SHADOW WEAVER

by Claire Merle

  Shadow Weaver

  Claire Merle

  Copyright © 2017 by Claire Merle

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Claire Merle to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Sean, West, and Lana.

  Ederiss: Land of the five known kingdoms. Throughout the winter, the sun vanishes below the horizon and the lands are dark and frozen. Throughout the summer, it is always day. All creatures of Ederiss have evolved with hibernation. They rest through the dark winter months in a state of torpor. The Carucans call this "the long-sleep".

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Note from the Author

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  One

  I splay across a rock, semi-frozen. The finger-deep layer of snow against my back softens the lumpy stone. My eyelids soak up the sun's amber rays. After three months of winter's endless darkness, I am making the most of this serene breath of sunlight.

  “Mirra, get down here!” my little brother Kel shouts.

  “I’m coming,” I say. But I don't move. Steal a few more seconds, longing for the midnight sun when it is warm enough to lose our heavy parkas and furs and jump in the cool flowing river.

  A thin layer of ice cracks as my brother leaps to my side of the stream. His boots crunch and scrape against the snow. I smile at his impatience, haul to my feet and slide down the rock, tiny white avalanches falling with me. Near the bottom, I hook onto a pine branch to stop my descent. Flakes clasp the needles. Ice necklaces hang in little trails between the branches, and a gray-backed spider's web dangles by my gloved fingers. The spider rocks in its diamond woven center. Dead. But not for long. Like the fish and the beetles and the worms, it freezes when winter sweeps in, and reanimates in the spring.

  “So what have you got?” I ask Kel.

  My brother lifts his sharpened stick. He grins at the stiff pug-faced fish skewered on the end. He has excavated it from the bottom ice where the fish struggle for refuge as the top waters freeze during the onset of winter. No master spearing techniques.

  “A Grump!” he says. “Now you have to say it: Long live Kelson the great hunter!” Blonde tangled hair flops over his brow. His fur trousers and parka hang off him. He fattened up before we hibernated for the deep winter long-sleep, but now he's skinny again. The golden flecks in his blue irises glitter and swirl. He'll be six in a few weeks, so the shimmer in his eyes may not fade for another year or two.

  “Excellent find, Kel. Well done.”

  “No, you have to say, ‘Long live Kelson, the great hunter!’”

  “Long live Kelson, the great hunter!” I ruffle his hair. He ducks and I stride across the stream to fetch my pack, bow and fire bundle. We haven't long before the sun begins its rapid descent. Better to leave now and trace our snowy tracks back to camp before dusk comes down over Blackfoot forest.

  Kel's lined up the fish I scooped from the riverbed ice earlier. He's placed them two by two, like a ladder. Rainbow Sparkles, nose to nose; Suntrouts, nose to nose; Mudwaters, nose to nose.

  “Did you do that?” I ask. A rhetorical question because you could walk for days in any direction and find no one. Because other than Ma, Pa and Kel, I haven't seen another living person since Kel was a baby.

  My brother nods, dropping the spear and picking up his wooden beetle farm. He inspects a frozen bug, turning the shell so it glistens. I gaze at the neat lines of his fish display. I'm wondering what he was thinking, when there comes a whisper on the horizon of my mind's eye. A flare of color, so faint, I'm uncertain whether I have imagined it.

  Kel arranges the beetle in his wooden box and ties on the lid. He doesn't seem to have noticed. Prickles of heat flood my cheeks. We can perceive the shadowy memories drawn up by another person in the present if that person is close enough—within screaming distance on a windless day.

  I stretch my attention through the forest. A memory drifts in the mind-world like mist through a valley. Growing clearer, closer.

  Ruffled blankets. Wreaths of curly brown hair. Twilight glowing on wooden tumbledown walls.

  Kel's head shoots up. He saw that. You couldn't miss it!

  “Is Pa looking for us?” he asks. My heart skips a beat as I scoop up the fish carcases, wrap them in deerskin and dump them in my bag. He must sense it's not Pa as well as I do.

  “Put your pack on,” I say, forcing my voice to sound calm. With the churned up snow around the stream, and the broken ice, any attempt to conceal our presence will be useless. I strap on my rucksack and pick up my bow and quiver. Kel stands stiffly as I shove his beetle farm into his bag and hook the strap around his shoulders. His glittering eyes blaze with shock.

  “Let's go,” I say. Hand in hand, we leap over the stream and half-jogging, half-running move east, away from the falling sun. Our boot prints guide us through skiffs of snow and crowded, prickly pines. If we manage to keep up the pace, we will be with our parents in fifteen minutes.

  “Who are they?” Kel asks. Panic and our unrelenting speed make his voice breathy.

  “I don't know.”

  “Are they looking for us?”

  How could they be? No one knows we're here. “No. No, they're not looking for us.” Not yet.

  “Did they find the magic door?”

  Irritation flickers through me. Not at Kel. It's not his fault our mother decided the best way to deal with his nightmares was not to deal with them at all. So he believes when he was a baby we found a magic door into a forgotten land where the bad men couldn't follow. I think they should have told him the truth a long time ago. I was four when I understood that nowhere in the three western Kingdoms of Ederiss, nowhere this side of hundreds of miles of impassable mountains and frozen tundra, would I be safe until I was seven or eight and the golden sparkle in my eyes faded.

  I squeeze my brother's hand. “It's OK, everything's fine. We just have to get back to Ma and Pa.”

  The smooth white surface is unpredictable. Our feet slam into gnarled roots, jarring our bodies. Sudden hollows leave us panting with the extra effort of extracting boots from deep snow
. My fire bundle, wooden sun-clock and the fish thump around in my backpack. Kel wheezes, breath hissing in and out of his small chest. Far off, the wind moans through the jagged mountain range that blocks the north. An eagle screeches high in the empty vault of sky above our sheltered forest, searching the land for prey.

  We have been jogging for ten minutes, when beyond the squeak and crunch of our boots and the clunk of our packs, I hear a dog bark.

  “What was that?”

  “Run!” I drag my brother behind me, clasping his gloved hand. “Faster, Kel.”

  We plummet down a drift, weaving between tightly clustered trees. The low sun glimmers and dances on the swathes of untouched snow.

  Kel breathes in gasping snatches, his face turning bright red. My calf muscles ache, pain shooting through them at regular intervals. It is too soon after the long-sleep for such exertion. Kel claws his fist against his chest and I know we can't keep this up.

  “I got a stitch,” he wheezes.

  “Just a bit longer.”

  “It hurts.”

  “All right,” I say, slowing a little. “You're doing really well.”

  He looks at me with such trust in his eyes, I feel sick. A sense of panic churns my empty stomach. He has seen stuff like this in my memories. And worse. Before he was born, before my one and only friend Asmine was taken, we lived in the Sea of Trees beyond Black Slope Mountain, where hundreds of Uru Ana families hide their glitter-eyed children. Out-running bounty hunters and poachers was regular enough.

  I've tried not to think of Asmine for the last few years, but even if my little brother has heeded Ma's warnings never to enter our minds, we all have memories that rise unbidden from the darkness. He knows what will happen if men find him even if he doesn't understand how they came here.

  Kel’s hand snaps from mine. I reach to grab him but I'm not quick enough. He falls hard on a tangle of surface roots. I drop my pack and pick him up. His face looms before me before I swing him onto my back. There is a red welt on his bony cheek where he is cut, and snow and dirt on his forehead. He is holding back tears. His attempt at bravery makes my chest squeeze tighter and my own unwanted tears push up my throat. I swallow them down and hook my hands together behind me to secure his legs. He buries his head deep in my fur hood, snivelling.

  I hesitate for a moment, unwilling to abandon the fish, and my bow and fire tools. I throw Kel's bag up into a tree to hide it, then strap my own to my front.

  “You have to carry my bow and quiver.”

  “OK.” He bunches them under his arm and they press into my shoulder. I push forward, jogging again. We cannot be far now. Icy snow cracks beneath my boots. Our earlier prints have softened in the sun at the edges and now grow crusty and hard. This is tracking snow.

  I think of setting out with the sunrise two hours ago. Desperate to get away. The week it takes for us to regain our strength after the long-sleep always drives me crazy. Hunkering around a spitting fire while strangling hours of darkness, unable to escape one another. I couldn't wait to be far from Ma's smothering memories. Now I search for her mind to guide us home. Oh, the irony.

  The dog barks again.

  Much closer.

  There are two men following it, but I find it difficult to gauge how far they are behind the dog. One mind is as hard and impenetrable as a fort. The other feels like wrestling in mud.

  I scan the trees and spot a pine with several stunted branches at the trunk. I drop my pack and slide Kel off my back.

  “OK, Bud,” I say. “Climb up as far as you can.” He stares at me, cheeks stained with tear lines. “I’m going to get rid of the dog,” I explain. He wipes his nose with his sleeve and nods.

  “You climb up and don't make a sound. Now. Quick.” I lift him onto the first branch. Pine needles shake and snow flutters from the branches as he ascends.

  I pull off my right glove, hesitating between knife and bow. Knife-throwing is my strength. I've been handling and throwing them since I was five, practising until my shoulders ached and my arms were strong. But a bow and arrow is the hunter's weapon and far easier with a moving target.

  I unwrap the fish, cut off one of the Suntrout's heads and drop it away from Kel's hideout. Then I jog back twenty paces. Standing absolutely still, I wait.

  High in the trees, wind rustles snow-tipped pine needles. Somewhere close by I hear tapping. A squirrel or perhaps a bird pecking its way out of a sealed tree hole. I sense hundreds of small animal minds, sleeping under the ground, in tree hollows and snow-dens. I nock the arrow in my bow, focus my thoughts.

  The dog lets out a single bark. I concentrate on where I feel it bounding in our direction. Its shaggy white and gray coat emerges through the trees. Large yellow eyes. Tail pointing upwards. A beautiful wolf dog.

  If I don't do this, it will keep coming. It will lead the hunters after us once we clear camp and vanish back over our maze of trails to hide our retreat.

  The wolf dog slows, scenting the fish. I sight my eye down the arrow, tighten the flex on the bow. It looks up from my offerings, meeting my gaze. I release my fingers. The shaft spins through the air. There comes a loud yelp. The dog leaps forward and for a moment I don't understand. I think I've missed. But then the dog collapses on its hind legs, baring its teeth, ears flat back against its head, my arrow jutting out from its front leg. I grab my pack and return to Kel's tree.

  “Hurry, Kel. Get down!” My brother scuffles and slips his way towards the ground. I reach out to help him from the last branch. His eyes flick over my shoulder. He sees something that makes him lose balance and cry out. I catch his arm to stop him falling, push him back into the tree. There is a small throwing knife in my waistband. I wind my hand around my back to retrieve it and turn.

  Two

  A lean silhouette leaps through the undergrowth with determination and speed. He is backlit by the setting sun, vanishing and reappearing between trees. I recognize my father's mind at once. Distracted by the men and the wolf dog, I hadn't sensed him approaching. He must have come looking for us because he heard the hound's bark. He must have followed our outbound prints, because unlike Kel and me, he cannot sense people's minds.

  “Pa!” Kel shouts. My brother jumps from his hideout, not caring anymore about twisting his ankle or hurting himself. Not caring about anything but getting himself into our father's arms.

  Pa scans the forest, blue eyes bright and keen in his rugged face. He takes in the injured dog, the cut on Kel's cheek, the state of me breathless from all the jogging and carrying and shooting. Then he hoists his bow onto his shoulder and lifts Kel into his arms, pulls him tight to his chest, one hand stroking the back of my brother's head.

  Side by side, with their slim faces, and gray-blue eyes, it is easy to see they are father and son. Kel looks like Pa, and with all that blonde hair and warm yellowy-pink skin, he takes after my mother too.

  We abandon the wolf dog and jog back to camp, Kel on Pa's back. My father says nothing as we move swiftly, the air growing chillier with the parting daylight. I can't tell if he's angry, worried or focused on what lies ahead. The next couple of hours—how quickly we can pack up and how far we can get without leaving obvious tracks—are crucial.

  I wonder if we should have put the hound out of its misery, and what the men will do when they find it injured. My father did not take his knife to the creature and I couldn't bring myself to finish the job. My arrow had pierced its front leg. With proper care it will have a good chance of healing. That was what made me hesitate. And there wasn't time for such indecision, so I left it.

  There is a break in the thicket, a downward slope where our camp nestles behind the high banks of snow we dug out yesterday. Smoke curls towards the sky, suspended in frosty air that preserves footprints, skinned pelts, and bone remnants, long after those who left them have gone.

  As the wooden tent poles come into view, pictures shimmer in the mind-world.

  Bare feet on warm stone floors. Hot water baths. She lathers oil tha
t smells of summer and hope over her slim, sixteen-year-old calves.

  It is the year before my mother met my father. Ma's reminiscing has this annoying way of echoing whatever age I am. Her thoughts break off as she hears our boot steps in the compacted snow. The smell of warm oatmeal hits me and my stomach grumbles. Ma rises, cheeks red from sitting too close to the fire, wisps of blonde hair escaping the fur ruff of her hood. I am neither blonde like Ma, nor blue-eyed like Pa. My wide-set oval eyes and flat-bridged snub nose are typical of the Uru Ana. I resemble my mother's mother, who passed down the sight to Kel and me, even though it skipped Ma.

  Pa puts Kel down. “Get your clothes together,” he tells my brother. Kel crosses the clearing towards our sleeping tents. Ma intercepts him with a quick hug. Her eyes watch Pa and me anxiously, the lost gaze clearing. My father picks up a large copper pan, scoops snow and douses the fire. The flames suffocate with barely any smoke.

  Once Kel has moved inside the skin tent where he and I sleep, Pa turns to me.

  “How many?” he asks.

  “Two.”

  “Bounty hunters?”

  “I don't know.” But if they set eyes on Kel, it won't matter. They'll want him.