He pointed to the spidery lines spreading out from the hollow in the statue’s throat and the Ice Queen’s blue lips quivered as she took them in. Then she stood up and stalked towards the statue, raking her staff across the frosty tiles. She held her crown of snowflakes high, then lifted the black key from the chain around her neck and slotted it into the hole in the statue’s throat.
Her eyes flickered towards Slither. ‘The magic in this turret only works when I play the organ – it is fuelled by my growing strength – so I shall play the organ in the evenings as well as the mornings from now on.’ She paced towards the window and looked out at the stars. ‘Because we only have five days before the midnight sun rises.’
Slither’s scalp tightened. ‘We must be careful not to move too quickly. Magic used in haste often crumbles. Perhaps we could—’
The Ice Queen cut across him. ‘I need Eska’s voice drained from her body before she realises she can claim the Sky Song for her own. So, when you hear my choir sing, I want you to turn and turn and turn.’
She left the room, the wolverine by her side, and, as the organ sounded a moment later and the prisoners’ voices sailed into the night, Slither wound the key again and again and more dark veins seeped across the statue, scarring it through with black.
At dawn, they packed rucksacks full of food and flasks of water and for a moment Eska felt sad that they were leaving the Giant’s Beard, the place she and Balapan had come to call home, but then she remembered Whitefur’s words. She had a pa to rescue now – and the Sky Song to discover.
The Ice Queen’s choir had sung all through the previous night and on into the early morning and, though it had stopped now, the fact that the anthem had sounded for so much longer than usual made Eska and Flint exchange anxious glances. The Ice Queen’s power was growing and Eska’s voice was getting weaker still. She couldn’t see how it would be strong enough to silence the tribes, command animals and shake the skies . . . She had tried to pick out the individual voices when they sang, desperate to recognise her pa’s voice, but no recollection came and she sat behind the waterfall, her hand on Balapan’s back. She could feel the bird’s heartbeat, sure and steady, beneath her feathers and somehow that made her feel stronger.
‘Can you lead us to the Lost Chambers?’ she whispered. ‘Like you led me to the Giant’s Beard?’
Balapan yapped and ruffled her feathers, then she charged towards the waterfall and Eska gasped as she shot through it and spiralled up into the air. Eska crossed the river to join Flint and Blu and with their skis and poles strapped to their backs they followed the eagle up into the ravine and then on through the gap in the hills which led out of the valley. The river snaked west, then ran towards the sea, but Balapan hurled her cry across the sky, beckoning them north, on into the heart of the Never Cliffs.
At first the land climbed gently, but before long the hills built themselves up into jagged mountains and, though Pebble kept nibbling Flint’s ear for food and Blu stumbled in the deeper snow, the group trudged on. After an hour though, they collapsed on the top of a mountain and shared their water round.
‘They go on and on,’ Eska panted as she looked out over the ridges that scored the horizon.
Flint nodded. ‘They’re called the Never Peaks for a reason.’
Eska swallowed a mouthful of water. ‘Do you think most people feel like this before a quest?’
‘Like what?’
Eska considered. ‘Small.’
Silently, they watched the mountains – the slopes of ice, banks of scree and frozen waterfalls that hung like tapestries of frost – then they listened to the whrum of Balapan’s wings above them.
‘If you count us all together,’ Flint said eventually, ‘you, me, Blu, Pebble and Balapan, we’re not so small.’
Eska nodded. ‘Sort of tribe-sized when you think of it like that.’
Blu picked up a handful of snow and smoothed it between her mittens. ‘We go home see Tomkin now. I love my brothers.’
Flint sighed. ‘No, Blu. I told you, remember? We won’t see Tomkin until we’ve found the Frost Horn.’ He nudged her skis towards her. ‘We need to get your skis on so that we can find a quicker trail through the mountains.’
Blu stared at the skis. ‘Don’t like them.’
Flint slotted her boot into the first binding. ‘You need to let me put them on, Blu. We’ve got a job to do, remember?’
Blu narrowed her eyes and then, to Eska’s surprise, she threw her snowball in Flint’s face. ‘Not doing skis,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t like skis.’
Flint wiped the snow away. ‘You love skiing, Blu. I’ve seen you zip through Deeproots after me and Tomkin.’
Blu turned away. ‘No.’
Flint lowered his voice. ‘Now you’re just being difficult.’
Eska could see Flint trying to cling on to his patience, but, when Blu folded her arms and pouted, his anger spilled out.
‘Fine,’ he muttered, flinging her poles into the snow and tightening his hood around Pebble. ‘If you’re going to play difficult out on the Never Cliffs, I’m going to play difficult, too.’
And, with that, he strapped his boots to his own skis, grabbed his poles and set off down the mountain at breakneck speed. Eska didn’t know much about tribe behaviour – perhaps flinging poles around and pouting was perfectly normal – but she knew, from spending time with Balapan, about loyalty and so she crouched next to Blu.
Her voice was quieter than Flint’s, more scratched and far less sure of itself. ‘You can hold my hand for the first bit – if you want – but you’re probably going to be a lot better at this than me.’
Blu prodded the snow with her mittens. ‘I good skier. Speedy speedy. I like fast. Ask big brother.’
But Flint was already shooting down the mountain, his skis slicing wide arcs in the powdery snow. Eska watched. He looked graceful, like a bird skimming the surface of a river, but also slightly furious in the way he jabbed his poles into each turn.
‘Come on,’ Eska said. ‘Let’s go after him.’
Putting on the skis was easy enough, but, as Eska poled her way towards the edge of the mountain with Blu, she swallowed. She’d never skied before. There was no way she’d keep up with the others . . . Balapan yapped from above and Eska knew what that noise meant: it was a call to move faster, to keep going. She lifted up her hood so that the fur was snug around her cheeks and then, gripping Blu’s mitten, they set off.
Blu, it turned out, only needed to be held for a second. As soon as her skis picked up speed, she let go of Eska and sailed on down the mountain after her brother. She wasn’t graceful like him – tucked into a wobbly crouch, she looked rather like a runaway cannonball – but she was getting down the mountain. Which was more than could be said for Eska. She couldn’t seem to find the nerve to point her skis downhill. Instead, she swerved across the side of the mountain with shaking knees, watching nervously as Flint pulled up on a ledge and Blu careered over a little bump, then clattered into him. They were hugging, poles and pouts evidently forgotten, and Balapan yapped again. The eagle was getting impatient now and so, drawing in a deep breath, Eska tilted her skis down the hill.
Her eyes streamed, her legs wobbled and, for a few seconds, Eska forgot to breathe. Then her calves grew sturdier and her thighs tightened as she felt her way into the snow. Moments later, she was leaning into the slope, shifting her weight from one leg to the other as she carved her mark into the mountain.
She grinned. This was something she had done before. The pace, the balance, the thrill of winding deeper into the wild. Some patterns of behaviour, it seemed, couldn’t be unlearnt. And as she swished through the snow a memory burned in her mind: she was smaller than she was now, much smaller, and she was making her way down a snowy mountain, her little skis framed by two larger ones that belonged to the man holding her up from behind. She could feel the softness of his wolf furs. She could hear the sound of his deep voice urging her on. She could smell the warmth of campfire
s and pine needles on his breath. And she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was her pa. He had taught her how to ski.
The memory vanished and Eska pulled up in front of Flint and Blu, showering them both with a spray of snow.
Blu grinned. ‘You good, Eska. Better than Flint.’
Flint pulled Blu’s hood down over her eyes at that, then he turned to Eska. ‘You did well.’
Eska blushed. ‘This is something I’ve done before – with my pa. I can feel it.’
‘I wasn’t talking about the skiing.’ Flint glanced at Blu who was feeding Pebble a clump of snow, then he undid the straps of his skis and hoisted them on to his back. ‘Though you’re not bad at that either.’ He looked at his sister again. ‘It gets hard sometimes.’
Eska nodded. ‘I know.’
‘Especially since Ma and Pa left and Tomkin became Chief. Most of the time it’s just me and her. Not that I’m complaining. It’s just—’
‘—hard sometimes.’ Eska swung her skis on to her back. ‘You’d make a good eagle, you know.’
Flint laughed. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Because you’re protective – and patient.’
Flint chewed his lip. ‘Some of the time.’
They traipsed up the next mountain and Eska wondered, as she glimpsed Balapan disappear inside a cloud and then burst out the other side, how much longer they’d have to go before they saw signs of a tribe hiding among the cliffs.
They shared out some of the food Eska had cooked the night before, then they made their way on and on through the mountains – into the endless spring light – until eventually a late dusk fell and they came to a lake covered in black ice. Like a stain of ink, it squatted before the surrounding peaks, blocking the way ahead. There was no sparkle, no glint, no reflection of evening clouds on the ice – just a cold dark mass of black – and, at the sight of it, Pebble growled.
‘Devil’s Dancefloor,’ Flint murmured. ‘Pa used to tell us stories about it. He said it was one of the deepest lakes in all Erkenwald and that the reason it’s black is because years ago the Feather Tribe grew frightened of the storms that raged through the Never Cliffs so they trapped the largest of the thunderclouds down inside the ice.’ He paused. ‘It’s just a story though.’
Eska watched Balapan soar above the lake. ‘We’ve got to cross it, haven’t we?’
‘Your eagle seems to think so.’ Flint squinted. ‘And I can just make out a narrow path on the other side, winding on through the mountains.’
Eska bent down to unstrap her skis. ‘If it’s black ice covering the lake, it’ll be frozen solid so it’ll hold us. Right?’
Flint unfastened Blu’s skis. ‘Absolutely.’
But, as they approached the shoreline, nobody said a word. Not even Blu, who watched the Devil’s Dancefloor with narrowed eyes.
Cautiously, they placed their boots on the ice and Eska waited for its creak and groan, but this was a slice of the wild that didn’t talk. It lay silently beneath them and as they walked out on to it, the sealskin soles of their boots stopping them from slipping, they looked left and right and sometimes over their shoulders. Because, although none of them said it, each felt that perhaps someone or something was watching them.
It was only when they were in the middle of the Devil’s Dancefloor that the noises started. At first it was the drawn-out moan of ice and it made the group bunch closer and rise up on to their tiptoes. But then another sound came: a restless rumbling from beneath the ice that spoke of thunder gathering many miles away.
Eska’s insides clenched. ‘Go quietly,’ she whispered to Blu and Flint. ‘And keep your eyes fixed on Balapan.’
For a few seconds, Flint and Blu did just that, then the rumbles grew, like an enormous engine throbbing into life. Eska noticed Flint’s hold on Blu’s hand tighten and she looked down. The lake was no longer a block of impenetrable black. It was mirror-clear and beneath its frozen surface things were moving. Long, thin arms that seemed to be made from trails of smoke reached up towards the ice and beat their fists against it.
Eska felt her legs sway. There were faces below the arms, masks of grey with gaping mouths, and they were calling with hungry voices:
‘The Ice Queen came and cast her curse
On thunderghosts and much, much worse.
Come dance with spectres locked in ice.
Your whispers, though, won’t quite suffice.
One word out loud is all we need
To drag you down and fill our greed.’
Eska gulped. So the stories Flint’s pa had told him were true; the Feather Tribe had locked a thundercloud inside the lake, but now the Ice Queen had manipulated it to do her bidding.
Eska kept her voice low as she turned to Flint and Blu. ‘Whatever you do, don’t raise your voices above a whisper.’
She put a finger to her lips to check that Blu had understood and, when the little girl nodded, the group kept walking. But when two large fists pummelled at the ice between her boots Blu couldn’t stop her fear spilling out.
‘I scared, Flint!’ she cried. ‘Scared!’
What happened next happened fast. The ice beneath Blu’s feet fell away in one swift slice and she shot down into the lake. Where she had been standing the surface closed up to form a shield of solid ice and then it was not only the fists of the thunderghosts beating below.
Blu’s small hands raged against the ice while wisps of grey swirled around her.
Flint fell to his knees, pounding his knuckles against the ice, and beside him Pebble raked his claws over the surface again and again. But the ice didn’t shift. It remained locked over Blu like a depthless seal and all around her the thunderghosts twirled. They were dancing now, their voices delighted cackles, as Blu’s eyes clouded with terror.
‘No,’ gasped Flint. ‘Not this! Not this!’
He threw back his head as a wail full of love and loss and anger rose in his throat, but in the nick of time Eska clapped a hand over his mouth and looked into his eyes.
‘Don’t cry out,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t let the thunderghosts take you, too. Think, Flint. Think. What do you have in your rucksack that could help Blu?’
Hardly hearing, Flint laid his palms on to the ice over his sister’s hammering fists. He’d put Blu in danger because he had wanted to prove to his brother that he could set things right and find their ma. The shame and longing beat inside him and tears streamed down his cheeks. ‘I can’t lose her, too,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t.’
Balapan landed by his side and began pecking at Flint’s rucksack, desperately trying to wrench it open.
‘You won’t lose her because you’re a thinker,’ Eska urged Flint. ‘A problem solver. Now, think your way out of this.’
Flint shook his head. ‘Most of my inventions don’t even work,’ he whispered. ‘Tomkin’s right – he’s always been right – I can’t control magic. I can’t even keep my little sister safe. I’m useless.’
Eska thrust the rucksack into Flint’s lap. ‘Tomkin doesn’t know what you can do. He didn’t see how the Camouflage Cape helped us escape from Winterfang.’
Blu slammed her fists against the ice, and the thunderghosts let out a rumbling laugh.
‘Help your sister,’ Eska murmured. ‘I know you can.’
And so, with shaking hands, Flint tipped the objects from his rucksack. The Camouflage Cape spilled over his lap, but he brushed it aside. His Anything Knife clattered against the ice, but he ignored that, too, and it was only when he held up a small glass bottle filled with golden liquid that he stopped searching.
‘Maybe this,’ he whispered. ‘Bottled sunlight mixed with firefly glow. It’s hotter than fire, if mixed right.’
Still trembling, he poured it over the ice above Blu. At first the pool of golden liquid simply lay on the ice and Flint’s tears rolled faster, then the invention began to bubble and hiss and a second later it burned through the ice to reveal a thrash of limbs below.
‘Blu!’ Flint gas
ped.
There was a clamour of thunder and more scrabbling limbs, then Flint and Eska hauled Blu out of the lake and the black ice folded over the hole, sealing the thunderghosts back where they belonged.
Flint held Blu close. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he sobbed. ‘I’m so sorry. I never should’ve let you leave Deeproots.’
Blu clung to her brother’s waist, gasping the air back in. ‘I love you, Flint,’ she panted. ‘I love you more. I stay with you.’
Flint squeezed her tight, right close to his heart, then after a while he wiped the tears from his face and looked up at Eska.
‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I didn’t expect all that to come out.’ He blushed and looked away. ‘Tomkin says crying is a sign of weakness.’
Eska raised an eyebrow. ‘Tomkin also says you’re not an inventor – and look at what you did just then. You rescued your sister from thunderghosts, despite how terrified you were!’ She paused. ‘So, really, tears are just a warm-up for courage.’
Flint looked down, trying to ignore the thunderghosts moaning beneath the ice. ‘I’m not sure I’m going to make a very good warrior though. Too much—’ he looked at Blu, searching for the right word, ‘—gentleness.’
‘I don’t think you have to fight with weapons to be a warrior,’ Eska whispered. ‘You could fight with love and tears and inventions instead. That would probably be just as good.’ She thought of the way Balapan was – fierce and tough and definitely wild – but there was a gentleness there, too, even if it wasn’t easy to spot at first.
Eska stood up. ‘I think gentleness is a mighty word because you have to be strong of heart to be kind.’
And Flint smiled then because, although Eska’s voice didn’t sound like much, she often found the words that mattered.
The group hurried over the Devil’s Dancefloor, only too glad to leave the thunderghosts behind, but, as they stepped out on to the snowy path through the mountains ahead, Flint cast a worried look at his sister. She was shivering badly and the light was fading fast.
Sky Song Page 11
