‘Balapan,’ she whispered.
And at the name the eagle looked up and turned round, as if it had been waiting for Eska to say that word from the very first moment they met.
Eska could have stayed inside her hideaway for the rest of the day quite happily. But it turned out Balapan was bossy as well as protective and the eagle had yapped outside her door until Eska snatched up her spear and made her way out into the valley again.
Ears pricked for the sound of a sleigh, Eska trudged up the tallest of the hills after the eagle. She paused halfway up, her face shining with sweat, and watched as the eagle soared above her. Balapan’s eyes didn’t roam the hillside aimlessly as Eska’s did. They darted about, from one part of the valley to the next, and as Eska looked harder – deeper – she saw the landscape as the eagle did: the herd of caribou denting the horizon on the other side of the valley; the ghost-like shape of a snow hare darting up a hill; and the footprints of wolves, lemmings and marmots scoring the snow around them.
Eska carried on walking, and watching, and in the hour that followed she found a discarded caribou antler that she realised could serve as a bow to accompany the quiverful of arrows she’d spotted in the hideaway. And she flushed a snow hare from its burrow, which Balapan pounced upon, and Eska decided she would use the animal to make mittens that fitted – the fur for gloves and the sinew for thread.
The wild was still vast and unknowable, but Eska was learning how to carve out her own small place in it. And, though this small place thronged with animals instead of people, Eska discovered, quite unexpectedly, that she was starting to feel a part of it, that she was less alone than she had thought.
She sat on a large rock and thanked the North Star and the snow hare’s spirit for a successful hunt, then she turned to face Balapan, who was perched beside her.
‘We make a good team, you and me.’
The eagle looked at Eska, long and hard, and in those bright yellow eyes Eska saw something precious, something she had almost given up on. The Ice Queen despised her, the Fur Tribe had driven her out, but this eagle was telling her she mattered.
Eska listened to the rush of river water echoing through the valley. ‘I don’t belong to a tribe – I don’t really know where I fit in exactly – but if my tribe ends up just being you and me, Balapan, that would be enough.’
The eagle shuffled nearer until she was so close Eska could see the vane of each golden feather. Then she watched, hardly daring to breathe, as Balapan leant against her. The eagle felt warm and strong and at its touch a deep-buried chord inside Eska’s heart thrummed because to know the closeness of another in a wilderness was to belong, even at the very edge of things.
But, when Balapan flinched, Eska knew something wasn’t right.
Scooping the hare into the game bag she had found in the hideaway, Eska crept after the eagle as it flapped to the uppermost ridge of the hill. The eagle crouched below the skyline, with just her head poking over, and Eska did the same.
At first Eska saw only the towering peaks of the ice-capped Never Cliffs in the distance, but when she brought her gaze closer, down into the neighbouring valley, her stomach lurched. A sleigh, much bigger and much, much faster than the one she had seen before in Deeproots, was speeding between the hills.
They were too far away to hear anything, but Eska watched, rooted to the spot in fear, as six more musk oxen pulled the Ice Queen, flanked by a dozen Tusk guards in glistening armour, closer and closer towards the north of the valley. Eska’s mind whirled. Was there a path from the neighbouring valley to hers? Could a sleigh pass through the ravine above the frozen waterfall?
She tore down the hillside, wincing as she stumbled on a loose stone and her ankle gave way beneath her. She forced herself up and, limping through the pain, carried on down the hill before weaving between the rowan trees by the river and clambering over the rocks leading down to the waterfall. Balapan slipped into her nest – a lookout should anything happen – and, with her ankle throbbing and her heart hammering, Eska squeezed through the opening in the ice and closed the hideaway door behind her.
Trying to ignore the burn in her leg, she waited, crouched in the tunnel before the window, her eyes wide with fear. She had drawn the sack curtains across the pane that morning, but through the narrowest of cracks Eska looked out now.
There was nothing for a long time and, as the light began to fade, Eska wondered whether perhaps the Ice Queen had failed to find a way through the valley and had given up and gone back to Winterfang. But then, out of nowhere: the sound of a sleigh from the north.
The Ice Queen was coming.
Eska drew back from the window, pinning herself against the tunnel wall. She listened as the sleigh pulled to a halt somewhere nearby and the grunts of the cursed musk oxen rumbled into the twilight. Eska’s heart thumped at the clink of the Tusk ice armour, but she kept absolutely still. Then the Ice Queen’s voice came, loud and sharp and so close Eska could almost feel the words slipping down her spine.
‘I summon you foothills under my hold.
Take the girl and the boy into your fold.’
Eska’s breath caught in her throat. The girl and the boy . . . Did the Ice Queen mean Flint? Had her candles whispered of his presence in Winterfang? And had Eska put him in danger even without the Fur Tribe taking her in?
The Ice Queen’s voice dropped as she addressed her guards. ‘The hills will only remain under my command until the midnight sun rises – in eleven days’ time. I must achieve immortality before then so I can extend my power over every living thing in Erkenwald for ever: hills, rivers, forests, lakes.’ She paused. ‘And, once I’ve swallowed the voices of the Fur and Feather Tribes, I will kill every single one of them so that you, my Tusks, can share in the glory of an Erkenwald ruled by dark magic.’
There were murmurs of excitement from the guards, then the Ice Queen added, ‘But if I fail to steal these voices in time I will vanish with the midnight sun and all those touched by my magic – my prisoners, Eska’s memories and my Tusk Tribe – will perish alongside me.’
The guards were suddenly quiet and the Ice Queen went on. ‘I must ride back to Winterfang; Slither’s contraption is complete and I want to see if it does what he says it is capable of – but you will stay and search Deeproots. I want that forest patrolled. A boy from the Fur Tribe helped Eska escape and he must be taught a lesson. The girl needs to be isolated and helpless if I am to take her voice before she learns about the power of the Sky Song.’
At the mention of the Sky Song, Eska risked a glance through the window. The Ice Queen was standing on a rock overhanging the river, her fingers wrapped round a staff of glistening black crystal. It was taller and thicker than her previous sceptre and at the sight of it Eska withdrew. The Ice Queen thumped her staff against the rock and the musk oxen lashed their horns against the nearby branches. Moments later, Eska heard the lurch of a sleigh and then, finally, there was silence once again.
She peered out of the window to see the silhouette of the eagle standing up in the nest on the ledge. Eska breathed a sigh of relief, but as she thought of the hills boxing in the valley, dark and tall and bidden to the Ice Queen’s commands, she shivered. And what was this mysterious Sky Song the queen spoke of? Did it have something to do with her voice? She reached a hand up to her throat, suddenly frightened by what might lie inside it, then she shook herself and lit a lamp.
Eleven days. . . that’s what the Ice Queen had said. Just eleven days until the midnight sun and the queen took power over the whole kingdom. Eska gulped. Even if the Ice Queen failed to achieve immortality in that time the consequences would be disastrous: the prisoners at Winterfang would die and her memories – every single recollection of her past – would be lost for ever. Eska’s heart was racing now. There was no more time to prepare; she needed to press on into the Never Cliffs as soon as possible to find the Feather Tribe in the hope that they could help her. But her ankle was pounding and, as she eased off her boot, Eska sa
w that it was purple and swollen. She cursed under her breath. It would be a few days before the sprain healed enough for the journey onward.
Eska looked at her reflection in the metal of a dagger she had found in the hideaway. A girl stared back at her, but despite the sunken cheeks and straggled hair, this girl’s eyes were hard. The Ice Queen said she wanted Eska isolated and helpless, but that wasn’t going to happen.
Because she wasn’t the timid little prisoner she had been, locked inside the music box at Winterfang. She was out in the wild now – with a golden eagle by her side – and for the first time since leaving the palace, Eska dared to hope that the sum of all that might be enough against an Ice Queen with the power to conjure whole valleys to do her bidding.
During the days that followed, Eska bound her ankle with caribou hide and filled every waking hour learning how to face the wild head-on so that she was ready for the Never Cliffs when the time came. She took care of her shadow when fishing; she learnt to spot camouflaged snow hares by the flicker of their eyelids; she got her hunting ritual down to just a few words; she tracked snow buntings and geese to see where in the snow they plucked the mountain cranberries from; and, with each hour that passed, she grew to understand Balapan more. She knew which yap meant ‘yes’ and which meant ‘no’; she could tell the difference between a hiss and a squawk and a cry from the clouds that could only come from an animal that knew it was free.
What she didn’t understand though was her voice – how every morning since the Ice Queen’s visit her throat felt tighter and sorer than the day before and a strange iciness seemed to linger on her tongue. At first she had put it down to fear, but as the days bled on, and each morning her throat became increasingly painful and the cold in her mouth grew sharper, Eska felt sure the music box key and Slither’s contraption were behind things. Was the Ice Queen inching closer and closer to stealing her voice?
On the sixth morning after the Ice Queen’s visit to the valley, the morning Eska planned to leave for the Never Cliffs now that her ankle had healed, she woke to an almighty crash.
She sat bolt upright in her bed and reached for the dagger under her pillow. The anthem from Winterfang was drifting through the valley, but Eska listened beyond that. There was another noise – a roaring, churning, raging sound – and it was coming from just outside the hideaway.
Eska leapt out of bed, clasping her knife tight, and strained her ears towards the door. She recognised that roar . . . It was water – gallons of it – pouring down the valley. She edged towards the window and pulled the sacking back. Balapan was still there, tucked up in her nest, because she could tell without even opening her eyes which were the noises to be frightened of. And this ear-splitting roar was nothing to do with the Ice Queen. This was the wild talking.
Eska threw on her furs, then opened the door to her hideout.
The frozen fall was no longer there. Instead, a torrent of water burst over the ledge above her, cascading through the sunlight in a glittering curtain. Eska pushed her hair back from her eyes and peered through the water.
She could see the whole valley, snowy hills spliced into slithers by the waterfall, and she knew that, although her ankle was strong enough for the journey onward now, and with the midnight sun only five days away she needed to press on, she would miss these hills. They’d come to feel a bit like home. She cast her eyes towards the largest hill, the one whose snow still clung in knee-deep layers, and blinked. She could have sworn she saw something dark moving across it. She squinted harder. These shapes weren’t moving like animals; they were moving, unmistakably, like humans.
Eska swung her quiver over her shoulder, then crouched in the opening between the rock face and the waterfall. Balapan’s eyes were fixed on the hillside. Whoever it was out there, the eagle had seen them, too.
For a while, Eska just watched, but, when two figures swung into clear view round the middle of the hill, she frowned. They were a long way away, but even from this distance Eska could see that they weren’t especially tall and they weren’t clad in ice armour either.
‘Members of the Fur Tribe?’ she whispered.
Eska watched the figures slogging through the snow, then she listened to the Ice Queen’s anthem and thought of the command the queen had given to her guards. Were the Fur Tribe still safe now that Tusk guards patrolled the forest? She knew she shouldn’t care – this was a tribe that had cast her out – but somehow she did, despite what had happened.
She glanced up at Balapan. ‘Come on. Let’s take a closer look. I need to know that Flint and his tribe are safe.’
Eska strode off. The eagle didn’t follow, but the pull of other people drew the girl away from the waterfall. She kept to the rowan trees at first and when out in the open she darted between rocks and ridges. She couldn’t risk being seen just in case the figures were in fact Tusk guards.
But when she reached the foot of the largest hill and squatted down behind the boulders at its base, the remains of a long-ago landslide, Eska heard Balapan cry. High-pitched, drawn out, it was a warning.
Eska scoured the hillside for the figures and saw them halfway up, two dots against the snow. The Ice Queen’s anthem drifted away, then there was a loud grinding sound and, before Eska could even cry out, an enormous chunk of snow broke free from the summit and began sliding down the hill. The figures ran, but, although they were nimble and fast, they couldn’t outpace what was coming. Because this was no ordinary avalanche. This was a hillside under the Ice Queen’s control and for some reason it had waited until now to attack.
The snow swallowed everything in its path and as it surged down the hill it seemed to gather itself up into a roaring mass of white. Eska’s mouth dropped open. The avalanche was full of faces built from the snow itself – horns and fangs and bulbous noses, hooded eyes, pointed ears and gaping mouths – and they leered forward, spreading jagged wings, as the snow roared around them.
Realising that the avalanche was now only metres away from the figures below, Eska leapt up on to the boulders, her instinct to help overcoming her fear of who these people might actually be.
‘Move to the side, not down!’ she yelled. ‘You can’t outrun this!’
But her voice felt sticky in her throat, as if the words were only just struggling out. She darted round the side of the hill and threw her arms up in the air.
‘Over here!’ she cried. ‘Over here!’
The figures swerved towards Eska. But the avalanche was moving faster now, and with a hideous roar the faces in the snow swallowed the figures and continued to tear down the hillside. Without thinking, Eska rushed towards the pulsing wall of snow. She could hear voices screaming from inside the avalanche, then something small was tossed up into the mist. It landed by Eska’s boots and she snatched it up. It was a necklace made from willow twine and for a second Eska paused, as if half remembering something, but there was no time to think. If she didn’t yank the victims free, they’d suffocate or be dashed to their deaths on the boulders at the bottom of the hill.
She charged on up the mountain, ignoring the spray of ice on her face and the cries of the golden eagle circling above, then she flung her bow to the ground and, as the avalanche reared above her, she fixed her eyes on the figures tossing and turning at its edge, and charged into its throes.
For a second, the world turned white, but Eska knew she had to act before the snow spun her upside down so she reached out, grabbed hold of an arm and, as the snow raged around her, she yanked hard and, just a split second before she lost her footing completely, she burst free from the avalanche. She pulled back from the figure and gasped.
She was face to face with Flint.
And suddenly she realised who the willow-twine necklace belonged to.
‘Blu,’ Eska murmured as she watched the avalanche storm towards the boulders at the bottom of the hill.
Flint blinked at Eska in disbelief, and Pebble did the same from his parka hood, then he scrambled to his feet after his little sister
. But the eagle had beaten him to it and he watched, open-mouthed, as the bird dug its talons into Blu’s shoulders. The snow faces snarled and hissed and one or two flung jagged wings towards Blu, but Balapan had her now – she wasn’t letting go – and as the avalanche raged on the eagle dragged Blu from its sway.
Eska watched the writhing snow smash into the boulders at the bottom of the hill and, as it spilled out into the river and was carried from the valley, she thought about the Ice Queen’s enchantment: I summon you foothills under my hold. Take the girl and the boy into your fold. The hill had waited until both she and Flint were in the valley so that it could ensnare them both at once.
Flint tore down the hill towards Blu who was lying to the side of the boulders, but Balapan rushed towards Eska and this time the eagle didn’t land beside her. She swooped on to the girl’s shoulder and, as Eska stood on the snow-strewn hillside, she felt the bird’s talons wrap round her bones and she wondered then about her past, about whether she’d ever been held this tight.
Flint knelt by his sister and wrapped his arms around her.
‘It’s okay, Blu. It’s okay.’ Pebble crawled out of his hood and licked Blu’s cheek. ‘I’ve got you now.’
Blu’s bottom lip was trembling. ‘Snow alive, Flint. It angry. Why the snow angry?’
Flint brushed the ice crystals from her furs. ‘It’s gone now, Blu. We’re safe. It’s all right.’
And then he turned to face Eska. She was there on the hillside still, just a few metres above them, but this was not the feeble girl he had helped escape Winterfang. This girl was different. Her stance was tough, her red hair was braided with feathers and plaits, and on her shoulder there perched a golden eagle. It was the same one Flint had seen trapped in the snare before Deeproots – he could see the scar on its left talon – but what on earth was it doing with Eska? And how had she survived in the wild for so long? He scooped up Pebble and stumbled to his feet, but, on seeing Eska, Blu pushed past him.
Sky Song Page 8
