She scurried round to the back of the sled while Flint untied the huskies and tethered them inside a small outhouse to the side of the hut.
‘The dogs need a rest,’ he said. ‘It’s another few hours to the Fur Tribe hideout and we’re a safe distance from Winterfang now. We’ll leave again at first light.’
Eska squinted through the driving snow. ‘You mean you’re taking me to see your tribe?’ The possibility of being welcomed and looked after by others made her heart flutter. She had been abandoned at Winterfang – no one had come forward to rescue her or even say they knew her – but now there was an opening, a chance for friendship.
Flint shrugged. ‘I’m taking you to see my brother – briefly. Then I’m leaving you to fend for yourself.’
Eska’s heart sank. This wasn’t a promise of safety, after all. But she tried to hide her disappointment. It was a small step in the right direction and after Winterfang that counted for everything.
She glanced at Flint. ‘You’re interested in my voice, aren’t you? You think that your brother should know about me?’
‘I’m mildly curious,’ Flint replied. ‘There’s a difference. But you’ll need to speak to Tomkin first. He’s in charge and, if he thinks your voice will help with his battle plans, he’ll use it.’
Eska flinched. ‘Your tribe are going to fight the Ice Queen?’
Flint held his head high. ‘One day – yes. We’re not staying at home like last time when our parents made us promise to hide until they returned.’ He straightened up. ‘And it’ll be Tomkin who leads us. He’s the best warrior in the tribe now Pa isn’t around.’
Eska bit her lip. ‘You won’t win. I know the Ice Queen. It’ll take more than spears and shields to force her back.’
‘You don’t know Tomkin. If anyone can take on the Ice Queen, it’s him.’ Flint hefted his rucksack on to his back and pulled open the door of the hut.
Eska stood, shivering, by the sled. ‘Is – is it safe in there?’
Flint nodded. ‘It’s an old Fur Tribe food store – there are lots of them dotted all over Erkenwald, if you know where to look.’
He disappeared inside with Pebble, and Eska followed nervously, closing the door against the flurries of snow. It was pitch-black within.
‘Keep still, Pebble!’ Flint muttered. ‘I need to find the caribou tallow and the heather so that we can see what’s what.’
Eska squinted into the dark. ‘Can I help?’
Flint grunted.
Eska tried again. ‘Tell me what I’m looking for, at least?’
‘First rule of the wild – know how to make fire. You’re looking for a stone dish filled with hardened caribou fat,’ Flint said, ‘and a wick of heather. That’s a plant that grows out on the tundra, in case you don’t know.’
Eska felt her way around the wooden walls, nearly tripping over two large wooden objects tucked into the corners of the hut, then her palms met with a stone dish set between these objects.
‘Here!’ she cried. ‘I think it’s here.’
Flint fumbled towards her, then stooped to touch the dish. He rummaged in his pocket and drew out two small rocks and for several minutes the hut was filled with the quiet scuffing of metal. Then sparks appeared and he set them to the heather wick and, within seconds, a soft light flickered.
The wooden objects Eska had stumbled on were beds laden with blankets made from the furs of snow hares and Eska looked around to see clumps of moss had been stuffed into the walls to block the cracks in the timber. There was a table beneath the lamp and above it hooks made from antlers.
They sat down on the beds and Flint turned his Anything Knife over in his hands. He said nothing but Eska could tell, when he kicked his boot against the bed leg and Pebble leapt up into his lap, that he was angry at not returning with his ma.
She picked at her nails. ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t free your ma.’
Flint didn’t look up.
‘One day I’ll repay you for rescuing me from the palace though,’ Eska added.
‘I doubt that very much.’
Eska glanced at the knife in Flint’s hands. The handle was made of bone and slotted into the hilt was a blue gem which shimmered mischievously. ‘That knife,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s built using magic again, just like your cape . . .’ She leant forward. ‘You’re an inventor, aren’t you?’
Flint’s face hardened. ‘I’m a warrior, like the rest of my tribe.’
But the more time Eska spent with Flint, the more she felt that he wasn’t like the rest of his tribe at all. From what he had said, the Fur Tribe didn’t believe in Erkenwald’s magic and yet he clearly did. And while none of them seemed keen to welcome strangers, Flint, despite his reservations, had. To Eska, Flint seemed a strange kind of warrior and she wondered whether she wasn’t the only one who felt like an outsider. Maybe Flint felt different from everyone else, too. But his guard was up so she offered her next words as a truce.
‘You’re a warrior who believes in magic and I think that’s the best way to be – because you won’t defeat the Ice Queen with weapons alone.’
Flint cocked his head. ‘Isn’t it time you stopped talking?’
He stood up and walked over to the corner of the room where a spear carved from caribou antler had been stashed. Grabbing it, he headed for the door.
‘Get some sleep,’ he muttered. ‘You look like you need it. And now that the light has returned to the kingdom, you won’t get long before dawn is up.’
‘Where are you going?’
Flint opened the door. ‘To get food – and I’m going alone.’
But Eska didn’t roll over and go to sleep. She hurried to the wall facing the river, pulled out a clump of moss and peered through.
She watched intently as Flint carved a hole in the iced-up river with his spear and then sat down beside it, his back against the rush of snow. Eska waited. And, though her hands ached from the climb down the palace wall and her throat burned from speaking after so many months of silence, she did not turn away. She needed to learn the ways of the wild – fast – and, if there was one thing she was good at, it was watching the world from a distance.
Flint woke to the sunlight streaming through the cracks in the moss and the timber. Normally, he would have welcomed the dawn after so many months of darkness, but now it felt like a warning; they didn’t have long to halt the Ice Queen’s quest for immortality. He swung out of bed and glanced at Eska. She was still asleep and to Flint’s surprise, and irritation, he saw that Pebble was curled up in a ball at the bottom of her bed, not his.
She’s even bothersome in her sleep, Flint thought to himself, scooping the fox pup into his arms and tiptoeing out of the hut.
The dogs yapped from the outhouse and only when Flint pulled back the mound of stones he’d placed over his catch and tossed them a fish to share did they hush.
The dwarf willows either side of the river were cloaked in white, but the sky above was a brilliant blue and, as Flint listened, he could hear the soft flump of snow sliding off branches and the pop and crack of river ice melting. Spring was in full swing and Flint knew that the river was not to be trusted as a way across the Driftlands when the temperatures began to climb.
He gathered up an armful of branches, tried his best not to think about what Tomkin might say if he declared, when home, that he was a warrior who believed in magic, and laid them out of sight behind the hut. Before long he had a fire going and with his Anything Knife he pierced chunks of the second salmon he had caught and held them above the flames to cook.
Eska shuffled through the snow towards him. ‘You should’ve woken me up,’ she whispered. ‘I would’ve—’
‘—got in the way,’ Flint said.
‘—helped with the fire.’
Flint shrugged. ‘Quicker on my own.’
He held out a scoop of bark laden with fish and Eska shovelled mouthful after mouthful down.
Flint raised an eyebrow. ‘You’d think you hadn’t eaten
in a year . . .’
‘I haven’t,’ Eska replied. ‘Not since the Ice Queen locked me in the music box. It wasn’t food or water that kept me alive – just her dark magic.’
Flint wanted to ask more. Despite what he might have said, magic, in all its forms, fascinated him. But he was still cross and suspicious of Eska so he caught himself just before the words slipped out and threw her a death stare instead.
Eska was too busy enjoying eating to notice. ‘Last night I watched you cut a hole in the river ice, then plunge your spear in,’ she said between bites. ‘Then it looked like you were muttering something, but from inside the hut I couldn’t hear anything. What were you saying?’
Flint looked up. ‘You were watching me? I thought you were asleep?’
Eska shook her head. ‘I figured watching and listening were probably the best ways to learn about hunting.’ She paused. ‘I don’t imagine I’ll be a particularly good hunter – I’ve not had much experience jamming spears into things – but hopefully I’ll pick it up after a while.’ Her eyes brightened. ‘Like I did with the brake on the sled.’
Flint squinted. The only reason the sled hadn’t careered off was because he had stamped his boot over Eska’s – there was no way she’d have had the strength to hold it on her own. He looked at her gaunt face and straggled hair and the furs that almost swallowed her body. Nothing about the girl was geared up for the wild and, before he could stop himself, he found he was offering her advice.
‘There are rituals attached to hunting and the tribes always honour them,’ he said. ‘First you thank the North Star, the Sky God who breathed life into Erkenwald—’
He stopped suddenly, catching himself. No one thanked the Sky Gods any more, but he did. Because despite what he had told Eska earlier, he still believed in the Gods. How could he not when he could feel their magic hovering over the kingdom? Flint cleared his throat. He hadn’t known this girl long, but it seemed to be annoyingly difficult to steer conversations in the direction he wanted with Eska; her voice had a habit of drawing surprising, and often unfortunate, things out of him. He decided to move on quickly.
‘Then you thank the animal itself for giving up its life for you. An animal chooses its own death, you see; it chooses the hunter to whom it will submit.’ He ran a hand down Pebble’s back. ‘There’s a bond between animals and tribes out here.’
Eska breathed a sigh of relief. ‘That’s good to know. Because if the bonds between the tribes are all broken you’ll probably want the animals to hold things together.’
Flint narrowed his eyes at Eska. There was a mad sort of logic to her and he wasn’t sure whether he liked it. Before he could reply though, Pebble slipped from his side, poked his nose under Eska’s elbow and gobbled up the last of her fish. Flint smirked as Pebble waddled back to him and crawled into his lap.
‘You’ve got to watch your food when Pebble’s around.’ Flint threw a handful of snow on the fire and it fizzled out. ‘His appetite is out of control.’
Eska followed Flint back towards the hut. ‘How did you and Pebble meet?’ she asked, hurrying to keep up. ‘Was it on a hunt and Pebble refused to choose his own death? Maybe he felt he had more eating to do before he submitted to a hunter.’
There was a snuffle-grunt from the ball of white fur tucked inside Flint’s hood that sounded quite like a chuckle.
‘Found him in our camp scavenging for food,’ Flint replied, but he made sure he didn’t meet Eska’s eyes because that wasn’t what had happened at all.
Shortly afterwards, they were back on the sled, racing between the dwarf willows and the drifts of snow as they travelled further and further south. Flint shivered as the first notes of the Ice Queen’s anthem floated over the land. The choir was ever so slightly louder with each day that passed and Flint grimaced now he knew why. Had the Ice Queen already stolen his ma’s voice? Would he ever be able to get it back for her?
Flint focused on his sled to stop his thoughts spiralling, keeping the river to his right and watching as Eska’s eyes travelled beyond that to the mighty Never Cliffs in the distance, a sprawl of jagged peaks locked in the harsh white glitter of snow. Now and then she gasped and pointed at things and mostly Flint ignored her, but when her gaze shifted to the trees a few miles ahead he knew a conversation was inevitable. The trees were not small and straggly, like the willow shrubs around them. They were tall and bold, the type of trees you could start climbing at sunrise and only reach the top of when the first stars showed. And, as Flint saw them, a smile spread over his face, too.
‘Deeproots,’ he said. ‘The start of it anyway. There are spruce trees here older than Erkenwald’s glaciers with roots that stretch so far into the earth they reach depths even the whales in the oceans know nothing about.’
Eska gulped. ‘So, where exactly will you take me after we’ve spoken to your brother?’
For a second, Flint felt a stab of regret that he planned to leave Eska in the forest – it would be fun showing someone, other than his little sister, his secret laboratory up in the trees and all the inventions stored in there – but then he remembered his failed rescue mission and the danger of detours and he banished the thought from his head.
‘I haven’t decided yet,’ he said stiffly.
He steered his sled between the willows which had grown denser and taller now the forest was in sight. Then, without warning, the dogs swerved and backed up in their tracks. The sled stopped and Flint peered ahead.
‘What is it?’ Eska whispered.
Flint secured the brake and stepped off the runners, clutching his Anything Knife in a shaking hand, then he crept over the snow until he was level with the dogs. There was a scuffling sound from behind a willow and a high-pitched cry that made Eska jump. Flint edged forward and there, huddled under the branches of the tree, was a very large bird.
He slipped his knife back into its sheaf. ‘A golden eagle,’ he said as Eska tiptoed closer. ‘Female, it looks like – they grow much bigger than the males – and this one’s huge.’ He nodded to the wire encircling the bird’s talon. It was attached to a chain that had been tied round the trunk of the willow. ‘It’s got itself trapped in a fox snare.’
The bird flung its body back from the snare, then flapped its wings against the snow. They were vast, those wings, and flecked with brown, black and gold feathers. But the snare didn’t loosen and, after another failed tussle, the eagle jabbed at the wire with its hooked beak.
‘We have to help it,’ Eska whispered.
Flint looked up at Deeproots. Tomkin would have noticed he was gone by now. He’d be worried – and so would his sister, Blu.
‘Even if we free the eagle, it won’t survive. Its talon’s probably crushed and it’ll need it to hunt.’ Flint tugged at her sleeve. ‘Let’s go.’
But Eska stayed where she was, crouched opposite the eagle, and the girl and the bird stared at each other for several seconds. Flint had seen eagles before, but never this close. Its eyes seemed to burn like desert sand and there was something in the way it looked at Eska, as if it was seeing things that perhaps he had missed.
Shaking himself, Flint turned away, but a few seconds later the eagle began to hiss and flap. Flint whirled round to see Eska bent over the snare, her mittens laid down on the snow beside her. The eagle’s wings thrashed against her back, nearly knocking her over, but she didn’t back away. She kept close to the bird, her fingers working at the trap, and for a moment Flint thought how natural Eska looked alongside the eagle. Wild animals were hard to approach, even harder to help, but Eska was right there beside this bird as if, just possibly, she had tended to wild animals before.
He strode towards her. ‘What are you doing? Those wings could break your arm!’
The eagle yanked back, shrieking, but Eska had managed to loosen the loop of wire a little, and in a flurry of snow and feathers the eagle burst free, tumbling over itself before stilling a few metres from Eska.
‘Go on now,’ she panted. ‘You’re
free.’
The eagle blinked at Eska, its golden head cocked to one side, then it limped behind another tree, trailing its tail feathers out of sight.
Eska stood up and looked at Flint. ‘Like you said, there’s a bond between animals and people out here.’
Flint said nothing for a moment, then he dragged Eska back to the sled. ‘Get on. We can’t afford any more detours.’
But, although Flint kept his eyes trained on the trees ahead as they raced towards Deeproots, he was sharply aware of two things: Eska had shown she had more knowledge of the wild than she realised and the eagle she had freed was still watching them from back among the willows.
There was a hushed kind of silence inside the forest. Flint’s dogs nipped this way and that between the trunks – they knew their path instinctively and they could tell they were almost home – but as Eska was pulled deeper and deeper into the trees she bit her lip. This was a place that smelled of secrets and if she didn’t manage to win over Tomkin she’d be left to find her own way here.
She pointed to a line of large, clawed animal tracks leading into the trees. ‘What made those?’
‘Grizzly bear,’ Flint replied.
Eska shuddered.
The dogs ran on and on until eventually the trees grew so close together there was no longer a clear path through. Flint unhitched his sled, then dragged it and his huskies towards a large spruce tree. Eska frowned. This tree looked just like all the others, but, as Flint slid his bear-claw earring out and slotted it into a crack in the wood, Eska’s eyes grew large.
There was a click, then a door swung inwards and as it did so Flint’s dogs rushed through and Eska watched, open-mouthed, as all seven of them disappeared, their footsteps pattering into silence. She raised a mitten to her mouth. The tree was entirely hollow – you could fit half a dozen people inside it – and there was a lamp burning in a bracket on the far side.
‘Where have they gone?’ Eska gasped.
Flint grinned and for a moment it seemed to Eska that he had forgotten to be cross with her. He hauled the sled inside the tree and as Eska peered closer she saw him hang it on a hook on the inside wall.
Sky Song Page 4