The Huntress: Sky

by Sarah Driver

  When the boy only studies a patch of flaky skin on his palm, she sighs. ‘You seem different with me, Yapok. It’s like you hardly remember our friendship.’

  Suddenly I’m pitching sideways into a shelf leaning and groaning under the weight of thick manuscripts. An owl darts from its burrow, chattering angrily around a beak stuffed with little black ice-worms.

  ‘No!’ Yapok lunges after me, grabbing at my cloak.

  A book slips to the floor and Yapok gasps. ‘Nonononono, didn’t I say not to touch anything?’ The cover turns bumpy, like a rash spreading across skin. Then it froths and hisses and spits. When I pick it up, the book sucks at my fingertips and I jerk back with a startled yell.

  Yapok shoves me out of the way. He plucks at the air above the book like he’s playing the strings of a harp, and a snarling creature is revealed, gripping the crinkled pages. Sweat breaks out across Yapok’s brow. Then he sneezes and the creature melts back into the cover, leaving an angry, sizzling blotch in the middle. ‘Most books have secrets hidden amongst their runes, and my monsters guard them,’ pants Yapok. ‘The monsters need to be subdued before the books can be disturbed, otherwise the pages will be damaged. So please take care.’ He glares at me.

  Crow swishes to my side, stops with a shower of ice and nudges me in the ribs. ‘Loony,’ he mouths, eyeing Yapok. Then he slumps into a squashy chair, sticks his legs out over one of its arms and belches, startling an owl.

  Ooooooohh meanpricklingboy! it scolds.

  I press my fist to my mouth to stopper a belly-laugh.

  Yapok stows the book back on the shelf. He yanks off his goggles and throws them onto a chair. I can see the fright shining in his eyes. He jabs the tip of his skate into the wall, getting redder and redder in the face but still not saying anything. Then he erupts.

  ‘Right – would you all please study the rules.’ He points to the back of the room, where a list is tacked above a table piled with books with broken spines.  Rules for Skybrarians. ‘There are no visitors’ rules, because, ah, we have never had any, so I’d thank you to be directed to the Skybrarian’s rules.’

  Keep the Skybrary secret

  Remember, the books are sensitive

  No running, jumping, or shouting

  No folding pages or bending spines

  No unnecessary talking

  No tea near the books

  No writing in the books

  No tampering

  Wear gloves

  If in doubt, consult the owls

  ‘No tampering with what?’ Kes asks.

  ‘Anything!’ replies Yapok.

  Seeing the list pinned up like that makes me think of how Grandma scribbled notes and stuck them in her medsin-lab. ‘You got somewhere for him to rest?’ I ask Yapok, jerking my thumb at Sparrow. I want to get him away from the others and tell him what I have to tell him before the guilt and horror tear me to pieces.

  ‘Ugh, people,’ Yapok grumbles. ‘With all their people-needs.’

  I stare at him.

  ‘I ent got people-needs,’ says Sparrow, flushing angry blotches.

  ‘Oh, really? You seen the state of you?’ I ask.

  ‘The spindly child can have a hammock if he must,’ says Yapok with a heavy sigh. ‘There is a sleeping loft.’

  ‘I don’t wanna go up there!’ complains Sparrow.

  ‘I need to talk to you, alone.’

  ‘Why?’ He wrinkles his nose.

  ‘Sea-Tribe stuff. None of this lot would understand.’ That shuts him up. I can feel Kes’s eyes on me, but I don’t look at her as I bundle Sparrow away. I realise how scrawny he is and how filthy all of us must be.

  We step into a rickety iron cage, and Yapok winds a crank to hoist us to the upper level of the Skybrary.

  When we reach the top we’re in a circular sleeping loft closed in by the uppermost rows of bookshelves. Sparrow clambers into a hammock and burrows into the blankets, suddenly beaming like he’s heart-glad he came up here after all. And I’m about to smash his heart-gladness to splinters.

  When I sit next to him I reach for his hand under the blankets and grip it. ‘Sparrow—’

  ‘Ugh, what you doing – get off !’ he whinges, trying to prise my fingers away.

  ‘Gods, all right then. Thought you might want some comfort or – forget it, I ent your flaming ma.’ I roll my eyes as soon as the words are out, cos once again I’m remembering the fight we had in our cabin.

  ‘No, you ent.’

  Thunderbolt watches me from the top of his head.  Keeptrykeeptry, Yellow-Hair frighted.

  I know, I tell her. I suck in my bottom lip and hide my face in my hands, the sweating and sickness starting again.

  ‘Sparrow,’ I start. His sour breath hits me in the face. My eyes ache and my throat’s raw.

  ‘Spit it out!’ he warbles. A dark wisp of whale-song curls from his lips. It’s lost the brightness it had at sea and a prickle of homesickness spikes my throat.

  I pinch the whale-song out of the air and stretch it between my fingers. ‘There’s something you need to know.’

  He peers at the space next to me, digging his little finger into his ear to scoop out a plug of ear wax. ‘What?’

  Horror creeps through my blood and curls my tongue tight behind my teeth. ‘You’ve missed a lot of stuff since—’ My words crash into the room. I swallow against the rock in my gullet. My voice trails away. Since what? Since Crow smuggled him off our ship, doing Stag’s dirty work? Since I betrayed him by saying I hated him for Ma dying giving birth to him?

  Then the words spill out in a sea-tumble.

  ‘Sparrow, when they took you, I was asleep. I’d almost drowned.’

  ‘You almost drowned ? But Grandma says you can’t drown cos of being born in the caul.’

  ‘I know, I’m saying I didn’t, ent I? A merwraith found me before I could put the not-drowning to the test.’

  ‘Ooooh, really?’ He bounces in the hammock, hawk-keenness lighting up his face.

  My voice is barely a breath. Somewhere below I can hear the others chattering. ‘And when I woke up that wretched blather-blubber, Stag, was in our cabin.’ My throat closes and I cough it open and keep going. ‘But you weren’t there and I got such a fear creeping over me.’ Tears splosh onto my stitches, and the salt stings. ‘And Grandma weren’t there neither.’

  ‘She was out looking for me, stupid! You don’t have to cry about it.’

  I shake my head. ‘I flaming do have to cry about it, slackwit.’ I’d give anything not to have to say the next bit. Cos then it wouldn’t be true, and I’d finally wake up, in our cabin, with Grandma bossing me to tar the ropes. But it is true, and he needs to know.

  I lean closer, propping my chin on his damp forehead, my tears spilling into his hair, my lips struggling to form words around the loss of her, that thing hulks like a shadowy monster inside me. ‘Stag took over our ship, calling himself captain.’ I spit the word. ‘And then he killed her. He killed Grandma.’ My sobs echo off the walls and I can’t breathe, I’m being crushed under this weight. ‘I couldn’t get to her. I couldn’t help her.’

  Purple fire begins to crackle in Sparrow’s good hand. There’s a beat, a sudden hush, the space that waits for his song to fill it widening around us. The song that can make a map. But instead of singing, he fills his stunned-fish silence with a sudden, echoing sob that makes me flinch. Then he kneels up, lifts his good arm and starts hurling lightning around the ice-cave.

  He blasts a small round hole in the wall. The ice crashes out and the wind whips through, stinging my eyes. A tendril of lightning weaves through and joins to the lightning in his palms. ‘Sparrow! Stop!’

  There’s a squeal of frenzied cranking as the metal cage sways into the room and Kestrel and Crow burst out.

  Then Yapok flies up the slope as fast as his skates can carry him, puffing and wheezing and batting owls out of his way. ‘Stop!’ he cries. ‘Someone in the next iceberg might hear!’

  A spot of g
lowing light burns through the pocket of my cloak and lands in the hammock, fizzling – the Opal is being pulled towards my brother by a vine of lightning. Sparrow smashes a whole shelf full of glass bottles and blasts a lamp into a thousand slivers. I try to pick the Opal up and snatch back my hand with a yelp. Then I grab a piece of bedding and wrap the gem in it before it can burn a hole in the floor. Yapok stares at the glowing bundle of cloth, and I can’t make out his expression.

  Sparrow burns a table into a pile of ashen splinters. Everyone’s running for cover, crawling on hands and knees to hide.

  Finally I wrestle my brother’s arm down by his side. His fingers are charred and his sobs are hot and endless.

  ‘We’ll run wild along our deck again,’ I whisper. ‘Promise.’

  But he just pulls away from me and turns to face the wall.

  I leave Sparrow sleeping and make my way back down to the lower floor. The cold reaches up through my boots to the top of my head. I stare around, and startle when I see the old Skybrarian sitting up in his hammock, sipping a steaming brew through crinkled lips. ‘People, heh? Bless my stars!’

  ‘You woke him up.’ Yapok’s proper moody now, glaring at me like Sparrow’s lightning was my fault.

  ‘I don’t mind, boy! Not a jot. I thought it would come to this, eventually. Trouble’s brewing hotter than a kettle of wish-tea.’

  ‘Trouble?’ I ask, curious to hear what trouble he’s heard of, stuck in here.

  ‘Yes, child. There are murmurs that the giants are waking up,’ he says. ‘There are storms unlike any I have known in my long life. And what a vicious early winter! I’ve an inkling it won’t want to thaw.’

  A shiver brushes my skin.  Giants ? If Grandma was here, I’d ask her why she never said so many of the stories were flaming true.

  ‘What about that village that got sucked right into the rock, when one of the mountains cracked? All the Witches were talking about it,’ says Yapok nervously.

  Kestrel skates out from between two bookshelves. ‘Yapok,’ she says. ‘Could we look through the books?’

  ‘No,’ he says, gliding off to collect an armful of bottles and books from a nearby table. ‘Sorry.’

  Her eyes follow him as he whizzes around the Skybrary. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I have enough work to do,’ he says, sneezing again and wiping his nose on his grubby sleeve. ‘And because I’ve already broken enough rules, bringing you here.’

  ‘Rules are for breaking,’ rasps the old man from his hammock. ‘Especially at your age.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Apprentice, I insist that you show these curious young minds around our home.’ He props himself up on one crackly elbow and peers at us. ‘I believe you’ll find something to suit every taste. My own favourite shelf is our lovely collection of wish-tea-fuelled poetry. I also have a whole case devoted to the construction of the first ghostways . . . you’ve seen those, I suppose?’

  ‘The silver tunnels that carry voices?’ asks Crow.

  ‘Yes, yes. And owls. Those are the ones.’ His ancient blue eyes flutter around the ice-cave. ‘Yapok, dear, would you show them? After all, knowledge must be passed on, if it is to survive.’ He settles back into his hammock and begins to snooze.

  Kestrel claps her hands and grins until her cheeks squash her eyes.

  Yapok watches the Skybrarian. ‘I am trying to look after him as best I can,’ he whispers. ‘And preserve the collection. And all the while, the wild weather is trying to destroy our iceberg.’ Then he looks around at all of us, his mouth setting into a grim line. ‘But who am I to disagree with the Skybrarian?’

  We follow him away from the central cave, down one of the paths between the shelves. Our skates crunch the bones and teeth hidden inside the owl pellets littering the floor. I wobble along slowly, frighted I’ll fall and wrench a shelf down on top of me.

  The books are sheltered by taut awnings made of animal skin, to catch the icicle-melt. Some of the spines show names written in runes I understand, but other titles are written in letters I’ve never seen before – other Tribe-tongues. Maybe even ancient lost ones. Excitement flutters inside me, and Kestrel stops to touch every other spine, exclaiming in wonder.

  ‘So over here is Natural History,’ calls Yapok, and when I ask what he means he tells us they’re books about birds and animals and fish, trees and plants and rocks.

  ‘On this side we have world monarchies of Sea, Sky and Land—’

  ‘Kings and Queens!’ whispers Kes.

  ‘And then we find Star Travel, Owl Breeds, Owl-care . . .’ Yapok’s voice dwindles as he careens off down another path. ‘Ice-sculpting, different types of ice and their names, Hunting, Ice-worms, Poetry and a few volumes on draggle-riding!’ he calls back to us. Then his skates slish to a stop and he rushes back to us, pale face looming out of the murk. ‘I forgot to say, don’t startle the monsters. They’re used to me, but they won’t like strangers. They’re guards, after all.’ He cocks his head and we all pause, listening to a steady, wet breathing that’s coming from the bookshelves.

  Soon exhaustion’s crept over me, and I can hardly stand in my skates. But when I lean too heavily against a shelf, Yapok squawks at me until I straighten.

  We keep moving, and Yapok points out more and more books. ‘Gods, Philosophy, Shape-changing, Mystik-cism, Legend . . . we have one or two on giant-lore but most are with the land-lurkers at Nightfall.’

  My eyes boggle in my head. I never knew so many thoughts had been scrawled. And maybe we can use some of them to help us get the next Opal.

  Then a faint voice wheedles through the path behind us. ‘Mouse?’

  ‘Sparrow’s awake,’ I tell the others. ‘I’d best go back and check on him.’

  My brother’s call throbs into the air again and suddenly one of the ghostway paths sucks it up and hurls it around the ceiling.  MouseMouseMouseMouseMouse!

  ‘Aagh, come on!’ says Yapok in dismay, eyeing the ghostway. ‘We have to get him to quieten down!’

  As we turn around, I notice Kestrel stuffing a few small books into her cloak. When she sees me watching, she grins.

  We reach the main chamber and see Sparrow peering down from the loft, chattering to the Skybrarian, who’s listening keenly. Thaw’s perched on the old man’s knee. ‘Yes, yes,’ he tells Sparrow. ‘My goodness! Little wonder you’re forced to get cross with people, if no one ever understands you!’

  ‘Aye,’ agrees Sparrow, nodding.

  I roll my eyes. Then Yapok cranks me up to the loft in the metal cage, and I help Sparrow down to the first level. He still looks pale and shaken from what I told him. Tears have made tracks through the grime on his face, and his hair’s sticking on end. Sparks crackle through him, from his hair to his feet, and carve craters in the floor underneath him.

  Kestrel takes the books from her cloak and spreads them out on a fur on the floor. She brings a gold-tooled leather tome to her nose and inhales the scent of the age-browned pages. ‘This used to be one of my favourites,’ she whispers, eyes still closed like she’s trying to get back to some other time. ‘I never thought I’d see another book as long as I lived!’

  ‘Is that so?’ asks the old man. ‘Well, I am extra glad to have rescued it, then.’ He sinks back into the pillows and gives a long, thin snore, his papery eyelids fluttering closed.

  Yapok flushes, but before he can speak Kes lifts a hand. ‘I saw this and wondered if we could read it to Sparrow?’

  I stumble closer, putting out my hands, and drop to the floor next to the books. ‘Whale Travels,’ I read out. The book is a deep blue, speckled with coarse white spirals, like barnacles. Forgetting about the monster guard, I pinch the edge of the cover to open the book but a slimy green tail lashes out, stinging me across the knuckles. I jerk back, sucking my fist.

  ‘No!’ Yapok turns to a cupboard and stoops to rummage inside. Then he stands, pulling on a pair of white gloves. ‘That is a very old volume,’ he tells Kes, disapproval dripping fro
m his words. He picks it up like it’s made of crystal, and blows a layer of dust from it. Then he puts his face very close to the cover and whispers odd, garbled words. He snaps his fingers and a small green beast with a spiny tail slips from the book and puffs into a stinking cloud of green vapour.

  Crow winks at me. ‘Now that was witch-work!’

  Yapok gifts him a sharp look and passes the book to Kestrel. When she opens it, whale-song yawns out, lighting her face blue. ‘Can you do these, too?’ she begs, opening her cloak to produce two other books she nabbed from the shelves. Yapok sighs, but when the Skybrarian gazes at him over the edge of his hammock he does as she asks. Soon she’s sprawled on the fur with Sparrow, reading whale stories to him. His hair settles down as his lightning calms.

  Yapok brews a kettleful of tea and passes around steaming goblets of it – it’s dark purple and sweet-smelling.

  When I sip it, startlement widens my eyes. The tea tastes just like Pip’s cinnamon buns. I gulp it down, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. The bones-deep chill is banished, leaving me aglow with warmth. ‘What is this stuff ?’

  Yapok grimaces. ‘Wish-tea. Tastes of whatever you wish for. Waste of time if you ask me, using magyk to brew that, but the dear old Skybrarian insists on it.’

  ‘But I didn’t wish for anything!’

  He scowls. ‘You might not think you did, but inside, everyone wishes for something.’

  I grin at him and close my eyes, gulping the tea. One heartbeat I think of oranges, and my tongue fizzles with sweet, sharp juice. The next beat I picture a jar of honey and after that Pip’s best squid tentacle stew. But my favourite is when I wish for the taste of nutmeg and the feeling of being in our old bunk, snuggled beneath the open porthole, watching the stars. The tea’s flavour shifts as fast as the fire spirits, and I can almost imagine I’m home.

  ‘What’s yours?’ I ask Kestrel.

  ‘Dried starfishes!’ interrupts Sparrow, happily.