Sarah Driver - Storm

‘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.

‘I feel like something’s changed, about the chatter,’ I tell her slowly. ‘Da’s been fretting about it. He told me to keep it secret, and he’s never said that before. It’s like it’s suddenly a thing of shame.’ Thaw glides towards me and I hold out my arm for her to land. Then her head nuzzles my jaw. ‘I’ve heard folk say mean things, too. Like Coati, and some of the older girls that hang round Lunda. I’m not telling tales – I can handle myself against them, I just—’

‘Mouse,’ she interrupts gently. ‘I know you can. But you’re right to ask about this – I know I would. And I know something about it. Now seems as fine a time as any for the telling.’

‘Go on,’ I whisper.

‘Since I stepped into the great wide, I have heard many foolish opinions of beast-chatter. Some view it as a sickness. A disease of the mind. It is an idea that is spreading.’

I stare up at her. ‘A disease ? But I ent sick.’ I touch the blade at my belt, and Thaw shrills a cry of outrage.

‘Of course not,’ she adds quickly. ‘But in times like these, folk distrust anyone marked out as different. Especially those with a connection to things they can’t understand. Some powers are so ancient that they are feared. I remember my mother teaching me of the old ways. She said there were once other chatterings, kinned with the same power, but different strands of it. Green-chatter, wielded over the plants, and wind-chatter, which is sister to the weather-witch powers, but more potent.’

Other chatterings?

‘It takes its toll on you, doesn’t it?’ she asks, brow puckering. ‘Is that why you fainted on the Sneaking?’

‘It don’t normally, no. That’s the point – I feel like it’s different. Something’s changing. But aye – my chatter’s what knocked me out cold.’ I nibble my lip. ‘What about Stag, though?’ The name feels like it’s knocking around in the air, bruising my skin. ‘He don’t keep his beast-chatter secret.’

Kestrel considers. ‘He’s using his power for ill-doings. Maybe that protects him, somehow.’ She takes my hand. ‘Enough about him, though. Just be careful. Please?’

‘I’m stuck here, ent I?’ I pull my hand away and turn to stare at the Opals, pins pricking my eyes. ‘Can’t get much more careful than that.’ My voice comes out more bitter than I expected.

‘I know. I’m sorry – you must hate me, coming back here and telling you what to do.’

I offer her a small smile. ‘It’s alright.’

She links arms with me. ‘Now, more importantly – shall we go and find some food?’

We step into the flickering torchlight of the long-hall. The place rings with the cries of babs, the bleating of goats and a score of mismatched tribe-tongues. Squidges have wedged themselves into clusters along the tops of the walls and on the chains of the lanterns. The round, feathered, squidlike creatures squeal about the cold, chubby tentacles quivering. They drip ink onto folks’ heads and into their food.

Great oaken eating benches glitter with hollowed, hungry eyes. The benches are laden with piles of kids, thumping each other’s arms, tumbling around, jostling for space. As we walk past, they nudge each other, staring at my scar. Their stares make me feel skinned. What I did for Leo’s lost spirit is famed round here.

‘There treads the sea-witch,’ someone whispers behind our backs. Nervous laughter whistles around my head, and my shoulders tense.

‘Ignore them,’ whispers Kestrel.

Easy for her to say. She’s getting out of here. We stand in line for shallow bowls of goats’ milk porridge. Pangolin joins us. She’s bundled in thick wool dyed the colour of flame, and a grey enamelled pin in the shape of a draggle holds her cloak close around her neck.

She greets us both, but Kestrel’s manner is stiff and the two eye each other warily. Maybe Kes still ent forgiven Pang for the way she was under the old regime.

I’m so busy watching how they are with each other, the seed of my idea swelling in my bones, that I end up stepping on Pang’s cloak and she trips, almost knocking a pot over.

Curses whip from the cooks’ mouths.

‘She never meant to!’ I blurt.

‘Make her words big to her elders, will she?’ threatens a fat old waddler called Kid, with six chins and three mean looks she switches between. She raises a tarnished ladle like a fist and turns to Kestrel. ‘Sawbones, you keep these filthy sea-roving folk out of my kettle-fires.’ She turns her broad back on us. ‘That’s the last of the provisions. Protector says we’ve to hold back the pot-scrapings for the prisoner.’

Axe-Thrower . But she wasn’t the only prisoner, before. Leo captured a mystik and locked him in the belly of Hackles, but one day the cell was empty ’cept for a dark stain on the floor. The mystik leaked through the cracks in the stone.

Kestrel’s cheeks have reddened. ‘If my mother finds out you spoke of Mouse in such a way, she will not be pleased!’

Kid rounds on us, eyes rolling in her head. ‘You dare take a tone with the women who have kept watch over you since you were belly-swell?’

Lunda appears, holding a bowl of porridge scraped clean. ‘Your mother won’t be around much longer anyway. Oh – haven’t you heard?’ she asks innocently. ‘She received a summons, just before the mid-meal bell. She’ll be flying to the Frozen Wastes as soon as possible.’

As me and Kes hurry from the hall, Kid’s words arrow into our backs. ‘She and her kin pine for the sea like a pack of seals. I say, let them fish for their breakfast.’

We find Leo in her chamber. She tells us the summons came from the Fangtooth Chieftain. ‘Stag has turned on the Fangtooths,’ she tells us. ‘My strongest warriors are making ready to fly as soon as we are able.’

‘You cannot accept this summons!’ begs Kestrel.

‘That Chieftain chased me and Crow into the sea with a volley of fire arrows,’ I add, curling my lip. But I swallow down the real reason I don’t want her going. You can’t abandon us !

Leopard smiles sadly. ‘How can I not go? My help has been requested. Isn’t unity what we fight for? We are trying to re-establish ourselves as a major Trianukkan Tribe. The time for hiding is over.’