Storm. Sarah Driver
really thought I would not realise?’ she asks, letting go of me with a sigh. A few Riders twist in their saddles, staring at me with narrowed eyes.
I shrug, cheeks burning. ‘Reckoned it were worth a stab.’
To my startlement, Leo’s face dimples into a grin. ‘I promised your father I would keep you safe – I will deal with this disobedience when we return,’ she swears. ‘But I do admire your determination.’
I don’t dare return her grin, but I let my eyes sing out my wildness.
We reach the sea, where storm-waves have frozen solid, into ice-mountains that rise like great dark fins. Between them, the sea that ent yet frozen bubbles weak as a dying Tribesperson’s spit.
Ice-bound ships litter the sea, wounds agape in their flanks. Tears well in my eyes as I think of my ship. Bear. Frog. Pipistrelle. Vole. I breathe the names of my Tribe into white ghosts on the air. Where are you? Where?
In the distance, a steady drum begins to throb, shattering my thoughts.
The drum beats louder, closer. It rattles my ribs. Riders stare around them, and I feel their nerves tense.
The rider nearest me draws a breath. But then there’s a choking sound as the air catches in her throat.
Movement catches my eye from the left. I twist in the saddle. My skin jumps. Smoke puffs in time with the drumbeat I heard. As I stare I realise that it’s vapour, that it’s something’s breath. Something big, to make that much steam. Something with a footstep even bigger, to make a drumbeat that loud.
A dark shape is looming. My heart clangs and hammers.
Through the bleak light stamps a chalk-white giant with a skull bubbled all over in milky sores.
Yellowy fluid seeps from sores and trickles down the giant’s body. He leans down, opens his cavernous mouth and smashes his tombstone-teeth around a frozen wave. He chews the ice, then bends for another bite.
The giant’s blistered flesh sucks any last warmth from the half-frozen clouds and the sluggish sea, which throws up a new tower of ice as he passes.
A long, low groan knocks from the giant’s mouth, echoing around the sea of crystal waves. I remember seeing giants like this one in the stories etched in bone that Grandma and Da used to read to us. They were called stogs – the biggest of the Tribe of giants, and the most miserable. They made the seas by weeping, and liked to pluck ships from the waves, crushing them with their bare hands. But the stories said the giants were all sleeping . . .
Not any more.
The stog’s face is craggy-glum and his legs are as long as masts. His hot breath knocks the draggles up and down in the air like toy ships. He snaps a hateful glare onto us and roars, a sound that booms through my chest and makes my teeth chatter. Then his fist swipes through the air.
The draggles scatter. Leo calls orders lost as the storm winds begin to whip again. The stog groans, and kicks out against a wave, making icy rubble fall.
I’ve ended up alone on one side of the giant’s flailing arm, the others all watching me from the other side. As I struggle to control the draggle, I lose my grip on Pangolin’s spear and it falls, clanging onto the ice below. A Spearsister jerks her face towards me. Wisps of white hair have escaped her hood – Lunda. ‘Is that who I think it is?’ she spits. ‘She’s not even meant to be on this patrol!’
I grit my teeth. The stog’s breath reeks, even through my raindrop cowl. I guide my draggle lower, trying to dodge underneath the huge arm.
‘Mouse!’ warns Leo.
The arm sweeps towards the ground but I swoop low and fly past the dank hollow of the armpit, gulping a lungful of a sharp tang that makes my head woozy. The stog snatches me from my draggle. My chest is squeezed until black spots dance in my eyes. There’s no air left in my lungs for screaming. My legs swing wildly in the air, and my belly pitches into my mouth . . . and dimly I’m aware of riders yelling before I’m shut inside a huge, clammy fist.
I gulp for breath, heart skittering. I slip on the thick yellow sweat pooled in the stog’s palm, clawing at the ridges of his skin. ‘Leo!’ I yell, but my voice bounces back into my own ears, stabbing painfully into my head.
I’m running out of air. My eyes scan the roof of flesh above my head – there are thin gaps between the fingers. The stog’s grip tightens so I push through one of the gaps, kicking, clawing, scratching, wriggling . . .
Finally I squeeze through and leap out of his hand, grabbing hold of a thick brown vine sprouting from his ear – but the vine is slippery, and I can’t hold on.
Lunda zooms towards me, one foot planted on her draggle’s back, the other on mine. Two sets of reins are bunched in her hands. She hovers as near to me as she can get. ‘Jump, fool child!’
The giant roars, thrashing his head around.
I swing myself across the space, miss my own draggle and land with a thump behind Lunda. I grab her waist as I regain my balance. ‘Bleeding blood cockles,’ I whisper, eyes watering with shame. My palms are coated in stinking, gloopy ear wax.
‘Fly on!’ calls Leo, and we wing away from the giant.
I wipe my hands on my breeches as we tear away through the sky.
Jealousy nags me. Wish I could be as skilful riding one of these beasts as Lunda is. ‘You should stay behind with the other youngsters from now on!’ she hisses, holding the reins while I scramble back onto my own draggle. Her hard blue eyes graze my face.
I glare at her while my lungs suck shallow breaths. The stog’s distant howls of fury rattle through my chest and make my teeth throb.
In spite of everything, excitement bubbles in my belly when I think about the Tribe-Meet, where my Tribe traded jet and amber for songs, stories for furs and fish. Sometimes Da and Bear traded sailcloth or silver for songs alone, and even though magyk could be spun from them, Grandma weren’t never too impressed. The last Meet I went to – for Dread’s Eve – feels so long ago. And it weren’t exactly a normal meet, with Da missing and me almost getting swallowed by a gulper. It’s where I lost Sparrow, too, when Stag had him snaffled by wreckers.
The Tribe-Meet for Wakening’s Dawn is all about drumming Spring up from her grave. There’ll be market stalls and music-makers and acrobats with flaming torches, bakers whose spices dance in the air, traders with bundles of brightly dyed cloth and sword-sharpeners, tanners and tricksters.
‘I can’t wait to show you your old Sky-Tribe path and gateway stones!’ I call to Leo, to gift her good cheer.
She nods. ‘I am keen to see these things,’ she says. ‘But nervous, also. Many suns and moons have risen since any Sky-Tribe attended. How do we know the etiquette, here?’
Lunda’s draggle drops closer as the Spearsister tries to listen. Maybe her nerves are tightening, too.
‘You approach the circle along your Great-Tribe’s path – that’s the Sky Path, which you get to through the gateway stones shaped like eagle heads. There’s no weapons allowed, so we’ll have to leave our spears outside.’
The old rider called Coati, who angered Pike in the long-hall, laughs, face fury-flayed. ‘Leave our weapons and we are sitting targets, mark my breath.’ He twirls his spear.
Leo rolls her eyes at me, the tension melting off her face. But when we can see the tips of the circle of stones piercing the drifting fog, I sense my draggle wants to bolt.
‘This place is eerie,’ hisses a rider, a man with two long black braids hanging over his shoulders.
I struggle to steady my draggle, stroking