Urchin and the Rage Tide Page 14

  At times like this it was good to touch the bracelet made from his mother’s fur. He curled his paw over it and closed his eyes.

  “Heart, look after Sepia,” he prayed. “Heart help her.” He thought of his parents, the father who had been killed before Urchin’s birth, the mother who had died giving birth to him.

  Can you see her? Mother, Father, can you see her? Can you help her? Mother, will you look after her?

  Singing reached him, and he sank his head into his paws. Those were the songs Sepia had taught, and he could hardly bear to hear them. He was glad when it stopped, but then a shuffling of paws told him that they had company. Dutifully, not wanting to speak, he raised his head—but it was only Apple, his foster mother. Her familiar voice, her walk, and the green cloak were comforting.

  “I thought Brother Juniper would have found you somewhere nice and quiet, and I was right, he has,” she said, sitting down beside him and wrapping the cloak around herself. “I’m getting too old for all this coming and going, Urchin, and mind, we’re all having a good sing in there, but, ooh, I don’t know what sort of a state our homes will be in when it’s all over, if it ever is over, makes you wonder. And that little Twirl, do you know what she’s saying? She’s saying she wants ’em all to sing for Sepia when she comes home, and Princess Catkin says she’ll organize it all, and there’ll be all Sepia’s little choirs all singing to welcome her back.” When Urchin didn’t respond, she went on. “She will, you know, your Sepia, she’ll get back. She may look like a little thing that’ll blow away in a high wind, she may be as gentle as a blossom in spring, but you know what? Are you listening, you know what? She’s as tough as a tree root, your Sepia. Tough as oak. Didn’t she warn the king against that traitor hedgehog, and stand up to him, too? And she were just a little bit of a lass then. Didn’t she rescue the princess when she were a baby, and when them ravens attacked, didn’t she do her bit? And hasn’t she survived? She’ll survive this, too.”

  Apple was only prattling on as she always did, but she could be right. Urchin began to feel encouraged.

  “You’ve served the island well,” she said. “I’m right proud of you. And here’s Juniper, looking after you. Give me a paw up, Juniper, I’ll leave our Urchin alone, but I had to come and see him. Thank you, Juniper, Brother Juniper, I should say.” And she waddled away.

  “I don’t want to give you false hopes,” said Juniper, “but I think Apple’s right. Sepia’s alive. I told you before, it was as if she were tugging and calling for help, as if she’s out there somewhere like a light bobbing about. The light hasn’t gone out.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Urchin.

  “It’s hard to explain,” said Juniper, “but I worked with Sepia a lot when she helped to look after Brother Fir, and I have a sense for her spirit, just as I have for yours. There’s a shining quality to Sepia, and I can feel it’s still there. I think I’d feel the emptiness if she no longer existed.”

  “She may never get home,” said Urchin.

  “Maybe not,” admitted Juniper.

  “I just wish we knew something,” said Urchin. “There’s been no word from Corr.”

  “I know,” said Juniper. “That’s hard. But I do believe she’s alive.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  N DARKNESS AND POURING RAIN, Corr and Crown fought to keep the lurching boat from sinking. There was land close by, but no hope at all of turning the boat to reach it. In the relentless rain and waves, they were barely staying afloat.

  “Heart help us!” yelled Corr, and hoped that the Heart heard the crying of his own heart though the fury and crash of the waves drowned out his voice. The boat lurched and tipped, water swirling around Corr’s paws. He bailed furiously. Crown’s strong beak held the tiller as the little boat pitched. A wave flung itself over them. Spray blinded Corr. A second wave hurled him into the water and threw him back against the boat, knocking the breath from him. Gripping the side with both paws he heaved himself back in, tumbling onto the soaked benches, and when he raised his head he saw something he had never seen before, and would never forget.

  The sea advanced like the charge of an army. At first, it looked like a great wave building up behind them, gaining on them, faster and faster. Then it reared up, roaring like a great wild creature, ready to devour them. They could either ride this wave, or disappear beneath it.

  “Turn the boat!” he yelled.

  Against the bullying of the sea, Crown wrenched the tiller. The boat turned.

  “Now fly!” shouted Corr. “Let me take the boat! Fly home! There’s no point in both of us dying!”

  Maybe Crown hadn’t heard—but there was no time to think about that as the monstrous wave rose, roared, and swept them up. All Corr knew was that he was sinking under its power, then flung up like driftwood and tossed backward and forward. He was under the water, over the water—the boat was there, but it was upside down—now it was right way up—he had no idea what had happened to Crown. The sea caught him again. This time, it flung him onto shingle that bruised him, grazed him, and knocked the breath from his body. The next wave washed him like seaweed farther onto the shore.

  Battered and half drowned, he crawled farther inland. He didn’t get far. Exhaustion overwhelmed him, and he slept.

  Sunrise woke him. He tried to sit up and found he was almost too stiff and sore to move, but the pain of the bruises reassured him that he was alive.

  “Thank you, Heart,” he whispered.

  Gradually, he managed to sit up, scent the air, and look about him. The sea was flat, calm, and sparkling, as if trying to convince him that it couldn’t possibly have wreaked destruction the previous night. The land was almost completely bare. A few thin trees sprouted and a stream ran down the hillside, but there was no sign of any living creature. A black mountain towered above him. Putting out a paw to the nearest rock, he found it smooth and shiny.

  “Corr! Corr!” The thin croak was barely recognizable, but it was Crown’s voice. Corr struggled to stand, and hobbled painfully across the shingle as the cry came again.

  Crown lay sprawled in the shelter of a rock, one wing tucked in and the other spread out behind him. Beyond him, scattered across the shore, was all that remained of their boat.

  “Crown!” Corr knelt painfully beside him. “Can you get up?”

  Crown raised himself a little, and collapsed again. “Most of the boat broke around me,” he said, and his voice was low with pain. “I think my wing’s broken. I need you to look at my foot, there’s something digging into it.”

  Corr examined Crown’s foot. The sight of the splinter that had driven through the web made his stomach churn.

  “I can pull it out,” he said, “but it’ll hurt.”

  Crown gave him a stern look to remind him that he was the son of the great Lord Arcneck. Corr gritted his teeth, braced his back paws against a stone, gripped the splinter with both forepaws, and pulled. There was one low moan through a tightly clamped beak from Crown, and it was out.

  “I’ll try to find something to bandage it with,” said Corr. “If our supplies have survived at all we should still have some mendingmoss.”

  “That’s for Sepia,” said Crown. “Salt water will heal it.” He limped slowly to the water and floated in the shallows, his broken wing trailing. Corr followed him in case he collapsed again, then surveyed the wreckage of the boat.

  The food had been wrapped in moss and dock leaves and wedged under the stern seating, and most had survived. The water supplies were intact, too, as well as the mendingmoss and the honey from Whitewings. But the boat itself—Corr tried to work out a way to make a raft from what was left of it. It would depend on what he could find on the island, but it didn’t look promising. There didn’t seem to be anything much here. He stepped back to take a good look upward, and turned hot and cold when he realized exactly what he was looking at.

  “Corr!” he shouted, and stumbled down the shore. “This island! It’s been destroyed by fire! That’s a fi
re mountain! We’re on Ashfire!”

  Sepia slept and woke again and drifted from one to the other, not always sure if she was sleeping or not. Now and again a wave of peace would sweep through her, and it seemed as if death were wrapping her in a bed, rocking and soothing her. Then she would remember that she had to live, even though she didn’t know why. In her clearer moments she remembered Mistmantle, Urchin, the tower, her music, and her friends, but those moments were fewer all the time. When she did wake, she found the pain in her paws had gone. That was a lovely feeling. She wasn’t even sure where her paws were anymore. Little by little, it seemed that her body had stopped working. Her eyelids did not want to open.

  “Crown!” yelled Corr. “I’ve found her! Sepia, wake up!”

  She heard someone calling her name, and thought it was the voice of death. Death had been calling to her all night. But the voice of death in the night had been gentle and soothing, and this voice disturbed her peace, dragging her back from her deep, dark rest.

  “Sepia!” called Corr. “Can you hear me?”

  With an arm behind her shoulders, he sat her up. He knew a few moments of wonderful, triumphant joy as he found her sleeping in the boat. He had done what he had come to do, he had found Sepia. He could bring her home, and all Mistmantle would celebrate. But she lay motionless and didn’t respond to his call. Sickeningly, he thought she was dead, but at a second glance the pulse showed clearly in the pitifully thin wrist. Sitting her up, he saw that her eyes were still closed, and her face haggard. Don’t die. Please, please. You mustn’t die, not now.

  Crown came to stand beside him. “This boat is in one piece,” he said. “We can get her to Mistmantle, but we’ll have to be quick.”

  “We can’t get her through the mists,” said Corr. “You can’t fly her over like that.”

  “We’ll find a way,” said Crown. “Don’t argue. Just move the boat.”

  Together, with muscles already aching, they heaved the boat to the shore.

  “Give her water,” said Crown, “the water we brought with us. We know it’s safe.”

  Corr trickled a few drops of water into Sepia’s mouth. It would be good to find a stream here and top up the water, but Sepia seemed so ill that time might be vital. Besides, Crown was right. They knew the water they had brought would be safe.

  With the boat out of the cave and in the sunlight, Corr could see even more clearly how ill Sepia was. Her frailty scared him. Her whole body was thinner than he remembered, and her wrist felt as light as a twig. He dripped more water into her mouth, and this time he stroked her throat, because she seemed too weak to swallow it without help.

  “There’s a drink you can make with mendingmoss,” said Crown. “It will do her good.”

  “Then we’ll have to make it on the way,” said Corr. “We can’t waste time here.”

  The thought of rowing all the way back to Mistmantle was crushing, and Corr couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t fair—why did it all have to depend on him, one bruised and aching otter who’d already rowed the length and breadth of seas and been shipwrecked? But in the next moment, he felt proud of those bruises and that shipwreck. Urchin would be proud of him, too. Perhaps all adventurers got tired and dispirited sometimes. And whose idea had it been in the first place? His.

  It wasn’t the way he’d imagined it. He’d pictured himself wrapping Sepia warmly in the cloak he had brought from Mistmantle, but it had been drenched in the storm. With help from Crown, he fastened it to the mast to use as a sail until the wind had blown it dry. The jar of honey from Queen Larch was intact, and when he opened it, the scent of warmth, sweetness, and herbs was so powerful, so full of summer, that he thought even the smell of it would do Sepia good. He dipped his claw into it, and stroked it onto her tongue. At last, as if the effort were almost too great, she swallowed.

  “It will make you well, Sepia,” he said. “Home now.”

  They traveled on, day and night, Crown and Corr taking turns to stay awake. Crown refused to use the precious mendingmoss on his injured foot, preferring to swim from time to time to let the salt water heal it. The sight of the broken wing trailing in the water troubled Corr, but there was nothing to do except to wait for it to heal itself.

  Making the mendingmoss drink for Sepia was difficult. Crown had only a vague idea of how much to use and how long to infuse it, and they had no means of heating the water. But they did the best they could, and three times a day they poured a few drops of the infusion into Sepia’s mouth. As the nights grew cool, Crown would spread his good wing over her to keep her warm.

  The yellow cloak, once dried—and when they didn’t need a sail—was wrapped around her. Corr thanked the Heart for that cloak, warm and lined. He hoped he hadn’t deprived anyone of it, but by keeping her warm and dry it could be saving her life.

  Every time he gave her food or water, she was a little more responsive. She began to swallow more easily and sometimes her eyelids flickered open, but she had fits of shivering so violent that Corr was afraid. Often, she cried out as if in pain or distress. Every time he put an arm around her shoulders to raise her head for a drink, he could feel the sharpness of her shoulder blades just beneath the skin. The idea that a heart could still beat in this drained little body amazed him. He crushed the hazelnuts he had brought from Mistmantle, mixed them with honey and water, and used a nutshell as a cup to slip the mixture into her mouth. Corr narrowed his eyes and gazed at the horizon, but they were still not in sight of the mists.

  “We should talk to her,” said Crown. “She might be able to hear us, and it could help her to hold on.”

  Crown talked to her about the welcome waiting for her on Mistmantle, about the rage tide and the war against the ravens, and about his own island with its swans and squirrels. As night fell and Crown slept, Corr tucked the cloak around her and sang the Mistmantle lullaby.

  Waves of the seas,

  Wind in the trees,

  Spring-scented breeze

  For your sleeping, sleeping…

  “You’ll sing again, Sepia,” he said. “Stay with us. Stay with us. You’ll be well. There’s only one thing in the world that I want, Sepia, and that’s to take you back to Urchin. How can I look him in the face if I go back without you?”

  She blinked. For the first time, her eyes opened fully, dark eyes that looked too big for the pinched face. Then she winced, and her eyes closed again. He gave her mendingmoss water, and wrapped the cloak around her.

  “Heart help us,” he said. “Heart, keep her alive.”

  Another morning came. Corr sat up, scanning the horizon with bright eyes, and his heart leaped.

  “The mists, Sepia!” he said. “I can see the mists!”

  Every stroke of the oars and every breeze brought them nearer to Mistmantle. But Sepia was still very weak, and Prince Crown’s wing would be slow to mend. Corr had seen him try to fly, only to flounder onto the sea after a few yards. He couldn’t possibly fly himself over the mists, let alone Sepia.

  Around Mistmantle the sea lay calm and still, sparkling in the sunlight, but crops were destroyed, trees bent, and homes flooded. Mud and silt sprawled where flowers had grown, and, like so many of the animals, Juniper felt wretchedly tired. He knelt on a hillside near the tower. Sorrow before joy. He repeated the phrase to himself. Hadn’t they had enough sorrow? Wasn’t it time, surely, for joy? But still there was a sense that things were not complete, that the greatest thing was yet to happen, and he thought of King Crispin, and held him before the Heart. When he rose from his knees he was aware of Urchin waiting for him.

  “The moles and otters have reported back,” Urchin said. “It’s all over now. No more rage tides.”

  “At last!” said Juniper.

  Fingal was lolloping up the hill toward them. “Isn’t it wonderful!” he said. “Look at that sea! It’s trying to look innocent, after all it’s done to us! Have either of you seen the king? I was worried about him. He’s working harder than ever, and he’s not hims
elf. And there’s Twirl, coming this way. What a small squirrel for such a steep hill!”

  “And what on the island has she got there?” wondered Urchin. Her paws were full of something soft and white.

  “Half a nest, I think,” said Fingal. A feather drifted away on the breeze. “Yes, feathers!” He offered a paw to help Twirl up a particularly steep slope, but she was clutching all the feathers she could, and wouldn’t let go.

  “Hello, Twirl!” said Urchin. “Are you all right now?”

  “Yes, thank you, and I found these,” she said, holding out the feathers to Urchin. “The wave swished them up, so I chose the very nicest ones for you, to say thank you for helping me last night. Please, Urchin, sir, will Sepia come back?”

  Urchin knelt down, and took the feathers from her. Fingal caught the stray ones that were blowing away.

  “Thank you, Twirl,” said Urchin. “That’s really sweet of you. They’re beautiful. And I don’t know about Sepia, but we can all hope and pray.”

  She nodded, rushed to Juniper, hugged him tightly as he raised a paw in blessing, and ran away.

  “Take care, Twirl!” Juniper called after her.

  “I think she really wanted to give them to Sepia, but I’m the next best thing,” said Urchin.

  “Poor little thing,” said Fingal. “What are you going to do with those?”

  Urchin turned the feathers over in his paws. They were the small, downy feathers that are softest and lightest, best for pillows.

  “Do you know where there are more like this?” he asked.

  “They’ll be all over the shore, I should think,” said Fingal. He put one paw on Urchin’s shoulder and pointed with the other. “You see that little bay, there? That’s always been a good place to find feathers, but they must have been washed up higher in the rage tide. What a mess!”