The Huntress Trilogy

The sky-wolves fall back, becoming a grey, snarling wall behind us. And when another marrow-shattering boom rocks the sky, they turn tail and race away, the rear ranks torn apart by massive clumps of ice. Shock tugs at my mouth.

We’re dragged higher and higher still, until we’re level with the clouds. Crow turns grey and cradles his head in his hands.

The mountain looms.

Sparrow moans, soft as a bone pipe, but when I call to him he don’t open his eyes and shakes wrack his body.

‘Stay in the waking world, too-soon,’ I murmur in his ear. My little brother was born before he was baked proper. I ent letting him leave me too soon as well.

The mountain is a black wall blotting out the world beyond. A great wound in its side oozes ice. A churning sound buzzes in the air, and I can feel a bowstring-tenseness that tells me it’s waiting to spew again.

We dip and swerve to the right, towards a chink in the rock. Behind us, ice boulders thunder through the air, spat out by the mountain range.

Then we’re hovering, trapped between the ice-bombs behind and the bleak cracked mountain ahead. The gap in the rock is packed with raging winds and swirling snow.

Lunda and the other riders shout into the wind and raise their arms high. They urge their draggles through the gap in the mountain. I squeeze Sparrow’s hand as we fly between two of the mountain’s jags, through a mass of cloud.

We’re only halfway through when the cloud begins to freeze around us, tightening, icing our garb to our skin, squeezing . . .

Up ahead, the riders shout panicked words that are lost in the storm.

Then we’re through the gap and the storm’s behind us and we can breathe. When I look back, there’s just a broiling mass of lightning, fog and frozen cloud.

The mountain echoes with the high shrieks and open-throated grunts of eagles. Inside my cloak, Thaw hisses.

There’s no trace of the world we came from.

We plunge downwards. My belly flips. I peek through a gap in the raindrop net and the ground is rushing closer. Closer. Closer.

I squeeze Sparrow tight and tuck my face into his neck, bracing for the hit. Crow grabs onto Sparrow too, and our wide eyes fasten together in panic.

Snow squabbles in the air. A snowflake pastes onto my eyeball – I scrub it away – and when I look through the net again there’s a smoky shape pressing up through the snow. My heart clambers into my throat.

The mountain is a jagged, ring-shaped fortress surrounding a settlement, like a bristling beast squatting gleefully over a kill. Spiny turrets are chiselled into the rock.

We thud into a snowdrift that guzzles sound. The net sags heavily onto us, sticking to our faces. I reach up to push it off, scraping my scar, and curse, sucking my teeth against the pain. Wind rushes overhead, snagging the raindrops in its grip, as the draggle flock glides past to land nearby. ‘Did the storm-barrier keep them out?’ calls a fretful voice.

‘Of course!’ snaps Lunda.

Crow wrestles with the net. ‘Help me get this thing open.’ He pushes his fingers between the raindrops and wrenches open a small hole.

As soon as he’s made it the hole shrinks, so I tug a merwraith scale out of my pocket and try to snick a proper cut. The raindrops buzz and rush to knit back together. ‘Bleeding cockle dung,’ I mutter.

I take Sparrow’s face in my cold-numbed fingers, whispering to him. He moans, but he won’t wake up. I tighten his cloak around him and pull his hood over his face. Then my ears twitch, and a prickle spreads up my neck. Boots are crunching through the snow.

I nuzzle my face close to the tough web of clamouring raindrops, and through the drifting whiteness a long-limbed girl has appeared, swamped in a cloak of brown feathers.

Her copper hair is bundled on top of her head like a tangled nest and her long red skirts billow around a pair of fur-trimmed boots. There’s something bare about her gaunt face; the flash of raw hope she wears is the only light on the mountain.

She steps nearer, then catches herself and glances around sharply, face turning dull and closed. She fits wooden snow-goggles over her eyes and melts into the snowstorm.

Lunda scrunches towards us. The raindrops slowly unravel into a thread that slides away along the ground and slurps into her staff.

Me and Crow thrash upright, pulling up our hoods, and watch as the riders leap off their draggles and hurry towards a row of statues etched into the rock-face. Reckon they must be likenesses of their sky-gods – human-bodied, eagle-headed, terrodyl-clawed. The riders kneel, muttering prayers.

Other figures battle through the snow to unsaddle their beasts. Then the draggles wheel around and soar into the air. Huntsniffbloodquickscurrytheybitetheywaitheartsbeatbeatbeat, they whisper, lips stretched into gruesome grins. Their huge shadows pass overhead, together with the sweet, damp stink of their fur.

‘Don’t tell anyone your name!’ I whisper to Crow. He nods.

‘What happened back there, Spearsister?’ a man calls to Lunda, as he turns from muttering his prayers.

‘Cloud-freeze is not part of the barrier,’ says another. ‘We could have been frozen to death!’

‘We must make more appeasements to the flicker-gods,’ says a woman, twirling her blade in her fingers.

‘When did you last see their lights? Even the gods have turned their backs,’ retorts the first man, lifting his gaze to the scrap of sky pinched between the mountain’s leering jags. More tribesfolk pipe up, their grumblings swelling louder.

The flicker-gods? I think of the white and green sky-fire that my Tribe call the fire spirits. Instinct makes me tip back my head to look, but there’s no sign of life.

Lunda glares a warning look. ‘Everything is under our control,’ she hisses. One by one, the tribesfolk fall silent.

‘Welcome to Hackles,’ says Lunda, hand on hip as she watches us along the length of her pointed spear. A gloat bubbles onto her face. I tense my muscles to run, though there’s nowhere to go.

Other riders prowl to join her, staring at us with narrowed eyes.

I show Lunda the quiet and stormy look Grandma said could seek out all a person’s secrets. Grandma would take no nonsense from these slither-wings, so I hold tight onto the heart-strength that she stitched into my bones and shine it out at the girl. For a beat, Lunda’s fierceness is startled away.

Then she snarls, knocking me over the head with a spiny knuckle ring. I crouch, cursing and clutching my head.

Pangolin unwraps her raindrop headdress and stoops to touch Sparrow. I leap forwards with a growl but Crow grabs my wrist.

‘Arm’s broken,’ says Pangolin, brushing back her knot of thick braids. She watches Lunda’s face like a mongrel begging for scraps.

‘A pantry-squidge could tell that much, Pangolin!’ snipes Lunda, making the other girl flush. She straightens and peers around. ‘Pika! Hey! Over here! Pika! ’

I follow her stare. To our right is a stone hut, smoke huffing from its chimney. Up ahead a run of steps is carved into the mountain, leading to a set of wooden doors crowned with two crossed spears. A tall boy with white hair and cinnamon skin unfolds himself from the steps and slouches towards us. ‘I heard you.’ His dark eyes sweep Lunda’s face. ‘Half the mountain’s heard you. Think an avalanche must be brewing.’

‘Stopper your beak,’ declares Lunda. ‘Take the cripple to the sawbones’ nest while me and Pang get the other sea-creepers to their cells.’

Crow scowls.

‘You ent taking him anywhere without me!’ I hiss.

‘The draggles are hunting.’ Pika folds his arms wearily. ‘I have to be ready to stable them when they return, and the caves are a mess after you left in such a clamour.’

‘Do not defy me, apprentice, or I’ll have you mucking out the draggle-dung well past midnight!’ Lunda spits, flicking her stubby white braid off her shoulder.

The boy snorts but he does as she says. He bends to pick Sparrow up and my brother’s head lolls like his neck’s gonna snap. He looks smaller than it’s even possible to be.

‘Don’t take him! We stay together!’

‘Mouse,’ mutters Crow. ‘Just let them help him.’

‘Help him? You seen this place, slackwit?’

He wipes his sweaty brow with the back of his hand. ‘She told that boy to take Sparrow to the sawbones – that’s another word for healer. Know any other healers round here?’

The heart-truth of his words melts away my fight. But when the boy turns his back to carry my brother away, a hollow pit tears open inside me. ‘I’m coming with him!’ I shout. Then a wave of sky-sickness makes me so dizzy I can barely stand.

I pull away from Crow and bend forwards, gulping for air, as Sparrow’s carried towards the stone steps in the mountain. I straighten in time to see him vanish from sight.

Then there’s just all these pairs of strange eyes fixed on me. And no friend but Crow; a boy who not so long ago I couldn’t trust a stitch. Feels like my blubber’s been turned inside out.

Crow’s telling me something but his face swims before my eyes and his voice is stars away. Then everything blurs, and hands grab us. Thaw-Wielder pokes her head out of my cloak and nips at a rider.

‘Oohhch!’ the rider squeals, sucking the blood from her finger. ‘I think we’ll be having you, hawk-sister!’

Hah! Bad-blubber not have Thaw! shrills my hawk, dodging and spiralling off into the sky.

We’re forced apart. Crow’s fighting, I’m hurling threats, but we’re lost in a tangle of fists and spears and shields. ‘Mouse!’ Crow bellows. The wind roars, slashing snow into my eyes, and when I can see again he’s being shoved under the crossed spears and through the wooden doors.

I’m pushed to the right, towards a doorway etched into the hulking flank of the mountain. Shivering figures shovel snow, others snap icicles from overhanging rocks and there’s a clatter-clang-clatter as they drop them into cauldrons for melting. One lingers to warm his hands over the steam, and a rider cracks a whip, knocking him to the ground.

I’m dragged through the door and up a spiral stairway cut straight into the rock. Then I’m pushed forwards and made to climb higher, higher, higher into the mountain. ‘Please, tell them my brother gets shaking fits,’ I gasp in the thin air.

Hot breath burns my frozen ear. ‘Were you given leave to speak, sea-creeper?’

‘Please! Just tell them!’ It gets even harder to breathe, cos now the thin air stinks of rotting eggs, musty pelts and damp. ‘We made a potion of violet root but I didn’t get the dose right and—’ I’m shoved into a crooked stone passageway, my words oofed away into the bitter cold.

Grubby moon-lamps are strung along the ceiling, dimly showing how the passage weaves around a bend and out of sight. Moonsprites wail inside the smeared glass, making the lamps flare.

Letoutletouttrappedtoolong! Grrrrrrfizzlefearhelphelphelp!

Our footsteps ring against the stone. The cold stabs up through the soles of my boots. I stumble, and the tip of a spear digs into my back, jolting me forwards. The anguished cries of strangers echo from inside the walls.

Soon it feels like we’ve walked so far into the mountain that we’re gonna fall off the other side of the world. ‘Where’ve you taken my crew?’ I wheeze.

My captors don’t answer. I look back and glimpse a long, serious face and lips purple with cold, but then the spear-tip finds me again and I stagger forwards.

We reach a thick wooden door. One of the riders wrenches at it, scrabbling with her fingernails, but the door is stuck. ‘The ice has sealed this one shut, too.’

In the end she gets it open by lighting a torch and heating the lock, while I twist and kick in the other’s vice-grip.

Then I’m jabbed hard in the back and sent sprawling into a freezing cloud of sour air.

I stumble to my knees on a damp, grimy floor. The door slams with an echoing clunk, like the sealing of a tomb.

I throw my weight against the door. Sickness has robbed my voice, so when I try to scream, nothing comes. What if Sparrow shakes, or they see his lightning? What if they use his powers like the mystiks did? And – I fight the thought, but it moulds tightly over me. What if he dies?

I’m trembling, and my head swirls like there’s a storm of fog and snow blundering through my brain. This weren’t meant to happen. We should’ve reached Whale-Jaw Rock by now.

On the other side of the door, boots scrape against the frost, moving away.

I cough and rasp another empty breath. The sickness that started as we climbed higher in the sky squeezes my belly in an iron grip. I’m frighted for Thaw too, but I ent got the strength to yell for her.

I stare around the murky stone turret. There’s a straw mattress on the floor and one thin, grime-streaked blanket. Through a star-shaped hole at the top of the wall, the wind screeches in a thousand broken voices.

It hits me, in a sickening drum-boom – I ent going anywhere. I can’t look for the Opals. A picture of Da floats before my eyes – on the storm-deck, watching the sun skim the waves, his eyes smile-crinkled.

I reach into my pocket and curl my fingers around the little wooden carving of the Huntress that I made for Da so long ago. Some time between leaving our ship and disappearing he added sails to the carving, and wrote a message on them – a message to tell me what I’ve got to do. And to tell me he’ll find me when he can. The message gifted me heart-strength. And when Sparrow’s song turned it to a magyk map that showed me the Opals hope sparked in my veins. But the map couldn’t magyk the thing me and Sparrow really wanted – Da.

And now I ent even got the message. Stag’s thieved it, just like he thieved Grandma’s life and my ship.

My ship. When I close my eyes, I can almost smell her joyous stinks of fish and birch-smoke and tar.

‘Tell me we can get some rest, now?’ pleads a thin voice, startling me out of my thoughts. It’s throbbing from frosty metal pipes that criss-cross the wall.

‘We can’t,’ answers another. ‘There are trials.’

I scuttle closer to the pipes to listen.

‘I am bone-weary,’ gasps the first. ‘Have you any food?’

‘No.’ There’s a scrape and a clank and the voices are almost drowned out.

A sob rattles the pipe. ‘My sisters are not growing as they should – I need to give them more.’

‘Shhh! The Protector provides . . .’

Their voices fade. I shiver. Then a distant wolf howl pierces the night and I drop into a crouch, staring up at the hole in the wall.

My heart beats twice before the turret quakes. I cover my head with my arms and feel the explosion in my chest as the mountain spews more ice-bombs. What is going on in this Sky realm?

As the sound dies away, the Opal’s wild power sparks through my cloak pocket. I pull it free and wince as it singes my eyebrows. I can feel the gem longing for its kin, the same way I long for mine. The ache in my chest turns to a painful yearning for my Tribe. It feels like the stitching of my life has come apart at the seams, so I hardly know who I am any more.

I press my back to the wall and slide down until I’m huddled on the ice-glittered floor of the turret, arms wrapped around my knees, chin pressed into the bloody rips in my breeches.

If I don’t get the Opals back together and find the golden crown, the sea’s gonna freeze solid.

My thoughts fly and scatter and drift. I wonder if these draggle-riders – or the Wilderwitches – know the legend of the Storm-Opal Crown. I can’t believe there are two Sky-Tribes left! I remember seeing the ruined Sky Path at the Tribe meet on Dread’s Eve, lost to vines and thorns. Being in a hidden Sky realm would make for a tale my Tribe would love to guzzle. It’s like I’m living one of Grandma’s stories. But all I can feel is the heaviness of my quest.

My eyes cross and numbness steals over me. I feel my spirit pushing the edges of my skin.

I’m slipping into a dream-dance and the Opal in my hand seems to breathe, turning clammy and blubbery, just like the last time.

But the rotten stink of this place creeps into my nose, making me gag. I grind my teeth together, dig my nails into my palms. The sky-sickness hits harder and I retch bile onto the straw, then fall to the grubby mattress and drag measly lungfuls of air through my bleeding lips. Then I sneeze, spattering my wrist with black snot.

There’s a tangled wail in the sky outside. I look up, sickness spins the room and I have to get my head down again. A sorrowful beast-chatter floats into the turret.

Wherenowwherenow? Home, lost, Thaw heart-sore for her two-legs!

My sea-hawk’s searching for me! Thaw, I croak uselessly, feeling a growl of fury build in my belly. Heart-sad homesickness carves up and out of my throat, spilling hot tears onto my cheeks. The Huntress slices through my thoughts, calling me home. My ship plucks at me until an invisible cord, connects us.

Man gone, hisses a sudden beast-chatter, somewhere in the pipes. Flew low, low, low. Scribble scrap scribble scrap.

But the beast-chatter rolls off my skin like a bead of water, as the Opal grows fluttering gills and my spirit squeezes through layers of bone, muscle and skin, then sneaks through the hole in the wall, into the raging night.

I’m a ragged ghoul in the wind, high above the mountain fortress. The Opal pulses against me. Even though I’ve left my body behind I feel a smile tugging for the fun of flight.

I’m struggling to dive towards the sea when the wind catches me in its jaws. I’m flung across the edge of the mountain. The world falls away.

Across the mountainsides below streak the gleaming dream-spirits of reindeer, mountain goats and wild horses.

Swirling storm-clouds gather and skinny lightning spears the sky. Stooped red trees paint the mountain like a river of old blood, where the leaves of autumn froze before they could fall.

I fly faster and finally through the smoky fog I glimpse the sea and the jagged icebergs. Another sliver of lightning slashes down and cracks into a berg, sending blocks of ice tumbling into the water.

A coastline looms. I trace its craggy edges with glowing dream-fingers. Huge cauldrons of oil bubble on the cliff edges. I can sense my home in a rich dream-stink of tar and iron rivets. She’s pulling me closer, but where is she? The further I tumble the closer I get to a fleet of ships. My spirit pangs.

The Huntress is one of them.

I strain my spirit into the wind, wiggling like an eel, feeling a pull between my body and my ship. Panic jangles from me into the night air, sizzling a flurry of ghostly sparks. The air thickens with the grey, moaning spirits of whales and the cold vast depths of the sea flood into my mind; the depths that swallowed Grandma. I shrink back from the whale spirits, fighting the memory.

The ship’s anchored over the spot where the great warship from the Icy Marshes, Frog Witch, is said to have sunk ten moons ago. The sea is slicked with a thick cloak of ice that crunches as she tries to throw it off.

I drop through the sky, treading air like it’s water. Below, Stag stands on the storm-deck, bellowing at the crew. His voice stabs into my dream, making me growl. Polar dogs sprawl beneath the rail. Their chains clank as they twitch their muzzles to the sky and whine, spooked.

Thingthingthingnomarrow? chatters one.

Nofoodhungryhungrywhatit? Deadthinglurking! replies a pack-mate, snotcicles hanging from its snout.

Stag glances at the dogs. Their white clouds of breath puff into the air and his narrowed eyes follow them, until he’s looking right at the spot where I’m hovering, my dream-toes bathed in dog breath. My spirit flares, turning jagged and spiny with horror.

Can he see me?

But then he turns his attention back to the deck, and my spines of fright retract.

‘Heave!’ commands Stag. There’s a creaking of ropes and a strange squealing noise. Then a huge bone claw winches into the air, trembling like a held breath.

‘Shipwrecks mean merwraiths. And merwraiths mean riches.’ Cold mirth curls the edges of Stag’s voice.

Merwraiths? No. He can’t!

My nerves stretch tauter than a bowstring, but still I glide closer to the ship. Cos even with evil lurking, I can’t waste the chance to glimpse chief oarsman Bear.

The tar-blackened ropes that tether the dredging claw snake down in front of me. The crew lower the claw towards the sea. When the waves gulp it, dread bites me.

‘It’s reached the seabed!’ someone cries.

‘Hold steady!’

One of Da’s sayings fills my head. ‘Are we not all the gods’ little creatures?’ My sluggish dream-blood simmers. I’m voiceless, but I wish I could roar. I flutter towards the deck and the polar dogs tense, then riot, thrashing against their chains, gifting rough barks to the sky as they watch me shimmer.

The claw shudders from the sea, spitting a clatter of long, curved whale bones across the deck. I know I should look away. Terror squeezes my throat. I don’t want to watch.

But I have to.

Tangled on the claw’s bony barbs are three merwraiths, the scales of their long, drooping tails flashing bright. One’s got a tail of rusty bronze; the others gleam storm-cloud grey. Sodden flame-red hair is plastered to their heads, and pearly globs of fish eggs web their fingers and lace up their arms, chests and throats. My mind flits to Rattlebones, the ancient Sea-Tribe captain who turned to merwraith long ago. My guiding ancestor. These wraiths are our kin. Once they proudly strode their decks, fire-crackle in their hearts.

The merwraiths’ eyes are glazed behind a foggy layer of film. But they’re awake, and they’re frighted.

I whimper, my voice trapped in the space between the worlds, ringing off the masts and round my brain. The horror turns to bony fingers that wring my belly until I gasp.

The merwraiths begin to wither. Their hair becomes seaweed, their fish eggs turn to strings of black slime that drip onto the deck. Only their scales stay bright. The crew snick their knives open.

Get away from them! I scream, but no one hears me ’cept the polar dogs. They howl, frenzied, until Stag blasts a gun into the air, forcing silence.

I flutter, tangled in the ropes, a ghost filled with heart-fury. The face of one of the merwraiths crumples and the eyes fall out – now plain grey seastones that roll about the deck. A shriek rips from her lips before she shrivels into a pile of weeds, slime and rocks, and only her gleaming scales remaining. Sobs rake my chest, and in the tiny gaps in between I sense another mourner. Bear, huddled at his oar, his tears turning to chips of ice on his cheeks.

Missing him and wanting to be in his arms carves my chest into a gaping hollow.