Midnight Over Sanctaphrax (4 page)

What was happening? Twig wondered. What was this all-consuming sorrow? He hauled himself to his feet. It was almost too much to bear.

Tarp Hammelherd knelt on the ground, his head hung low, and bellowed like a wounded tilder. ‘Why?’ he howled, and his body convulsed with grief. ‘Why did you have to die?’

Spooler swung down the mast and crouched down beside him. ‘Tarp, my friend!’ he implored.

But Tarp couldn't hear him. And when he looked up, his unseeing eyes stared past the oakelf.

‘Oh, Tendon. My brother!’ he cried. ‘My poor, poor brother …’ He collapsed on the deck, shielding his head from the hailstones.

Twig gripped the helm. Behind him, Goom the banderbear's loud howls drowned out all other sounds. Then the swirling green fog broke silently over the bow. Thick and evil, it coiled round the deck, cloaking the crew from sight. With the abrupt change in the weather, the sobs of the crew turned to howls of fear.

Twig shuddered as the green fog hit him. It pierced his skin, chilling him to the very marrow in his bones. Blind panic gripped him.

‘We're doomed!’ he screamed. ‘We'll never escape. We're all going to die here in this terrible place. We …’

‘After sorrow, fear,’ the voice of the caterbird floated back. ‘This too will pass. Be brave, Captain Twig.’

Twig shook his head. The fog thinned and the terror began to release its hold. A light drizzle was now falling,
the raindrops glittering and shimmering like tiny jewels. Wingnut Sleet threw back his head and roared with laughter. Twig drank in the rain. His head swam. It was all so wonderful, so beautiful, so unutterably …

‘Aaaaarghl’ screamed Sleet.

Below him, Twig could see the quartermaster staggering back from the balustrade, clawing desperately at his face. Encasing his head and shoulders was a ball of lightning, with worm-like tendrils of light squirming over his terrified features. Woodfish screamed and dived for cover as more sparking twists of lightning crackled across the deck.

‘Get down!’ yelled Twig, all feelings of elation abruptly gone.

Wingnut Sleet, seemingly lifeless, was slumped on the deck next to the body of Tarp Hammelherd.

‘Save us! Save us!’ screamed Woodfish, his voice high and sibilant.

‘We must go on!’ Twig shouted back.

And then the red mist descended.

Thick, penetrating and acrid with the stench of wood-smoke, the mist blurred Twig's vision. He found himself
consumed with rage. His eyes blazed. His nostrils flared. His teeth ground together.

‘No going back!’ he roared, pounding at the helm.

The Edgedancer bucked and juddered alarmingly. Twig hit out at the bone-handled levers, scattering them this way and that. The sky shij seemed to gasp as its weights and levers pulled in opposite directions. Beside him, even Goom was i unable to resist the effects of the red mist.

‘Wuh!’ he bellowed as, gripped by a frenzy of rage, he tore at the balustrades and punched holes in the sides of the sky ship,
‘
WUUUUH
!’

Twig's inner fury intensified. It was all the caterbird's fault, this turmoil, this madness: the fact that they had set off into open sky in the first place.

‘Curse you!’ he bellowed. ‘May you rot in open sky!’

Behind him, the banderbear roared fiercely as he ripped at the doorways and battened-down hatches and tossed each wrenched-off piece of splintered wood over the side. Creaking and cracking, the Edgedancer was now out of control. At any minute the swirling vortex would tear it to pieces.

Twig raced down to the main deck and over to the bowsprit. The red mist filled his mouth, stained his eyes and filled his muscles with a wild and unfamiliar strength. The madness grew; his senses closed in. He became blind to what his eyes were trying to show him, deaf to what his ears could hear. With his sword in his hand, he was cutting, hacking, stabbing and all the while, the terrible roars of the banderbear screamed in his head.

Then everything went black.

Twig opened his eyes to find a milky whiteness all around him. The Edgedancer hung in space at a crazy angle, perfectly still.

‘We made it,’ he said quietly to himself. He looked about in astonishment. Everything suddenly seemed clearer and sharper than ever before.

Tarp Hammelherd lay in a heap, still softly sobbing. Wingnut Sleet, hands clasped to his face, didn't move. Bogwitt was unconscious, a section of mast pinning his right leg to the deck. Beside him, and utterly exhausted, the banderbear's great hairy form lay in the wreckage of mast and rigging, heavy rasping breaths showing that he lived still. One great paw rested against Spooler the oakelf. His whimpers revealed that he, too, was clinging to life. Woodfish sat in the bows, shaking his head from side to side.

‘I can't hear a thing.’ he repeated monotonously.

The Stone Pilot appeared at the top of the bridge staircase.

Twig smiled weakly. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I'm fine. Are you all right?’

From deep inside the hood came a muffled voice. ‘Oh, captain,’ it said softly.

‘What?’ said Twig. ‘I…’ He followed the line of the Stone Pilot's pointing finger. It led to his own hands. He looked down, to see a piece of limp rope in one hand, his sword in the other. ‘What have I done?’ he murmured.

Slowly, fearfully, he pulled the rope-tether towards him. It offered no resistance. All at once, the end flicked over the balustrade and landed on the deck at his feet. It had been severed neatly.

‘Caterbird!’ Twig screamed. ‘Caterbird, where are you?’

There was no reply. The caterbird - his guide and protector - was gone. Horrified, Twig turned to the Stone Pilot.

‘What has happened?’ he whispered.

‘I … I tried to stop you,’ the Stone Pilot said. ‘But you were too strong for me. Swearing and cursing, you were. You seized the rope and tugged it towards you. The caterbird cried out as its wings clipped the bowsprit. Then you raised your sword and thrust forwards …’

Twig gasped. ‘Did I kill it?’ he asked.

‘I don't know,’ the Stone Pilot replied. ‘The last thing I remember is Goom knocking me to the floor.’

‘My crew, my crew,’ said Twig, shaking his head. ‘What is to become of them now?’

The great heavy hood of the Stone Pilot turned from side to side. Out of the corner of his eye, Twig saw something black and white sliding across the sloping deck. He looked round, just in time to see one of the caterbird's tail feathers sliding under the balustrade and slipping over the jutting ledge. As it fluttered away into the glistening void, Twig shuddered at the enormity of what he had done. The great caterbird, who had watched over him since its hatching, was gone, perhaps dead - and by his own hand. Twig was on his own now.

‘What do I do?’ he said miserably. He pulled out his telescope and looked all round him. The milky whiteness now glittered with all the colours of the rainbow: intoxicating, mesmerizing - red and orange and yellow and …

The Stone Pilot seized him by the elbow and cried out urgently. ‘Look there!’

Twig pulled the telescope from his eye and squinted into the white light. ‘What? I…’ And then he saw it. There, looming from the mist, was a shadowy shape
suspended in mid-air. It was almost upended; its mast was broken, the sails hanging limply like broken wood-fly wings. Twig's skin tingled; his heart thumped.

‘Oh, caterbird,’ he murmured. ‘You did not fail me, after all. You led me to the Stormchaser.’

With his heart in his mouth, Twig leaned over the balustrade. He cupped his hands to his mouth.

‘Father!’ he bellowed. ‘Father, if you're there, answer me!’

But no sound came from the floating shipwreck save the creaking of its cracked hull and the tap-tap-tap of a loose tolley-rope knocking against the broken mast. The Edgedancer drifted closer to the wreck of the once-proud Stormchaser. Twig peered at the sky ship. It shimmered with a brilliance that hurt his eyes.

‘I must know if my father is on board,’ he said.

He seized one of the fore-deck grappling-hooks, swung the rope round his head and launched the heavy hook down through the air at the other sky ship. It seemed almost to pass through the Stormchaser until, with a shudder and the sound of splintering wood, it struck something solid - and held. The Stone Pilot secured the end of the rope to the bowsprit. Twig climbed up, placed a length of broken wood over the rope, and clutched it with both hands.