Storm. Sarah Driver

the hall, the Elders creak to their feet. Thick silence plunges once again.

      Leopard nods to the Elders, then sits at the edge of the dais, opposite me. She twists her thin hands in her lap. Her lips move, and I can just hear her prayers. ‘Wakening’s Dawn, please come to us, please melt this ice and wake the sun.’

      The Elders hook a cauldron over a fire, then pinch powder inside and feed lumps of resin to the flames. Sparks race each other into the air. The Elders make a circle, linking hands.

      Steam noses over the edge of the cauldron, coiling up to the damp cavern that yawns over our heads. The Elders crane their necks to see the shapes made by the steam.

      I scrunch my toes inside my boots.

      ‘A darkness spreads across all the sea, sky and land . . . the great wheel of Midwinter has turned, but new life fails to wake in the earth!’ croaks an Elder. ‘It is as we feared. The age of the Withering has befallen us!’ She rakes her wide, watery eyes through the crowd. Then she spits. ‘Sky-gods save our souls.’

      The fire claws at the sides of the cauldron. The steam thickens and writhes.

      Draggle-riders are a goat-hardy, wind-sculpted folk. But still their frighted whispers leap into the air like sparks from a stabbed fire.

      ‘My granny always warned of a Withering – why weren’t we ready?’

      ‘The fear was lost . . . we turned our backs on the demon!’ comes the hissed reply.

      ‘It’s the gods that turned their backs, on us !’

      ‘A Withering means no food, yet we take more stragglers in! Where will it end?’

      Pika, the tall, cinnamon-skinned draggle-keeper boy, buries his face in his hands. ‘All my life, I’ve been taught to fear the Withering,’ he whispers. ‘I can’t believe it’s here.’

      ‘What is it?’ I ask, leaning forwards to see him, sitting on the other side of Crow.

      ‘Death of light,’ he answers absently, eyes roaming the hall. ‘A long, cold night of dead things. If no life stirs, there’ll be a food shortage even worse than the one made by war.’

      The Withering. I try to picture it in my mind’s eye, but it’s hard to imagine a thing so vast. Not long ago – but exactly when, no one can agree on – dawn failed good and proper. Now we’re stuck in a grainy light, like a nightmare.

      The steam from the cauldron twines and shifts, until I see grim faces with stretched eyes pulling upwards and swarming through the air.

      One of the Elders throws a jug of water over the fire, smothering the flames. The steam dissolves slowly, the gaunt eyes fading into nothing. Something terrible is coming. Something worse than a Withering. Something even worse than Stag. I can feel it.

      Leo stands. ‘We must focus our energies on the fight ahead!’ she calls. ‘A destructive force is gaining power, taking full advantage of the peril of our world – a marching movement of evil, with Stag and the mystiks at its helm. They control the devastated Icy Marshes and have dug their claws into the Frozen Wastes and the city of Nightfall. We must not let them claim further territories.’

      Sickening thoughts knuckle my skull. Thoughts about what Stag is to me, now there’s a link that I’ll never be able to cut. He fathered me. He ent my da but my bones are threaded with his poisoned blood. How could Ma have chosen such a gruesome mate? Was he always the same, or was he different when she met him? I stub my toe against the floor. I hate wondering about him!

      ‘You say they take advantage,’ says a stout old rider called Coati. ‘But Stag is offering shelter to those in need. He has opened Nightfall as a refuge, just as we have here.’ A furious clamour rises. My fingers tighten on the bench. ‘Hear me,’ Coati calls gruffly. ‘They say he distributes food in the territories he controls. I am yet to see how we know he intends war.’ He sits down, puffing out his ruddy cheeks.

      My belly squirms and fury lights my chest. I’m about to gift Coati the truth when Pike, the leader of the homeless Marsh-folk, stands and strikes the floor with his fish spear three times. ‘Stag burned our home and drained our marshes. He treated us as though our lives counted for nothing!’ His eyes blaze. ‘And mark me, Rider. He offers shelter only to certain breeds of people – those he and his allies deem elite.’

      ‘Aye!’ I call out, thumping my chest with my fist.

      Coati shrugs. ‘I meant no offence,’ he says. ‘But I have heard the reports with my own ears. People are desperate. They say Stag offers a stability no one else can provide.’

      Shouting, cursing and gesturing breaks out, with most folks telling Coati to mind his tongue. But more than a few are voices praising his words. The noise stops when the doors smash open, making every head in the hall turn.

      Boots stride along the floor. A hornblower, draped in ice-matted furs, folds back his raindrop cowl. ‘Protector! An urgent message, received through the ghostways.’ The parchment rasps as he unwraps the scroll. ‘It is signed with the claw mark of the Wilder-King,’ he announces. But then something crescent-shaped – like a small moon, or a shell – slips to the floor. The hornblower stoops to pick it up, mouth slackening. ‘It’s – an ear,’ he stutters.

      Folk gasp. Some leap to their feet, others reach for spears.

      ‘Whose ear is that?’ I ask Da. Crow leans close to listen.

      Da shakes his head. ‘I can’t be sure, but – the Protector did send an envoy to the Wilder-King, who has not yet returned.’

      Leopard stalks towards the hornblower and takes the ear in her hands, gently, as though it’s a broken bird. She grips the scroll and scans it quickly. Then her eyes search me out.

       Me?

      The look in their depths carves a hollow in my gut. I wrap my arms over my chest.

      What does that scroll say?

      ‘This meet is dismissed,’ says Leo briskly. ‘Tribesman Fox, please stay behind.’

      I hurry to Leo’s side as the hall begins to empty.

      She looks from me to Da. ‘Sorry Mouse – it’s just your father I want to speak to.’

      ‘Anything you got to say to Da, you can say to me,’ I tell her, jabbing my thumb into my chest. ‘Ent that so, Da?’

      But he just looks at me like I’m five moons old. ‘I think you’d better listen to Leo this time, Bones.’

      ‘For serious?’

      ‘Aye. Get your hide gone and I’ll see you soon.’

      I want to snatch the letter and gobble every rune on it, right now. I’m sure it’s got something to do with me, from the look Leo shone out. But I turn on my heel and shove my way past the stragglers. ‘He’ll tell me as soon as he gets out of here, anyway!’ I yell over my shoulder.

      I wait for Da in his chamber. Beats and beats pass, until my belly growls and my nerves are bowstring-tight. When he opens the door, I leap out at him. ‘What’s that letter gabbing on about, then?’

      Da ghosts a smile at me. ‘Ah, Little-Bones! Almost stopped my heart, you did.’

      ‘Don’t even think of changing the subject. You know that don’t work with me.’ I lift my chin. ‘Well?’

      ‘Well what?’

      I swallow a scream. ‘The letter,’ I repeat, ominous-calm.

      Finally, he sighs. ‘Let’s just say, it wasn’t anything good.’ I gulp a breath but he stops