mutter. ‘I’m thirteen Hunter’s Moons old.’ My teeth chatter. ‘The Huntress is our ship. The home of our Tribe. And we’ll claim her back from Stag.’
My sea-hawk, Thaw-Wielder, snoozes between my belly and one of the terrodyl’s spines; a warm bundle of sleek feathers. She’s grown again, but she ent realised she’s got to be more gentle when she lands on me – I’m still sore from the last time her huge claws thudded into my shoulder. I rub her head, feeling the delicate bones of her skull beneath her feathers. Then I pull my hand back as a shock stabs into my fingers – the Opal in my breeches pocket has made Thaw puff up into a ball, crackling with heat and smelling like the sky before a storm.
I scan the horizon. On the shore, stretched from east to west, a beach of black sand wears a skin of ice, and beyond glints a dark sea hissing and pluming into jets of water that are fighting not to freeze solid.
I hum under my breath. You must remember what waits there, you’ll find it at the point high in the air.
Then I stop, cos the song brings my dream-dance crashing back over me like a wave. Thaw stirs and stretches out a brown and white wing, uncovering her eyes and watching me curiously. Remember how that line of the old song once gifted us the idea of searching at Whale-Jaw Rock, Thaw? I say when I can breathe again. It’s east of here, and marked by a great plume of water, that looks like a whale breathing through its spout.
Sea-breather, she babbles, eyes glinting.
I nudge the terrodyl’s right side with my heel. We should bear east! I call.
My gut lurches into my mouth as the creature twists in the air to change direction. He chuckles. Long-flying since asked crawler where go. It answers almost at end of world!
I grin at the beast’s cheekiness, and turn back to Thaw. Reckon we’d better find the place soon, I tell her. Cos the world’s ready to crunch up our bones and spit us out if I don’t get all three Opals to the golden crown.
She blinks slowly at me, a shiver rippling through her feathers. Remember home, she warbles softly. Remember name. Tell Thaw feather-truth, bone-truth. The fierceness in her eyes gifts me the heart-strength to dredge my truth from the depths of my bones.
My name is Mouse. I’m thirteen Hunter’s Moons old, I mutter between chattering teeth. Sometimes my Tribe call me Little-Bones. I love to howl and dive for pearls and shoot arrows from my longbow. There’s fire-crackle in my heart, Grandma always said. There’s fire-crackle in the hearts of all my Tribe. It’s a fight that blazes inside.
Thaw gurgles a quick battle-squawk and puffs up her feathers.
My home’s been thieved, and now I’m out in the wild. My Tribe are in danger. I need my fire-crackle more than ever. Cos the fight’s only just begun.
We fly east, the sea curving from our left and spilling into the distance ahead. The wind buffets the terrodyl and tries to claw off our skins. I’m watching for the Huntress without even meaning to, cos my heart pangs whenever I glimpse movement below.
I picture my friend, chief oarsman Bear, battling furious waves and shivering at his post. Forced to be one of Stag’s oar-slaves, chained and half starved. I have to make things right and claim our ship back – there ent a beat to lose. Can you keep watch for the geyser – the sea-breather? I ask Thaw, as we fly over a landscape of cracked brown earth, abandoned dwellings and ripped out trees that lie on the ground, roots grasping for the sky. My belly twists like I’ve swallowed a nail – seems like the world is brimming with chaos.
Thaw-Wielder flicks open one bright yellow eye. Thaw watches! She hops out of my lap onto the terrodyl’s head and fans out her striped wings, shaking the frost from them. Then she huddles down, head twitching to right and left as she watches for the flicker of the geyser.
Heart-thanks, Thaw, I tell her. Then I cough, cos my beast-chatter always comes from the very back of my throat, and I’m proper parched to boot. Long icicles hang from the terrodyl’s wings. Wonder if I could snap one off for drinking water?
I stretch out my arm, eyeing an icicle, but then a fizzing finger of lightning stabs from the sky into the black sand below, exploding black arrows up into the air. The terrodyl hisses and swerves away from where the lightning struck. Then a sparkle catches my eye, and when I glance again we’ve crossed the shoreline and a glittering forest has opened up below us.
A forest of shapes.
Scores of towering blue icebergs shoot upwards from the sea. Glowing balls of blue zip between the bergs. I squint down at them and then my chest riots. ‘Berg owls!’ The feathery bundles thud into caves they’ve burrowed in the ice. ‘We’re flying over the great Iceberg Forest of the Wildersea!’
When I turn to grin at the others, a slip of moonlight skitters out of Sparrow’s tunic pocket and streaks silver footprints up his neck, over his ear and onto my shoulder. Where where what-huh-what black-hair chatters? Thunderbolt chimes eagerly. The moonsprite swings from my earlobe with a tingle-cold grip.
I chuckle. Icebergs. You can’t miss ’em. It means we’re flying over the border of the Wildersea! Now all we need to do is follow the icebergs east towards the Bay of Thunder, and I’ll know how to find Whale-Jaw Rock from there.
She gifts me a short chirrup of approval before zipping back to Sparrow. Not so long ago me and the sprite couldn’t stomach the sight of each other, so I’m heart-glad she still wants to be friends.
‘What d’ya reckon, Sparrow? Ent these bergs something?’ Then I remember he can’t see much, cos of the creeping white film on his eyeballs, and I chew my tongue.
‘I’m thirsty.’ That’s all he says, and proper quiet.
‘Don’t worry, we’re on the right path, so we won’t be flying much longer. And I’ve got an idea,’ I call to him, eyeing the icicles on the terrodyl’s wings.
‘Can I have a story, too?’ he whimpers. ‘My nightmares are more stronger. They keep giving me the brain-aches.’
I squeeze his hand. ‘S’alright, they’ll soon stop now we’ve got you away from that place.’
‘But I feel like something bad’s gonna happen.’ He bangs his head against my back. ‘I dreamt a golden lightning bolt shot us down.’
‘We’ve left the bad stuff behind, too-soon,’ I tell him softly, panicking inside about what to do if he has more shaking fits. ‘How about that story?’ I clear my throat. Stories grow twisted over time, especially if you tell them without story pictures etched in bone to guide you. But I remember one so well that I can taste the words, ready to spill out. The story everyone knows, but I never knew the heart-truth of when I used to tell it before. Now the truth of it rattles through my marrow.
‘One hundred moons and suns ago, long after the first oarsman beat his drum, the last King of Trianukka had an ancient golden crown and three powerful Storm-Opals.’ As I tell the story, I feel Sparrow relax against me the tiniest bit. I clutch the terrodyl’s spine tightly as it navigates the Iceberg Forest. ‘The Opals were to be set in the crown, to heal the trouble between all the Tribes of Sea, Sky and Land and let them live in peace together. The first Opal held a foam of sea, the second a fragment of sky, and the third a fracture of land. But before the gems could be set in the King’s crown, it got gobbled up by a great whale. The Opals had to be kept safe, so the crinkled old molluscs—’
‘You mean mystiks!’ murmurs Sparrow.
‘Aye, same difference. The mystiks of the Bony Isle guarded them, deep within the walls of Castle Whalesbane, where the King dwelt. The King blamed the Sea-Tribe captain, Rattlebones, for hiding the crown in the whale’s