The Last of the Sky Pirates

by Paul Stewart

  Rook lay the stubby twig of leadwood down. He was sitting cross-legged, high up in a spreading lullabee tree, his stove blazing, his hammock hanging absolutely motionless in the still, humid air. The moon shone down on his pinched, anxious-looking face. The hammelhorn had reminded him of his fellow apprentice.

  ‘Are you safe, Stob?’ he whispered. ‘Have you found your coppertrees yet? Has your treatise work begun? Or …’ He swallowed, and fought hard against the choking emotion which rose in his throat.

  Just then, from above, Rook heard a soft scratching sound. He turned and looked up. Some way to his left, secured to the knobbly bark on the underside of a thick, horizontal branch, was what looked like a bunch of pine-grapes. Only the colour was different, parchment brown rather than purple – that, and the increasingly insistent scratching.

  As Rook watched, one of the spherical pods split and opened. A small, bedraggled insect appeared at the papery entrance, crawled up onto the top of the branch and flapped its wings in the warm, moonlit air. The matted fur on its body dried and fluffed up. The wings thrummed softly as they stiffened.

  ‘A woodmoth,’ Rook whispered. ‘First the hammelhorn. Now a woodmoth.’ He smiled as memories of Magda flooded his thoughts.

  Soon the first woodmoth was joined by others as the rest of the pods cracked open, one after the other, and the hatchlings emerged. Then, as the last of them climbed onto the branch and flapped its wings, the whole armada took to the air and fluttered through the shafts of moonlight.

  Rook stared, unblinking, as the woodmoths performed their strange, exuberant dance – dipping and diving like autumn leaves in a blustery wind, their bright, iridescent wings sparkling like marsh-gems and black diamonds in the silvery light.

  How Magda would have loved the sight, he thought, and smiled. Perhaps she already had. Perhaps her treatise was already finished … His face clouded over.

  While his own was yet to begin.

  Rook was thirsty. His canteen was empty and, apart from a little sticky juice which he’d sucked from the chewy flesh of a woodpear that morning, not a drop of liquid had passed his lips for almost two days. His head was throbbing. His vision was becoming blurred. His concentration strayed …

  ‘Wooah, there!’ he cried out, as the nether-sail snagged on a spike-bush branch and tipped the skycraft off-balance. Shocked by his own carelessness, Rook realigned the sails and raised the flight-weights. The Stormhornet lurched away from the danger unharmed and up above the tops of the trees. But Rook knew he’d had a lucky escape. He must find water before he blacked out completely.

  As the sun beat down ferociously, Rook slipped back beneath the forest canopy and continued through the dappled trees, keeping low and close to the forest floor. He knew that sallowdrop trees, with their pale, pearly fronds, grew near running water, and that clouds of woodmidges often collected above underground pools – but he saw neither.

  His mind was beginning to wander once more when, from his right, there came the unmistakable sound of babbling water. With a sudden burst of energy, Rook manoeuvred the Stormhornet skilfully about, swooped down through the air and round the cluster of tall lullabee trees before him.

  And there, at the far side of a small, sandy clearing, bursting with lush vegetation, was a spring. It bubbled up from rocks on the side of a slope, trickled over a jutting lip of rock and splashed down into a deep green pool below.

  ‘Thank Sky and Earth,’ Rook whispered to the Stormhornet. ‘At last.’

  Yet he did not dare land. Not yet. Beautiful though this welcome oasis looked, he knew it would also be a perilous place, attracting some of the most dangerous Deepwoods creatures there were: rapier-toothed wood-cats, whitecollar wolves and, of course, wig-wigs which, though they themselves never needed to drink, frequented such places to prey on those that did.

  Rook brought the skycraft down to land on a sturdy branch high up in one of the ancient lullabees. He put his telescope to his eye and, trying hard to ignore his dry mouth and burning brow, focused in on the spring below him.

  As the time passed, several creatures appeared from the surrounding forest to drink at the babbling pool. A small herd of speckled tilder, a family of woodfowl, a solitary woodhog boar, with long curving tusks and small, suspicious eyes. A hover worm flitted over the surface of the water, bowing its head and sipping delicately, as the jets of air expelled from tiny ducts the length of its underbelly hissed softly Finally Rook could wait no longer. He tethered the Stormhornet securely, scurried down the great bulbous trunk of the lullabee to the ground and, looking all about him, crept towards the bubbling spring.

  There, he quickly dropped to his knees, cupped his hands, and drank mouthful after mouthful of the cold, clear water. He felt it coursing down his throat and filling his stomach. Immediately his head stopped pounding and his eyes cleared. He hastily filled his canteen and was about to return to the Stormhornet to continue on his way, when something caught his eye.

  A footprint.

  Rook gasped and, scarcely able to believe his good fortune, crouched down for a better look at the broad marking in the soft, damp sand at the water’s edge. Although smaller than the print he had seen beside the oakgourd tree, from the arrangement of pads and claws, there could be no doubt. It was a banderbear footprint. What was more, the impression was sharply defined. It had been made recently.

  Bursting with excitement, Rook leaped to his feet and inspected the whole clearing. In amongst the footprints of all the other thirsty creatures were more of the small banderbear tracks. Some were faded and worn, some as fresh as the one at the water’s edge – the banderbear must have returned several times to drink over the last few days.

  Turning away he scaled the lullabee tree. ‘This is the place,’ he confided to the Stormhornet. ‘We shall wait here for a banderbear to appear, no matter how long it takes.’

  Rook stayed awake that night. All round him, the sounds of the night creatures filled the air. Coughing fromps. Squealing quarms. Chattering razorflits … As the moon rose, blades of silver light cut through the surrounding trees, and speared the forest floor below. Rook’s eyes were growing heavy when all at once, shortly before the dawn, he heard the sharp crack of a twig snapping in the shadows beneath him.

  How could anything have got so close without me noticing? he wondered. He pointed his telescope down at the place where the noise had come from and adjusted the lens, until every leaf appeared in sharp focus. As he did so, the foliage trembled and abruptly parted, and out of the shadows stepped a tall, stocky creature.

  It was a banderbear! Rook held his breath and tried not to tremble. He had finally found a wild banderbear!

  The creature was truly magnificent, with bright eyes, sharp white tusks and long, gleaming claws. Though smaller than the banderbears he had seen at the Foundry Glade, it was nevertheless both tall and imposing and, given the half-starved appearance of those sorry individuals, probably weighed more than them. As it lumbered towards the bubbling pool, its shiny coat gleamed – now dark brown, now pale green.

  Rook watched it stoop down at the water’s edge, lower its snout and begin lapping at the water. He was so excited, he could hardly breathe. His hands were trembling, his legs were shaking – he had difficulty keeping the telescope focused.

  Just then there was a rustling in the leaves. The banderbear looked up, its delicate ears fluttering. It was probably just a fromp swinging through the trees, or a roosting woodfowl shifting position in its sleep. But the banderbear was taking no chances. As Rook watched, spellbound, the banderbear climbed to its feet and melted silently into the surrounding forest.

  ‘Today,’ Rook whispered, as he closed his telescope and clipped it back onto his flight-suit. ‘Today is the day!’

  The banderbear returned many times, and as the days passed, Rook observed it closely, keeping detailed notes of its behaviour and writing them up in his treatise-log. He recorded what time of day and night it appeared, and for how long. He documented each move
ment it made: every scratch, every gesture, every facial expression. And he drew pictures – dozens of them – trying to capture each individual characteristic of the creature: the curve of its tusks, the arch of its eyebrows, the grey mottled markings across its shoulders … Several days into his vigil, Rook decided to track the banderbear. As it lumbered off into the forest, he slipped the tether-rope of the Stormhornet and, keeping at a safe distance, flew after it. He was surprised how fast the creature travelled. Hovering silently up in the air, he watched it stop at a huge, spreading tree, and gorge itself on the dripping blue-black fruit which hung from its branches, before continuing on its way.

  An idea formed in Rook’s head. He swooped down and, keeping close to the tree, plucked an armful of the fruit. Then, having returned to the spring, he laid it out in small pile beside the bubbling water.

  For the rest of the day – using a makeshift catapult to keep other visiting creatures away from the fruit – Rook made sure that the pile remained untouched, ready for the banderbear’s return. When the banderbear did return – several hours later – it sniffed at the fruit suspiciously. Its ears fluttered wildly. It sniffed again.

  ‘Go on,’ Rook whispered urgently. The next moment he beamed broadly as the banderbear picked up the first piece of fruit in its sharp, yet delicate claws and bit into it. Gleaming red syrup dribbled down over its chin, and Rook noted the blissful expression – the drooping mouth and dreamy eyes – that passed across the creature’s face.

  When the first fruit was gone, it started on the second, then the third. It didn’t stop until every last morsel had gone.

  The following day Rook laid out more fruit. This time, however, when the banderbear came to eat it, he was crouched down on the ground behind the lullabee tree, watching it. Up so close, he realized just how enormous the creature was. Although clearly little more than an adolescent, it was already more than twice his own height and ten times as heavy, and from its shorter tusks and mane, Rook could tell it was a female.

  It was four nights later when Rook plucked up the courage to take the next step. The banderbear returned at midnight to discover that no fruit had been left out for her. She sniffed round disappointedly and, with a low guttural groan, made do with a drink of spring water.

  Heart in his mouth, Rook tentatively emerged from his hiding place. He held a piece of fruit in his trembling hands. The banderbear spun round, eyes wide and ears fluttering. For a terrible moment Rook thought she was about to turn on her heels and gallop back into the forest, never to return again now that her drinking place had been discovered.

  ‘It’s for you,’ Rook whispered, holding his hands out.

  The banderbear hesitated. She looked at the fruit, she looked at Rook, she looked back at the fruit – and something in her expression seemed to change, as if she had made the connection between the two.

  Her right arm rose, and her great taloned paw fluttered by her chest. Rook held his breath. With her gaze fixed on Rook’s eyes, the banderbear reached forwards and gingerly seized the fruit from his hand.

  ‘Wuh-wuh,’ she murmured.

  *

  Little by little as the weeks passed, Rook gained the confidence of the banderbear, until – by the time the ironwood’s leaves were beginning to turn colour and fall – the two of them had become close. They foraged for food side by side. They watched out for one another. And at night Rook would help the banderbear build one of the great sleeping nests in the dense thickets of the forest floor. Intricately woven and expertly concealed, lined with moss and soft grasses and protected by branches of thornbush, the nests were spectacular constructions, and Rook could only marvel at the banderbear’s skill.

  He recorded everything in his treatise-log: the edible fruit and roots they ate, the building of the sleeping nests, the creature’s finely tuned senses which enabled her to detect food, water, shelter, changes in the weather, danger … And as the banderbear became more and more familiar to him, he began also to understand her language.

  Rook had often read the part in Varis Lodd’s seminal treatise – A Study of Banderbears’ Behaviour in Their Natural Habitat – where she had outlined the possible meaning of some of the banderbears’ more simple grunts and gestures. Varis had had to rely on observations taken from a distance. Now, closer to a banderbear in the wild than any librarian had come before, Rook was able to take the understanding of the subtle intricacies of their communication further.

  As they journeyed together, he slowly began to master the banderbear’s language and, though the creature appeared amused by his own attempts to communicate, they seemed to understand one another well enough. Rook loved the rough beauty of the language in which a tilt of the head or the shrug of the shoulders could convey so much.

  ‘Wuh-wurreh-wum,’ she told him, her head down and jaw jutting. I am hungry, but step lightly for the air trembles. (Beware, there is danger close by.)

  ‘Weg-wuh-wurr,’ she would growl, with one shoulder higher than the other and her ears flat against her head. It is late, the new moon is a scythe, not a shield. (I am anxious about proceeding further in the darkness.)

  Even the creature’s name was beautiful. Wumeru. She with chipped tusk who walks in moonlight.

  Rook had never been so happy as he was now, spending every day and every night with the banderbear. He was becoming quite fluent now, and – he realized with a guilty jolt – so wrapped up in his life with Wumeru that he was neglecting his treatise-log. Still, there was always tomorrow. Or maybe the next day …

  They were seated on the ground one late afternoon, sharing a supper of oaksaps and pinenuts. The dappled sunlight was golden orange. Wumeru turned towards him.

  ‘Wuh-wurrah-wugh,’ she grunted, and swept an arm round through the air. The oaksap is sweet, the sun warms my body.

  ‘Wuh-wuh-wulloh,’ Rook replied and cupped his hands together. The pinenuts are good, my nose is fat.

  Wumeru’s eyes crinkled with amusement. She leaned forwards, her face coming close to Rook’s.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘Did I say something funny? I simply meant that their smell is …’

  The banderbear covered her mouth with her paw. He should be quiet. She touched Rook’s chest and her own in turn, then, concentrating hard, she uttered a single word; low, faltering, but unmistakeable – a word, Rook knew he had never given her.

  ‘Fr-uh-nz.’

  Rook trembled. Friends? Where could she possibly have heard the word before?

  *

  Some nights later Rook woke with a start and looked up. The sky was clear and the moon was almost full. It shone down brightly on the forest, casting the treescape in silver and black. He climbed out of his hammock, high in the lufwood tree and looked down. Wumeru’s sleeping nest was empty.

  ‘Wumeru?’ he called. ‘Wuh-wurrah.’ Where are you?

  There was no reply. Rook walked along the branch to where the Stormhornet was tethered, and looked out across the dark forest.

  And there she was, standing on a rocky incline not twenty strides away, motionless – apart from her fluttering ears – and staring intently at the distant horizon. Rook smiled and was about to call out his greetings, when he heard something that took his breath away.

  Echoing across the night sky, came the yodelled cry of a distant banderbear. It was the first one Rook had heard since meeting his companion.

  There it was again!

  Wumeru! Rook recognized the name being called, and he felt a tingle run down his spine. The second bander-bear was not merely calling out to any other; it was addressing his friend by name. ‘Wumeru, Wumeru …’

  Over such a long distance, with the wind whipping half of the sounds away, it was difficult for Rook to make out exactly what the banderbear was saying. But he had no difficulty translating Wumeru’s reply.

  ‘Wuh-wuh. Wurruhma!’ I come, the full moon shines brightly; it is time at last.

  ‘Wumeru,’ Rook called down, suddenly gripped by an incredible sense of expectatio
n. ‘What’s happening?’

  But Wumeru ignored him. She had ears only for the other banderbear. From the distance, the yodelling continued.

  ‘What’s that?’ Rook murmured. Make haste … The Valley of a Thousand Echoes awaits …

  Shaking with excitement, he fumbled for his treatise-log and leadwood stub, and began to write the words down in a trembling hand. ‘Valley of a Thousand Echoes,’ he whispered. ‘Wumeru,’ he called, and looked down. ‘Wumeru?’

  He fell still. The rock where the banderbear had been standing was empty. His friend had gone.

  Wumeru had abandoned him.

  ook quickly gathered his belongings together and stowed them on the Stormhornet. He couldn’t lose the banderbear. Not now. He was all fingers and thumbs unhooking the hanging-stove and, as he was folding it away, the flame-cap came loose and tumbled down into the darkness below.

  ‘Blast,’ Rook muttered breathlessly. It would take for ever to find the thing again, and meanwhile Wumeru was getting farther and farther away … There was no choice. He would have to leave it.

  Jumping astride the Stormhornet, he raised the sails, realigned the hanging weights and pulled on the pinner-rope, all in one smooth movement. The skycraft leaped from the branch, darted through the overhead canopy of leaves and soared off into the clear night sky beyond.

  ‘Where are you?’ Rook murmured, as he searched the forest floor ahead of him. The yodelling of the other banderbear had come from somewhere to the west – and that was where Rook set his course. Earth and Sky willing, Wumeru had headed off in the same direction. ‘Where are you?’ he whispered. ‘You must be down there somewhere.’