The Huntress Trilogy

Sundown’s an hour away when we raise sail for the Wildersea; the great greyness we have to cross to reach the Bay of Thunder, for the Tribe-Meet. The Western Wharves fade behind us in the mist, and the foghorn booms.

I’m out on the storm-deck, practising my right-handed shooting. Grandma’s black-cloaks keep arrows nocked to their bows as we sail past the closed ports of the Hill-Tribe chieftains, who watch, shields up, from their jagged fortresses.

Leaving without Da feels every kind of wrong. But I ent gonna doubt him. If he says he’ll come home, then he’ll be here, sooner or later. I keep a tight hold of the carving in my pocket and treasure what Bear said – that it might be a paw print Da left for me.

My last arrow thrums into the animal-skin target. As I lick the salt from my lips and stoop to gather my fallen arrows, I remember with a jolt that Grandma said to meet her in the lab. My pulse flickers as I race below.

Grandma’s medsin-lab is marked with a sign saying ‘Leave Me Be!’ but I push open the heavy door and step inside. The stinks of boiled sea-slugs and algae greet me. I’m dwarfed by tall shelves crammed full of brown bottles, with labels written in squid ink. There are vials of wolf-fish blood, for keeping divers’ blood warm, and the dragonfish luminescence Grandma worked on for moons and moons, to make into night-vision eye drops for the night-watchmen. On the wall is a note: ‘A new-birthed oyster ent no bigger than a peppercorn,’ to keep her impatience in check.

Grandma stands at her table, tipping a blue powder onto measuring scales. Beside her, glass tubes of jewel-bright liquid seethe and bubble. The table’s strewn with chisels, mallets and saws, and stained with dark patches of blood from her amputations and tooth-pullings.

‘Young Mouse,’ she says, without turning. ‘Come and help me brew this potion for Sparrow’s shaking fits. Fetch me three sea-slugs, if you please.’ I’d a mind I was being silent. How’d she know I was there?

I dump my bow and quiver on the floor and turn to the shelf behind me. When I find the right jar I grab a rusty pair of forceps and pick out the scaly green slugs, dropping them onto a square of cloth.

‘So why’s this Stag here, then?’ I ask, idly digging the forceps into the flesh of a slug.

‘He’s a navigator.’ Grandma looks at me like she’s about to say more but her jaw closes again with a pop.

‘Aye, but we don’t need a new navigator; we’ve got you til Da comes back.’ I spot the mortar and pestle, add violet root and start to grind it up for the potion.

She laughs croakily and turns back to her work, dropping the sea-slugs into a small cauldron, where they burst and sputter. ‘Happens I’ve got too much shrimp on my platter and I could do with the help. Think of that?’ She sets the cauldron over a flame and adds a gooey ball of rotten kelp to the slug-sludge. ‘Fetch the porpoise bladder, dearest.’

I scuff over to some barrels filled with the odds and ends that Pip can’t find a use for in his kitchens, and haul a big white bladder out of one.

‘But why him ? Could’ve had any of the crew be a navigator if you ordered ’em to. Da was training up a few good ’uns, anyway.’ I dump the bladder onto the table. It makes a soft ooooohh sound as the air’s knocked out of it.

Grandma ladles the cauldron gunge into the neck of the bladder. ‘Ha! Being a captain ent about giving orders.’ She threads a needle and starts to stitch the bladder shut. I add my violet root to a glass tube with a ladleful of elder wine and set it boiling over a flame. ‘A crew’s like the sea herself: full of wild moods. A skilful captain learns to weather stormy seas, but only once she’s learned to weather her crew.’

I squint up at her.

‘Ack, such solemn grey eyes, always finding me out since the day you were born!’ She laughs. ‘Stag was a young member of this crew, moons ago. Any Tribesperson may return after a wandering if the captain judges them to be heart-sore for their true home. Stag is True-Tribe and his skills are much needed here – he is a truly exceptional navigator.’

‘He’s a sombre old loon, is what he is. Besmirching our deck with his sneering jowls.’ I use tongs to lift my glass tube from the flame and fix it in a vice to cool.

Grandma’s mouth twists like she’s trying not to laugh. ‘You ent frighted of him, now, are you, Bones?’

‘No, I flaming well ent!’ My face floods with shame. I slam my fist down onto the table as Grandma hoots with laughter. ‘But he can’t be trusted.’

Grandma stretches across the table for a rag. ‘Time will tell, dearest heart. Shall we gift him a chance to prove himself ?’ She wipes her hands on the rag. ‘Truth be told, my girl, the sea is the only one you can trust, though she’s no fool and she claims anyone who don’t show her rightful respect.’ Her good eye flickers between both of mine, and deep inside her glass eye, little flecks of gold begin to swirl. Ent noticed that before – less it’s just my imagination.

‘I wonder if turning thirteen’s lent you the strength for what I’m about to say.’ Her mouth draws into a grave line.

‘What?’ I gape up at her, my heartstrings pulling and thudding.

She pushes loose strands of hair away from her face. ‘Stag’s moving into your da’s cabin.’

The words hit me hard in the chest, like Grandma’s thrown the whole stinking porpoise bladder at me. ‘You ent serious.’ I back away, a storm in my veins turning my cheeks hot.

‘Mouse, calm your bones, you know I don’t want to heart-bruise you.’

‘So why are you, then? You still sore with me cos of that terrodyl? I never meant to bring it down on us!’

‘No, course I ent.’ Grandma’s eye burns into me. ‘But if you ever try a repeat performance I’ll do far worse.’

I nod, quick. ‘I thought you wanted Da back as much as me ’n Sparrow do!’

‘Course I do, Little-Bones.’ She folds herself onto a wooden stool, looking more crumpled and tired than ever. ‘There never was a finer man. I’ve loved him like my own son, ever since your ma first fell for him at a Tribe-Meet. And gods know we could do with him aboard. But you saw that sealskin, clear as stars.’

‘So what? Anyone can lose a cloak. I’d bet it weren’t even his blood!’ I bite my lip, hard.

‘Aye, that’s a point. I don’t know exactly what it all means.’ Grandma sighs, her craggy face pained. ‘But if he is alive, your da’s more than capable of crewing another vessel until he can return – then the cabin will be his again. Meantime, we’ve to forge on, and Stag needs a place to sleep. Tonight we celebrate your Hunter’s Moon. I’m heart-certain your da will be with you in spirit.’

‘I couldn’t give a twisted fishing hook for any birth-moon without Da!’ I turn my face away as tears prickle the backs of my eyes. ‘I ent ten, so don’t talk to me like I am. I want Da here, body and spirit. Don’t let Stag have his cabin. Please.’

Grandma smiles gently and reaches for me. ‘Listen. The cabin was yours for a heartbeat, when you shared it with your da. But you’re half-grown now, learning the ways of a captain. Looking after your brother. Does a captain pine after past lives? We can’t own a thing in this world, and a cabin’s wooden walls, that’s all.’

‘Ha!’ I shout bitterly, swiping at my face with my sleeve cos the tears are dripping down even though I’m fighting hard. ‘You always say there’s so much of our blood in Huntress she’s like our living, breathing kin! Now the truth comes, that you think –’ I snatch for breath ‘– you think she’s naught but wooden walls!’

Grandma looks at me. Her mouth’s turned down at the corners and her good eye shines bright. ‘Aye, girl. There’s Stag’s blood in the Huntress, too. Like it or not.’ She bundles me into her arms and I breathe her warm, herby scent.

Someone taps at the door. ‘Mouse! Are you in there? It’s time for your gift-giving!’ calls Vole.

My pulse quickens. I wipe my nose on my sleeve and pull away from Grandma, looking up into her face.

She brushes the hair off my forehead and nods briskly. ‘Come and greet your first sea-hawk.’

Near the prow Frog, Vole and Big Marten play pipes and drums. Moon-lamps hang from hooks along the deck, bright against the dusk. My heart lifts when I see my moon rising, a full yellow orb that bathes the sea in milky light. Wherever Da is, maybe he’s looking at the moon too, and thinking of me.

Pip lays out a feast beneath the stars: oranges and cinnamon buns, lobster claws, whole spiced tentacles, roasted snowshoe hare, toasted anemones and sweet curd tartlets.

Folk stuff themselves with grub and leap in the firelight, clad in animal masks and hoods. I take an orange and run my thumbs over its cool, bumpy skin, but I can’t eat. The fire spirits twine overhead, flickering white, green and purple, but they still don’t gift me any sign of Da. Bear rumbles his loudest growl and the littlest ones shriek with laughter.

High above us on the top of the fore-castle, a group of women gather moonlight. I crane my neck to watch as they spin orbs of light between their hands and drip pools of it into glass bottles to make moon-lamps.

A Tribeswoman lets out a cry as she drops a silver splash of moonlight onto the boards. It quickly forms a moonsprite that runs off, streaking silver footprints across the deck. Squirrel chases it, giggling, red hair braided over her shoulder.

I send imaginary arrows and my fiercest battle-howl into the night sky, as the pipes and drums and horns and fiddles play faster and faster. The whirs and clicks of the orcas’ song fill the air. ‘The whales are dancing with us!’ Sparrow shouts, cheeks nipped with cold.

Bear hears him. ‘Aye, the sea-gods have blessed your thirteenth moon, Mouse-Bones!’ He grabs our hands and spins us in a circle. Sparrow squeals with laughter.

All the faces around me are familiar ones, and I’m heart-glad, but how can Grandma say the stranger is True-Tribe when he ent even bothered showing up for my celebration? I wrinkle my nose. He must have too much work to do, given he’s such an exceptional navigator.

Squirrel clambers down from her best spot in the rigging to gift me with a tiny arrowhead chiselled from jet, hung on a hook. I thread it through my ear and grin at her. ‘Took me three sunrises to make it!’ she chirps through a mouthful of sugared almonds.

Sparrow’s gift is a wooden whale that he carved himself, with chips of jet for eyes. It looks like a great shapeless lump of wood, but I keep my mouth shut about it.

From Bear I have an amulet of dark amber, wrapped in silver and hung from a string of dried sinew. ‘It’ll bring you luck and protection,’ he tells me, grinning as he lifts it over my head. My gift to him is a proper toothy smile.

‘Can I have something, too?’ begs Sparrow, eyeing my gifts sullenly.

‘Your birth-moon, is it?’ I ask.

He sticks out his tongue. I make a grab for him but he wallops me on the arm and darts out of the way. Then he gasps. ‘Look!’

I turn as Grandma appears, cradling my sea-hawk fledgling, and before I can think I’m jumping in the air and shouting for joy. I startle the bird so much that she poos a white river all down Grandma’s arm.

‘Mouse, you witless sculpin!’ Grandma scolds, but laughter sparkles in her eye. ‘Don’t unsettle her so!’

I rush to her and grip her arm, peering at the hawk’s spiky feathers and up-to-no-good face. She’s got yellow eyes and a white crest like spilt sea-foam. She stares at me but no words come yet. I can sense the beast-chatter in her, though, and it stirs the wild-crackle in my blood.

‘Can I take her?’ I gasp, opening my palms.

‘Gently,’ Grandma says.

The fledgling settles her feathers against my skin and cosies her face up to my neck. It tickles and makes me laugh. Her heart drums wild against my frozen palms.

‘My granddaughter has claimed her thirteenth moon, and will take her place by my side at the next great Tribe-Meet!’ announces Grandma. ‘Let it be known the fire spirits named her hawk Thaw-Wielder.’

Folk begin to cheer, howl and clap. Sparrow wanders up to me and scuffs his boot against the boards. ‘She ent even half as good as Thunderbolt.’ His moonsprite flits around his head, shedding moondust into his hair. Her light shows up the jealousy in his wrinkled nose and stubborn chin.

I open my mouth to tell him what I think of that stupid moonsprite when Thaw-Wielder poos down my cloak. Sparrow laughs so hard he bashes into the mast.

How much of that stuff have you got in there? I ask the bird.

She stares at me and makes a soft peep that nearly sounds like lotslotslots.

Grandma smiles. ‘It’s good to hear the wildness of the beast-chatter in your throat, my girl. This hawk is lucky to have you.’

Heart-pride blazes in my chest. But I wish, fierce as anything, that Da could be here to greet Thaw-Wielder with me.

Tonight Grandma’s let me sleep out on deck with my sea-hawk, in the hammock Da uses when he takes the watch. Thaw-Wielder tucks her beak into her feathers and her sides rise and fall with tiny beast-breath. The only other life out here is the night-watchmen and the creatures lurking below the starlight-silvered sea.

In the light of the Hunter’s Moon I cradle the carving of our ship in my hands. Grandma’s words echo around my brain. There’s Stag’s blood in the Huntress, too.

Worms, croons Thaw sleepily. I fetch a pink wriggle-treat out of my pocket and she slurps it up. Wormswormsworms.

The tiny model of the ship has all three masts and jutting sticks for oars, though some of them must’ve snapped off. This ship belongs to me and my kin, I whisper to the snoozing hawk. Not that Stag. The wind rises and gusts suddenly, filling the sails, and the Huntress speeds along like she agrees with me.

I’m about to put the carving back in my belt pouch when my finger brushes a knotted lump in the wood at the base of the tiny fore-mast. I pluck at it. Thaw, lend me your beak and you can have lots more worms. Her eyes flick open and she looks where I’m pointing. She nibbles and drags at the knot with her sharp beak, and it extends into a thin cord.

Wormswormsworms? Worms? she asks, fanning out her wings and tail feathers.

Shh, wait! Frowning, I grasp the cord and pull.

My breath lodges in my throat like a fishbone. Beautiful, silken white blooms unfurl, attached to the miniature masts. They’re little white sails. My eyes fill with tears. We were meant to add the sails together, Da and I, but he must’ve finished the job without me.

I turn the carving over to look at the other side and suddenly I sit bolt upright, heart hammering. Thaw bursts into the rigging with a shrill hoot.

Etched in spidery squid ink around the edges of the sails are runes, delicate enough to look like decoration to eyes less sharp than mine. My eyes follow the symbols:

KEEP THIS HIDDEN, LITTLE-BONES.

I CANNOT RETURN, THERE IS GRAVE DANGER.

SEEK THE SCATTERED STORM-OPALS OF SEA, SKY AND LAND, BEFORE AN ENEMY FINDS THEM AND USES THEM TO WIELD DARK POWER.

TAKE THEM TO THE GOLDEN CROWN BEFORE ALL TRIANUKKA TURNS TO ICE, TRAPPING THE WHALES BENEATH A FROZEN SEA.

REMEMBER THE OLD SONG? THE SONG WILL MAKE A MAP.

KEEP YOUR BROTHER CLOSE BY YOUR SIDE, AND KNOW YOU’RE NEVER ALONE.

I WILL FIND YOU WHEN I CAN.

DA.

My heart flutters like a wild thing. A message from Da – I knew he was alive! Then his message starts to settle about me like a heavy cloak. The Storm-Opals are real? I thought they were just part of a story! My mind tries to catch hold of this new knowing, but it’s too big. There’s so much power in them Opals, Thaw! The story says they can bring all the Tribes together in peace, if they’re returned to the crown. How’d they end up scattered? And how am I meant to find them?

My eyes gobble the runes over and over. Wasn’t I just pondering the meaning of winning that ice-rune this morning and now here’s this message, talking about ice again!

Thaw-Wielder zooms down to land on my knee and stares up at me. Da used to sing me the old song, I tell her. But that was many Hunter’s Moons ago, when I was little. I search my mind, but I can’t remember the words.

She pecks my ear with her cold beak. Lift throat-warble to sky!

Reckon she’s telling me to sing, but I frown and shake my head. I don’t know the words, Thaw. And anyway, singing ent my strong point, mostly cos the beast-chatter clogs my ears all the time.

I pull the cord from the other side and the tiny sails collapse and disappear back inside the carving. I’ve got to keep Da’s message secret. Bear’s right; Da did leave the carving as a trail!

Trail! Old song. Worms? she peeps.

I stow the ship in my belt pouch and pull the furs up to my chin as I sway gently in the hammock, feeding worms to the sea-hawk.

For hours I lie awake and stare at the full moon, etching Da’s message onto my memory. I don’t mind keeping it hidden – for once I can have a secret, just for me. But how can a song be a map? And what kind of danger has kept Da from coming home?

When my eyelids grow heavy I’m restless. I know I should settle my bones good and proper, cos otherwise my spirit’s gonna pull free and fly through the night in a dream-dance. That’s what happens if my mind can’t stay still.

As I slip into the dreaming world, my spirit tugs against my body. Fright pangs beneath my skin; I fight, but it’s too late. I climb out of my sleeping self, cold night air brushing my spirit. I flit away from the hammock and fly below decks. Something drags me like the tide, towards Da’s cabin. But when I reach the door the din almost shocks me back to my body.

A man shouts and cries out like a frighted bab. I drift inside and the stranger’s there, asleep in Da’s bunk. A candle burns by his bedside – is he afraid of the dark? He thrashes and yells. ‘Lost. Dark. No! Gone. Almost had them. But I’ll find them again, can’t have been for nothing—’ Then he startles awake and stares about him for a long moment. ‘Who’s there?’ he barks. But he can’t see me, cos only my spirit is there, dream-dancing.

Darkness falls earlier every night, now this fearsome winter’s stirring. I watch through the porthole as the Huntress prowls past a stretch of ice-flats. These skinny sea-paths through the ice are perilous, cos the land-lurking Fangtooth Tribe rule this place with terror.

Grandma’s orders float along the deck. ‘Lamps doused! Shields up! Oarsmen below! Black-cloaks, be watchful for Fangtooths. The Huntress is entering the Frozen Wastes – Sparrow’s whale-song is the only sound I want to hear, from this beat on. May strong winds fill our sails.’

The drum fades and Sparrow’s high voice rises, like a bell, to chime along with the whales. Blue puffs of song blow past my face. His voice will keep the whales close and they’ll guide us forwards in the dark, so we don’t crash into the ice.

Thaw-Wielder clings to my shoulder. How does Grandma think I’m gonna be captain if she don’t let me join the watch when danger lurks? I mutter.

Danger? Thaw trills.

I need to be out on deck, where I can watch for polar dogs and keep an eye on that Stag. Suddenly I snatch a yawn, and Thaw catches it in her beak. Last night in my dream-dance I saw Stag thrashing in his sleep, and babbling about something being lost. My mind flits to the missing Storm-Opals in Da’s note.

Feather-fear, chirrups my fledgling, hiding her head under my chin.

You stay here then. I nest the hawk in a swirl of bedding. But I ent frighted of the Fangtooths, just cos they wear bones round their necks and file their teeth into daggers. What if they’re out there, hunting us? I can’t stay put a heartbeat longer.

I pile on another walrus skin and some slippers, then grab my bow and quiver from under the bunk.

Outside, cold blackness steals my breath. The Huntress glides through a forest of icebergs, some tall enough to hide their heads in the clouds. There’s a sadness to them, like they hold too many secrets.

Sparrow plays with the whales, mixing up the words of his song to make the bowheads chuckle, whilst a pod of orcas hunthunthuntPUSHhunthunthunt, driving fish up through the thin ice on the surface. Sea-hawks swoop silently over the waves to seize herrings from the sea and plunk them onto the deck. My eyes drink it in as I turn in circles. Grandma was going to let me miss all this?

I feel my way along the frosty deck. Grandma’s in the mended crow’s nest, blowing softly into a bone pipe, in time with Sparrow’s song. A dark shape ripples next to her head – when I squint I can just make out the ancient sea-hawk, Battle-Shrieker, perched on her shoulder.

Sparrow sings at the prow, his hair and furs glowing white under the moon’s light. He spots me and grins. By his side, Vole captures drifts of whale-song in the crystal atop her prentice-staff, making it glow midnight blue.

We break free of the ice forest and drift down a narrow path through the middle of the frozen land. The whales fall silent as they’re forced to dive beneath the ship.

An eerie moan carves the night, spilled from the throat of an animal.

My heart becomes a wild bird, thrashing against my ribs. Grandma hoots into her cupped hands and black-cloaks step out of the shadows, all along the storm-deck and higher up on the fore-castle. Icicles hang from the men’s beards. Stag’s with them, eyes glittering.

I scan the ice but it’s too dark to see. Then Sparrow’s song strikes deep into my bones.

Do you remember

When the sea

Lay, still, in wait for me.