Snowbone (32 page)
Authors: Cat Weatherill
“Snowbone?” said Butterbur anxiously. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” said Snowbone, beginning to laugh. “I'm fine. In fact, I'm better than fine. I can see everything. It's brilliant!”
“You gave me quite a fright,” said Butterbur. “And poor Sausage here didn't know what to make of it.” She patted the pig affectionately. “Why anyone would want to root in her poo is beyond her!” Butterbur helped Snowbone to her feet. “Let's get you cleaned up.”
They returned to the surgery, and there Snowbone saw something so unexpected, her heart skipped a beat. On the table stood an opened leather flagon, with a dropper beside it.
“Did you use ashen sap?”
“Yes,” said Butterbur. “This is one of the flagons Two Teeth brought up.”
Snowbone couldn't believe it. Tarn and her gang had brought untold misery to countless people, Figgis included, but without their villainy she might still be blind.
This is crazy!
thought Snowbone.
Tarn is dead and I am the one benefiting from her crime. It's mad. Mad!
Mad but true.
he meal the friends shared that night in Butterbur's house was the best ever. It wasn't just the delicious food. It was the laughter and the sense of belonging that made it perfect. And the knowledge that it would be their last together added a special flavor all its own: a warm, subtle hint of spice that lingered on the tongue long after the meal was over.
Between them, the travelers recounted the whole adventure while Two Teeth and Fudge punctuated it with a
no!
here, and a
wow!
there, and an
oh, you never!
thrown in for good measure.
Butterbur listened intently, saying nothing but memorizing it all. When it was over, she said, “I'm so glad you've used your shadow-sight, Blackeye. It's such a rare and precious gift. It needs to be nurtured.”
“Torbijn had shadow-sight,” said Filizar.
“Really?” said Blackeye.
“Yes. I forgot to tell you. Skua was wrong to say he was just a mapmaker. Torbijn was much more than that. He had
extraordinary powers. He was a shaman, a healer. He could definitely shadow-fly. That's how he drew his maps.”
“Ah!” said Figgis. “Now that is interesting! Stellan showed me a Torbijn map and it was incredibly precise. We couldn't work out how he was doing it long before flying machines were invented. Well, now we know!”
“I'm so jealous of you all,” said Fudge. “I know there were times when it got hairy, but you've had such an adventure. You're heroes. Real heroes.”
“I don't think I'm a hero,” said Snowbone. “Though when we first set out, I thought I would be. I thought it was my destiny. But it didn't work out like that. I played a very small part in the adventure. Nothing I did was particularly brave.”
“You led the attack against the slavers,” said Two Teeth. “You led the attack at Barrenta Bay.”
“That wasn't bravery,” said Snowbone. “That was bravado! There's a difference. Bravado is instinctive. You're so fired up, you just storm in. You don't really think about what you're doing. That's me! But bravery—real bravery—is when you understand the danger you're facing, and you feel afraid—yet you still go in. Manu ran back to save Filizar in the volcano. Tiger-mane risked capture to return to the quarry. Blackeye risked his life to save me from the tower. That's bravery. No, if you're looking for the real hero in all this, it has to be Blackeye. Without him, we wouldn't have won.”
Blackeye shook his head. “Snowbone, you're not being fair to yourself. You are a hero. You're
my
hero. Without you, I wouldn't have done anything. I would still be on the beach at Black Sand Bay, building a tree house! You took charge. You spurred us on. It was your energy that kept us all going. Y our
energy, your belief and your commitment. Without you, we were nothing. If you could have seen us sitting in the workshop in Farrago—miserable, completely at a loss what to do— you would know that!”
Snowbone smiled. She didn't know what to say.
“If we're talking heroes,” said Figgis, “then I didn't amount to much at all! What did I do? I made tea and washed a few pots.”
“You found the black-haired man and the blue-eyed lad,” said Manu. “You sorted the flight to Farrago.”
“That's all!” said Figgis. “You could have left me behind at Spittel Point and not noticed the difference.”
“No,” said Blackeye. “That's not true. You kept us going, just as much as Snowbone. You made sure we had food and water and somewhere safe to sleep. You were like a mother to us.”
“I'm the only mother you'll ever have,” said Figgis.
“I couldn't ask for better,” said Blackeye.
“You wouldn't want mine!” said Filizar, and they all laughed.
But Manu, lying in bed later, felt his heart harden as he thought of his stepmother and her scheming.
And Figgis, lying awake in the room next door, felt every muscle tense as he thought of the fight in the warehouse. He hadn't told anyone about killing the black-haired man and he wasn't going to. He would lock away the memory in the darkest chamber of his heart and throw away the key. “Some secrets aren't for sharing,” he told himself, punching his pillow to make it more comfortable. “And dead men don't tell tales.”
“
o what's next?” said Butterbur. “Where do you go from here?”
It was midday. The friends had slept well into the morning. Now they were finishing a very late breakfast.
“I'd like to stay awhile, if that's all right with you,” said Figgis. “I have nothing to go back to.”
“Of course,” said Butterbur. “There's always plenty of work to be done.”
“Filizar and I might return to Balaa,” said Manu, “but we need some time to think. At the moment, we're planning to go to Kessel. We could get a ship from there.”
“With his body and my brains, we'll make a great team,” said Filizar. “That mother of mine won't know what's hit her!”
“What about you, Blackeye?” said Butterbur.
“I'm going to find Mouse,” he said simply. There was a strange expression on his face. No one dared press him further.
“And what about you?” said Butterbur, turning to Snow-bone at last. “I thought you might like to stay here and work with the animals.”
“I have thought about it,” said Snowbone, “but I can't stay. Not at the moment. I'm too restless. I have to go on.”
“Do you know where you're going?” asked Figgis.
“I do,” said Snowbone, and she smiled enigmatically and said no more.
Snowbone stood in the clearing and looked at what remained of Figgis's house. Nothing much. A few charred timbers, green with moss and overgrown with nettles. Half a dozen rusty pans, buckled and bent. A ceramic sink. Bedsprings. A twisted fork.
She moved over to the fallen ashen trees. They lay where the tiddlins had placed them, side by side in neat rows. Snowbone sighed. “If only the Ancients had been watching instead of sleeping, it would never have come to this,” she said. “What a waste.”
Or was it? She couldn't escape the fact that she owed her sight to trees like these. Suddenly she felt very small and humble, and curiously cherished, as if these Ancestors were honoring her in some way. But how? They were long gone. Their souls had flown away like bumblebees, never to return. But still …
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Wherever you are.”
And the leaves on the living trees suddenly rustled, as if they were talking to one another.
The sun was setting by the time Snowbone reached the forest fringe. Its low rays filtered through the trees like an amber fan, drawing her to the sea. To the salt-charged air and the falling waves. To the fleecy foam and the endless sky.
Snowbone left the forest behind and stepped onto the
black sand. That wasn't good enough; she kicked off her boots to feel the grains between her toes. She began to walk down the beach, but that wasn't enough either. Soon she was running, and the waves were rushing to greet her. Rolling in joyously, tossing their white-washed manes.
Snowbone stopped at the water's edge and stared out at the limitless ocean, breathing in great lungfuls of briny air: tasting it, savoring it, loving it. “I promised I would return,” she said, “and I have.”
She sat down on the sand and waited for the moon to rise. Slowly it came: a great silver button pinned to the cloak of the sky. Snowbone sat for hours, watching it journey across the heavens, until a band of golden light appeared at the rim of the world and the morning came.
This is such a perfect place
, she thought as the sun began to ascend.
I'm not going away again for a long, long time.
And she didn't. She stayed at Black Sand Bay for many moons, happily alone. And when she did eventually leave, it was for the most unexpected of reasons.
But that, my friends, is another story.
fter Tigermane had gone, Daisy and Snowdrop sat in their bleak barrack room and waited for morning. When it came, the bolts were drawn back, the slaves were summoned to work, and Daisy told the quarry master that her friend was moving on.
Dunamis stared at her like a great fat frog eyeing a worm. “When was she hurt?” he asked suspiciously.
“She wasn't,” said Daisy. “She's quite well. She's just moving on.”
The news spread like ice cracking on a pond.
One of the girls … eight years old … fit and healthy … moving on!
Then came the rumor of a spell. Magic words that anyone could say.
You cover your eyes … cover your ears … cover your heart … and this is what you say …
By midday, the quarry was a cauldron of hot, feverish hope. Dunamis cracked his whip and spat and swore, but who was caring anymore? No one.
No one!
Because seventeen slaves were moving on. Escaping!
That night, Daisy said the spell. And elsewhere in the darkness, in a room hissing with whispers, seven boulder men realized they would have to escape.
Really
escape. They had to spread the news. If they didn't, no one beyond the quarry would ever know. Dunamis and his men would hush it up. Even if a rumor spread, the spell certainly wouldn't.
And so the next day, as the overseers struggled to cope with hundreds of slaves moving on at once, the boulder men slipped out of the quarry unseen. They began to run. And one reached a farm and one reached a plantation. One found a factory, one found a lumber mill. One found a coal mine, one found a gold mine. And one found a ship and stowed away, and carried the news to another land.
Hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands! All around the world, slaves Moved On. Their owners bought more eggs, but the spell continued to spread—dedicated bands of escaped slaves made sure of that. So the owners bided their time and waited for the ashen trees to mature. They would have a bumper sap harvest, for sure! But a strange thing happened. As the first tree was felled, the sap turned foul. It was black and greasy, stinky as beer breath, and it wouldn't heal anything, not even a cut finger.
The slave market at Barrenta Bay was rebuilt, but it fell into disrepair as trade dwindled. The town declined. The shopkeepers moved away and soon it was a ghost town. Squirrels nested in the saloons. Wild dogs roamed the streets. Crows roosted in the clock tower. Time stood still.
But not the trees.
Slaves believed in The Forest: a place of peace, where Ashenpeakers could Move On and grow old together. Did it
exist? Perhaps not, but the slaves
wanted
it to exist. That was why, at the quarry, they loved to see their friends carried away on the wagon. It made their dreams real.
But now, with dozens of slaves moving on every day at the quarry, the wagon wasn't being used. The overseers were dumping people in a yard behind the master's cabin. Here there was neither soil nor water. The emerging ashen trees couldn't take root.
So they started to walk.
Slowly, slowly, by the light of the moon. Their skin turned to bark and their fingers sprouted leaves, but still they marched on: great armies of trees from east and west, north and south, converging in the darkness. And when they found water and shelter—in the lee of a hill, in the basin of a valley—they stopped. They sent their roots down into earth, creating an Otherworld of their own, beneath this foreign land, where their souls could dance, bright as butterflies. They spread their branches into the air above, creating vast canopies of leaves, from coast to coast across the Nova Land.
And they sent their hearts across the world, singing the news:
It's over, it's over. We're free, free, free….