Sarah Driver - Sky

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 belly, and that brought a hundred years of war, and gifted all the power to the land.’

That’s where the story always ends but now I’ve got more to tell. ‘Sparrow, we can hammer in our own iron rivets, can’t we? How about this?’ I sniff away the sticky ice inside my nose. ‘Somehow, after moons and moons, the three Opals were thieved from the castle and scattered, setting grave danger loose on the world. Sneaking ice tiptoed ahead of the winter, and the seas threatened to freeze and trap the whales. Trianukka was at risk of ripping apart altogether. But heart-luck was waiting to save the day, in the form of a girl. One Hunter’s Moon, this girl – who was the best at longbow shooting, amongst other things—’

‘No bragful boastings!’ yelps Sparrow.

‘– aye, she’d packed most skills under her belt as it happens. Well, she found a note telling her to find the scattered Opals and to take them to the golden crown before the world turned to ice. And – get this – the girl found the Sea-Opal, right under her nose.’

Crow splutters. ‘I think boasting might be putting it mildly, mate.’

My heart clangs, whooshing blood into my cheeks – I’d reckoned him still asleep, and I ent certain if I want him to know all that stuff yet. Grandma always did say my big mouth would be the end of me. ‘Shut it, you.’

‘Interesting how you make everything about you, ain’t it? And you do realise the whole thing’s just a kids’ bedtime story?’ He sniffs loudly.

‘You’re wrong, I reckon!’ pipes Sparrow.

Crow scoffs.

I tug my cloak tighter around me and will Sparrow not to utter another word. If the wrecker boy thinks it’s just a story, I’ll let him think that, for now.

But Sparrow thumps my arm weakly. ‘When you gonna tell the bit of the story that’s about me?’ he croaks.

Mememe , croaks Thaw-Wielder, feathers trembling with wanting to be part of the story, too.