Ottilie was stunned. This was not at all what they had expected. Whistler wasn’t going to make herself sleepless – she was going to do it to the king!
‘And here’s the best part,’ said Whistler, pointing the pipe at the cauldron. ‘It’s a second-hand sleeplessness – a slightly watered-down version.’ A gleeful smile stretched across her face. ‘You’ll live forever, but you won’t be unbreakable. You’ll break. I’ll break you myself. You’ll mend over and over …’
Varrio’s face was twitching with fear. He spat on the ground. ‘You’re old, witch! You won’t live forever.’
‘Do you know how I extended my life?’ said Whistler. There was a crack and flash as Whistler whipped into the winged beast and, in a blink, shifted back. ‘Dredretches don’t die of old age. I’ll live until I choose to end it with a bit of salt-forged steel, but you … I’ll make sure I do something really special with you before I go. I haven’t worked it out yet … but I’ve got an eternity to come up with that plan.’
The potion flickered to a bright, shining white.
‘Look at that,’ said Whistler. ‘Tea’s ready.’ She hovered the pipe above the bubbling potion.
Ottilie’s heart hammered. She couldn’t let her drop it in. What if it was the only way to wake everyone up? She felt Maeve looking at her. Her bright eyes flitted from Ottilie to the king, and Ottilie understood. She drew back her bow string, not aiming at Whistler, but at the king. ‘Wake them up,’ she said.
Whistler didn’t even bother to look at her.
Leo drew an arrow as well, and behind her, Ottilie felt Gully do the same. Maeve stood unarmed but frozen with focus, staring at the king.
‘Ottilie, don’t be slow,’ said Whistler, finally turning to face her. ‘How many times have I stopped your arrows?’
Gully changed his aim to Gracie, and Leo to Whistler herself.
‘You can’t stop all of them at once,’ said Ottilie, not sure that was actually true.
But Whistler hesitated. She took them all in, her eyes settling on Maeve. Three arrows and a witch against her – it was a gamble. Ottilie had to believe she would not risk losing the king. Whistler had not waited all this time to have her revenge snatched from her at the final second.
‘Wake them up,’ said Ottilie, pulling back further on her string.
Whistler smiled and raised the pipe to her lips.
Ottilie tensed as a strange song surfaced. Like the call of something ancient far below, slithering through cracks in the world. Was this it? Was she waking them?
No. It was too easy.
Ottilie sensed them before they came, but the sickness was bearable. The song seemed to sharpen as, slowly, the dark shadows of dredretches pressed in from all sides. They were calmer than Ottilie had ever seen them, drifting as if in a dream.
‘That’s not what she asked,’ said Leo through gritted teeth, his arrow still pointed at Whistler.
‘It doesn’t matter how many you call,’ said Ottilie, her eyes fixed on the king. She could feel the sickness beginning to sink in. ‘I’m a good shot.’
Whistler didn’t respond. Ottilie’s eyes flicked to her and she saw Whistler’s thoughts flying about. She was weighing the risk.
Finally, Whistler’s face hardened and she blew into the pipe once more. A high-pitched whistle pierced the air. Ottilie twitched and yearned to cover her ears, but kept her arrow pointed at the king.
The song seemed to cut out mid-note, and Ottilie felt a strange scraping and grinding in her teeth.
‘They’re awake,’ said Whistler, coldly.
Ottilie would not celebrate, not yet. There was only one way to test it. She nudged Gully’s foot and felt him shift his aim to the king.
She took her ring out of her pocket and, with a slight hesitation, slipped it onto her thumb. The relief was immediate. With the burden of warding lifted, Ottilie sighed, and remained entirely awake.
Whistler flipped back her sleeve, revealing her damaged hand. With a twirl of her wrist, the threads of Seika’s ring pulled off the pipe like a pinched spider’s web. Whistler flicked out her fingers and the shiny strands sprang from her skin like water. Then, causing a tiny splash, she dropped the pipe into the cauldron.
Ottilie was lost now. What was the right thing to do? Should they try to escape? Go back to help at Fiory?
The potion turned jet black. There was a sound like lightning striking rock as the cylinder of bone was broken apart. Great spirals of thick smoke billowed from the cauldron. Whistler waved her hand over it. A glass vial appeared from beneath her sleeve and filled slowly to the brim with shimmering black.
Ottilie stared. There it was: the remains of the sleepless witch. Transfigured again. No longer breathing bones, but liquid – a perennial punishment for the king.
Whistler seemed finished with conversation. She had no more mysteries, no more speeches. She stoppered the vial and smiled a triumphant smile. Looking at Ottilie one last time, her eyes flashed black.
Growls rolled in, shrieks cut the air, and from all around the dredretches attacked.
41
The Final Flight
A jivvie dived at Ottilie. She shot it down in an instant. Gully was struggling with something behind her. She turned to see him undoing the last buckle and leaping off Nox.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m better down here.’
‘No, there are too many!’
There was no time to argue. Ottilie fired arrow after arrow and gripped hard as Nox ducked and weaved, swiping scales and cleaving bone. More and more dredretches were prowling out of the festering forest. Gracie was beside the king. Her proximity must have been protecting him, the same way Ottilie had shielded Leo against the squails.
Whistler was by the philowood tree, watching the king’s face as he stood frozen, terror twisting his features. This might be the first time Varrio Sol had seen what his huntsmen were truly up against.
Ottilie didn’t know how they were going to get out of this. It would take a miracle. The winged dredretches circled above, blocking their escape. Maeve shifted and soared up to meet them, but she was only one owl.
All around, the wilted trees were crawling with fanged pobes, yickers, cleavers, even knopoes. Beneath it all, Whistler was holding the vial.
‘This is your future, Varrio!’ she called above the clamour. ‘What do you think of it?’
Maeve tore a jivvie to tatters, the struggle drawing her closer to Gracie. Gracie looked up with interest. Her mouth twitched as she twirled her knife and flung it right at Maeve.
Ottilie froze as Maeve tilted, the blade shaving the very tip of a feather.
Gracie Moravec was truly gone. She had never, not once in all this time, attacked Maeve. But now, it seemed that final scrap of humanity had been sucked into the dark.
Maeve let out a pained shriek and Ottilie knew it was not because she had been physically hurt.
The mass of monsters thickened and Ottilie could not see Gracie or the king through the swarm of claws and wings. She was down to her very last arrow. Tucking it into Nox’s saddle, she whipped her cutlass from her back.
A wyler snatched at her ankle and Gully sent it flying.
‘Gully!’ she cried. ‘Get back up!’
But there was no way to escape. All they could do was fight. Ottilie just wanted him back in the saddle so they could be near each other when it ended.
The winged canopy drooped lower. They were going to be torn apart from all sides. Ottilie’s fear threatened to overwhelm her, like chains snaking across her body, tugging her inward and down.
There was a great screech from above. Her head snapped up and, through a curtain of scales, shadow and wings, Ottilie saw the birds. They barrelled through the darkness, sending the dredretches flying in all directions. Hundreds of them – eagles, kites, owls of all kinds … every fierce bird she could think of – wove this way and that, cutting through the swarm, diving to pierce the dredretches’ eyes, snatching ripperspit
ters, morgies and shanks and tearing them apart with their talons.
Ottilie’s heart leapt. ‘Bill,’ she said. Bill had sent in the birds.
Whistler shrieked with rage and Ottilie felt the change in the atmosphere. A jolt disrupting her pulse. The darkness flashed, signalling her transformation, but in those seconds before it happened, Bill, bent at an impossible angle, leaned out from a branch of the philowood tree and snatched the vial right out of Whistler’s hand.
The winged beast screeched with such thunderous wrath that Ottilie felt it in her bones. Whistler beat her wings, reducing the surrounding branches to dangling ends. She rose above Bill.
A morgie leapt at Ottilie from below. Somewhere, she heard hooves thundering. Ottilie struck out with her cutlass. Whistler’s talons were inches from Bill. The morgie fell. She didn’t have time to reach her last arrow.
‘Bill!’ she cried out.
It couldn’t happen. She couldn’t lose him.
A spear shot through the air, tearing a hole right through Whistler’s wing. She staggered, crushing a dozen dredretches in her path.
Ottilie’s head whipped back. Astride a black horse, Ned galloped across and held out his arm to Gully. Gully climbed up behind him just as Echo and Warship tore into the clearing. Preddy and Skip had arrived.
‘Where’s Scoot?’ Ottilie stood up in the saddle to look.
‘He stayed back to help,’ said Ned. ‘The dredretches are attacking Fiory.’
With an ear-splitting shriek, Whistler righted herself and faced Bill once more.
Ottilie needed to draw her away – there was only one way to do it. ‘Bill!’ she hollered, holding out her hands.
From his perch on the branch, Bill threw her the vial. Whistler followed the motion with her hooked beak. Ottilie dug in her heels and, through the break made by the birds, Nox shot into the air.
Maestro followed, with Whistler after him, her wingbeat uneven.
Ottilie had never flown so fast in her life. She wanted Whistler far away from everyone she loved. She didn’t even know where she was going until the edge of the Dawn Cliffs loomed. Whistler was gaining on them, her wing already starting to heal.
Maestro had overtaken Nox. Whistler was just behind her. Maestro circled back and Leo aimed arrow after arrow, but Whistler swayed and spiralled, dodging every one.
Ottilie still only had one arrow.
With a screech, Whistler shot at Nox. Nox rolled in the air, but there would be no escaping it. Leo tried to stop her. He fired more arrows and was so occupied with aiming that he didn’t react quickly enough when Whistler changed direction and shot at Maestro instead.
Maestro lurched backwards and Whistler caught his wing with her claws. Blood sprayed and Ottilie cried out in horror as he tumbled down. The buckles around Leo’s bad leg were the only thing keeping him in the saddle.
Maestro’s roar of pain tore her heart in two. He couldn’t right himself. He couldn’t fly. Whistler dived, her talons tearing across his throat.
‘No!’ Leo cried.
Bright blood drenched Maestro’s fur. He flailed and plummeted. One wing torn and bent, he rocked in the air and did all he could to slow his fall.
Whistler wasn’t finished with him. She dived again, speeding towards the injured wingerslink.
There was so much blood. So much damage. Ottilie would not let Whistler touch him again! Gritting her teeth, she aimed her last arrow.
She couldn’t think, couldn’t see. If she missed, it was the end.
She wasn’t even sure of releasing the arrow, but her fingers were free of it. She pulled her focus back and watched it fly true.
It felt like a story. She imagined words weaving the world. The river catching the light, like a serpent made of stars. The deathly quiet. The hunter’s arrow piercing the winged beast’s heart.
Whistler screeched. She twisted, plummeting down. She seemed bigger, more solid, all edges – jagged and sharp. She had never looked more wrong, more out of place. It was like a mighty piece of mountain falling from the sky.
She plunged into the Sol River. Water sprayed like shattered glass.
Ottilie felt all the air rush from her lungs. She nearly choked, or vomited, or was it a sob? She slumped forward as if whatever had been holding her up, keeping her functioning, was no longer there.
What had she done?
Was it over? Was everyone safe? It was so quick. Such a small thing – just an arrow and a target. Just another dredretch down – only it wasn’t just another dredretch.
It was momentous. There should have been thunder, a whirlwind, the sky spitting light. But it was just the afternoon: calm weather, sharp sun, a lazy river … Ottilie in the air, out of arrows, tired and muddy but uninjured … Someone was injured … worse than injured …
Maestro was sprawled on the riverbank, Leo still lashed to the saddle.
She couldn’t think straight. She guided Nox in beside him and held her breath as Nox sniffed at his wound. Maestro managed a broken growl. Red blood trailed down his beautiful silvery wings, pooling on the misery moss.
‘Leo?’ She leapt from Nox’s back.
Leo was panting, struggling with the straps. With shaking hands, Ottilie helped him get free. He looked dazed. She didn’t know if it was from the fall. If he was injured, he didn’t say. Tears spilling, he limped around to face Maestro.
‘He’s breathing,’ he said.
‘Will he … is he …?’
‘He’s breathing.’ It seemed to be all Leo could say. He pressed his hands against the gashes in Maestro’s neck. Maestro dug his claws into the dirt, but didn’t make a sound.
He should have growled. Why didn’t he growl?
Something else drew her attention. Fearing the worst, Ottilie hurried to the edge of the water. There was a disturbance beneath the surface. Her muscles seemed to heat and reawaken. She clenched and unclenched her fist.
Whistler’s great dark shape had disappeared. The water was swirling and, finally, with a shower like shooting stars, an enormous silver eagle soared out of the water and into the sky.
Healing water …
There was no dredretch left in her. This must have been Whistler’s true shape, and Ottilie could not help but think her glorious.
The silver bird was losing height, dipping back and forth in the air. Ottilie didn’t want to watch another winged thing go down, but there was nothing to be done. It landed a little way down the river on the opposite bank.
Ottilie peered over the softly flowing water at the silver bird mirroring Maestro. A strange rippling passed over it. Its feathers were falling out, its form thinning. It was ageing. Whistler’s life was catching up with her. Finally, the movement calmed.
The silver eagle lay by the water’s edge and never moved again.
42
Wreckage
Ottilie didn’t know what to feel. Triumph? Sorrow? It all seemed wrong.
This should have been the end of the war. It seemed absurd that it was not. But the demise of the witch was not a magical lever that would set the world right.
Maestro was fading. The dredretches were attacking Fiory. It would take a great deal more than Whistler’s death to fix what had been done. Ottilie remembered the patch of sickness by the slaver caves where the dredretches had risen on their own, and the thousands of monsters that the bone singers had led in from the Laklands.
Whistler had said the Usklers had rotted through. In her mind, there was no saving it. It was why she could do such terrible things. Perhaps this was why vengeance was all that mattered to her by the end. She had nothing to protect, nothing to fight for. But Ottilie saw things differently.
There was always something to fight for.
She turned back to Maestro. His head was tilted sideways, resting on the ground. He wasn’t moving. Leo was by his side, still pressing his shaking hands to the wounds, blood seeping between his fingers.
He couldn’t die. She wouldn’t let him. She looked at the river. ‘Leo.�
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He turned to her, tears mingling with sweat and dredretch blood.
‘It wasn’t a spell that did it – so I think the water can heal him.’
Leo didn’t seem able to speak. His face crumpled and he nodded, giving her leave to try.
Ottilie cupped her hands and tried to carry the water to Maestro, but what didn’t drain out did little other than rinse off a layer of blood. He was too injured. The cuts were too deep. Still, she tried again and again.
A sob escaped.
Leo grabbed her wrist. ‘Stop,’ he croaked.
She shook her head, throat too swollen to speak.
Maestro shuddered and let out a long breath. They both froze, terrified that this was the end.
Still holding her wrist, Leo struggled to his feet. ‘He needs to go all the way in.’
Ottilie turned back to the river. ‘But …’
Leo bent down, pressing his hand to the fur on Maestro’s face. ‘Get up,’ he whispered. ‘Maestro, get up. Get up!’
Maestro shifted his head. Leo ran a hand along his leg. ‘Get up.’
Maestro’s shoulders stirred. He was trying. He flipped a paw, pad down.
‘You can do it,’ said Ottilie.
He rolled his weight and shuddered again. With a huff, he seemed to press further into the ground.
Nox slunk forwards, her ears pressed back. Maestro managed a soft rumble, warning her not to come closer, but Nox ignored it. Shoving past Leo, she clamped her jaws on the scruff of his neck and strained, trying to pull him upright.
Ottilie held her breath. Leo grabbed her shoulder, as if losing his balance.
Maestro shifted his legs and with an agonised snarl he fought to his feet.
If she wasn’t holding Leo up, Ottilie might have fallen to her knees.
Maestro was too tall; Nox had to release him. She withdrew, head low, staring intently. Maestro’s jaw hung loose, his fangs dripping with blood. Leo approached with outstretched hands. Maestro sniffed in his direction and tucked in his good wing, his injured one hanging out at an odd angle.
Ottilie Colter and the Withering World Page 20