The Huntress: Storm

by Sarah Driver

  ‘You couldn’t have helped her, I swear to you,’ I say through gritted teeth. ‘They thieved your soul, Kes!’

  But nothing can comfort her and she’s lost to me, swept away on the tide of her grief.

  ‘We’ll never hold them off,’ Leo whispers to me. ‘Too many have been elixirated.’ She turns back to Kes and scooping her daughter into her arms.

  Yapok – who ent a fighter – comes tearing through the trees towards me. He presses a page from a manuscript into my hands. When I look at the parchment, the runes are red, over a sea of blue. They’re the hidden truth!

  The Storm-Opal Crown can be found at the highest mountain peak in the Citadel of Sky, above the breath of the first sea-god.

  The highest point in Sky? That’s Whale-Jaw Rock.

  . . . Witches call to me, atop the Wildersea,

  The hearth-stones treasure their memory.

  You must remember

  What waits there,

  You’ll find it at the point high in the air.

  The Old Song was spilling the truth all along – but not about the Opals. It was the final piece of the mystery.

  I feel a fleeting stab of triumph, but it’s scuttled quick-sharp when I think how I don’t even know where the Opals are, let alone where there’s a citadel on Whale-Jaw Rock.

  I stare at Yapok. ‘You did it! Now we have to find the Opals and get them home.’

  ‘How?’ he asks.

  Kes takes a shuddery breath. ‘Mouse?’ she calls.

  ‘Aye, I’m here!’ I sit by her and Leo, holding the sawbones’ hand.

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ she says, struggling to catch her breath through the tears.

  I frown. ‘Are you heart-certain?’

  She throws me a look of fierceness. ‘I won’t have her death be for nothing.’

  Leo agrees to let Da know where I’ve gone. Then me and Kes hike to the edge of the encampment. We search around, but it seems like all the draggles are working in the battle. I march off in the other direction, not giving up, but then Kes grabs my arm.

  ‘Mouse,’ she whispers urgently.

  A terrodyl is hunched on the ground, watching the city and muttering to herself.

  Onix not go back notgoback Onixnotgobacknever Notbespikedwithsharpenedsticks OnixnotfightWAR.

  Onix ? I ask. She swivels her head towards us and I feel Kestrel tense. ‘It’s alright,’ I whisper, prising Kestrel’s fingers off. ‘I’ll talk to her.’

  I hold up my hands.  We mean no harm. Can you take us to the city? We need to find three gems there, and if we go on foot, we’ll be found. You could fly silently, hidden, and get us there?

  The terrodyl blinks.  Fight back at city??

  I nod and she chuckles.  Fierce little scrapper, you. Onix will help. She extends a wing and me and Kes scramble onto her back. ‘This is for Egret,’ says Kestrel. She passes me a raindrop cowl and I pull it on, eyes stinging with tears.

  ‘Aye,’ I tell her, thumping my chest. We lay flat, cos a terrodyl near Nightfall won’t cause suspicion – but two girls on its back will.

  Onix rushes right up to the city walls and turns in the air, swooping low enough for us to jump onto the wall and sway there, trying to get our balance. Then she pulls away, soars into the air and disappears. We climb down and crouch in a filthy gutter, panting.

  Oily, spitting lanterns line the streets. Holding onto each other, me and Kes edge deeper into the city, brushing past hurrying figures half hidden by the smog.

  ‘Watch out for spies,’ I whisper. ‘They could come in any shape.’

  She nods. Tears have made tracks through the grime on her face. ‘Are you ready for this?’ I ask.

  ‘I will smash them for what they did to us,’ she spits.

  We make our slippery way towards the Hall of Moans.

  Kes presses a finger to her lips. High overhead, black and grey storms lurk, desperate to feast on the city. They’re being held back by weather-witches. But where are they?

  When we reach the the hall the front doors are open. I drag Kes behind an abandoned Spiderstop and we watch as blank-eyed, blank-faced soldiers pour through. We’re about to sneak out from behind the Spiderstop when a stooped figure emerges. We hang back and I see the pointed white staff and pale darting eyes of Akhund Olm. I gasp as I realise he’s wearing a crown, with the three Opals set in it.

  ‘Let’s go,’ hisses Kes, and we follow him into the murk.

  We hide outside Olm’s house for what feels like an age after he disappears inside, working out how to get around the guards. Eventually we find an upper window at the back of the building and Kes boosts me to the ledge. I heave, the wood groans and rattles upwards, and then I’m tumbling into an upstairs room – I stare around, not recognising it. Then I turn back and help hoist Kes inside.

  I freeze. When nothing stirs, I nock an arrow to my bow and advance slowly. Creeping unease tightens over my skin.

  We prowl through the room. On the back wall hangs a tapestry like the ones I saw at Hackles and the Iceberg Forest. Chests and cabinets spill with jewel encrusted chalices and goblets and everything coated in the thickest grey dust.

  We push open the door and it squeals loudly. We pause, wincing. Then we head down a passageway and I open another door.

  The air in the room is thick and cloying. I step further in and turn to my left and feel my guts plummet into my boots. The room is full of people tied to chairs, mouths gagged, hands bound, eyes screaming.

  Olm stands in front of them. He twists round to goggle at us. I see is more clearly this time – the brilliant band of gold, set with three jewels, one green, another blue, and the third amber. He was about to elixirate again.

  I choke out a laugh, my bow shaking in my hands. ‘You fool,’ I whisper, feeling older than thirteen, and wiser than greedy full-growns like this one.

  Kestrel waits in the shadows.  Olm don’t know she’s with me, I realise.

  The Opals in the false crown begin to spill a yellow light. ‘How so?’ Olm asks softly, tilting his head.

  I keep my arrow trained on his chest.

  ‘That ent a crown,’ I spit. ‘It can’t be, when you don’t deserve to wear one, and the Opals don’t want to sit in it.’

  ‘Peculiar child,’ he comments mildly. ‘Aren’t you feeling tired? Wouldn’t you like to lie down?’ Tendrils of light twine from the Opals, towards me. They braid together, blue, green and amber.

  Then I see the Opals’ light billowing around my longbow. The skin on my hands looks like it’s lifting off, fraying, bleeding into the air. It’s happening.  He’s elixirating me.

  ‘I am in possession of the most powerful objects ever cut from the womb of the world, and you come here calling me a fool?’

  Just then, as I feel myself growing weaker, a silver shimmer streaks through the gloom, hitting Olm in the shoulder.

  Kestrel!

  Olm cowers on the floor, pressing his fingers to the puncture in his skin. My skin settles as my spirit eases back inside where it belongs. Then I step close to Olm, reach down and snatch the crown off his head, ripping out oily strands of grey hair with it.

  I turn away but Olm snatches at my ankle, making me crash to the floor.

  But Kestrel flings another dagger, and it spears his upper arm, making him scream in a frenzy of pain and fury.

  I untie the ropes on the wrists of the folk he was about to drain, and they flee, too petrified to even thank us.

  ‘Go!’ I scream to Kes.

  We tear back the way we came, towards the window. I sling my longbow over my back and shove the crown onto my head. Kestrel hooks her legs over the ledge and then pulls me out the window. I yelp as my leg scratches along the brick, tearing another rip in my breeches. Then we’re scrambling down the side of the house and running through the sickly, greasy light of the empty street. We run, boots slipping, hoods bobbing over our faces. My face grows sticky-hot under the tight raindrop cowl.

  We turn down alleys, losing
ourselves in the maze of the city. Something stirs, high over our heads. I glance up – and watch the underside of a huge beast glide over us.

  You waited for us, I chatter. The terrodyl swoops closer, muscles rippling under her tawny flesh, eyes glowing.

  As we’re climbing onto Onix’s back, a boy creeps out of the shadows. ‘Kestrel?’

  Kes stares at him and cries a greeting. ‘This is Mudskipper,’ she tells me. ‘Another scholar of Medsin.’

  ‘We’ve been searching for you!’ he whispers. ‘We are ready to join your movement.’

  I start asking if he could convince the others to ride terrodyls back to the Forest when Kes interrupts. ‘Oh! But what about something even better – could you find a way into the Hall of Moans underneath the College and rescue all the bottles you can find there?’

  We explain about the souls in the bottles and the army. ‘We think we know a way to mend all this chaos, and we need them bottles to stay safe until then,’ I say.

  ‘Mission accepted,’ says Mudskipper, melting back into the smog crawling through the streets.

  Back in the Forest, I rip the crown from my head and use my dagger to prise the gems out, careful not to scrape them. I put them in my pocket and hurl Olm’s false crown away. Then I tell Kestrel the plan that’s been thumping at the back of my brain. But now we’re back the grief is painted vivid on her face again, and she shakes her head.

  ‘No,’ she breathes. ‘Don’t leave me!’ Then she flushes. ‘I’m sorry, I just—’

  ‘I know,’ I tell her. ‘But I have to go, Kes. I have to find the Crown.’

  I leave Kestrel curled into Leo, sobbing again. Then I dart back into the fighting and try to find Toadflax. I yell to her about the Opals. ‘The Skadowan supply of souls is cut off now!’

  Toadflax nods. ‘Finally, I can see a chance of winning. Morale is low – the troops will be cheered by this.’

  Da and Grandma run up to me and I tell them what happened in the city. Da’s so overcome with pride that all he can do is open and close his mouth.

  ‘Now I’ve got the Opals, I have to keep going and get them to the Crown. Once Leo and Toadflax have decided who should stay and fight, others can follow me.’

  Before they can argue, I chatter to Onix, who’s waiting nearby, leap onto her back and she lifts up and away.

  Moonlight trickles through the clouds. I stare down at the city walls as we streak back past Nightfall.

  Fright like I’ve never known rattles up and down my spine. I’m alone, now. This is it. Might be a new beginning. Might be the end of everything I’ve ever known. I howl to the hidden moon.

  I glide high over the world, hunched on Onix’s back, longbow slung across my shoulder.

  I pull an arrow from my quiver.  I need to find Whale-Jaw Rock, I tell the terrodyl. I flatten along her back, until my belly presses against one of her massive spines.

  You bear the stones home, seethes the old terrodyl.

  I wrap my cloak closer around me, adjust the raindrop cowl on my face and tighten my hood. The cold licks my eyeballs. I ent glugged a drop to drink for beats and beats, and my belly’s clamped with a low-down stabbing pain.

  In the east, above the scarred land between the Stone Circle and the Eastern Mountain Passes, we halt, flapping in the air. I scan the ground. There are many geysers here, spurting whale-breath high into the sky, and the whale-breath has frozen solid. But there ent one that points to a great rock crowned with the jaw of a whale. Have I remembered it wrong?

  I turn full circle on the terrodyl’s icicled back, half sobbing under my breath.

  We’re turning in the air, the beast’s wings wheeling against the wind, when the shadow of a mountain looms to one side. I stare up at it. The breath of a geyser has frozen all the way up to its peak. And right at the summit a whale-jaw stands, proudly rooted into the stone.

  You bear the stones . . . you wicked, evil child, chatters Onix suddenly, and all the hairs along my spine rise, prickling my skin. The beast slows and starts to wheel around. Someone’s controlling her.

  ‘No!’ I put my face in my hands and groan. Then I grunt a desperate beast-chatter as I try to wrestle back control.

  Through the stark sky Stag rides, clutching the back of another terrodyl. As he gets closer, I see the mad look slapped across his face, and the way his lip twitches, so it pulls up into a sneer.

  Oh, gods! He’s following me!

  Onix wrenches her mind free and snorts hot air out through her nostrils and thrashes her spearpoint head around.  Not for long! She cranks her wings and pushes on, faster, faster, faster . . .

  I twist. Stag lunges out of the murk, a dagger clutched in his hand. He slices a deep wound in Onix’s skin, erupting a jagged wound that seeps black rain.

  The beast screams.

  ‘Get back! Leave her alone, you filthy flaming savage !’ I grab for my longbow but the terrodyl booms at me.

  Jump, now! Blood eat away whale-breath!

  I stare down. She’s right. The black rain is dissolving the bridge of frozen whale-breath that leads to the rock – and I need to climb it.

  I’m so sorry! I jump. She shelters me with her wings until the last beat before she’s forced to pull away.

  I tuck into a ball and land, shockingly winded, on the bridge from the geyser below to the mountain above.

  I gulp for breath.

  ‘Mouse!’ yells a cut-blubber voice.

  Stag zooms closer on his terrodyl. I aim an arrow at him. He curses and the beast dodges. He guides it closer, closer. Then Onix shrieks her last breath and barrels at Stag’s terrodyl, driving it away from me.

  I stare up at the bridge passing up the mountain and through a hole in the cloud above.

  And I start to climb.

  With every laboured step, the Opals in my pocket clink together, making an oddly musical noise. The only other sound is the crunch of my boots, shush, shush, shush, in the ice.

  To keep my spirits up, I start chattering to the Opals.  I am a vanquisher of monsters, I tell them.  I am. I swear it. But now I know what the real monsters look like. They walk on two legs.

  My breath swells loud in my ears. I keep looking back, fearing Stag’s murderous fingers on my neck. Are Kestrel and the others on their way?

  There’s darkness. I’m more alone than I knew I could be, ever. But a tiny sliver of hope pulses in my chest, like a moonsprite. I am here. I am trying. Whatever happens, I tried everything.

  I hike. I can’t believe I’m walking on the first sea-gods’ breath – in the past I’ve watched it gush and babble, with folk crowded round to see it burst out of the ground, and I’ve placed offerings by it along with the others.

  I trudge. I rest. Repeat. I stare out across a vast, smoking field of ice. I feel the wind reach into my hood and trace my scar. I shudder inside my furs. Bite my lip. Turn around.

  Stag’s terrodyl drops him onto the ice below me. My nerves startle and I summon all my strength, hurrying as fast as I can without slipping.

  At the top the air’s so thin I can barely fill my lungs. I breathe quicker and quicker. Then I wait to see if Stag survives the climb. Cos I won’t be hunted any more. I will face that lumbering man, not be chased.

  Time for the hunted to become the Huntress.

  When his head finally appears above the ice he blinks at me. Then he grabs for my ankle and I scuttle back. I stand, nock an arrow and train it on his neck. ‘Ent you ever gonna learn?’ I hiss. ‘You’ve lost. I’m bringing the Opals home.’

  His face tightens with rage. But when I gesture roughly with my bow to make him move, he does it.

  Then, while I’m staring at him along the length of my arrow, my boot slips and plunges through a weak point in the ice. My hands flail for balance, and my longbow flies from my grip. I’m falling. I fall into the ice up to my chest.

  Stag squats above me, panting quietly, red frothing in the corners of his lips. ‘You will never be able to hold a ship against disaster or
mutiny. I’ve already proved that a woman cannot. Why risk repeating history?’

  ‘Just pull me out!’

  He smiles. His hand tightens on my cloak.

  ‘What makes you think I wanna be a captain now, anyway?’

  He pulls a false-sorry face. ‘Come, now,’ he says, pouting. ‘I know you.’

  ‘You flaming don’t!’ I spit, right into his face.

  He wipes it away. ‘Charming, as ever.’

  Something inside me snaps. I’m gonna set him straight. ‘No, you’re the one that ent charming! You’ve never been a captain, y’know,’ I tell him. ‘Cos you thieve dignity from everything, and you don’t even know what it really means. I didn’t use to, either. Now I know it’s being a spirit guide.’ He laughs but I keep trying to tell him. ‘Why don’t you know things? You think you do, but you don’t. Like why don’t you know that animals are folks, too? And why can’t you see the life pulsing in all things?’ I’m full, now. Brimming over with feeling. ‘And why don’t you know how much it matters ?’

  And still, here at the end of the world, after everything, he cocks his head and looks at me like I’m spouting stupids. And he just can’t understand. He don’t have it in him to understand. And I feel something new pop into my belly and swish there. I feel heart-sad for him, that he can’t feel a stitch of joy at being in this world, that he can’t feel the wonder of sharing it with all the beasts that fly, swim or crawl. He’s got beast-chatter and all it is to him is a curse and a thing of terrible shame. And that’s what lost him Ma, and me. And that’s what’s killing him.

  Blood clogs the corners of his mouth. Gruesomeness cracks his face into a grimace.

  I throw myself forwards and sink my teeth into his wrist and he yells and flicks his wild gaze into my face. He yanks my hair back so hard I feel like my neck’s gonna snap.

  Behind him, another terrodyl rears suddenly over the mountain. Akhund Olm slithers off its back, wearing bloodied bandages from Kestrel’s blade. ‘Well tracked, Stag. You can leave her to me, now.’