by Martin Vine
First, the raven had attacked, then just as quickly backed off. Bartrem had swung at it with the torch. Everything had erupted into flame; in the middle of it all was his best friend.
Unbalanced by the swaying bridge, Hopskotch had tried to get to Dobbin but found he couldn’t squeeze past Flek. Cut off and helpless, his despair had turned to anger.
This can’t be happening. Not to my Dob.
He’d called out to his friend but found his voice lacked the strength. Through the madness of fire and Dobbin’s gut-wrenching shrieks, Hopskotch had felt the pendant ablaze with heat. Curiously, it had not burned him. This was a different heat altogether, and it throbbed in time to his own pulse.
As if he’d done it countless times before, Hopskotch had flicked the pendant into his palm. The familiar energy had responded, flooding his body with power indescribable. The old Hopskotch had been peeled away like skin from a bruised apple, leaving only the stronger, sturdier core. He’d felt like a giant, his strength multiplied many times over.
It was then that the voices had erupted inside his skull. And yet, unlike voices at all—closer to—thoughts! There was fear; there was anger; there was pain, so much pain it was almost unbearable. With no concern for his own safety, Hopskotch had raised himself to his feet and stared down the flames. For a brief moment, it had felt like he’d been inside Dobbin’s head. He’d felt his friend’s agony and it caused his temper to flare. The raven had disappeared, so Hopskotch unleashed his fury at a new enemy.
“Get off himmm!”
His voice had echoed raw and primal, like the distant growl of an approaching thunderhead. An ancient power was coursing through him and its strength emboldened Hopskotch. He repeated the command and raised his right arm to the fire. The amber pendant had grown fiercely hot in his opposite palm. Its power had surged through his body, up his left arm to his heart, and from there, out again in all directions till it reached the tips of his fingers, setting them to tingle.
With little idea how, Hopskotch had released himself from the power, sending it with the force and fury of his will against the flames.
The strength fled his limbs. Head spinning, Hopskotch dropped to one knee, clutching at Flek for support. He went over it again inside his head and arrived at the same conclusion – he’d just saved his best friend, but now the bridge was ablaze as far as his smoke-filled eyes could see.
What have I done?
The raven had disappeared into the night, remaining only long enough to fan the flames with its immense wings. Now the fire had grown into an impenetrable wall of yellow-orange separating Hopskotch and Flek from their companions. On either side ahead, the bridge’s support ropes were being gradually consumed. Flaming sections of the webbing were already beginning to fall into Saddleslip Gorge.
Hopskotch could see what was going to happen. Moving in both directions, the flames would soon eat away the support rope. Every unknown fear he’d had about the cursed span had been justified. This bridge was a place of nightmare, as his instincts had warned him.
But Hopskotch resolved not to go down without a fight. With a quick flick, he snapped the pendant out of his palm so it sat flush against his wrist. A crippling headache exploded immediately behind his eyes. It was beyond anything he’d experienced before, but he knew he had to break through the pain barrier. He would not let it end here. Not while hope remained. Not while others depended on him.
Hopskotch knew what they had to do: get to the far side of the gorge!
Flek was back on her feet, steadying herself on Hopskotch’s shoulder. Through vacant eyes, she stared into the flame barrier separating them from the others.
From her sister, Hopskotch realised.
And Grandpa Rand.
Fighting exhaustion, he lifted himself properly upright. Hopskotch slipped his right arm under Flek’s left, backing her away from the inferno and their companions hidden beyond. His legs wobbled as if his bones had turned to jelly. Flek felt slack and unresponsive in his arms. The fire flared so forcefully that the heat of it singed Hopskotch’s eyelashes. A familiar sizzling, crackling noise sounded at his back. He made to turn, but the wooden planks beneath his feet tilted, sending both Syltlings sideways.
Another loud explosion sounded. A giant ball of fire rose into the night sky above the bridge. The heatwave slammed into Hopskotch’s face and he squinted to protect his eyes. The smell of burning hair filled his nostrils.
Mustering strength, Hopskotch dragged Flek further away from the flame wall, turning her around till they were both facing the north end of the bridge. The sight drained him of hope. Somehow, the fire had spread to the support ropes leading to the far side of the gorge. Fingers of flame – some, three times as high as a Syltling – grasped skyward against the background night. The rope webbing either side of the gangway was splitting and falling away in sections.
How the fishmitts did this side catch fire? he wondered. How could it have?
More unanswered questions. Hopskotch pushed them from his mind and tried to think what he was going to do about it. Through the orange glare and smoke, he saw an opening. The heat would be intense – it would scorch his lungs as surely as it would roast the hair right off his skin – but he knew it was the only way. With Flek barely conscious on his right arm, he took one last gulp of fresh air and staggered lopsided into the inferno.
Every step was agony. Surrounded by fire, the heat lashed Hopskotch’s flanks. He swung the cylinder Grandpa Rand had given him round on his left hip and held it protectively against his torso. Tears streamed down his face. He ground his teeth and persevered, but deep down he knew it was hopeless. The agony of the flames had awakened Flek alongside him. She clung tight to his body, but Hopskotch could sense her reluctance to persist.
Sheer stubbornness pushed him forward. The heat pushed back. Hopskotch could hear Flek weeping. Staring into the flames, he felt the rage return. Hopskotch flicked the amber pendant one last time.
Almost instantaneously, his strength returned. A flurry of thoughts rushed into his head with the force of a cyclone. Drawing focus, he channelled the power through his shoulders and down the length of his left arm. Raising it, Hopskotch pushed.
The bridge exploded outward, both sides erupting in brilliant yellow-orange fire. For a brief second Hopskotch feared it would recoil right back on him. Just as quickly, the flames were swallowed by night, leaving nothing but clouds of spiralling smoke.
Hopskotch couldn’t believe he’d actually done it. Lining either side of the span ahead, only traces of flames remained, threads of crackling orange licking at the roping. The bridge was scorched and smouldering, with large sections of the webbing now absent. Everything was black, but the way forward had been cleared. Even the remaining torches had been extinguished.
A voice in his head whispered, “The flame fears you.”
But if it were so, why?
And more importantly, how? The anger had changed Hopskotch somehow, leaving him with gaping holes of memory. Only one thing was certain: he’d pushed the fire; the fire had moved, swept away from either side of the bridge.
As with Dobbin!
It seemed far-fetched, but once more Hopskotch’s mind drew the same conclusion: The flame fears me.
Daring another glance backward, Hopskotch was shocked to see how rapidly the original fire had spread. Somewhere on the other side of the flames was his best friend. Somewhere beyond Dobbin was Grandpa Rand. He felt like he was going to vomit. Though every instinct in his body urged flight in the opposite direction, Hopskotch knew what he must do. Swallowing deeply (it burned his parched throat), he turned and squared up to face the remaining inferno.
Flek dug her fingernails into his right forearm and spun him roughly around. “Don’t!” she pleaded, tugging Hopskotch by the arm. “It’s too much. It’ll kill you!”
Hopskotch startled at the words. He squinted into the raging fire and felt the heat upon his eyeballs. His legs felt so drained he could barely stay upright.
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A voice in his head whispered, “She’s right.”
Flek wasn’t waiting for his approval. Grabbing Hopskotch’s pouch sling, she yanked him away from the flames toward the distant darkness. Underfoot, the wooden beams were charred – many still smoking at the edges – but they felt solid enough to support the weight of two Syltlings.
Hopskotch followed Flek’s lead. Heads down and coughing up smoke, the pair staggered toward the northern ridge of Saddleslip Gorge. It was slow going, but eventually the gangway began to slope noticeably upward beneath Hopskotch’s soot-stained feet. Through blurred eyes, he imagined a giant V rising in the near distance. The vision vanished just as quickly behind a wall of drifting fog. Judging by the incline, he reckoned the pylons to be not more than thirty yards away.
Not much further, he reassured himself. Nearly th—
It all happened so quickly. Hopskotch felt the gangway drop suddenly out from under him. His foreshortened right leg came down and found only empty air. His stomach was in his throat. Flek fell right beside him. He reached out for her helplessly.
The world spun away and she was lost to his orbit. Hopskotch’s priorities shifted to self-preservation. Crashing sideways, he managed to snag the rope webbing. Instinctively, he thrust his right forearm through a gap and folded his elbow around the coarse weave. Momentum rolled him over one more time and the force of it almost dislocated his shoulder.
But he held fast.
Tears pouring down his cheeks, Hopskotch grappled with his free hand for more of the rope webbing. This time he thrust his left fist through and locked on, before doing likewise with his feet so that he clung like a crayfish in a trap.
Hopskotch’s entire body began to tilt. Something began sliding out from the inside pocket of his vest. The brooch! he realised in horror.
It fell away from him even before he could untangle his nearest hand. Hopskotch wrenched his neck around and stared after it as it disappeared into the grey mist drifting through the gorge. Loosened rope and smouldering boards were moving about below. He could feel the weight of the cylinder against his hip, thankfully still secure. His sling-pouch was biting hard into his shoulder and the cicada net Bellows had given him was pushing against his spine. It felt like he was being stabbed right on the bone, but at least he was not falling.
The respite dredged a memory: Flek!
Though the agony was overwhelming, Hopskotch refused to give up. Gritting his teeth, he twisted his body round to look for the girl among the wreckage. For his trouble, a deafening creak hammered his eardrums. Hopskotch spun back around just in time to see the fireball. What had seconds ago been the middle of the bridge dropped straight down into the void. The scene played in slow motion before Hopskotch’s bulging eyes. Icy fear consumed him, tip to toe. His world swung up and away from him in a whoosh of cold air.
The black closed in a split-second before Hopskotch’s entangled body, bridge and all, crashed into the north face of Saddleslip Gorge.
The Sons of the Father
Somewhere inside Hopskotch’s head an orchestra was playing. It was like nothing he’d ever heard before: a mellow, earthy symphony with a background beat that sounded like a distant drum. His head seemed impossibly large, but everything outside was cold and dark and filled with horror.
He did not trust awakening into it.
The percussion grew steadily louder – deep and booming – as if the lone drummer had been joined by thousands. With great reluctance, Hopskotch parted his eyelids and a field of grey swallowed his vision. Everything was framed in blurry outlines. The wall in front of his eyes was pulsing like a slow heartbeat. Something was pulling at his shoulder and his right leg was twisted backward. In the waking world, a blazing inferno of pain awaited him, but it could not touch him yet.
Hopskotch had no idea which way was up. It didn’t really seem to matter. As the background orchestra continued its hypnotic symphony, his attention was captured by vibrations running through the grey wall. They followed each drumbeat in an aftershock that carried right out of its surface and through the air to buffet his body from—
The cliff face!
The realisation of what he was looking at hooked a memory inside his skull. Hopskotch fled from it. He was not ready to know.
Then he saw the sapling.
Narrowing his eyes, he drew focus until the blurry outlines sharpened. It was such a small thing, a tree in miniature jutting sideways from a narrow crack in the cliff. A bird’s nest of leaf litter cradled the base of its trunk.
A sideways tree, thought Hopskotch, and something about it occurred to him as funny.
The voice in his skull seemed more awake than he was. “The tree is not sideways, fool. You are!”
The words brought Hopskotch one step closer to the waking world. A burning heat was building in his right shoulder and the joint of his corresponding knee. There would be no escape from it, unless—
The music could keep it at bay.
The music in my head!
Or was it?
Hopskotch was no longer so sure. Once again, his eyes were drawn to the miniature tree. With great force of will, he angled his head to view it from a level plane. The rock wall had stopped pulsing but the drums continued to pound; the orchestra continued to play. Hopskotch could see the tiny leaves vibrating in time to the rhythm.
A miniature spiral fig! he realised, and it occurred to him he was looking at a miracle. How could life grow out of the side of a cliff?
The mystery unravelled quickly in his head, explained through the voice of his father. “The fissure captures leaves falling from the forest canopy. As the layers build, those beneath begin to rot. Moisture from the air and rain from the sky speeds the process. A small seed finds its way to the fissure and feeds upon the nutrients.”
A soggy clump of decay had become a cradle of life. Hopskotch saw something magical in it, that in such a hostile and remote place, and against all odds, life could be tenacious.
Tenacious!
The word repeated in his head and stirred something deep in Hopskotch’s soul. Life is tenacious. Life is worth fighting for. With only a sliver of a crack to hold on to, the tree had chosen life.
It inspired Hopskotch to do likewise.
For the first time since his eyelids parted, Hopskotch attempted to move. He knew he would get nowhere till his leg was free from the rope webbing. Acting with great caution, the suspended Syltling tried to disentangle his ankle. With a bit of twist and wriggle, he finally tasted success. His foot was free but the pain was overwhelming. The sudden force of it pushed his mind halfway back into unconsciousness.
Through the fog, he returned his eyes to the sapling. The orchestra was still playing but now he knew where the sound was coming from. The music was not inside his head at all, it was coming from the earth behind the cliff face, channelled through the limbs of the miniature spiral fig. He could sense a great power behind it.
The booming drumbeat continued. His eyelids were heavy, but Hopskotch held them determinedly apart. Glued to the tree, he suddenly noticed something extraordinary. It grows!
Before his disbelieving eyes, the trunk began to shift and expand from its base. The branches grew and multiplied, spiralling outward. The stone framing the tree began to crack and crumble. Fresh shoots emerged from the fracture lines zigzagging across the rock face, each growing in turn to reach out for him. Great splinters of dislodged rock were falling into the gorge below.
Hopskotch stared spellbound as the first limb coiled itself around his arm. He could feel the knobby texture of the wood and it felt cool and welcoming against his skin. The sound of the background drums was growing louder in his head. Curiously, he felt no fear. He could not imagine a more natural thing.
Yet more branches sprouted from the pockmarked cliff face to ensnare him, twisting their snake-like tendrils about his body till he was completely enwrapped. The tree had the full weight of him now and Hopskotch surrendered to its embrace, lulled into a pas
sive state by the song of the rising orchestra. He felt his right arm finally escape its rope snare, but could not tell whether it was by his own power or that of the spiral fig. Cradled by the living wood, Hopskotch began to rise through the air.
Straight up he went till the grey cliff face disappeared beneath his feet. The tree’s hold on him was firm, but gentle. Now suspended above the ridge, Hopskotch felt in no more danger than a babe in the arms of its mother. No bruise or ache troubled his body. The earth melody was being channelled through the mysterious inner workings of the spiral fig, and it sang to him in a language from before the coming of Aethelron. His head still felt larger than it should, but his neck no longer bore the burden. Flexing and coiling branches entwined him all about, doing the work his muscles no longer had the strength to.
He knew it must be a dream. He’d been in this place before, this very clearing. As the spiral figs lowered him toward it, he first saw the Shriven.
There were three of them standing in a V formation and they were waiting for him. Their faces were hidden within shadowed hoods, but Hopskotch knew with absolute certainty what he was looking at. The dark robes were unmistakable. Completely beyond his control, he was being carried to them.
Hopskotch offered no resistance. Though his mind was not fully awake, he struggled to recall what Bartrem had told him about the Shriven: that they were flesh and blood Sylt and had dealings with the elders of Witherness.
Or was it that they were forest wraiths who stole children?
He didn’t know which was truth. Something had interrupted that conversation (he couldn’t remember what), but it seemed unimportant now. His life was in the hands of the angels, so his mother had always told him, and now he clung to the idea and whispered half-formed prayers to the Five.
It was a surprisingly gentle landing. The living-wood tendrils released Hopskotch to the cool grass and he heard the earth song slip away. An eerie silence settled in its place as the last remaining branch broke contact with his skin.