Eska ran blindly into the twilight, her head full of bears and wolves and cursed anthems. She hadn’t wanted to leave the Labyrinth, even when Flint disappeared into the tent and she was left alone with the Fur Tribe and their mutterings – ‘She’s cursed by the Ice Queen!’ ‘She’s rotten to the core!’ But Eska was no match for Blade and, when he seized her by the arm and marched her towards the ladder, she’d had no choice but to follow.
Now she kept running. Back in Winterfang, she had always dreamed of escaping and finding the tribes. But the Fur people hadn’t been what she was expecting and she felt more alone than ever now. When Blade had grabbed her, she had wanted to call out for Flint whom she had started to think of as a friend, but she hadn’t dared. Because she could see the Fur Tribe were turning against him and Flint didn’t deserve that.
Eska stumbled over a log and crashed down into the snow. She lay there for several seconds, her eyes shining with unshed tears.
An owl hooted, the darkness drew closer and Eska forced herself to her feet. She needed to find some kind of shelter before the light vanished completely. Food would have to wait until the morning.
The shadow of a lynx flitted between the trees and, every time a branch creaked or a twig snapped, Eska flinched. But she kept going until eventually she came to a few slats of wood arranged like a wigwam around a tree trunk. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to hide her until dawn. And so, gathering up a handful of sticks and moss for a fire, Eska crawled inside.
She reached into her pocket and drew out the two splints of metal Inch had stuffed into her palm as Blade pushed her down the ladder. She hadn’t looked to see what they were at the time, though she’d had her suspicions, but as she turned them over in her hand now she felt a lump in her throat. Fire-starters. There had been goodness among the Fur Tribe, but their fear of outsiders was so deep-rooted it meant it wasn’t as easy to spot as she had hoped.
She struck the metal splints against each other again and again, just as Flint had done back in the food store, but nothing happened and, before long, Eska’s fingers felt like rods of ice.
‘Please work,’ she whimpered. ‘Please, please work . . .’
And perhaps somewhere the Sky Gods were listening. Because the flames caught then and, lying on her side in that abandoned shack, Eska watched them flicker until she fell asleep.
She woke to the sound of a sleigh skimming over the snow. Stamping out the embers of the fire, Eska waited. The light coming through the slats showed it was dawn already, but something wasn’t right. Eska listened for the Ice Queen’s anthem, for the voices floating out over the kingdom, but there was nothing. Which could only mean one thing: the Ice Queen wasn’t in her palace. She was on the move.
The sound of the sleigh drew closer and Eska hugged her knees to her chest. It sounded different to the sled that had whisked her away from Winterfang. It was louder against the snow – heavier – and, instead of the patter of husky paws rushing through the trees, Eska could hear the pounding of hooves. Her blood froze. Musk oxen. And only one person rode a sleigh drawn by musk oxen. The Ice Queen.
Eska’s skin chilled. The Fur Tribe would have brushed away her footprints from the Labyrinth the night before, but once a safe distance away from the hideout they would have left them – which meant the Ice Queen could track her. Eska chewed her lip. She couldn’t stay: the Ice Queen had hexed these musk oxen so that they had the strength to run for hours on end. They would find her soon. She had to run, fast, as far as she could.
She lifted back a slat of wood and darted out of the shack into the dazzling sunlight, half running, half stumbling as she pushed through the trees. Her legs were unsteady beneath her and, after a few seconds, a stitch burned in her side, but she forced herself on, one boot in front of the other. She wasn’t going back to Winterfang. Not now. Not ever.
Eska scrambled over fallen trees and skidded on patches of ice, but fear made her blunder on. Then she threw a glance over her shoulder. The Ice Queen’s silver sleigh was there, fifty metres behind, carving a channel through the trees. The queen’s eyes met Eska’s and she smiled through thin blue lips, her teardrop gown billowing behind her. Two Tusk warriors, clad in breastplates of ice armour and holding whips and spears, stood on the sleigh either side of her and, in front, four enormous musk oxen with matted black coats and swooping horns churned up the snow.
‘Stop! In the name of the Ice Queen!’ the guards roared.
Eska dragged her legs on, her heart smashing against her ribcage. She needed the forest to close in, like it had around the Labyrinth, then the Ice Queen’s sleigh wouldn’t be able to force its way through. But the trees here were growing sparser and smaller and, from behind Eska, a whip lashed and the musk oxen ran faster.
Then, to Eska’s horror, the trees stopped. Just like that. And she burst out into the open. In front of her now were the foothills of mountains: rolling valleys that folded in rivers of melting ice and little copses of trees, before eventually climbing up to form the Never Cliffs. The morning sun glittered over the hills and, with a sweeping sense of dread, Eska tried to keep running. But even the slightest incline bit back at her. She didn’t have the stamina for the wild and she knew it.
The sleigh raced closer and Eska whirled round to see the Ice Queen, just metres away, standing in front of her cushioned seat, her staff held high in her hands. Eska grimaced and turned to carry on, but the queen’s words wrapped round her like a snare.
‘You ran away, Eska! Ungrateful child! After everything I did to keep you safe at Winterfang!’
‘Keep me safe?’ Eska panted as she ploughed up the hill. ‘You held me under a curse!’
The moment the words left her mouth, Eska realised her mistake. Fear had made her careless; it had caught her off guard.
‘So you can speak, you little wretch!’ And then the Ice Queen laughed – a bitter laugh that made Eska’s skin crawl.
She ran on, hardly daring to look behind her, then something hard and cold slammed into her back and she was flung, face first, to the ground. Spitting snow and gasping for breath, she looked up. A circle of musk oxen closed in, their heads hung low, their black ice horns glinting in the sunlight.
The Ice Queen held up her staff and the musk oxen stayed where they were, thrashing their horns from side to side, then she stepped off her sleigh, leaving the Tusk guards standing either side of it.
‘I’ve come to take you home,’ she cooed and the musk oxen parted as she stepped into their circle.
She stooped and slid five long white fingers round Eska’s neck. Eska’s pulse drummed at the sight of the red ring on the Ice Queen’s thumb – she’d heard Slither say it was filled with frozen blood – then, quite unexpectedly, there was a scream from one of the guards.
The eagle had come out of nowhere, a golden bullet racing through the sky and ripping the guards’ spears from their hands. The men grappled in the snow for their weapons, but before they could snatch them up the eagle turned and plummeted again, raking its talons across the guards’ faces. The men fell to the ground, clutching their bloodied skin, while the eagle beat its mighty wings up into the sky once more.
Ignoring the guards’ cries, the Ice Queen grabbed Eska by the scruff of her neck and dragged her towards the sleigh. She stamped her staff on to the snow and the musk oxen obeyed, gathering in line before the vehicle.
But the eagle was careering down again, its body tucked in like a barrel. Eska closed her eyes as the bird plunged towards her – she felt sure that it would never stop – but at the very last moment it spread out its wings and in one sweeping arc it dashed the staff from the Ice Queen’s hand, splitting it in two with its talons.
The musk oxen jerked at the ropes that bound them to the sleigh, suddenly waking from the curse that the staff had held over them, and when their ropes snapped, the Ice Queen’s grip on Eska loosened just long enough for her to dart free. She scrambled backwards, hardly noticing that something had slipped from her pocket into the sno
w, then flung herself into a run. Behind her, the Ice Queen screamed as the musk oxen, no longer under her command, charged off into the forest.
Eska ran at the hill, her ears ringing with the eagle’s high-pitched cries, and only at the top did she allow herself to glance back. The eagle was nowhere to be seen now, but the Ice Queen was bent over the snow and, with a shrill laugh, she picked something up and glared at Eska.
‘I will steal your voice by force!’ she shrieked. ‘When Slither sees what I have here in my hand there will be no stopping his contraption!’
Eska’s insides turned as she dug her own hand into her pocket. The key to the music box was no longer there. And, while she couldn’t possibly know what Slither had created or how the Ice Queen planned to use the key, Eska realised the threat of it all because the queen was stalking off towards the forest, back to Winterfang, with her guards trailing blindly behind her. She could have battled on against the eagle if the bird had returned, but she hadn’t and that fact lay like a cold dark stone inside Eska.
She watched the Ice Queen disappear into the trees, then turned back to the foothills. They rose and fell before her like waves and Eska wondered how anyone could remember their way through when every hill looked just like the last. She sighed, then her eyes fixed on a lone tree a little further down the hill.
And there was the eagle. Perched on a branch like a sentinel.
Eska approached slowly and stopped just a few metres away from the bird. And, as she watched the majestic creature, something like a memory, only looser and less defined, stirred inside her. It was a feeling that although she had no obvious place among Erkenwald’s people she might just have a place among its animals. The feeling lingered for a second longer and then vanished and Eska carried on looking at the eagle.
It was the same one she had freed from the snare before Deeproots. She could see the wound to its left talon, still red and raw from the trap, but that hadn’t stopped it attacking just moments ago. And Flint’s words about it struggling to survive with an injured talon seemed almost ridiculous now.
But, even if Eska hadn’t seen that talon, she would have known the eagle by its eyes: yellow orbs, fierce like the sun. The eagle blinked, then it launched itself off its branch and sailed across the hills until it was nothing more than a speck in the sky, leaving Eska alone once again.
Eska trudged on through the foothills, squinting into the glaring sun. The snow was melting in places with patches of grass, juniper and rocks poking out and once or twice she jumped as a chunk of snow crunched away from the hillside, then slid down into a hollow. She climbed up on to a ridge. She needed to find shelter, a place to hide should the Ice Queen return, but she was thirsty and hungry and her legs were close to buckling. She picked up a handful of snow and sucked on it, but it tasted stale, like animal sweat, and she spat it back out.
Eska looked out at the landscape before her. There wasn’t a living soul in any direction – just the curved backs of the foothills. She sighed. This was a vast and silent emptiness that she knew nothing about. She thought of what Flint might do. He moved quickly, thought quickly and spoke quickly, but Eska did none of those things. She felt tears prick the back of her eyes as she remembered his words to her on the sled: You don’t even know anything. And he was right. Flint was a part of the wilderness – he understood it – but, as Eska gazed upon it, she felt that it could swallow her whole.
She sat down on a rock, pulled her hood up against the wind and closed her eyes. She was an outcast whichever way she turned. And yet there had been that moment with the eagle on the hillside; somehow things had felt, for a fleeting second, almost familiar.
Eska’s eyes sprang open as a noise – a high-pitched cry – sounded from further across the hills.
The cry came again, splitting through the wind, but when Eska threw back her hood she saw only snow-covered hills. She scrunched up her eyes and scanned the foothills and it was then she saw the eagle gliding above the ridges, a dark streak against the deep blue sky.
Eska watched the bird for a few seconds. Perhaps it was hunting for mice or marmots – Flint had said as much back on his sled – but, as she looked on, Eska began to wonder whether that was really what the eagle was doing. It didn’t dive down to catch any prey, but it didn’t sail off into the distance either. It just soared between the hills, back and forth, back and forth, as if – maybe – it was waiting for something.
Eska looked around. Perhaps it was waiting for another eagle. But no more birds appeared and, as the eagle cried again, Eska thought of Flint’s words: There’s a bond between animals and tribes out here. Her breath fluttered. Was the eagle helping her in return for saving it from the trap? Eska stood up and, because she had no bond with any person or any place, she found herself walking over the hills after the eagle.
She was hungry still and her legs ached more than ever, but something about the bird made her want to follow it and, as Eska crested yet another hill, her heart leapt. Before her lay a valley and in it was a wide, meandering river folded in on both sides by hills. There was a small forest wrapped round one of the hills to her left and beyond, where the river narrowed further up the valley into a ravine, she saw the landscape rise into jagged peaks. The start of the Never Cliffs, possibly, where Flint had said the Feather Tribe lay hidden. Maybe they would offer her protection. Maybe they would be more welcoming than the Fur Tribe and she’d be able to find a way to work with them to defeat the Ice Queen . . . It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all she had, though if she was going to make the journey to find them she’d need to learn to hunt and build shelters first.
Eska skidded down the hillside, boots slipping on loose stones and snow, until she came to the river. She knelt beside it, cupping hands into the water where the ice had melted, and gulped the liquid down. It was cool and fresh, like drinking the wind, and when the ripples stilled Eska saw all the red, greens and blues of the rocks on the riverbed. Suddenly the landscape didn’t seem as white and as bare as it had done before. The eagle cried above her again. She had been following it for at least an hour now and it seemed to do that every time she stopped to catch her breath – and Eska couldn’t help feeling, or hoping, that it was trying to lead her somewhere.
She walked on through the valley beside the river, keeping the eagle in her sights as it flew ahead, and, just when she felt that she couldn’t possibly drag her legs on any further, the eagle landed on a rocky ledge leaning out over the river.
Eska blinked. She had been looking up at the eagle for so long that she had missed what had happened to the river. Before her was a waterfall, shielded on either side by crags and rowan trees, only the water itself hadn’t melted up here. It was locked in ice still: a great white curtain built of icicles that hung in spiked ropes.
Eska thought of the organ in Winterfang. The icicles that formed that instrument had been conjured by dark magic – and every day she had trembled at the sight of them – but, though these were just as fierce and splendid, they did not bend to another’s power. They were wild and gazing at them now Eska wondered whether she had found something as powerful as the Ice Queen.
She glanced up at the eagle, expecting it to fly away. But it simply sat, its eyes fixed on the waterfall level with its perch. Eska looked again, at the rocks either side, capped with polished ice, and at the jagged blue tips of the icicles hanging down. It was so quiet, this waterfall, but Eska sensed it was only holding its breath. One day soon, as the days stretched out and the melting began, it would roar. And, as she was thinking of the rush and pound of water to come, she found herself squinting at the frozen spirals, looking deeper, harder, than she had before. She clambered on to the rocks, aware of the eagle watching her every move, and her heart skipped a beat.
There was a tiny gap between the icicles in the waterfall and, behind that, Eska could see wood, not rock as she had expected. She edged still closer, her eyes glued to the ice, then suddenly the eagle squawked from its ledge and Eska looked down. Sh
e was only centimetres away from a sheer drop down to the river.
Carefully, Eska climbed over the rocks until they spread out into a platform beneath the eagle’s perch. The waterfall hung like a veil in front of her and she noticed the rocky plinth she stood on extended right under it and that there was an opening in the ice large enough for a person to squeeze through. Eska could no longer see the eagle above her, but she could feel it watching, waiting, so she crept over the stone platform before ducking behind the ice.
Her eyes widened. On her left hung the waterfall, a silent shield, but on her right there was a small wooden door built into the rock face. Eska blinked. Did somebody live behind this waterfall, tucked out of sight from the rest of the world? Was it safe for her to stay? She thought of the Ice Queen and Slither brewing curses to snatch her voice – she needed shelter from their dark magic and this place was about as secret as shelters could come.
She stretched out her hand and knocked on the door. Silence. She knocked again, a little louder this time, but still no one answered. And then Eska reached for the handle, a piece of wood carved into a half-moon, and turned it.
The door creaked open and, as the light spilled in, a smile spread across Eska’s face. Nestled into the rocky chamber in front of her there was a table laden with wooden bowls and spoons and boxed in by several chairs. There was a stove cut into the rock, too, and beyond that two beds draped with furs. Eska gasped. Someone had even chiselled a little tunnel into the right-hand side of the rock and a pane of glass had been fitted at the end. Eska wondered whether she might be able to see the eagle perched on its ledge from there, then her gaze fell to the item leaning against the tunnel wall. The best thing of all. A spear.
‘I can hunt now,’ Eska murmured. ‘There’ll be fish in the river – and probably bears around, too.’ She paused. ‘Though I’m not sure I’m quite ready to tackle them.’
She grinned. This had to be one of the food stores scattered over Erkenwald that Flint had mentioned. Somehow the eagle had led her right to it and, though Eska’s mind was spinning with the discovery, she didn’t rush inside right away. She crept back to the opening in the ice and looked up at the eagle on its ledge.
Sky Song Page 6
