by Sarah Driver
She grins. ‘That gladdens me.’
Then I hear the chatter of draggles beyond the trees’ canopy of protection and stare upwards.
‘What is it?’ asks Da.
The chatterers cower on their haunches, eyes wild.
‘Something’s coming,’ I say. Then, slowly, the trees’ fingers begin to unlace, revealing a scrap of sky.
Two huge orange blots sweep towards our camp. Tiny figures are huddled on their backs. As they get closer, I see who they are – Yapok and the Skybrarian! They descend, getting closer, before finally landing in the glade. Everyone covers their faces against the stink stirred by the beasts’ wings.
‘The Skybrarian ?’ I breathe.
‘He’s the oldest book-wielder in the world,’ says Da, face lit with awe. ‘He knows what’s at stake here.’
More draggles thud into view, bearing old men and women wearing eyeglasses and holding books close to their chests.
‘I offer the anti-Skadowan movement the allegiance of the book-protectors of Trianukka,’ croaks the Skybrarian triumphantly, long white hair wrapped around his neck like a shaggy scarf.
Once the draggles are settled and the newcomers fed and watered, we sit around the campfire making plans. ‘How did you know the Skadowan had risen again?’ Hoshi asks the Skybrarian.
‘My apprentice showed me a symbol that he could not remove from the manuscripts – it was enchanted, and was suffocating the true runes written underneath,’ he explains. ‘He had unearthed the symbol of the great Shadow itself.
Painful-looking red blotches creep up Yapok’s neck and break out across his face. He fidgets, like he wants to fly right back to his Skybrary, and his books.
‘Well done, mate,’ says Crow, clapping him on the back and drawing even more attention to him. ‘Praise where it’s due!’
The Skybrarian clears his throat. ‘I performed extensive historical investigation with the help of my colleagues, and we realised that certain patterns from the last time of the Skadowan were being repeated. I became convinced that the Skadowan were rising again.’
Sparrow curls into my side. He’s told me that Old One’s been helping him to work on his life-spark power, and learn to control it. But it looks to be tiring him out more than ever.
‘Our spies inform us that the Nightfall army is assembled, and almost ready to march,’ says Toadflax.
‘This is confirmed by what Mouse and Egret witnessed inside the city,’ says Leo, who’s trying to stay heart-strong until we fight to the last.
I nod. ‘The Skadowan is making ready to bring a battle to end all battles,’ I tell them. ‘Akhund Olm says he wants to crush the rebels in the forest, level it flat, then march beyond, snuffing every last flame against the dark. We have to be ready for them.’ I swallow, realising that every pair of eyes in the glade is fixed on me. Sparks hurry from the fire, and the kindling snaps.
Then terrified whispers swarm around the clearing.
‘We thank you for your report, Mouse,’ says Toadflax. ‘The Nightfall army is readying to quash any remaining resistance, until they hold all the power in the land. Sadly, they now possess all three Storm-Opals.’
‘No!’ someone cries.
‘We’re lost!’ says another.
Leo chooses not to tell everyone how the Skadowan got the jewels, and I know I should be grateful for that, but shame still squeezes me, making my face burn.
While arguments rage, Da leans close. ‘I am heart-proud of you, Mouse.’
I flinch away. ‘Why?’ I hiss. ‘It’s all gone proper wrong cos of me. I don’t even know why I didn’t tell Leo I had the Opals before I went into the city. I think I just – wanted to prove myself.’
He rubs his temples, taking a long breath. ‘But you dared believe you could just – go in there, and take that last Opal. You believe in the possible more than any of us full-growns. I wish I’d been even halfway as brave as you when I was your age, daughter.’
I gift him a watery smile. ‘Heart-thanks, Da,’ I whisper. ‘How is it you can always make me feel so much better?’
He pulls me into a hug. ‘It’s all part of a da’s job.’
That night I try to sleep, but the beast-chatter of the draggles and the scuttle-spiders seeps into my veins, lacing my blood with hot, spiky panic.
I’m up and pacing before folk begin to stir, making breakfast. Sparrow pulls me to one side. ‘I had a vision,’ he tells me with solemn impatience, like I should’ve flaming guessed or something.
‘Aye? What did you see?’
‘Merwraiths.’
‘How many?’
‘Lots.’ He rubs his eyes. ‘But they was walking again, like they used to before they drowned. I think we’ve got to find them, so I can try to wake them up.’
‘What?’ I whisper, heart skipping. I notice the great white wolf, Astraia, watching us keenly. ‘How do you know you even can?’
He shrugs, scowls. ‘I woke up that dead Chieftain, dint I?’
Astraia pads across to us. Your sea-people are many.
I frown at her. Sea-folk were many, once upon a sometime. But they ent nowadays.
They only sleep, she replies softly. In the realm of fog and pearls. She nuzzles Sparrow’s arm. Let the boy try to wake them. The battle for the light will be lost if you do not find your people. In battles of old, Sea-Tribe armies were rarely defeated. Find your ice-clutched ship. She looks right into me, down to my bones. A great warrior of the sea haunts the waters there.
I gasp. Rattlebones once told me how she trailed our ship to find me, how she watched over me when I was growing up. Maybe she’s waiting in the water, ready to help us in our time of need. And if the Skadowan march as soon as I reckon they will, we ent got long to gather as many warriors as we can find.
I scramble to my feet and pick my way through the folk around the campfire, until I find my Tribe huddled together near the base of a tree. Away from the fire, the cold is sharp as the edge of a blade. ‘Vole, Pip, Bear – can you remember where the Huntress ran aground?’
‘If the stories are true,’ says Bear, ‘merwraiths trail their ships. Most ships that weren’t wrecked in the wild are at the ship-breaking yards. That’s where we’ll raise our army of the dead.’
I shudder at the thought of seeing my ship again, cos I don’t know what state she’ll be in.
‘What of the Sea-Tribe folk who are still living?’ Da asks. ‘The Marsh-folk travelled with us from Hackles. But there must still be others.’
‘Don’t lots of them rove the waters around Fisherman’s Flukes, and trade at Stonepoint?’ I muse. I remember the first time I saw the mighty, heart-bright beacon of light spilling from the great lighthouse of Stonepoint. Many a Sea-Tribe life’s been saved by the lighthouse-keepers there. ‘If any trading’s still going on, they’ll head there, won’t they?’
‘Good thinking, Bones!’ Da beams at me. ‘Stonepoint and the Flukes are southerly enough that, with heart-luck, they might not have frozen solid yet. We can go there afterwards, if we’ve time enough.’
‘I’ll go ahead and suss the place out,’ says Frog, mossy green eyes glinting.
‘And I’ll go with you, lad,’ adds Bear, firmly.
While we’re readying to leave, Thaw flies to the city to spy for us, and returns barely a breath later, feathers spun into ice-capped panic. Nestsrippedapart, two-legs outoutout, into fighting! she gabbles. No free-flying, nosafetysafetysafety!
I sift through her chatter until I can make sense of it. ‘She says folk are being torn from their homes. The Skadowan army’s got full control of the city. Everyone’s being made to fight – there’s no freedom left, and no safety.’ Heart-sadness drags at the corners of my mouth. But then I gulp a deep breath, and force myself arrow-straight. ‘We rove!’
We fly in pairs, on borrowed draggles. Da and Sparrow, me and Crow. Kin-keeper is flung over my shoulder, and Thaw flies by my side, ready to crush bones to dust if anyone threatens us.
&nbs
p; As we soar over Nightfall, we see the army march through deserted streets. Elixirated bears walk on two legs, clutching spears hewn from their kin’s thighbones.
I chatter to the draggles, begging them to fly faster.
Our faces are bundled tight beneath layers of fur. Draggle breath streams up our noses. I’m lulled to sleep and I dream of Stag. A terrible dark cloud leeches from his back, and he spits rivers of blood.
When I wake again I watch the world through ice-clumped lashes.
Somewhere far south of Nightfall and north of Riddler’s Hollow, we find the ship-breaking yards. The pain of seeing a place where ships go to die bites away my breath.
Dead ships sit on blocks, chained, great gaping holes smashed in their sides, masts splintered, sails torn down. Giants with chained ankles swing their fists into the ships’ flanks, crushing them. Others pull apart clinker planking, wrench free masts and oars, tossing them all into a towering heap of wood. They snack on sails.
‘Enslaved giants,’ mutters Da.
On the edge of the ship-breaking yards, the Huntress sleeps in a cradle spun from ice. Abandoned, but for one fretful polar dog.
‘May the sea-gods swim close to you,’ says Da.
Calmcalmcalm, I chatter to the polar dog desperately, as we tiptoe towards the ship, out of sight of the giants. The dog draws back its lips, revealing sore-riddled gums.
Then a flame of horror licks through my innards. If I’d thieved the title of Captain, I’d never have left her here!
Da shoots an arrow into the lock on the polar dog’s chains, and she runs away, even though I tell her to wait with us. ‘At least the dog’s free now,’ says Sparrow.
We begin digging in the shadow of my ship, at a soft spot in the ice where seals have been. When I look up, I’m eye to eye with one of the Huntress ’s portholes. ‘We’re gonna get you free,’ I swear to her.
Sparrow starts crying. I pull him to one side. ‘Remember what Old One taught you. Ready to put that spark of yours to the test good and proper?’
He snuffles, wiping his nose on his wrist. Then he nods.
First we make a camp in one of the drier hulls of a dead ship. Crow gathers wood to build a small fire. Thaw goes hunting, and shares her spoils with us, clattering mussels onto the hard ground. We prise them open and eat them straight from the shells, salty and raw and crunchy with ice. The thunder is too loud to bother trying to talk so we share the food in silence. I heart-thank Thaw with my eyes.
‘See how the rain’s turned to ice, even this far south?’ murmurs Da, in a little space between growls of thunder. He gestures towards the long, gleaming daggers that hang from the clouds hulking over the ship-breaking yards. Then he blinks. ‘Wait – who was posted to keep watch for—?’
‘Giants !’ shouts Crow.
A stog’s face swoops out of the sky, as he bends low to stare at us. Open sores leak sticky yellow liquid onto the ground around our camp. We scuttle backwards, yelling.
The stog’s like a whorl of old wood, a twisted root scraping the sky, and his eyes are like the egg stones from the shores of the Moonlands. The musty stink of him weaves into the back of my throat, gagging me. Da snatches Sparrow behind him, and Crow does the same to me.
But Sparrow wriggles out from behind Da and jabs a finger up at the giant, bold as bronze. ‘And who are you?’
‘Sparrow!’ hisses Da, grabbing my brother’s cloak.
‘I am a listener of your chit-chattings,’ the Stog grumbles, not understanding Sparrow’s question. ‘We stogs want to join you who resist the Shadow.’
Everyone stays in a stunned silence, except the too-soon. ‘But don’t you have a name ?’
The giant sighs. ‘I am Spear-Flinger, third inheritor of the rights of these yards,’ he answers wearily. ‘Free us from our chains, and we will fight with you.’
I chuckle suddenly through my nose, remembering when I called Lunda the same name, as an insult.
‘How?’ asks Da, forcing himself brave. ‘Aren’t there guards?’
‘They have been called away by the Skadowan,’ answers Spear-Flinger. ‘They tried to force us with them but ran when we crushed a few underfoot.’
Crow gazes around at everyone, amazement shining in his eyes. ‘That’s a ruddy good start, eh?’
‘Certainly is, lad,’ says Da, ruffling his hair. Crow grins.
We get into the guards’ abandoned dwellings and find the keys to the shackles. Then we go round unlocking chains until we’ve got five bubble-sore giants staring down at us, ready to follow us into battle.
After a heavy sleep, tucked in a bed roll, I stir and sit up.
Da and Crow are sitting with their backs turned, muttering in low voices.
‘Are you really going to let her do this?’ pleads Crow.
Da sighs. ‘No one “lets” Mouse do anything. And she is the most skilled diver among us.’ I smile to myself.
When I get up and go over to them, Da musses my hair and rummages in his medsin pouch. ‘Here – I’ve still got half a vial of your grandma’s wolf-fish blood left.’
I take it and squeeze a drop onto my tongue, feeling the familiar heat lick through my bones.
Once we’ve re-cut the seal-hole in the ice, Sparrow lies down on his front at the edge and drips strands of lightning from his fingertips into the thickening water. My head throbs. Salt coats my lips and whitens Crow’s jawline.
I fill my pipes. And I jump.
Even with the wolf-fish blood, the icy water snips a marrow-deep wound up through my body to my crown. I am parted. Hacked by the cold.
I tuck into a dive. Pale anemones let their tentacles hang in the inky depths. They tangle with my hair, until I’m forced to rip free.
I plunge deeper.
Hands grasp for me out of the darkness. Hands that almost forgot what they were.
Merwraiths – half in this realm, half in the Other – weave through portholes and squirm from burrows in the mud, drifting between green tongues of kelp. They wait, witching in the underwater wind, watching me. The current pulses me closer.
Rattlebones! I call. Are you there? But the space once filled by her spirit pangs like an empty tooth socket. I can’t find her.
Other wraiths drop words right into my head, like Rattlebones did, but there are too many of them to untangle.
Quiet! I think at them. The words buzz, fracture, drift away, and then I’m surrounded by pairs of blind, questioning eyes.
What ARE you? A frighted wraith slams the words at me.
I tell them about the war, about what we want to do. I tell them about the lie spread against the Sea-Tribes. I ask them – beg them – to gift us their heart-strength.
A swirl of them confer on the seabed, flashing dark looks at me with pearly-pale eyes.
When they swim towards me again, faces questing blindly in the freezing water, one of them pangs a message into the middle of my head. We will allow you to bring us back to the living, to help with the fight.
I direct them towards the surface.
Some move quick-sharp, and gulp Sparrow’s lightning greedily, blind faces questing for light, though there’s none – for air, though they’re gilled. The lightning shows up under their skin, and quivers in their chests, waking their slumbering sea-hearts.
Others are seahorse-slow; moving forwards, shrinking back, frowning with faces salt-nibbled, parchmented with layer upon layer of deep green seaweed. I encourage them gently, guiding them to where purple worms of lightning wriggle in the water.
I help the merwraiths out through the seal-hole, then surface to breathe. I meet Crow’s amber eyes, then stare past him at the sprawl of merwraiths gulping at the air. Must be ten of them already.
I take a new breath and keep going. The wraiths know we’re here now. More and more of them slither towards me. Some swim with fierce determination. They grab Sparrow’s lightning like a lifeline in the water. I guide them towards the waking world and Crow helps them through.
; As I dive, I hear a crunch as Crow places a lantern by the seal-hole. A glow drips through the water, making a guiding searchlight as I dive lower, past underwater icicles trailing from the ice above my head.
My fingers brush a whale’s skin, as it makes for the hole to breathe. I swim until we’re eye to eye. A waker, he booms, making my teeth rattle. A waker knows you.
Knows me? His tail brushes past my eyes. Then, from a gnawed gap in the underside of the Huntress ’s hull, a silver chunk slips free and thuds into the muck on the sea floor. I dive down and close my fingers around the silver.
There’s a flash of remembering deep inside me. Quick, strong hands. You were born in the caul. I had to grab my hook to cut you free.
I see movement from the corner of my eye – another wraith – one eye socket empty, and the other shining with pearl.
I blink.
The wraith is gone.
Snow-thick fog blots my eyes. I’ve let myself run out of air. A groan seeps from my lungs, and there’s a dragging feeling, pulling at my chest. The gloom is swallowing me. A noise knocks into the top of my head and I look up to see fists pounding on the ice above me. A pair of arms plunges into the water, frantically waving. I kick towards them.
Crow hauls me out by the scruff, scoops me up and runs with me across the ice to the fire. Water trickles hot from my ears, and all the sound of the world crashes into them.
I do more than gasp. More than splutter. I expand, raking, hoarsing, hacking. I blink and one eye stays netherworld-dark. My lips are blubbery-numb and between my teeth are shreds of seaweed and the flesh-salty taste of scales, filtered through like I’m a whale.
I feel hands tugging at my garb. ‘Get her dry!’ commands Da. They work to dry me, almost rubbing off my skin. I’m in front of the fire, bare-blubbered, but I feel no shame.
I roll over and spew seawater onto the ice, studded with sand and globs of seaweed and a round, fat pearl. The thundering of the giants in the ship-breaking yard hurts my head. ‘Too loud,’ I croak.
‘That’s all you’ve got to say?’ demands Sparrow. He pinches my arm. ‘Why dint you come up for air?’