Urchin and the Heartstone Page 16

  “Oh, are you going to the cave with the waterslide?” said Fingal. “Can I come?”

  “You’ll only play on the slide all the time,” said Needle.

  “Yes, please!” said Fingal.

  “Oh,” said Needle, remembering, “I promised Mum I’d help line the nests for winter this morning.”

  “Tomorrow would do,” said Sepia, “though I have to rehearse the choir then. Do you think we could take them all to the song cave, if their parents are all right about it? They’ll love the song cave, and they’d sound so good in there. I’d love for them to hear themselves in there. D’you think we could take them with us?”

  “Gorsen says it’s dangerous,” said Needle, “but you’ve been there loads of times, haven’t you?”

  “Oh, Gorsen just says that,” said Fingal. “I think he wants to keep the caves to himself. A romantic little meeting place to impress his girlfriends.”

  Padra had never liked heights, but Fir’s turret was different. Its airy simplicity, its neat hearth, and its sense of holiness never failed to quiet him. Having escorted Fir up the stairs, he knelt to light the fire in the grate himself and sent the young squirrel Whittle to bring breakfast from the kitchens. He pulled a stool to the fireside for Fir.

  “Heart bless you, Padra,” said Fir, settling himself down and stretching his paws to the warmth. “I’m not quite in my dotage, but it’s very gratifying to have my fire lit by a captain.”

  “Fir,” said Padra in exasperation, “can you explain to me about the mists? I don’t understand at all. They’re supposed to protect the island, but they just make it impossible for us to go to the help of our own.”

  Fir closed his eyes, pressed his paws together, and rocked gently back and forward on the stool, not even noticing when Whittle returned with the breakfast. Padra was about to ask if he was all right, when he opened his eyes, shook himself, and said, “The Heart is wise and Mistmantle is small. Small and beautiful. The mists were put there to protect us from attack. Our own animals who leave by water cannot return by water. That means that exiles who brought war and misery to our island cannot recruit an army to return and do it all again. But the mists are not there to keep out the valiant and the true. Such as Lugg with his tunnels. Lugg has left twice. Nobody has ever left three times and returned. It may not be possible. But nobody fully understands the mists, let alone the Heart that gave them.”

  “But Husk was able to bring in mercenaries,” Padra pointed out. “The mists let those ships through.”

  “Hm,” said Fir. “That does puzzle me. Why do some ships get here, and most don’t? The Heart knows. And the Heart knows Mistmantle can’t live entirely cut off from the rest of the world, whatever it consists of.”

  “But why Whitewings, of all places?” said Padra. “Since Husk’s time in power, we’ve had more of their ships than we used to.”

  “Hm,” said Fir. “The Heart knows. But what a delightful breakfast, Whittle! That bread does smell delicious.”

  “And I brought fish for Captain Padra,” said Whittle eagerly. He hadn’t been sure how much fish to bring, so he’d made sure there was plenty. He quickly removed a squirrel hair from the butter and hoped they hadn’t seen it.

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, Whittle,” said Padra, noticing that Whittle had brought enough fish for a whole family of otters. “Perhaps I can take some to Lady Arran.”

  “And how is she?” inquired Fir, pouring hot cordials into cups.

  “Cross, and longing for it all to be over,” said Padra with a shrug. “Mother Huggen says it’s twins, but Arran won’t believe that till she sees it. Lovely hot cordial, Whittle.” When he had finished breakfast he wandered down to the Spring Gate and offered fish to Arran, but she turned uneasily in the nest and said she didn’t want it.

  “Go away,” she muttered, so he did. When he had gone, she sent for Mother Huggen.

  Leaving the tower, Gleaner found a door to bang, and banged it loudly, twice, hoping it would wake somebody up. She’d argued herself breathless with those guards and they wouldn’t let her near Lord Treeth. They even said she wouldn’t want to see what Lord Treeth had done to Lady Aspen’s chamber, and she had hotly replied that they didn’t want to see what she’d do to Lord Treeth, either.

  She hurried around the tower, ignoring Mother Huggen and Lugg’s daughter, Moth, who were bustling toward the Spring Gate. As soon as Lord Treeth was allowed out of that chamber, she’d be waiting for him.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  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 tel
l 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.

  On Mistmantle, Padra lay wide awake, folded around Arran as she lay folded around two tiny, curled baby otters. He couldn’t help watching constantly, observing their tightly shut eyes, the soft paws pressed against small round faces, the thin down of their first fur. Now and again one of them would wriggle or rub its face or sneeze, and his heart turned over with love. Sooner or later he would have to sleep, but he couldn’t sleep yet. He couldn’t bear to miss a squirm, or a squeak, or the twitch of a whisker.

  They hadn’t yet named the little girl, but the boy would be Tide. It was a good water name for an otter and had something to do with Urchin. The tides had first brought him to Mistmantle, and maybe they would turn his way again.

  Needle, Fingal, and Sepia herded the excited little choristers to the song cave. Needle was asking about Arran and Padra’s babies, and Fingal s
aid they were boring.

  “Boring?” said Needle.

  “They don’t do anything. Except one of them hiccuped. When they’re bigger I can take them down the waterslide.”

  Sepia and the small squirrels were scampering ahead. There were squeals of delight as they made slides on the frost.

  “Too cold for the waterslide today,” said Sepia. Seeing her cloak, she pounced on it and hugged warmth into it as she waited for Fingal and Needle to catch up.

  “It’s never too cold for a waterslide,” said Fingal. “Come on, squeakers, get inside where you won’t fall over.”

  “We never fall over!” squealed a young squirrel before hitting the ground with a thump. He was trying to explain that he did it on purpose, as Needle and Sepia ushered them into the song cave, and Needle called sharply, “Stop!”

  The little squirrels froze with wide-eyed fear on their faces and their paws pressed to their sides. Sepia stood still with her paws around the shoulders of the nearest ones.

  “What is it?” she whispered urgently.

  “Pawprints!” said Needle.

  Sepia sighed with relief and bristled with annoyance. “Is that all?” she said. “Hedgehogs are always coming here.” She steered her choir around the pawprints as she looked down at them. “There was somebody here the night after we came looking for the Heartstone. I heard something, and there were hedgehog pawprints when I came out. And Sluggen and Crammen were outside.”