The Huntress: Storm

by Sarah Driver

  ‘Forgive us, lady,’ says one with a scar through his eyebrow. ‘We did not know the Chieftain had a daughter. Welcome home.’

  Axe returns to the sled. She salutes the guards and we race through. The gates swing closed behind us. ‘You were right,’ says Axe grimly. ‘Everyone does have a choice.’

  And I know she’s made hers and that I’ve reached this place in one piece cos of her. I feel a flicker of trust, wriggling through my bones. But I don’t know if I’m a fool for feeling it.

  As we’re moving I think about how Axe called me a slave and the guards didn’t blink. Grandma used to spit nails about the trade in slaves. If she saw any ships she suspected, she’d scratch a quick-sharp letter to the nearest dockmaster. Sometimes she’d try to board slave ships. Once, we spent a winter huddled up with twenty child-slaves she rescued.

  When we’re close to the edge of the sea, the dogs blunder to a halt. However hard Axe lashes them, they won’t run. So we take the chance to rest. Together we make another shelter, by sculpting a wall of packed snow. We huddle on the sled behind our wall. Snotcicles crunch in my nose.

  Axe-Thrower lifts a skope to her eyes and peers towards the rotting docks, where abandoned longboats lie clutched in the sea’s frozen grasp. On a slime-blackened wooden post, the great ragged crow hunches, watching us through one yellow eye. He peels a shellfish off the wooden dock and smashes it over and over until he can stretch out the morsel inside. He opens his beak and gulps it down.

  Later, when Axe snoozes, I tiptoe away from the shelter and push against the wind to reach him. ‘Crow!’ I hiss.

  The bird startles and squawks, flapping inky wings.

  ‘She’s asleep! You should become a boy again for a bit!’

  The bird cocks its head at me.

  ‘Come on,’ I mutter, shuffling from foot to foot with cold. I don’t like how long he’s been a crow this time. And I don’t like seeing him eat in crow-form. It gifts me the fear.

  When I listen hard, I can almost make out the fizzling, crackling whisper of a faint beast-chatter. I plead with him for a few more beats, but the cold is trying to saw my limbs off so I turn to go – and there’s a groan behind me, then a smell of burning. I spin around and there he is – Crow, ashen-faced, curled at the foot of the docks. I fall to my knees and help him wolf down a few more shellfish and a strip of dried goat meat he’s kept in his belt pouch.

  ‘Mouse – I saw – something,’ he says through rattling teeth.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Two cloaked figures – one pointing at you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Just after the checkpoint. But then the wind blew me off course and I lost sight of them. Keep your blade sharpened and your arrows ready. I think someone’s following you.’

  ‘Why won’t they take us closer?’ grumbles Axe, when she’s rested. Crow’s a bird again, keeping out of her eye line. Thunder threatens the snow dunes.

  I watch the dog pack, see the way their gums are bared and their fur is raised in ridges.

  Bad place, no home. Not go backbackback.

  ‘Should we try another way?’ I ask, careful not to show her that I understood them.

  Run, husk the polar dog pack in turn.  Far, fast, run, hide. Not win fight here.

  ‘There is no other way.’ She lifts the skope from her eye and takes a hollowed-out bone from her pocket, then unscrews a cork from its neck. She tips a handful of white cubes into my palm.

  I gift her a quizzical look.

  ‘This is moons-buried shark meat. It is too fine for you, but I won’t see you starve. Even I do not have the stomach to watch your corpse pulled apart by the dogs.’

  I push one of the soft, cold cubes of flesh between my chattering teeth. A salty, slimy tang explodes on my tongue. I force the sinewy pulp down, blinking against the pungent stink blocking my nose from the inside out. What kind of Tribe takes good, fresh shark meat and buries it underground for moons, until it’s half rotted?

  Still, I’m heart-glad she’s sharing with me. My belly’s worse than desperate.

  I stare up at the smooth slope of Axe’s nose in the half-light. ‘Why are you called Axe-Thrower?’ I ask.

  She glances down at me in surprise.

  I fold my arms. ‘I mean, I don’t reckon any new ma looks at her bab and decides, “Aye, she looks like an axe-thrower, that little one”.’

  ‘Less of your foul-mouthery,’ she says, but her eyes glimmer with a grin. ‘My mother called me Little Moonlet,’ she whispers, her mouth letting the words slip peacefully into the air. ‘That was my true name. It was the Chieftain that forced a battle-name onto me, along with a set of fangs, after he ripped my own teeth out.’

  I shiver, picturing the scene, almost tasting a mouthful of blood when I imagine the same fate befalling me.

  She lashes the dogs again but they still won’t go closer, so we approach the stagnant docks on foot. A clutter of Fangtooth longboats are tethered to a crumbling, rotting dock. But then a cloaked shape snags at the corner of my eye, and when I glance behind me, it darts out of sight.

  Behind us, the polar dogs thrash and gift guttural whinings to the storm. I push my croaky voice into life. ‘Someone’s following us.’

  ‘I know.’ We watch each other. Our breath-frosts mingle.

  Behind us, in the distance, a fire glows into life. It’s purple. A mystik!

  I wade towards the fire, clutching my dagger tightly.

  ‘Wait! ’ hisses Axe. But I press forwards and she curses at my back, before her footsteps begin to crunch in my wake.

  I point my arrow down at a hooded figure seated by the fire. ‘Show yourself !’

  Suddenly, a hawk bolts from the black branches of a dead tree and barrels towards me. ‘Thaw ?’

  The cloaked figure pulls down their hood. I’m staring at a young boy with ice-nipped yellow hair. Most of his face is covered but I’d know them big brown eyes anywhere.

  ‘Sparrow.’ I take a step back. Inside, I’m screaming. He’s got a little jar that’s spilling light – I squint. Thunderbolt? But then I realise the light’s tinged blue and see that it’s a scrap of whale-song thudding about inside – gifting him the light he needs to thin the fog on his eyes.

  ‘How did you—’ I clutch uselessly for my words.

  ‘Bribed a man to drive me on a sled,’ he says.

  My mouth flaps like I’m a stranded fish. ‘But – but . . . what man? Where?’

  ‘He’s gone now – he didn’t want to go over the frozen sea. He dropped me after the checkpoint. I hid under the furs to get through,’ he finishes triumphantly.

  ‘How could you be so slack-witted?’ I groan.

  ‘How could you leave us behind ?’ he counters.

  I glare at my brother and my sea-hawk.

  Thaw splutters her own outrage at me.

  Thawnotsitwaitstupid! She shuffles her feathers, filling them with fight.  Thaw be with two-legs girl! Home!

  ‘Me and Thaw reckoned you’d need us,’ Sparrow says firmly. Then he reaches inside his cloak and lifts out a tiny tinderbox. His face is licked all over with the fiercest dark defiance I have ever seen in my life. He slides the box open and a purple flame springs up from his finger to gift enough light to show me what’s inside. A smear of silver. ‘Thunderbolt died!’

  I stumble backwards, almost tripping in the snow. Oh, no. Not this. ‘Sparrow, I’m sorry!’ I reach for him but he twists away.

  ‘I miss her too much.’ His face crumples.

  My gut feels slashed. Our moonsprite.

  I’m about to try again to gift him comforts when a gleam of light spills from his cloak. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Naught.’

  ‘Sparrow.’ I put all my warnings into the name.

  Before he can stop me, I snatch open the edge of his cloak, and there they are, bulging inside his pocket. Two bright, round gems, spilling over with ancient power.

  I pull the Opals free and cradle the bright stones in my pa
lms. A tiny lightning bolt flickers inside the Sky-Opal, and a miniature sea tips up and down under the skin of the Opal of the Sea.

  I lift my eyes to my brother’s face. ‘You disbelievably wretched slackwit!’

  I lean forwards and grab him by the shoulder. ‘How did you get these? Why did you bring them here ?’ The weight of carrying the gems and the death of Thunderbolt jolt thick tears into my throat.

  ‘Get off me, fool-heart!’ yells Sparrow. ‘You told me to look after them!’

  ‘Who you calling fool-heart? You ent got nine suns yet, so don’t be squawking to me like that.’

  Thaw hisses angrily.

  No, Thaw-beast! I GET to be angry! You and my brother have done all the things I told you not to, and I didn’t tell you not to for nothing!

  Axe-Thrower trudges towards us. ‘What is going on?’

  Sparrow gulps a breath. ‘The best friend I ever had is dead, and just like I thought, my sister don’t even care,’ he babbles, not even noticing who he’s chatting to.

  Axe-Thrower frowns as my brother turns his back on me. ‘Best friend dead? You should show kind-heartedness.’

  ‘I ent letting someone like you preach on at me about kindness.’ I turn on my heel and stalk away from them, dropping the Sea-Opal in my left pocket and the Sky-Opal in my right. When I’m alone, the loss of Thunderbolt thumps me full in the gut and I sob silently into my fist. I can hardly remember a time without the sprite. I feel like every beat that passes, another piece of our home dies.

  We’re at the eastern end of the frozen Wildersea, and in the west, far to my left, I can just make out the looming sparkle of the giant Iceberg Forest. I stare, my breath frosting. Spooky-odd to think that not so long ago I was inside the Skybrary, in the very tip of one of the bergs. Thunderbolt was with us then, too. And she helped me when I had to find a way to tell Sparrow about Grandma. She guided him through life for so long. He’s gonna feel so alone without her.

  I walk right up to the rotten docks, kicking through filthy snow, and start poking around in the boats. The wind scrapes my eyeballs and plucks handfuls of black sand into the air, like swarms of sharp flies.

  When I spin round and catch sight of Sparrow, he’s clutching the tinderbox and shuddering with tears. I’ve got to show him I do care. But when I open my mouth to say something, a great claw of sadness scratches the words away.

  The dock creaks and sways in the gale. The boats rock.

  ‘Something foul treads my paths,’ Axe whispers, behind me. I flinch – I never heard her approaching.

  Thunder booms overhead and she hisses like a cat. Her eyes stare across the stretch of sea greedily, like she’s thirsting for the land on the other side.

  ‘We have to hurry up and get to the Frozen Wastes,’ says Sparrow, reaching for the stick Da made him and standing up.

  ‘That ent their true name,’ I tell him firmly, glancing at Axe. ‘From now on, we should call them the Moonlands.’

  He pulls a face and shrugs. But Axe gifts me a small proud nod. ‘We cannot get the sled across in a boat,’ she says. ‘The dogs must run on frozen water.’

  She unties the dogs and I help her drag the sled across the docks and on to the sea.

  ‘Will it hold our weight?’

  ‘Let us pray so.’

  Get away get away get away! the dogs chatter desperately.

  I weigh my choices, then spit onto the ice. I have to risk showing my beast-chatter in front of Axe.  You can get home, dogs! I yell.

  Water flow, water not hold dogs up. Dogs drown!

  No, it’s frozen solid. Look! I jump on the frozen sea to show them it’s safe.

  I coax them past the rotting docks and finally we board the sled and we’re running again, the sled sliding smoothly across the ice. Sparrow plonks himself down in front of me and I make sure his hood stays up, elsewise he’ll likely lose an ear. But it’s proper hard to hold onto the sled and his hood at the same time. My body knocks against the wood. Thaw and Crow fly overhead, staying out of sight.

  Axe calls the sea-paths the ‘whale-ways’, and it makes me feel strange. Cos it’s like she – a Fangtooth – is gifting respect to the whales with that name. But then I remember her Tribe’s true name and wonder if there might be more to them than I know.

  Sparrow leans over the side of the sled and flicks purple patterns of lightning across the dark icy sea. Shallow dents melt in the ice where the lightning touches, like he’s got a spark of life in his fingertips. I remember him saying how he zapped that dead frog at Hackles and made it move.

  ‘I left your letter under Da’s pillow,’ he says quietly. ‘I put my name on it, too, so he knows I’ve gone looking for you.’

  I put an arm round him. ‘Heart-strong you are,’ I tell him. ‘Feel sad for Da, though.’ His guts must be tied in knots, with both of us gone! ‘How did you even get out of Hackles?’

  ‘After I nabbed the Opals I hid in the caves. Someone was down there saddling a draggle. When they went off to the tack room, I stole it!’

  I splutter. ‘You ent never even ridden a draggle on your own!’

  He sticks out his lip. ‘Leo took me out riding lots of times. I’ve always been a better rider than you – it’s just like riding a horse.’

  I raise my brows. ‘Oh, aye,’ I say, and he sniggers.

  ‘I took that key you left behind to get to the Opals and used my lightning to smash the cages!’ His voice trails off and fright fills his eyes. ‘Please don’t send me back. No one else knows I did it.’

  Gods gift me heart-strength. I’ve got no words.

  I pull away from him and stare at his pleading face.

  ‘Course I won’t send you back!’

  Sparrow beams up at me and goes back to fizzing with heart-pride at what he’s done and I find I can’t fight off a grin of my own.

  We tear past a fatly heaped walrus herd, snoring on the ice.

  Shuffleshufflesleepsnoozehungrygrumbledragsnooze.

  One cracks open a bulbous eye and peers at us.

  When we reach land, I wish we could turn back. Have we really sought the place I was always taught to dread, the folk I was always taught to hide from? Thieved warships bulk along the iced black sand, their rigging strung with dagger-long icicles.  Devil’s Hag is among them, red sails torn to tatters and hull sealed tight in the clutches of the ice. She’s the warship me and Crow hid aboard to escape Weasel – when Stag sent the Fangtooth Chieftain to claim me. Axe guides the dogs through a gap between two ships. Their wooden flanks press close on either side, walls of deeper black in the grainy darkness. Then we jump off the sled and drag it across the beach, our boots squeaking as the sand changes into shiny, bone-white stones shaped like eggs. Lightning strikes the stones, and we dodge, shrieking, and the eggs hop high into the air, chattering back down to earth like teeth. When I glance over my shoulder, a sea-hawk and a ragged black crow flap across the frozen sea.

  Then we’re back on the sled again. We drive across vast plains of ice and snow, past strange herds of squat, dusky purple beasts, their mottled skin covered in pink lumps, huge lantern eyes swivelling in their small skulls. When we ride close to them, they flee, big feet slip-slapping on the ice. Sparrow gasps, shrinking back from the creatures.

  I never reckoned I’d set foot in this place, and I never in a thousand moons would’ve guessed I’d do it out of choice. Now the land is opening up around me, I’m realising how I only knew it from the stories of an enemy Tribe – my own. I never knew it at all. I struggle to breathe. I feel my guts grow hot, and loosen. Then my mouth fills with spit as bile rushes from my belly to the back of my throat. The Frozen Wastes. The most dangerous, forbidden place my boots could ever tread. What am I doing here? And gods – now my brother’s followed me!

  We race faster and further across the hard-packed snow. The sled slides from side to side as Axe follows a path I can’t even see. It feels like running down a dark grey tunnel. I feel speck-small.

  An age passes before
we meet another human. Then two appear through the murky snowscape – old women swaddled in furs, crouching next to a hole in the ice. They’re using a curved bone covered with netting to clear loose ice from the hole. They call out to Axe-Thrower and she answers them in a tongue I don’t know, shaking her head.

  ‘What did you say?’ asks Sparrow.

  ‘I told them the fish have fled,’ she replies, with a sigh.

  We come to a skin tent that looks big enough for twenty full-growns, and Axe-Thrower stops the sled. I’m so stiff and sore it takes me a few beats until I can stand. I help Sparrow from the sled and Axe ushers us inside. ‘A resting tent,’ she tells us, looking half asleep on her feet. ‘Leave your weapons.’

  The tent is full of the stinks of smoking meat. The air sparkles with embers and the diamond-dust that sweeps in from the outside.

  Axe shows us a place to sit by the fire. I stare at the hole in the roof, like a bitten-out moon. Even though we’ve stopped sledding, I still feel like we’re shushing over the ice. I wrap my arms around my knees, bones sore and throbbing. The base of my spine feels proper bruised.

  Sparrow sits close to me. I rest my cheek on top of his head. Will we ever get home? And if we do, will it ever be the same as it was?

  ‘Wish Thunderbolt was here,’ he murmurs. He draws his knees up to his chest.

  ‘Gods, so do I, too-soon.’ I sniff. The little sprite would be a welcome light in this unknown world.

  Axe brings a purple egg for me and Sparrow to share. She whispers that even these folk are saying it’s cold.

  Crow hops sideways through the opening of the tent, pecks at an egg and gets his beak through its tough shell before someone chases him away. My palms turn hot. I can’t let him stay a crow for much longer. I’m halfway certain Axe won’t harm us, but something makes me feel like he should stay hidden, just in case. If anything goes wrong, he can fly back to Hackles and raise the alarm.

  Folk string up a reindeer carcass trapped inside a block of ice, and set it thawing over a fire. I gift Axe a questioning look. ‘Another storm-killed beast,’ she mutters. ‘They say many are being lost in this forever-winter.’ Her eyes brim with startling tears.