by Sarah Driver
‘When did she start spouting that bilge to you? It ent true!’ I take her limp, sweating hand. ‘All you’ve gotta do is put one foot in front of the other and not look back.’
But she’s caught in some inward tide and travelling further from me with every beat. Reckon this mountain’s marked her the way the sea brands a shell. ‘I can’t,’ she whispers, glancing around like a spooked horse. ‘I – I’m sorry.’
A cold fist settles in my stomach as she tells us how to find the sawbones’ nest. Then she bolts, her skirts rasping along the stone floor.
‘We don’t need her anyway,’ I say hollowly, the lie scalding my tongue.
‘Never did,’ says Crow, scuffing his boot against a shelf, making a squidge trill angrily at him. ‘Let’s find your brother and get out of here.’
We run across the room, ducking under and weaving round huffing, puffing rows of squidges. Heavepulllugdon’tdrop! Keepgoingheavytiredfatarmsouch!
A stone archway yawns overhead and we tear through it, dodging shelves. Our boots slip in puddles of squidge ink. Crow blunders through what’s left of a smashed moon-lamp, scrunching through shards of broken glass. We whip around corners too fast. My fingernails rip painfully on the stone when I flatten myself out of the way of a frighted squidge.
Our breaths wheeze, too loud in the silence. The walls are so thick in this part of the stronghold that the sounds of battle outside don’t reach us and the world shrinks to nothing but my raggedy breath and my swooshing blood and my boots too loud on the stone. I try to remember the way Kestrel told us, but my ears are clogged with the Protector’s threat. Execution.
Another sweep of steps. A huge, dusty tapestry of Hackles under a full moon. Our boots fall so loud. How can no one come? Then a door thuds closer and closer out of the murk.
We sneak through and loop up a spiral of rusty metal stairs on the other side. I stumble and put out my hands just in time to catch myself against the wall.
Crow grabs my sleeve and we duck next to a round, dark wooden door.
‘Reckon we’ve found the sawbones’ nest,’ I whisper.
The door creaks open when I give it a push, and we step silently inside.
The nest reeks of sickness – sour, stuffy and sweet all at once. Two rows of rusty metal beds line the room. Half the beds are filled with moaning or sleeping folk, gashes on their heads, legs wrapped in bandages, faces greyer than whale skin. One or two cry garbled words. A sawbones hurries between them.
We hover in the shadows. I look around for my brother, and finally my eyes snag on a rusty old iron bed that’s set apart from the others. Sparrow’s tangled in a mess of furs slickened with strands of whale-song. In his palms sit puddles of liquid purple fire. My heart stammers. Has he had more shaking fits?
Despite everything Kestrel said, he is awake, and sure as rotten teeth he’s frighted. His filmy eyes search the room. He whimpers under his breath, twitches his head this way and that, and folds and unfolds his fingers, stretching purple webs of lightning. But he’s finally looking a lot more like my little bag of bones whale-singing brother.
Sitting by his bed is a curly-headed woman with the gold eye-paint of a sawbones. She’s wearing gloves and a mask, and she’s using a moon-lamp for light – when I squint, I realise Thunderbolt’s the moonsprite trapped inside the bottle, and she looks proper furious about it.
The woman leans forwards and scrapes globs of foamy whale-song from my brother’s mouth – he wriggles and spits – then she pushes the sticky strands into a bottle. ‘Don’t want you choking on all this gunk,’ she murmurs.
‘Guts and tails and skins and fins! ’ sings Sparrow, and I grin as I recognise the start of one of his best stench-songs.
‘Mix ’em in a pot with crumpled old wings! ’
‘Will you shut that sea-creeper up?’ someone shouts.
‘I’ll pluck out your eyes and saw off your hair, touch me again if you dare! ’ Then he starts belching the tune. The sawbones jerks to her feet and pushes her chair away. Me and Crow draw deeper into the shadows.
‘I can’t help you if you’re going to threaten me,’ she says angrily, eyeing his lightning. Then she turns and ducks through a side door, muttering, ‘I shouldn’t have to look after outsiders!’
Me and Crow stay still, watching the other sawbones make her rounds. My toes itch to run to Sparrow but I can’t risk it while she’s there.
Across the room, my brother thrashes suddenly, balling up his fists and pressing them to his eyes. Lightning licks into his hair. He cries out in pain.
The sawbones straightens up and stares across at his bed. But she shudders instead of going to him, and hurries from the room through the side door, cursing.
I nod at Crow and we sneak between the rows of beds, towards Sparrow. The sick folk that’re awake murmur as we pass, some asking for help, others spitting insults. One threatens to call the sawbones. I flinch, begging them to stay quiet, as we creep closer to my brother.
‘Sparrow,’ I whisper, resting my hand on his arm. ‘I’m here. Hang on.’
His eyes flicker open, but there’s just thick white film and his grimace don’t ease – he’s stuck in the nightmare but I reckon he’s awake. His nightmares have always seemed frightful-real, but this feels different.
Crow tenses. ‘What’s wrong with him? Does he always sleep with his eyes open?’
I peel back my raindrop cowl and put my mouth next to Sparrow’s freezing ear. ‘Sparrow? Wake up! We have to get out of here, right now!’
He jumps, filmy white eyes searching the space next to my head. ‘Mouse?’
‘Aye. We’re gonna get you out of here, but we’ve got to be quick!’
I snatch the moon-lamp and pull out the stopper. Thunderbolt flicks up and out, showering me with a grateful burst of jittery moon-sparks. Then she zooms over to Sparrow and skitters up the bridge of his nose, into his hair, shedding pale light over his face. Her light thins the film on his eyes and he relaxes the tiniest bit. ‘Hello, Thunderbolt.’ Then he squints up at me. ‘Is it really you, stinker? I can see a black blob that might be your rat’s-nest hair.’
‘Shhh!’ I look over my shoulder, but most of the other sick folk have fallen asleep or been carried off on waves of pain. I take his hands and pull him upright, biting my tongue when his lightning zaps up my wrists. His bad arm’s been wrapped in thick, padded linen, so it’s twice its normal size. ‘I saw a face under the ice, somewhere far away, coming for me!’ he husks.
‘It was just a nightmare,’ I tell him. ‘Let it fade. And keep your voice down!’
He curls his lip. ‘It was real.’
‘Up you get – I don’t know how long we’ve got. This ent the time to be stubborn.’
I lift a scratchy old goat skin from the bed and as Sparrow climbs dizzily from the sweat-stained mattress I bundle him up in it.
Then I tear a ragged strip from the bed sheet and make a sling for his arm, like I used to watch Grandma do. I search for his boots, and find them under the bed with his stockings still stuffed inside. Crow helps him shove them on, pulling faces at the stink, while I look for anything else we might need.
I root around on the table by his bed, find more of the yellow flowers Kestrel gave me and cram them into my pockets. I pocket a small brown bottle of liquid, too, in case it’s some medsin they’ve given Sparrow to help with his fits.
My neck prickles. I whirl around as the curly-haired sawbones steps into the room, carrying firewood. We freeze. She stares, mouth falling open. Fright boils my insides. The firewood falls out of her arms and thunks onto the floor.
Sparrow props himself up on an elbow and gives a little snarl. He flicks a sticky lightning web at the woman’s heels, but it misses and fizzles uselessly on the floor as she turns on her heel and sprints from the room.
Her footsteps ring along the passageway. ‘Help! Prisoners are loose!’ she yells.
‘What now?’ groans Crow, watching tensely as the eyes of sick Sky-folk
blink at us from their beds.
I pull him and Sparrow towards the far wall. ‘I reckon there’s only one way Kestrel would’ve got us out of here – the draggles. We’ve got to find their cave.’
Downdowndown, chitters Thunderbolt, whizzing moon-sparks in my eyes and up my nose. I sneeze. Doorwaybacktherebackthere, secret! She flits over to a tapestry on the wall and wriggles under a loose corner of it, spreading silver streaks over the thread.
I race to the wall, lugging Sparrow with me, and jolt the tapestry aside – there’s a door hidden in the wooden panelling. I grab the iron ring in the door and twist it from side to side. ‘It’s locked!’
Crow takes a slender feather from his pocket and wiggles it in the lock. Sparrow presses his free hand into mine. It’s still warm and feels ash-gritty.
Outside the room, footsteps clang closer. My heart stalls.
Crow curses under his breath as his feather snaps in the lock.
‘Hurry!’ whimpers Sparrow. ‘I can feel them getting closer!’
Crow fumbles for another feather. He screws up his face in concentration. But the quill snaps again. He yells through his teeth.
Suddenly the lock crunches and the door’s flung wide, just as a gaggle of Spearwarriors burst into the nest behind us. ‘Stop!’
A cloaked arm sweeps us into a darkness full of the stink of damp and picked bones. Then there’s a metal clunk as whoever pulled us to safety locks the door. Fists pound against it on the other side.
The figure sweeps past us and footfalls echo away through the murk. We stumble after the sound. Thunderbolt fizzles ahead of Sparrow’s face, turning back every few beats to chirrup and make sure he can see enough to keep walking. My heart swells with gladness that we’ve got our moonsprite with us.
We walk through sloping, slippery corridors with ceilings low enough for Crow to bump his head more than once. ‘Stop!’ I hiss, but the figure walks faster and we’re forced to hurry to keep up.
When we reach the end of a passageway, the figure pauses and turns to us. Thunderbolt’s moonlight shows spiky white hair, brown skin and the black paint that strikes through the eyes to the jaw. It’s Pika – the boy that dared to tease Lunda when we first landed on the mountain. He leans close. ‘I heard the sawbones’ war-cry. I can get you out of here.’ He turns to the right and strides on.
I run and catch his arm. ‘Why?’
‘I’m a friend of Egret and Kestrel. Come on!’ He hurries off, head bowed.
‘Will Kestrel be safe?’ Crow asks quietly.
‘I don’t know.’ Pika twists round to eyeball us. ‘But you won’t be if you don’t get a shuffle on.’
Me and Crow swap heart-sad glances and hurry after him, herding Sparrow in front of us. He follows Thunderbolt; a scratch of light in the dark.
I grapple with the weight of the longbow that’s no use until I can craft some arrows. At the end of the next passageway we reach a steep set of steps. Darkness presses to either side and I can’t see if anything’s lurking there. We start climbing downwards. Some steps are so high I have to jump into thin air and there’s a beat before I land, jarring my ankles. When they get too steep for Sparrow, me and Crow are forced to pass him between us like a wriggling parcel. My breath is a thin wheeze.
Pika pulls a mooncake from his pocket and nibbles on it as we plunge down the break-neck stairs. Our boots make a hollow echo every time we land, cos there’s a sheer drop to each side of us and nothing to swallow the sound. Then Pika drops his mooncake, and it falls for beats and beats until finally, a long way down . . . smack.
And somewhere very high above, there’s a thud, and bellowing voices.
We climb down faster. When we reach the bottom, a damp breeze ruffles our hair and the floor’s so sticky it sucks at my boots. Whenever I move my head, a rich, clogging stench fills my nose.
‘Urgh! What’s that smell?’ asks Crow.
‘Shh!’ says Pika with a quick glance up into the darkness of the stairway. He gets onto his knees and scrabbles around with his fingers, looking for something. ‘Come on,’ he mutters under his breath. Finally, as the footsteps above us grow louder, he finds an iron ring and hauls on it, until a wooden trapdoor yawns open in the ground. He ushers me through.
I lower myself into the space but I can’t feel the ground underneath my boots. I frown up at Pika.
‘Your fall will be broken,’ he hisses. ‘Let go!’
‘What? Why should I—’
‘Let go!’
I do as he says.
My belly flies into my mouth.
Greasy air rushes over my skin.
Rough walls scrape against me.
I’m falling.
Falling.
I’m falling for much too long, deep into the mountain. Then I land with a squelch. The foul stink has swelled to fill the world.
‘Mouse!’ comes a faint, urgent call. I roll just in time, as the bundle that is my brother comes hurtling through the air and lands in a tower of sticky white goo. Sparrow bursts into a snotty laugh. ‘Can I have another go?’
I pull him out of the way and after a few beats Pika and Crow drop out of the sky, landing with a squelch.
Pika looks up. ‘I tried to press a sealing rune into the trapdoor as we fell, but I don’t think it worked.’
My gut heaves and bubbles with sickness at the stench of the dung we’re flailing in.
Then there’s a shout from the trapdoor above.
‘Go!’ I yell.
Crow pulls Sparrow onto his back and we tear through the cavern, towards the sound of draggles. My boots slide on the slippery white stuff and I have to steady myself against the jagged cave walls. Ent long before my fingers are grazed and bleeding.
We reach the main cave and I feel my jaw grow slack.
Thick orangey-brown shapes hang from the roof of the cave like hairy ropes. Draggles. Hundreds of them. Clamp teeth, sup blood, chatter the beasts in their sleep. Hollow guts, slither, scurry. No hiding.
To our right, the cave yawns open into a void of endless sky.
‘Into the tack room, quick.’ Pika leads us into a cluttered nook off the main cave. I stare at rows of saddles, coiled whips and stacks of boots with gleaming spurs.
Sparrow trots around, touching everything he can lay his good hand on until Pika holds him still. ‘We’ll find a ladder and choose a draggle,’ he says, lifting a black saddle from a hook. ‘I’ll saddle it for you and then you’ll be on your way.’
Pika leans out of the door, watching a warden guarding the cave mouth. ‘Now!’ he says, as her head lolls in sleep.
But we’ve barely taken ten paces when Lunda’s sprinting down the passageway towards us. Her lips quirk into a sneer. Behind her, Pangolin cries out. ‘I’m drowning in this stuff ! Wait for me!’
I grab Sparrow and we run through slippery white draggle dung, Crow on our heels. We head for a ladder that teeters skyward between the matted orange pelts of the snoozing draggles.
‘Out of our way, Pika!’ screams Lunda behind us.
Metal sings in the dank gloom. I glance behind me. Pika has drawn his sword.
I help Sparrow onto the ladder, then haul myself after him, struggling with my longbow. Crow clambers on behind us and we squeeze between the tightly packed draggles. Sparrow’s climbing is painful-slow and proper awkward, cos of his sling.
Curious green eyes snap open as we pass. We’re waking them up – dread traces its cold spear-point along my belly and chest. What if we spook them? They shuffle, fur pressing tighter around us. My hands brush long, fleshy snouts. Strings of drool drip off bared brown teeth, landing on our heads.
‘Wait,’ pants Crow. ‘We’ll be smothered if we try to get all the way up there. Come back. I’ve got a better idea.’
I look down at him. Crow roots in his cloak pocket and pulls out a vial of what looks like blood.
‘What’s that for?’ I spit out a mouthful of rancid fur.
He looks up at me, startled. ‘If I ai
n’t got energy to change, the . . . blood lends it to me.’ He looks away, jaw flickering. ‘Need it more than ever after that potion they made me drink.’
‘How do I know you ent just gonna fly off and leave us here?’ I hiss stupidly, before I can stop myself. The sounds of the battle between Pika and Lunda are muffled by the stinking press of fur.
He shoots me a frustrated look. ‘Would you stop pushing me away? Anyway, now ain’t the time!’ Then he smears stripes of blood from the vial onto his cheeks, and pushes his hands against the air – they fade in and out of sight with every beat of my heart, like he’s pushed through a gap into another world.
I can see the edges of him pulling and squeezing and blurring, his face lengthening and his arms shortening, glossy black feathers sprouting all over him, clothes shrinking into the enchantment, becoming wings and scaly legs. His sword becomes a silver feather, bright against all the black. But it all happens in a beat – a fold – between this world and some other. Time slows.
A shudder ripples through me. He wheels past our faces, up to the roof of the cave. I pull Sparrow back down the ladder, willing the draggles to stay asleep. We huddle among hanging vines of filthy orange fur.
Then a draggle pulls free from the flock and flexes her wings. Crow must’ve untied her. She swoops down and stands at the cave mouth. Day hunt? Hunt? she asks, chatter quivering with puzzlement.
The warden’s disappeared. She must’ve gone to raise the alarm.
A dark shape zooms towards me and Crow’s emerging bigger and closer from the murk, quicker than I’d expected. He gestures with a wing that’s still changing back to an arm draped in his stained black cloak. Slowly the black feathers shrink into his skin and his face broadens, the yellow beak sucking back and back like a tide, until the boy stands in front of us. ‘Quick!’ he croaks, voice still half a bird’s caw.
