The Burning Shadow

by Michelle Paver

  In silence, Pirra handed him the fireweed, and in silence he made twine for tying on dressings. He didn’t want to talk about the Crows, especially not Telamon. Telamon hadn’t told him he was a Crow—and yet, without his help, Hylas would never have escaped with his life. Telamon had been his friend. He might be the Chieftain’s son, but he used to like nothing better than roaming the mountains with Hylas and Issi. Once, he’d confessed that, at his father’s stronghold, he never felt good enough.

  “Father was a great warrior in his time, and I’ve always got the Ancestors staring down at me from the walls.”

  “I thought Ancestors were dead,” Hylas had said.

  “That’s the point, Hylas, it means you can never get away from them. You can never be as strong or as fearless as them.”

  Hylas glanced around to find Pirra watching him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to spoil things.”

  He sighed. “It’s not you. It’s the Crows.”

  He prowled about, picking rue for a salve. Pirra went on watching him. So did Havoc. The cub’s ears were back: She knew he was upset. When he sat down and started mashing the rue between two stones, for once, she didn’t push in to see what he was doing.

  Pirra sat with her tunic tented over her knees. “I heard something else in Kreon’s stronghold.” She paused. “They’re bringing the dagger here. To Thalakrea.”

  Fiercely, Hylas ground the rue to a gray-green pulp. “I don’t want to hear about the dagger.”

  “Hylas. While they have it, they can’t be beaten. No one is safe. You know that.”

  “All I want,” he said stubbornly, “is to get back to Akea and find Issi.”

  She blinked. “I can’t believe that’s true. Where would you go? How would you get away from them?”

  “I know the Mountains, I’d find a way.”

  “Oh, Hylas. Do you truly believe that?”

  He threw her an agonized glance. Then he fetched his little bundle of deer fat and mixed it with rue to make the salve. He smeared half on the bite on his calf, and bandaged it with a giant mullein leaf tied on with twine.

  “They’re going to invade Keftiu,” said Pirra.

  “What’s it to you? You ran away from Keftiu.”

  “It’s still my country, I can’t—”

  “Here,” he cut in, “rub the rest of this on your scratches.”

  “Hylas—”

  “No. I can’t talk about this now.”

  “But—”

  “I said no!” He was glaring at her, but he couldn’t keep the pleading out of his voice.

  Havoc stood tensely, glancing from one to the other.

  “We need more food,” he muttered, “and we need to find a way off this island. Until we’ve done that, there’s no point talking about the Crows. Agreed?”

  Pirra met his eyes. Then she nodded. “Agreed,” she said. “For now.”

  23

  Pirra slept like a stone, and woke to find that Hylas and Havoc had gone to check his snares. She had another marvelous wash, and dabbed some mud on her cheek. Maybe the magic spring would get rid of her scar.

  She was hungry—they’d finished the deer meat last night—but Hylas came back with nothing: His snares had been empty.

  “Oh well,” she said, “we’ve still got the olives.”

  “Mm,” he said. “But we should save them till we really need them.”

  “I just remembered. When I was on the cliffs, I saw a white beach below the forest. It can’t be far.”

  His face cleared. “Then let’s go and catch some fish!”

  Last night, Pirra had been too tired to notice the forest, but now she drank it in. She loved the scent of hot pines and the big glossy beetles bumping about among the thistles; the intense blue sky between the deep green branches, and the sunlight striping Hylas and Havoc with gold.

  “It’s beautiful,” she exclaimed.

  “What is?” muttered Hylas, casting about for signs of prey.

  “This!” She flung up her arms.

  He gave her a puzzled grin and shook his head. He’d grown up in a forest. He didn’t know what she meant.

  As they went farther, Havoc kept sneaking up on Pirra and swatting her ankles.

  “Stop it,” said Pirra, warning her off with a stick.

  “She’s just practicing hunting,” said Hylas. “That’s how full-grown lions trip up their prey.”

  “Well I’m not prey,” retorted Pirra. “Havoc, no!” In the end, she had to distract the cub by dragging the wicker ball on some twine.

  Suddenly they heard the voice of the Sea, and emerged from the trees into the glare of the strangest ravine they’d ever seen.

  Great frozen waves of dazzling white stone swirled around them, as if the Sea had once attacked the land, and been stilled by the touch of an immortal finger. Ghostly white crickets sprang up at their feet as they picked their way between juniper and spurge pallid with dust. In pockets of bleached sand, they saw tall, stately white flowers.

  “I don’t know those flowers,” said Hylas.

  “I do,” said Pirra with a flicker of unease. “They’re Sea lilies. They’re sacred, they only bloom in summer on the hottest shores. My mother uses them in spells of finding.”

  Hylas wasn’t listening. “The Sea!” he shouted, racing up a huge crest of smooth white rock.

  Pirra forgot the lilies and scrambled after him.

  But when they reached the top, they found a sheer drop to the waves far below.

  “We’ll never get down there,” said Hylas. “So no fish.”

  Hungrier than ever, they started back through the ravine.

  All at once, Pirra spotted something behind a clump of junipers that she’d missed before. “Pomegranates!” she cried, running to see if any were ripe.

  “What are pom—what are they?” called Hylas.

  “You eat the seeds, you’ll like them!”

  “Well hurry up, I want to go and set some more snares.”

  Pirra ignored him.

  She’d picked three pomegranates and was reaching for a fourth when she sensed she was being watched.

  High overhead, in the bushes on the edge of the ravine, something stared down at her. It was dark against the Sun: all she could make out was a pair of horns and two floppy ears. She had time to think goat; then a stone whistled through the air and the goat dropped with a thud at her feet.

  “Is it dead?” shouted Hylas, tucking his slingshot in his belt as he ran toward her.

  “Um—yes,” she said. “That was a good shot. I didn’t think you’d even seen it.”

  He grinned. “Main thing is, it didn’t see me.”

  After they’d sent the goat’s spirit on its way, Hylas split its leg bones and they gobbled the delicious, rich marrow. Feeling much stronger, they carried the carcass back to camp.

  Hylas insisted on using every scrap; he said it was disrespectful to the goat if you didn’t. He set a haunch to bake in the mud along with some snails Pirra had collected, and after a squabble, she got the filthy job of scraping the hide clean, while he cut the meat, liver, and heart into thin slices and hung them to dry—out of reach of inquisitive paws.

  They spent a peaceful afternoon curing the hide and stomach for a pouch and a waterskin, and making sausages by stuffing the intestines with clotted blood and chopped caper buds. (Pirra added the capers, which Hylas viewed with suspicion; she was glad there were some things she knew and he didn’t.)

  To make up for her cleaning the goatskin, he made her a knife. It had a lethal obsidian blade in a goathorn handle, wound with split pine root for a steady grip. Pirra loved it because it wasn’t like anything from the House of the Goddess.

  When the meat was cooked, they ate in ravenous silence.

  Havoc had eaten till her
belly was as big as a melon, and now she lay on her side, sleeping it off. A wilting Sea lily was tied around her neck. Before leaving the ravine, Hylas had made an offering of the goat’s ears, and Pirra had smeared the juice of two flowers on their foreheads and garlanded the cub with a third, to include her in the blessing.

  At last, Pirra heaved a sigh and wiped the grease from her chin. “That was the best meal I’ve ever eaten. And so hot! On Keftiu my food’s always cold. My room’s too far from the cookhouse.”

  Hylas snorted a laugh. “You poor thing.”

  She chucked a snail shell at him, then lay on her side, chewing a fennel stalk. “So how come you know all about tracking and things?”

  With a thorn, Hylas pried a snail from its shell and ate it. “An old Outsider taught me. I never knew his name. People called him the Man of the Woods, although he told me once he was from Messenia.”

  “What was he like?”

  “He had one eye and one tooth, both dark brown, and he stank like a dung heap. But he knew everything about the Wild. He could tell when a storm was coming just by the way a raven flies. And he taught me tracking with a beetle and a pile of dust.”

  “A beetle?”

  He nodded. “He’d smooth out a patch of dust, and I had to shut my eyes, and he’d put a beetle on the dust and make it crawl. I had to work out where it’d gone by its tracks. It was easy with dust, but then he did it again with grit, and that was harder. After that he used grass, then leaves. They were hardest of all. Went on for days. The beetle got really sick of it.”

  Pirra blinked. “You used the same beetle?”

  He burst out laughing. “Course not! Sometimes you’re just too easy to fool!”

  She grinned and chucked another shell at him. “But you did use beetles?”

  “Yes, but not the same one!”

  Flipping onto his belly, he propped himself on his elbows. “I used to wonder if he was my father,” he said. “I asked once, and he said no. I think he knew something, but then he died of fever, so I never found out.” He glanced at her. “Who was your father?”

  “I don’t know,” said Pirra. “When my mother decided to bear a child, she mated with three different priests, so that none of them could say I was theirs.”

  Hylas looked startled. “Did you know them?”

  She shook her head. “They died in an earthshake when I was little. At least, that’s what I was told, but I’ve always wondered if she got rid of them, so they couldn’t make trouble.”

  Hylas whistled. “Didn’t you want to find out about them? I’ve always wanted to know about my father.”

  “Why should I? It’s bad enough having a mother.” An image of Yassassara rose before her, and she pushed it away.

  Hylas was watching her. “Will she come after you?” he said quietly.

  She reached for another fennel stalk. “Oh yes, she’ll send people to find me. She’ll never give up.” For a moment, she pictured her mother in the Hall of Whispers, breathing the mysterious scent of Sea lilies. Perhaps already the lilies of Thalakrea had sent their perfume on the wind, and told their Keftian sisters that Pirra was here—and they’d told Yassassara . . .

  “I’m never going back,” she said out loud. “If she locked me up again, I’d die.”

  She knew this didn’t really fit with what she’d said about warning Keftiu of the Crows’ invasion; and she could see Hylas thinking so too. But he didn’t point it out, and she was grateful for that.

  With a thorn, he pried another snail from its shell and held it out to her. “I still think you’re lucky to have a mother.”

  “Lucky?” Pirra nearly choked on the snail. “I hate her and she hates me!”

  “Yes, but . . . All I remember about mine is when she left me and Issi. Sometimes I think there’s more, but it always slips away.”

  Pirra felt sorry for him. She thought how odd it was that while she knew and hated her mother, Hylas didn’t know his, and yet he loved her.

  “Do you think she’s still alive?” she said.

  “Maybe. Maybe someday we’ll all be together, her and me and Issi.” He frowned and scratched a circle in the dust.

  Havoc woke up and padded over to sniff the snail shells. Hylas pushed her gently away. Then he said to Pirra, “When you escaped Keftiu, what were you planning to do?”

  She spread her hands. “I hadn’t really thought that far. I was just trying to get away. Why?”

  He scratched another circle in the dust. “You could come with me. To Lykonia. We could live in the mountains.”

  She flushed. “Thanks.”

  He shrugged.

  Havoc spat out a snail shell and coughed. Hylas gathered the rest and put them out of reach in the fork of a tree.

  It was getting dark, but Pirra didn’t want to go to sleep yet, so she asked Hylas how far he could spit an olive stone.

  His lip curled. “Farther than you.”

  “Oh yes? I don’t think so!”

  They delved into the bag of olives, and chewed and spat. Pirra had often played this game on Keftiu, and she was winning, until Hylas made her laugh and she gulped and nearly choked—which made her laugh even harder, so that she lost.

  “You cheated!” she gasped.

  “So what?” spluttered Hylas. “I won!”

  They lay on their backs, chewing crunchy red pomegranate seeds, which Pirra had finally persuaded him to try.

  “Where’d you learn to spit like that?” said Hylas.

  “Userref taught me, he’s really good at it.”

  Havoc climbed onto Hylas’ chest, and he tugged her ears.

  “Userref would love her,” said Pirra. “One of his most powerful goddesses has the head of a lioness.”

  Hylas scratched the lion cub’s scruff. “Hear that, Havoc?”

  Havoc yawned so hard she fell off.

  Idly, Pirra asked Hylas why the pit spiders had called him Flea, and he told her it was the first name that came into his head. “It’s what that stranger called me last summer, remember? Akastos?”

  She shuddered. “The one who tied you up and left you for the”—she lowered her voice—“for the Angry Ones.”

  They fell silent. Pirra thought of the Crows worshipping the Angry Ones in their secret, terrible rites. She was about to tell Hylas—then decided against it. Not now. Not in the dark.

  Night deepened around them. In subdued tones, they talked of what they would do tomorrow. Hylas wanted to climb the obsidian ridge and head west around the Mountain, in the hopes of reaching the Sea. He described a place high above the ridge, with strange hissing cracks where fire spirits lived. He said he thought Havoc could see them, and he had no desire to go near them again. “But I think we can avoid them if we keep lower down. There’s bound to be a trail to the coast, and maybe a village where we can steal a boat.”

  “Or we could find a way to Hekabi’s village,” said Pirra. “They’ll help us. And I’ve buried some gold behind one of the huts.”

  He took that in silence.

  Pirra was uncomfortably aware that she hadn’t mentioned the Crows, or the dagger.

  She caught Hylas’ eye, and he glanced quickly away, and she knew that he was thinking of them too.

  24

  “That Mount Lykas where you grew up,” said Pirra in a low voice. “Is it anything like this?”

  “No,” said Hylas.

  They’d been heading west over a black slope spiked with red grass, but had halted before what lay ahead. From the summit to the roots, a great shoulder of the Mountain had been scorched to cinders: a whole tree-covered spur blasted by poisonous breath.

  “Could a forest fire have done it?” said Pirra.

  “I don’t see how. Those pines have all fallen downhill. Whatever it was, it came from above.”

  Uneasily, they craned their necks a
t the smoking summit.

  “Look how it bulges,” said Pirra. “As if something’s trying to thrust its way out.”

  Or someone, thought Hylas.

  Down in the forest, it had been easy to forget the Mountain. Up here, these blasted pines felt like a warning. Know that I am all-powerful, the Lady of Fire was telling them, and that you only survive because I permit it.

  Havoc bounded onto the spur and sneezed, then glanced back at him. She was right. They had no choice but to cross it.

  A hot wind whirled ash in their eyes as they picked their way over the cinders. Charcoal branches were slippery underfoot, and the bitter smell reminded Hylas of the burned valley last summer, and of the Angry Ones, who haunt charred places.

  In an undertone, he asked Pirra if she thought they haunted the Mountain too.

  “I don’t think even the Angry Ones would dare.” She made to say something else, but just then, Havoc gave an excited little grunt and darted to a burned pine log.

  “She’s found something,” said Hylas.

  The lion cub was sniffing eagerly. She’d found a piece of scat. It was packed with deer hair and shards of bone, and when Hylas bent closer, he caught its acrid smell. “Lion,” he said.

  Pirra turned pale. “What, up here?”

  “Look, there are the tracks.”

  He followed them, with Havoc sniffing each print. “They’re widely spaced,” he said, “that means it was going fast . . . Some of the paw prints are deeper than the others. It was wounded, dragging its right hind leg . . .” He lost the trail in a tangle of charred branches.

  Pirra cast about her in alarm. “D’you think it’s still here?”

  He shook his head. “These tracks are old. Must’ve been made by Havoc’s father or mother.”

  “What was a lion doing this high up?”

  “Who knows? Maybe trying to escape.”

  Havoc had already set off across the blasted spur. Hylas noticed how starkly she stood out, a streak of gold against the charcoal slope. His own fair hair must show up like a beacon.