The Huntress: Storm

by Sarah Driver

  I grit my teeth. The stog’s breath reeks, even through my raindrop cowl. I guide my draggle lower, trying to dodge underneath the huge arm.

  ‘Mouse!’ warns Leo.

  The arm sweeps towards the ground but I swoop low and fly past the dank hollow of the armpit, gulping a lungful of a sharp tang that makes my head woozy. The stog snatches me from my draggle. My chest is squeezed until black spots dance in my eyes. There’s no air left in my lungs for screaming. My legs swing wildly in the air, and my belly pitches into my mouth . . . and dimly I’m aware of riders yelling before I’m shut inside a huge, clammy fist.

  I gulp for breath, heart skittering. I slip on the thick yellow sweat pooled in the stog’s palm, clawing at the ridges of his skin. ‘Leo!’ I yell, but my voice bounces back into my own ears, stabbing painfully into my head.

  I’m running out of air. My eyes scan the roof of flesh above my head – there are thin gaps between the fingers. The stog’s grip tightens so I push through one of the gaps, kicking, clawing, scratching, wriggling . . .

  Finally I squeeze through and leap out of his hand, grabbing hold of a thick brown vine sprouting from his ear – but the vine is slippery, and I can’t hold on.

  Lunda zooms towards me, one foot planted on her draggle’s back, the other on mine. Two sets of reins are bunched in her hands. She hovers as near to me as she can get. ‘Jump, fool child!’

  The giant roars, thrashing his head around.

  I swing myself across the space, miss my own draggle and land with a thump behind Lunda. I grab her waist as I regain my balance. ‘Bleeding blood cockles,’ I whisper, eyes watering with shame. My palms are coated in stinking, gloopy ear wax.

  ‘Fly on!’ calls Leo, and we wing away from the giant.

  I wipe my hands on my breeches as we tear away through the sky.

  Jealousy nags me. Wish I could be as skilful riding one of these beasts as Lunda is. ‘You should stay behind with the other youngsters from now on!’ she hisses, holding the reins while I scramble back onto my own draggle. Her hard blue eyes graze my face.

  I glare at her while my lungs suck shallow breaths. The stog’s distant howls of fury rattle through my chest and make my teeth throb.

  In spite of everything, excitement bubbles in my belly when I think about the Tribe-Meet, where my Tribe traded jet and amber for songs, stories for furs and fish. Sometimes Da and Bear traded sailcloth or silver for songs alone, and even though magyk could be spun from them, Grandma weren’t never too impressed. The last Meet I went to – for Dread’s Eve – feels so long ago. And it weren’t exactly a normal meet, with Da missing and me almost getting swallowed by a gulper. It’s where I lost Sparrow, too, when Stag had him snaffled by wreckers.

  The Tribe-Meet for Wakening’s Dawn is all about drumming Spring up from her grave. There’ll be market stalls and music-makers and acrobats with flaming torches, bakers whose spices dance in the air, traders with bundles of brightly dyed cloth and sword-sharpeners, tanners and tricksters.

  ‘I can’t wait to show you your old Sky-Tribe path and gateway stones!’ I call to Leo, to gift her good cheer.

  She nods. ‘I am keen to see these things,’ she says. ‘But nervous, also. Many suns and moons have risen since any Sky-Tribe attended. How do we know the etiquette, here?’

  Lunda’s draggle drops closer as the Spearsister tries to listen. Maybe her nerves are tightening, too.

  ‘You approach the circle along your Great-Tribe’s path – that’s the Sky Path, which you get to through the gateway stones shaped like eagle heads. There’s no weapons allowed, so we’ll have to leave our spears outside.’

  The old rider called Coati, who angered Pike in the long-hall, laughs, face fury-flayed. ‘Leave our weapons and we are sitting targets, mark my breath.’ He twirls his spear.

  Leo rolls her eyes at me, the tension melting off her face. But when we can see the tips of the circle of stones piercing the drifting fog, I sense my draggle wants to bolt.

  ‘This place is eerie,’ hisses a rider, a man with two long black braids hanging over his shoulders.

  I struggle to steady my draggle, stroking her head, but she hisses.

  ‘They’re spooking!’ I call. My hands are sweaty on the reins as I jostle to get my balance. The draggles’ voices rise in panic.

  Suddenly, a young terrodyl flickers up and out of the fog, wings lashing inches from our flock. Black blood drips, fizzing, from a wound in its flank.

  ‘Pull back!’ shouts Leo, and the draggles bare their teeth at the terrodyl.

  Gold gleams like shattering stars as the riders level their spears as one. But Leo warns them not to shoot. ‘You’ll burn whoever’s down there with black rain!’

  Black rain – the weapon wielded by Stag, extracted from the veins of terrodyls, that burns warped, bubbled pits in the flesh. My belly writhes at the thought that he’s twisted a beast’s own life-blood into a weapon.

  The riders hold fire, their spears shining in the depths of the terrodyl’s eyes.

  Dead things! Ice! the beast screams, wheeling away.  Sad-hearts rotted!

  What’s down there, beast? I chatter.  What’re you fleeing?

  The terrodyl’s panic mingles with the draggles’ fright-pangs, gifting me a sore, woozy head.  TroubletroubletroubleHIDEflyflyhideinnest!

  What trouble? I ask, but she’s pulling further away and thudding out of sight.  Wait, you’re hurt!

  ‘What is that child doing?’ Coati asks Leo, watching me with hard eyes.

  What trouble? I call again, threading my beast-chatter through the air to touch the creature’s hair-prickled hide.

  The terrodyl jerks in the air and her wings carve the sky as she twists around and soars towards me.

  ‘She’s brought it back upon us,’ gasps Lunda.

  ‘Spears!’ declares Leo, flashing me a frighted look.

  ‘No, just trust me for a beat!’ I beg.

  Lung-stink! snaps the terrodyl, fixing me with her great lantern eyes.  Blood-stink! Spine-shudder bad-taste bled. Life fled, bled, BLED!

  My breath comes quick and tattered.  Life fled? Bloodshed? That can’t be what she’s saying . . .

  Uuuuuughhhhh tongue-tang rot-shadow-HOME! She bolts.

  My head fizzes with her fading beast-chatter.  No, you must be wrong! I chatter after her desperately.  There’s never bloodshed at the Stone Circle! It’s forbidden!

  The draggles pop up and down in the air. Mine bucks underneath me, half crazed from fright.

  Gods. Blood at the Tribe-Meet ? Grandma must be writhing in her sea-grave!

  Leo watches the terrodyl vanish from sight before guiding the flock closer to the Stone Circle.

  ‘Wait!’ I shout.

  ‘What is it now, Mouse?’ calls Leo, impatience sharpening her tone.

  ‘We can’t land,’ I plead. ‘A proper bad thing’s happened.’

  Coati gruffs a laugh of steam and bitterness. ‘Why does a child ride among us? Someone get her back to the mountain!’

  Leo turns away from me, leading the draggles lower.

  ‘Protector!’ My urgent use of her title makes Leopard jerk around in her saddle to look at me. I force my voice steady. ‘There’s bloodshed.’ I wipe my palms on my cloak and stare around at the riders. ‘At the Stone Circle.’ Shock guts my words even as I spill them.  Gods swim close.

  Our flock pauses, beating the air. Leopard’s eyes are large and fixed on my face.

  Then everything erupts into a tumble of loud babblemaking.

  ‘That’s impossible!’

  ‘It’s the Fangtooths, isn’t it? They’re terrorising again!’

  ‘What if there is? Bloodshed does not faze warriors!’

  ‘Mouse, are you certain?’ asks Leo. As the words steam from her mouth, a great black talon of smoke stabs the sky in the distant west.

  ‘I’m heart-certain,’ I pant, thumping my fist to my chest.

  A tide of disappointment floods Leo’s face. ‘We’ve c
ome all this way,’ she says, through clenched teeth.

  ‘How do you know?’ challenges a narrow-eyed Spearbrother.

  ‘The terrodyl told me.’

  Coati watches me darkly. ‘You are sheltering a chatterer ?’ He flicks his eyes to Leo.

  ‘Enough, Coati,’ warns Leo.

  The old man snorts rudely. Heat creeps up my neck to sting my cheeks. I remember the Wilder-King’s letter.  Surrender any chatterers dwelling amongst you. ‘If it wasn’t for me you’d have landed unawares!’ I spit, hurling the old man’s gift of shame back to him.

  Coati’s face darkens. But then the draggles begin to scream, borrowing the words of the terrodyl.  Life-stink! Lung-stink! Troubletroubletroubleflee!

  The chatter is like a punch in the brain. Before I can breathe it smacks into me again.

  U h h h h h m u r k w o r l d r e a c h r e a c h S T R E T C H s e i z e c a t c h s l i t h e r g u l p b o n e s s m a s h s m a s h d e p t h s c r aw l i n g c r e e p i n g d a r k d a r k p u s h d a r k a b o v e d a r k b e l o w r e a c h r e a c h STRETCH grabuhhhhhhhh . . .

  ‘Mouse?’ The Protector’s voice breaks through the chaos as she guides her draggle towards mine and touches my shoulder. As I return from the beast-world I taste blood and realise I’ve clamped my teeth onto my tongue. I gulp a breath, glancing at the faces of the Spearwarriors.

  They’re gifting me a look of fear. They’re frighted of what I am.

  We’ve drifted closer to the Stone Circle.

  While I’m grappling to stay mounted and catch my breath, a sight emerges below that almost makes me plummet to my doom.

  Lying across the standing stones is a dead terrodyl.

  When the tips of the stones pierce the drifting fog, some are bloodied. Others are dripping with black rain.

  A ragged figure darts out from beneath the dead beast’s wing, wielding a longbow. An arrow pierces the fog.

  ‘Go!’ shrieks Leopard.

  As we’re wheeling our draggles around to flee, the sight of the blood-splashed Sea gateway stone clangs into my brain and the chatter of the draggles rises to a storm inside my chest.

  The world blinks and melts into a frenzy.

  Deathridesclosedrowningredsoakedgetawaypointawaygogogofly strongwingfightridersgogogoBOLTgogogoDODGEgogogoRUN gogogoNO!

  Dizziness swarms my head. Faces slip in and out of focus.

  Noise. Swelled. Everything. Everywhere. Sick bursts up my throat and blurts from my lips. My foot slips from the stirrup.

  ‘Tooth-and-bone storms!’ yelps Lunda, pointing.

  Great cyclones sweep from gaps in the ice out to sea, packed with shark and whale teeth that tear bites from whatever they touch.

  Chatter. Stealing breath.  Stealingthoughtsthoughtsthoughts.

  Stealingbreathbodymindgrowingcuttingsqueezingweare panickingflutteringbreathingironbloodstinkdeathlurksheregreed squatsherenosafetynohome—

  I push away the chatter but it presses close again, suffocating like lungfuls of damp fur.

  GETAWAY—

  Lash of whips—

  ‘Is she breathing ?’

  Falling backwards ice nipping ears blood in nostrils chatter in head.

  Everything hurts.

  ‘Who are you?’ bellows a deep voice from the ground. ‘Are you Sky-Tribe?’

  The world fades in and out.

  ‘Show yourselves!’ booms Leo.

  Black emptiness swarms close.

  ‘We need help!’ The voice snips at my memory. My draggle stays close to the others, her muscles squirming with horror and wanting to get back to her cave. We drop lower in the sky, towards the ground.

  Chatter squiggles in my blood, setting it alight.

  FrightfrightfrightSPARKrawbloodbeatboomboomBOOM!

  A tall man garbed in salt-stained boiled leather steps out from behind a blood-splattered standing stone. His face is swamped in a wild tangle of icicled beard.

  Then I’m flung into a dream-world of beasts.  Getawaygetawaygetawayspeartipshadowspressingbreathstopping helphelphelpwrongnessnomoonnosunclamouringbuzzingrunning runningnowheretorun. Nowheretohide.

  I’m flying so fast, so far. I’m diving into the shallows, spearing a fish on my claws. Heavy wingbeats slice the air, carrying me so fast the wind slips past me like water.

  Paws and hooves drum the snowy plains. Starlight writhes under us, locked in ancient graves. Bellies sore, bloated-not-with-cubs. Wind-spirits lick our fur. We move. We fight! We hunt. We roar! We face dark burrows, endless night. But we shudder secretly, blood roiling. Our bones click with ice. Life starves, withers. Storms boil.

  A shiver brushes my belly as my fur drags in the snow but then a brown-and-white blur streaks into my room and I’m waking up, straining against iron-heavy dreams that drag at the edges of my brain.

  My eyes crack open. I’m in my featherbed in my chamber at Hackles, sweating buckets. The room thumps into being around me, full of fuzzy outlines in the half-dark. In the hearth, a fire devours kindling in a spit-crackle frenzy.

  Thaw-Wielder soars across the chamber to the messy nest of twigs she’s built atop one of my bedposts. My sea-hawk’s been thieving kindling from all the hearths in the stronghold to build it, much to the vexation of the cooks. I hear the thud as she drops a fish onto the twigs, and the scratching as it thrashes.  Fillpipesfillboots, she chatters, jostling her feathers. She squints down at me, stirring a love-pang in the pit of my belly.

  A bright droplet of blood falls from her wing onto my pillow. Reckon she must’ve got scraped flying through the arrow-slit again, cos at just the same moment the skin on my arm burnt and the muscles throbbed. Sometimes when she hurts herself, it’s as though I feel it with her.

  Thaw gurgles at me, low in her throat, and then the beast-world presses closer to me again, its rich stink clogging my mouth and nose. My skull thuds. I know the hunt Thaw flew. I can taste the fish she speared. I can feel the ice carried by the wind, wrapping around my claws.

  A wave of sickness rolls over me. I blink filmy eyes and suddenly I’m looking down into the nest and my own huge talons, one of my claws still hooked through the flesh of the dying fish. I gasp, shaking my head, grabbing fistfuls of bedding. What’s happening to me? For a beat, I’d swear I was peering through my hawk’s eyes. It feels like something inside me is tearing.

  There’s a movement to my left. I roll blearily towards it. Da sits in a chair by my bed, rubbing his jaw. The stubby hairs make a scratching sound.

  ‘Da,’ I croak stupidly. My skull pounds, and a foul, rusty taste clogs my mouth.

  I can only see one side of his face, lit by the pale glow of a moon-lamp he’s wedged onto a table next to him. He’s garbed in a midnight-blue tunic with pearls for buttons and a shaggy black goatskin cloak. His yellow hair is bundled into a messy knot on his head. Behind a tangle of reddish beard, his face is the pale grey of a skimming stone.

  ‘Bloodshed! ’ I blurt, lifting my head from the pillow. The room spins wildly. ‘At the Stone Circle!’

  ‘Peace, Mouse,’ says Da softly.

  I stare at him through great matted clumps of black hair. He’s full-vexed at me, so I make ready to charm my way off trouble’s hook. ‘You know the sea is calling me but still you come in here dressed like her, in blue and pearls and gold like the sun on the waves, eh?’

  He stares at me evenly. ‘A hailstorm broke the skulls of three draggles and two riders. Leo—’

  ‘She’s alright, ent she? Is she?’

  ‘Let me finish. Leo told us that the rest of the flock spooked, and badly. She managed to shoot a message into a ghostway and called some of the Wilderwitches to her aid. They used weather-magyk to help get the party home. But before they arrived, you passed out.’ He clears his throat and looks away.

  I know I’m in for the worst earful of my life, so I clutch handfuls of bedding and get ready to beg myself blue. ‘Staying still is too hard!’ I whine. ‘I loathe it here! I miss home! You can’t blame me!’

&
nbsp; ‘Are you eight moons old?’ he demands.

  I flush.

  ‘You of all people should know there are worse places for those without a home. Don’t be so guppy-witted.’ He reaches over and gives my leg a shake – not hard, but enough to put me in my place. ‘Can you picture how it feels to find your child gone, in the middle of a pack of angry storms, in the breath before a war? Because mark me, girl—’

  ‘It weren’t my—’

  ‘That is what is coming. A war ! A war that I would die before seeing you caught up in!’ he yells.

  Da’s only yelled at me a handful of times my whole life long, but when he does, it’s frightful cos normally he sails so easy, and suddenly he’s so mad-vexed his face is purple. The odd thing is, the frightfulness of it makes me laugh, which don’t help matters at all. Grandma used to give in much quicker when fury bit her.

  ‘Banish that smirk or so help me Mouse I will lock you in this chamber and you won’t even have the run of the stronghold. Then we’ll see how trapped you feel.’

  I force the corners of my lips down.

  ‘Better.’ He sits back, pulls the band from his hair and runs his fingers through it, blue eyes flashing. ‘Gift a man a young death, you will.’

  ‘I’m not trying to hurt you, Da. I just can’t stay here. I don’t know how.’

  ‘You’d better get learning, then, hadn’t you?’

  I puff up my cheeks and blow all the air out in a rush. ‘When are we gonna find the Land-Opal?’

  ‘Mouse.’ He folds his arms and leans closer to me. ‘What sort of a father would I be if I let you go running off into this perilous world again, when I’ve only just got you safe?’

  I raise my brows.  He got me safe?

  He sees my look and narrows his eyes. ‘You don’t need to fret – I’m going to find the Huntress and rescue those of our Tribe who are still aboard. Then I will search for the Opal.’

  A howl of hope arrows from my throat. ‘And I’ll go with you!’