The Last of the Sky Pirates (34 page)

*

Little by little as the weeks passed, Rook gained the confidence of the banderbear, until – by the time the ironwood’s leaves were beginning to turn colour and fall – the two of them had become close. They foraged for food side by side. They watched out for one another. And at night Rook would help the banderbear build one of the great sleeping nests in the dense thickets of the forest floor. Intricately woven and expertly concealed, lined with moss and soft grasses and protected by branches of thornbush, the nests were spectacular constructions, and Rook could only marvel at the banderbear’s skill.

He recorded everything in his treatise-log: the edible fruit and roots they ate, the building of the sleeping nests, the creature’s finely tuned senses which enabled her to detect food, water, shelter, changes in the weather, danger … And as the banderbear became more and more familiar to him, he began also to understand her language.

Rook had often read the part in Varis Lodd’s seminal treatise –
A Study of Banderbears’ Behaviour in Their Natural Habitat
– where she had outlined the possible meaning of some of the banderbears’ more simple grunts and gestures. Varis had had to rely on observations taken from a distance. Now, closer to a banderbear in the wild than any librarian had come before, Rook was able to take the understanding of the subtle intricacies of their communication further.

As they journeyed together, he slowly began to master the banderbear’s language and, though the creature appeared amused by his own attempts to communicate,
they seemed to understand one another well enough. Rook loved the rough beauty of the language in which a tilt of the head or the shrug of the shoulders could convey so much.

‘Wuh-wurreh-wum,’ she told him, her head down and jaw jutting.
I am hungry, but step lightly for the air trembles
. (Beware, there is danger close by.)

‘Weg-wuh-wurr,’ she would growl, with one shoulder higher than the other and her ears flat against her head.
It is late, the new moon is a scythe, not a shield
. (I am anxious about proceeding further in the darkness.)

Even the creature’s name was beautiful. Wumeru.
She with chipped tusk who walks in moonlight
.

Rook had never been so happy as he was now, spending every day and every night with the banderbear. He was becoming quite fluent now, and – he realized with a guilty jolt – so wrapped up in his life with Wumeru that he was neglecting his treatise-log. Still, there was always tomorrow. Or maybe the next day …

They were seated on the ground one late afternoon, sharing a supper of oaksaps and pinenuts. The dappled sunlight was golden orange. Wumeru turned towards him.

‘Wuh-wurrah-wugh,’ she grunted, and swept an arm round through the air.
The oaksap is sweet, the sun warms my body
.

‘Wuh-wuh-wulloh,’ Rook replied and cupped his hands together.
The pinenuts are good, my nose is fat
.

Wumeru’s eyes crinkled with amusement. She leaned forwards, her face coming close to Rook’s.

‘What?’ he said. ‘Did I say something funny? I simply meant that their smell is …’

The banderbear covered her mouth with her paw. He should be quiet. She touched Rook’s chest and her own in turn, then, concentrating hard, she uttered a single word; low, faltering, but unmistakeable – a word, Rook knew
he
had never given her.

‘Fr-uh-nz.’

Rook trembled.
Friends?
Where could she possibly have heard the word before?

*

Some nights later Rook woke with a start and looked up. The sky was clear and the moon was almost full. It shone down brightly on the forest, casting the treescape in silver and black. He climbed out of his hammock, high in the lufwood tree and looked down. Wumeru’s sleeping nest was empty.

‘Wumeru?’ he called. ‘Wuh-wurrah.’
Where are you?

There was no reply. Rook walked along the branch to where the
Stormhornet
was tethered, and looked out across the dark forest.

And there she was, standing on a rocky incline not twenty strides away, motionless – apart from her fluttering ears – and staring intently at the distant horizon. Rook smiled and was about to call out his greetings, when he heard something that took his breath away.

Echoing across the night sky, came the yodelled cry of a distant banderbear. It was the first one Rook had heard since meeting his companion.

There it was again!

Wumeru!
Rook recognized the name being called, and he felt a tingle run down his spine. The second bander-bear was not merely calling out to any other; it was addressing his friend by name.
‘Wumeru, Wumeru …’

Over such a long distance, with the wind whipping half of the sounds away, it was difficult for Rook to make out exactly what the banderbear was saying. But he had no difficulty translating Wumeru’s reply.

‘Wuh-wuh. Wurruhma!’
I come, the full moon shines brightly; it is time at last
.

‘Wumeru,’ Rook called down, suddenly gripped by an
incredible sense of expectation. ‘What’s happening?’

But Wumeru ignored him. She had ears only for the other banderbear. From the distance, the yodelling continued.

‘What’s that?’ Rook murmured.
Make haste … The Valley of a Thousand Echoes awaits …

Shaking with excitement, he fumbled for his treatise-log and leadwood stub, and began to write the words down in a trembling hand. ‘Valley of a Thousand Echoes,’ he whispered. ‘Wumeru,’ he called, and looked down.
‘Wumeru?’

He fell still. The rock where the banderbear had been standing was empty. His friend had gone.

Wumeru had abandoned him.

ook quickly gathered his belongings together and stowed them on the
Stormhornet
. He couldn’t lose the banderbear. Not now. He was all fingers and thumbs unhooking the hanging-stove and, as he was folding it away, the flame-cap came loose and tumbled down into the darkness below.

‘Blast,’ Rook muttered breathlessly. It would take for ever to find the thing again, and meanwhile Wumeru was getting farther and farther away … There was no choice. He would have to leave it.

Jumping astride the
Stormhornet
, he raised the sails, realigned the hanging weights and pulled on the pinner-rope, all in one smooth movement. The skycraft leaped from the branch, darted through the overhead canopy of leaves and soared off into the clear night sky beyond.

‘Where are you?’ Rook murmured, as he searched the forest floor ahead of him. The yodelling of the other
banderbear had come from somewhere to the west – and that was where Rook set his course. Earth and Sky willing, Wumeru had headed off in the same direction. ‘Where
are
you?’ he whispered. ‘You must be down there somewhere.’

Just then the trees began to thin beneath him, and Rook spotted his banderbear friend striding purposefully ahead. She was walking in an unwavering straight line, as if hypnotized. And as Rook caught up, he could hear her murmuring under her breath. The same sound, over and over – a word he didn’t recognize.

‘Worrah, worrah …’

‘Not too close, now,’ Rook whispered, patting the
Stormhornet’s
prow and raising the loft-sail. ‘We don’t want her to spot us. Not yet. Not until we know where she’s heading.’

The
Stormhornet
slowed to little more than a hover, and Rook steered it gently to his right, where the forest was thicker and he could follow Wumeru without her seeing him. As he darted on from tree to tree – keeping to the shadows and taking care not to lose sight of her, even for a moment – Rook’s hopes began to rise.

‘The Valley of a Thousand Echoes,’ he murmured. ‘Is it too much to hope …? Could it be …? Could it actually be the place where the banderbears assemble? The Great Convocation?’ He ran his fingers down the long, curved neck of the
Stormhornet
. ‘Is that where Wumeru is heading?’

For several hours he flew on, keeping Wumeru constantly in sight. The other banderbear’s yodel must
certainly have been important; Rook had never seen his friend so determined. Usually she would amble slowly through the forest, leaving no trace of her passing. Tonight, as she blundered tirelessly on, she left a trail of trampled undergrowth and broken branches in her wake.

Suddenly the air was splintered with the sound of banderbears – seven or possibly eight of them, far ahead, yodelling in unison.
‘Worrah, worrah, worrah, worrah …whoo!’

It was the same sound that Wumeru herself had been chanting under her breath, and as the chorus of voices faded away, their calls were answered by others. Dozens of them. From every direction.

‘Worrah, worrah … whoo.’

And from his right, louder than all the others, came Wumeru’s answering cry.
‘Worrah-whoo!’

Rook’s hopes soared. Surely it must be the con vocation. What other reason could there be for so many of these solitary creatures to be gathering together in the forest?

‘Worrah-whoo!’
Wumeru called a second time, and Rook looked across to see that she had stopped some way up ahead on the crest of a rocky outcrop. Motionless save for her twitching ears, against the slate-grey sky the banderbear looked like a great boulder with a pair of cheepwits fluttering at its top.

Rook flew closer. ‘Wumeru,’ he called out. ‘Wumeru, it’s me.’

He landed the
Stormhornet
on the flat slab of rock just
behind her and jumped down. The banderbear turned to face him.

‘Wuh-wuh,’ said Rook, holding his open hand to his chest.
I woke alone. You abandoned me
. He sighed and touched his ear, then pointed down to the ground. ‘Wurrah-wuh.’
Your parting words were silent, I followed you here
.

‘Wuh!’ grunted Wumeru, and sliced her claws down through the air like a great sword. Her eyes blazed. Her lips curled back, revealing her gleaming tusks and glinting fangs.

Nothing had prepared Rook for this. It was as if he were suddenly a stranger to her.

‘But—
’
he began, his hands open in a gesture of supplication.