The Huntress: Storm

by Sarah Driver

  ‘She’s my daughter.’

  ‘What did you say, boy?’

  ‘I said she’s my daughter,’ calls Stag, face creasing with annoyance. ‘I will deal with her.’ He reaches down and drags me up and out of the ice.

  ‘Water must run in your veins, and not seawater, neither! I got my fire-crackle from my ma.  You ent no part of me!’ I wrench away from him.

  ‘This is all particularly endearing,’ says Olm, sneering. ‘But I am afraid I can no longer find any use for you. Leave her to me.’

  Stag stares at him. ‘But—’

  ‘You are nothing to me, boy. You have only failed the Skadowan.’

  ‘After everything I’ve done?’

  ‘Weakness is dangerous, intolerable,’ Olm says. ‘I cast you out.’

  ‘You can’t mean that.’ The surprise tears his voice and slackens his mouth. Then he sinks to his knees, wringing his hands in a beg.

  His stupidity stings me like a slap.

  ‘They’ve used you up!’ Sudden traitor tears spark in my eyes. ‘If you’re gonna steal ships and lives, you might as well make it count for something! How could you let them? Why did you ever let them in?’ I never expected this muddle of feelings. But the man loved my ma, once, and she loved him. And they brought me into this world.

  He turns to look at me. ‘I know you’re thinking of her,’ he says, voice bubbling with blood. ‘Hare saved me, Mouse. And I threw it away.’ A haggard, heavy shadow crosses his face, betraying his broken spirit and the hugeness of his regret. ‘And she never loved me like she loved her own blood. Her parents. Her child.’ He drops his head into his hands. ‘I never knew love like your kin does.’

  Love sits on his tongue, hot and fat, like some poisonous toad.

  ‘You could’ve been our kin, though, couldn’t you? If you’d only learned to let the light in.’

  He snorts. ‘Light? It was crushed out of me when I was many moons younger than you are now.’

  ‘Aren’t you tired of listening to him whine so, youngling?’ pants Olm. ‘Wouldn’t you like to put a stop to his words once and for all?’

  ‘But – after everything—’ mumbles Stag.

  ‘Did you really think I would admit you to our order?’ laughs Olm.

  ‘I know I am a mystik.’ Stag pushes the word through his teeth like a glob of poison. ‘But I thought that if I proved my loyalty to the Shadow, pledging my powers to our – your – cause, then the mysticism would be scrubbed from my veins, that the—’

  ‘Tedious, isn’t he?’ says Olm, turning to me. ‘Shall we put a stop to him?’

  Stag laughs bitterly. ‘I am already dying.’

  Olm passes a thin silver blade to me.

  I reach my fingers towards the weapon, to take it from him. Then I hesitate. Grandma’s voice rattles inside my skull.  For the gods’ sake do it, girl!

  But then I’m blinking, and breathing, and pulling my hand back in disgust. ‘Leave me alone, both of you!’ I turn and blunder away from them.

  ‘Stop her!’ shrieks Olm.

  Stag mumbles something lost in the wind.

  ‘You dare disobey me, when this is your final chance to redeem yourself ?’ spits Olm, advancing closer.

  ‘Oh, I can prove I am ruthless, old teacher.’ Stag pulls a sleek black handgun out of his cloak.

  ‘You threaten me?’

  ‘Not you, Olm. I said she’s my daughter, didn’t I? I said I would deal with her, did I not?’

  He points the gun at me. He presses a lever on it, and there’s a sickly clicking sound. I knew I was gonna die out here, alone, with no one who cares about me near. This is where the voyage ends. Biting like a ray, stinking like a draggle, swallowing hope like a gulper. There’s naught left of me for fighting.

  ‘No,’ booms a rich voice. ‘She is my daughter.’ A draggle swoops towards us, and Da leaps onto the ice, Thaw-Wielder riding on his shoulder.

  ‘Da!’

  Thaw bolts towards us, scratching deep gouges in Stag’s face. She sings her feather-truth.  Fledgling, no strength! she calls, dragging her claws down Stag’s face again, making him answer her with a wretched scream.

  Flew anyway, life-not-death. Dredge strong wings from deep-heart places. FLYFLYFLY!

  Her chatter gifts me heart-strength. But Stag roars. Thaw wheels away, and he follows her with the gun and—

  ‘No! ’ My voice throbs off the mountain.

  Crack.

  Thaw screams, giving a last burst of strength, scrabbling in pain with her claws. She soars higher and higher in the air, until she reaches a frozen cloud. She plucks at the silver edge of it, clipping it away to let a dimmed ray of winter sun puddle on the peak of Whale-Jaw Rock.

  Da charges at Stag, wrestles the gun from him and throws it off the mountain. Stag collapses into the snow.

  Almost without thinking, I take out the Opals. Their light weaves together into a strong, glowing, multicoloured vine. The vine reaches out for the pale ray of sun, and the sunlight weaves into the braid. The light bursts upwards, hitting the frozen cloud and punching through the hole Thaw made. The hole widens, letting even more light through. Around me, the storms hold back like they can’t touch the stones. Lightning withers and dies in the air, filling my mouth with the taste of burning.

  Thaw plunges off the edge of the mountain. I storm the rocks with my tears.

  ‘Mouse!’ says Da urgently.

  ‘But Thaw!’

  ‘Hurry!’ yells Da. Then Olm runs at him, snarling, and Da turns away to fight. Another draggle zooms into view and Kes leaps from its back, throating a fearsome battle cry.

  I think of how Grandma dragged herself back into this realm I summon the fierceness I need to keep moving. I stow the Opals back in my pocket.

  I stare at the little puddle of light Thaw scraped out of the frozen cloud. Then I fire arrow after arrow into the cloud, whispering to the runes buried in Kin-Keeper’s wood. They burn bright. More golden light trickles through the hole.

  I stagger to my knees, letting the light bless my skin. I gulp a breath and fire another arrow – more light spills down.

  Ghosts begin to mill around me. An ancient citadel flickers behind the here-and-now – a village defended by a fortress, with arrow-slits along its walls and flags waving from its battlements. Ghostly Tribesfolk are garbed in celebration clothes, and gathering for a great feast.

  More light spills onto the rock and finally, I know the full truth of the Crown – cos above me, the sunlight has cast a gold band atop the mountain and touched three gaping sockets, etched all around with deeply-scratched runes. The gold is the finest I’ve ever seen, and now I understand the whale’s words, about how it can’t adorn any man’s head. The Crown ent a thing or place hidden up here. The Crown visits, forged by nature when the sun rises and sets. Like a gift from the tide. It can’t be owned by anyone but nature.

  I shoulder my longbow and climb towards the Crown.

  Ghosts brush close to me, cloaks cobwebbing my eyes. I brush them away. I hear a yell.  Da? I sob as I climb, but I know I can’t stop to help Da or find Thaw. If I don’t keep going, before the sunlight moves, I’ll never get the Opals home and everyone else I love will suffer, too. Grandma. Sparrow. Crow. The thought startles me, but my bones sing its truth. I do love Crow. I love him like he’s kin. Like I’ve always known him.

  When I’m standing, breathless, underneath the golden crown that’s grazing the ancient rock, I pull the Opals from my pocket. They feel lifeless in my hand. As cold as Sparrow when I thought he was dead from a shaking fit – waxen. Am I too late? I breathe over them. I want to lick them to life like a wolf mother. I want to kick out at the clammy paws of death, padding closer.  Not now! Not yet! Come on, you’re almost there!

  I scream the words of the old song into the clouds. Liquid gold spreads across the top of the world, falling into my eyes and kissing the backs of my hands.

  ‘Open your eyes,’ croaks Sparrow, from somewhere near my elbow.
>
  ‘I am, too-soon!’ Then I blink, a shiver spreading across my skin. ‘How did you get here?’ I glance down at Sparrow. Shimmering, he floats. Cross-legged, in flaming mid-air.

  ‘I’m having a vision.’

  I release a great sigh. Thank the gods he’s here.

  Sparrow points skywards at the Crown. ‘Mouse! ’ he splutters. ‘Do it, now! ’

  I stumble, the three lifeless Opals tumbling and clinking together in my cupped hands. My cold-flayed hands, cradling ancient wildness, skin on skin. I’m dead tired.

  I can hear sounds of a horrifying struggle. Olm begging and shrieking.

  I glance back and see Stag chasing after me, clutching his bleeding face. He lurches to his feet and I stumble on, calf-deep in snow, breathing animal dreams.

  Then I stop, sway and almost topple backwards. Terrodyls are circling like sky-sharks. Has he called them?

  Stag chatters low in his throat, and a terrodyl with hailstone wounds cratering its body and wings like ragged bites lunges for me.

  ‘Roll right! ’ says Sparrow.

  I do it, sobbing, forehead touching the snow. ‘So tired!’

  ‘Keep going! ’

  I climb up, holding onto the ledge of rock, fingertips bleeding. ‘I can’t !’ My voice emerges stupid, young, weak. The very sound of it makes me roar from the pit of my belly, up through my chest, through my throat, between my teeth.

  I feel the heat of a terrodyl zooming towards my back and I hurl beast-chatter out around myself like a huge shield, and the beast pulls away from me, seething.

  I growl and shriek my wriggling way up, hauling myself by trembling arms, and when a hand clutches at my boot, I kick out viciously, hearing the snap of a bone and a trickle of blood. ‘Little devil!’ bubbles Stag.

  I stand panting beneath the Crown. I read the runes etched around each socket in the rock, then I lean forward and push each Opal into its burrow.

  Then I collapse into the snow, breath ragged, muscles screaming.

  A smell of sunlight on fur weaves into my nose, and I taste old blood on my teeth. I watch a flash of some ancient ceremony play out across my eyelids.

  I close my eyes. My heart is a drum. It booms. I think my lungs are still gilling open and closed.

  ‘Mouse? ’ asks Sparrow’s voice, clear as a bell.

  And in my bones I feel a deep stitching together of the cloth of the world – like the opposite of tearing. The storm-stink of the Withering clears, bringing fresh, clean air. Another gap chinks open in the frozen clouds and light streams through.

  I mutter words from the Captain’s Oath. ‘I’ll read the pictures in the lights, the gifts that tell us future Sights.’

  Stag creeps closer.

  ‘My hawk soars strong, of heart and claw!’ I yell down at him. ‘From summer’s freeze to winter’s thaw! I heed the pulsing, the blue whale’s call, that every ship has a soul!’

  Inside the crown, the Opals chink into a bright dance of light, each one glowing. The fire spirits begin to play overhead and I fall, panting into the snow.

  I watch the fire spirits twist into a picture of me, striding the length of my deck.

  Stag reaches me, craning his neck to stare at the Crown with a look of wonder. ‘I can still get them, before the light changes,’ he mutters to himself. But then he collapses in the snow. ‘Beautiful,’ he whispers, with a nod, watching the lights. ‘Not as beautiful as your mother was, though. Nothing ever could be.’

  I keep my face blank and my arms crossed. But I listen.

  He taps his chest, then points at me. ‘I gave her that brooch. The dragonfly.’

  ‘That’s why you put it under your pillow!’

  He nods, then bursts into a fit of bloody coughing.

  The Crown disappears as the sun climbs higher in the sky. When I search the rock for the Opals, they’ve gone. Finally, they’re safe from human hands.

  ‘I’m proud of you, Mouse,’ says Stag.

  I scowl. ‘You don’t get to be proud of me!’

  ‘Join with me, Mouse,’ he says. ‘Together we could be so powerful. I know your potential like no one else can. We can turn the tide against them.’

  He watches me as doubt slithers under my skin. And suddenly I feel like running. I feel like a small creature caught in the claws of a cunning beast.

  ‘And then we can make this world a purer place,’ he gabbles urgently, wiping the blood from his mouth.

  ‘No!’ I turn away. I plug my ears to his ranting.

  ‘What hope can there be otherwise?’

  ‘There is so much hope!’ I roar, defiance blooming in my chest like a rose of blood.

  He sighs, heavily. ‘Leave me,’ he bubbles, blood spilling down his chin. ‘I am dying. Leave me here.’

  ‘No one,’ I say, eyes fixed on his, ‘deserves to die alone.’

  He smiles. ‘No. But I want to. Grant me that mercy?’

  Before I turn to go, I reach down and pin Ma’s dragonfly brooch onto his cloak. ‘I want you to know that I forgive you.’ I straighten up. I force myself to look right at him, and let all the rage and hate drift away.

  He puzzles up at me. ‘Why?’

  I sigh. ‘Cos your bad blood ent my burden,’ I explain, slowly so his stupid can soak it in. ‘I ent taking it on.’

  Then I walk away.

  ‘Sleep, you black-heart,’ I whisper, remembering Grandma’s old lullabies. ‘Fall down a dream-well brimming with ghosts.’

  ‘Hurry, Mouse!’ shouts Da. ‘The thaw is starting!’ He runs to me, and he sweeps me up in his arms, pressing a kiss onto my cheek. ‘You did it!’

  ‘What happened to Olm?’ I ask.

  ‘Kes and I disarmed him,’ says Da grimly. ‘But he chose to throw himself off the mountain rather than face justice.’

  We jump onto the back of a draggle and lift up and away from the melting geyser. ‘I’ve got to find Thaw!’ I yell.

  ‘She’s gone, Mouse,’ says Da, holding onto me.

  I shrug him off. ‘No.’ I shake my head, shivering. ‘No.’

  I scan the ground below and spot a tall figure. ‘Look!’

  We swoop low and find Bear, holding Thaw in his strong arms. ‘I fought off Skadowan fool-hearts while your da flew up to find you,’ he explains. ‘Then I saw this poor girl plummet to the ground. I’m so sorry, Mouse.’

  His care and heart-sad look wrench a raw cry up my throat and it cracks into the air, steaming.

  He puts Thaw in my arms. She’s limp, and heavier than I’d have thought possible. Her love’s flown, but mine aches in my chest, and what am I meant to do with my love for her if she can’t feel it? What is a captain, without her sea-hawk?

  My tears thump loudly on her blood-smeared crest. A howl brews thick in my lungs.

  ‘We’ve got to go, before we’re swept into a flood,’ warns Da, eyeing the melting whale’s breath.

  I let my howl fly, and it clangs off the geyser ice.

  ‘We have to go,’ says Da, still gentle, but frighted-urgent.

  ‘Hang on, please, just a beat.’ I find a scrap of tree-blood poultice in my pocket. I squat on the ground, with Thaw stretched along my thighs, and search among her feathers for the wound. Then I press the poultice against her skin and let Da help me onto the waiting draggle.

  Bear and Da exchange troubled glances, thinking I’m blind as well as grieving.

  ‘Mouse, Thaw has no need for that,’ Da says.

  Bear wraps an arm around me, holding onto the draggle with one hand. ‘She helped you save the world,’ he tells me proudly. ‘Never was a finer hawk. She’ll have the finest sea-burial to match.’

  But I block out their worry, even their praise. I’m sensing out for the death-sea. I’m gonna find Thaw there, and bring her home.

  When we land in the Forest of Nightfall, smoke billows from the city. The gates are open and people move freely in and out, helping each other to shelter.

  ‘The souls of the Skadowan’s army have returned!�
� says Hoshi joyfully, when we return to the Glade. ‘The battle ended and the bears turned on their masters.’

  Crow bursts from the trees in crow shape, spilling long into a boy again as his feet touch the ground. His amber eyes sparkle.  All the feathers retreat into his skin, like normal. He grabs me and musses up my hair. I push him away, laughing, forgetting my heartache for a tiny beat.

  ‘The Akhunds have fled,’ says Toadflax, running to greet us. ‘But we caught some of them. There will be trials.’

  ‘Where’s my brother?’ I ask,

  ‘Here,’ he says at my elbow, making me leap a hundred feet in the air.

  ‘Stop doing that!’ I scold.

  His eyes glow bright white. His scraggy yellow hair tips his collar bones. I grab him and pull him towards a bed of pine needles under one of the trees. ‘Please, help her,’ I beg, peeling Thaw’s limp body from inside my cloak where I’ve been hugging her to me.

  He touches Thaw and a purple light glows on the ends of his fingers. He frowns and a bead of sweat drops down from his lips to his furs.

  ‘I can’t do it no more,’ whimpers Sparrow, cradling Thaw in his arms. His tears plop into her feathers.

  ‘What?’ I take a step backwards.

  ‘The power,’ says Sparrow miserably. ‘It’s – going.’

  ‘Mouse, I tried to warn you,’ says Da. ‘As much as it scalds our marrow, death is something we must accept . . .’

  ‘No ! Not this death, not her !’

  THAW! I thunder my voice across the worlds, through the water, popping into the dream-world and seeing her fluttering spirit, small and lost and alone. When she sees me she smiles with her eyes. She is an ancient. A sky-goddess visiting in hawk form.

  There two-legs girl! Thaw knew she would come. Thaw wait to say feather-farewell.  She jostles her silvery spirit-feathers.

  Come home, Thaw! swim my words.

  Thaw goes home, to feather-nest. Thaw loves two-legs home-girl. But Thaw flies far, now.

  She vanishes.

  ‘Mouse!’ Da’s voice smacks into my ear, like water against a hull. For a few beats, my hearing is trapped underwater, unless it’s just the blood in my ears. Da stares, ashen-faced. ‘What just happened?’