Sarah Driver - Sky

Sparrow’s breath is ragged and when I shake him and call his name he won’t wake. A chewed-up cry worms through my lips before I even know it’s brewing.

‘You have to help us!’ I shout. I keep my hands on Sparrow’s shoulders, squeezing the tender part like Grandma showed me, to make pain and wake him up. But naught happens. I look up towards the flock of riders and they’re blurring cos my tears are falling fast.

When I look back down Sparrow’s lips are tinged blue and that’s when I notice the way his arm lies, the angle of his elbow all crooked. Beads of sweat stand out all over him and his forehead burns under my touch. His arm must’ve had what Grandma called a ‘skinny break’. That loosening I felt was the arm breaking good and proper.

‘Riders!’ I call. ‘You get over here and help me. My brother won’t wake up!’ The salt of my tears prickles on my tongue.

I lift my chin and howl , like I’m warning my Tribe of danger.

And somewhere, in the distance, a creature howls back.

The howl leaves a gloopy silence in its wake.

Startlement stretches my eyes wide. That howl pulled at my chest like it knew me.

Lunda halts her draggle and twitches her head this way and that, alert and ashen-faced. ‘They’re coming,’ she mutters.

‘Who?’ asks Crow, jaw flickering as he grinds his teeth.

Riders fidget, a crackle of fear passing between them. Lamplight glances off the rings in their noses, making them look like a tangle of stars. Their whispers crowd the air, until the wind fizzes with one word.

‘ Wilderwitches! ’

Then the howl comes again. Closer. It cracks the sky like a throatful of death and rings eerily off the distant icebergs. I hunch low, digging my nails into my palms, breath tattered. This must be witch-work.

‘They’re pack hunting again!’ shouts Pangolin.

‘Shushhh!’ orders Lunda.

Pack hunting ? I turn to Crow. ‘Have you heard of Wilderwitches? Are they sky-hunters?’

But Crow’s answer is knocked from his mouth when a rider thwacks him in the back with the butt of their spear. He opens his cloak, presses his face inside and lets out a muffled stream of growls and curses. Then he sits with his hood pulled up, glowering face shielded by folds of cloth.

Lunda steps along her draggle’s back as easy as I would in the rigging. ‘Which direction are they coming from?’ she hisses.

Pangolin glances around. I watch her face; all the tiny workings of her muscles, the tenseness.

Then I spit. ‘Help me, right now, or I’ll summon that thing closer!’ I say it with all the bluster I’ve got, cos I ent the foggiest whether I can summon it or whether I’d want to, but if this Tribe think I can, maybe they’ll help my brother.

‘You will not summon anything!’ Lunda thunders. ‘You are the Protector’s prisoner !’

‘Ha! You try and stop me.’ I check Sparrow again – his breath comes weak and flutter-quick, but it’s there.

Then I stand. My howl’s brewed hot and stormy so when I send it up it’s the fiercest I’ve ever howled, and proper loud.

The horde of riders flinch in their saddles, and Lunda guides her draggle towards the net, raising her knuckle-ringed fist.

Crow moves to shield me but he stumbles, nearly stepping on my brother, so I shove him out of the way and he curses at me, eyes like fire-arrows.

Before I can gift him a sorry, the strange witch-howl comes a third time, closer still. It rattles through my marrow and cloaks the threats Lunda hurls at me. A deep hush follows it, like falling snow. Lunda freezes, her fist still raised.

In the silence I duck low again and put my face close to Sparrow’s mouth, feeling a tiny hot flutter of breath touch my cheek.

‘Lunda, we need to hide,’ says Pangolin, two spots of heat blooming in her round cheeks. ‘We cannot outpace them.’

‘No.’ Lunda smiles, white hair wispy-wild. ‘We will smash them for daring to threaten us – we were made for this fight.’

Riders whisper and write symbols on their chests with their fingertips again. Pangolin’s breath gushes out like she’s winded. ‘But there aren’t enough of us. We’ll be dragged to our deaths!’

DeathdeathdeathdeathDEATH! screeches one of the draggles, and fright bolts through the flock. They jostle, the riders grapple with the reins and Lunda’s thrown face down on her draggle’s back. She scrabbles to grip the staff holding our net, almost dropping it. Before I can stop myself, I’m staring down at the snow, stained black with terrodyl blood.

Lunda jerks to her knees, spitting out a mouthful of orange fur. ‘You idiot !’ she gasps at Pangolin, purple-faced. ‘You’ve spooked them!’ She uncoils a black whip from her waist and starts furiously lashing her beast to try and control it. The others do the same, but still the creatures buck and writhe in the sky. The net judders and Crow groans, clutching his belly.

Finally Lunda gets her draggle turned around. ‘Pangolin has forced us into a cowards’ escape, despite the fact that this is our rightful sky-territory!’ she calls. ‘We must get the sea-creepers to Hackles before the Wilderwitches swoop. Douse the lamps and follow the stars!’

Pangolin’s draggle wobbles for a beat, and she fights with the reins until it steadies. Then she pulls her raindrop cowl over her tear-stained face and vanishes from sight.

The riders smother their lights. A velvet darkness snuffles close.

Are the Wilderwitches a Sky-Tribe, too? What kind of Tribe hunts and howls like wolves? My mind soars, fast as a hawk. Until now I’d reckoned there were no Sky-Tribes at all.

The riders flit after their leader. The wind bites my hands and face as we’re pulled through the air, the opening in the top of the net sealing again as the tendril unravels from the staff.

A damp mist begins to rise. It presses against the net. ‘They’re coming closer!’ yells a voice.

My ears fill with the sharp cracking of whips. I squint through the raindrop net and watch the mist thicken. It bristles like fur, then separates into ghostly shapes that streak through the air, uttering yips and howls. I croak Crow’s name but my voice is drowned by the yells of the riders.

‘Hurry!’ one cries. ‘The sky-wolves are almost upon us!’

We’re flying fast, too fast for me to try to help my brother, and the mist is a stew-thick fog that the riders try to brush from their eyes. ‘Faster!’ shouts Lunda. ‘Don’t swallow even a wisp of this witch-fog!’

When the howl comes again it’s splintered into a hundred fragments that throb all around us and set my teeth rattling. I clamp my eyes shut.

When I look again, the fog has furred and toothed and clawed itself into an army of wolves, some with white or grey fur, others black or red. I wrap my arms around myself and think of bolting along the Huntress ’s deck, her salt- and snow-dusted boards crunching under my boots, sunlight dancing in Da’s hair. I will us home with every stitch of blood and bone, but naught happens.

‘There’s summat fearful wrong about these wolves,’ mutters Crow.

I raise my ice-stiffened brows. ‘They’re prowling through the flaming sky , for one thing.’

‘It’s more than that,’ he snaps. ‘Their faces are more human than animal.’ He stares at the wolves as they race closer and closer. ‘Can you hear their – what do you call it?’ He flails for the words.