The Last of the Sky Pirates

by Paul Stewart

  Stob frowned. ‘Well?’ he said imperiously.

  Hekkle turned to him. ‘I don’t think you quite understand, brave master,’ he began.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Rook awkwardly, moving forwards. ‘We can carry our own bags. After all, we’ve carried them this far.’

  ‘Leave them, Rook,’ said Stob sharply. ‘A fine place this is! Upstart servants who refuse to do as they’re told. Wait till the High Master hears of this!’

  ‘I think,’ said Hekkle quietly, ‘he just has.’

  ‘Stay out of this, Hekkle,’ said Stob rudely, before rounding on the smiling gnokgoblin. ‘Now, tell me your name this instant, you impudent wretch!’

  Just then, as the gnokgoblin lowered his hands, Rook noticed the gold chain around his neck, glinting from beneath the simple robes. Each of the heavy links was in the shape of twisted leaves and feathers.

  ‘Why, certainly, my fine, young and rather over-tired apprentice the gnokgoblin said. ‘I am Parsimmon, High Master of Lake Landing.’

  Stob turned a bright shade of crimson. ‘I … I …’ he stuttered.

  But the High Master waved his apologies aside. ‘You must be tired and hungry, all of you,’ he said. ‘Come inside and I’ll show you your sleeping cabins. Then I’ll take you to the upper refectory. There is food and drink waiting and …’ He looked up. ‘But what have we here? I was expecting only three, indeed I was. And yet, and yet …’

  Stob, Magda and Rook turned to see a wiry figure with close-cropped hair crossing the walkway towards them. ‘He’s not with us, Your Most Highness, sir,’ said Stob, regaining the power of speech.

  Parsimmon beckoned to the figure to approach. ‘Welcome, welcome,’ he said genially. ‘And who might you be?’

  ‘Xanth,’ said the youth. He rubbed his hand over his scalp. ‘Xanth Filatine. Sole survivor from the latest group of apprentices to set forth from the Great Storm Chamber Library’ He pulled a bloodoak-tooth pendant from his tattered gown and thrust it forward defiantly.

  Rook noticed the youth’s hands shaking. He frowned. There was something about this young apprentice that made him feel uneasy.

  ‘They sent another group after us?’ said Stob suspiciously. ‘So soon?’

  Xanth nodded. ‘Word came back that you’d been lost in a shryke raid. The professors decided to despatch a second contingent of apprentices immediately’

  Stob humphed.

  ‘I’m sure the professors know what they’re doing,’ said Hekkle.

  ‘So, what happened to the others?’ Stob demanded of the youth.

  Xanth shook his head sadly. ‘Dead,’ he said quietly. ‘All dead.’ He swallowed noisily with choking emotion. ‘I’m the only one who made it.’

  Rook listened closely. Perhaps he had been too harsh.

  ‘Bron Turnstone,’ Xanth went on, his voice cracking with emotion. ‘Ignis Gimlet. And our brave woodtroll guide, Rufus Snetterbark. A logworm got them all ….’

  ‘I don’t know those names,’ said Parsimmon, ‘but it is always a terrible tragedy to lose any of our brave apprentices. And as you can see,’ he said, nodding towards Rook and the others, ‘this contingent did make it – which makes the losses all the more tragic’

  Xanth nodded silently and lowered his head. Tears welled up in his eyes.

  ‘But you made it, Xanth Filatine,’ said Parsimmon kindly. ‘The journey to the Free Glades is never an easy one. Few are lucky enough to get through. And those who do …’ He clapped the four new arrivals re assuringly on the shoulder. ‘You are very precious to us. We will teach you everything we know, and send you off on your treatise-voyage, so that you may add to our deepening knowledge of the Edge.’ His eyes sparkled brightly. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘Very precious indeed.’

  The Woodtroll Workshop

  ‘Damn and blast!’ Rook shouted, and sucked at his painfully throbbing thumb.

  Stob chuckled. ‘A fine way for a young scholar to talk,’ he said.

  ‘Another splinter?’ came Magda’s sympathetic voice. She was standing by her own workbench.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rook, wearily inspecting his hands. Apart from the jagged splinter – which he managed to pull from his thumb with his teeth – his hands were grazed, scarred and bruised black and blue. He looked bleakly at the huge sumpwood log clamped into the vise before him. Despite weeks of work, what should by now have been an elegant skycraft prow was still no more than a shapeless lump. ‘I’ll never get the hang of this,’ he muttered miserably.

  Around them, the timber yards hummed with activity. Convoys of tall-sided log-carts swayed past the long, thatched woodsheds, the musky odour of the sweating hammelhorns pulling them mixing with the peppery scent of sawdust. Cloddertrog wagoneers shouted down to the woodtroll carpenters, while groups of woodtroll tree-fellers queued good-naturedly at the huge, ever-busy grindstones to sharpen their axes. Rook gazed out of the open-sided workshop at the cluster of woodtroll villages in the distance and let out a deep sigh.

  ‘Don’t give up,’ said Magda.

  Rook glanced over towards his friend. Her own prow was coming along beautifully. The wood was smooth and the figurehead was slowly taking on the appearance of a delicate woodmoth, with its bulging eyes and coiled feelers. Stob, too, had created something recognizable. A hammelhorn, stolid and lifelike. He was using a fine rasp to shape the long, curling horns. While Xanth – who was at his usual workbench apart from the others at the far end of the thatched workshop – was the farthest advanced of them all. With its long, crumpled snout and swept-back wings, the ratbird he had carved from the sumpwood was almost complete.

  Oakley Gruffbark, the woodtroll master, his thick orange hair twisted into the traditional woodtroll tufts, stood beside him, running his leathery hands over the wood and inspecting the workmanship closely. ‘Well, young’un, it’s an unusual creature to carve, and that’s the truth,’ he was saying. ‘Yet it seems to come from the heart …’

  Stob snorted. ‘A ratbird,’ Rook heard him muttering scornfully. ‘I wonder what that says about his heart?’

  Rook said nothing. He’d distrusted Xanth at first, but the young apprentice kept himself to himself and, with his haunted-looking eyes and polite, quiet voice, Rook found it hard to dislike him. At least, Rook thought, Xanth had thought of something to carve. He picked up a plane from the workbench and attacked the lump of wood with a sudden fury. The air filled with muttered oaths, and a flurry of pale wood-shavings.

  ‘Stupid! … Blasted! … Accursed!’

  ‘No, no, no! That’ll never do, Master Rook, indeed it won’t!’ came Gruffbark’s urgent voice as he hurried over to his bench. He snatched the plane away. ‘You must feel your wood, Master Rook,’ he said. ‘Know it. Study it intimately, until you are familiar with every mark of its swirling grain, with the intricate pattern of knots, with the natural curve of its sweeping shape.’ He paused. ‘Only then will you find the creature hiding within …’

  Rook looked up angrily, his eyes filling with tears. ‘But I can’t!’ he said. ‘There’s nothing there!’ Oakley shook his tufted head sympathetically. ‘All those dreams of flying I’ve had, and I’m never even going to leave this workshop! It’s hopeless! Useless! And so am I!’

  The woodtroll’s face creased into a warm smile. He fixed the youth with his deep, dark eyes and took his hands in his own. ‘But there is something there, Rook,’ he said patiently. ‘Open your ears and your eyes, and let the wood speak to you.’

  Rook shook his head mutely. The words meant nothing to him.

  ‘It’s getting late, and you’re tired, young’un,’ said Oakley. He clapped his hands together. ‘Class dismissed.’

  Rook turned and walked stiffly away. Outside, the parties of axe-carrying fellers and teams of carpenters were wandering out of the timber yards and off down the woodtroll paths towards their villages – and supper. Small groups passed him by, laughing and joking in the evening twilight glow. Magda caught him up and put her arm round his shoulders. ‘
You’ll feel better after supper,’ she said. ‘I think it’s your favourite tonight. Tilder stew.’

  Magda was right on both counts. It was tilder stew, which was Rook’s favourite. The upper refectory was busy tonight. Several visiting professors sat at the central table. A huge translucent spindlebug – the stew clearly visible digesting in his stomach – was in conversation with a tiny waif, her large ears flapping delicately as she ate. Parsimmon sat listening indulgently, his usual supper of barkbread and water untouched in front of him.

  Rook, too, had little appetite. He stirred at the stew absent-mindedly, the spoon never leaving the bowl. He looked round at the others on the circular outer table, all tucking in hungrily. There were Magda and Stob, sharing a joke; and groups of other apprentices, loud and swaggering, at different stages in their learning; and Xanth, alone as usual, watching everything but saying nothing.

  Rook sighed. If he couldn’t even carve his prow, then how would he ever learn to fly?

  A painful lump rose in his throat, which he could not swallow away. His eyes smarted and watered. He pushed the bowl back, climbed from the bench and quietly left the refectory. With the door closed behind him, he clambered down the circular staircase of the Academy Tower, passing the round doors of the sleeping cabins as he went, and on through the dark wooden colonnades where the skycraft lessons took place.

  At the edge of the landing platform Rook stared out across the dark waters of the lake, his heart weary. The air was thick and heavy, smudging the stars and sliver of new moon, and muffling the night sounds coming from the Deepwoods beyond. Black, forbidding stormclouds rolled in from the north-west, making the air darker, denser – and charging it with a crackling force that made Rook’s skin tingle.

  The sky splintered and flashed as fine tendrils of lightning spread out across the darkness; the water shimmered with a pale green phosphorescence and, out of the corner of his eye, Rook caught sight of something darting across the lake. He couldn’t quite make it out. The air seemed as heavy as a liquid and the lake blacker than it had ever looked before.

  There it was again, a flash of yellow and red. And a perfect circular ripple spread out across the dark surface of the lake, growing in front of Rook’s eyes, larger and larger, before fading away.

  Suddenly, close by, there was the hum of swiftly beating wings – and Rook saw it. A large, insect-like creature with an angular head and a long, slender body striped yellow and red. As he watched, it swooped and dived, sipping at the luminous water before looping back up into the air. Another perfect ripple spread out.

  Rook was entranced. His heart soared and bubbled. The little creature was so graceful, so elegant – so perfect.

  And as he stared, unblinking, it was as though he too were flying beside it, darting down to the surface of the water and soaring back up again. His stomach turned somersaults. His head spun. He opened his mouth, and laughed and laughed and laughed …

  The following morning, after a deep dreamless sleep, Rook skipped breakfast and hurried to the timber yards before the others had even emerged from their sleeping cabins. He hugged the great slab of wood.

  ‘Perfect,’ he whispered, and his body tingled with the feelings of the previous evening.

  With mallet and chisel, Rook began to shape the wood. Although it was still dark, he worked swiftly and con fidently, and without a break. And each time when, for a moment, he was unsure what to do next, he would close his eyes and stroke the wood gently, for Oakley Gruffbark was right. The wood was telling him what to do.

  The rough form of the skycraft began to take shape: the narrow seat, the fixed keel and, at the front, the raised figurehead. Although lacking any fine detail, the angular head of the creature was already clearly recognizable. He was working on the curved neck when he heard footsteps approaching. The first woodtrolls must be arriving from the surrounding villages.

  Rook felt a hand on his shoulder. ‘Early start, young’un?’ said Oakley, his rubbery face creasing with amusement. ‘That’s what I like to see. Now, what do we have here?’ He raised his lantern and held it up to the wood. For the first time, Rook saw the carved prow clearly. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘I think I’ve found it,’ he said.

  ‘I think you have,’ said Oakley. ‘Do you know what it is?’

  Rook shook his head.

  ‘Why, young’un, it’s a stormhornet,’ Oakley told him. ‘And you don’t see many of them, I can tell you.’

  Rook’s heart fluttered. He lay his hands on the roughly hewn head of the creature. ‘Stormhornet,’ he whispered.

  The Gardens of Light

  Click click click click …

  The rhythmical sound of claw on stone came closer. Rook looked up from the bubbling pot in front of him, to see their tutor – an ancient spindlebug, already in his third century – tottering towards them. He was picking his way along one of the narrow, raised walkways which formed a winding network throughout the glowing underground cavern. A laden tray was gripped tightly in his claws.

  Weeks after he had first set foot inside them, Rook still couldn’t get over the Gardens of Light. Hidden deep below the huge Ironwood Glade, the vast illuminated cavern was one of the most spectacular wonders in all the Free Glades. It was here that the great glassy spindle-bugs grew the astonishing glowing fungus, the light from which shimmered on the cavern walls high above their heads and lent everything an eerie, yet ethereal beauty Rook could have spent hours just gazing at the hypnotic shifting lights – if it wasn’t for the varnishing. ‘Nice glass of tea, Master Rook?’ The ancient spindle-bug’s voice, as thin and reedy as his long glass legs, snapped Rook out of his daydream. Tweezel towered above him.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Rook, taking the glass of thin, amber liquid.

  The spindlebug passed the tray to Magda, Stob and finally Xanth, who accepted the last glass with the faintest trace of a smile playing on his thin lips. Xanth really seemed to like Tweezel, Rook noticed. Although the young apprentice was still quiet and reserved, the spindlebug seemed somehow able to get him to relax. Rook never could work out how.

  Perhaps it was the old creature’s quaint formality; the way he insisted they stop and drink his strange scented tea, bowing to each other after each sip, but saying nothing – not a single word – until the glass was empty. Or perhaps it was the long conversations the two of them had together about long-ago times, as the apprentices stirred the little pots of varnish over the small brass burners, adding a pinch of oak pepper here and a dash of wormdust there.

  Rook would listen in as Tweezel told Xanth about places with strange names, like the Palace of Shadows and the Viaduct Steps, and tell stories of a young girl called Maris, whom the old creature had loved like a daughter. They spoke quietly, politely, never raising their voices. Rook couldn’t always make out the details, and when he tried to join in, Xanth would smile and Tweezel would say, in that thin voice of his, ‘Time for a nice glass of tea, I think, my dear scholars.’

  They finished their glasses and bowed. The spindle-bug inspected their varnish pots.

  ‘Not bad, Master Rook, but be careful not to overheat your varnish. It does so thin it, I find – and with quite tiresome results.’

  Rook nodded. It was strange to think, looking at the clear, bubbling mixture in front of him, that without it there would be no sky-flight. The sumpwood of the sky-craft, once coated with the meticulously prepared and applied varnish, gained the enhanced buoyancy that made wood-flight possible. Some said that it was Tweezel himself who had invented the varnish, but whether this was true or not, all accepted that the spindlebug was the greatest authority on varnish and its preparation in all the Deepwoods.

  ‘What shall we do with you, Mistress Magda? We can’t have lumps, now, can we?’

  Magda sighed. Varnish was proving far trickier than she’d ever expected.

  ‘And as for you, Master Stob!’ Tweezel tutted, peering into the apprentice’s blackened, sticky varnish pot. ‘I
think you’d better start again. To the milking field with you!’

  Stob groaned, and with a dark look at Rook and Xanth he picked up a tin pail and a pair of heavy gloves, and stomped off towards a field of glowing fungus, several walkways below.

  ‘Now, Xanth, my dear young scholar.’ The spindle-bug’s antennae quivered as he peered down at the glistening brass pot. ‘I do believe you’re done! Quite remarkable! I have never seen a more perfect varnish, and at only the fiftieth attempt! You, Master Xanth, will be the first to varnish your skycraft. Congratulations! You’ve made an old spindlebug very happy!’

  Xanth smiled and looked down modestly. Rook was pleased for his classmate – though he couldn’t help also feeling a little jealous. He was still months away from making a perfect varnish for his skycraft.

  Just then there was a high-pitched scream, followed by a string of loud curses.

  ‘Not again!’ said Tweezel, trilling with irritation. ‘Follow me, everyone.’

  Rook, Magda and Xanth clicked the lids over their burners and followed the spindlebug off the laboratory ledge and down the stone walkway towards the fungus fields. As they rounded a corner, they saw him.

  Covered with glue and upside down, Stob was stuck halfway up the cavern wall. Ten feet below him, snuffling amongst the glowing toadstools, a huge slime-mole swayed from side to side, its translucent body bulging and sloshing with mole-glue. The sight of the glistening creatures’ jelly-like bodies always made Rook’s stomach lurch queasily – and milking them was one of his least favourite tasks. But without mole-glue there would be no varnish, and without varnish there would be no wood-flight, and without wood-flight …

  ‘Master Stob!’ said Tweezel, his reedy voice sharp with vexation. ‘Don’t tell me. You did it again, didn’t you? You milked it …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Stob weakly. ‘From the wrong end.’