Snowbone (2 page)

She sniffed at the food.
Oh!
She dropped from the pirate's leg, took the pork pie in her mouth and scuttled away, over the deck and into the rigging. And there she sat, happily munching her prize, while the pirates began their celebrations below.

Night fell. In the vastness of the ocean, the
Mermaid
and the
Hope
lay at anchor together, side by side like slippers. The pirates had covered the
Hope
's rigging with lanterns. Now they sat beneath them, smoking tobacco and swigging rum. Both tasted sweeter tonight.

Scar Arm, the pirate who had been bitten earlier, emerged from the shadows and walked an unsteady line across the deck, zigzagging to avoid the countless wooden babies that still crawled free.

“These blasted tiddlins!” he said. “They're getting under my feet something rotten. I reckon we should throw 'em overboard. They're no use to anyone now.”

“But they're so cute!” said another pirate, Dog Ear, who was cradling one of the babies in his arms. “Look at this one here. She is the sweetest thing! I'm gonna call her Mouse, 'cause her eyes are the softest brown—just like a little brown mouse.”

“Well, if you're gonna call her Mouse, I'm gonna call that one Blackeye,” said his mate, Squid. He pointed at the baby who had eaten the second chicken. “You can't see it from here, but he has the most incredible eye. You know the bit where it's blue or brown? On him, it's black. And if you look really close, there's a ring of silver around the edge. It's weird! I don't know if he can see through it, it's so dark.”

“You can't go giving 'em all names!” cried Scar Arm, throwing up his hands in despair. “Not if we're going to toss 'em overboard!”

“Who says we're doin' that?” said Dog Ear. “Not I!”

“Nor I,” said Squid. “Oh, come on now, Scar Arm! You'll bust a gut the way you're goin' on.”

He offered the pirate a glass of rum. Scar Arm took it, grunted and settled himself on a nearby sack of beans.

“What about that one?” said Dog Ear, nodding at something in the rigging.

The others looked up. There was the pale baby, still clinging to the masthead.

“She's very skinny,” said Squid. “How about … Boneybum?”

“Nah.”

“She should be Fang,” said Scar Arm grumpily. “She's vicious, that one.”

“Nah,” said Dog Ear again. “She's not vicious, just hungry. They all are. But she is a fighter, though.”

“You're not wrong there. In a scrap, she'd be the last one standing.”

“Aye. She'd be there, long after everyone else had gone.”

“Wait,” said Squid urgently. Inspiration had seized him. His eyes widened. His brain whirred … and a single word fell from his mouth: “Snowbone.”

“Eh!” breathed Dog Ear. “That's genius, is that!”

“I know!” said Squid. His grin was so wide, it tickled his ears.

High in the rigging, the baby heard the name. She didn't know why it was clever, but she liked it. She repeated it slowly, rolling it off her tongue:
“Snowbone.”
Sounded good to her. “Want it,” she said to the night and stars. “Mine.” She smiled. Now she had something no one could ever take away from her.

he following day, the
Hope
was stripped of her valuables. Soon nothing remained but an old, lumbering hulk, no use to anyone. So the pirates sank her, right there in the middle of the ocean, and the
Mermaid
headed for home.

Home for the pirates was Puffin Island. It was a small island, busy with birds, which lay off the northwest coast of the much larger Ashenpeake Island. Puffin Island had sheltered beaches, rich land and plenty of fresh water. It lay low on the horizon, like a basking turtle, and its deep-water bays were big enough to hide any ship. All things considered, it was the perfect place for a secret pirate hideaway.

The voyage to Puffin Island took seven days and, during that time, the tiddlins grew at an astonishing rate. The pirates watched and wondered. Whispered about “unnatural magic” and “things beyond our understanding.” Some said the wooden babies were wiser than they ought to be and would bring bad luck. “We'll never see home again,” they lamented. “There'll be a storm or a fire or a terrible sickness.” But there
never was. Day after day, the ship sailed safely on, and the tiddlins thrived.

By the sixth day, the tiddlins were as big as five-year-old humans. They could talk with confidence, their personalities had emerged and a curious thing had happened: Snowbone had become their leader. No one knew how or when it began, but suddenly Snowbone was the one the tiddlins looked to when they were challenged. She had the answers. She knew what to do.

Snowbone had noticed the tiddlins' respect for her and was pleased. But she had also noticed something else. She might be the most capable tiddlin in the gang—and she was certainly the most determined—but she wasn't the most popular. That was Blackeye.

Everyone adored Blackeye. He was so warm and friendly and entertaining. Even the pirates loved him. Griddle, the ship's cook, gave him special tidbits. Lord Fox, the pirate captain, stood him on a box so he could take a turn on the wheel. He was everyone's favorite.

Blackeye had a special game he called
dive-bombing.
He would climb up the
Mermaid
's rigging and throw himself off:
wheeeeeeeeeee!
When he hit the deck, he would bounce, pick himself up and laugh at the sheer exhilaration of it all. Then he'd climb back up and do it all again—especially if Mouse was watching, which she usually was. She watched him endlessly, adoringly, with her soft brown eyes.

Snowbone sat on the deck, watching Blackeye dive from the rigging for the umpteenth time. She listened to the cheers that greeted his landing and couldn't help feeling envious. Blackeye seemed to live in a bright bubble of love and laughter. Her bit of the world seemed dark and lonely by comparison.
“If I could dive-bomb,” she said to herself, “would people like me more? I wonder …”

Late that night, when the tiddlins were asleep in the hold and the pirates were snoring in their hammocks, Snowbone returned to the deck. There was no one around except the night watch and he was at the far end of the ship. She started to climb. Up, up, up she went, climbing the rigging like a ladder to the moon. Higher and higher. Finally, she stopped and looked down.
Oh!
Did Blackeye come this high?
Yes. Higher, knowing him.
It seemed such a long way down. But Blackeye did it all the time. He never hurt himself.

Snowbone took a deep breath, closed her eyes and jumped.
Whoo!
She fell like a chestnut, so fast she heard the wind whistling past her ears, and—
duud!
—she hit the deck.

She didn't bounce like Blackeye. She didn't hear laughter or applause. She didn't pick herself up and wave gaily. She just lay there, shaken to her very core. She wasn't hurt; she wasn't broken. But she felt … wrong. As if some part of her, deep inside, had been shaken out of place. And there was a dull ache in her head, across her eyes.

Slowly, very slowly, she sat up. She drew in her knees and wrapped her arms around them. Hugged herself close while the sky blushed peachy-pink at the sun's first kisses. And that was how Griddle, the ship's cook, found her when he arrived on deck for his early-morning stroll.

He knew it was Snowbone, and knew she wouldn't want to be seen like this: lost, shaken, tight as a pinecone. But he couldn't leave her there.

“It's not like you to be up at dawn,” he said as he sat down beside her.

Snowbone lifted her head. “I'm not hurt.”

“No. Neither is a pigeon when he falls from a nest. He's a bit wobbly, though.”

“I'm not wobbly.”

“No.” Griddle saw her proud little face, trying to be brave. He had to smile.

“I was trying to dive-bomb.”

“Aye. Well, I'd leave that to them that are daft enough to do it. You let well alone, that's my advice. Stick to what you're good at.”

“I don't know what that is.”

“Well, you've not been long in the world, have you? Happen you'll find out one day. Now me, I'm good at cooking. And I know there's a frying pan down in the galley right now, crying:
Griddle! Griddle! Come and make pancakes!
And since you're not hurt, or wobbly, or upset, or any of those things, perhaps you could help me. Do you like pancakes?”

“Don't know. Never had one.”

“Oh, then you are in for a treat, little lady! A hot pancake, with a touch o' lemon and a dollop of syrup … Oh! My mouth's gone all dribbly, just thinking about it. Come on!”

Snowbone had been sitting for so long, her joints had seized up. Getting up wasn't easy. But Griddle turned his back and pretended not to notice her struggle. He didn't offer any help and Snowbone didn't ask for any.

But she did ask for extra syrup on her pancakes, and Griddle was more than happy to give her that.

fter seven days at sea, Ashenpeake Island came into sight: a dark land, wrapped in sea mist, with the great, snowcapped cone of Ashenpeake Mountain rising above it all.

This was where the tiddlins would soon be setting up home. Lord Fox, the pirate captain, had made the decision. He didn't dislike the tiddlins, but he had no use for them. They were too young to go to sea and too many to stay at the pirates' hideaway.

“They're such hungry little beggars,” he said. “They'll eat all we have. No, they must go elsewhere.”

Lord Fox decided to settle them at the north end of Ashenpeake Island. They would be safe there: the land was heavily forested and sparsely populated. The pirate captain had no doubt they would survive. They would be well provisioned and there would be time for them to learn survival skills before they were taken to their new home. Snowbone was a strong, capable leader and the group wasn't overlarge. Of the hundreds of babies born during the attack on the
Hope
, just twenty-eight remained. Many had died in the fire and most of
the survivors had jumped overboard in search of adventure. They had drifted away on the waves, bobbing like driftwood, laughing and waving and wriggling their toes.

“It's a perfect plan,” Lord Fox told himself. “They'll
adore
Ashenpeake. They'll build a camp and make it cozy. It'll soon feel like home.”

In truth, Ashenpeake Island really
was
the tiddlins' home. They were Ashenpeakers. They belonged to the oldest race of people in the world.

Ashenpeakers were proud, hardworking, steadfast folk. Their wooden bodies made them immensely strong and virtually indestructible. But this blessing became a curse when someone, somewhere, realized that Ashenpeakers would make perfect slaves.

From that single thought, a worldwide slave trade had grown and flourished. Over the years, thousands of eggs had left Ashenpeake Island, bound for the Nova Land, Candalia, Tuva—wherever cheap labor was needed. The eggs were stored until they were wanted, then thrown into fires, triggering an incredible process that catapulted them from birth to work within a month, full of strength and empty of memory. Perfect slaves, with no past happiness to disturb their dreams or trouble their minds.

Snowbone learned these things from Barkbelly, the galley boy from the
Hope.

Barkbelly was special. All the other sailors on the
Hope
— those who hadn't been killed in the fighting—had been taken prisoner. They were down below, safely secured in the
Mermaid
's hold. But Barkbelly and Griddle, the
Hope
's cook, had been treated differently. Griddle was now the pirates' cook, and Barkbelly was allowed to roam freely about the pirate ship.
Snowbone wondered why. She also wondered about the
Hope.
Where had it been going when the pirates attacked it? And why was it carrying hundreds of wooden eggs, packed away in crates?

Barkbelly had been the only Ashenpeaker on board the
Hope.
He wasn't very old, but he was a big, brawny lad with an honest, friendly face. And Snowbone had realized that, young as he was, Barkbelly had knowledge. He had seen something of the world.

And so she had asked him what he knew, and Barkbelly had told her. It wasn't much. He hadn't grown up on Ashenpeake, so he couldn't tell her about that. And until the tiddlins were born, he had never even
seen
another Ashenpeaker, so he couldn't tell her how a wooden body worked. But, based on his own experience, he could tell her two important things. If a bit was chopped off—a hand, say—it would grow back, good as new. But if it were
burned
off—no. It wouldn't grow back. He showed her the stump of a missing finger to prove it.