The Huntress: Sky

by Sarah Driver

  But behind us, the other draggles begin to unfurl their wings with a slick and a click. They start squabbling and shrieking, and I cover my ears, sickened by the rolling stink of the place and the blood-hungry beast-chatter.

  ‘Over there!’ yells Pangolin.

  Pika stumbles towards us, a trickle of blood weaving past his ear. ‘Go! I can’t hold them off !’

  I grab his sleeve. ‘Come with us!’

  But he turns away from me, bringing up his sword to block Pangolin. ‘Go!’

  I heave Sparrow onto the draggle’s back and Crow and me leap on behind him. Lunda grabs my ankle but I kick her away.

  Flyflyfly draggle-beast! I scream.  Hunt! And then the wind’s burning my cheeks as the draggle swoops from the mouth of the cave. The cold is like an ice-axe in my chest. I pull my raindrop cowl up and over my face.

  The draggle wheels away from the cave underneath Hackles. Far below, the black streak of the Iron Valley waits to catch our bones. I can sniff another storm brewing.

  Foodwherefindyellinsectspritehunthunthunt! shouts the draggle.

  The mountains gather close, each one jagged, dark, cracked; a cluster of cut-throat peaks, touched by last light. They are a grey slap. A drumbeat shock to my marrow. Suddenly I know why Kestrel couldn’t leave their grip. Heart-fright for her and Pika storms my bones and I curse that wretched Protector and her Spearwarriors.

  Above us, terrodyls circle, and fright shoots through me. They’ve flown away from the cave. What if Stag’s still controlling them?

  My sky-sickness writhes in my gut like an eel.  Thaw-Wielder! I bellow to the sky.  Where are you?

  Pooled around the mountain’s feet lie inky bogs that creep and crawl with shifting mist; I catch a glimpse when the cloud thins. The draggle bucks, beast-chatter terrified into a gaggle of nonsense. Crow yells, struggling to keep his feet tucked onto her back.

  Hold steady, draggle-beast!

  But she’s panicking, tipping off balance, flying too fast then too slow, trying to throw us off. We zoom lower, the bogs rushing up beneath us.

  ‘Let go!’ shouts Crow, and he flings himself off the draggle’s back into the black bog. My foot is caught in a tangle of fur and I’m dragged along, head upside down. Sparrow’s terrified face appears over the side of the draggle, staring towards me. ‘Get back here!’ he demands.

  What Black-Hair do NOW? shrills Thunderbolt, buzzing outraged moon-sparks into the air.

  Then I wrench myself free and slip into the edge of the bog, cracking through a layer of ice. A heartbeat later and I’d have been smashed on the rocks. The draggle rights herself and flits around overhead, with Sparrow still hunkered on her back, clutching a fistful of orange fur and screaming like a mad thing, Thunderbolt riding in his hair.

  Squidges scull around, gobbling frozen bog myrtle and moaning about the cold.

  Hurtteethfreezebrainowowowowow!

  ‘Over here!’ calls Crow from my right, but he’s hidden in fog.

  I try to swim towards his voice but the inky gloop is sticky as tar, sucking me down. Crow grabs my hand and tries to drag me towards him. We’re alone, struggling in the bog, our clothes and hair dragging, under the looming spines of Hackles. Inky shapes writhe and twist, pulling us down.

  Then I sense movement and jerk my head up. Two purple circles glow towards us through the fog. Crow’s hand tenses in mine. He must’ve seen it too. Behind the fire straggles a cloaked figure, shoving against the wind. Balls of purple fire sit in the figure’s palms.

  ‘Sparrow!’ I yell. ‘Help us!’ But there’s no answer, and in the depths of the bog, skinny fingers wrap around my ankle.

  Then there’s a new noise. The steady beat of strong wings. An orange shape thrums towards us through the gloom.

  Kestrel stands tall on a draggle’s back, twirling daggers in her fingers. She utters a war-cry and sends the blades whistling through the air, straight into the bog.

  Something screams, and the painful grip on my ankle eases. I swim through the ink for the bank. Crow follows. The figure in the mist pauses, watching, a red cloak billowing around its thin frame.

  Kestrel swoops low, leading Sparrow’s draggle as well as her own. I leap into the air, grasp fistfuls of orange fur and haul myself onto Sparrow’s draggle. Crow wrenches himself out of the bog and onto the same draggle as Kestrel. His cheeks burn red as he’s forced to hold onto her waist to stay put.

  I kick a slimy tendril from my boot as we’re lifted up and away into the sky. In front of me, Sparrow sobs into the draggle’s furry neck.

  ‘Never stray near the bogs when the fog comes!’ gasps Kestrel.

  I nod dumbly, thoughts still on that figure in the fog. Whoever it was, they had the red cloak of a mystik and purple lightning like Sparrow’s.

  Suddenly a graceful bolt of striped feathers swoops through the snow-filled sky.  Thaw! Hope burns in my chest.

  Battlehugewingcreakybatthingleavetwolegsalone! she screeches furiously.

  Thaw! It’s all right, she’s saving us!

  She’s too spooked by the draggles to come close, but she glides alongside us, wings strong and powerful, eyes wide and bright in the dusk.

  Kestrel cries a command to the draggles and then we’re lifting up and away from the bog, heading north towards the Wildersea.

  Below us, the shadows of two giant draggles and one sea-hawk are black and huge enough to blanket herds of grazing reindeer in darkness.

  ‘Let’s go and find Yapok!’ calls Kestrel.

  But all I can think about is the figure battling towards us across the mountain. Could it have been one of Stag’s mystiks? Has he sent them to hunt me?

  It can’t be – how could he know I was trapped in that sealed-off place?

  I hunch on the draggle’s back, willing it to fly faster, and check my pockets for the Opal and Da’s carving of the Huntress. They’re both there, but something else is, too.

  I pull out the rolled scrap of skin I prised from the wall of my prison cell. The grey surface is cool to touch, smooth, and flecked with patches of light pink. It’s dried fish skin – I ent sure what kind of fish but I reckon it’s freshwater, not salt. I turn it over in my hands. On the underside is a scrawled mess of runes, but they’re torn through like the skin was quickly ripped. Who hid this in the wall, and what does it mean?

  Suddenly Kestrel shouts and pulls on the reins, her draggle dodging a frozen cloud. Our draggle dodges, too, but I almost lose my balance. ‘Careful!’ squeals Sparrow.

  I stuff the fish skin back into my pocket and let out a tight, shaky breath. We escaped the Protector of the Mountain. I gift a chestful of heart-thanks to all the sea-gods that I never left Sparrow behind in the clutches of that old babbler. And Kestrel found the heart-strength to leave the mountain. I glance across the sky at her and grin. She’s crouched low on her draggle, head twitching sharply to left and right as she keeps watch, messy braids streaming behind her and thumping Crow in the face.

  Maybe now we can get back on track, and search for the Sky-Opal.

  Hope glows in my chest as we streak north-east through the sky.

  Steaming pools of blue-grey water glint on the foothills of the mountain below. Riding a draggle is proper different from riding a terrodyl. The draggle’s body pings up and down in the air, her wings grasping the wind and flinging it down past our ears, then hurling it back up again. It takes all my strength to grip her furry back.

  A velvet-blue night thickens around us. We follow a star that Kestrel watches fiercely. When we lose sight of it she tuts and scolds, searching and weaving until it shows again, a bright chip of light in the dark.

  In between bulks of frozen cloud, faint green-pink fire spirits emerge. The colours gleam deep inside the sky, like the flecks deep within the Opal. As I watch them, the spirits curl to make the shape of Rattlebones. In my bones she’s begging me again.  Help us!

  Sparrow sings, the blue notes of his song drifting past our faces and bumping against rocks so w
e don’t crash into them. It reminds me of how the whales guided the Huntress to keep us safe. ‘Thank you, Sparrow!’ calls Kestrel. ‘You are so helpful!’

  He shrugs awkwardly and keeps singing lines from battle songs.

  ‘How is the pain?’ she asks.

  ‘A bit better!’ he sings. Reckon even if the pain was bad he’d still sing, though. Nothing stops him spilling notes.

  ‘If it worsens, tell me,’ she says, keeping her gaze fixed on the star.

  ‘What happened back there, with them nightmares? You had the shakes again?’ I ask Sparrow.

  He don’t answer at first, so I pinch him under his ribs and he jabs back at me with his good elbow. ‘I ent been shaking, don’t think, but the nightmares are even worserer than ever. I’ve seen faces stuck right under the ice. Horrid scaly tails. Eye sockets, all dark. Burning houses and burning boats – that one’s the most real.’

  ‘It ent—’

  ‘It is real, I know it’s real! Why don’t you ever believe me? I keep seeing monsters prowling in the corners and it ent just when I’m sleepy, but sometimes when I’m wide awake.’

  ‘That’s just cos they took Thunderbolt away,’ I tell him. I watch the back of his yellow head, how all the hair’s bunched into filthy tangles, and wish I could’ve kept him much, much safer than this.

  ‘Why can’t we go home?’ he whines at me. ‘I hate it up in the sky.’

  ‘We just can’t. Not yet.’

  ‘Ent Grandma looking for us, though? You’re gonna be in big trouble!’

  I shut my eyes and weep silent tears that turn to ice on my cheeks. When he asks again I pretend to be asleep.

  Thaw-Wielder’s plucked the heart-strength to get near the draggles, now. She nests herself on Kestrel’s head, moon-bathing. When she twitches to look at me, her eyes are wide and shining with wildness.

  We fly through the night, until I’m sore and starved.

  Kestrel makes us change course to dodge hunting packs of terrodyls. ‘And if draggle-riders do follow, I don’t want to lead them straight to Yapok. A wiggling route is better.’ She grips her draggle with her toes, rummages in her bag and passes each of us a snowy mooncake. I wolf mine down, then have to watch Sparrow eat his in bites so tiny I want to scream.

  The air turns to filthy gloop as we pass over the billowing funnels of Nightfall, the great Land Tribe city of smog where scholars go for book-learning. Even all the way up here I can hear the cogs and wheels and engines clanking. I think back to what Egret and Kestrel said about it. What’s the good of a learning place that not everyone is allowed to go to? Scorn burns my chest. Stag must’ve brought them stupid land-lurking ideas with him when he said women shouldn’t be captains.

  ‘We can rest here,’ says Kestrel. ‘The draggles need to hunt.’

  The draggles drop us off on a huge chimney on the outermost edge of Nightfall. Below us spreads the thick green silence of a vast forest. The beasts circle away from us to hunt among the evergreens. Thaw goes with them, the night gulping her fast. When the moon gets blotted out by black smoke, it feels like anything could be out there, skin-close, and we’d never know.

  Kestrel fishes about in her bag, then flings a rippling square of black cloth over us. When it settles over our shoulders, my muscles begin to warm. Crow pulls it further over him and I glare, snatching some of it back. Sparrow snuggles into my armpit. We lean against the stone funnel. Under the quiet moon, my eyes grow heavy. The funnel belches out thick yellow smog.

  Later, I’m pulled out of a doze by murmuring voices. ‘You and Egret,’ whispers Crow. ‘Are you?’

  ‘What?’ says Kestrel.

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Do I?’ she snaps. Then she snickers. ‘You can’t even say it.’

  I open my eyes and pull a gruesome face. ‘What you two babbling on about?’

  Crow winces. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Ha! So much rudeness in one child,’ Kestrel tells him.

  A slap of shame splays across Crow’s face, and he turns away.

  Kestrel unscrews a bottle, and the sweet steam of spiced goat’s milk touches my nose. When she tries to pass a cup to Crow, he keeps his arms folded and pretends sleep, so me, her and Sparrow drink the milk and try to untangle our thoughts. She tells us how Egret helped her see sense about leaving, cos she’d never have survived the night if she’d stayed. How Egret’s gonna be safe for now, cos the draggle-riders need her rune-magyk. How what I said about her ma spouting lies helped her get the courage to leave the mountain. When she says that, I know it ent just the goat’s milk warming me.

  I try biting my tongue but the words spill out all the same. ‘You’ll never be allowed back, will you?’

  ‘I don’t want to go back to that place, sea-sister. Except to get Egret and Pika.’

  ‘But it’s your home, ent it?’ says Sparrow. His voice catches on the word home, and it makes my chest ache.

  ‘Not any more.’ She rubs the ice from her brows. ‘What if home’s not a place, but with people?’

  I nod, thinking of Bear and how he found our Tribe when his own was destroyed.

  Soon sleep makes Sparrow lean heavily against me. Crow sits with his legs crossed at the ankle, snoring.

  ‘What d’you reckon will happen when we get to this Yapok boy?’ I whisper.

  Kestrel links her arm through mine and leans her cheek on my hair. ‘Honestly, I cannot say. He was apprenticed to care for books when he was your brother’s age, a few years before they were banned. When they were burned, he helped try to save them. He put himself in so much danger. I only hope we find him safe. He hasn’t replied to my latest letters.’

  ‘When did you last get word from him?’

  She hesitates. ‘Five full moons ago.’

  ‘Five ?’

  ‘Please, after all that’s happened, no doubts,’ she begs.

  I let out my breath, and nod. ‘How do you know where to find him?’

  ‘His letters always came to me by berg owl, and the owls followed the same star-path we’re following now. He always said the owls preferred to roost amongst his quiet, away from the other Wilderwitches. So if we follow them, maybe they’ll lead us to him.’

  Her words prickle me with wonder. ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘When I had eleven moons the war worsened and my mother cut off all outside contact. The Sky-Tribes were severed. I had a group of Wilderwitch friends, who I used to see at Sky-Tribe Meets and feast days, and I lost them all. But Yapok kept writing. He refused to give me up.’ As she speaks, she feeds pieces of mooncake to Ettler, who quivers inside her cloak. And I know without her saying it that the old friendships, the lost ones, are like scars that never healed, and me being around has picked open the scabs, and she likes the pain a little bit.

  I breathe the smell of night. ‘Is flying like you remembered?’ I whisper finally, as Crow snores.

  She nods quickly. ‘It is wondrous. But . . . nothing is quite like flying alone, in my bird-shape. I envy your Crow for that.’

  My Crow. Hah. ‘What happened?’

  ‘After my father was hunted by a terrodyl, Mother became over protective. She had a clip fitted to my arm, to try to stop me shape-changing. But I changed even though it was painful, and I flew even though the clip made me clumsy. When a terrodyl came, I was too hindered by the clip to fly away from it.’ Suddenly she looks straight into my face, and I flinch at the rawness there, as though her own skin has been peeled off, layer by layer. ‘No one except Egret understood my wish to travel beyond-the-mountain.’ More feathers have broken through and little bulbs of blood roll down her cheeks. ‘Until I met you.’

  We let our bones rest, the smoke-tinged night brushing our faces. ‘I love this night-silence,’ Kestrel murmurs sleepily.

  I try to imagine proper silence, but it’s so hard. Cos even now there’s beast-chatter drifting up from the forest far below and wafting from Ettler and peeping from Thunderbolt’s moondreams.

  ‘You’re
lucky,’ whispers Kestrel suddenly, making me jump.

  She leans forwards and it’s like half of her wants to hit me, and the other wants to scoop me into a hug. ‘If I had a chance to be a captain – to be a real leader, make real changes . . . I’d take it in both fists and I wouldn’t let go,’ she tells me, eyes burning into mine. A flash of anger burns inside me. Cos I won’t be captain now, I can’t be. But then she gifts me a bright, hopeful grin, and my anger fades. ‘You can call me Kes, if you’d like.’

  ‘All right. Kes.’ The name tastes strange and clipped short on my tongue.

  Then we sit, not knowing what else to say. I wait a beat, trying to untangle my thoughts. But her breathing lengthens as she drops into sleep.

  In my dream I’m trudging through treacherous ice, following the paw-prints of a polar fox. I’m screaming for Da. The paw prints are speckled with drops of bright blood. Beneath the ice, the eyes of whales watch me and the hands of merwraiths beat and claw, trying to escape. If they die, he dies, throbs a voice.

  I bolt awake, eyes damp with tears and chest sore with missing Da. Feels like I only slept for a few beats but the funnel has stopped belching and the smog has thinned. From far below comes a strange click click click that moves in and out of hearing. On one side of me, Kestrel breathes softly, hair tangled in her eyes. On my other side, Sparrow whimpers. Next to him, Crow’s wrapped a scarf around his face and he’s still snoring.

  My heart settles as a gap chinks open in the clouds. A beam of pale light pokes out – a silvery strand like Grandma’s hair caught in the wind. The fire spirits have started their dance, and they’re seeking me out. Their pictures make me think of Sparrow’s nightmares and my dream – eyes trapped beneath the ice.

  I watch, chest aching, as the fire spirits tumble, closer to me than I’ve ever seen them, cos this is the first time I’ve been in the sky with them when they want to play.

  The pale pinks and shimmering greens swirl to make the shapes of Ma and Da’s namesake animals: a snowshoe hare, kicking her spirit legs into the sky as she chases a polar fox into the tops of the distant trees.

  I touch my dragonfly brooch for heart-strength. ‘Ma,’ I murmur, watching the hare and fox disappear. ‘Where is Da? When can we have him back?’