The Ice Maze

by Isobelle Carmody

  Once the urns were secured, Zluty almost mentioned the odd feeling he had of being watched. He wanted to ask if his brother had seen or heard anything, but in the end, he held his tongue because he knew it would just make Bily anxious. Instead, he resolved to keep watch that night, no matter what the diggers said.

  Bily had set out a cold meal of a few pancakes he had set aside from breakfast. As they ate, Zluty was reminded of all the times he had eaten cold pancakes on foraging trips. By the time they finished, it was cold enough that they were all glad to go on. The short day was already dimming, and Zluty suggested that from the following day they should no longer stop during the short day. The few hours of light were too precious to be wasted resting or eating.

  They had not long set off before coldwhites began to fall very thickly and softly. Soon they had to stop to remove the wheel nets, which were beginning to collect great clumps of coldwhites. They were just stowing them away when the wind began to blow. It was only a slight breeze that barely stirred the mist to begin with, but it got more and more forceful, until the flying coldwhites began to sting. They endured this by pulling the hoods of their cloaks close about their faces, but in the end they had to stop when the coldwhites were so thick on the ground that it was hard for the wheels to turn. They would have removed them, but the coldwhites were still too soft for them to turn the wagon into a sled.

  ‘There is still at least an hour of daylight left,’ Zluty protested. ‘We have come hardly any distance at all since midday.’

  ‘I know, but we are not getting anywhere now and we are exhausting ourselves,’ Bily said. ‘And what if there is a crack or some obstacle hidden by the melting cold fluffs.’ He reached out to pat Zluty’s shoulder. ‘We can leave before the sun rises tomorrow to make up for stopping early today, and we can go on later because the cold fluffs give off so much light,’ he said.

  ‘Windfulness will get worse and coldwhites will fall all night,’ Semmel added.

  Zluty surrendered. ‘All right, but I will take the wheels off now so that we can set off tomorrow without wasting any time.’

  ‘Not goodly, Zchloo-tee,’ Flugal said regretfully, pointing out that coldwhites could fall all night and still melt on the morrow, in which case they would have to replace the wheels before they could go on. ‘Better to waiting, since putting on is being harder than taking off.’

  Flugal suddenly spotted a fallen Maker device not far away, half covered in coldwhites, and hurried to examine it.

  ‘Anyone would think those broken machines call him like the West called to Redwing,’ Zluty muttered. He had spoken softly because he did not want to remind Bily of Redwing’s departure, but Semmel was close by.

  ‘Yes,’ she said calmly, watching her mate. ‘Living Makers metal calling to Makers metal in Flugal.’

  Before Zluty could think what to say to this, Bily cried out to them to help tie all the flaps and awnings shut, since they did not want to sleep in a wagon full of puddles of melting cold fluffs.

  ‘I will make a hot soup for supper,’ Bily said.

  ‘We can’t have a fire, Bily,’ Zluty objected. ‘If we put up an awning to stop coldwhites falling into the firepit, the wind is like to blow it down, and even if it doesn’t, the wind is blowing the coldwhites sideways so they would quench the flames.’

  ‘There is room in the wagon to cook, now that so much has been taken out,’ Bily replied tranquilly.

  ‘But . . . Bily, we can’t light a fire in the wagon,’ Zluty spluttered, wondering what had possessed his brother to suggest such a thing. The metal of the egg was strong, but it could be melted by heat. He had learned this watching the diggers make changes made to the wagon using heat as a tool.

  ‘Wait,’ Bily said and gave him a jug, bidding him to fill it with water.

  Zluty went to take water from one of the urns. He could just see Flugal trying to open up the broken Makers device through the falling coldwhites. Zluty would have gone to help him, but the diggers had rejected him when he had tried, saying the metal would not listen to him. Given what Semmel had just said, he supposed he could not hear because he had no Makers metal in him.

  Zluty had just brought the water to Bily when the door opened again and Flugal scrambled in. Triumphantly, he held up a device with wires dangling from it. Zluty was relieved to see how small it was.

  Setting the device aside, Semmel helped her mate brush the coldwhites off his tail and ears. Zluty mopped them up, for they were already melting. It was warm inside the wagon because of the heat given off by the Monster. Glancing across at it, he was startled to see it was awake. He knew Bily was worried the soothing potion was wearing off, but he resolved to take advantage of its wakefulness since they had been forced to stop. He tried to think what he wanted most to know about the Velvet City, for if the Monster did answer questions, it seldom answered more than one or two.

  Bily interrupted his thoughts by asking him to help Semmel.

  The she digger was struggling with a wide flat metal disc. He went to help and was startled at how heavy it was. In the end, Flugal had to help them lift it carefully onto the frame that Bily had set up. They moved the disc around until it was balanced and then Bily pushed little clips into place, fixing the disc to its base. It looked rather like the cottage table, except it was low and round and curved up at the outer edge.

  Bily mounded some firenuts on it and bade Zluty get the firemoss ball and set them alight. Once the firenuts were smouldering, he dropped a little wad of fluff onto them, and even as the fire flared to life, he deftly dropped a bowl of metal mesh over it.

  Bily set a pot atop the mesh bowl, and Zluty realised that it must be made of the same special metal as the metal disc, else it would have melted.

  Bily dropped a knob of digger butter into the pot and, as he cut and chopped a tuber and some mushrooms and then poured in water from the jug, Semmel bustled to and fro around him, sniffing the broth and adding this or that pinch of herb or powder, occasionally consulting with Bily.

  The she digger was humming and Zluty thought he recognised the telling song he had heard the departed diggers singing, though it was hard to be sure over the wind, which had begun to howl and moan.

  Flugal began examining the device he had brought back, and, watching him, Zluty realised the queer apprehension that someone or something was watching them, which had haunted him all day, had finally gone. It was absurd to think any creature would be lurking out in such weather, spying on them!

  He suddenly felt very weary. It was one thing to work hard and walk far, but worrying was more tiring than days of tramping over the plain.

  As the soup bubbled away, its delicious, complicated, savoury smell filled the air, making it even warmer inside the wagon. Zluty lay back against the bale of sweetgrass Bily had insisted on bringing so he could stuff their mattresses in the new cottage. The smell of it reminded him of harvesting the sweetgrass. He relaxed but he did not want to sleep. He no longer felt the need to keep watch, but he was looking forward to being awake after all of the others slept. A part of him missed the solitude of the days on the plain, when he had gone off to forage alone. He loved Bily, and he enjoyed the company of the diggers, their busy, endless interesting chatter. But sometimes he wanted a bit of time alone with his thoughts.

  To keep himself awake, Zluty got out his little reed pipe. It was cold to the touch, and when he began to play, the music he got from it was thin, but gradually it warmed. He thought for a moment, then played a tune of harvesting the coldwhites Bily later spun into thread. The two diggers leaned together to listen as he went on to play Bily in the garden with the little birds hopping around him. At length they joined in, clapping out the sound of the birds, and when he played of the flowers breaking out of their seeds, showing their faces to the sun and drinking in the rain, they clapped out the rain song they had made days before.

  They made music until the food was ready and Bily asked Zluty to fetch a loaf of bread to break into pieces in the soup bo
wls. The bread was hard and dry but it would soften and thicken the broth. When he had finished, Bily poured soup into the bowls and Zluty passed them to Flugal and Semmel.

  Spooning up his own food, Zluty watched as Bily held a bowl of the broth he had cooled for the Monster to lap at. Only when it had finished, did Bily sit down and eat his own soup. When they had all finished and the dishes were done and put away, Bily rose to put out the fire, now only a pile of glowing ashes, but Semmel stopped him. When he stepped back, she used a spoon to remove the hot mesh bowl and then dropped a pinch of dust from a small pouch onto the ashes. A beautiful green spiral of smoke rose up and a sweet, lovely scent filled the air.

  ‘What is it?’ Bily asked in delight.

  ‘It is memory dust,’ said Semmel. ‘For keeping memories.’

  Her voice was dreamy, and to Zluty’s and Bily’s startled delight, the she digger began to dance, moving her paws in a graceful swooping motion that reminded Zluty of Bily sewing a rug, and then of Redwing, swooping in a high wind. The greenish smoke coiled up for a long time as Semmel danced, pushing and swirling her paws through it so that it coiled and floated all through the wagon. She was humming a song very softly, adding to it as she went over and over it.

  ‘She is dancing the memories into the smoke,’ Flugal said, watching his mate with shining eyes, the bit of the metal device for the moment forgotten in his lap. He pointed to the mound of ashes from which the greenish smoke still rose. ‘Later she will harvest the ash.’

  Semmel danced on and on and Zluty watched until his eyes began to droop.

  Outside, the wind howled and coldwhites fell and fell.

  Zluty woke with a start, and wondered what had woken him. The wind was howling and coldwhites were slapping against the awning, but they were the same sounds he had been listening to before he fell asleep. Then he remembered that he had meant to stay awake for a time after the others slept.

  He sat up and looked around. It was very dark but there was a lantern powered by a Makers device hung from the awning frame at the front of the wagon. By its soft light, he saw that everyone was asleep – Semmel and Flugal curled together, Bily lying on his bedding by the Monster. The fire table was still standing and there was a trace of the sweet scent of the greenish smoke in the air.

  Zluty leaned back against the bale of sweetgrass with a sigh, and turned his thoughts to the Makers as he did in every quiet moment. He was annoyed with himself because despite being determined to question the Monster about the Makers while they were stopped and it was awake, he had fallen asleep. Now he was awake and the Monster was asleep.

  Zluty sighed in frustration.

  He had asked Flugal as they walked together the day before why the Makers wanted to widen the sky crack and come through. The he digger had told him the Makers needed more space for making because they had used it all up on the other side of the sky crack. Zluty had the cheering thought that, being small, he and Bily might be able to escape their attention, but then remembered the diggers were even smaller than he and Bily, and still the Makers had sent the Monks to capture them and empty their heads!

  Outside, the wind got stronger and the wagon began to rock. The movement made the lantern swing to and fro and Zluty noticed that the shadows on the Monster’s face shifted as the light did. One moment it appeared sad, and the next, sly and full of malice.

  The Monster stirred and one paw twitched. Zluty wished he had the power to look into its dreams.

  As if it felt the weight of his thoughts, the Monster stirred again and curled itself around Bily before settling. The sight reassured Zluty, for no matter what secrets it held, the sombre beast truly loved his brother, and would never do anything to bring him to harm. The trouble was, once the Monster was back in the Velvet City and under the control of the Makers machines, it might forget how it felt about Bily and tell its people about them. Then it was likely the Listeners would tell the Makers what they had learned.

  A frightening thought occurred to Zluty.

  The Monks had seen Bily riding on the back of the Cloud Monster to rescue Zluty. If they had told their masters about that, and the Listeners then told the Makers about them, they might become interested in Bily and him, just as they had become interested in the sky crack, and look where that had led.

  Bily gave a moan and thrashed about in his sleep, and Zluty realised he was having another nightmare. He got up and went over to soothe him, only to see that his own travelling pack was humped up awkwardly under Bily’s head. Zluty was puzzled because he distinctly remembered pushing the pack into one of the lower niches when they had been readying the wagon in the digger settlement. The diggers must have pulled it out when they were collecting their devices to take back to the settlement.

  Carefully, Zluty eased the pack out from under Bily and carried it back to the bale of sweetgrass. He opened the pack and took out the little metal egg he had found in the Northern Forest. It was small and nearly weightless but very hard. No wonder Bily had been sleeping restlessly. He held it up, and the soft lantern light caught the raised pattern around its seal. They were very like the markings on the broken seal of the enormous metal egg he had also found in a burned place in the Northern Forest. Given all he had learned, he thought the bones of the immense, long-dead beast inside it had probably been those of another creature sent through the sky crack by the Makers that had not survived its journey.

  The plains’ diggers had been drawn to the small egg, and Zluty supposed now that was because the metal of whatever was in it had called to their metal, just as Makers devices called to Flugal. The Monks had been dismayed when they’d discovered the metal egg on Zluty while he was their captive, because they thought it was a stolen message egg, and feared to be blamed by the Makers for carelessness.

  Then one sly Monk had suggested that if they did not open the egg, and emptied Zluty’s mind so that he forgot where he found it, the Listeners would be blamed for its loss and punished instead of the Monks, since message eggs came from the Velvet City.

  The Monster had later said that it was not a message egg. Zluty shook it, wondering what was inside it. To begin with he and Bily had thought that some small creature might hatch out of it, though neither of them had been able to sense life in it. Later they tried and failed to open it. In the end, they kept it because Bily said it was beautiful and must have a place of honour in their new cottage. Zluty suspected Bily secretly hoped that one day something marvellous would hatch out of it.

  For him, the egg was a reminder of the Northern Forest. Despite the danger, and the distance from their old cottage, Zluty had loved his journeys there. He had wanted them to go and live there after their cottage was destroyed by the stone storm, but the Monster had insisted they would perish, devoured by giant beasts that took refuge there in the Winter. Zluty had been unable to argue because he had never been there in the Winter. He had reluctantly agreed to go West, because the Monster’s description of a soft green land had echoed the vision a bee queen had of them living peacefully in the Vale of Bellflowers.

  He wondered whether the bee queen’s foreseeing would change if the Makers came.

  Everything came back to the Makers, thought Zluty, even though he and Bily were not part of their plan. The diggers even used gestures with their names that meant the unplanned. Yet they had saved the life of the Monster, who was part of the plan, and Zluty had been captured by the Monks because of the Makers plan, and now they were travelling with diggers who had rebelled against the plan.

  Zluty realised he was absentmindedly running a finger along the smooth metal device clasped to his head. He made himself stop and put the metal egg back in his pack and pushed it into an empty niche alongside his bedding. Then he yawned and lay down, all at once weary with thinking about questions that had no answers.

  Bily stretched and sat up, only to find the Monster sitting up for the first time since they had left the digger settlement. Its eyes blazed yellow and the fluffs on each ear tip were as stiff as its
whiskers.

  ‘What is the matter?’ Bily whispered, seeing that everyone else was still asleep.

  ‘I can smell something,’ it said. It sounded alert but not alarmed.

  ‘What?’ Bily asked.

  ‘I do not know,’ said the Monster, and after a little while it lay down again and closed its eyes.

  Bily frowned, wondering if the Monster might be getting feverish again, imagining things. Then he realised that it was quiet.

  The wind had stopped!

  He climbed over the diggers and pulled himself eagerly up onto the rim of the wagon. He unfastened a section of the awning and put his head out.

  The air was frigid and Bily’s breath came out in little clouds. Cold fluffs had ceased to fall but there were no stars, which meant clouds still lay overhead. His senses told him it was very near dawn.

  Dropping his gaze, he gasped to see the ground was now covered completely in a thick blanket of white that gave off a soft radiance.

  He climbed out of the awning and dropped to the ground. He sank up to his knees in the cold fluffs, but he did not feel the stone underneath his feet, which meant a layer had settled and firmed under the powdery fresh-fallen cold fluffs. With luck it would support the weight of the wagon, in which case the wheels could be removed to turn it into a sled. That would please Zluty, because it would mean they could travel more quickly.

  Getting the wheels off would be no small task, however, for the cold fluffs were mounded over the wheels. He was facing the East, and he saw a brightening along the seam of the horizon that confirmed it was almost dawn. Although the wind had dropped almost to nothing, there were still occasional gusts that scooped up cold fluffs and whirled them away. He turned to follow one white dervish to the South when, from the corner of his eye, he caught the movement of something large and dark across the face of the mountains.