Storm. Sarah Driver

      He drops his voice to a whisper. ‘I need you to promise to keep quiet about your beast-chatter.’

      Something slithers in my gut when I see the fright stretching his eyes. It’s the first time Da’s told me to hide anything, and the oddness of it bites like a ray. ‘Why?’

      ‘Just . . . trust me. Alright? These folks don’t know you like your own Tribe. They may not understand your blood-wildness like we do.’

      I frown, thinking back to how Coati looked at me before I fainted on the Sneaking. The way he called me a chatterer, like his tongue was wrapped in poison.

      Da leans down and presses his forehead to mine. ‘Keep your brother safe ’til my return.’

      I chew my tongue to keep from hurling curses. Cos I remember what happened when I parted with Sparrow after a frightful row where I said I hated him. Now I always wanna part with my kin on good terms. So all I do is nod. ‘Come back safe, Da. Don’t be long.’

      ‘I swear it.’

      He limps towards the door, and a rock swells in my throat that I have to fight and fight to swallow down. My mind fills with a picture of him with ice crackling in his yellow brows, his sea-eyes sweeping vast plains of land. May the sea-gods swim close to you, I pray, laying my weary head back on my pillow.

      I fall into a fitful doze. When I wake in the glow of the dying fire, my brother crouches at the end of my bed, humped like a bowhead whale and draped in a thick grey bed-fur. I croak out a startled yell but he don’t look up. His moonsprite Thunderbolt sits in his hair, a paling slip of silver. Sparrow’s song is a husked whisper under his sticky, blue-lipped breath. He’s staring at something on the blanket. Sparrow lost his sight after the worst shaking fit I ever saw, at the same time as a great storm at sea. Now he can see hazy shapes and colours, and things like Thunderbolt’s light help his eyes work better. But in other ways, he sees better than anyone. He glimpses the future in visions that leave him frighted breathless. Sky Elders say he is gifted with True Sight.

      Last time Sparrow had a vision was the day Axe-Thrower attacked me. He told it to me after we’d both been taken for healing in the sawbones’ nest, and as he spoke I saw that, under his tunic, his muscles still twitched.

      ‘I saw you,’ he said, eyes blackened by exhaustion. ‘On a carriage pulled by polar dogs, past a beach of white stones in the shape of eggs. A place where—’ He started to cry, lightning webbing his fingers. ‘Sea-gods die, and there are so many polar dogs, with blood on their teeth. There were doors of ice, covered in reindeer fur. You got shoved through them. Then I woke up.’ He shuddered with his whole body, like someone swam over his grave.

      Thunderbolt chitters softly at me, bringing me back into the here and now. Black-Hair better now? Thunderbolt fretful for Black-Hair!

       Heart-thanks, Thunderbolt! Aye. I’m better now.

      Her frail voice and thin light make me look at her more closely than I have for a while. Gods! With everything that’s been happening, I barely thought that if the other sprites need moonlight, so does she. Come back with that Opal soon, Da, I pray.

      The middle of my bed is aglow with purple, the light from Sparrow’s lightning that webs between his fingers.

      ‘What are you—’

      ‘Shh!’ he says, face screwed up with determination.

      ‘Don’t you shh me!’

      He ignores me. He prods something lying on the bedsheets. I step closer. It’s a dead frog, stretched out on its back.

      I sigh. ‘You don’t have to fry your own frog for breakfast, too-soon. Things ent that bad.’ Yet.

      ‘I just made a thing happen,’ he whines, lightning flaring. ‘And now you’re distracting me!’

      I pull a face. ‘What?’

      ‘The frog’s leg just moved!’

      I roll my eyes. ‘That beast’s stone dead.’

      He shakes his head, still not looking up. ‘I ent ready yet – my lightning went into a skinny thread. I want to make it do it again.’

      Sparrow reaches down to lift the limp body of the frog. Purple light pulses through it.

      He flexes his fingers, dropping a splodge of purple that fizzles on the sheet until I lunge forwards to smother it. Then he flicks a small lightning bolt into the frog’s chest. He draws back, breathing hard through his mouth. Then he yells, ‘Why won’t it do it again?’

      I try to distract him. ‘Ent you heart-glad I’m better?’

      Finally, he looks. ‘Aye,’ he says doubtfully, with a half-shrug. ‘You passed out cold, dint you?’

      I press my lips thin. ‘I’m strong as ever I was,’ I tell him, hating the thought that folks might think me weak.

      ‘Mouse?’ calls a bright, hesitant voice outside the door, making my skin jump.

      I brush my tangles out of my eyes. It can’t be. Can it?

      Sparrow slithers off the bed and yanks open the door. Kestrel steps into the chamber, face flooded with concern, coppery hair threaded with firelight. ‘How is she, Sparrow?’

      I watch them watching me from the doorway. A little spark flares in my belly. ‘Aye, and who might she be? The ship’s cat? The shark’s mother?’

      ‘She’s as prickly as ever,’ announces Sparrow, ducking under Kestrel’s arm and marching from the room.

      Kes bites the corner of her mouth to keep from laughing as she hurries to my bedside. My heart rolls over in my chest and all in one beat I’m kneeling up, bed-furs and blankets flying, and my arms are wrapped tight around her neck. ‘Is it really you? Am I still dreaming? What you doing here?’

      ‘So many questions!’ She laughs, returning my hug just as fiercely.

      We pull away, checking each other over. She’s thinner; her plain garb is slack and her cheekbones jut. Her light brown face looks tired, her freckles are pale and there’s no gold paint on her catlike green eyes. But they glow with more heart-strength than ever.

      ‘You have grown, sea-sister!’ she says. ‘And your scar continues to heal well – I wonder who stitched it so finely?’ Her lips quirk into a grin.

      I laugh, more loud and pure than I feel like I have in an age. Thaw thuds onto my pillow, stretching out her long neck to peer at Kes, blood glistening in the feathers beneath her hooked beak. Hoodwink-high two-leg girl home?

       Aye, Thaw!

      A strange look crosses Kestrel’s features, seabird-swift, but she blinks and the look melts away and then she’s clasping my hands. ‘So, to answer you. Yes, it is really me. No, you’re not dreaming. And I came to meet with Mother, to reassure her all is well and beg more provisions – not that there are many to be had. I hear more goats have frozen to death, so now Butter and Bone rule the hearth-sides, hogging the heat.’

      Butter and Bone are the oldest goats on the mountain – two sisters who do as they please and bite anyone who challenges them. Cantankerous bleaters, both, and forever underfoot. I nod. ‘But how is your mission working? Have you reached many of the Trianukkan youth yet?’

      Her face grows flushed, burning with a look of hope and excitement. ‘We’ve been camped with the Tree-Tribes at the edge of Nightfall, sneaking into the colleges when we can. Staying safe and