by Sarah Driver
Thaw sits on a nearby tree branch, spitting insults at the horse, which don’t seem to help matters.
Crow watches me. ‘Don’t flick your fright around like a spear,’ he tells me. ‘The horse is a gentle spirit – let him guide you. You can’t control everything, but you can learn to trust. He can sense all the troubles in you. And he can help you heal them.’
‘When did you turn into such a wise-one?’ I spit. ‘I’m telling you – the horse don’t like me, and I don’t like him.’
‘It’s all right to be scared, y’know. Now and then.’ Crow bites his lip. ‘But there’s not much we can do about liking or not liking each other, if you want to find the Marshes.’ He takes my horse’s reins to help me along, but every time we need to go proper fast he mounts my horse with me and takes over, so I can clamp my eyes shut and cry into the wind. Turns out horse herds are so strongly linked that his horse just tears after us, not wanting to be left behind.
‘You know,’ Crow says when we slow again and my belly falls out of my mouth, ‘it’s just like being on a ship. You have to feel the rhythm.’
‘Ent nothing like being on a ship,’ I spit through clenched teeth. Sparrow – half blind, sickly as anything and seal-pup young – sniggers at me as he and Kestrel canter past. Even flaming Sparrow don’t mind horses. Shame bites my bones raw.
After a day’s ride I still hate horses just as much as I always did – and I’ve got a new-found hate for sore backsides, to boot.
Then things go from bad to worse. Even Crow struggles to calm the beasts when lightning zaps at their hooves and trees are torn loose in a storm that tries to gulp us whole. The trees smash to the ground, their roots straggling into the air. One horse bolts when we stop to find water, so we’re left with three.
We ride through the storms until we reach the outskirts of the Icy Marshes, where there’s a man loaning canoes for a silver ingot each. For extra silver he loans ice picks, veils and gloves – protection from the poison frogs.
‘Daylight robbery,’ mutters Crow when he strolls back from selling our horses – he’s only got enough for a canoe.
I watch the skin boats skudding away down the wandering sea-path to the Marshes. It’s proper strange to be back here – the place where Rattlebones helped me escape my ship, before.
‘’Twill have to do,’ says Kes, with a frown.
‘We’ll be fine.’ I stride towards the man renting out the canoes, the others on my heels.
The man takes our silver and slips a canoe from its mooring. We climb in, and when the man sees my scar he smirks a look of amused disgust.
Thaw springs from my hood and bolts into the man’s face, hissing and squawking and flapping her ever-strengthening wings. He staggers backwards and splashes into the marsh. I reach down and grab the ice pick from his hand as Thaw spits at him and soars back to me. She smooths a wing-tip gently across my cheek, a habit she’s started whenever folks gift my scar hard looks.
Heart-thanks, Thaw.
Fury makes her body tremble, so it takes me a few beats, while our boat gathers speed, to get her to come back to me, out of the beast-world. Then she whisks from my shoulder into the water to catch fishes that dart in the murky shallows.
Our canoe crunches through the frosty water, releasing little puffs of steam. When we reach the end of the sea-path, the marsh widens into a great network of waterways and canoes wreathed in mist, with lanterns swinging from poles at their prows. Finally, I’ve got a chance to feel a surge of heart-gladness that we found the Sky-Opal, saved it from Stag and all stayed together.
Our canoe crunches to a stop until I lean over and break the ice in front of us with the pick. Crow watches the marsh water, then plunges his hand through the surface and grabs a long-legged insect, stuffing it into his mouth. ‘I got hungry,’ he says when I stare at him, heat spilling across his cheeks.
We sail until the moon is high, and a mourning-song fills our ears. A township on stilts looms into view, a hotch-potch of skinny-legged stilt homes, swaying in the wind. Heart-sadness wraps around my chest when I see that some of them have been burned by terrodyl blood, too. But the others stand strong and whole, and I won’t let my hope fizzle out.
Giant toads with cracked, slimy skin sit in the marsh, urgently calling out.
GlukglukGLOATINGglukglukgloiking!
When they suddenly spring away, showering us with stagnant water, Yapok and Kestrel cower together, cringing with horror.
‘I can smell toads,’ whispers Sparrow, fear stretching his face.
‘S’alright too-soon,’ I tell him. ‘This is a place of hearth-welcome.’
But he shakes his head. ‘It’s just like my nightmare.’
A stink swarms close. Folk empty chamber pots from their homes into the marsh, and droplets of slurry pepper our skin as we glide past.
‘Urgh,’ says Crow, wiping his face with the back of his hand.
‘Ever the spoilt land-bab, I see,’ I tell him, and he whacks my arm. Then he yells, swerving around a huge column of ice that’s sticking out of the marsh. Inside the ice are frozen frogs and fishes.
The air above is thick with fog the colour of rotting meat. I wrap my scarf tighter around my nose and mouth, wondering how to get someone to help us find the Marsh-folks’ leader.
Then a rubbery yellow frog the size of a gold piece lands on Crow’s bare arm with a muffled wet sound. He glances down at it, his hands stilling on the paddles.
My mind scrambles for Grandma’s teachings. ‘Don’t move!’ I tell him. ‘The tiniest poison-frogs are the most deadly.’ This little one could knock him out cold for days, if not for always.
‘Everyone make certain you’re covered up,’ I call, as my heart pounds, making me dizzy. ‘Anyone got a blade?’
‘I have not dealt with such foul creatures before!’ breathes Kestrel, cowering away from the frog. She kicks a dagger along the bottom of the canoe, and I pick it up. Ettler pokes two dark eyes from inside her cloak.
Whatitwhatit ?
‘You’ve never seen a frog before?’ Crow hisses.
My mind whirrs. Traders squabble on the marsh banks, carrying double-pronged spears like the tails of sand-eels. They watch us pass, suspicion scrawled across their features.
No one else is going to save him, rings a voice in my head.
I reach for my belt and pull free the blade Kes gifted me. ‘Don’t move,’ I tell Crow. He grips his forearm with his other hand, trying to steady the shakes running through him.
The frog sticks out its bone-white tongue. Two curved gold fangs gleam in its mouth. Slowly the tongue flickers out across Crow’s skin.
Tastysaltywarm, the frog snickers. Tangfleshfattysup.
‘My arm’s gone numb!’ he whispers, barely breathing.
‘It’s released its numbing medsin,’ I whisper.
The frog draws its tongue back into its mouth, waiting.
Bitesoonbitesoonrasptastemeaty!
I bring the tip of my blade slowly closer.
‘Just kill it!’ wails Yapok.
When the gold of its teeth flashes again I drive the point of my blade clean through the frog’s skull, just stopping short of Crow’s arm. Careful not to lose any of the venom that’s started to seep out, I peel the frog’s sucker pads off his skin.
‘Argh, you’re pulling out all the hairs!’ he gasps.
‘Want me to leave it next time, do you?’ I growl, lifting the frog’s tiny body onto my knee.
‘Beast weren’t mucking about,’ he remarks, staring at the bald, still-sticky spots on his arm where the suckers were attached.
‘Nor are these others!’ snaps Kestrel, shuddering as she stares around at the giant toads. ‘How much further must we drift into this place?’
More and more giant toads swarm towards us, and Kes clutches the sides of the boat, knuckles white.
‘I reckon they’re being drawn by the Opals,’ I whisper, nerves jangling as great bulging pairs of eyes watch us pass.
&
nbsp; ‘They are horrible,’ whispers Kestrel. We accidentally hit one with an oar and Kes shrieks when it bloats up into the air, muttering and spluttering to itself.
I pinch the shiny gold fangs from the dead poison-frog’s mouth. ‘They say that rich-as-filth land-dwelling ladies like to adorn their necks with glimmering ropes of poison-frog fangs. We can save these and trade them.’
‘Summat tells me this lot of bog-faeries might be sitting on piles of the things already,’ snipes Crow, as he sets to covering up every inch of his skin.
Then I remove the tongue, cut loose a scrap of moss and use it to wrap the tongue to preserve it. I feel Crow’s eyes on me. ‘For its numbing medsin,’ I tell him, without looking up. Finally I take the glass tear-vial Kes gifted me and squash the frog’s skull with the flat of my thumb, like Grandma once showed me, making a miniature river of black slime drip into the vial, filling it almost to the top.
I stow the teeth and vial of venom in my tunic pocket. What with being on the water and having a longbow and a blade, I’m starting to feel more like my old self with every beat. The rushing of my blood is slowly growing quieter in my ears. I wipe my dagger clean on my breeches but keep it out and ready. ‘We should’ve nabbed one of them nets!’
‘How about we just get out of here?’ Crow grabs the paddles and pushes our boat away from the bank we drifted into.
‘Hang about a beat, wrecker-boy. Think we’d better take a little dose of venom now. Never know when more of the blighters will start sticking themselves to you. This will make us immune for a little while.’
We dab a smidge of the venom onto our tongues. The taste sends a wave of bile and wooziness crashing over me, but I shake my head violently and try to hang onto my wits.
‘Where’d you learn how to do that?’ asks Crow.
Just then, a shadow falls over us. ‘I was going to ask the same thing,’ booms a voice. ‘That’s some mean technique!’
Something hits the bottom of our canoe and instantly I’m engulfed in an angry, biting cloud of green fog. It claws its way down my throat, making me cough and retch painfully. I feel someone grab my boots and pull me up, into the air, until I’m hanging upside down and staring into a pair of buggy green eyes.
‘Oi!’ yells Crow. ‘Put my friend down, right now!’
‘Yes,’ says Kes, fingering a dagger in the scabbard on her chest. ‘Release her at once.’
‘If you insist,’ says the voice. The grip on my ankles eases and I tumble back into the boat, bashing my head on the struts in the bottom.
I blink to make the trees stop spinning. A long shadow falls across me. I scuttle onto all fours.
A grizzled man stands over us, with long, swaying ropes of viney hair hanging down and getting in the way of his round green eyes. There’s a pitted scar beneath one of them, puckering the lower eyelid. His toad-skin coat is covered in a layer of grime, and he carries a sparkling spear covered in fish scales. When a giant toad rises from the water, belching glowing gas, the man lashes it with a whip hooked to his belt, and it vanishes under the steam again.
He looks like he’s moving when he’s not. Something is swarming, all over him. I know who he is.
‘You’re the frog man! From my map!’ As I blurt the words, I see the poison-frogs leaping about in his hair, in the pockets of his grubby cloak, stuck to his bare chest.
He places a finger to his lips and winks, then unravels a length of netting from his pocket and rigs it to cover our canoe. ‘My name is Pike,’ he tells us. ‘Let me take you to my home. We can talk more safely there.’
As we hack the ice and paddle through the marshes, Pike croaks a throaty tune with the frogs. He looks down at us and winks again. ‘A rain charm.’
The gateway to the town above the water is a giant fish-jaw fringed with icicles. I remember when we docked here, right before I escaped Stag’s grimy clutches, and Squirrel raced away towards these marshes. What happened to my friend after that?
We glide beneath it and a man on a raised platform lowers a gate in front of us. ‘Toll,’ he croaks, stretching out a veined hand.
‘What’ve you got to offer to our marsh-gods?’ asks Pike, as he kisses a small carving of a frog and tosses it into the rushes.
I try not to grumble as I fish out a frog fang and pass it to Crow. The man lifts the gate to let us pass. We’ve made a trade of sorts, I reckon. That fang most likely did buy us safe passage and, with heart-luck, Pike might gift us a place to sleep for the night.
On the banks, musicians strum stringed instruments built from the jaws of fish.
We moor at the base of the largest of the houses on stilts. In the boats, on the balconies of the houses, and on the walkways running between them, folks run around barefooted, frogs leaping in their hair. One or two of their stilt-homes smoulder, spewing old smoke. Pike sees me looking. ‘Lightning storms,’ he explains.
Pike moors the boat and we climb a ladder onto a mossy walkway. The house creaks in the eerie wind that echoes through the reeds. The foul stink of the marsh-fog seeps through the boards and claws into my nose.
Pike pushes open a thin door and we step into the house, dripping onto the black floor. ‘I can’t wait to get dry,’ says Kestrel, peering around.
‘Get dry?’ says Pike in alarm. ‘That can be dangerous. Why should you want to do that?’
Rushlights flicker in the gloom, and a woman sits in a rocking chair by the stove, dipping rushes in kettles of fat to make more lights as the old ones die. ‘Hearth-welcome,’ she says, dipping her head. Then she stands and pads stickily towards us, gripping a pan and ladle. Pike takes our cloaks from us and hangs them from hooks in the wall. He glances inside the lining of mine and nods to himself thoughtfully.
Then, without a word of warning, the woman starts dumping ladlefuls of thick, clear slime over our heads. I start to complain, then shut my mouth before the slime runs down my throat. I stare down at the woman’s webbed feet until the slime stops coursing down my face. Then I wipe the worst of it out of my eyes and mouth, gasping.
Kestrel is fuming. ‘You should ask before doing that!’
The woman smiles. ‘Slime-dunking keeps us warm and prevents our skins from drying. Now please remove your boots and stockings, and come inside.’
We look at each other. ‘Best do as she asks,’ I say with a shrug, peeling off my boots. Then I move further into the house, my hair and clothes welded to my skin. Sparrow follows close behind, and the others are still squabbling with the slime-woman. My feet stick to the rubbery black floor. It’s covered in eel skin. My jaw falls slack when I see how the main room crawls with huge newts and salamanders. Ooze, they chatter. Drip, plinkplunk, slimeslimeslimesearch, tonguedartsnack?
Thaw reels away from them into the rafters, where she perches, bristling. Nonono, she whispers to me. Uh no oh no, no heart-thankings from me!
Don’t flaming blame you, Thaw, I tell her, watching the creatures shuffle around the room.
A fire crackles in the corner, stirring up all the strange stinks of the place – fish and frogs and damp. There’s a constant croak-chirp-plop of frogs falling from the rafters. I jump, brushing them away. ‘It’s all right,’ says Pike. ‘The ones in here should have been defanged.’
I don’t like the sound of should.
All around us, there’s a slimy pattering as frogs land on the fish-skin roof.
Pike fetches a tray filled with steaming mugs of broth. ‘Help yourselves.’
I take one and sniff the steam – it smells suspiciously froggy. I pinch my nose and drink it down, cos these days we never know when we’ll eat again. Kestrel tucks herself into a chair and hides her feet under her skirts, staring round at everything with what looks like a mix of horror and wonder. Ettler wiggles out of her cloak and starts chugging around the room, ogling everything.
‘You wanted to know about the great wide,’ I whisper.
Kestrel sucks in her bottom lip and raises her eyebrows. ‘But so much of it, all at once?
’
Pike lights a pipe and puffs out green rings of smoke. ‘I saw the symbol of the Huntress sewn into two of your cloaks.’ Strings of slime plop from the roof into our laps. ‘I’m more heart-glad than you could know that you didn’t drown when you fled your ship. I’m guessing you learned your poison-frog extraction from Captain Wren.’
‘Aye!’ Heart-gladness swells in my chest. ‘You knew her?’
He nods, drawing in a sharp breath. ‘And are the whispers true? The Hunter had her drowned?’
I flinch, watching Sparrow. He curls his feet under him on a chair, watching the space next to Pike’s head. ‘S’alright,’ he says, ‘you can talk about it around me, y’know.’
I turn back to Pike. ‘Aye, the whispers are true. So I’ll be needing your help.’
He strokes his whiskery chin. ‘I didn’t just know your grandma. I know Fox, too.’
I sit arrow-straight at the mention of Da, brushing a tiny frog from my hair. ‘Do you know where he is?’
Sadness floods the crags of his face and he shakes his head. My hopes turn sour. ‘I have gathered whispers in the dark. He sent a message to say he hadn’t made it back to your ship, that Stag had caught up with him.’
I reel. Finally, someone’s said out loud what I’ve always known in my heart – Stag didn’t kill Da!
‘Stag left Fox for dead, but he was rescued by a tree-tribe. I was about to travel there when another message arrived from that tribe, telling me he had already left.’ Pike stops abruptly. ‘Can all of your companions be trusted?’
Crow bristles, glaring at Yapok until he flushes. Pike watches them in bemusement.
‘Aye,’ I tell him. ‘You can talk freely.’