The Wind on Fire Trilogy: Firesong. William Nicholson

it at a run, racing the rolling rocks to the bottom.

      ‘Still nothing?’

      ‘Just cracks, everywhere.’

      Hanno Hath turned to his son. ‘Are we near water, Bo?’

      Bowman shook his head. Sometimes he could sense the presence of springs or streams, but right now he felt nothing.

      ‘I can’t smell anything.’

      ‘My dear?’

      This was to Ira Hath, who had sat down and was composing herself on the ground, her back leaning against a wagon wheel. She closed her eyes. Several times a day she repeated this process, in order to make sure that they were going the right way. It was a little like sensing the direction of the wind, only it wasn’t wind she felt on her upraised face, but warmth. The sensation was faint, but clear. It told her the way to the homeland. There was another part to the feeling, which was harder to describe: a sense of gathering hush, the prelude to a storm. Ira never spoke to the others of how much she feared this coming time. They could travel no faster than they were doing. There was no point in spreading panic. To herself and to Hanno, she called it the rising wind: every day, a little more every day, the wind was rising. They must seek shelter, they must reach the safety of the homeland, before the storm broke; or the coming wind would carry them away.

      Her husband squatted down before her, and took her hands in his.

      ‘Are we getting closer?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes. Closer.’

      ‘And you?’

      ‘I’ll live to see the homeland. Haven’t I said so?’

      He gave her the last of the bread that he’d saved from his own ration, together with a cup of milk. She ate a little and drank a little for his sake, but she wasn’t hungry.

      ‘You’re getting thin.’ He pretended to be cross. ‘You must eat what you’re given.’

      She smiled and watched his anxious face and thought what a good man he was.

      ‘We each have our part to play, Hannoka. Then it will be time for us to go.’

      ‘Not yet,’ he said, like an order. ‘Not yet.’

      ‘No. Not yet.’

      While the marchers rested, Sisi became more and more agitated.

      ‘Sit, my pet,’ said Lunki. ‘We have two more hours of walking before sundown. Take the ache off your feet.’

      ‘Lie down, I should,’ said Scooch. ‘Get your feet higher than your head. That’s the trick.’

      ‘Higher than your head?’ Lunki was mystified.

      Little Scooch lay on his back on the stony ground and supported his heels on the wagon’s step-board.

      ‘Like this. It makes all the heaviness drop off the feet.’

      Lunki lay down beside him, with her heels on the step-board alongside his.

      ‘Yes!’ she cried, amazed at the sensation. ‘I can feel the heaviness dropping off!’

      She turned to urge Sisi to follow her example, but her mistress was gone. She was some way off, pacing round and round in restless circles.

      ‘What’s the matter with her? Why can’t she settle?’

      ‘Too thin,’ said Scooch.

      ‘Do you think so?’

      ‘No doubt about it. A body needs padding, or the nerves stick out.’

      ‘My poor baby! Her nerves do stick out, you’re right. She feels things too much.’

      What Sisi was feeling was a sudden and insistent need to go to Bowman, and talk to him, and – and she hardly knew what, except that it would end in humiliation. Her pride held her in check, but the longing was becoming more powerful all the time.

      Bowman was some way off, talking quietly with Kestrel. He was as agitated as Sisi, but for very different reasons.

      ‘I want it to be over,’ he said. ‘I want them to come for me, and for it to be over. Why don’t they come? Every hour that passes, I feel it, the wind is rising. They must come soon.’

      ‘They’ll come for you when they need you,’ said Kestrel. ‘I don’t want you to go before you have to.’

      Kestrel knew her brother believed it was his destiny to join the Singer people, but she didn’t understand how they could be parted.

      We go together, she thought. We always go together.

      Bowman heard her thought.

      ‘I don’t want to go. But I can’t go on like this. You don’t know what it’s like.’

      ‘I feel it, a little.’

      She could feel the turmoil in him, his spirit a field of endless battle. Bowman was so open, he could resist nothing, he was like the sky, he absorbed all things. The nomad dreams of the Manth people, the fierce power of the Morah, the sweet wordless songs of Sirene, all swept the horizons of his mind, chasing each other like wind-borne clouds.

      ‘I don’t want to leave you,’ he said. ‘But I must be with them, when the time comes.’

      ‘And after?’

      ‘There is no after. Not for me.’

      ‘Am I to go on without you?’

       Don’t ask. Forgive me.

      As Kestrel received these unspoken words, she felt a movement against her skin, beneath the fabric of her shirt. It was the silver pendant she wore on a string round her neck, that had once been the voice of the wind singer. She had worn it so long she had almost forgotten it was there. Now it stirred and pressed on her chest, and felt warm, as if it was part of her. At the same time, as she sensed its familiar shape and weight, a door opened in her mind, a door she had not known existed. Through the doorway she saw herself and Bowman together, just as they were now: but a little further away, in a time she knew had not yet taken place, she saw her brother without her, lost and heart-broken, calling her name.

      He seemed so real, and so lonely, that she called out to him with her mind.

       I’ll never leave you. Even if I seem to be gone, I won’t be gone. I’ll always be with you.

      Bowman heard her and was astonished.

      ‘What do you mean, Kess? Why do you say this?’

      ‘These things that are coming,’ she said aloud, speaking slowly, finding the thoughts only as she formed the words, ‘these things the prophet has written, the time of cruelty, the wind on fire, these things are greater than us.’

      ‘Oh, yes. Far greater.’

      ‘We aren’t the makers and the un-makers of the world.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Our task is only to play our small part, for our brief moment, in what must happen.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Then we should neither hope nor fear. We must wait for the call, and then do what we must.’

      ‘Yes.’

      She stroked his cheek lightly, tenderly.

      ‘It’ll come soon enough, brother. Don’t wish it any sooner.’

      Sisi could control herself no longer. She must be with Bowman, whatever the consequence. Holding her head high, and looking before her with the distant imperious gaze she had so often used when she had been a princess, she stalked past the other marchers to where Bowman and Kestrel stood. Sisi knew that what she was about