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