‘Spiker,’ the captain interrupted. ‘Have you plotted that course?’ The oakelf nodded. ‘Good lad,’ he said, and looked slowly round the circle of pirates, suddenly sombre. ‘The three rules of sky sailing. Never set sail before you've plotted your course, never fly higher than your longest grappling rope, and on no account dock in uncharted areas.’
The pirates nodded earnestly. Each and every one of them knew the perils of getting lost in the vast green leafy ocean. The fire was low. Twig watched the flickering flames reflected in the captain's thoughtful eye.
‘I did that once,’ he went on. ‘Landed where I should not have landed.’ He sighed. ‘But then I had no choice.’
The pirates looked at one another in surprise. It was unlike the captain to speak of himself. They topped up their mugs and drew closer. The darkness wrapped itself around them.
‘A wet and stormy night, it was,’ Captain Quintinius Verginix – Cloud Wolf – began. Twig's body tingled with excitement. ‘A cold night,’ he said. ‘A night of expectation and of sorrow.’
Twig hung on his every word.
‘At that time I was a crew member on board a league ship.’ He looked round at the circle of faces, bathed in the dying fire-glow, mouths open, eyes wide, and smiled. ‘You load of ruffians,’ he chuckled. ‘If you think I'm a hard taskmaster, you should have served under Multinius Gobtrax. Ruthless, demanding, punctilious – the worst sort of league captain you'll ever meet.’
Twig watched the fireflies playing roly-poly in the air and darting in and out of the leaves. The wind had dropped completely and his hair and skin felt damp. He chewed on the corner of his scarf.
‘Picture it,’ the captain said. Twig closed his eyes. ‘There were but five of us on board the ship, and only four who were in any state to sail her: Gobtrax and his bodyguard, the Stone Pilot and me. Maris was already nine months with child. The storm had caught us unawares and dragged us way off course. Worse than that, the up-currents were terrible strong. Before we could weigh anchor or secure the grappling irons, we'd been sucked up, far above the forest and towards … open sky.’
Twig's head spun. Straying from the path was bad enough, but being lost in open sky…
‘We lowered the sails, but still we continued to rise. I crouched down next to Maris. “Everything's going to be all right,” I said, though I scarce believed it myself. We would never get back to Undertown before she went into labour, and even if we did – the birth of the child was little cause for celebration.’
Twig opened his eyes and looked at the captain. He was staring into the glowing embers of the fire, playing idly with the waxed points of his side-whiskers. His single eye shone moistly.
‘Was there something wrong with it?’ asked Twig.
The captain stirred. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Only the fact that it was a child at all…’ He paused, and his eye glazed over. ‘Maris and I had big decisions to make,’ he said. ‘I was ambitious. I intended one day to command my own sky ship – I couldn't be doing with a child weighing me down. A captain or a father, that was the choice I had. It was no choice at all. I told Maris that we could travel together, but she would have to choose between the baby and me. She chose me.’ He breathed deeply in, and out. ‘Mother Horsefeather agreed to take the child off our hands.’
Complete silence fell around the camp-fire. The pirates looked down at the ground awkwardly. They felt uneasy listening to their Cloud Wolf opening up in this way. Tem Barkwater busied himself with stoking up the fire.
The captain sighed. ‘At least, that was the plan. Yet there we were, miles from Undertown, and being drawn ever upwards.’ He nodded up to the sky ship. ‘It was the Stone Pilot who saved us then, as he saved us this evening. He doused the buoyant-wood burners, released the balance-weights, and when that was not enough, he climbed over the side and began chipping away at the flight-rock. Bit by bit, as slivers and shards broke off, our ascent slowed. Then we stopped. Then we started to go down. By the time the hull of the ship touched down on the forest, there were six on board. Maris had given birth.’
The captain stood up and began pacing agitatedly back and forth. ‘What to do?’ he said. ‘We were grounded now in the Deepwoods, and the baby wouldn't survive the journey on foot back to Undertown. Gobtrax ordered us to get rid of the brat. He said he wouldn't wait. Maris was hysterical, but Gobtrax's bodyguard – a hulking great cloddertrog – made it clear that he'd snap my neck if I objected … What could I do?’
The pirates shook their heads earnestly, solemnly. Tem poked at the fire.
‘We left the sky ship and set off into the forest. I remember how loud the creatures of the night were, and how still the tiny bundle in Maris's arms. Then we came across a small village of woodtrolls…’
Twig started. The hairs at the back of his neck stood on end. Icy shivers strummed his spine.
‘Odd creatures,’ the captain mused. ‘Stocky, dark, not that bright. They live in tree cabins … I had to tear the child away from Maris. The look in her eyes at that moment! It was as if all the life drained out of her. She never spoke a word again…’ The captain sniffed.
Twig's heart beat faster and faster.
‘I wrapped the baby up in a shawl,’ he went on, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘The birthing-shawl that Maris had made for it. Stitched it all herself, she did. With a lullabee tree for luck, she said. I left the bundle at the foot of a cabin tree, and the pair of us left. We didn't once look back.’
The captain paused and stared ahead into the shadows of the forest, hands clasped behind his back. Despite the roaring flames, Twig was cold. He had to clamp his jaws firmly shut to still his chattering teeth.
‘You made the right decision, cap'n,’ said Tem Barkwater quietly.
The captain turned. ‘I made the only decision, Tem,’ he replied. ‘It's in the blood. My father was a sky pirate captain, as was his father, and his father before him. Perhaps…’
Twig's head was whirling, buzzing; thought after thought collided with one another. The abandoned baby. The woodtrolls. The scarf – his comfort cloth, still tightly tied around his neck. My scarf, he thought. He stared at the majestic sky pirate captain. Could you really be my father? he wondered. Does your blood flow through my veins? Will I also command a sky ship one day?
Maybe. Maybe not. There was something Twig had to know. ‘Th … the baby,’ he said nervously.
The captain spun round and looked at him, actually seeing him it seemed for the first time. The eyebrow above the patch raised questioningly.
‘This is Twig, cap'n,’ said Tem Barkwater. ‘He found the flight-rock and…’
‘I believe the lad can speak for himself,’ said the captain. ‘What did you want to say?’
Twig climbed to his feet and looked down at the ground. His breath came short and jerky; he could barely speak. ‘Sire,’ he said. ‘Was the baby a g … girl … – or a boy?’
Quintinius Verginix stared back at Twig, his brow deeply furrowed. Perhaps he could not remember. Perhaps he remembered only too well. He stroked his chin. ‘It was a boy,’ he said finally. The sound of chains jangled behind him as Mugbutt rolled over in his sleep. The captain drained his mug and wiped his mouth. ‘Early start tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We could all do with some shut-eye.’
Twig thought he would never sleep again. His heart was a-flutter, his imagination was working overtime.
‘Hubble, you're on first watch,’ the captain said. ‘Wake me at four.’
‘Wuh,’ the banderbear grunted.
‘And be careful of our treacherous friend here.’
Twig started with alarm, until he realized the captain was referring to Slyvo Spleethe.
‘Here,’ said Spiker, as he handed Twig a blanket. ‘Take this. I'll be warm enough tonight in my caternest.’ And with that, the oakelf climbed the tree, boarded the sky ship and made his way up to the cocoon at the top of the mast.
Twig wrapped the blanket around him and lay down on a bed of quilted leaf-fall.
The fire was burning bright and hot. Glittering sparks and glowing embers rose skywards. Twig stared into the dancing flames.
But for the sky pirate – this captain Cloud Wolf, the one who had caused Spelda and Tuntum to send Twig away for fear he would be forced to join his crew – but for him, Twig would never have left the woodtroll village in the first place. He would never have strayed from the path. He would never have been lost.
But now he understood. He had always been lost, not just when he left the path but from the very beginning, when this sky pirate had left him wrapped in the birthing-shawl beneath the Snatchwood cabin. Now he'd been found again. Three short sentences kept going round and round his head.
I've found my path. I've found my destiny. I've found my father!
Twig closed his eyes. The image of the heartcharming stick pointing upwards sprang into his mind. That was where his future lay: in the sky, with his father.
· CHAPTER THIRTEEN ·
THE GLOAMGLOZER
There was stillness. Then there was movement. Then there was stillness again.
The first stillness was that point of deepest, darkest silence shortly before the dawn. Twig rolled over, pulling Spiker's blanket tightly round him. His dreams were full of sky ships sailing across the indigo depths. Twig was standing at the helm. He raised his collar against the wind. ‘Gallantly sailing,’ he murmured, and smiled in his sleep.
The movement was brief and purposeful: a flurry of activity. Twig was still at the helm holding a straight course, while all around him the crew busied themselves with the nets as they flew towards an incoming flock of migrating snowbirds. It would be baked snowbird for supper.
The ropes clacked and jingled against the mast. ‘Hard to starboard,’ came a voice. Twig sighed, and rolled over onto his other side.
The second stillness was orange – a desert of flickering emptiness. There were no more voices, not even his own. His back was cold, his face was hot. His eyes snapped open.
At first, what he saw made no sense. A fire in front of him. Charred bones and patches of grease in the dust. The dense canopy above, with stripes of bright early morning sunlight lancing the air.
Twig sat bolt upright. Suddenly, the events of the previous night came back to him. The storm. The sky ship. Stumbling across the flight-rock. Eating with the sky pirates. Finding his father … So where were they all now?
They had gone without him. Twig howled with pain and loss and desolation. Tears streamed down his face, turning the stripy sunlight to star-shaped rainbows. They had left him behind! His choking sobs filled the air. ‘Why, my father, why?’ he cried out. ‘Why have you abandoned me? Again!’
His words faded away, and with them his hopes of ever finding his way beyond the Deepwoods. He hung his head. The forest seemed quieter than usual. No coughing fromps, no squealing quarms, no screeching razorflits. Not only had the sky pirates gone, but it was as if they had taken all the woodland creatures with them.
Yet the air was not completely silent. There was a low roaring sound, a hissing sound, a crackling sound which, even as Twig sat there with his head in his hands, grew in volume. The heat at his back became more intense. The hammelhornskin waistcoat began to prickle ominously. Twig spun round.
‘Yaaaiii!’ he screamed. It wasn't sunlight he had seen. It was fire. The Deepwoods were ablaze.
A piece of burning oakwood which had floated away from the sky pirates’ slapdash fire had become lodged in the branches of a lullabee tree. The lullabee had smouldered and smoked; hours later it burst into flames. Fanned on by the stiff breeze, the fire had rapidly spread. Now, from the forest floor to the tips of the canopy leaves, a solid wall of red and orange flames was advancing across the forest.
The heat was overwhelming. Twig swooned as he stumbled to his feet. A blazing branch crashed down beside him, the sparks exploding like droplets of gold. Twig took to his heels and ran.
And he ran and he ran – with the wind at his side – trying desperately to reach the end of the fiery wall before the flames consumed him. He ran as he had never run before, yet not fast enough. At both ends, the wall of fire was curling round. Soon, he would be surrounded.
The burning air scorched the fur on his jacket, sweat poured over his face and streamed down his back, his head throbbed with the relentless blast of molten air. The curving ends of the wall closed in further.
‘Faster,’ Twig said, urging himself on. ‘FASTER!’
He sped past a halitoad, whose short stubby front legs had slowed its escape, fatally. A hover worm, bewildered by the heat and smoke, flew round and round in circles before disappearing into the flames in an explosion of fetid steam. To his right, Twig caught sight of the writhing green of a tarry-vine trying in vain to dodge the advancing fire: the bloodoak it was attached to screamed and squalled as the first of the orange tongues lapped at the base of its trunk.
On and on Twig ran. The two ends of the wall of fire had almost come together now. He was all but encircled. His only hope of escape lay in the narrow gap remaining between the towering flames. Like two curtains hooked to the sky, they were being drawn across. Twig made a dash for the opening. His lungs burned with heat and acrid smoke; his head swam. As if in a dream, he watched the shimmering curtains of fire close.
Twig stopped and looked about him. He was slapbang in the middle of the burning circle. He was done for.
All round him, bushes and branches were smoking. Flames broke out, guttered and burst into life once again. Giant woodsucculents hissed and steamed as the water within their fat angular limbs began to boil. Fatter and fatter they grew, until – BANG, BANG, BA-BA-BA-BANG – they exploded. Like corks from bottles of woodfizz, their seeds shot through the air in a jet of frothing liquid.
The water doused the flames. But only for a second. Twig backed away from the advancing fire. He looked over his shoulder. It was getting closer there, too. To his left, to his right, the fire was closing in. Twig looked up into the sky. ‘Oh, Gloamglozer,’ he whispered. ‘Help.’
All at once, a tremendous noise cut through the roar of the fire. Twig spun round. The purple flames of a burning lufwood tree were dancing not twenty yards away. The creaking, cracking noise came again. Twig saw the whole tree tremble. It was about to fall on top of him. He glanced this way, that way. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and nothing to protect himself with. Again the noise echoed round about him – rasping, jarring, like the rotten tooth Twig had pulled from the banderbear's swollen jaw.
‘NO!’ Twig screamed as the tree wobbled and shook. For a second it remained suspended in the air. Twig fell to the ground and rolled into a ball. A blast of blistering air battered his body. He clamped his eyes shut and waited, petrified, for the tree to come crashing down on him.
Nothing happened. He waited some more. Still nothing. But how? Why? Twig lifted his head, opened his eyes – and gasped in amazement.
The massive lufwood tree – now a blazing purple inferno – was hovering above the ground. The wood, so buoyant when alight, had dragged the very roots from the earth and was rising slowly up towards the sky. On either side were two more lufwoods whose anchoring roots were, even now, being torn out of the ground. The melancholy voice of a lullabee filled the air as it, too, rose up above the blazing forest. The sky itself seemed to be on fire.
Where the burning trees had been, now there was darkness. It looked like a gappy smile. Twig seized his chance and made a headlong dash towards the sudden opening. He had to get there before it closed again.
‘Near-ly … near-ly…’ he panted.
The fire was on both sides of him. He ducked his head and lifted the collar of his jacket against the shimmering heat as he ran the gauntlet of flames. Just a few steps more … Just a little bit further…
He raised his arm to shield his eyes, and sprinted through the enclosing flames. His throat stung, his skin prickled, his nostrils caught the whiff of his own scorched hair.
All at once, the heat grew less intense
. Twig was outside the circle of fire. He ran on a little more. The wind had dropped; the smoke was thickening. He stopped and turned and watched for a moment, as the great balls of purple and turquoise rose, ablaze and airborne, majestically into the darkening sky.
He'd done it. He'd escaped the forest fire!
Yet there was no time for congratulating himself. Not yet, at least. The coils of smoke were winding themselves around him; filling his eyes and mouth. Blinding him. Choking him.
On and on, Twig stumbled, breathing through his scarf which he held tightly against his face. Further and further. His head throbbed, his lungs ached, his eyes smarted and streamed. ‘I can't go on,’ Twig spluttered. ‘I must go on.’
He kept walking till the roaring of the forest fire was just a memory, till the acrid smoke was replaced with a cold grey mist which – though as blindingly thick as the smoke – was wonderfully refreshing; he kept on to the very edge of the Deepwoods. And still he did not stop.
The mist thickened and thinned.
There were no more trees. No bushes, no shrubs, no plants or flowers. Beneath Twig's feet, the ground became hard, as the spongy earth of the Deepwoods gave way to a pavement of pitted rock, slippery from the thick greasy mist. He picked his way carefully over the treacherous slabs. One slip, and his foot would become wedged in the deep fissures between.
The mist thinned and thickened, as it always did. For these were the Edgelands, that narrow stretch of barren rock which separated the Deepwoods from the Edge itself. Beyond lay the unknown, the uncharted, the unexplored; a place of seething craters and swirling fogs – a place into which even the sky pirates never ventured intentionally.
The gathering breeze blew in from over the Edge. It brought with it the whiff of sulphur as broad tongues of fog lolled over the top of the cliff and lapped at the rock. The air was filled with the moans and groans of an eternity of mournful lost souls. Or was it only the rising wind softly howling?