Viper's Daughter

by Michelle Paver

  Rip and Rek swept past, scattering the kittiwakes. The ravens were making cuckoo calls. Renn wished they wouldn’t, it only heightened the strangeness of this strange land.

  Hating what she was about to do, she crouched in the shelter of a rock. On a stone she ground lichen with dried elderberries from the Forest, mixed them with seawater in her birch-bark baler, combed the black dye through her long red hair. The wind chilled her scalp. Despite her reindeer-fur clothes she shivered.

  Next she must hide her Raven clan-tattoos: the three blue-black bars on her cheekbones. In a clam shell she blended wood-ash with deer fat and smeared it on her face, as if she was mourning the dead.

  Now for her clan-creature feathers sewn down the side of her parka. She couldn’t bear to remove them, so she covered them by sewing sea-eagle feathers on top. Finally she used the last of the dye to paint the back of her hand with the four-toed mark of the Sea-eagle Clan.

  ‘There,’ she said shakily. ‘You’re not Renn of the Ravens. You’re Rheu of the Sea-eagles.’

  She’d chosen the Sea-eagles as they got on with everyone, but it didn’t help. Never had she disguised herself so completely. She’d betrayed her clan and disrespected another, and by changing her name she’d gone even further. Your name is yourself held in a sound. If you change it, you change your luck.

  But what else could she do? Torak would come after her. She had to make sure he didn’t find her.

  A seal bobbed up in the shallows. It was the same one who’d warned her about the iceberg: wise brown eyes, bushy whiskers like a gruff old man. It gave her a penetrating look and dived, flicking up its tail-flippers. It didn’t like what it saw.

  Renn whistled for Rip and Rek. The ravens dropped down from the cliffs – then veered off with startled caws: Rap! Rap! Stranger!

  ‘I’m not a stranger, it’s me!’

  But they were gone. They didn’t know who she was.

  The mourning marks were stiffening on her cheeks. She felt sick. Her name-soul was coming loose. For comfort she wound Torak’s headband around her temples. She wondered if he’d guessed that she’d taken it. She’d needed something of his to keep her company.

  Water was lapping her boots: the Sea Mother was breathing out, sending in the tide. You can’t stay here.

  As Renn pushed off, she saw a face in the water. The girl who stared back at her had long black hair and pale, stern features. She didn’t recognize herself.

  She had become her mother: Seshru the Viper Mage.

  ‘You are not your mother,’ Dark had told her.

  ‘But I have her marrow in my bones. Maybe that’s why this is happening.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I saw a viper in a rowan. Vipers don’t climb trees.’

  He blew stone-dust off the pine marten he was carving. ‘When I was born, my mother named me Swan Clan. I don’t like being Swan, they abandoned me. But I can’t change who I am. I can only change what I do.’

  ‘Your mother wasn’t a Soul-Eater. She didn’t kill people.’

  He looked at her through his cobwebby hair. ‘Is she why you haven’t done Magecraft for two summers? You’re still afraid of becoming like her?’

  ‘I don’t need to do Magecraft—’

  ‘You’re wrong.’ His severity made her blink. ‘People need healing, Renn, they need help finding prey. If we all refused to do Magecraft, how would the clans live?’

  ‘There’s something inside me that wants to hurt Torak. I have to find out what it is and make it stop.’

  ‘Magecraft could help you do that.’

  ‘I don’t need spells to tell me where to go, I see signs wherever I look!’

  ‘Be careful, Renn. Magecraft is a force, like a river. If it’s held back it turns dangerous.’

  Maybe he was right. But a few days later she’d had the dream that had forced her to leave. Standing in a cave of ice, holding Torak’s heart in her hands…

  She woke with a jolt, slumped over her paddle. She had to find a campsite or she’d fall overboard.

  It had been winter when she’d been here last, the Sea frozen, the land a howling wilderness of snow. She’d been shocked to recognize nothing. Even keeping the coast on her right was hard, all these rocky islands littering the Sea like flakes of flint dropped by the World Spirit sharpening his axe. Without the North Star to guide her she’d reckoned by the sun, and when she couldn’t see it, by the stunted bushes cowering from the wind.

  That was one thing that hadn’t changed: the power and anger of the wind. With no Forest to stop it, it came rushing down from the mountains to attack the fells, where dwarf willow and birch flattened themselves against the ground, and even rocks huddled together.

  The sun became fierce, soon Renn was sweating under her clothes. When the sun went in she would be chilled, and a White Fox hunter had told her once that it isn’t cold that kills, it’s wet.

  She passed cliffs clamorous with seabirds and reeking of droppings. Nowhere to camp. In the next bay a grey whale lay rotting on the shore. The stink was stomach-churning, yet still she hesitated – until a great white bear ambled from behind the carcass, snuffed her scent and glared.

  Clouds hid the sun and it started to snow. In the Far North the weather changes with unnerving suddenness: spring, summer, autumn and winter in a single day.

  She reached a black beach strewn with icebergs. On a ridge above the tideline she spotted three hunched boulders that might provide shelter.

  The ridge was taller than it had appeared from the Sea. She was standing beneath it when she noticed there were four boulders. There had only been three.

  She glimpsed movement. She edged away.

  The Hidden People live in rivers and rocks, and they look like us except when they turn their backs, which are hollow as rotten trees. They hate being seen and you must take care not to anger them by camping too close to their rocks.

  Renn put her fist to her heart and bowed. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll go.’

  A fifth boulder appeared. No, not a boulder: a creature she’d never seen before. As big as a bison and immensely shaggy, its lugubrious brown face was flanked by massive downwards-curving horns. It was moulting, blond wool clotting its humped shoulders and hanging almost as far as surprisingly small, neat hooves.

  Renn had heard about musk-oxen from Dark. ‘If you keep your distance they probably won’t attack. Although they’re very bad-tempered so sometimes they do. It’s fine to gather their wool snagged on bushes, but don’t ever hunt them. They belong to the Hidden People.’

  Renn stepped backwards. ‘I’m not after your prey,’ she told the dwellers in the rocks.

  The musk-ox snorted. It lowered its head and pawed the ground.

  She raised her hand. ‘Look: I’m walking to my canoe.’ A second musk-ox appeared. Then three more. They stood in a row, staring at her amid clouds of breath.

  She floundered through mounds of kelp. The musk-oxen leapt down from the ridge as nimbly as deer and moved towards her.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ she shouted, digging in her paddle.

  Balefully they watched till she was gone.

  The snow turned to sleet, stinging her face and trickling inside her reindeer-fur mittens. She was beginning to despair of finding a campsite when she came to a bleak islet with a lake shivering in the middle.

  Dizzy with exhaustion, she hauled the canoe behind some rocks by the lake – having first checked that they were rocks, not musk-oxen. She didn’t sense any Hidden People, but she couldn’t be sure.

  The sleet eased. Clouds of midges whined in her ears and crawled up her nose. She’d eaten all her Forest food, so she trudged down to the Sea with her fishing gear, baited her hooks with limpets and set her lines.

  Renn knew the ways of the Sea, she’d been fostered with the Whale Clan when she was nine; but only now did she remember that if you mix things from the Forest with those of the Sea, you risk offending the Sea Mother.

  Every piece of her gear came from the
Forest: her yewwood bow and dogwood arrows, her reindeer-fur parka and leggings, beaver-hide boots, sleeping-sack, pack, canoe. Her fishing-hooks were thorns lashed with spruce root, the lines horse hair, the floats pine bark. The only things that wouldn’t offend the Sea Mother were the bait and the sink-stones.

  Biting her lips, she pulled in the lines and trudged up to the lake to start all over again. She knew she wasn’t thinking straight. Her head was buzzing with fatigue. She should have set the lines in the lake to begin with.

  No driftwood on the shore but plenty of bones: the blotchy skull of a bear, the white skeletons of seals. After waking a fire she smoked her clothes and gear to make their scent less Foresty. She ate a handful of mussels off the rocks and some slimy kelp. Unwrapped her bow, polished it with hazelnut oil from the horn in her medicine pouch. ‘At least I’ve got you,’ she mumbled. She still missed her old bow which Fin-Kedinn had made for her, and she gave this one lots of attention so it wouldn’t feel left out.

  Clumsily she overturned the canoe, piled stones against the sides and wriggled underneath. Grey daylight seeped through the deerhide. Ice clinked in the shallows. Behind it the immense silence of the Far North.

  Rip and Rek had not come back. She had relied on them to warn her of danger – but why should they now, when she’d shunned her clan? She pictured demons and Hidden People emerging from the rocks. Ice bears swimming stealthily ashore.

  It was too painful to think of Torak, so she thought about Wolf and Darkfur at the river, teaching the cubs to hunt. Salmon were good prey for beginners, no nasty antlers or hooves to hurt small bodies.

  Unwinding Torak’s headband, she sniffed his smell of sweat and wolves and pine-blood. By now he must have found out why she’d left. But did he know how much she hated doing it? How fiercely it hurt?

  She saw him coming after her. She saw his long dark hair and lean brown face with its Wolf Clan tattoos: two dotted lines along his cheekbones, with the thin scar cutting the left one to cancel it out. She saw the green flecks in his light-grey eyes from when he’d spirit walked in trees.

  Would he ever forgive her for lying to him?

  She was woken by wingbeats, a splash and the honking of swans. The scar on the back of her hand was itching. Her fingers felt gritty. When she wriggled out of her sleeping-sack, a stub of charcoal crunched under her knee.

  The sun lay low on the amber Sea. In the fire a piece of birch bark was smouldering. Someone had scratched Torak’s forest mark on it in charcoal, over and over in anger. With a cry Renn grabbed the bark and flung it in the lake. She’d broken the spell just in time: if the fire had eaten even one of those marks it might have done Torak great harm.

  To her horror, her hands were black with charcoal. ‘I didn’t do it,’ she cried. And yet who else was there? And where would you find birch bark and charcoal in a land without trees?

  Running to the Sea, she scrubbed her hands.

  Her fishing lines were back in the shallows. That wasn’t right, she’d put them in the lake. Yet here they were – and they’d caught something.

  A sob rose in her throat. It was the whiskery seal. It was dead.

  This was her fault. Now she had to cut up the carcass and use every part. Baring her teeth, she drew her knife and slit the fat grey belly. She sprang to her feet. From the mess of guts slid a viper. It hissed and vanished into the kelp.

  This can’t be happening, thought Renn.

  A figure sat by the fire with its back to her. As Renn edged closer, the figure turned and she saw the beautiful, heartless face of her mother.

  ‘You’re dead,’ said Renn. ‘You were killed three summers ago. I watched you die.’

  Seshru’s black lips twisted in her sideways smile. ‘So?’

  ‘What are you?’ whispered Renn.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ taunted Seshru.

  She sat cross-legged by the fire, slowly pouring ash from palm to palm. She was barefoot, in a sleeveless tunic of silver sealskin, and though snow fell thickly, none touched her long dark hair or her smooth pale arms. The Viper tattoo on her brow was a vertical line of arrowheads set point to point, and her dark-blue gaze held Renn’s with the fixity of a snake. ‘Interesting disguise,’ she remarked. ‘You look better with black hair. Like mother, like daughter.’

  ‘You’re not real,’ said Renn. Putting out her hand, she passed it through her mother’s face as if it were smoke.

  ‘Are you sure?’ The Viper Mage blew on the embers, loosing a flurry of sparks. One burnt Renn’s cheek. ‘If I’m not real, how could you feel that?’

  Renn shielded her face with both arms, exposing the zigzag tattoos on her wrists that warded off evil. ‘You’re dead. I saw you die.’

  Seshru’s shoulders shook with silent laughter. ‘You keep saying that!’

  ‘I hated you when you were alive, I still do. You broke my father’s heart. If he hadn’t gone looking for you he wouldn’t have died on the ice—’

  ‘Your father was weak.’

  ‘You wanted to put a demon in me and make me your tokoroth: your creature, to obey your every command.’

  ‘And now look at you,’ sneered her mother. ‘A snug little mated pair with your wolf boy! Although we both know that’s not perfect. You want to be with your clan. He can’t wait to leave. It’ll never work.’ Flicking out her pointed black tongue, she tasted Renn’s unease. ‘And now you’ve left him, as I left your father.’

  ‘I had to, he was in danger—’

  ‘Yes, from you. All that rage bubbling inside you.’

  ‘I’m not angry with Torak.’

  ‘Really? Those “accidents” in the Forest? That charm just now, burning his mark?’

  ‘You’re behind this. That’s why you’re here.’

  Her mother’s gaze slid sideways. ‘A snake can still bite when you cut off its head. But what intrigues me is that you never confided in your wolf boy. You’re good at secrets. You get that from me.’

  ‘I get nothing from you!’

  More noiseless laughter. ‘Daughter, why fool yourself? You can run all the way to the Edge of the World, it’ll never be far enough! You can’t run from what’s in your marrow.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ Renn said coldly.

  ‘Finally, you ask why! That’s good, that’s what Mages do.’

  ‘I don’t need praise from you.’

  The Viper Mage regarded her. ‘Do you remember the day I died? You knelt beside me as I lay with an arrow in my breast. Your face was wet—’

  ‘With rain, not tears.’

  Seshru smiled. ‘Oh, I know! You’d have shot me yourself if someone hadn’t beaten you to it.’ Again she poured handfuls of ash. ‘People were frightened, they didn’t dare come near me. But not you and the wolf boy. You heard what I said as I died. This is not the end…’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Renn’s voice cracked. ‘You’re dead. The Soul-Eaters are dead, so are their tokoroths. You don’t exist!’

  ‘There will come a time when you’ll wish I did: when you’ll wish you were only up against me. At least I was human.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here?’ snarled Renn. ‘To warn me?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  What was this woman – this thing before her? Renn’s thoughts flew to the day she’d put the Death Marks on her mother. The smell of wet earthblood as she drew the circles on Seshru’s forehead, breast and heels to keep her souls together. Hadn’t the Death Marks worked?

  If Seshru had lost her name-soul she would be a ghost. If she’d lost her clan-soul she’d be a demon. If she’d lost her world-soul she would have snapped her link with trees, hunters and prey – she would be drifting for ever beyond the stars…

  ‘I’m not a Lost One,’ said Seshru as if Renn had spoken aloud. ‘And I’m not a demon or a ghost.’

  In a supple movement she rose and spread her hands, and at her command the ash lifted and whirled around her in a glittering cloud. Her hair was a writhing mane of serpents. Her empty eyes
pierced Renn’s.

  ‘You’re a dream,’ said Renn.

  ‘Well done!’ mocked Seshru. ‘But don’t you know what that means?’

  The ashes blew apart. Seshru was gone. ‘It means I’m inside you,’ she hissed in Renn’s head. ‘You can’t ever be rid of me. I’m part of who you are…’

  Renn woke standing by the dead fire. Clouds hid the sun. Wind roughened the surface of the lake.

  The Viper Mage was gone, but her venom lingered. Renn was shaking. Her hands were black with charcoal. A piece of birch bark floated on the lake. It bore traces of Torak’s marks. So that part had been real: she must have scrawled them in her sleep and laid the bark on the fire.

  Was it possible her mother was right? That deep down she was angry with Torak and wished him harm?

  ‘No,’ she said aloud. ‘No. No! You’ll never make me believe that! I’d never hurt Torak!’

  At the lake she cupped water and drank. She filled her waterskin. Her fishing lines were here in the lake, after all. She’d caught nothing, but she spotted a ptarmigan in the rocks and shot it.

  When you make a kill, you must thank the prey and use every part of it. This is the Pact, the oldest law of all: hunters must treat the prey with respect, and in return the World Spirit will send more prey.

  Renn thanked the bird and wished its spirit peace. She tucked the innards under a stone as an offering and ate the liver and heart raw. She skinned the body and legs and roasted them, then to save time she wrapped the bones in the feathered skin and put it on the other side of the lake. Soon afterwards an eagle swooped and carried it off. Renn took that as a good sign.

  Honouring the Pact steadied her, but she couldn’t forget what Seshru had said. This is not the end. What had she meant?

  At the shore Renn braved the cold and took off her parka and leggings, then scrubbed every trace of the dream off her skin with wet kelp, which she threw in the shallows. Having dressed, she ate the ptarmigan.