by Sarah Driver
I nod through my tears. Now Crow’s said it, I can feel warmth coming from Da’s arm, so close to me. I tug his sleeve.
Da’s eyes flicker open groggily, and he looks up at me blankly. But then, just as a drum beats hard in my chest and the world stops moving, his eyes clear and widen and shock splays across his face.
I’m in his arms before I know I’ve moved.
I squint up into his faraway blue eyes, eyes like the sea, and touch his face gently with the ends of my fingers. I take one of his hands in both of mine, feeling for the roughened pads on his palms and checking the lines and scars and freckles that I know so well, then press my face into the folds of his tunic and breathe him in. It’s him, all right. He’s got that smell, like honey and parchment, but I keep checking him over, suspicions crawling over me like spiders, until he takes my shoulders and holds me still.
‘My girl,’ he whispers, voice cracking. ‘Hair black as pitch and eyes grey as a storm. Am I lost in a dream? Where is your brother? Is he safe?’
‘It’s you,’ I say stupidly, through my tears. ‘It’s really you.’ I stare at him and then I’m shuddering against the tangled nest of horrors in my brain. I never wanted to take my hurts out on Da, but now I’m hailing them down on him like little fists of spite, and all he does is gather me in his arms and let me.
‘Tears are one with the sea,’ he murmurs into my hair. ‘And salt water heals all wounds. Let it out.’
‘I am !’ I bellow into his chest. Then I sag limply against him, my face a storm of tears and pain. ‘You left us,’ I whisper hoarsely.
His long fingers wipe the hair from my forehead. Then he kisses me and holds my chin while he studies my scar. ‘You know, all the most fearsome captains have scars,’ he whispers, but his voice is tipped with sadness.
‘Da, I ent seven moons old,’ I tell him, cos somehow, after everything, it’s more than I can stand to be safe and held.
‘No,’ he says, eyes clearing as though he’s seeing me proper for the first time. ‘No, you are not.’
‘So much for coming to find me when you can, eh?’
‘Aye.’ He dips his head, tears brimming. ‘I am sorry, Little-Bones. More than you could know. I was on my way – I tracked you as far as the Bony Isle, but before I could reach Castle Whalesbane, the mystiks surrounded me and took me prisoner.’
‘You went that far, for me?’
‘Mouse, I would go to the ends of this world and beyond, for you and your brother. And when they caught me, I fought – oh, I fought as hard as I could.’
‘Shall we get out of here?’ asks Crow softly.
Da lets Crow help him to his feet, then drapes an arm around both of our shoulders to walk.
We slip outside, into icy mists and dagger-cold. Sparrow and Yapok are waiting. Ettler wriggles into my cloak pocket. Da falls to his knees in the snow and I drape my cloak over him and help him up, checking the shadows for movement. What if there are other mystiks close by?
‘Just a rest,’ he whispers, eyelids fluttering. ‘Not for long.’
‘But look, Da!’ I tell him, pulling at his arm. ‘Sparrow’s here.’
Thunderbolt buzzes round his head in a cloud of moon-sparks. He stops dead still in front of Da and holds his fingers before his face as though tracing a shape in the air. Thunderbolt flits to his fingertips, touching each one in turn, then she drifts in a haze of moon-dust before his eyes, and he squints. ‘Da?’ he calls.
‘Sparrow,’ splutters Da through his exhaustion. ‘My little one. Come to me?’
Sparrow dithers, twisting his cloak shyly, making Da cry. Then he barrels up to him and snuggles his face into Da’s filthy cloak. That makes Da cry harder. A treacherous voice snakes in my ear. He loves Sparrow more than me, cos I’m not really his. I dig my nails into my palms and banish the voice to the back of my brain.
Pangolin tears down the mountainside, clutching her ribs. ‘Here you are!’ she gasps. Then she looks at Da and her face falls. ‘Quick, to the draggles – the Protector says we’re to get all the casualties to the hearth-healers – she’s opened all the cells and let the prisoners go. Even the moonsprites!’ She laughs, brushing a giddy sprite out of her thick dark red hair. ‘And you won’t believe it – she’s ordered the storm-barrier to be stilled!’
‘Heart-thanks, Pang,’ I tell her. ‘But can you take an urgent message to the Protector for me?’
She nods, brown eyes bright.
I fish Ettler out of my pocket and pass him to the startled Spearsister.
‘Tell her that her daughter is dead.’
Outside the tiny mountain settlement of Hearthstone, the draggle sets me and Da onto the frozen ground. The Protector scans the sky. ‘We’ll never be far away,’ she calls down to me. ‘We will rid these hills of mystiks and keep Stag away while you get your father to the healers.’ Then she hesitates, her draggle’s wings circling.
‘How did my girl die?’ she whispers, watching me brokenly.
‘It was quick. But I know what it’s like, not being able to stop the pictures in your head,’ I tell her. ‘If you get the chance not to know too much, take it.’
‘Wise thing, aren’t you,’ she says, with a deeply buried hint of a smile that never appears. Then she turns her draggle around, leaving us.
Tears crowd behind my eyes. What I’d give for Kes to have the chance to see that her ma’s a good person, after all.
The wind shoves against our backs, helping us along, but when it dies for a heartbeat I feel the suffocation of the thin air. My feet hit the mud and send thick globs into my face but I don’t even wipe them away. I can feel eyes peering out of dark doorways and my heart hammers harder and harder against my ribcage. What if they keep their brooms crossed, and won’t help us?
But another feeling, full-blooded and bold, sizzles across my nerves like a shooting star.
He’s with us, now. And he’s going to get better. And when he does, I can tell him I’ve found two of the Opals.
My heart rises gladder than it’s ever been, into my mouth, making me grin though I gasp for air and my earth-slapped feet ache. Cos now I know I have to be what Grandma always knew I could be. The fire spirits know me and my kin, and I have to trust them. I will find the last Opal, and one day, I will be captain. Maybe I’ll find crew that measure up to Kes. Maybe I won’t. But I’ll never forget her.
‘C’mon, Da. Not much further.’ He gifts me a weak smile.
Something golden snags my eye, hovering at face height. It’s a dragonfly, the colour of my brooch, with delicate scarlet wings blurred by speed. Sparrow laughs aloud, slowly raising his fingers to try to brush a cobwebbed wing. Then he sneezes in the damp, dark snow.
Thaw sweeps wide circles through the air, watching tensely. Hurryhurryhurryquick!
We hobble into the home of the chief hearth-healer – one of the only houses undamaged after the black rain attack – and she bustles up to us, cheeks rosy, eyes strained. But when she sees Da, resolve settles over her like a cloak and she starts shouting orders. ‘Hot water, please! Plenty of it, and prepare a fresh bed in the sick chamber. I’ll need warm bricks in his bed and fresh linen and the herbs I gathered last night. Someone come and help me cut this crusted garb off him.’ I try to heart-thank her for helping us escape Stag but she brushes me away kindly. ‘There are no thanks needed among friends.’
A healer stands behind Sparrow and peels him away from Da, ignoring his shrieks of protest. ‘That’s enough for the time being,’ she coaxes. ‘Your father needs to get well.’
‘Heart-thanks, sky-sister,’ murmurs Da, the warmth of his smile lighting up the moot-hall.
‘Save your thanks for when you’re better, young man,’ she scolds.
After the riders have set off for Hackles, the hearth-healers won’t let us in the room with Da, whatever threats I make. ‘He needs to sleep,’ they keep telling me.
I’m about to storm away when their chief catches me by the wrist and peers into my eyes. ‘How old
are you, child?’
I shake her off. ‘That’s none of your blubber’s concern,’ I tell her. Then I feel a stab of guilt, cos she’s the one that helped us get away from Stag the night of the black rain.
‘No, it ent,’ agrees Sparrow, scuffing his foot against a doorframe.
‘Is that so?’ she asks, looking from one of us to the other.
‘Yep,’ says Sparrow, nodding vigorously.
I kick his foot. ‘But – heart-thanks, for taking care of our da,’ I add.
‘What about you? I’d say you need some care, and urgently. Why don’t you tether your bird and break evening bread with me?’
Thaw leans down and we frown into each other’s eyes. Her bright yellow ones are full of merriment. Tether? she asks. Feather?
‘She stays with me, until it’s time for her to go and hunt,’ I tell the healer. ‘She chooses where she goes and when, not me.’
The meal is small and the stew is thin, but I sup it gratefully and pretend I’m full so the healers don’t feel bad that there ent enough. When Sparrow starts to whine that he’s still hungry I jab him in the ribs ’til he shuts up, then sneak him some of my own bread under the table. I think of the Wilder-King, keeping so much food and riches to himself, and my blood boils.
One of the healers leans back in her wicker chair, peering at Sparrow’s fingernails. ‘Have you been playing with fire?’
‘Might be you could say that,’ replies my brother. Then he starts up giggling and I join in, ’til my ribs ache.
But then a memory of laughing with Kes pulls at my heart and I feel my grin collapse around me, dragging me down. I miss her so much it’s like a chunk’s been bitten out of my side, and nothing can heal the wound.
I leave Sparrow having the ash scraped out from under his fingernails with a quill. ‘Don’t fuss!’ I call over my shoulder, when he squeals for me to stay put.
By the time they finally let me in Da’s chamber, I’m oddly tongue-trapped. I scuff into the room.
‘Mouse!’ says the old, deep voice of my home. When I look up he’s propped on his pillows, the sunlight coming over the mountains and streaming through the shutters, touching all the gold in his hair.
The bones-deep horror slams into me again, when I think of Sparrow looking so much like Da, and Ma having fair hair ’n all.
Now I know who I take after.
‘What is it?’ he asks, reaching out for me. I go to him and let him haul me up onto the bed like I’m a nipper again. He smooths my newly brushed hair. ‘Tangles won’t stay away for long,’ he says. The warmth of his big hands on my head makes me want to blub all over again so I suck in my lip.
‘I know something, Da. Something about me and—’ I bury my face in my hands and he rubs my back, singing softly to me until I can speak again. ‘My birth.’
His hand pauses on my back. I listen to the rush of his breath, like waves on a stony shore. ‘Mouse. I will always be your da. Whatever it is that you have learned in my absence, I am here now and nothing need have changed.’
I look up, nerves flaring. ‘But something has changed! My da ent you. He’s a murderer!’
‘No,’ he says simply, and I stare up at him. ‘That man is not your da. It is true that he and your ma brought you into this world, but he disappeared the moment he set eyes on you. It couldn’t have been more different, with me. I came along when you’d just had your first Hunter’s Moon, and I could never have left you after that – you stole my heart, as fiercely as your ma did!’
I lock my eyes onto his blue ones and drink up the warmth spilling out from him. I know he’s telling heart-truth, and it eases the hurt a smidge. But then I realise something else. Once again, it’s gonna fall to me to tell my kin that Grandma’s gone.
After the telling’s done, and we’ve shed enough water to fill a well, Da takes hold of my shoulders. ‘Your grandma stitched thunder into your heart. Did you know that?’ I nod, shuddering with tears.
‘That thunder will always rage on. It’ll gift you all the heart-strength you need, and more.’
‘Aye.’ I dredge a grin from my bones, then wipe my nose on my sleeve. ‘I know.’
We swap stories of Grandma until our eyelids grow heavy. We sleep for a while. When I wake up I find I’m brimming to tell him scraps of my adventures.
‘I’ve got to tell you everything!’ I shout.
‘Shhh, the healers and the patients are still sleeping!’ Da whispers with a grin.
‘So?’ I whisper back. ‘Did you know that Captain Rattlebones still prowls?’ I’m gleeful as I watch his smile broaden.
He presses his forehead to mine and makes his eyes go crossed, then sticks out his tongue. ‘Nooooo, really?’
‘Aye. You do believe me, don’t you?’ I poke a finger into his chest.
‘Course!’
‘Well, you’d better! Cos you know what else? She was a woman captain! And I met her, more than once, and she saved me!’
His face has turned serious. He clasps my hands. He gives a startled laugh and his smile breaks again. ‘She was ?’
‘Aye!’ Then I can’t stop the words spilling and I’m telling him every last drop of what’s happened. When I tell him about being swallowed by a whale his eyes widen like Wilderwitch platters.
‘That is proper gloriousness, Bones! The things you have seen!’ There’s a sadness to the way he says it again, so I reach up like I used to and gently press his eyes closed.
‘Da, you sleep now,’ I say, like I did when I was four moons old. And he does, ’cept he ent pretending.
When he wakes again we haul reindeer skins outside and sit wrapped up warm with our backs to the stone of the hall, sipping the strong, sweet tea that the morning healers brought us.
‘How could I not have been there to protect my family,’ says Da to the mountain, eyes questing the sky.
I reach over and take his hand. ‘You were trying to protect us. You stopped Stag from getting the Opals from them mystiks at Castle Whalesbane. That would’ve been a thousand times worse than the trouble caused by the scattering.’
‘It’s true that Stag was on his way to collect the Opals from the mystiks at Castle Whalesbane. Pike and I stole them before he could claim them, and scattered them, because he was gaining on me. He caught me the day I was supposed to come home, and he almost killed me because I refused to tell him what I had done with them. He thought he had killed me. But none of it is how I had it planned in my mind’s eye.’ He shakes his head.
‘Ent that how life works?’ I ask him. He opens one eye and peers at me. ‘That’s one thing I learnt while you was gone.’
He laughs. ‘How did you get so wise?’ Then he shakes his head again and laughs. ‘No, wait. The story of your wisdom is famed among our Tribe. Your grandma used to say that when you were new-birthed, you would look at her with such calm grey eyes that she knew you’d seen much more of the world than she.’
I have to wait a few beats before I can speak, but Da carries on, wrapping an arm around my shoulders so we’re snuggled under the warmth of the skins, watching the dawn. ‘Before you found me, Bones, I was having dreams of merwraiths.’
My skin tingles.
‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve a sense that your grandma might be biding her time beneath the waves, especially cos she once turned—’
‘Half to merwraith,’ I finish, my breath steaming in the frozen air. Da’s right – Grandma already started the process of becoming wraith, once before. So what if, this time, she became one good and proper?
I try to brush away the hope, cos what if the wound got her before she could change, and what if the sharks came? But hope sticks to me like a glob of honey, too bright and sweet to resist.
The pain of hope squeezes my chest and fattens up the lump in my throat, but then, for the thousandth time I’m back on the deck and Stag’s firing that gun and the waves shatter as Grandma hits the water. Da fades and I’m back on the storm-deck, clear as day, with the stinks of
polar dog and fish guts filling my nose. The wind batters me and the shadow of Battle-Shrieker, bald and lifeless, dances over my head. Sick fear clamps my gut and I’m running for Grandma and she’s toppling from the plank, bloody water jetting into the sky. I feel again how strongly me and Grandma reached for each other in that moment, and now that yearning to stay together, with our ship, is a connection between the worlds of the dead and the living, the worlds of above and below the sea. But I ent got that connection with Kes – she won’t become a wraith. In painful-slow motion I watch in my mind’s eye as she topples backwards into the canoe again. How many times will I have to watch that in my head?
Da pulls me back to him, stroking my hair and whispering soft comforts in my ear until the room appears around me again and I can see where I really am, know I’m not really back there. When I can see Da’s hand holding mine, I realise how much I’m trembling, and how sweaty my hand is in his.
‘We need to save the wraiths, Da. Them, and the whales. We need to get the last Opal back and find the crown.’ I glug my tea, wrinkling my nose cos it’s so bitter. ‘Have you got any clues where the crown might be?’
‘Well, I’ve been studying every legend I can find, but I’m far from finding real clues, Bones.’
‘When the whale spat me out he told me that the crown can’t “adorn any man’s head”. What sort of crown is that?’
Da drifts into thoughtfulness.
After a while, I sigh. ‘Can we let stories and legends and mysteries alone, for now, and just be in the here-and-now?’
‘Aye, Little-Bones. There’s a wondrous idea, if ever I did hear one.’
When the hearth-healers finally proclaim Da well enough to leave, three days have passed and we’re proper rested. His wounds have started to heal, though he walks with a limp.
A draggle comes to get us and zooms us back up the mountain to the stronghold. We pass a flock of draggles leaving their cave at dawn, dodging frozen clouds.
At Hackles, Pangolin bursts from the long-hall, red-brown hair flying everywhere in her haste, and stands in front of us, grinning, until I step forwards for a hug. ‘Good to see you again!’ She points to the draggle flock, now a distant smudge against the sky. ‘They’re off to the Wildersea, to smash the whale-hunting and wraith-dredging boats into firewood, and make breathing holes for the whales by dropping goat-skull bombs,’ she tells me. ‘Your ship is the Huntress, though?’