Eska leant forward, hungry for the truth. ‘Took me from where?’
‘From your mother and father.’ Whitefur looked down. ‘They were Wanderers, too.’
Eska’s heart fluttered as the pieces of her past gathered closer.
‘Wanderers hear and see things others miss,’ Whitefur went on. ‘And we knew, from the way the whales sang and the wind blew that night last spring, that the Tusk shaman, under the influence of the Ice Queen, killed the Tusk Chief. But, when your father visited the Fur and Feather Tribes and tried to explain the truth, they wouldn’t believe him. He tried to tell them that the only way to defeat the Ice Queen would be to fight back using Erkenwald’s magic, but mistrust and suspicion had already started working their way into people’s hearts and minds and, before long, the bonds between the tribes, and the people’s belief in Erkenwald’s magic, had crumbled. When the day of the battle came, the Wanderers fought alongside the Fur and Feather Tribes, but we were small in number and unable to conjure enough magic to force the Ice Queen back.’
Eska bit her lip. ‘My parents fought in the battle?’
Whitefur nodded. ‘And you did, too. You’ve been wielding bows and arrows since you were tiny and, no matter how many times your parents tried to persuade you to stay hidden that day, they couldn’t keep you from their side – you were adamant that you wanted to fight.’
He looked down and was silent for a few moments. ‘Your mother was killed out on the ice, by a wolverine bewitched by the Ice Queen.’ The old man’s eyes softened. ‘She loved you, Eska. With a fierce kind of love that could rattle mountains.’
Eska felt the room sway. She had had a mother, one who’d loved her, but knowing that had come too late. Beneath the table, two little arms wrapped round her legs. Blu couldn’t really understand what was going on, but she could sense Eska’s sadness and she held on tight.
Whitefur sighed. ‘Blackfina, she was called, and she was as much a part of the sea around Erkenwald as the whales that glide through its waves. She understood the underwater songs of orcas and narwhals and she swam down into the depths with the seals.’
Eska tried to take it all in and when she closed her eyes she saw a woman standing on the cliff top above the ocean. Her long red hair streamed out in the wind and, above her, a flurry of kittiwakes cried. The memory slipped from her grasp and Eska’s heart surged with longing.
‘Eska’s father,’ Flint said quietly. ‘Is he alive?’
The old man nodded. ‘Wolftooth still lives.’
Eska slumped back in her chair because there it was – hope – the knowledge that she had a person out there to call her own.
Flint glanced at Eska. ‘We need to find him.’
But Whitefur shook his head. ‘He’s a prisoner in Winterfang Palace.’
Eska gasped. Her father had been so close to her – all those lonely days and nights in the music box – and yet she had never known.
‘What happened?’ Eska asked. ‘Why did I end up alone in that music box?’
‘Because of your voice and all the possibilities inside it. From the moment you were born and we saw the mark of the Sky Gods on your neck, we Wanderers knew you were special. In the days when the Sky Gods still danced at night, we used to hear them singing, too, and they sang of a child with a voice so powerful it could save Erkenwald if darkness came.’
Flint turned to Eska. ‘See,’ he said softly. ‘You were never cursed; you were marked to stand out.’
Eska felt the weight of Flint’s and Whitefur’s words. For a long time she had hoped she might be able to use her voice for good instead of evil, but now she could feel the Ice Queen stealing it from afar and if Flint and Whitefur knew that maybe they’d give up believing in her and she’d be all alone again. Eska shifted in her seat. The thought of her voice being more powerful than the Ice Queen’s staff and anthem and endless dark magic seemed to be growing horribly unlikely.
Whitefur went on. ‘The Ice Queen, a fallen star from the Little Bear constellation, was jealous of you from the very start, Eska, and she and her shaman had the deadliest Tusk warrior and a pack of wolverines seek you out at the battle. The wolverines wrenched your mother away from you and when your father realised he had lost Blackfina he held you close to him and tried to fight on. But the Tusk warrior was fighting with dark magic on his side and I remember watching, powerless to help, as he dragged you and your father to the palace.’
Whitefur met Eska’s eyes. ‘The queen threw your father into the ice towers and you were shut away in her music box. Later, we Wanderers heard your father’s voice singing in her choir, but not yours, and we assumed you had been killed. Until a few days ago, when, in the dead of night, your eagle found me while I was hunting on the Driftlands. It flew round and round until I realised that it was flying in the same pattern each time it circled – the shape of the Sky Gods’ constellation – and I knew it was a sign that you might still be alive. I watched the direction the eagle flew off in, then I followed, and when I arrived in this valley a few days later I remembered the Giant’s Beard, one of Wolftooth’s favourite food stores.’
Eska brushed a hand against the table leg. Had her pa sat at this very table? Had he slept in the bed she lay down in each night? The possibilities tingled inside her, then she thought of her ma dying to protect her in the battle at Winterfang and a lump lodged in her throat.
‘I never asked for any of this,’ she said quietly, ‘for a voice so dangerous and terrible it got my ma killed and my pa locked up.’
Whitefur ran a hand through his beard and little specks of ice floated to the ground. ‘Dangerous, perhaps. Terrible, no. You have a gift, Eska. Your voice has the power to do great things if you use it wisely.’
‘But my voice is getting weaker!’ Eska blurted out.
She looked down. Whitefur deserved to know the truth – he was helping her find a way back to her past – and so did Flint. Eska realised that now, despite what it might mean for her.
‘Every morning when I hear the Ice Queen’s anthem, I feel something cold inside my mouth – like icy fingers trying to reach down my throat and pluck at my words.’
Whitefur growled and beneath the table Pebble scurried behind Blu.
Eska went on nervously. ‘When I escaped from Winterfang I took the key from the music box with me but out in the foothills, the Ice Queen snatched it back.’ She paused. ‘It’s cursed and I know that she planned to give it to her shaman, Slither, so that he could finish a contraption designed to steal my voice.’ Eska sniffed. ‘At the moment, the Ice Queen can only weaken my voice but it won’t be long before she finds a way to take it completely.’
Eska waited for the disappointment that was bound to follow but where that could have been she found loyalty instead.
‘Then we have less time than I thought,’ Whitefur replied. ‘We must act quickly.’
Eska glanced at Flint.
‘Knowing that the Ice Queen has found a way to steal your voice doesn’t change things,’ he said. ‘We’re still in with a chance, however small, of saving Erkenwald.’
‘But how can my voice hold back an Ice Queen, a terrifying shaman and an army of Tusk guards when it’s growing weaker by the day?’ Eska cried.
Whitefur’s eyes glittered. ‘A voice is a mighty thing, Eska. When everything is taken from you – your family, your home, your friends, your dignity – you still have a voice, however weak it sounds.’ The light from the lamp on the table made shadows flicker on the rocky walls as night folded round the hideaway. ‘And your voice has the power to silence the tribes, command animals and shake the skies – if you can prove that you are the rightful owner of the Sky Song.’
‘But we don’t even know what it is,’ Eska whispered.
Whitefur smiled. ‘Many years ago, the North Star blew the legendary Frost Horn to breathe life into Erkenwald and the Sky Song was the tune the Sky God played on that horn. It was a tune infused with the very greatest magic and the Gods meant for you, the child ch
osen by them, to find it one day, and to sing it so that hope might come to Erkenwald when darkness closed in.’ He sighed. ‘But the Ice Queen wants your voice so that she can use it for a very different tune, one full of dark magic that will call the Fur and Feather Tribes in, then tear down the Sky Gods.’
Flint took a deep breath and Eska realised that he, too, was struggling to understand now. ‘How do we find the Sky Song if it’s just a melody?’
‘How?’ asked Blu from under the table, though the word didn’t carry any understanding. It was just an echo, a reminder that she wanted to be heard, too.
‘The Gods used to sing of Eska’s quest.’ Whitefur drew himself up and as he looked at Eska his words came deep and growled. ‘You must find the forgotten Frost Horn and blow it from the stars before the Ice Queen steals your voice. Only then can you unleash the Sky Song and bring hope back to Erkenwald.’
Flint snorted. ‘Find something that’s forgotten and then blow it from the stars? I was all for trusting in Eska’s voice but what you’re suggesting is downright impossible. It doesn’t even make sense!’
Whitefur stayed very still. ‘And there I was thinking you were an inventor. Someone who believed in impossible, illogical things.’
Flint narrowed his eyes. Up until an hour ago, he had thought all Erkenwald’s grown-ups were imprisoned at Winterfang and yet here was Whitefur, an adult walking free and armed with all sorts of surprising knowledge. ‘What do you know about my being an inventor?’
Whitefur shrugged. ‘I can see the magnifying class poking out of your rucksack – infused with rainbow essence, I assume?’
Flint gasped. How could Whitefur know that, unless . . .
‘I’m guessing you found the Wanderer’s Shield, into which the earliest Wanderers carved their knowledge of magic.’ He paused. ‘We thought it had been lost years ago. I’m glad it’s been found by someone open to Erkenwald’s wonders.’
Flint’s eyes widened at the realisation of what he had stumbled across. Then he sniffed. ‘Yes, well, I’m not doing any more inventing because it keeps getting me in trouble.’
‘Brilliant ideas often meet with scorn,’ Whitefur replied, ‘in the beginning, anyway. But you’ll show them, boy. You’ll show them all when you find the Frost Horn.’
‘If we find the Frost Horn,’ Flint mumbled.
Whitefur clasped his hands together. ‘We Wanderers believe that after the North Star breathed life into Erkenwald he hid the Frost Horn somewhere in the kingdom so that its magic might hover over the land long after he left. No one has ever found it but I’ve heard it said that the songs of the Feather Tribe talk of this horn. And it’s my belief that if you can find these outlawed children they might be able to help you.’
‘Do you know where they are?’ Eska asked.
Whitefur shifted. ‘I think they’ve gone into hiding in the Lost Chambers, a warren of secret passageways inside the Never Cliffs, but I don’t think anyone has ever found them either.’
‘So we’re searching for two things no one has ever found?’ Flint said.
‘Following magic is almost always a complicated affair.’ Whitefur paused. ‘But if you can find the Feather Tribe and win their loyalty they will talk to you about the Frost Horn.’ He glanced at Flint. ‘You’ll need the Fur Tribe on your side, too, eventually, because only when all the tribes unite will we beat the Ice Queen.’
‘Unite the tribes?’ Flint nearly choked on his words.
Eska blew out through her teeth. ‘So, if we find the Lost Chambers, if we make friends with the Feather Tribe and if we then locate this Frost Horn, we’ve got to blow it from the stars?’
Blu poked her head out from under the table. ‘Stars long way, Eska.’
Whitefur smiled. ‘Yes, a long way away, but possible to reach, with magic on your side.’
Blu clambered out and placed her chubby hands on her hips. ‘What you talking about? And where’s cup of tea? Pebble and me thirsty.’
Whitefur nodded. ‘I quite agree, Blu. Impossible things are often easier to believe after a mug of tea.’
Eska set about brewing some pine-needle tea and roasting a rabbit she’d caught the day before while Blu padded up to Flint and leant close to his ear. ‘What happening, big brother?’
Flint put an arm round her waist. ‘We’ve got to find something, Blu.’
‘Find Ma?’ she asked hopefully.
Flint shook his head. ‘Not yet but soon.’
Blu picked at her dirt-clogged nails. ‘Miss Ma, Flint. Miss her. Love her.’
Flint nodded. ‘Me too.’
And then, into the quietness of the hideaway, Blu began to cry – little snivels that choked her throat and made her shoulders shake. ‘Ma,’ she sobbed. ‘Want Ma.’
Whitefur stood up and bent down on one knee, holding out his hands.
‘Blu,’ he whispered. ‘I have something for you.’
She wiped the tears from her face.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Give me your hands.’
Blu looked at Flint who nodded. Then, very slowly, Blu walked towards Whitefur and held out her hands. The old man wrapped them in his, as if they were precious little stones, then he closed his eyes and drew in a very deep breath. His chest and shoulders rose beneath his furs, his old, cracked lips drew tight and then he opened his mouth and let his breath out. Tiny flecks of snow spread from his lips into a cloud of falling silver that glinted in the lamplight and showered around Blu.
Eska looked up from the stove and gasped. ‘What is it?’
‘Diamond Dust,’ Flint whispered. ‘It occurs when snow freezes to ice as it falls . . . only Erkenbears have breath as cold as this.’
Blu blinked into the dancing flakes, her face full of awe, and Whitefur continued to breathe out, his eyes still closed, as the Diamond Dust filled the hideaway, scattering glitter around Flint and Eska. And they laughed then, at the touch of ice on their faces and the sight of magic working for them alone.
Whitefur opened his eyes and the Diamond Dust vanished. Then he smiled. ‘It will protect you on your journey through the Never Cliffs. At the time when you need help most, say my name.’
‘You’re an Erkenbear, aren’t you?’ Flint said quietly, trying hard to make sense of things, because the lines that divided all that he knew – tribe and non-tribe, animal and human – seemed to be blurring. He frowned. ‘I don’t understand how but you are. I know you are.’
Whitefur stood up and winked at Flint. ‘You do say some very strange things.’ He glanced at the stove. ‘Now, Eska, how about that pine-needle tea?’
They talked long into the night – of Eska’s parents and the times before the Ice Queen’s rule, of the battle and the choir of stolen voices – and it was several hours later that they emerged from the hideaway on to the ledge behind the waterfall.
Whitefur bent down and picked up a bundle of long, thin objects. He handed them round. ‘Skis and poles. I found them in a food store out on the Driftlands and I brought a set for each of you. They have strappings for your boots and you’ll need to fix them fast because up in the Never Cliffs you can’t afford to put a foot wrong.’ He glanced at the eagle looking on from her nest. ‘Does she have a name?’
Eska nodded. ‘I call her Balapan.’
Whitefur smiled. ‘Like Blackfina’s song . . . Your mother had a beautiful voice and many a night, when we crossed paths, I heard her sing to you round the campfire. Songs of orcas in the deep and eagles in the skies. Balapan, she used to call the king of the birds, an old Erkenwaldian word for the wind because she felt that only eagles – and the Gods – really knew the power of the skies.’
And, at those words, Eska’s soul shook. A week ago in the Giant’s Beard she had found her way back to a memory of her ma and, though the Ice Queen might have used dark magic to steal her past, it was clear that some things, like love, were stronger even than an Ice Queen’s curse.
‘I must go now,’ Whitefur said. ‘Tusk guards are patrolling Deeproots and I wan
t to make sure the Fur Tribe stay safe.’
Flint smiled at the thought of Tomkin discovering that an Erkenbear Wanderer – who was most definitely magical, and therefore completely illegal in his brother’s eyes – was keeping watch over Deeproots.
Whitefur looked from Eska to Flint to Blu. ‘Good luck in your search for the Lost Chambers. And remember, you have the wild on your side and the wild doesn’t play by ordinary rules.’
The group watched as the old man slipped out on to the rocks lining the river and, as they peered through the gap beneath the tumbling waterfall, they saw him walk under the starlit night. But when he was past the rowan trees, some way down the river, he stooped to all fours and his rhythm changed, from the measured gait of a man to the thundering power of a beast. Flint blinked. Ever since meeting Eska, his world had begun to shift and, while at first these changes of perspective had rocked him, now he was beginning to see that things weren’t as black and white as he had thought. And as he turned back inside the hideaway he understood a little better. Eska had a tribe after all – one made up of eagles and Erkenbears – and, day by day, it was growing.
Meanwhile, in a frosted turret in Winterfang Palace, the Ice Queen sat on a throne built from walrus tusks. They jutted above her head and shoulders, a fan of pointed ivory, and beside her sat a wolverine, purring darkly. She let her fingers glide along the staff across her lap, then she raised her head to the other person in the room.
‘You have done well, Slither.’
The shaman’s face twisted into an ugly smile as he eyed the statue in the middle of the turret. It was a life-size model of a child – the eyes, nose, hair and limbs all chiselled out of glass – and, though Eska was miles and miles away, to the Ice Queen and Slither it felt as if she was standing right there on the floor in front of them.
‘I believe the contraption is working as we wanted it to,’ Slither replied. ‘There are signs on the glass to prove it.’
Sky Song Page 10
