The Veil Weavers (13 page)

A chorus of cawing stopped me. Aleena was stepping out of the river. When she reached the gravel shore, she shook herself. Water flew off as her long hair and cloak spun around her. When she finished, she was completely dry.

“Gronvald is coming,” she said as we walked towards each other.

“What can he do?” asked Maddy. “He’s compelled by the Will of the Gathering.”

I felt through the magic surrounding me to understand. “Remember when he attacked you in his cave?” I said to Maddy. “He’s compelled to help me, but his anger is so strong it doesn’t protect any of you.” I nodded to the crows, Brox, Vivienne, Aleena and Maddy.

“He cannot attack you directly,” Brox said, “but he can try to distract you by attacking us.”

“We’ll take care of him,” said Maddy, looking fierce.

“No, you stay with me,” I said.

Maddy shook her head. “This is the one thing I can do, Josh.”

Reluctantly, I nodded. I walked along the shore until I found a long, thick stick, like a staff. I handed it to Maddy. I knew how small a weapon it was against Gronvald’s power, but I had to give her something. And she wouldn’t be alone.

She just smiled, a tight, determined smile.

“Gronvald doesn’t scare us,” said Brox. “We haven’t had a good fight in a long time.” He grinned. It didn’t reassure me.

“We’ll keep Maddy safe,” said Vivienne.

And so I walked up the hill to the doorway while Maddy and the others waited for Gronvald.

Chapter Ten

In the Veil

I
found the doorway near the bank
of
the stream, outlined in gold. From there, I had a perfect view of Maddy, the staff held firmly in her right hand. Brox and Vivienne stood to either side, each watching a different direction. Aleena waited in the water, trying to catch Gronvald’s scent, while the crows circled overhead. I could feel their tension, their alertness, their drive to do whatever was necessary to give me time to fix the veil.

I turned to the doorway and pushed back my cloak. I didn’t need to breathe in magic – I was filled with it. I simply exhaled, and the doorway opened.

I reached into the veil and ran my hands over the threads. I could feel each one, and when I reached far enough, I could touch torn ends lifting off the face of the veil. But I still didn’t know how to repair them.

I started to sketch, drawing weaving down my pant leg, vertical lines crossing horizontal lines. I drew a tear, a gash in the veil, threads broken and drifting free. Then I drew them coming together and healing. Somehow drawing the threads became a new kind of drawing. I reached into the veil and touched the threads, and knew I could pull them together and mend them.

Satisfied, I paused to check on the others. They were all staring to the side, looking confused. The curve of the hill blocked my view just enough to hide whatever worried them. Should I walk over? Step out of the veil to see?

I closed my eyes for a moment, to think and decide, and found I
could
see, the entire scene laid out as if I was watching from the air above them: Maddy’s golden head between Brox and Vivienne’s broad backs, Aleena standing in the river, legs braced against the current. They were all staring at the hillside beside them, dotted with rocks.

As I circled overhead, I watched rocks rise from the ground, growing steadily larger until they were as tall as men. Then, slowly, they transformed into trolls. An army of trolls.

I let out a squawk and realized I was a crow; at least, I was seeing through crow eyes. I snapped open my own eyes and checked that I was still me, still Josh, standing in the veil.

The crows were cawing in a raucous frenzy. I remembered the ochre monster and called out to them to be quiet. It was more caw than words, a hoarse croak, but they understood and fell silent.

When I heard Maddy cry out I shut my eyes, and watched with crow eyes again.

The trolls were marching down the hillside, deep thumps reverberating with every step. Maddy gasped and backed into Brox. Aleena stepped further back into the water, afraid to be part of the fight. Could I send a crow to her, to beg for her help? I felt their hatred of Aleena wash over me. She had killed a crow, last summer. They would not beg.

Instead, they spoke to the trolls. In a perfect imitation of Gronvald, a crow said, “Stop.” The trolls turned, and paused.

“Keep going,” Gronvald yelled.

The trolls stepped forward again.

Another crow, behind them, said, “Wait.”

They turned, searching. Who was speaking? Which troll was Gronvald?

“Walk!” Gronvald screamed.

Another crow, far to the right, said, “No,” in Gronvald’s voice.

Gronvald roared in anger, waved his arms and stepped forward, bellowing, “Now!”

And they followed him down the hillside, the earth rumbling as they moved, relentlessly descending on Maddy, Brox and Vivienne.

I could see Maddy shaking, but she studied them carefully. “They’re not real,” she said, her voice quivering. “They’re shadows, Gronvald’s magic. He made them.” Her voice cracking, she asked, “How do we stop him?”

“Only sunshine can stop him completely, turning him to stone until he’s been thawed by twelve hours of darkness,” said Brox.

I looked up. The sky had become totally overcast, solid with low, dark clouds.

“But Vivienne and I can stop almost anything,” he added.

Then we heard a new sound, an odd, burbling walk. It didn’t sound like Keeper walking, solid thumps reverberating through the earth. This was huge, but squishy. How could anything be big enough to make that sound?

Aleena turned deadly white. “We’ve raised the ochre monster.” She sounded stunned.

Brox and Vivienne gasped, and backed up.

I saw her before the others could, as she strode up the river valley. She was massive, the largest creature I’d ever seen, twice the height of Keeper. She was huge-shouldered and strong-thighed, and all mud, all drippy ochre-orange mud. It dropped off her as she walked, but it never ran out, and she never got smaller. She just left a trail of orange behind her.

“She’s the Paint Pots?” asked Maddy.

“When she’s sleeping,” said Vivienne.

“How can she hurt us, if she’s only mud?”

“She could drown us in mud, freeze us in mud.”

“Why would she do that?” Maddy whispered.

“She hates humans.”

I settled back into the veil, reaching for torn ends, trying to learn the tears. And watching. Always watching. I heard a low rumble, a deep burbling voice.

“What’s she saying?” Maddy asked.

“Listen carefully,” said Brox.

As we listened, sounds emerged, burbling words:

Humans bad.

Stop humans.

Humans bad.

Stop humans.

“But we’re not bad,” said Maddy. “We’re trying to help. Josh is trying to –”

“I know,” Brox interrupted. “But we have no way to tell her. She’s like an angry two-year-old.”

“How do we stop her?”

“We will do everything we can, so Josh can concentrate on the veil.”

Maybe we should just run away and try again later, somewhere else. Then I remembered I’d eaten all the muskberries and Folens was dying. It had to be now.

I felt desperate to join them, but I had to repair the veil. They were risking their lives to give me time. I took a breath, trying to slow my pounding heart. I reached deep into the veil and searched for the largest tear. There, at Storm Mountain, where Gronvald had yanked it wide. I touched one side of the tear, stretched further and grabbed the other. Magic flared across me, and I jerked back.

On the hillside, Gronvald raised his arms and began to mutter. Each troll lifted a head-sized rock and flung it at Maddy and the buffalo, a wall of stone raining down. They ducked and scrambled clear, the rocks falling just a little short. The trolls simply walked further down the hillside and picked up a new set of rocks.

I had to help them. I closed my eyes and settled into crowness. I could feel crows all around me, the rush of wind against their feathers, the beat of their wings. Then I felt my own wings. My eyes snapped open and I checked my arms – still there, no feathers, no wings sprouting from my shoulders. But when I closed my eyes I could feel wings, long and strong. Wind ruffled every feather.

Calling to the crows, I gathered them together and, in a black cloud, we launched our assault. That’s when I understood why a flock of crows is called a murder of crows.

We were terrifying.

We attacked, a wall of black, dive-bombing the trolls, claws and beaks tearing, in a squawking, cawing mass. Except the trolls were stone, and we couldn’t hurt them. I could feel the blows as each crow attacked, flinging themselves at the trolls, but it was like smashing against rock.

The trolls dropped their rocks, and instead raised thousands of pebbles and flung them at the crows. Pebbles thudded against their bodies and crows plummeted to the ground. I gasped at the pain, expecting to fall too, but I continued to circle above, watching.

The crows lay totally still. I held my breath, waiting, hoping for any sign of life. Wind caught a wing and ruffled feathers, and I felt a faint stirring. Then slowly, ever so slowly, they began to move, to tuck in wings and awkwardly fly to the safety of nearby trees. But not all of them. I couldn’t see Crowby.

The army of trolls lifted large rocks again.

Brox, Maddy and Vivienne were watching the trolls and worrying about the crows. They’d forgotten the ochre monster. But she hadn’t forgotten them.

As soon as she was near enough she threw up a wall of mud, like a tidal wave sweeping across the valley. It washed over Maddy and Brox and Vivienne, coating them in thick orange goo, then swept up the hillside, covering the army of trolls.

“Run,” Brox shouted at Maddy. He and Vivienne started to race around in circles, cracking the mud as it stiffened. “Run, before the mud hardens.”

Maddy paused, confused, and immediately the mud started to thicken. Even as she understood and tried to run, it was encasing her. Then her cloak shivered and the mud fell off in hard bits, shattering around her. She wiped her face with the cloak and the rest of the mud dropped off, leaving her shining and clean in a sea of ochre mud.

The troll army didn’t move fast enough. Soon every troll except Gronvald was encased in rapidly drying mud, some with their rocks still held high. Only Gronvald moved, shaking off the mud in a frenzy of anger. Enraged, he walked to a cliff face and began to mutter, preparing to bring down the cliff in an avalanche.

Before he was ready, Maddy roared and ran forward, her staff swinging. I couldn’t stand to watch, to not protect her. I stepped forward, out of the veil, but Aleena was faster as she finally joined the fight, racing up from the water, pushing Maddy back towards Brox and Vivienne.

She walked straight to Gronvald, drawing river water with her. Brox bellowed, distracting Gronvald. As he turned, Aleena flung water at Gronvald and a wall of rocks directly behind him, weaving her hands in a spell over the water as it flew. When it hit the rocks, it froze in a wall of ice.

Gronvald had seen it coming and slipped back into the cliff face. Aleena followed, flowing with the water into the rocks, searching for Gronvald. Water and rocks sprayed from the rock face as they fought.

I reached into the veil again and found the tear. I could feel each strand of the veil, delicate threads of palest blue. I grabbed one broken end and touched it to another. Nothing happened. I tried again with a new thread. Nothing. Then I found the right one, the matching thread. With a shudder, magic flared from one thread to the other, right across my body, as I became part of the flow of magic.

Gronvald and Aleena were still battling inside the rocks, shards of ice and rock chips spewing out of cracks. The ochre monster watched, trying to understand what was happening.

Slowly I tugged the ends towards each other. When they touched, magic flashed and the threads became one. I worked along the tear, thread by thread, slowly finding each match, magic flowing through me as I joined them.

When the first tear was mended I paused again, emerging from the veil just far enough to check on Gronvald and Aleena. The showers of rock and water and ice stopped, and Aleena slipped out of the rock face, covered in rock dust and blood. She sagged against the cliff face, battered and exhausted. Gronvald didn’t appear.