by Sarah Driver
Then I panic. ‘Where’s Sparrow?’
‘Here!’ I grab his hand and the three of us jump into a boat. There’s a shout as Stag paddles after us. ‘It’s all coming true,’ whispers Sparrow.
Flames dance and lick across to the next stilt-house, and the next, until the whole marsh is crawling with flame that crackles, roars and sheds a haze of heat that ripples over the water.
‘He’s gaining!’ shouts Crow as we push along the marsh as quick as a tail-flick, though it’s still too slow. He glances around and spots a house tucked behind the others that ent caught light yet.
All around, in the boats, on the burning houses, on the walkways and in the shallows, Marsh-folk and Fangtooths battle, spear against club, axe against blade. We rush through a storm of leaping poison-frogs trying to flee their home, and I shove Sparrow flat in the boat.
‘Overturn the canoe and hide under it!’ Crow hisses. ‘I’ll make him think I’ve got the gems.’
‘Both of us go or both of us stay!’
‘Think on it – you need to get the Opals to safety! Now go!’ He pushes us out of the boat.
I bite my tongue and swallow a scream, as I scrabble to overturn the canoe, tearing my nails. Then me and Sparrow gulp a breath and dive underneath it, the relief at getting away from Stag filling me with shameful tears. The gloopy water is bone-bitingly cold. I know I can’t do what Crow said. I ent leaving without the wrecker, Opals or no Opals.
‘Stay here,’ I tell Sparrow. ‘The fire won’t get you in the water. Just keep kicking.’ He nods, Thunderbolt sitting on his ear.
I swim out from under the canoe and jump into the webbing of wooden struts under the stilt-house. But when I reach for Crow he knocks my hand away and paddles another stray canoe back to face Stag.
‘No!’ I whisper, watching them from under the house.
‘We’re alone again, traitor,’ throbs Stag’s voice. ‘Cosy, isn’t it? Just like being back in that cabin, with you my scraping servant-bird.’
Crow stays silent.
‘Nothing to say? Not even a filthy squawk for your old master?’ Stag chuckles.
Anger sweeps through me. Flames flicker all around, the reeds send smoke curling into the sky, and boats creak as people paddle away.
‘You are a nothing, boy.’ There’s a creaking of boats as someone shuffles their feet. ‘To see you running around after my savage daughter is truly pathetic.’
All the sounds in the world fade in a heartbeat.
I stop breathing.
‘Your – what? ’ Crow stutters.
My belly lurches.
‘You heard me.’ He speaks lightly, like all he’s doing is trading for spices. ‘And while I may have been softhearted before, not even our blood-tie can save that little bow-wielding thug, now. She has sealed her own fate.’
‘Mouse is your daughter?’
Crow’s words lie buried deep beneath a fug of muffled sounds, as my blood beats hard in my ears. Bile rushes into the back of my throat, but I swallow it down and dig my nails into my palms to keep myself heart-strong.
‘She should have been a boy,’ says Stag. ‘I was owed a son, to soothe the loss of the boy who lived for seven sunrises. Then that monstrosity slithered into the world. I wanted to shoot her gloating hunter’s moon out of the sky.’
Stag’s lying.
He ent my kin.
My kin have open arms and hearts. My kin are proud and fierce and heart-strong, loyal and brave. My kin laugh ’til it hurts.
He ent a thing like my kin.
The house above me catches light with a woofff of flame. But he don’t know you’re listening, chimes a treacherous voice in my head. So why would he lie?
And what about him having the beast-chatter, like you?
I turn hot and dizzy, can’t move a limb. I heave and retch into the water under the burning house, Thaw fussing her feathers and keening sorrowfully. I can’t believe it, I won’t – cos if he ent lying, then my da ent my da at all.
My mind slows. I stare at a knot in the wood of one of the house-stilts. I feel my eyes going crossed and my spirit thirsting for the dream-dance world. I fight to keep myself in the here and now.
My father is a murderer. No. No.
There ent no way I can ever be captain, now.
And I had another brother, who I never knew died.
Shut up.
Even if I can forgive Da for abandoning us, how will I ever forgive him for not telling me a stitch of the truth, and for not really being my – I push the thought down but it flies at me, all tooth and claw. For not being my da?
Then worse thoughts come, sharp as arrows, punching into my chest. I’ve always known there’s a streak of badness in me. Now I know it’s a blood-taint.
I cover my face with my arm and scream, biting hard into the fur of my cloak, shaking, as fire crackles all around me.
I dive into the marsh. Thaw tries to stop me but then I’m under the water and its foul gloop fills my mouth.
Why didn’t anyone ever tell me? Suddenly I’m thinking of Ma’s brooch and how Stag stuffed it under his pillow. And how Grandma mentioned Ma’s name to Stag, just before he killed her. Horror strokes shivering claws up and down my nerves. It can’t be true . . . maybe he knows I’m lurking here, listening. Maybe he’s just trying to get inside my head. But everything swarms closer now. I think of how Sparrow has Ma and Da’s yellow hair, and mine is black as tar.
Dimly, I’m still aware that I need to keep the Opals safe. I surface underneath another burning house, and ash falls into my hair. On the banks, Stag’s army crank huge catapults laden with pots of terrodyl blood and unleash the black rain over the marshlands. Folk run, terrorised.
‘Why are you telling me all this?’ asks Crow, voice edged with panic.
I can’t leave without Crow. And where would I go? Who can I trust?
‘Because you won’t live to squawk to anyone,’ gloats Stag. ‘You didn’t think I’d let you get away with it, did you? No one turns their back on me and lives to tell the tale.’
Crow’s breath is shallow and tattered. I can smell the sour animal-stink of his fright. ‘One thing I’m curious about,’ he says quickly. ‘When you first came round the Orphan’s Hearth, you said we was the same. You said you knew what it were like, to—’ Crow pauses. ‘To be made to smuggle loot through them caves of filth from as young as five summers.’ His voice is edged with poison.
I could swim through caves as deep and dark as the tomb, drifts Stag’s voice across time. Dead Man’s Caves . . . Stag was a child at the Hearth?
But Stag’s stopped listening. ‘You bore me,’ he says absently, looking round at the destruction he’s making. ‘I have territories to claim.’
‘Look,’ says Crow. ‘Just don’t go after Mouse. I’ve got the Opals.’
I’m trying to stay in the waking world but a dream-dance plucks at me, trying to take me away from the pain.
Stag snorts. ‘You expect me to believe that?’ I hear a metallic click and straight away the image of that gun he used to shoot Grandma floods back into my mind.
I need to save Crow, but my spirit keeps popping in and out of my body.
Crow-boy is friend now friend nownownow get away! hoots Thaw-Wielder. She bursts through the ash and smoke, into Stag’s face. He levels the gun at her.
‘You!’ rings a strong, sudden voice. Kestrel. ‘You cannot tear us apart. That is my friend’s sea-hawk. You will not harm her!’
For a heartbeat, my spirit settles in my body and my eyes focus. Yapok and Kestrel are paddling a canoe towards Crow and Stag. Kestrel reaches him and tries to wrench the gun away.
Soldiers laugh, their voices dead-dull, like heavy clubs all around the marshes.
No.
I try to warn her. ‘Get away from him!’ But my voice is barely a whisper.
Stag rips the gun from her grasp and hits her hard in the back of the head with the end of it. The world fills with a brutal smack. Then he shove
s her in the back, away from him.
Kestrel crumples forwards into another canoe.
Crow freezes. Yapok bellows her name. ‘Neither of you move,’ orders Stag. He kicks the canoe away from him and it carries our friend away, downriver.
I slip heavily under the water. My mind is flailing and my body’s so numb I don’t even feel the cold.
A small figure bumps past me, hair gold in the underwater firelight. Sparrow! Thunderbolt hangs from a strand of his hair, shedding the light he needs to see.
He shoves under the boat and sends Stag toppling backwards into the water, his gun cracking as he falls.
Then he swims to me and tugs me to the surface with his good arm.
Yapok is swimming towards the canoe that’s carrying Kestrel, crying out as he tries to keep his face above water. ‘Wake up!’ he yells when he catches the canoe, reaching inside and shaking something, hard. Then a stillness settles over him that screams louder than anything of the sickening wrongness he must be facing.
Crow drags Sparrow and me out of the water, onto the nearest bank. We spin, looking for anywhere that ent ablaze, as Stag surfaces, spluttering.
‘We have to run away, fast!’ says Sparrow. He and Crow pull me along between them. Yapok clambers out of the water, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. Ettler shivers in the crook of his arm, whimpering.
Crow looks at Yapok, but he shakes his head, once, quickly, then every one of his muscles and bones seems to slump. His teeth chatter and he puts out a hand to stop himself from falling.
‘We can’t leave without her!’ I scream, belly raked hollow.
Crow presses his hand over my mouth. His skin smells scorched. ‘Shhh, you can’t help her. She’s gone. Yapok saw, all right? Breathe. Just breathe for the gods’ sake.’ Anger steams from his mouth, hot, into my ear.
‘This way!’ says Sparrow, Thunderbolt hovering by his head. ‘I seen it in my vision. I can get us out of here.’ We run. The houses are crumbling into the water and the marshes stink sickeningly of roasting toad. There’s no sign of Pike. A few Marsh-folk still battle Stag’s soldiers out on the banks, but most have fled. Or worse.
‘Quick, there’s a boat!’ Sparrow gestures behind a clump of reeds to a canoe, loosely tethered to a mooring post. ‘Get in!’ We jump into the boat and I wrap my arms around my knees and shake so hard I feel like my bones will snap.
We drift through a haze of burning wood and fizzling fish scales. Stag’s destroyed the Marsh-folk’s home, just cos they wouldn’t join him, just cos they were in his way.
My gut’s a sick, hollow pit and shock has splayed my eyes and mouth wide. I know what’s happened, but I can’t feel anything, and I can’t focus on anyone when they try to talk to me. Sparrow takes the lead and the older boys listen closely to him, nodding, faces grave.
Then Yapok curls on his side, weeping for Kestrel. Ettler quivers next to him. I wish I could gift Kes my tears. But there’s nothing left of me. There’s just a knot in my throat and as I watch the blaze, I realise again how it’s all just as Sparrow saw in his nightmare. The smoke makes us wheeze for breath, so Sparrow carefully cuts a scrap of cloth from his tunic, with help from Thunderbolt’s glow. Then he presses it over my nose and mouth, and tucks his own face into his sleeve, eyes streaming.
The Opals make the sparks dance in the air and let me see through this world into the dream one – the one where I’d rather be. ‘We have to find Da,’ Sparrow tells me, gripping my fingers hard and trying to make me focus on him. ‘Then we’ll be all right, won’t we?’
But I don’t know if anything will ever be all right again.
The fire spirits dance all night, as we sail. While the others lie in a crumpled heap in the bottom of the boat, snoring, I watch the spirits flicker, feeling nothing, not even reaching up to brush the snow from my face.
There’s a wound in the world, left by Kes, that hurts so much I have to turn away from it. I cradle the Opals as the boat creaks and the wind carries its smell of burning.
Da, I think. Da. Where are you? In the depths of my bones, the word Da creeps like a sickness. Cos Stag said – no. No. I know what Stag said, and I don’t know why he would have lied. But it can’t be true, can it? I can’t be his kin.
I roll onto an elbow and stare at my brother. ‘It weren’t just a nightmare, about the Marshes.’ I don’t need to carve my words into a question.
Sparrow shakes his head. ‘No,’ he whispers huskily. We lie down, face to face. I breathe his sour breath.
‘Have you had nightmares – visions – about Da?’
‘I think I saw Da in some kind of cave,’ he splutters, too much smoke still in his lungs. ‘His hands were tied up.’
‘A cave?’
He nods. ‘In the bottom of a great huge mountain.’
Crow sits up in the boat, wiping his face as he wakes up properly. ‘What about the caves at Hackles?’
I sigh. ‘But we were there, and there was no sign of Da. Sparrow – could the cave have been on the mountain where we were trapped?’
‘I ent sure. It weren’t a cave with creatures in,’ he says. ‘It was another one. There was someone wearing a red cloak.’
I remember the figure staggering towards us as we escaped on the draggles. Where had it come from? ‘We have to go back there anyway,’ I whisper. ‘To tell Egret about—’ My throat closes thickly.
Sparrow stares at the space next to my head.
‘I’m always gonna listen to you telling me your visions, from now on,’ I say.
He grins, but the grin falters quick as a melting snowflake. ‘I heard that Stag saying an odd thing about you when I was waiting under the boat, in the water.’
My chest squeezes tight. I wish I could run. I shut my eyes. ‘I didn’t hear anything. Let’s find Da.’ I lie back down in the canoe and when Sparrow peers at me, asking me if I’m all right, my eyes seep silent tears.
I lie on the floor of the canoe for two days. When the others try to slip me crumbs of the odds and ends of food they’ve saved, I turn away.
Crow grips my shoulders. ‘What’s happening to you? You said it yourself – we can’t let Stag win.’
‘Wrong – I can’t stop him.’ The hopelessness hurts worse than hunger.
‘We’re going to search for the mountain caves your brother saw.’ Crow’s mouth keeps moving but I can’t hear the words. After a while he stops talking and sits back in the canoe with a sigh.
‘Stag got the third Opal from me,’ says Yapok.
This wakes me out of my stupor. ‘What?’ I sway, spots swirling before my eyes.
He pushes himself upright in the canoe and hugs his knees. ‘I opened a parcel sent by owl to the Skybrarian – because sometimes he doesn’t wake up for days, and no one is meant to know about us. The note was written on fish skin and it said to keep the Opal safe. It was signed by a person called Fox.’
Tingles race along my spine.
‘When Stag came, I was desperate to keep the Skybrarian hidden. So I gave him the stone. But it wasn’t enough. He still forced me to help him search for the Sky-Opal, and to betray all of you. Now the Skybrarian is alone!’ He looks at us, full to the brim with heart-sadness. ‘He’s the closest thing I’ve got to family, but if I’d known how important that Opal was I never would have let it leave my Skybrary, I promise.’
I gift him a small nod. ‘I believe you. What’s done is done.’ Now we’ve got to make things right, for Kestrel.
We leave the boats by the edge of the river far to the north, and trek for half a day across the snowscape, towards Hackles. Doubts pummel me like fists. I can’t trust myself to know if we’re headed the right way, even though Kes showed me how to read the star-paths. We’re heading back towards the place she worked so hard to escape. The pain strangles me again. How will I ever explain any of it to Egret? I wipe flecks of sleet from my eyes. Then Crow taps me on the hand and offers me his snow-goggles. I take them and slip them on, still heart-numb.
&nbs
p; When we’re nearing the foot of Hackles, a great sky battle rages. In the distance, huge brown scraps dart between the frozen clouds, lunging for streaks of smoky grey with wide toothy mouths and lashing claws. The draggles and the sky-wolves are fighting. Every few beats there’s a deep, shocking boom as Hackles’ defences spew massive ice boulders. Shouts, snarls, yelps, yawps and cries echo off the rocks, chilling my marrow.
Under the spiny mountain jags of Hackles, there are gaping dark caves in the rock. Sweat trickles down my spine as we struggle higher and higher towards them. My muscles feel torn and my bones weigh me down, but I want to run if there’s a chance Da could be here. I watch the sky, sickened at the thought of being captured. When we’re swaying in front of one of the caves, Sparrow stops and frowns. ‘I think this is the place!’ he says. Thunderbolt flits ahead of him into each cave and back out again.
Empty! She sighs a silver cloud of moon-dust. I tell the others.
‘Don’t worry, kid,’ says Yapok, patting Sparrow’s arm awkwardly. ‘We’ll keep looking at dawn.’
We rest in a cave with paintings of rust-brown reindeer on the walls. Crow takes first watch. I slip into dreams.
‘In between light and shadow, ice and water, sleep and wake, there is another world,’ she tells me. ‘I have seen you dive into it before. This time is no different. You can stay true to yourself.’ She holds a fist up to her heart.
I copy her. ‘Here is the birth of a mountain,’ I say, and she covers her mouth as tears fill her eyes. She sweeps me into a hug.
The kestrel-membranes on her eyeballs slick up and down as she peers at me. Her scarlet skirts swirl against the dirty snow. ‘Are you ready for your dream-dance?’
Ent I already in one?
I wake, heart pounding, cheeks wet with tears.
When I stumble from the cave, trying to catch my breath, Hackles is a sharp shock in the pale dawn. I can feel the mountain pressing down on us from all sides, staining my mind as it hunches overhead, sneering.
We keep searching for the cave from Sparrow’s vision. Thunderbolt swings from a strand of hair in front of his eyes, helping thin the fog for him, but he says he can’t remember anything else about the vision and slowly the hope inside me withers to ash.