Urchin and the Heartstone (25 page)
RCHIN SAT IN THE ROUND, FIRELIT CHAMBER
with Juniper at his side and Cedar and Flame facing him. Everything had become very quiet, but it was a humming quiet, like the vibration where a note has been struck.
“The first thing you need to understand,” said Cedar, “is that I don’t come from this island, but I can’t remember the place that I do come from, not clearly. It was an island called Ashfire because the mountain at the center of it was said to be a fire mountain, but everyone thought it was a dead one.”
“Excuse me,” said Urchin, “what’s a fire mountain?”
“It’s a mountain that heats up inside until it bursts,” said Cedar. “It’s so hot, it melts itself and pours down in boiling rivers, then there’s ash everywhere. I can’t remember much about it. I can only remember shouting and the red glow, and my father picking me up and running to a boat—we all left our island forever, and settled in different places. Some of us came to Whitewings, which was all right in those days. The Ashfire squirrels tended to stay together, and there was one who became my great friend. I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t there. She was older than I was, and she was like a big sister to me. She used to help look after me when I was small, and I looked up to her. She was lovely. She was the kindest animal I ever knew, and the first to tell me about Mistmantle. She’d never been there, but she’d heard of it and she hoped she’d find a way to go there one day. Urchin, I caught that longing from her. I can remember the way animals would look at her and whisper, because she was Favored.”
“I’m sorry?” said Urchin.
“She was, well, she was more or less your color,” said Cedar. “Here, they talk about a ‘Marked Squirrel,’ but on Ashfire, they called it ‘Favored.’”
Urchin gasped. His fur prickled.
“She wasn’t exactly like you,” said Cedar. “She had red squirrel color down her spine and it faded into honey color on either side, and there was more red on her ears and tail than on yours, but the rest of her was your color. Her name was Almond. There was a lot of interest in her because of the prophecy about a Marked Squirrel being the island’s deliverer. Most of the Wise Old Whiskers on the island thought the deliverer would be a male, and many said that she had too much red about her to be a Marked Squirrel at all, but all the same, animals were watching Almond. A lot of the healing skills that I learned came from her and her family.
“When the queen died, Larch was next in line, but she was a small child then, and Silverbirch became Regent. At first, he wasn’t too bad. He was temperamental and very keen on mining for silver, but nothing like the way he is now. But he grew worse and worse, and animals began to leave the island. Almond could have helped him—his mind needed healing—but he wouldn’t have it. We had an excellent, gifted young priest. His name was Candle, and animals still talk about him. He was already training Flame, but the king wouldn’t listen to priests, only to Smokewreath.”
“Excuse me,” said Urchin, “but I don’t understand about Smokewreath and his magic. I mean, is it really magic? Does he really have power, or do they just think he has?”
“It’s a good question,” said Flame. “Certainly he has that extra dimension—he’s aware of things that most animals aren’t. You could call it a sixth sense. But lots of animals have that, and it doesn’t make them into sorcerers. In Smokewreath’s case, it’s enough to convince the king that he is. Whether his magic, and all his poking about with dead bodies, actually does anything, is difficult to prove. But I’ll tell you what I do know. Firstly, the king believes in it, and that gives Smokewreath power over him. And I do know that evil is at work in Smokewreath and through him. But, unfortunately, evil is at work through lots of animals, like Granite and the king, without their being anything magical about it.”
“I see,” said Urchin.
“The king was fascinated by the magic, and feared it, too,” continued Cedar. “It’s always the same with magic: animals think it’s a power they can control, but they find out too late that the magic controls them. But you want to know about Almond. When the rest of her family left the island, she stayed. She could have tried to reach Mistmantle, but she stayed.”
Urchin was about to ask why, but Cedar went on.
“Smokewreath convinced the king that whenever all was well on the island, it was because of his horrible magic; and if things were going wrong, it was because he needed to do more magic. Whatever else he was doing, he was destroying the king’s mind. Brother Candle could have left the island, but he felt he had to stay and do his best to protect the animals from Smokewreath, and because Candle stayed, Almond stayed. Candle and Almond loved each other, and Flame married them in secret. It had to be a secret because the king already mistrusted them both, especially Almond because of her color. When Almond told me she was expecting a baby, we knew the king mustn’t find out about it.
“Candle made a prophecy about the baby. He said, ‘He will bring down a powerful ruler.’He didn’t know what it meant, but he was sure it was came from the Heart. We kept it quiet, but somehow the king heard of it. After that, it was much too dangerous for Candle and Almond to stay any longer, and we had a boat ready for them to leave Whitewings.
“The night they were to escape, Candle couldn’t be found. Almond, of course, wouldn’t leave without him. Urchin, it was terrible. Candle was found dead at the foot of Eagle Crag the next morning, and nobody ever knew whether he fell or was pushed. The islanders were already losing heart. They were the way you see them now, terrified of Smokewreath and the king’s archers, and drained of their health from the dust in the silver mines. They were too scared to ask how their priest died. Too many of the king’s enemies were being found dead below cliffs, or floating on the water. Some were killed for magic, some escaped. It’s all horrible, Urchin, I’m afraid.”
“Yes,” said Urchin, “but what happened to Almond?”
“First,” said Cedar, “we took Larch and Flame into hiding and let everyone think they’d escaped. That way, the king wouldn’t hunt them down and have them killed. They could have left, but they both felt they had to stay with the animals who needed them. I was young but I was a good healer, so I was safe, and I’ve stayed safe by pretending to be on Silverbirch’s side. I know what’s going on at court, and all the time I’ve been helping the Larchlings. You could say, Urchin, that I’m a traitor.”
“Nobody could call you a traitor,” said Urchin.
“Please
, what happened to Almond?”
“After Candle died, she had to escape before Silverbirch could hunt her down. He wouldn’t risk leaving her or her baby alive. When I met her for the last time, she brought me that bracelet. It was a thing that the girl squirrels used to do at the time, exchange bracelets with our own molted hair woven into them. She was stowing away on a ship that night. It had been to Mistmantle before, and she hoped it might go there again.”
With a delicate touch she picked up the bracelet, turned it over gently, and laid it down again. Her paw shook. She turned her face away, and there was a pause before she could go on.
“She’d been such a friend, a sister, almost a mother to me, and I wanted so much to go with her. I said she’d need me when the baby was born, but she said Whitewings needed me more. I went down to see the ship sail, and I still wanted so much to be with her.”
Urchin gazed at the bracelet in the box. It held him. His heartbeat quickened.
“The ship was already sailing,” she said. “And I never saw her again. I never knew whether she got to Mistmantle.”
She did, thought Urchin, his heart beating hard and fast. Please. She did.
He gazed at the bracelet as if it had its own story, but it needed his voice to tell it. He imagined a ship arriving on Mistmantle, and a pale squirrel slipping away. His ears prickled. He longed to touch the bracelet, but it lay like a sacred object and the time was not right.
“But,” Cedar went on softly, “the young who were born that year are about your age, Urchin. Perhaps she did reach Mistmantle.”
The tingling turned into a shiver. Urchin remembered everything he had been told about his coming to Mistmantle—how he fell from the sky, how Padra thought a gull might have dropped him, how his mother had never been found. He tried to speak, and couldn’t.
Cedar held out the box to him.
“This belongs to you, Urchin.”
Very gently, with a shaky paw, he picked up the bracelet. It felt stiff with age, and he was afraid of damaging it. He wanted to press it against his cheek and feel that pale squirrel fur as close to his face as it could be—but as so many other animals were there, he only held it to his mouth for a second. He thought of going to his nest tonight with the bracelet in his paws. Then he put it back.
“Please, will you look after it for me?” he said. His voice was quieter than he meant it to be. “Only, if I took it and they found it, they might take it away.”
“Of course I will,” said Cedar gently. “And we’ll get you home, Urchin.” Then, as Urchin was still very quiet, she added, “Would you like to be alone now?”
“Yes, please,” said Urchin. It was exactly what he wanted. He didn’t even want Juniper’s company, or Cedar’s. For a little while, he needed to be alone with his own story. “But perhaps I really am meant to do something for this island. Or perhaps I should, after what you’ve told me, whether I’m meant to or not.”
“You were brought against your will, by force,” said Brother Flame. “Nothing good comes of forcing an animal against its heart. And we have a duty to protect you. And besides, Urchin, you need time to take all this in. Would you like to go back to your cell?”
“It’s so cold up there!” said Cedar.
“I won’t notice,” said Urchin.
Alone in his cell, Urchin stood at the window and looked up into the sky. The moon and stars shone so brightly that the frost beneath them sparkled, and for the first time he felt a pang of love for this island. This was the hard ground his mother and father had walked. The tired, dispirited islanders were the animals his father had died for.
He held his paw to his cheek as if he could still feel the smooth fibers of the bracelet and the softness of squirrel fur.
“Candle,” he said out loud. “Almond.” He knew their names. He was somebody’s son. He remembered the thing that, apart from his color, singled him out.
He had been born on a night of riding stars. Almond the Favored Squirrel had come at last to Mistmantle, and the stars had honored her.
It became too cold to stay at the window any longer. He went back to the nest, pulled the blanket round his shoulders, and snuggled down to sleep.
“Good night,” he said.