The Huntress: Sky Read online

  The air rings with the clash of daggers, claws and teeth as the Wilderwitches descend into a good and proper brawl.

  We’re almost at the door when a witch leaps up, knocking platters and tankards to the floor. ‘Where’d you think you’re going?’

  Sparrow’s song stutters and fades. Blue gloop glistens on his chin.

  ‘Go!’ I hiss, eyeing the King.

  We tear out of the ice-cave.

  The passage through the ice is gloomy and thick with drifting fog. ‘Hide!’ whispers Kestrel, pulling Sparrow down to the edge of the path and throwing her cloak around them both.

  Crow and me do the same, and the Wilderwitch that spied us tears past, claws clicking against the ice. I catch sight of her as she disappears into the murk – her face was still human, so with heart-luck she won’t scent us out. We lurk for a beat, to make sure no one else has seen us. In my bones I picture the draggle cave and remember the stink and press of all the fur and the chatterings of the draggles. I remember when I controlled a terrodyl to protect Ma’s dragonfly brooch and try to send the wildness in my chest spinning out across the sea to the caves at Hackles.

  ‘Raindrop cowls on!’ says Kestrel. We pull on the cool, rubbery skins of armour forged by Egret. Then we tear back the way we came, but pause on a smaller, quieter bridge of ice instead of making for the Skybrary. ‘We can’t lead them to Yapok,’ says Kes.

  ‘What about my longbow and blood-singer ?’ I hiss, picturing our weapons lying on the iceberg’s floor.

  Suddenly the snowy sky thud-flashes into a blanket of lightning. A tendril of lightning snakes away from the sky and quests towards Sparrow. It settles on him like a shivering ridge of fur. Thunderbolt whimpers under the hood of his fox-fur cloak, puffing out a trail of moon-sparks. We duck behind a pillar of ice.

  ‘I’ll fetch the weapons,’ Kes scans the sky. ‘Can you call the draggles, Mouse?’

  ‘It’s too dangerous!’ warns Crow.

  ‘Just watch over them until I’m back,’ calls Kes, skating away.

  I realise there’s a roar in my ears that ent just my own blood – it’s my life-blood, the sea, thrashing far below the Iceberg Forest, her voice thick with ice.

  Draggle-beasts, I call, feeling out again with the wild thread of my beast-chatter.  Fly to us! Where are you?

  A rotten taste floods my mouth, and pictures of the draggles hunting flicker through my mind like fire spirits.

  ‘They’re alive,’ I tell the others, my voice a growl as it changes back from beast-chatter. I feel for them again. ‘They’re storm-frighted, but they’re coming back for us!’

  Crow nods, eyes widened by fear. Fright trickles through me as the beats pass and Kes don’t come back. I shut my eyes and focus on the beast-chatter grunting it under my breath. Finally, the draggles thud through the fog and flicker towards the bridge. ‘Mouse, you wonder!’ says Kestrel, appearing from behind us, lugging our weapons.

  ‘Thank the gods,’ I spit. ‘You were ages!’

  Kestrel dumps the weapons and leaps to catch the draggles’ long fur, then lets Crow scuttle onto one of their backs, and passes a vine of fur to me. I hold the draggle steady while Sparrow climbs on, and then leap on after him. Kestrel passes my borrowed longbow up to me and I lift it onto my shoulder. Crow fastens his sword belt and Kestrel climbs onto the draggle with him. ‘We rove,’ I cry, gripping tightly with my knees as the draggles swoop into the sky.

  ‘So did you see that owl-boy?’ asks Crow.

  ‘No,’ replies Kes sadly.

  Sparrow wraps an arm around my waist as I quickly string Egret’s bow and nock an arrow. I scan the ice bridges below.

  Why ent they coming after us?

  ‘We did it!’ yells Crow.

  Then a shower of black rain bursts over us. When a drop of it touches the draggle, it fizzes into her skin with a hiss and she panics, trying to throw us off.  Frightfurfleefleeteethpangbloodgetaway!

  Steady, I chatter, trying to hold her still with my thoughts even though I’m panicking too. The memory of shooting that terrodyl down on our ship, what feels like an age ago, flashes in my brain. ‘Someone send for Pipistrelle! ’ Grandma shouted. ‘We need his cauldrons to catch that filthy slime, so it don’t eat the Huntress whole! ’

  ‘Fire!’ cries a distant voice. Then more black blood hails down on us and the draggles beat the air, screeching to get away. The runes on Egret’s longbow sigh and hiss as the blood burns into them. But they don’t get eaten away – instead they grow warm and glow against the dark wood.

  ‘What is this stuff ?’ cries Kestrel, clutching her wrist in pain as a drop of it burns a pit in her skin.

  ‘It’s terrodyl blood,’ I shout, making sure Sparrow’s covered up and praying they stop catapulting the blood at us. I try to summon the heart-strength to send a thread of wildness from my throat to the draggle.  I will keep you safe. Just fly, as fast as your wings will carry you!

  A ripple of fright pulses through the draggle’s body. She bucks again, trying to throw us off.

  Steady! Fly steady, now. Faster!

  I feel the draggle’s muscles relax under me, and its fur loses its electric crackle of fear. Controlling it with beast-chatter fills me with a sick feeling in my bones. I know I’m putting another creature in danger again, to keep us safe.

  I search the forest for the catapult and spy it near the King’s Iceberg – a wooden structure on a set of great wheels. As a Wilderwitch fills a bucket with more terrodyl blood, ready to hurl after us, I take careful aim at his upper arm, so I don’t hit any big blood vessels. I breathe, then loose my arrow. He wails a broken howl, and drops the bucket. Half-clotted black gunge oozes out, eating the ice.

  Finally I sag into the saddle, loosening my sweaty grip on the longbow. Thaw flaps along by my side. Then Kestrel’s draggle glides to join us and we’re coursing away from the forest, dodging the ghostways in case they suck us in.

  A trickle of heart-sadness for the old Skybrarian spreads through me. At least he stayed hidden – maybe that’s why Yapok shut us out. But I wonder what will happen to the books in the end, if no one knows they’re there. Won’t they just be dead words, after Yapok’s gone?

  We fly until a hollow pit unfolds in my gut and my belly grumbles. We need to stop to work out where we’re going but I’m too frighted the Wilderwitches will catch us, so I won’t agree to land.

  Finally, we let the draggles swoop to rest on a flat iceberg far to the west of the forest, but too close to the Frozen Wastes for my heart-liking. If a Fangtooth longboat finds us here I ent gonna have the strength to fight them. We huddle together for warmth, and rest while Thaw catches herrings. Kestrel unties Sparrow’s sling and helps him exercise his elbow. Then she bundles the sling into her bag. ‘Shall we try going without that for a while?’

  ‘Aye!’ A grin bursts over Sparrow’s face.

  I unroll Da’s message. As the draggles vanish into the sea-mist to catch fish with Thaw, the others crowd round to stare at the yellowed cloth. It’s the size of a full-grown’s hand and smudged, singed and spotted. ‘Da wrote this to tell me what I need to do to keep the whales – and Trianukka – safe from Stag and the creeping ice.’

  ‘So how does it work?’ asks Kestrel, voice nipped with intrigue.

  My teeth chatter. ‘It’s a map. Least, it turns to one, when my brother sings.’

  Sparrow’s doubtful voice drifts from the thick folds of his fur hood. ‘Hm. I don’t think it does! Ent it just some grimy scrap?’

  ‘Shut it, Slackwit.’ I’ve pinned all my struggling hopes on this map of my da’s. It has to work.

  The cloth is half blackened and some of the runes are written askew. I rub my finger across the sailcloth and then flinch as a handful of runes drop off the bottom of the message and plink onto the iceberg.

  Keep hid canot return, danger scattered Storpals Sky Land, fore enemy ield dark power. Take golcrown fore all anukka ice, trap whales frozen sea. The song make a map. Ke your bre
r never alone.

  thisdenInthereisgraveseekthemOofSeaandbeanfindsthemandusesthemtowthemtothedenbeTriturnstopingthebeneataremembertheoldsong?willepothclosebyyoursideknowyou’reDa

  ‘Gods !’ I sweep the fallen letters into my palm. They’re as light and fine as dragonfly wings. Half Da’s message has fallen away. ‘What do you reckon did that to ’em?’ I ask Kes.

  ‘Your father may have wanted to guard his words against the wrong sort?’ she replies uncertainly. ‘Maybe someone was trying to break the enchantment.’

  My blood leaps as I remember what Yapok said about someone trying to get him to break a spell. ‘Was it that owl-boy? What if he killed these runes?’

  ‘We have no way of knowing that,’ says Kestrel.

  ‘But what if the map don’t work like it did before?’ I babble desperately. ‘Maybe we should go back. Maybe Yapok can breathe life back into the runes. Might be something in one of his books, or—’

  Kes shakes her head. ‘Egret taught me that when a rune is dead, its hidden meaning dies, too. It curls back into the spirit world. And we can’t go back now. We must press on with this fight of ours.’

  Ours. A bolt of bright light fills my chest and I have to look away from her green eyes. I’m more heart-glad than she could know that the fight ent just mine.

  I turn to Sparrow, huddled between Crow and Kestrel. ‘Let’s try waking up this map, shall we? Can you gift us some of the old song?’

  ‘Don’t you know it by now?’ grumbles my brother.

  ‘You’re the one with the whale-song!’ I spit, my bright mood dying as fast as it was lit.

  ‘Aye,’ he says, wrinkling his nose. ‘You can’t sing a stitch.’

  ‘You’d never guess you two was related, would yer?’ remarks Crow.

  When Sparrow grudgingly unseals his mouth to sing the notes are tinged grey by the sourness of his breath.

  Do you remember

  When the sea

  Lay, still, in wait for me.

  Don’t you remember?

  Watch and see, they tread the paths, swim the seas.

  Thaw wings her way back from her hunt, a streak of striped feathers tucked behind a cloud of steaming beast-breath. She drops herrings onto the iceberg with a thump, and then zooms around helping me catch Sparrow’s whale-notes. She flings them onto Da’s message with a wet popping spluck. Smoke coils into the air. I blow on it quickly, cos it smells like the map is burning.

  When the blue strands touch the sail they melt into it, jerking the remaining runes to life, until Da’s message has disappeared and the lines of a hand-drawn map flicker into being.

  ‘Ahh!’ whispers Kestrel.

  But this time, the drawings are faded, blotched and blurry. ‘That wretch,’ I say bitterly. ‘It didn’t used to be like this!’

  ‘But that’s incredible,’ breathes Kes. ‘Sparrow, what a gift you have!’

  My brother grins smugly in my direction.

  Crow whispers his wonderment under his breath.

  But I bury my face in my hands, cos the map ent a patch on what it was before. Last time I saw parts of the sea and land, but now it’s not showing any waves though I can see the Sea-Opal. It’s a green orb flickering in and out of sight to the west of the northern sea, right where we’re huddled on an iceberg. At the Iceberg Forest, an amber orb glows on the sailcloth, guttering out and then popping back alight with a fresh puff of smoke. The Land-Opal? When it blinks back into life it zooms off to the western corner, that ent showing anything but smudges and stains – and then it whooshes around for a beat and pops into nothing again. I’m frighted the whole thing’s gonna shrivel to ash in my hands. I can’t see any sign of the Sky-Opal.

  ‘So this map is trying to show us the Opals. But what will show us the golden crown?’ asks Kes.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I tell her, the few clues I’ve picked up about the crown swishing behind my eyes. If I get to meet Rattlebones again, I’ll ask her what she knows about it.

  ‘Maybe it appears once you’ve found all three Opals?’ suggests Crow.

  They fly wild through the skies,

  Fathoms deep and mountains high.

  They are three . . .

  ‘Ouch!’ Sparrow stops singing and blows on the fingers of his good hand. The purple lightning’s burned his palms, stirred to life by the magyk. The map fades away. Fright nips at me. What if the magyk is too strong for him? Singing always used to gift him strength, not hurts.

  ‘You can try some more later,’ I reassure him, but he sets his chin, eyes turning steely under their film of blindness.

  ‘No, I wanna do more now.’ His high voice rises again, making Thunderbolt dance around like her wings are crackling with energy. The map stirs again.

  Sea, land and sky,

  On the sea

  One travels wide.

  Might he claim this sea,

  Claim it for his own?

  Witches call to me, atop the Wildersea,

  The hearth-stones treasure their memory.

  The last line makes a pulsing blue orb bloom over a settlement in the mountains. Arrows thread along a mountain path towards it. Is it the Sky-Opal? The map burns brighter than I’ve ever seen it, dazzling our eyes in the gloom, then dims suddenly and seeps smoke. Thaw chatters her unease, so I stroke her feathers gently ’til she settles.

  The blue orb on the map shines north-west of Stonepoint. I squint at it. Faint, spidery labels appear, but they’re smudged. ‘Something’s written here. Begins with an H?’

  Kestrel reaches across our circle to me. ‘Can I see?’

  I nod and she takes the cloth, studies it, then clears her throat. ‘There is a village in the east – Hearthstone – where the hearth-healers dwell. They are peaceful mountain-folk, said to be descended from a mix of Sky and Land Tribes.’

  I lean over her shoulder to look at the map again. ‘Hearthstone? Ent that mentioned in the song, too-soon?’

  Sparrow nods. ‘The hearthstones treasure their memory,’ he sings quietly. Then he yawns, puffing the song out quicker. His notes trace blue spirals in the night. But now I can tell his song is full of hurt, about Grandma, cos little prickles stick out on the gloopy strands.

  The song touches the map and the runes make arrows that scoot towards the sketched outlines of a cluster of homes nestled close to drawings of hills. Smoke puffs from their chimneys – the sketch moving before our eyes – and their windows are shaped like stars.

  ‘Oh my,’ murmurs Kes.

  ‘That’s where we need to go,’ I whisper. As soon as I say it, the Sea-Opal warms and tingles in my pocket.

  I think about that skittering amber orb and pray the map ent too damaged to help us find the Land-Opal, too.

  Sparrow starts to sing again, but his voice catches and he splutters out a sob. His song has grown jagged, into strange fragments of blue and silver. I reach for his hand as Thaw catches them and puffs them onto the sailcloth.

  West of Hearthstone, the snippets of song skip along, painting out a hidden picture of a stretch of steaming water, crowded with houses on stilts. A man with long hair waving like seaweed moves around the houses in a canoe. His skin and hair writhe with tiny yellow dots. Grey scales ripple under the water and the surface of the map shifts into something like . . . fish skin.

  I reach into my pocket and slip out the piece of fish skin I found at Hackles, squishing it gently between my fingers.

  ‘What is that place?’ asks Kestrel.

  I lift my eyes to her wide ones. ‘The Icy Marshes – a Sea-Tribe place that always welcomed Grandma. We were docked there when I fled my ship.’ I hope Stag left the Marsh-folk alone after the whale took me away. Would the map show me if trouble had befallen a place?

  Crow touches the map with a fingertip, frowning. ‘Why’s it showing us that?’

  I shrug. ‘I don’t know. Maybe there are folks there that can help us?’

  Crow pulls a small grey square out of his pocket. All the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
It’s a piece of fish skin, dappled in pink, just like the one I found. ‘Where’d you get that?’

  ‘I found it under the table in Stag’s cabin, when we were looking for the message. Almost left it there on the floor, but I thought it were odd so I kept it. Clean forgot about it ’til now. What about yours?’

  I hold the two next to each other. They’re both ragged, like they’ve been quickly torn from a bigger piece. ‘I found this at Hackles.’ Why do I feel like we’re on a path that I never chose, finding clues that ent the ones I’m asking for? ‘D’you know what kind of skin this is? Is it freshwater?’

  ‘Aye, it looks like pike skin,’ says Crow, running his finger along the dried scrap in my hand. ‘And there are marks scored on the underside.’

  I look where he points. Little fish and toads have been etched there, and when I put the two pieces together, jaggedly scrawled runes are joined to make two words.

  ‘Pike,’ reads Crow, frowning. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I think of the Icy Marshes again.

  ‘I don’t wanna go to the Marshes,’ says Sparrow suddenly, wiping a sticky smear of whale-song off his bottom lip.

  ‘We ent, don’t fret yourself,’ I tell him. ‘Why though?’

  He gives the air next to my head a sullen look. ‘There’s something bad. I seen it in nightmares. I hate the stink of toads, ’specially when they’re on fire.’

  I rub his arm. ‘The nightmares are gonna stop, y’know. And I don’t know why you’re gassing about flaming toads.’

  He pulls away and wraps his arms around himself. ‘You never listen to me.’

  Thaw pings another glob of Sparrow’s song from her beak onto the sailcloth, and a choppy sea is strewn across the map. A dark fleet of ships scrawls into life, and under the roughly drawn water, something moves. I hold the cloth closer to my face – tails are flicking there, in the drawing. Merwraiths?

  Suddenly, the muffled call of a whale drifts through the ice. ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘What?’ asks Kestrel, panic licking across her face.