by Sarah Driver
‘Axe?’ yells a voice, across the ice behind her.
She startles, then starts backing away. ‘Safe passage, sea-sister,’ she calls, before vanishing from sight.
What’s our world come to if I’m heart-sad to see Axe-Thrower leave?
Finally, when pitch darkness smudges to the bleak, grainy grey of the Withering, the Stony Chieftain steps out into the snow. Stag follows, breathing deeply like he’s mighty proud of himself.
Storm-Bringer yodels a command and the phantom whose box we’re chained in unravels its wrinkly snout to the ground. She steps onto it and the beast lifts her high, until she can step off into the wooden box. There’s a space at the front and she stands there, staring across the icescape at the other phantoms and pulling a coiled whip from her belt. Her warriors call the same command to their own steeds and then the whole battalion forms up in ranks, ready to move off. When the phantom moves, we slide around on our hard wooden seats, and I notice the splatters of sick on the floor.
Sparrow is on the other side, and I wrestle with the chains, wishing I could reach for his hand. He quakes with the sobs he’s forcing down.
I stare hard at Stag, willing him to drop down dead.
As the phantoms begin to shuffle away, gradually gathering pace until we’re moving at a brisk march, Stag steps close to the edge of the ice, eyes fixed on my face.
He shakes his head. ‘No.’ He rushes to the edge of the icy sea, where the eyeshine from the Stony staffs spills a sickly pool of light. Then his face is the size of a pin. Then he vanishes from sight.
Storm-Bringer rides at the front of the box, driver’s whip in hand. Behind her, twenty of us slaves are packed tight into the box, in two rows.
Opposite me, in the other row, hunches a girl of about ten birth-moons. Ice sits on each of her eyelashes and a pink birthmark is spread across one of her cheeks. I gift her a small smile but she just stares at me, lost to terrors.
Then we’re loping, faster and faster through the ice, the footfalls of the phantoms sending avalanches crashing down from the hills. In the distance, two bird shapes plunge after us. Thaw and Crow. Storm-Bringer swings her weapons in her fingers and laughs raucously into the wind.
Soon enough I wish I could flush all the frighted whimpers out of my ears. My backside turns numb and my bones stiffen with cold and my legs need stretching and my belly is sore, partly from hunger, mostly from fright. But there’s no sign the beasts are slowing, and on we race, leagues passing beneath the phantoms’ feet.
The other phantoms lope ahead when ours stops for a drink. ‘All well, Chieftain?’ calls another driver.
‘All well,’ Storm-Bringer confirms. ‘Press on, we will catch you up.’
Sometime later, after we’ve set off again but not yet caught up with the others, I’m almost too dazed to notice when Storm-Bringer drops her weapons and places her empty hands on her ripe belly.
‘Your time is not now,’ she says to the mound that is the bab, voice flaying her lips. I glance up and watch as she tips back her head and sighs a white plume of breath to the hiding stars. ‘Not now! ’
We press on, Storm-Bringer lashing the phantom with her whip, but soon she’s doubled over, clutching the side of the box with fingertips like claws. If Grandma was here she’d be helping the Chieftain’s bab into the world safely, slave-trader or no slave-trader. She helped anyone who needed her. I bite my sore lips, racking my brains for Grandma’s teachings. How we gonna keep the bab warm out here?
‘Breathe,’ I tell her, before I can stop myself. ‘Keep breathing through it.’
Storm-Bringer flashes me a vengeful look between bab-pains. ‘What do you know, boy?’ she spits.
I hesitate. ‘M— my grandma,’ I mumble through frozen lips. ‘Midwife.’
‘A gatekeeper grandmother.’ She nods, face filled with startling respect. Then the Other realm snatches her away again. When the pain’s grip loosens she frees me, and I crouch by her side. I rub the bottom of her back, firmly, like Grandma showed me.
Terror squeezes me. I don’t know what to do. Not really. I can feel the veil between the worlds thinning as the bab creeps closer. Most times, nothing is what you do, says Grandma’s voice in my memory. Until you have to do something. I try to relax.
Old One twists her whale-tooth pendulum in her fingers. It throws shadows onto the sides of the box. I pray she’s coaxing friendly spirits.
‘You labour well,’ I tell the slaver, trying to encourage her like Grandma would have.
‘I have birthed eight times, and I started long before you first squalled,’ she seethes.
I stay silent. Then—
‘So why won’t this one come?’ she sobs.
Grandma said most babs come easy enough. But now and then, they need a smidge of help. I summon my heart-strength and check to be sure, dredging Grandma’s teaching from my depths. ‘That one’s stuck,’ I tell her, panic rippling through me.
‘No,’ she breathes. ‘I have seen such blood-battles.’ Her frighted eyes quest for my face. ‘Can you help me?’
I shudder under the weight of the task. But then she’s bent forwards again, rocking, wailing, and I can’t just sit here in this boat and be a kid. I’ve got to be a captain.
I steel my nerves, thinking of Thaw and my longbow and Grandma. Then I work.
Once I’ve helped unstick the bab and it’s plopped into my arms, the slaves in the boat break into a gasping chaos of clapping, hooting, foot-stamping and bab-welcomings in what sounds like a mixture of a hundred different tribe-tongues. ‘I need something to dry her with!’ Between them, the group comes up with a few rags and a scrap of fur cut from the bottom of a cloak.
The Chief weeps freely, relief easing her face, and she stares at the slaves in wonderment.
I dry the bab briskly, praying under my breath until her solemn eyes stare up at me and she sets to testing out her lungs and limbs. ‘Thank the gods,’ I whisper.
Then I help Storm-Bringer get the bab fixed to her breast and watch as she starts to suckle. I stroke her cool cheek, tuck a fur around her, dry off her sleek dark head with the edge of my cloak. She’s just the same as babs born to peaceful folk. She don’t know her ma’s a warmonger. ‘Keep her warm against your skin,’ I tell Storm-Bringer, and she nods. She watches me quietly, and her slaves watch us both. The ice crunches under the phantom’s heavy feet.
‘How did you know, as one so young?’
I swallow. ‘Like I said. My grandma. She were midwife to my Tribe. I watched her, and she made me learn after what happened to my ma birthing that one.’ I point at Sparrow.
She blinks her great smudged eyes. ‘Thank you.’ The bab wriggles and mewls. ‘You with the fire in your eyes, fire in your cheeks and fire on your tongue. What can I do to repay the debt?’
I gulp a breath. ‘I wish a twofold payment – a truth, and a deed.’
She inclines her head, watching her bab from under her lashes. ‘Very well.’
‘I need to know if you traded a slave by the name of Leopard, Protector of the Mountain – tall and skinny, with brown curly hair and a cloak of feathers.’
‘Yes. I remember her. She was brought to our trading post. One of sunken cheeks, and lips that spewed ill-thought-out threats.’
‘Where is she now?’
Storm-Bringer blows out her cheeks. ‘I would not know. I took her to our fortress and sold her on to a trader from there. The price was poor, as she and her warriors were wounded.’
Sorrow squeezes me so hard that I struggle to open my lungs again.
‘This news pains you.’ Storm-Bringer gifts me a bones-deep look. ‘For that I am sorry. What is your second request?’
‘Free us.’
She groans. Then she sighs. ‘Alright, I will free you three.’ She looks at me, Sparrow and Old One in turn.
‘No. Free all of them – from your transport boxes, and from slavery. Then take us to Nightfall.’
If the Opal is bound for the great clanking
city of smog, then so are we – and maybe we can find the camp Kes talked of, outside Nightfall.
Storm-Bringer’s eyes flash. ‘I’d sooner break their skulls – it would be the kinder thing. How will you feed them? Owning slaves is not for the thoughtless.’
I swallow back my disgust. ‘I won’t own them. They will have their rightful freedom.’
‘Child,’ she says through a laugh, gazing down at the top of her bab’s head. ‘These people are slaves, through and through. That’s how they were born and how they will die.’
I shake my head, trying to brush away the heart-sadness clinging to me. ‘You’re wrong.’
She shakes her head for no.
‘But I just saved both your lives!’
‘Wait, you impatient wriggler!’ She chuckles. ‘I am not going to Nightfall this time. But I can get you close.’ Then she starts to laugh. ‘Birthing always turns me into the strongest warrior I’ve ever been, then softens my heart. Good luck to you. You will need it.’
The phantom marches south, down a frozen, wide-throated river. We sight the others in the distance, and by the time we catch up, the river has yawned into a glittering lake. A fog-shrouded city hulks to our right – that must be Nightfall, with the Colleges at its heart where no girls are allowed, but somewhere Kestrel and Egret are weaving secret revolution spells. The creature slows to a stop, and Storm-Bringer unchains us. ‘Walk westwards,’ says the Chieftain. ‘You will come to the Forest, on the edge of the city.’
I only leave the box after Storm-Bringer lets me check her bleeding has settled. Then she waves me off. ‘I’ll sever the cord with my teeth when the time comes,’ she says, flapping her hands. ‘Go, before I reclaim my wits.’
The raggedy band of once-were-slaves straggle after me across the ice-glittered, hilly landscape. A frail old man stumbles. His fear-stink tangs my tongue. ‘Careful!’ I gripe at him, like it’s his own fault. He flinches away from me, as though I’m his slaver now, and the horror of it wrings my belly like a rag.
I’ve got no food for them. No shelter. No weaponry except my longbow, as Crow helpfully reminds me, when he swoops out of the sky beside me, making the others yell and scatter. He only half turns back into a boy. His cloak is a skin of black feathers and his nose is curved and brittle and bony.
‘We can’t save everyone we meet!’ he caws, stumbling as his boots punch out of the ends of his scaly yellow legs.
‘Why not? If they need us, we’ve got to help them!’
‘How?’ he asks, tense. He flaps his feathered hands in my face. ‘Tell me, if you’ve got all the answers. What are we gonna do with all your strays?’
Fill a deck. Make a crew. I keep my thoughts locked in my head cos I want them to come true so much it’s painful.
But one of the former slaves, a kind-faced old man swamped in a patched cloak, has heard us. He steps close. ‘With respect, younglings,’ he says, ‘we must part from you now that our freedom is won. We listened to the bargain you struck with the slaver – you said we do not belong to you. I am Okapi. I was once a leader of my village. I will help these people find their ways home.’
I underestimated them all. I took it for granted they would need more help from me. I acted like they weren’t free at all. Humbled, I bow my head and Okapi clasps my hands in his worn ones. ‘Your kindness blazes, child,’ he tells me. ‘Please – do not feel shamed.’
At a crossroads in the path, Okapi leads the freed slaves away from us, and I wave until they’re out of sight, a lump swelling in my throat.
‘Hang about,’ says Crow. ‘What’s she still doing here?’ He points out the girl with the birthmark, who’s lingering next to Old One.
Her cheeks flush bright red, blurring the edges of the birthmark. She won’t speak until I get close enough for her to whisper in my ear. ‘I can show you the way to Nightfall.’
I look down at her, startled. ‘How?’
‘I live there, in the outer city.’
‘But I thought no girls could go there?’ says Crow.
‘That’s the heart of the city, where the learning’s done,’ she replies.
‘How did you become a slave?’ asks old big-ears-big-mouth Sparrow.
‘My Pa sent me away.’ She twists her hands together. ‘But I know he’ll be glad to see me again.’
Sparrow’s mouth falls open under the weight of all his questions, but I shut him up with a look and pat the girl’s shoulder. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Bluebottle.’ She gifts me a wobbly smile. ‘But most people just call me Blue.’
My hawk glides ahead, scouting the path. Old One slips so I scoop her fat elbow in my palm. ‘I can help a stuck bab but I can’t mend a broken leg,’ I hiss at her, but all she does is gift me a gummy grin.
We rest. We trudge. Hopelessness tries to cling in our hair. Sparrow cries himself hoarse and then struggles to breathe. I’ve been carrying him on my back so much that my legs tremble long after I put him down.
We walk until we reach a clot of trees thicker than night.
‘The Forest of Nightfall,’ says Blue, dropped-pin-quiet. One by one, we crane back our necks and stare up at the dense wall of evergreen.
The trees on the edge of the forest are tall and tangled. Their branches are dusted with ice, like sugar. The girl shows us where we can squeeze through a gap between them. The needles scrape against our cloaks.
We step through the outer trees, into deeper forest. Crow carries Sparrow thrown over his shoulder, and with every step my brother’s arms flap. The trees smudge out the grainy light. ‘Wake Sparrow up,’ I whisper. ‘We need his light.’
Crow sets him on his feet and he mutters blearily. The only thing I can see is Thaw’s pearly eyeshine.
The forest is oddly still.
Sparrow turns to each of us and coughs up a glob of whale-song. We each cup a strand between our palms, holding out our hands to see by the gentle blue light.
Old One grins in delight, stretching her sticky note between her fingers.
‘What is this stuff ?’ asks Bluebottle, scrunching her nose. ‘It’s pretty,’ she adds thoughtfully.
‘Whale-song,’ I tell her, as my own piece of it utters a low, heart-sad groan. A groan that should be knocking against the hull of a ship, not the lines of my palm.
We stumble forwards, tripping over the tree roots that twine through the mud. The trees seem to lean closer and closer, like they’re bending to see Sparrow’s whale-song.
We pass ancient tree stumps, felled in the spot where they grew from a tiny seed, hundreds – maybe thousands – of years ago. They’ve left heart-sad gaps in the forest. We slip in puddles of blood.
‘Killing bears and felling trees is forbidden here,’ whispers Blue. ‘Someone’s been breaking the Law of the Forest.’
Our feet crunch ice-crusted mud and leaves.
Soon the trees are crowding and their whispers trace cold fingers up and down my spine. Then I’m tripping over a lump on the ground. A lump of icy, bloodstained fur – a dead bear. Crow pulls me away from it.
Silence crawls over the forest. And the branches of the trees are patterned with whorls that look like eyes. Eyes hooded with wrinkled eyelids, like they belong to dolphins, or whales. A picture of my ship throbs at the back of my brain.
We slip in wet, mushy droppings the size of shields. ‘What kind of thing makes droppings like that?’ asks Crow, lip curled.
‘Scuttle-spiders,’ whispers Blue, grinning.
‘Spiders?’ repeats Crow, face turning grey. He twitches to stare at the trees around us, wrapping his arms around himself.
I can’t rein in my mind, and it slip-slides ahead of me, picturing how big a spider’s got to be to have dung like that . . . and then I gift myself a shake and stride on. ‘Come on,’ I tell Crow, pulling him forwards before the horror can rip him in two. ‘I’m sick of being frighted all the time! The sooner we get through here, the better.’
I can feel my eyes straining and pulling in the
dimness. When Old One strays from the path, I grab her arm and pull her back. I know she’s bone-tired. But we have to keep on.
From the corner of my eye I watch strange shapes twist in and out of the trees.
‘I think someone’s watching us,’ says Blue, rootsy brown tangles quivering. She turns to stare into my face.
‘I reckon you’re right.’
She steps close and links her arm through mine, and though I feel proper hampered walking like that I force myself not to push her away.
Inside my boots, blood squelches, but I can’t take off my stockings unless I’m ready to lose a toe.
When we’ve walked so long and far through the forest that we can’t stand any more, we settle down to rest. Old One crafts a tiny fire.
‘No,’ says Crow, eyes wild, desperate. ‘They’ll see it.’
‘Look at them,’ I say, pointing at Bluebottle and Old One and Sparrow. ‘They’re half frozen. We’ll have to risk a fire, just for a bit.’
But once it’s lit, no one can face dousing the flames. I pull off my stocking and stare at my foot – one of my toenails has grown long enough to slice into the skin of the toe next to it. I bend my knee, lift my foot to my mouth and bite my toenails short, spitting the clippings into the pine needles.
‘That really is disgusting, even for you,’ mutters Crow.
‘Ack, clam your pipes, land-lurker.’ I press close to him, leaning on his arm.
He moves away, flashing a warning look at me. ‘D’you always stick to folk like glue?’
‘What? You’re warm!’ I scuttle closer again.
The fire dies low, and there’s nothing else around to keep it going, so we curl tight together, like roots. Sparrow feels too bony. His belly creaks. We whisper the foods of our home.
‘What would you have?’ he asks.
‘That’s easy. Lobster claws.’ I close my eyes and imagine them, fresh from Pip’s pot. ‘Then steaming hot bread with a side plate of cockles. What would you have?’
‘I’d have the biggest plate of grilled monkfish,’ he tells me, snuggling closer. ‘Greasy battered squid tentacles – ten, all to myself, I ent sharing! – and a bowl of mussels too.’