The Huntress Trilogy

Paws and hooves drum the snowy plains. Starlight writhes under us, locked in ancient graves. Bellies sore, bloated-not-with-cubs. Wind-spirits lick our fur. We move. We fight! We hunt. We roar! We face dark burrows, endless night. But we shudder secretly, blood roiling. Our bones click with ice. Life starves, withers. Storms boil.

A shiver brushes my belly as my fur drags in the snow but then a brown-and-white blur streaks into my room and I’m waking up, straining against iron-heavy dreams that drag at the edges of my brain.

My eyes crack open. I’m in my featherbed in my chamber at Hackles, sweating buckets. The room thumps into being around me, full of fuzzy outlines in the half-dark. In the hearth, a fire devours kindling in a spit-crackle frenzy.

Thaw-Wielder soars across the chamber to the messy nest of twigs she’s built atop one of my bedposts. My sea-hawk’s been thieving kindling from all the hearths in the stronghold to build it, much to the vexation of the cooks. I hear the thud as she drops a fish onto the twigs, and the scratching as it thrashes. Fillpipesfillboots, she chatters, jostling her feathers. She squints down at me, stirring a love-pang in the pit of my belly.

A bright droplet of blood falls from her wing onto my pillow. Reckon she must’ve got scraped flying through the arrow-slit again, cos at just the same moment the skin on my arm burnt and the muscles throbbed. Sometimes when she hurts herself, it’s as though I feel it with her.

Thaw gurgles at me, low in her throat, and then the beast-world presses closer to me again, its rich stink clogging my mouth and nose. My skull thuds. I know the hunt Thaw flew. I can taste the fish she speared. I can feel the ice carried by the wind, wrapping around my claws.

A wave of sickness rolls over me. I blink filmy eyes and suddenly I’m looking down into the nest and my own huge talons, one of my claws still hooked through the flesh of the dying fish. I gasp, shaking my head, grabbing fistfuls of bedding. What’s happening to me? For a beat, I’d swear I was peering through my hawk’s eyes. It feels like something inside me is tearing.

There’s a movement to my left. I roll blearily towards it. Da sits in a chair by my bed, rubbing his jaw. The stubby hairs make a scratching sound.

‘Da,’ I croak stupidly. My skull pounds, and a foul, rusty taste clogs my mouth.

I can only see one side of his face, lit by the pale glow of a moon-lamp he’s wedged onto a table next to him. He’s garbed in a midnight-blue tunic with pearls for buttons and a shaggy black goatskin cloak. His yellow hair is bundled into a messy knot on his head. Behind a tangle of reddish beard, his face is the pale grey of a skimming stone.

‘Bloodshed! ’ I blurt, lifting my head from the pillow. The room spins wildly. ‘At the Stone Circle!’

‘Peace, Mouse,’ says Da softly.

I stare at him through great matted clumps of black hair. He’s full-vexed at me, so I make ready to charm my way off trouble’s hook. ‘You know the sea is calling me but still you come in here dressed like her, in blue and pearls and gold like the sun on the waves, eh?’

He stares at me evenly. ‘A hailstorm broke the skulls of three draggles and two riders. Leo—’

‘She’s alright, ent she? Is she?’

‘Let me finish. Leo told us that the rest of the flock spooked, and badly. She managed to shoot a message into a ghostway and called some of the Wilderwitches to her aid. They used weather-magyk to help get the party home. But before they arrived, you passed out.’ He clears his throat and looks away.

I know I’m in for the worst earful of my life, so I clutch handfuls of bedding and get ready to beg myself blue. ‘Staying still is too hard!’ I whine. ‘I loathe it here! I miss home! You can’t blame me!’

‘Are you eight moons old?’ he demands.

I flush.

‘You of all people should know there are worse places for those without a home. Don’t be so guppy-witted.’ He reaches over and gives my leg a shake – not hard, but enough to put me in my place. ‘Can you picture how it feels to find your child gone, in the middle of a pack of angry storms, in the breath before a war? Because mark me, girl—’

‘It weren’t my—’

‘That is what is coming. A war ! A war that I would die before seeing you caught up in!’ he yells.

Da’s only yelled at me a handful of times my whole life long, but when he does, it’s frightful cos normally he sails so easy, and suddenly he’s so mad-vexed his face is purple. The odd thing is, the frightfulness of it makes me laugh, which don’t help matters at all. Grandma used to give in much quicker when fury bit her.

‘Banish that smirk or so help me Mouse I will lock you in this chamber and you won’t even have the run of the stronghold. Then we’ll see how trapped you feel.’

I force the corners of my lips down.

‘Better.’ He sits back, pulls the band from his hair and runs his fingers through it, blue eyes flashing. ‘Gift a man a young death, you will.’

‘I’m not trying to hurt you, Da. I just can’t stay here. I don’t know how.’

‘You’d better get learning, then, hadn’t you?’

I puff up my cheeks and blow all the air out in a rush. ‘When are we gonna find the Land-Opal?’

‘Mouse.’ He folds his arms and leans closer to me. ‘What sort of a father would I be if I let you go running off into this perilous world again, when I’ve only just got you safe?’

I raise my brows. He got me safe?

He sees my look and narrows his eyes. ‘You don’t need to fret – I’m going to find the Huntress and rescue those of our Tribe who are still aboard. Then I will search for the Opal.’

A howl of hope arrows from my throat. ‘And I’ll go with you!’

He frowns. ‘No. No, you won’t.’

‘I’ll gift you a knowing for nothing,’ I hiss, tears sparking in my eyes. ‘You’re too tall, too full-grown and still too slow to be anything but a hindrance on a mission! You stick out like a sore thumb, old man. Any bad-blubber will see your hide coming from a league away.’

Finally, a laugh splutters out of his dry mouth. He grabs for me and musses my tangles into an even worse mess. ‘Listen, Bones. I’ve got a knowing for you, too.’ His voice is taut with heart-worry.

An oar-drum booms in my marrow. ‘What?’

He drops his voice to a whisper. ‘I need you to promise to keep quiet about your beast-chatter.’

Something slithers in my gut when I see the fright stretching his eyes. It’s the first time Da’s told me to hide anything, and the oddness of it bites like a ray. ‘Why?’

‘Just . . . trust me. Alright? These folks don’t know you like your own Tribe. They may not understand your blood-wildness like we do.’

I frown, thinking back to how Coati looked at me before I fainted on the Sneaking. The way he called me a chatterer, like his tongue was wrapped in poison.

Da leans down and presses his forehead to mine. ‘Keep your brother safe ’til my return.’

I chew my tongue to keep from hurling curses. Cos I remember what happened when I parted with Sparrow after a frightful row where I said I hated him. Now I always wanna part with my kin on good terms. So all I do is nod. ‘Come back safe, Da. Don’t be long.’

‘I swear it.’

He limps towards the door, and a rock swells in my throat that I have to fight and fight to swallow down. My mind fills with a picture of him with ice crackling in his yellow brows, his sea-eyes sweeping vast plains of land. May the sea-gods swim close to you, I pray, laying my weary head back on my pillow.

I fall into a fitful doze. When I wake in the glow of the dying fire, my brother crouches at the end of my bed, humped like a bowhead whale and draped in a thick grey bed-fur. I croak out a startled yell but he don’t look up. His moonsprite Thunderbolt sits in his hair, a paling slip of silver. Sparrow’s song is a husked whisper under his sticky, blue-lipped breath. He’s staring at something on the blanket. Sparrow lost his sight after the worst shaking fit I ever saw, at the same time as a great storm at sea. Now he can see hazy shapes and colours, and things like Thunderbolt’s light help his eyes work better. But in other ways, he sees better than anyone. He glimpses the future in visions that leave him frighted breathless. Sky Elders say he is gifted with True Sight.

Last time Sparrow had a vision was the day Axe-Thrower attacked me. He told it to me after we’d both been taken for healing in the sawbones’ nest, and as he spoke I saw that, under his tunic, his muscles still twitched.

‘I saw you,’ he said, eyes blackened by exhaustion. ‘On a carriage pulled by polar dogs, past a beach of white stones in the shape of eggs. A place where—’ He started to cry, lightning webbing his fingers. ‘Sea-gods die, and there are so many polar dogs, with blood on their teeth. There were doors of ice, covered in reindeer fur. You got shoved through them. Then I woke up.’ He shuddered with his whole body, like someone swam over his grave.

Thunderbolt chitters softly at me, bringing me back into the here and now. Black-Hair better now? Thunderbolt fretful for Black-Hair!

Heart-thanks, Thunderbolt! Aye. I’m better now.

Her frail voice and thin light make me look at her more closely than I have for a while. Gods! With everything that’s been happening, I barely thought that if the other sprites need moonlight, so does she. Come back with that Opal soon, Da, I pray.

The middle of my bed is aglow with purple, the light from Sparrow’s lightning that webs between his fingers.

‘What are you—’

‘Shh!’ he says, face screwed up with determination.

‘Don’t you shh me!’

He ignores me. He prods something lying on the bedsheets. I step closer. It’s a dead frog, stretched out on its back.

I sigh. ‘You don’t have to fry your own frog for breakfast, too-soon. Things ent that bad.’ Yet.

‘I just made a thing happen,’ he whines, lightning flaring. ‘And now you’re distracting me!’

I pull a face. ‘What?’

‘The frog’s leg just moved!’

I roll my eyes. ‘That beast’s stone dead.’

He shakes his head, still not looking up. ‘I ent ready yet – my lightning went into a skinny thread. I want to make it do it again.’

Sparrow reaches down to lift the limp body of the frog. Purple light pulses through it.

He flexes his fingers, dropping a splodge of purple that fizzles on the sheet until I lunge forwards to smother it. Then he flicks a small lightning bolt into the frog’s chest. He draws back, breathing hard through his mouth. Then he yells, ‘Why won’t it do it again?’

I try to distract him. ‘Ent you heart-glad I’m better?’

Finally, he looks. ‘Aye,’ he says doubtfully, with a half-shrug. ‘You passed out cold, dint you?’

I press my lips thin. ‘I’m strong as ever I was,’ I tell him, hating the thought that folks might think me weak.

‘Mouse?’ calls a bright, hesitant voice outside the door, making my skin jump.

I brush my tangles out of my eyes. It can’t be. Can it?

Sparrow slithers off the bed and yanks open the door. Kestrel steps into the chamber, face flooded with concern, coppery hair threaded with firelight. ‘How is she, Sparrow?’

I watch them watching me from the doorway. A little spark flares in my belly. ‘Aye, and who might she be? The ship’s cat? The shark’s mother?’

‘She’s as prickly as ever,’ announces Sparrow, ducking under Kestrel’s arm and marching from the room.

Kes bites the corner of her mouth to keep from laughing as she hurries to my bedside. My heart rolls over in my chest and all in one beat I’m kneeling up, bed-furs and blankets flying, and my arms are wrapped tight around her neck. ‘Is it really you? Am I still dreaming? What you doing here?’

‘So many questions!’ She laughs, returning my hug just as fiercely.

We pull away, checking each other over. She’s thinner; her plain garb is slack and her cheekbones jut. Her light brown face looks tired, her freckles are pale and there’s no gold paint on her catlike green eyes. But they glow with more heart-strength than ever.

‘You have grown, sea-sister!’ she says. ‘And your scar continues to heal well – I wonder who stitched it so finely?’ Her lips quirk into a grin.

I laugh, more loud and pure than I feel like I have in an age. Thaw thuds onto my pillow, stretching out her long neck to peer at Kes, blood glistening in the feathers beneath her hooked beak. Hoodwink-high two-leg girl home?

Aye, Thaw!

A strange look crosses Kestrel’s features, seabird-swift, but she blinks and the look melts away and then she’s clasping my hands. ‘So, to answer you. Yes, it is really me. No, you’re not dreaming. And I came to meet with Mother, to reassure her all is well and beg more provisions – not that there are many to be had. I hear more goats have frozen to death, so now Butter and Bone rule the hearth-sides, hogging the heat.’

Butter and Bone are the oldest goats on the mountain – two sisters who do as they please and bite anyone who challenges them. Cantankerous bleaters, both, and forever underfoot. I nod. ‘But how is your mission working? Have you reached many of the Trianukkan youth yet?’

Her face grows flushed, burning with a look of hope and excitement. ‘We’ve been camped with the Tree-Tribes at the edge of Nightfall, sneaking into the colleges when we can. Staying safe and hidden takes so much of our energy, and I tire of hiding,’ she tells me with a small smile. ‘But we’ve left scrolls full of our writings for folk to find, spreading word that the draggle-riders have returned and are seeking unity, not war. Also, about how women should be permitted to study, and about what Stag and the Wilder-King have been doing. We have met with young ones fleeing the city, helping them escape slavery, teaching them medsin and rune skills. And we’ve met with poor people on the outskirts, teaching them to read runic script. But it’s all so much harder than I had thought! I must have been so naïve,’ she says, burying her face in her hands. ‘Our words have been discovered by angry, powerful people. I believe—’ She pauses, studying her lap. ‘They have begun to search for us.’

‘Have you told your ma?’ I ask, dread tumbling in my belly.

She shakes her head. ‘And I beg you, please don’t tell her! She would keep me here, and even if I were willing to stay for her sake, I could never leave Egret.’

I nod, slowly, the breath turned to iron in my lungs.

‘You know, Mouse,’ she says, like a conspirator. ‘Even when you’re stuck in one place, you can still make waves. Think of all the allies you have, right under your nose.’

She’s misread my look – for once, I weren’t feeling heart-sad at being left behind. I was fretting for her.

‘Mother and I thought we would give you a present,’ she says brightly, fishing in her pocket. She pulls out a tiny stub of silver, worn and smooth. I take it from her and find that my thumb fits inside a groove in the silver – it’s an old key. ‘It unlocks the Opal Chamber, so you can visit the stones,’ Kes tells me, grinning.

‘Let’s go, then!’ I put my head under the blankets and dig my fur-lined slippers from the bottom of my bed. A fool that climbs out of bed barefooted is a fool that loses toes to winter’s jaws.

We step into the crooked corridor outside. Thaw glides by my shoulder, throwing the cloak of her shadow over the glittering stone floor.

As I glance sideways at Kes, her words buzz in my brain. You can still make waves. I can feel the seed of an idea throwing roots into my blood.

We wind our way up three stairways hewn into the mountain, past sputtering lanterns that cough up oily wreaths of smoke. We reach a small wooden door and fit the key into the lock.

Kestrel has to stoop to fit through, but inside, the space yawns wide into a cavernous antechamber. Another door, much bigger, is flanked by two guards with crossed spears. The Opal Chamber. Leopard waits with the guards. She smiles at me when I thank her for the key.

The warriors uncross their spears.

We step into the storm-restless feeling of the Opal Chamber. Kestrel gasps. Leo stands by my side, breathing fast. The walls are charred black, seeping fire-worms from tiny pits in the rock. The air tastes charred, too. The fire-worms thud against my heavy cloak like scraps of burning black silk.

A pulsing silver ghostway gloops through a crack in the wall, so the guards can hear if anyone is trying to get too close to the gems.

The Opals hang from the ceiling inside two round iron cages, etched with glowing protective runes. Even though there’s no breath of wind, the cages sway and the chains creak and groan. As I watch them, my skin itches on the inside. The Opals pull on my spirit, and I wish I could free them from their cages. Thaw rockets high in the air and swoops wide circles around the cages, feathers spiking. Shinystones! Glintofgreenbluesparkles!

I step slowly closer to the cages, dragging my fingers across the rough wall. There’s a sour smell in the chamber. ‘Are you making stinks cos you hate being trapped?’ I whisper. The smell in here reminds me of how my armpits get when I’m nerve-jangled.

In answer, the Sea-Opal glows bright green and weeps chips of ice. Gold flecks swirl in its depths. It throws shadows on the cavernous walls, shadows in the shape of seals that writhe and twist and float together, sliding sleek dark skins across the damp rock. Salt rides the air. I stick out my tongue to taste the tang.

The Sky-Opal’s blue deepens like dusk, as it splutters puffs of smoke and flurries of blue sparks that print pictures of clouds and birds and bats and the night hunts of owls on my vision. Shadows shaped like feathers dance across the walls. The cages holding the jewels pull towards each other, creaking.

‘They hate being separated,’ I murmur. Leo stands close by my side.

‘I am sorry for it,’ she says. ‘But we decided that together their power was too great.’

I chatter to the Opals, imagining they’re listening to me. They throw a fire-spirit glow onto the wall and I try to read the pictures. They twine together in ribbons of silver, like a plume of hair caught in a sea-wind. Hair like Grandma’s.

Thaw rasps a cry, wrenching me from my thoughts. A scuffling sound makes my skin twitch.

‘Who’s there?’ demands Leo, face sharpening to full alert as her fingers wrap around her spear.

‘Protector?’ calls one of the guards, knocking on the door.

Thaw dives past our startled faces, hurtling towards the floor. I turn around and see a small furry creature wriggling away through a gap at the bottom of the wall. Thaw shrieks her anger, her claws scraping against the stone floor. ‘Oh! It’s just a lemming,’ says Kes.

Leo’s shoulders sag. ‘It’s nothing, we’re fine,’ she tells the guard. She and Kes begin to laugh.

But a chill spreads through me. I breathe, trying to work out why I’m getting the fear. Notjustlemmingnotjustlemming, croaks Thaw.

Slowly, the knowing trickles into my veins.

‘I didn’t hear that lemming’s beast-chatter,’ I tell them. The beast had the same empty hole where beast-chatter should be that Crow has. What if that lemming was a shape-changer?

‘Perhaps you had no time to notice it?’ suggests Leo.

I shake my head. ‘I can tell when it ent there.’

‘Right,’ says Leo, eyes darkening. ‘I will have a word with the Elders about this.’ She nods to us and strides from the chamber.

Kestrel frowns at the place where the lemming vanished. Then she fixes me with troubled green eyes.