by Sarah Driver
A drum starts to pulse, muffling her words. She frowns. The drum is louder than the beat of a blue whale’s heart, louder than any oarsman’s drum, louder than thunder. I cast around and see the giants, striding towards us.
‘It’s the stogs,’ I tell her, clutching her arm. ‘They’re coming to help us, Grandma. They ent just a story!’
Her mouth falls open. ‘Never in my nights or days!’
We march back towards the Forest. The draggles were so spooked by the wraiths that we had to send them back ahead. Sparrow rides on the shoulder of a giant, cos he’s still so wiped. But he sings, and the wraiths follow him, the blue of his song-notes lighting their eyes. The giants stamp breathing holes for whales, and whale-breath shoots into the air.
Grandma and the other wraiths move stiffly, but the fog on her eye thins with every step, and life oils her creaking joints. Sometimes she runs a few steps, throwing out her arms and spinning in circles. ‘Ent the air the sweetest thing you’ve tasted?’ she asks me, bundling me close.
On, on, on through the gritty gloom we prowl, a Sea-Tribe army grown from fathoms across time.
‘So, we’re to fight the last battle on land, eh?’ Grandma utters a throaty chortle. ‘Well, now. It’ll have to do.’ She claps her hands together and rubs them briskly.
But my heart feels suddenly heavy, cos I don’t want to fly straight into the fight. I got my grandma back. All those times I wondered what I’d say to her if I could, and now all I’ve got is a lumpy throat and a dry mouth. No words.
Crow watches the wraiths in awe. We meet eyes and he grins so widely it’s like his thin face is gonna crack. I return the grin and I know the reason for it. With Captain Wren by our side, we feel like anything is possible. And it’s cos of us and Sparrow that she’s here in the land of the living, walking again. We made this wildness happen.
But somewhere along the way, Grandma signals for us to stop. ‘We must have taken a wrong turn,’ she mutters, as the storm-winds snicker, breathing snow into her eyes.
I look around, but thick fog has crept so close it’s hard to make out my hand in front of my face.
‘How’d you know, Grandma?’ asks Sparrow.
‘Use your fire and have a squint into the snow over there,’ she tells him, ducking to his height. ‘We’ve approached Nightfall from the wrong angle, dear-heart. We wanted the forest, but we must’ve veered east. Them spindles ent tree trunks. They’re towers.’
Goosebumps prickle across my skin. I turn in a slow circle. The dark shadows of the city walls loom up ahead. I remember how them walls crawled with eyes. We’re exposed as a bone out here.
Da groans. ‘I thought something might be wrong when we crossed that field of icier ground. But it wasn’t frozen ground, was it? It was a lake!’
Grandma nods. ‘We need to double back and make south-west towards the forest before we’re spotted out here.’
‘Arrows could be trained on us right now,’ I add grimly.
We turn back the way we’ve come, into the full force of the wind. But before we’ve taken twenty paces I feel a stirring of wings. A scream throbs suddenly, out of nowhere.
A tawny shape plunges through the sky. It dives fast – huge, reeking, eyes gleaming. A terrodyl.
Da bundles me and Sparrow out of its path. ‘Run!’
But I pull back. ‘I can help!’ I press my chatter into the air, reaching out for the beast’s mind. We ent your enemy! I tell it. We mean peace!
But the beast is hate-filled. It tosses its head, like it’s shaking off my words. Warmbloodseekfindhuntgirlbeastfindkilldeadripdraindrinkdry and I’m covering my ears but the chatter’s broken through my skin and I’m rising up, up, up, and staring down at a grey-eyed child and a screaming full-grown standing over her in the snow. Get that bab. Get her or lose nest-home. Lose life-blood. Hungryhungryhungrysupbloodbewarmmmmmm!
Someone grabs my shoulder and shakes me, hard. I wrench my eyes away and thump back into my body and use my chatter to force the beast off us. I’ve almost got it turned around when the chatter sears my brain so violently that I double over, retching, letting go.
The crew shoot arrows and hurl spears but the terrodyl wobbles out of shot and then comes at us again. I empty my lungs into the sky. ‘Hell’s teeth! ’
The stogs form a ring around us, raising huge fists.
The terrodyl dodges them and barrels through the air.
I use the last burst of chatter in me to shove it to one side. Its jaws open, but they fasten on air instead of flesh.
‘Halt, trespassers!’ commands a voice.
We turn to see Stag and Weasel advancing on us through the fog. They’re draped in red cloaks and flanked by a hunting pack of terrodyls, swirling in the sky. More terrodyls than I’ve ever seen clumped together in my life. Stag cracks open his throat and spits hateful beast-chatter.
Attack, he growls.
Two terrodyls cut through the mist, making for the giants. They collide, snapping and ripping and tearing. The stogs stumble backwards and one falls to the ground, rippling the earth under our feet. Sparrow begins to wail.
Stag sends another terrodyl. But I push my chatter against his, searching for the beast’s own mind buried under Stag’s control, and the terrodyl gets snagged in the air between us.
Blood slugs from the corner of Stag’s mouth. His eyes are glassy and his fingers clench stiffly. Is he sick, or is the chatter overwhelming him, too? But whenever my eyes sneak to his face, I lose my grip on the terrodyls, and he pushes them forwards another inch.
I feel someone brush past me. Grandma strides out from the protection of the giants. She stands there in the gloom, facing Stag. ‘What’s wrong with you, then?’ Mirth bubbles in her throat. ‘Still hurling all your toys out of your cradle?’
The scream Stag howls when his eyes fix on Grandma could stop the heart.
Da and Crow try to step in front of Grandma but she taps her chest. ‘I’ve clawed back from the dead, lads. I ent afraid of them.’ She thumps an arrow into Weasel before Stag can blink.
Stag starts up a sloppy, desperate beast-chatter. But Crow tears forwards and barges him to the ground, knocking the chatter from his pipes. He tries to roar, but coughs and splutters snotty blood into the snow. Crow pins him down.
The terrodyls wheel and tumble through the air, shaking their heads in confusion. Two snap at each other and a third lunges at us. Da chases it off with a volley of arrows. Before the merwraiths can launch their spears I yell for them to wait and use my chatter to calm the beasts.
Get away from Nightfall – find your home, I tell them, and they streak away, heading south.
Grandma plants her boots in front of Stag’s face and he whimpers with rage. ‘Hush up,’ commands Grandma, and he does. But then he kicks Crow away and tries to run. Da catches up with him easily, and sends him sprawling.
I laugh.
‘Well that weren’t too clever,’ says Grandma, squatting next to him. She draws her rusted silver blade from her belt. ‘Form a circle around us,’ she commands the crew.
‘What you doing?’ I ask.
She frowns. ‘What d’you think, Bones?’
‘No.’ I’m shocked into quiet, but my blood clangs.
Her reply is danger-quiet. ‘Mouse, turn your back like the others if you can’t watch.’
‘That’s not it,’ I wail. ‘We need the wretch, don’t we?’ My own words gift me a quease in the belly.
Stag goggles at Grandma, eyes stark in his face. ‘H— how – how can you—’
‘Ack, stay hushed, will you? Button up,’ says Grandma.
I step close to Grandma and she lets me whisper in her ear while she frights Stag with her look. ‘Can’t we force him to help us defeat the Skadowan? He’s been one of them,’ I tell her. ‘He knows things.’
She twists her mouth. ‘Pains me to say it, but you’re right, Bones.’ She sheaths her blade and drags the murderer to his feet. To my shock, he trembles when she touches him, an
d screws up his eyes, pleading under his breath. For the first time, it makes me see how he’s just some man. And naught but a coward, at that.
Every bedraggled member of my crew looks him right in the face, until he hangs his head. Then Da sets to binding his wrists.
‘I’m outnumbered,’ he says. ‘I will not do anything rash.’
Da snorts. ‘I’m still binding you, fool.’
Grandma shoves him in the back to get him walking.
‘Look how the table’s turned,’ sings Sparrow cheerily.
Grandma stalks away, pulling me with her.
‘Wait,’ stammers Stag.
Grandma keeps walking.
I hurry after her, triumph punching in my marrow.
But when we’re approaching the Forest, dread hangs heavy on my bones. Cos from the shoulder of the giant I’m riding with Crow, I watch the Skadowan’s army massing at the city gates. And it has swelled.
Back in the Glade, the Forest army is readying. Bear and Frog have returned from Stonepoint with a crowd of Sea-Tribes – fisherfolk, lighthouse keepers and traders from the Southern Flukes. Folk are clad in armour and forming up in ranks. Last minute repairs are being made to weaponry and a man rushes past, yelling for someone to help find a lost boot. Once I’d have called this crowd huge – but now I know it ent, compared with what’s waiting for us out there.
Toadflax stares at the straggling merwraiths. Then she cranes her neck and goggles at the giants ducked underneath the frozen clouds, beyond the trees.
‘Where are the others?’
‘What others?’
‘How many more did you bring?’ asks Hoshi. ‘The battle will soon come knocking.’
Disappointment drags at my edges. I reckoned we’d done alright. Irritation spikes across my skin. ‘I almost drowned raising these warriors!’
‘Sorry,’ says Hoshi quickly. ‘You’ve done well. We’ll just have to hope it’s enough.’
I search out Egret and Kestrel. The runesmith is trying to keep Kes settled on a fur blanket at the edge of the clearing. She tries to feed a bowl of stew to her, but Kes knocks her hand away.
‘Let me go!’ she growls, in a horrifying voice that don’t belong to her. ‘I am needed in the city. I serve the Shadow.’
Egret’s face is smudged with tree-blood and tears. Her hands and neck are covered in scratches. ‘Mouse! She’s worse than when you left. I can barely keep her from gouging out her own eyes. She won’t take food. She won’t keep warm. All she wants is to work for the Skadowan.’
When I sit next to Kes, she hisses at me, eyes burning my face. ‘Kestrel,’ I beg. ‘Don’t you know us?’
She gifts me the most withering, empty, bones-scouring stare I’ve ever seen. One that looks so wrong on her once kind, soul-beautiful face.
I try to gift Egret a break from the looking-after, but she won’t leave Kes’s side.
Hoshi passes me a brass skope and I put it to my eye, shinning up a tree like it’s a mast.
‘Not enough,’ I tell them breathlessly, when I’ve climbed back down. ‘We ent brought enough fighters to cope with what’s coming.’
Toadflax watches the beast-chatterers. They’re cowering under the lowest branches, fingers dug into the soil, sticking together like a pan of boiling, gluey bones.
Fear scratches a fingernail through the pit of my guts.
Before I have to answer, Sparrow hurls a glowing glob of lightning to the ground. ‘After all that! Why did we even bother if all’s what’s gonna happen is we’re gonna lose?’
‘We can’t lose,’ I tell him. ‘We just can’t.’
Grandma steps close and closes her iron fingers over my shoulder. She whispers into my ear. ‘Tell them, Mouse. They will heed you. They will follow you.’
Her heart-strength catches my own, kindling a raging fire in my bones. With her by my side, I can’t believe we won’t win, cos not even the sky would defy her.
I jump into a yew tree and stare down at them all. ‘Listen up!’ Murmurs die as faces turn towards me. ‘The Skadowan are a bunch of heartless cowards, with no soul, no rawness, no feelings between the lot of them. They reckon they’re better – with their book-learning, their grand dwellings, their machines.’ I notice Stag blink slowly, shaking his head, so I thump my chest and keep going. ‘But they’re proper stupid, cos they don’t know that every living thing is made equal. They don’t know that beasts have feelings and kids’ minds are needle-bright. They are dull and stupid and evil and we gonna fight them, aye? With everything we got !’
Folk crowd around my tree, craning their necks to listen.
‘Cos all we can do is our best for what’s right. It’s that, or idle by as the world ends! Answer me – who of you is gonna let that happen, to your friends, your kids, your crews?’
The roar that answers me almost knocks me out of the tree.
‘Merwraiths!’ I yell. They crank their ancient necks to look up at me. ‘The Sea-Tribes almost died out when the last King spread a lie across the world – that Rattlebones stole the Crown and hid it in the belly of a whale. That never happened! He used our captain to start a war! We have to end it, now!’
They beat their chests and roar up at me.
‘This is the fight for the end of the world!’ I yell at the top of my lungs. I yell it again, until I feel like I’ve cracked a rib. I feel Stag’s eyes burning my face, but I don’t care. ‘The Skadowan have been stamped down before – we can do it again!’
‘Aye!’ they boom.
‘This is the fight for freedom !’
I gasp, as scores of fists punch the air, people cheering me. My eyes drift to Egret and Kestrel, huddled on the ground. The sawbones girl has turned her head to stare at me. Her fingers twist her skirts in her lap.
‘Kestrel?’ pleads Egret. ‘Are you in there? Can you hear me? Were you listening to Mouse?’
But Kestrel just turns her head to stare coldly at Egret. Then she spits in her face.
After my speech, folk prepare for battle with a fresh burst of battle-spirit, and the sight gladdens my heart. Toadflax asks the giants to form up in a circle around the Forest. Yapok finds me to say that while we were away, he and the Skybrarian found a clue about the mystery of the Crown. ‘I found an obscure reference in a book of stories for children, which seems to have escaped the Skadowan’s choking symbol,’ says the Wilderwitch boy. ‘And it really intrigues me. It tells of a lost citadel in the clouds, where a giant rested his head for many thousands of suns and moons. I believe it could relate to the location of the Storm-Opal Crown. I believe that giant may have been the guardian of the Opals.’
As soon as the word Opals leaves his lips, shame squirms inside me. I want to stay and babble with him for longer, but instead I find myself hurrying away, promising to come back soon. Cos what good is finding a clue about the Crown when I’ve lost all three Opals?
In readiness for battle, we sharpen our weapons, nibble our rations of food and take it in turns to sleep. But my bones won’t settle.
I turn over in my bed roll and meet eyes with Crow. ‘Can’t sleep?’
He shakes his head, making the bedding rustle. He utters a crow-squawk, then hides his face, ashamed.
‘Crow, it’s alright, it’s just me!’
He clears his throat until his voice births human. ‘Thank you, Mouse.’ He reaches out of his furs and grabs my upper arm. ‘I mean it. Before this fight, I want you to know how grateful I am.’
‘What you thanking me for?’
In the low lamplight, I watch fire burn in his eyes and in his cheeks. ‘Whatever happens, I – I won’t ever forget that you gave me a home in this world, for the first time in my life.’
‘But I never gifted you a home !’
‘You did,’ he says, smiling gentle-sad. ‘My home is with you. Wherever we rest our bones. It’s with you.’
I flush fiercely. I know Grandma’s snoozing nearby, wrapped in bearskins with Sparrow, and I pray neither of them is listening. Then I
lean across the space between me and the boy and press my forehead to his. We stay like that for beats and beats, gripping onto each other’s hands. I feel like the whole world is spinning and he’s all I’ve got to keep me anchored. When I pull away, we lie face to face. ‘Crow,’ I whisper. Our lips almost graze when I talk.
‘What?’ I can hear the smile in his voice.
‘We ent gonna be resting our bones any time soon. We’re gonna live – just so you know.’
I hear him wheeze a thin, cold-achy breath, but before he can say anything there’s a swishing movement of stirring air. Thaw thumps to the ground next to us. Comingnowcomingnowcomingnownownow!
Small yellow mushrooms bunched around the feet of the trees begin to crackle and glow, like tiny lanterns. They quiver, making a damp popping sound that pulses between them.
Crow’s eyes glint. ‘The trees use the mushrooms to warn each other of danger, Toadflax says.’
I crane my neck and watch countless dark blurs thudding to land in the trees all around us.
‘No . . . they can’t—’
Sparrow stirs. ‘What’s going on?’
‘For the gods’ sake, Mouse!’ hisses Grandma nearby, drawing her blade and staring around her. The gold threads in her sea-spun tunic glitter in the half-light. ‘What’ve you sensed?’ Gods. What if she heard us, before? She always did keep one ear propped open while she slept.
I push the thought away and tune my ears into the treetops. But the shapes that hulk in the branches ent got a trace of beast-chatter. Which can only mean one thing.
The shapes in the trees begin to stir. ‘I need light!’
Sparrow answers me with a sticky burst of purple light on the ends of his fingers.
And we watch, open-mouthed, as huge, ragged eagles shift into red-eyed monkeys that leap from branch to branch, lower and lower through the trees. When they hit the ground, they shift again into scores of red-cloaked mystiks, carrying books and holding cracking balls of lightning.
‘Who comes to battle with books?’ scorns Crow, swinging his sword, Blood-singer, from hand to hand.