It was still and quiet inside the hut, despite the wind and the snow roaring across the Driftlands, and Flint noticed a rickety table with a stool beside it and a heap of furs bunched in a rocking chair in the corner. There was nobody inside that he could see, but the place felt homely, a welcome escape from the menace outside.
Flint tickled Pebble’s chin, then bent down beside his sister. ‘Are you okay?’
Blu brushed the snow from her face. ‘Don’t like hut. Not nice.’
‘It’s better than being outside in the Ice Queen’s storm,’ Flint replied, but he noticed that Pebble didn’t leap down from his hood to explore as he usually would.
‘Where’s Balapan?’ Eska whispered. ‘Didn’t she follow us in?’
Flint’s eyes caught on a dark shape huddled on the windowsill outside. The eagle’s wings were folded tight against the barrage of snow and wind.
Eska eyed her cautiously. ‘Do you think if Balapan didn’t come in then—’
Flint grabbed Eska’s arm. ‘Look at the walls!’
Eska gasped.
In the hurry to find shelter no one had noticed that this was a hut made entirely of bones.
Flint glanced around, his shoulders bunching higher as he took in the mesh of white bones surrounding them, then he listened to the tap-tap-tapping of Balapan’s beak against the window, a small but fierce sound amid the gusting blizzard. ‘We need to leave,’ he hissed. ‘Now. Because I don’t think this is an old food store at all; I think it’s a hut cursed by dark magic!’
Eska shot to the door and yanked the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. She threw her body against it. Still it wouldn’t move and, at the realisation that they were trapped, Blu shuffled closer to Flint.
And that’s when the wolves began to howl – hollow moans that rose into the storm and echoed with malice.
‘Wild wolves don’t sound like that,’ Flint whispered.
Eska gulped. ‘They’re bewitched, aren’t they?’
Flint put a shaking arm round Blu as the howls droned on into the storm.
‘We can’t just stay here and wait for the wolves to come for us,’ Eska spluttered. ‘We need to get out!’
As if in response, Balapan flung her weight against the window. But this pane wasn’t made of glass: it was a slab of cursed ice and, no matter how many times the eagle barged into it, it wouldn’t break. The wolves howled again and Flint watched in horror as Balapan launched herself off the windowsill and disappeared from sight.
‘Has – has she left us?’ he cried, rushing to the window.
Eska followed. ‘She can’t have done – she’d never abandon us!’
And while Flint and Eska pressed panicked palms up to the glass Blu hurried to the corner of the hut. Unseen by the others, she crouched low and whispered to the eagle whose talons she could hear wrenching the bones away from the outside.
Blu peered through a tiny gap that the eagle had opened up. ‘I see you, Bala. I help.’
She pulled at a bone and as it fell away the whole hut groaned and then juddered and a much larger bone from the ceiling clattered down, smashing the rocking chair behind her in two. Flint whirled round and then gasped as he saw what was happening.
‘Balapan and Blu!’ he cried, snatching up his sack of feathers. ‘They’re creating a hole for us to escape out of!’
He and Eska darted towards the corner of the hut and, kneeling beside Blu, began scrabbling at the walls. A cluster of bones thumped down, missing Flint’s head by a fraction.
‘Careful, big brother,’ Blu said. ‘Hut fall. Big bang. Slowly, slowly with bones.’
And, though the wolf howls clamoured closer and Blu’s, Flint’s and Eska’s hands were tingling with nerves, they pushed gently against each bone they wanted to move until finally there was an opening large enough to crawl through.
‘Now!’ Flint cried, ushering Blu out first. ‘Quick!’
He followed close behind with Pebble in his hood and just as Eska lifted her body through the gap after him the whole hut creaked to the side, then the bones thundered down into a giant heap of rubble behind them.
‘Balapan,’ Eska panted as she clambered free from the debris.
She held the eagle against the storm and Flint hugged his little sister, but there was no time for praise. They didn’t have any dogs to pull their sled away. Even running would be hard because the snow blocked out the sun and shadows so that all that remained was a depthless white. And still the wolves howled. They sounded terrifyingly close now and Flint cursed as he realised Whitefur had only sworn to help them in the Never Cliffs.
Balapan tore up into the sky and Eska grabbed Blu’s hand. ‘Run!’ she croaked. ‘Follow Balapan!’
Flint seized his sack of feathers, then grabbed Blu’s other hand and together they sped from the rubble of bones, heads down as they charged through the blizzard after the eagle. And though the snow battered their faces and the wind punched their furs, they struggled on.
But the Ice Queen’s dark magic was on to the group now and, as the storm pulled back for a moment, three sleds drawn by enormous midnight-black wolves raced into view. Blu shrieked in horror as the pack of slathering animals, pulling twelve Tusk guards clad in ice armour and tusked helmets, advanced. Then the blizzard closed in again and the sleds vanished.
Flint, Eska and Blu ran blindly after Balapan. Did the eagle know a place where they would be safe? Flint wondered. Or was she fleeing, too, in the knowledge that the dark magic was finally closing in?
The wolves bayed and the Tusk guards bellowed, but the noises didn’t seem to be coming from behind them now. The din was all around: a bawling, roaring, screeching ruckus. Flint listened to it and saw Balapan hovering above them, then he realised, with sickening dread, that there was nowhere left to run, nowhere left to hide.
He stopped and drew out his Anything Knife, and Eska pulled down her bow and arrows, then they waited. But the wolves didn’t approach. The din grew steadily louder and as Flint and his friends huddled together they realised the roaring sound did not belong to the wolves. Theirs was a strangled yowl while louder than that, fiercer than that, was the throaty growl of another animal.
Flint turned to Eska. ‘There’s something else out here on the Driftlands.’
Eska nodded. Even Blu seemed to understand. And, as the group listened to the roars and clashing of spears, Flint realised that someone, or something, was fighting their battle.
The air rang with the sound of the fight: roars so deep and fierce and wild that the very blizzard seemed to shake. The wails of the men were nothing beside those roars – merely empty cries that knew the end was in sight – and then, finally, there was silence. Even the wind died to nothing, as if it was no longer bound under the Ice Queen’s control. No guards cried out. No beasts roared. The only sound to break the stillness was a slow, heaving pant. Then the mist lifted and Flint, Eska and Blu saw clearly.
Twelve Tusk guards lay strewn on the ice and surrounding them – and Flint, Eska and Blu – was a ring of enormous Erkenbears. They faced inwards, their soot-black noses pointing to their kills, their bodies planted like boulders.
Flint’s blood coursed. ‘This is either an excellent situation to be in – or a dreadful one.’ His eyes darted from one bear to the next. ‘It’s very hard to tell which.’
‘The wild doesn’t play by ordinary rules,’ Eska murmured.
Flint gulped. ‘In which case, they won’t be that fussed about what they eat – Tusk guards, wolves, US!’
He watched Balapan rising, coil after coil, into the sky, the tips of her feathers fluttering in the wind. The eagle didn’t cry out or yap to warn them of danger. She simply flew, until she was almost lost in the clouds, then she let her call go, and, one by one, the bears threw up their heads and roared.
The sound of the bears and the eagle tore across the Driftlands and as Flint glanced at Eska he felt a strange tingling fill his body. She was surrounded by the wild – her tribe – and for a moment it felt like the anima
ls were singing just for her. The Erkenbears fell silent and Balapan flew without calling. Then, very slowly, Eska stood up. The bears took a step closer, claiming the ice with their heavy paws.
‘I hope you have a plan,’ Flint moaned.
Eska walked closer still, edging towards the largest bear in the circle, until its ragged breath ruffled her hair. Then she stopped.
‘Whitefur,’ she whispered, her voice so quiet it barely sounded at all. ‘You came for us, didn’t you?’
And, at that, the mighty bear dipped his head.
Flint staggered to his feet. ‘Whitefur?’
The Erkenbear didn’t stand up on two feet and shake back his pelt to reveal a man inside, but something about the way the animal looked at Flint, the way it looked right into his soul, made him feel sure that this was their friend.
Blu picked herself up and ran towards him.
Flint gasped. ‘Blu! No!’
The little girl threw her arms round the Erkenbear’s neck, burying her head in his soft white fur.
Flint blushed. ‘You can push her off if you want, Whitefur.’
But the Erkenbear simply wound his head round and tucked Blu closer to his body. Eska lifted a hand to Whitefur’s pelt and as she did so the first few notes of the Ice Queen’s anthem began.
Flint shivered. It couldn’t be later than midday – the choir had only finished singing a few hours ago – but the midnight sun would rise the day after tomorrow and Flint knew the Ice Queen was bent on swallowing all the stolen voices before then. He watched as Eska tried to ignore the anthem and focus on the Erkenbear before her.
She stroked his neck. ‘Thank you, Whitefur. If you hadn’t—’ Eska tried to clear her throat to allow her words out, but no matter how many times she swallowed her voice wouldn’t sound above a whisper.
The Ice Queen’s anthem droned on – louder now that she had swallowed so many of her prisoners’ voices – but it made Flint think of the contraption Eska said the Tusk shaman had made. Was it fuelled by the anthem and now that the choir sang more often was it coming close to draining Eska’s voice completely? He watched Eska’s eyes fill with tears and then the circle of Erkenbears dropped their heads low. Flint bit his lip. Could the Erkenbears tell that the Ice Queen was winning?
‘We won’t manage to get the Frost Horn in time,’ Eska whispered. ‘Will we?’
But Flint’s gaze was now fixed on the Erkenbears, on the way that they were standing. Heads dipped, one foreleg stretched out ahead and the other tucked under their bodies.
‘Eska,’ he said slowly. ‘The Erkenbears aren’t giving up. They’re bowing.’
‘Bowing?’ Eska whispered. ‘Why?’
Flint’s eyes shone. ‘Because you’re in their tribe. And they know, just as I do, that you’re the one person in Erkenwald who can still set all this right.’
When the Erkenbears pulled back from their circle and gathered together a little way from the group, Eska opened her rucksack and shared round the grayling and boiled eggs Jay had packed for them. She knew the Erkenbears were on their side, but something about their size and smell made Eska and her friends eat with one eye on their food and one eye on the bears. Only Pebble seemed unfazed by their presence, chomping and burping his way through his meal as if he was indulging in a feast in Deeproots.
The afternoon sun burned through the clouds and Eska knew that this break in the weather was just what they needed to travel north. She glanced at the Tusk sleds, smashed to pieces by the fight, but the Ice Queen’s anthem had gone quiet for a while and without it droning on Eska found she could think more clearly.
‘We need to find the Grey Man,’ she whispered. ‘But we’ve no way of getting north. Other than walking.’
Blu scoffed. ‘Bears.’
Flint shook his head. ‘They’re not for riding, Blu. The wild’s not like that.’
The group watched as five of the Erkenbears sloped away, spreading out in all directions over the ice, until just Whitefur and one other bear remained.
‘I wonder,’ Eska whispered.
She stood up and walked towards the two Erkenbears, then she leant in close to Whitefur. She didn’t use words – somehow it didn’t feel right, in the same way that if you were going to climb a mountain you wouldn’t stop to ask its permission – instead, she ran a hand down the bear’s neck, then scooped a fistful of fur into her hand. Whitefur dipped his head and Eska hauled herself up on to his back.
And as Eska sat astride the Erkenbear she remembered Whitefur’s words inside the Giant’s Beard – Your voice has the power to silence the tribes, command animals and shake the skies – and smiled. She had silenced the tribes. Well, one of them, anyway. And now she was commanding the animals. She squinted into the sun. Suddenly shaking the skies didn’t seem quite so impossible, after all.
Grabbing his sackful of feathers, Flint edged over to the second Erkenbear with Blu. He gave a polite little bow, then glanced at his sister. ‘I think you should curtsey before you climb up.’
Blu looked disgusted. ‘Wild not like that, Flint.’
And, seizing the bear’s fur, she hoisted herself up. Wedging Pebble into his hood, Flint climbed on after her, then he slotted the sack into Blu’s lap and wrapped one arm round it and his little sister, and clung on to the Erkenbear’s neck with his other.
‘They’ll take us to the Grey Man,’ Eska whispered. She glanced at Balapan soaring above them, then she looked across to Flint. ‘Ready?’
Pebble barked and Flint gave a shaky nod. ‘Ready.’
The Erkenbears lumbered forward, pounding over the ice with their giant paws, and at first Eska jostled around on the bear’s back, desperately trying to stay upright. It was only when she raised her knees so that she was bent low over Whitefur’s neck that she found the bear’s rhythm. And then she didn’t move like a girl but a wild thing, pressed close to the heart of beasts. So this was what it felt like to move like a bear, Eska thought, to swallow the ground underfoot rather than stumble breathlessly across it. She grinned. It was like running with the strength of a waterfall on her side.
On and on the bears raced – over ridges of snow, across iced rivers and through copses of winter-bare trees – while Balapan flew above. They never tired, never slowed, never stopped once. Eventually, the coast came into view.
‘The Groaning Splinters,’ Flint murmured as they neared the snow-blasted cliff tops. ‘We’re close to Tusk territory now . . .’
From the Erkenbears’ backs, Eska, Flint and Blu looked at the giant icebergs, floating like half-toppled houses on the turquoise sea. Eska shivered. Further east, along the coast, and thankfully out of sight from where they stood now, were the Tusk Tribe igloos and the cursed iceberg that was Winterfang Palace.
Eska slipped from Whitefur’s back on to the snow. The cliffs in front of her dropped vertically to the sea – their only hope down them was if they found the Grey Man – but as Eska looked around she could see no sign of a tall old man who had braved many winters out on the northern coast. She walked round to face Whitefur and held his heavy jaw in her hands. ‘Where is the Grey Man?’ she whispered. ‘Do you know?’
She half hoped that Whitefur would show his human form and trade words instead of grunts, but the wild never bent the way you wanted it to. Whitefur rubbed his head into Eska’s shoulder and she knew that this was goodbye – for now – that he had taken her to the right place and it was up to her, Flint and Blu to do the rest.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered against the din of the kittiwakes and guillemots chattering from the cliffs. ‘I wish my words were louder so that I could really tell you how grateful I am.’
Whitefur stood on the cliff top with Eska, then he dipped his head, and, together with the second bear, he hastened back across the ice, into the heart of Erkenwald once again. Balapan swooped down and landed on Eska’s shoulder.
‘It won’t be long before the Ice Queen steals your voice completely,’ Flint said to Eska. ‘And just two days until the
midnight sun rises. So, where on earth is this Grey Man?’
‘Over here,’ came a tart reply.
Eska jumped. The voice belonged to a man with a high, almost weedy voice, which might have gone unnoticed had Flint been talking more loudly.
‘Well, don’t just stand there gawping,’ the voice squeaked. ‘I’ve got a headache, a broken leg, a sore back and a sprained knee. I very obviously need help!’
Blu clutched Flint’s hand. ‘Who this? Who there?’
The voice came again, even higher – and crosser – than before. ‘No one comes my way for almost a year and then you three show up, like a trio of gaping buffoons.’ There was a sigh. ‘I’m right under your noses, you know.’
Eska glanced at the little mound of snow in front of her. ‘You don’t think . . . ?’
Balapan leapt down from her shoulder and Eska brushed a handful of snow aside to reveal a heap of small rocks. The reedy voice sounded again. It was louder this time and it came straight from the rocks themselves.
‘Why are humans always so confoundedly stupid?!’
Flint stared at the rocks. ‘How – how can they be speaking?’
‘Like this,’ the voice snapped.
Blu bent down and lifted up a long, thin rock.
‘Do you mind?’ the voice muttered. ‘That’s my arm.’
Eska’s eyes widened. ‘Jay’s words about the Grey Man . . .’ She forced her voice on. ‘He’ll be in pieces in light of what’s been going on. In pieces. The Grey Man is literally in pieces!’
The rocks looked decidedly fed up, if rocks could look that way. ‘Clever clogs.’
Flint blinked. ‘The Ice Queen must have torn him down in the battle. Maybe we need to build him back up into a person so that he can help us!’
The voice sighed. ‘Yes, you do. Before the sun sets, too, because I have absolutely no confidence in your working in the dark.’ There was a pause. ‘So, would you be so kind as to pass me my arm?’
Ignoring the Grey Man’s demands, Flint lifted an oval rock from the pile and placed it in the snow. ‘This could be a face,’ he murmured. ‘If you squint at it hard enough.’
Sky Song Page 15