Spirit Walker

by Michelle Paver

  After a few false starts, he tracked it to a stretch of limpet-crusted rocks that tilted into the Sea. Beyond the rocks, at the very edge of the bay, stood a clump of birch. To his surprise, the trail didn't lead toward them, but onto the rocks. He found a tiny piece of scuffed lichen, and a scent of rottenness where the Follower had scampered across a pile of dead seaweed.

  Finally, in a patch of sand left by a previous tide, he saw it: a perfect, sharp-clawed print. Very fresh. No time for ants or sand midges to blur the edges. Look at this, Bale, he shouted in his head.

  A cackle of laughter to his left--and there it was: a small humped figure shrouded in long hair like moldy seaweed.

  Torak was too elated to be scared. Here was the proof he needed. If he could catch it, Bale would have to admit defeat.

  204

  The creature turned and scuttled away.

  Torak scrambled after it.

  The seaweed was slimy under his bare feet, and a voice of caution sounded in his mind. The Follower would like nothing better than if he took a tumble into the Sea.

  He reached a cleft in the rocks where the swirling Sea sent up jets of spray. The cleft was too wide to leap, but somehow the Follower had got across. There it was on the other side: eyes gleaming with malice, daring him to jump. "Oh, no," he panted, "I'm not that stupid!"

  The Follower bared its brown teeth in a hiss and sped into the gloom, its claws clicking on the rocks.

  Torak raced around the edge of the cleft to where the seaweed was drier and less treacherous. It occurred to him to wonder how a patch of dry seaweed had come to be in the middle of all this wet. . . .

  Too late. The seaweed gave beneath him and he pitched into the Sea. Torak, you fool! A pitfall! The simplest trap of all!

  Winded by the cold and covered in seaweed, he kicked to keep himself afloat as he sought a likely place to haul himself out. The swell was heavier than it had appeared from the rocks, but it should be easy enough, and the only harm done would be to his pride. The 205

  Follower, of course, would be long gone.

  Clawing the seaweed off his face, he reached for a handhold. The seaweed was tougher than it looked. He couldn't seem to get it off his face--or push his hands through it to reach the rock.

  Because it isn't seaweed, he realized in surprise. It's rope made of kelp, knotted kelp, and this is a seal net. You've fallen into a seal net. Which, presumably, was exactly what the Follower had intended. The swell threw him against the rocks, knocking the breath from his chest. Treading water was becoming difficult, as the net clung to his legs, hampering movement. It seemed to be tied to the rocks at the top, and weighed down with something, maybe a stone, because he had to work to keep his head and shoulders above the water.

  How Bale will laugh about this! he thought bitterly. How they'll all laugh when they find me floundering in a net within arrowshot of camp! If he'd had his knife, he could have cut himself free, but the Seals hadn't trusted him with weapons. He'd have to call for help, and endure the inevitable taunts. "Help!" he shouted. "I'm over here! Somebody!"

  The wind whistled across the bay. Terns screamed overhead. The Sea slapped noisily against the rocks.

  Nobody came. Nobody could hear him.

  206

  Treading water was tiring. And strangely, the waves seemed to have risen: now they reached to just below his chin.

  That was when the truth hit him, and he began to be frightened. He was trapped in a seal net, out of earshot of the camp, and the tide was coming in. Fast.

  207

  Chapter TWENTY-TWO

  The tide was creeping higher, and Torak had to fight to keep his chin above the waves.

  The swell kept sucking him backward, then smashing him against the rocks. The Sea was pounding the breath out of him. Her salt smell was thick in his throat, her restless moaning filled his head. She had taken him, and she wasn't letting go.

  He tried to close his mind to her; to think what to do. There had to be some kind of opening in the net. After all, he'd fallen into it, so there must be a way out. But somehow he couldn't find it. The mesh was small--he couldn't force his fist

  208

  through--and the knots were hard as pebbles; a waste of time trying to unpick them with fingers grown numb. And the kelp was far too tough to rip apart with his hands, or bite through. "They've got to be strong to hold a full-grown seal," Detlan had told him at daymeal. "And they are." If only he had his knife. . . . What else could he use?

  Again he smacked against the rocks, scraping painfully over the limpets.

  Limpets.

  They had sharp edges, didn't they? If he could prize one off, maybe . . .

  The swell drew him back, then battered him once more. As he kicked his way to the surface, the Sea's endless laughter rippled through him. Don't listen to her, he told himself. Listen to yourself, listen to the blood drumming in your ears-- anything but her. . . .

  Still kicking to stay above the waves, he pushed his thumb and two fingers through the meshing and grabbed the nearest limpet.

  The creature clamped hard to the rock and refused to let go. Snarling, Torak clawed at its shell, but it stuck fast. It had become part of the rock.

  Then he remembered the black-and-white bird he'd seen attacking a limpet on the shore. He'd spotted similar birds here on the Seals' island--Detlan called them oystercatchers. Torak remembered the way the 209

  bird had struck the limpet with its beak: abruptly, giving it no time to cling on.

  He found another limpet and tried the same thing, striking a glancing blow with his fist. It worked. But the limpet slipped from his fingers and spiraled down, out of reach and through the net. Again the Sea's vast laughter shuddered through him.

  You cannot win,

  she seemed to whisper.

  Give up, give up!

  No! he shouted in his head. It's too soon!

  The shout became a sob. Too

  soon.

  He had to find the cure, and make sure that the clans were safe. He had to see Wolf again, and Renn, and Fin-Kedinn. . . .

  If that stone weren't dragging down the net, he'd have a chance.

  The thought woke him like a slap in the face. If he could get free of that stone, the tide would become his friend: he could make the Sea work against herself, make her lift him and carry him onto the rocks. So why are you wasting time with limpets? he thought frantically. Get under the water and deal with that rock!

  He took a deep breath and dived.

  It was frightening being in her world, in a swirling chaos of black water and murky seaweed. He couldn't find the rope that tied the rock to the net, couldn't even tell up from down.

  210

  He surfaced again, gulping air. The waves were lapping higher. Now he had to strain to keep his mouth above them. Salt burned his lips, his throat, his eyes. His legs were heavy, his thoughts fogging with cold. "Help!"

  he yelled. "Somebody!" His cry ended in a gurgle that was horrible to hear.

  The light was failing, and he couldn't see much: just the rock looming over him and a deep-blue sky pricked by faint stars that seemed to be sinking farther and farther away from him. . . .

  Drowning. The worst death of all. To feel the Sea Mother squeezing the life out of you, wrenching your souls apart. And without Death Marks, they would never find one another. He would become a Sea demon, wandering forever, hating and craving all living things, striving to snuff them out. . . . A wave washed over him, and he coughed seawater.

  I

  am beyond pity or malice,

  the Sea Mother seemed to murmur in his ear,

  beyond good and evil. I am stronger than the sun. I am eternal. I am the Sea.

  He was so tired. He couldn't keep treading water, he had to stop, just for a little while, to rest.

  He sank, and the Sea Mother wrapped her arms about him--tight, tight, until his chest was bursting. . . .

  A silver flicker in the darkness.

  A fish, he
thought hazily. A small one, maybe a capelin?

  211

  And now there were more of them, a whole shimmering shoal, come to watch this big creature dying in their midst.

  Down he sank, and the silver darts divided and flowed about him like a sparkling river, as the Sea crushed him in her arms. . . .

  A sickening jolt deep in his belly, as if his guts were being pulled loose. And now, quite suddenly, he was free of that crushing embrace; free of the cold and the darkness. He could no longer feel the net dragging him down, or the salt burning his throat. He couldn't even hear his own blood thumping in his head. He was light and nimble as a fish--and like a fish, he was neither cold nor warm, but part of the Sea.

  And he could see so clearly! The murkiness was gone. The rocks, the floating weeds, the other capelin flowing about him--all were vivid and sharp, although strangely stretched at the edges. In some way that he didn't understand, he had

  become

  fish. He felt the tiny ripples in the water as each slender body flickered past; he felt the shoal's wary curiosity. He felt the stronger surges coming back from the rocks; and beneath them the vast sighs of the Mother.

  Without warning, terror invaded the shoal. Panic coursed through them like lightning--and through Torak, too. Something was hunting them in the deep. Something huge . . . 212

  What is it? asked Torak, fighting to master their terror, which had become his own. What is it that hunts us?

  The shoal didn't answer. Instead it whipped around and fled for the deep Sea--fleeing the Hunter prowling beneath them--leaving Torak behind. Another sickening jolt inside him . . . . . . and he was Torak again, watching the capelin vanish into the dark.

  His chest was bursting, the blood roaring in his ears. No time to wonder what had just happened. He was drowning.

  Blindly he kicked out, fighting the Sea Mother's lethal embrace--and the net fought him, holding him back.

  At that moment, a column of white water sent him spinning sideways, and something big plunged in beside him. Powerful teeth savaged the net--tearing him free.

  . . .

  Then hands were reaching down for him, trying to pull him out. They weren't strong enough--he was slipping back again, scraping his palms on limpets. With his last shred of strength he gave a tremendous kick. It pushed him a little farther out of the water: enough for the hands to grab him and wrench him out. The Sea Mother gave a sigh, and let him go.

  213

  Torak lay gasping like a landed fish. He felt the roughness of limpets against his cheek, and the gritti-ness of seaweed between his teeth. He'd never tasted anything so good. "What were you

  doing?"

  whispered a voice that was oddly familiar.

  He rolled onto his side, then onto his knees, and spewed up what felt like half the Sea. "D-drowning," he gasped.

  "I could see that!" said the voice, managing to sound both angry and shaken. "But what were you

  doing?

  Why didn't you just climb out?"

  Torak raised his head.

  "Renn?

  Is that you?"

  "Sh! Someone might come! Can you stand? Come on! Follow me!"

  Struggling to grasp what was happening, Torak staggered to his feet. He swayed, and would have toppled back into the water if Renn hadn't grabbed his wrist and dragged him toward the birch trees. "Through here," she whispered. "There's a bay where we won't be seen!" Together they scrambled between huge tumbled boulders and straggly birch, emerging at last onto a little white beach shadowed by a looming hillside. Torak sank to his knees in the sand. "How--did you find me?" he panted.

  214

  "It wasn't me," said Renn. "It was-"

  A shadow bounded from behind a boulder and knocked Torak backward into the sand, covering his face in hot, rasping licks.

  "It was Wolf," said Renn.

  215

  Chapter TWENTY-THREE

  There was something fierce--almost desperate-- about the way they greeted each other. Wolf whimpering and lashing his tail as he covered Torak's face in kisses; Torak unnervingly like a wolf himself as he licked Wolf's muzzle and buried his face in his fur, murmuring in the low, fervent speech that Renn couldn't understand. She felt like an intruder. And she was deeply shaken by what had just happened. She kept seeing the body in the water: facedown, dark hair swirling. She'd thought he was dead. Her hands shook as she retrieved her quiver and

  216

  bow from where she'd hidden them behind a boulder, and shouldered her wovengrass bag of limpets. "Can you walk?" she said more abruptly than she'd intended.

  Still on his knees with Wolf, Torak turned and gazed at her as if he had no idea who she was. With his bruised face and streaming hair he didn't look like her friend anymore. "I--I can't believe . .

  ." His voice was rough with unshed tears.

  "Torak, we've got to get out of here! We're too close to the camp, someone might come!"

  But she could see that he wasn't taking it in.

  "Come

  on!"

  she said, pulling him to his feet.

  The hillside was steep, and the deep moss and crowberry made it tough to climb, but to her relief he managed it. Wolf pranced about them, swinging his tail and leaping up to nuzzle Torak's face. Just below the ridge, they had to stop for breath.

  "How did you find me?" panted Torak, bent double with his hands on his knees.

  "I was foraging on the shore," said Renn. "Suddenly Wolf gave that grunt he makes, and ran off." She paused. "Torak, what happened? Why couldn't you get onto the rocks?" "I--was caught in a seal net."

  "A

  net?"

  "I tried to get out, but I couldn't. Wolf

  bit

  through it. He saved my life."

  217

  Renn thought about that: about the kind of love that had made Wolf brave the thing he feared the most. "He hates the Sea," she said. "I had a terrible time getting him into a skinboat." "How did you manage?"

  From inside her jerkin she drew out the thong on which hung the grouse-bone whistle.

  Torak studied it. "So if I hadn't given it to you all those moons ago, you wouldn't have been able to bring him with you. And I would have drowned." He scratched Wolf's flank, and Wolf rubbed against him, wrinkling his muzzle in a grin.

  Once again, Renn felt like an intruder. She realized that she knew nothing of what had happened to Torak since he'd left the Ravens. There was lots she had to tell him, too: about the sickness, and the tokoroth. "Come on," she said. "My camp's not far." They crested the ridge, startling a pair of ravens who flew off with indignant caws. When Torak saw what lay before him, he cried out. "But there's a forestl"

  Below them lay a steep-sided valley like an axe cut through the mountains, with a long, narrow lake at the bottom. On all sides the slopes were darkened by willow, rowan and ash. "They're not very tall," said Renn, "but at least they're trees. The Seals don't seem to come inland, so hiding's been easy. But yesterday I found someone's 218

  tracks down by the lake. A man's or a boy's, I think."

  "I miss the Forest so much," said Torak, gazing at the trees.

  "Me too," said Renn. "I miss salmon, and the taste of reindeer. And the nights are so

  light

  here. You don't notice it in the Forest, but here ... I can't sleep."

  "Neither can I," murmured Torak.

  "There's my camp," said Renn, leading him down to the hidden gully filled with ferns and meadowsweet and the frothy yellow flowers of bedstraw. A stream tumbled through, and in the east bank she'd dug herself a foxhole, with a firepit in front. A rowan tree spread its arms protectively overhead. "You can dry off by the fire," she told him. "I'll cook the limpets. They won't take long."

  Hanging up her quiver and bow, she knelt by the embers. They gave almost no smoke because she'd used ash, and peeled off the bark.

  Before setting out, she'd placed a flat piece of slate over one end to heat up, and now she spat on it to c
heck it was hot enough; it gave a satisfying sizzle. After rinsing the limpets in the stream, she set them on the slate to cook. "What have you done for food?" asked Torak as he huddled by the fire, with Wolf leaning against him.

  "Birds' eggs, mostly," said Renn. "A bit of hunting, but only small prey. There don't seem to be any elk or

  219

  deer. There must be fish in the lake, but it's too exposed. That's why I went to the beach." She paused. "I'm all right, but I'm worried about Wolf. Those ravens led him to carrion, but it wasn't enough. And he won't go near seabirds, because he got spat at by a fulmar." She gave a slight smile. "He was so miserable. I had to find some soapwort and give him a wash. He hated that too." She stopped, aware that she was talking too much.

  Torak was frowning at the fire. "Renn, I'm really glad you're here."

  Renn looked at him. "Oh. Well, good."

  The limpets were cooked. With her knife she knocked them off the slate and onto a large goosefoot leaf. After tucking a limpet in a fork of the rowan tree for the clan guardian, she divided the rest into three. She put a third in the grass a short distance away for Wolf, then showed Torak how to cut away the black, blistered guts to get at the chewy orange meat. He eyed the limpets thoughtfully, then started to eat.

  He'd pulled off his jerkin and hung it to dry on the rowan, and she saw that he was thinner, and that there was a wound on his calf that had been quite badly sewn up, and needed the stitches taken out. She said so, and he told her he'd do it later; then he asked about the scab on her hand. "It's a bite," she said, rubbing it against her thigh.

  220

  She didn't want to mention the tokoroth just yet.

  Wolf had already finished his limpets, and was eyeing Torak's. Torak let him have them. Then he rested his chin on his knees. "What's it like in the Forest?" he said. "How bad has it got?" "Bad," said Renn. She told him about the clans leaving, and the man in the Sea Eagles' camp.

  Torak's frown deepened. "I dreamed about Wolf, you know. He was warning me. 'Shadow. Hunted.' I think that's what he was saying." "Did he mean the sickness?" said Renn.