s gone.’

  Heath turned back inside and went to the fire to put his shoes on. Rowan joined Llyran at the door.

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Three. I sent him outside to fetch some parsley. That was an hour ago.’

  Heath called over his shoulder, ‘He’s probably wandered off. We’ll call up a few other men and see if we can find him.’

  ‘Try not to worry,’ Rowan said.

  ‘He never wanders off. He’s a timid boy,’ Llyran said, then dropped his voice. ‘It grows dark. He’s frightened of the dark.’

  ‘He will hear our voices calling and not be so afraid.’

  ‘I sent him out. He didn’t want to go. I spoke to him sharply.’

  Heath brushed past Llyran, but Rowan grasped the man’s shoulder. ‘He will be fine.’

  The wind had risen, shivering in the branches and causing leaves to flutter and scuff across the ground. Armed with torches, sixteen volunteers from the village paired off and took a different area to search, under Heath’s command. Rowan and Heath formed a pair, and headed down the slope to the sacred grove. The paths were muddy after two days of drizzle, and Rowan’s left foot sank ankle deep on one poorly placed step, filling her shoe with squelching cold.

  ‘Damn it,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think the boy could have got this far,’ Heath said, frowning. ‘We’d see his tracks.’

  ‘Llyran will feel better if he knows we looked.’

  They called the child’s name as they wound into the sacred wood on the spiralling path. The trees were heavy with damp, and the wind loosened cold drips that fell in Rowan’s hair. No child answered. The only sounds were the scuttling feet of animals in retreat.

  Half an hour passed with nothing but Irtex’s name on their lips, then Heath stopped and sat on a rock to remove a stone from his shoe.

  ‘Could you ask Connacht where he is?’ he said, slapping his shoe on the rock beside him. His voice sounded almost too light, and Rowan knew this wasn’t the real question he wanted to ask. He wanted to know how often she contacted the ghost of her grandfather.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Since the day I held the crossings open, I have not been able to contact him. Perhaps he slipped away behind a crossing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The crossings are not physical. There are no mechanical gates that open and close. The borders between here and there, now and then, are slippery, dissolving in and out of each other. Things move between like sunlight through water.’

  Heath pulled his shoe back on and tightened the laces. ‘Sunlight through water?’

  ‘All the time moving, forming and re-forming. Connacht will likely be back, but for now I have no sense that he is near.’

  ‘So young Irtex hasn’t slipped through a crossing, has he?’

  Rowan firmly shook her head. ‘I would have felt it. I feel them all. Tickling against my ribs like the feet of insects.’ She shuddered. ‘But I have felt nothing this evening.’

  Heath stood and led them off again, but now Rowan’s anxiety had returned, like a cold lump in her stomach. She had assumed, along with everyone, that little Irtex had simply run off because he didn’t want to collect parsley. But now she remembered the old woman who had been hanging around her window. A swirl of vague fear, remembering the dark, hidden thing she had felt emerging from the crossings, right before she had slammed them shut.

  ‘Heath,’ she said, hurrying to catch up with him, ‘there was an old woman in a black cloak trying to open my window a few nights ago. Do you think she might have lured the child away?’

  ‘What old woman? Someone from the village?’

  ‘I don’t know. She looked familiar …’ At least, Rowan felt there was something familiar about her.

  She saw Heath frown in the flickering light of the torch Rowan held. ‘Let’s keep calling for him a little longer then head back. We are so far from town here that we might not hear if somebody else finds him.’

  They wound all the way to the centre of the sacred grove, where the druids’ great stone altar stood, then back out on quicker feet. The drizzle had started again, and it sizzled in the t
orch’s flame.

  On the way back up the hill, they met another pair of searchers, who told them the boy still had not been found.

  ‘Let us gather in the village square then,’ Heath said. ‘We need to decide what to do.’

  Rowan trudged up the hill behind Heath, and then the drizzle turned to cold, cold rain. Heath fell back and slid his arm through hers. ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Be warm, eat and sleep well.’

  ‘I’d like to help.’

  ‘There’s no point in both of us being out in the rain. This may take all night. The child may be – perhaps he has had an accident. I will gather a group of five or six, and we will hunt until we find him.’

  Rowan nodded, water dripping off her nose. ‘Very well.’

  She returned home, to dry clothes, cold oatcakes and a quiet house. The rain grew heavier and the wind rose and gusted over the roof, and she was grateful to have been spared the night-time search in these conditions.

  When she finally climbed into bed and fell asleep, she was plagued by dark dreams about old hands bent like claws.

  She woke in the grainy light before dawn to shouting from outside. Somebody was crying: a man, sobbing like a child, calling, ‘No! No!’

  Rowan threw back the blankets, quickly pinned on a dress and ran barefoot out of the house to the village square. A crowd had gathered around the impossibly small, impossibly still body of a child. All her limbs grew leaden with sorrow. She hurried to Heath’s side, where he stood over the boy and Llyran, who had thrown himself across the little body. A small crowd had gathered. Llyran’s wife was there too, white and frozen with shock, a howling toddler in her arms. Rowan could see the boy’s lips were blue, and red strangulation marks stood out on his neck.

  ‘He was still warm,’ Heath said to her in a low voice. ‘Whoever did it had him all night.’

  ‘From twilight to twilight,’ somebody nearby said. ‘Taken in the gloaming and killed in the gloaming.’

  ‘My daughter saw an old woman lurking near the edge of town yesterday evening.’

  Panicked voices, more people waking and coming from their homes, speculation, fear, and amid it all Llyran crying over his dead child.

  A hag in the gloaming. Rowan knew the stories. Snowy used to tell them to keep her afraid and inside at night. The old woman who hunts children in the twilight, stealing their spirits to keep herself young. A creature that attaches itself to the first person it sees when it slides out of the dark underwood.

  And she remembered the feeling of a bad thing escaping the wood, the hag outside her window, the prickle of recognition. Rowan knew, without a doubt, that this was her problem to solve.

  Sixteen

  Wretched and sorrowful, Bluebell endured the journey to the Brenci Isles.

  Doubt had gripped her guts one hour out of Æcstede, and it had not yet let go. Was this madness? Had desperation made her foolhardy? Were all of her thanes, even her sister, too afraid of her to tell her that this plan was not a plan at all?

  Find giants that may or may not exist.

  A day and a half they travelled on their mounts to the coast, to stay in the field of one of her cousin’s husband’s farms. He had given them the ship too, which he used for trips to the OverOcean lands for trade. They set out at dawn this morning, with a fair wind in their sails and enough curiosity and determination to see them through to before dusk, when the wind dropped and the oars were picked up. Now, for three hours at least, they had slogged through icy water, over a swell that seemed determined to carry them back to the east. Bluebell’s shoulders ached, but her sea-weary soul ached harder. It seemed fitting that she should be out here as if in exile on the dark waves, far from all that was kingly. Blazing fires, the thrum of the mead hall, stories of her famous deeds. On and on she rowed, beyond endurance, as the sky turned from pale blue to sunset purple to bruised evening.

  The longboat slid onto the fine gravel shore in darkness. There was a moment of quiet among Bluebell’s crew, when all she could hear were waves rolling onto the shore. But then there was noise and movement as oars were dropped, thanks were uttered to the gods, and one by one they climbed over the sides into knee-high water to pull the vessel further up the shore. Bluebell made Ash stay on board, and her sister stood, her long hair and cloak fluttering in the breeze, holding one of the masts. Her eyes were fixed on the dark horizon, as though she were listening for something.

  Soon Bluebell would give orders for setting up a temporary camp, but for now she let her thanes stretch out on the dark sand, under the cold stars. The journey had been all the more exhausting because they had pushed themselves to complete it quickly. Bluebell stretched her arms above her head and winced. Right now, she felt a very long way from anywhere. Certainly a long way from where she should be.

  She lowered her arms, took a deep breath. She had come too far to change her mind now.

  Ash had climbed over the side of the boat with Hyld and now joined her. Hyld put wet paws up on Bluebell’s belly, and Bluebell rubbed her head.

  ‘And so here we are,’ Ash said.

  Bluebell considered her in the gloom. ‘Do you feel any different?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Then, ‘Maybe a little.’

  Bluebell dropped her voice so nobody else could hear them. ‘My hopes are pinned on you. I feel a fool. Giants, Ash? Have I come a long way on a desperate hope?’

  ‘We have seen stranger things, you and I,’ Ash reminded her. ‘Do not be desperate.’

  Bluebell looked around at her little war band, most of whom were now sitting up, waiting for their next orders. Sal, Frida, Hroth, Hregen and eight soldiers chosen for the breadth of their shoulders.

  ‘It has been a long day,’ Bluebell announced over the constant thrum of the sea. ‘And it is a mild, clear night. We will make camp in the morning. Tonight, we will sleep in the boat or higher up on the sand. Rest. Eat.’

  Sal and Frida took charge of distributing food and water, and Hroth and Hregen gathered driftwood from above the tide line for fires. Bluebell took Ash with her up the shore and clambered up a sandy ridge to a more solid area of rock. From here, she looked out across the island, the largest of the Brencis. There were others, a chain of them. On the map they had looked small, easily searchable. Now she had a much clearer sense that it would take time to explore them all. She wasn’t sure she had that much time.

  ‘Ash, can you sense anything out there?’ she asked, her eyes on a high headland in the distance.

  Ash shook her head. ‘Nothing yet.’

  ‘It mustn’t be easy for giants to hide though, right?’ Bluebell smiled.

  Ash responded with a laugh. ‘Then why have we never seen one?’

  Firelight and food put everyone in a better frame of mind, and then it was time to roll out blankets and sleep.

  Bluebell thought she would lie awake, worrying. But the sound of the sea and Ash’s soft breathing next to her soothed her. All her problems could wait until the morning. For now, she needed to let her tired body and mind rest.

  Dawn came in a veil of mist that billowed off the sea, laden with the smell of salt and seaweed. Bluebell was up before everyone else, striding up the rocky slope towards a flat area of hard, spiky grass, Hyld at her side. She paced in both directions until she found the most sheltered place, and marked it out with a handful of stones. The soldiers began the task of setting up tents there, and she assembled her thanes.

  ‘We will stay in pairs,’ she said. ‘Hroth and Hregen, you head north along the coastline. Sal, take Ash and head south. Frida and I will go in west across land and between us we will get a sense of what kind of place this is, and where we might send the others to search later this morning. There may be climbing so I’ll leave Hyld here. Check in caves, look for anything that might indicate somebody has been here. Not just birds.’ She tapped Sal’s shoulder with the back of her hand. ‘It goes without saying, Sal, that my sister’s safety is in your hands.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Walk for two hour
s, then come back. We will eat then set out again, all fourteen of us. We must use all the daylight we have.’

  Bluebell took Frida and marched directly west, the sun struggling through the mist behind them. She indicated the headland, looming out of the mist. ‘We’ll head up there and see if there’s a view to be had. Though this weather is no friend to us.’

  ‘As you wish, my lord.’

  Bluebell glanced at Frida. Small and lithe, with close-cropped hair, she almost resembled a boy. Bluebell noticed she was looking around her with a strange expression on her face. Was it fear?

  No, it was awe.

  ‘You like what you see, Frida?’ Bluebell asked.

  ‘I had never thought to see so much of the world in my lifetime,’ Frida replied. ‘Let alone travel to the Brenci Isles. It’s like a story.’

  Bluebell glanced at the landscape as though through Frida’s eyes. It was certainly unique. Few trees. Tough yellowy grass. Thin, sharp rock formations in patterns that were almost geometrical. All of it swirling with fine sea mist that smelled of brine and seaweed.

  ‘And are you the main character in this story, Frida?’ Bluebell said with a smile.

  ‘I suppose we are all the main characters of our own stories. Here I am, only two years away from the farm, accompanying the king of Ælmesse on a quest to find giants.’

  ‘It may yet become more interesting,’ Bluebell said. ‘We may yet fight alongside those giants to liberate Blicstowe.’

  Frida laughed softly. ‘I have already fought alongside you. Giants could not be so impressive.’

  ‘I hope they are more impressive by far,’ Bluebell replied. ‘I hope there are a hundred of them a hundred times stronger than me, and I hope they can be persuaded to …’ She trailed off, the burden pressing on her heart again. ‘I hope we can find them.’

  Frida lifted her chin. ‘If they are here, we will,’ she said. ‘Look, you. The mist is clearing.’

  The sun hit the ridge ahead of them with yellow light. Bluebell had a sense that this might be a sign she was heading in the right direction. She hurried her steps, and Frida kept up.