‘Please help us, Sleek,’ I cried. ‘You must know what sort of flower we are looking for. Ask him, Siltboy.’
We were on Shadow’s back in the open plains, and there were as many flowers here as anywhere else in the Siltman’s country.
Siltboy did as I’d requested but the sleek ignored him, and when he asked a second time the sleek glowered and turned his back.
‘Then who will help?’ I cried. ‘It’s hopeless!’
‘Yeak, yeak!’
The sleek flinched at the sight of Siltboy’s eagle hovering above us; then he cowered, ran up my trouser leg and hid under my dress.
‘Stop it, Sleek. You’re meant to be helping.’
‘Best he hide,’ Siltboy said. ‘Battlebird will snatch him.’
The bird circled overhead, riding the air currents.
‘She is wide-seeing,’ Siltboy said. ‘If you give her the look she will find.’
‘How can I give her the look when I have no idea what I’m looking for?’
‘When I speak to creatures, I blank my mind so I can hear,’ said Siltboy. ‘Maybe you try that. Blank your mind and your mind’s eye.’
I closed my eyes and tried to make my mind empty, but no flowers came into it. Instead I saw Eadie. She was splashing through the dark towards me as I hung upside down in the snare. Then I saw her paddling towards her hut. She climbed the rickety ladder. In my mind, I pulled aside the bag that hung over the door, and I looked around her cluttered hut. And then I saw them – the flowers in a jar on the table.
‘Everlasting daisies!’ I cried. ‘Could they be the ones?’
‘Tell them to me,’ said Siltboy.
I tried to describe the flowers I had seen on Eadie’s table – their dried petals, their bright colours, the size and shape of them. Siltboy looked up and translated everything I said. ‘Yeak. Yeak. Yeak.’
The bird circled higher and higher. When she tipped one wing and swooped towards the west, Shadow followed. I had never travelled so fast before – not even in the tunnel with the Siltman and his dogs. In a few seconds I found myself in a field of everlasting daisies. There were hundreds of them – white ones, orange ones, pink ones and red ones. Where to start?
I looked up. The battlebird was a tiny dot in the sky.
‘She is watchbird,’ Siltboy said. ‘Tarry not, Peat.’
The sleek let go of my leg and slid to the ground, where he began pacing up and down, making anxious yipping sounds.
I walked among the everlasting daisies. Their dry petals rustled in the breeze. So many of them looked exactly the same. How would I find the right one? How would I know it was the right one?
The sun was high in the sky. I searched all through the afternoon, and when the sun set I was still searching. One by one, the flowers were closing up for the night.
‘Sleek, can you help? Please can you help?’
He laid back his ears, then he turned and groomed his tail, picking grass seeds out of it. I supposed he thought he had already done enough by bringing the cow charm – and perhaps he had, because as I spoke I noticed the everlasting daisy right in front of me. It was large and reddish in colour, and it was still wide open. The centre was gold and the petals had white tips, like the sleek’s tail.
‘Siltboy, look! This must be the one. I’ve found it!’
I carefully dug up the plant, cupping it in soil, then I tore a piece off the bottom of my dress and wrapped it around the roots. ‘Your plan is brilliant, Siltboy! Now we can take back the deed that was done!’
He didn’t answer. His eyes were closed and his face had gone very white.
‘What is it, Siltboy?’
‘The Siltman calls,’ he said. ‘Sleep-like, his voice . . .’
I grabbed Siltboy’s hand and the sleek leapt onto my shoulder.
‘Don’t listen,’ I cried. ‘Tell Shadow to get us to the river!’
I had to make Siltboy climb onto his dog, pushing and shoving him, but once he was there he did as I asked. He whistled softly and we were moving again.
‘We’ll cross the Silver River and find the tunnel,’ I yelled, hanging on with one hand and holding the flower in the other. ‘We can go back!’
‘I is fraid, Peat,’ Siltboy whimpered. ‘Fraid and afeared. I is fraid of behind and fraid of ahead.’
‘What do you mean?’
He replied with something I couldn’t hear. The wind was howling in my ears.
When Shadow reached the riverbank, Siltboy raised his hand and called out, ‘Halt!’ We stopped so quickly that the sleek went flying from my shoulder into the water and landed with a splash. I could still hear the howling.
‘Let’s go,’ I cried. ‘What are we waiting for? Let’s get away!’
Siltboy turned to me with huge, frightened eyes.
‘Siltman says if you cross the Silver River you die.’
‘It’s true,’ I told him. ‘But first you have a life. Have courage, Siltboy.’
‘All my life for nine hundred years, I live in the land of the Siltman,’ he said. ‘Where to can we go?’
‘To Hub,’ I said. ‘If you want to go anywhere, you must go to Hub first.’
‘But Shadow knows not the way . . .’
Siltboy looked very young just then. He was trembling, and I thought he might burst into tears.
‘Siltboy, you are the son of a warrior giant, you are the proud owner of a noble hound, and you are my true friend – the friend of my life,’ I cried. ‘Brave yourself!’
At that moment there was a cry far above us.
‘Watchbird gives warning,’ Siltboy whispered.
The howling grew louder.
‘The Siltman’s dogs!’ I yelled.
Siltboy seemed to be frozen to the spot. Suddenly the sleek leapt from the water, impatient with the delay. He hissed at Shadow and nipped Siltboy’s ankle before scrambling up onto my neck and biting me hard on the earlobe.
‘Make Shadow go!’ I shouted.
Siltboy gave an uncertain whistle and Shadow took off over the water. He didn’t touch it, he skimmed just above the surface, and when I closed my eyes I saw the sleek sitting between Shadow’s ears, talking to him in clicking sounds. The lights in the ghost hound’s head swirled for a moment like confused thoughts, then they settled into a pattern that looked a bit like the map Siltboy had drawn in the sand at the river mouth.
‘Look, Siltboy,’ I cried. ‘The sleek knows the way!’
The shore disappeared behind us as we glided out over the water, into darkness. When the moon came up I saw mountains looming in the distance and I thought the sleek would lead us towards them, but he continued to steer Shadow straight out over the river. I couldn’t see the other side.
‘No, Sleek. You’re going the wrong way. You must find the tunnel,’ I cried. ‘Tell him, Siltboy.’
Siltboy had stopped shaking. He stared straight ahead and the wind blew through his hair.
‘I dare not,’ he said. ‘Sleek comes by his own way. He is fierce and trusty guide.’
I clutched Marlie’s cow charm and hoped he was right.
‘How far?’ Siltboy asked.
‘I don’t know. It didn’t seem far when I came with the Siltman, but the tide was out then.’
‘This is tide of time,’ Siltboy said. ‘Long way and long journey.’
The moon moved over the sky as we travelled across the Silver River. From time to time I thought I could still hear howling. I hoped it was just the wind. The water was choppy beneath us, and as the night wore on the wind picked up and small waves broke against us, splashing my feet. I pulled up my legs.
‘Make Shadow ride higher, Siltboy,’ I said. ‘I’m getting wet.’
Siltboy whistled, but Shadow kept gliding just above the waves, moving steadily forward.
As we journeyed on he sank lower, until half of him was in the water. Now my legs were really wet. Soon I was shivering with the cold.
‘He’s tiring, Siltboy,’ I cried.
‘No tire,’ Siltboy replied. ‘Shadow likes to swim.’
I closed my eyes and saw the outline of Shadow’s paws paddling through the water. When I looked behind, his tail glowed and streamed behind him like a wake.
‘He’s trailing stars,’ I said.
‘And making bigger, just for us!’ Siltboy let go of Shadow’s collar. He pulled up his feet and sat cross-legged, and I found I could do the same. ‘See how he grows!’
Our ghost hound did seem to be getting larger. Somehow, he was letting himself spread as he sank into the water. Soon he was wide enough for us to sit upon side by side. He rose and fell with the swell, and we rose up and down with him.
‘Shadow is rocking, Peat,’ Siltboy said. ‘He rocks like a ship on the ocean. He is making me think of sea-voyage songs.’ Siltboy began whistling to himself. Suddenly he burst into song. His voice was high and clear.
Oh wave beat. Oh wing beat
Oh beat of the oars
Hail the hero . . .
He hummed a bit of the tune then fell silent. He looked as though he was trying to remember the words.
‘Is it an old song, Siltboy?’ I asked. ‘Did your mother sing it to you?’
‘Siltboy make it up,’ he replied, then he sang some more.
We’re riding the saltways
To seek out our fortune
In far-flung lands
Beyond the shore.
Siltboy hummed to himself some more. After a while he slumped against me and went to sleep. I held up the flower. Against the night sky it looked like a dark star.
‘Good night, everlasting daisy,’ I said, putting it into Siltboy’s bag for safety. I didn’t want to fall asleep and drop it into the water.
The wind off the river was cold but Shadow felt a little bit warm, as if the lights inside him were giving off heat. When I lay down next to Siltboy, the warmth seeped through my damp clothes and into my skin. I sighed and turned facedown, putting my arms around Shadow’s sides. I could feel his ribs, like the ribs of a boat, and when I turned my head I thought I heard a heartbeat, very faint at first but getting stronger.
How could that be? I wondered. Shadow doesn’t have a heart – he lost it when Scabbard speared him through the chest.
As I dropped off to sleep I decided it must have been my own heart I was hearing, beating in time to the rhythm of Siltboy’s song.