The next day is more walking, more snow. When they call a rest I thump straight onto the cold ground with a sigh. The thaw is further off up here, the snow content. I’ve never seen these mountains so close, but many of them I know, for they’ve looked over me all my life. Dragon Mountain looms behind us, and beyond that lies my home. I close my eyes and listen to the snow.
‘Dirt-Girl!’
I jerk awake. How long have they been calling me? Long enough that Praseep’s hauled himself over to where I am, and he doesn’t look happy.
‘We need to leave now.’
‘What’s happened? Your Highness.’ I barely remember the honorific.
‘Who said anything has happened?’
‘Your face.’
He looks away, lips twitching. I’d think he was trying to hide a smile, except he’s Prince of the Ice-People, and I don’t think he smiles at Dirt like me. ‘We cannot go the normal route to the city, there is an avalanche risk that way. We must take a longer route through a crevasse field.’
I nod. With a sigh I pull myself to a sitting position. A hand materialises in front of me. Praseep’s hand. Reaching out. To help me up. His strange turquoise necklace dangling as he leans forward. I school my expression and take his hand, and he hauls me to my feet.
‘Thank you,’ I say. I cover my fluster by looking around at the mountains like they’re the most fascinating thing ever.
When I look back he has walked away, returning to the front of the group.
Our route takes us up a side valley filled by the frozen roils of a glacier. The light is pearling when we reach the very end of the valley and the crevasse field that climbs to the pass above. The clouds already wisp around us.
Crevasses and me haven’t ever had much to do with each other. I look ahead doubtfully. They’re massive. Giant bricks of ice separated by chasms of smooth blue. And the noise. For once, it’s not just a song inside my head. I hear the groaning and creaking with my ears.
Nothing about this place feels secure. As if to agree with me, far up the slope one of the ice towers collapses and the left of the valley is enveloped in a cloud of displaced snow. Aji and Praseep are up the front, frowning, obviously discussing which route to take up the ever-changing maze of ice.
I rub my hands together to keep the feeling in my cold fingers. Finally, Aji moves back towards the middle of the group and Praseep begins to pick a path up the slope. When it is finally our turn to go the gotals look at me like I’ve lost my mind. But they follow me into this strange new world of ice.
Halfway up, I’m getting the hang of it. I just have to ignore my eyes and ears – which are screaming at me to get out of this place – and trust what my head feels. Everyone else, except Grumpy and the gotals, is ahead of me in a loose line balanced on the top of one of the massive ice blocks. Either side of us the ice slopes down into crevasses so deep I can’t even feel the bottom with my searching mind.
Suddenly I feel a change in the ice, a tension that skitters over the whole block we’re on. Our long line of people and gotals is too much for it.
Behind me, the gotals stop, begin to mill about uneasily. They feel what I feel. The danger isn’t near the front, where Praseep leads. It isn’t at the back, where I’ve now halted, it’s near the middle. Where Danam walks behind the Princess.
My blood stills with my feet. I gasp and Aji turns to me. Her hawk-features tighten.
‘Halt!’ she calls, so loud I jump. She swings back around to face those ahead, and I realise she wasn’t talking to me. Praseep turns, and his face transforms into horror. There is an audible crack and the ice judders, settling further down. Praseep’s eyes are white and his hand grips his necklace so hard his knuckles are white too, and I feel something like his presence entering the ice between us. Steadying it.
‘Princess,’ calls Aji, ‘please, come back to me, slowly.’
Princess Rishala nods, turns, begins to glide back towards us. The guard behind her stays as still as a mouse under the gaze of an eagle, even though she must hear Praseep call Vilpur forward. Even though she must realise she’s near the heart of the danger.
Danam’s looking at me, wild-eyed. ‘What do I do?’ he says.
Aji flashes a sharp look at me, then at Danam. She gestures him to retrace his steps. ‘Slowly now, come back here where it’s safer, before the Princess nears where you are.’
I nod in agreement. The weight of two bodies together would be more than the ice could handle now it’s broken, even with Praseep doing whatever magic he’s doing. Danam creeps back towards us, skin tight around his eyes. Princess Rishala comes behind him, steadily closer. Vilpur is safely with Praseep now, but the guard in the middle is obviously torn, not sure whether to follow her Princess or move toward Praseep. She decides on the first option.
It is the wrong decision, but I don’t have time to say the words. The ice cracks again, the sound echoing up and down each crevasse on either side of us. The section we’re on slumps again, and I struggle to stay upright. The block has split and shattered between the Princess and her guard. Princess Rishala staggers as the ice she’s on wobbles. She tears at her necklace, putting it safely in her pocket like that’s the most important thing right now, and closes her eyes. The energy of Praseep is all around her, so strong now it even feels different. His face is tight as he keeps his pure white eyes on her. The guard stands as if frozen, as if she realises her mistake, knows one wrong step could see three people consumed by the yawning chasms.
Danam, however, has always been a hero.
It’s an aspect I normally like about him. But not here. He turns to help Princess Rishala, his boot rising from the ice. I hear myself shout out, ‘No!’. But it’s too late.
He’s taken a step.
Just one step back to where Princess Rishala stands.
And the shard of ice they’re standing on begins to slope to one side, dangerously tipping Danam and Princess Rishala towards a crevasse. The grinding of ice on ice fills my ears. Praseep drops to his knees, face a mask of concentration, and the tipping slows. On the ice, Danam slips, regains his footing, but he’s another step closer to the Princess. She’s trying to balance, legs well apart, arms out, like the effort to simply stand is taking everything out of her.
Without thinking I reach out my mind to mimic whatever Praseep’s doing.
Otherwise the Princess will slip down into the crevasse, and probably Danam with her, and that will be the last of the future Queen of the Ice-People.
I hold that ice with everything I can muster, copying what I feel Praseep doing. And Danam runs the few paces between him and her, grabs her and throws her towards us like a gotal after the summer clip. Aji kneels, arms extended, grabs Princess Rishala, and for a moment she is safe.
Safe, but slipping.
The ice she’s on lurches violently. There is no time to fear what has become of Danam. I rush forward, and loop my arms around Aji. I feel Grumpy’s arms wrap around me from behind. Together we haul Princess Rishala off the shattered ice floe until we’re all a gasping ball of wool on the snow.
‘Danam!’ I call, when I have the breath to do so.
‘I’m okay,’ he calls back. I can feel him. He’s alive! He and Princess Rishala’s guard are balanced on a bridge of crushed ice well below us now. Praseep has lowered a rope and together he and Vilpur haul the two up to safety.
I sink back into the snow with a sigh.
The Princess catches my eye and smiles. ‘Thank you. Your nephew was very brave.’
My nephew was stupid, but I guess this isn’t the moment to mention that. And she looks like she wouldn’t listen anyway. Aji and Praseep are talking across the new crevasse using vigorous hand movements and gestures.
Finally Aji bows to Princess Rishala. ‘Your Highness, we must find a different route to the pass, and meet with the Prince’s party there.’
‘So be it, Aji. I trust you to Protect us.’ She pulls her monster of a ruby necklace out and ties it around her neck again.
Aji looks at me, hawk-eyes piercing, then nods to the Princess and sets off. It’s a much more difficult route. My hands are cold and bloodied, my nerves destroyed, and the others well gone by the time we emerge below the pass. I hope I never have to climb a crevasse field ever again.
Add to that, I’m worried.
Danam never sensed the danger back there. Not like I did. This last year or so, I’ve been trying to convince myself I simply do what anyone else in the village can do – find a safe path. I convinced myself Danam felt the same things I felt when we walked the snows and sat under the gaze of the high mountains.
Now I know I was wrong.
Princess Rishala was so certain it was Danam they were looking for, she never looked twice at me. But what if Danam isn’t the one they want?
What if it’s me?
I’m so absorbed in this thought and in feeling the snow around us, I’m taken by surprise when we top the pass. A flight of steps, carved into the near-vertical rock of the other side, disappears into cloud below. And there, the others wait.
There’s no time to catch our breath. The sun has dropped below the clouds and the world is taking on a grainy grey patina. Princess Rishala and Praseep embrace, I hear him apologising for not picking up the danger, and she shushes him then embraces Danam. Thanks him for saving her. His face lights up.
And I’ve got the feeling this is all built on icicles that will crack in the warmth of the palace. I need to talk to Danam.
We set off immediately, down the slippery steps. Aji stations herself at the rear, and my nerves twang like the strings of Vilpur’s harp. The gotals clatter down ahead of me, leaving a break between us and the rest of the group. My mind burns with all the things I’m terrified Aji might ask me. The chill of the clouds surrounds us, and I can’t see anything but a few steps below me.
I can feel Aji behind me – why can I now when I felt nothing before? I concentrate, and I can feel Praseep’s soul shining far below us, taste his intensity as he tests each step. They’re different, these two. Different from the other Ice-People. The necklaces they wear are not a fashion, but a marker of some sort. Of being a Protector.
Thing is, I’ve got the feeling I’m different too.
Aji takes a breath. Here it comes. ‘What were you thinking about just before the ice broke?’
By the Dragon, I don’t know how to face this. How to say something that won’t risk myself or Danam.
‘The gotals were distressed,’ I murmur.
‘Right.’ She doesn’t sound convinced. ‘I felt you – a Protector will begin to feel anyone they’ve been physically or mentally close to – and you were afraid. It’s what alerted me to the danger. I hadn’t felt a thing from the ice before then.’
I swallow. ‘The gotals are very good at picking danger …’
‘Extremely good, I would think,’ she says slowly, enunciating each syllable clearly like it has another meaning entirely. ‘Gotals that good at reading the path could be of great use.’
And then I get saved from further questions by slipping.
I feel the drop below, the useless slide of my boots. Too fast, I can’t correct my balance.
I’m going to fall.
A Very Long Way.
Except an iron arm latches to my wrist. Aji hauls me back against her. The two of us stand there, my own heart hammering in my ears at the same time as Aji’s hammers in my brain.
My head spins. ‘Thank you,’ I manage to say.
‘You’re welcome.’ She releases me, and I’m glad of the cloaking cloud hiding the unwelcome tears that threaten to spill. So close.
I try to smile, try to joke at the drop and the death that hovers beneath the white cloud. ‘I wouldn’t want to fall here.’
She pauses. ‘You wouldn’t hurt yourself, we’re almost at the bottom.’
I jerk my head up to stare at her. Everything I feel tells me she’s wrong, the base of these steps is far below us. She grins.
‘I knew it,’ she whispers. ‘You have the gift.’
I swear softly. One of the bad words the carters use, one that Father would slap me if he heard me say. I’ve given myself away. ‘I have nothing,’ I try.
But Aji’s grin widens. ‘Of course. It’s only the gotals.’
She raises an eyebrow at me, and I’m forced to look away.
She knows.
‘But if I were you,’ she whispers, ‘I’d ask why you think it’s best to lie. Your nephew had no sense for the ice back there. I saw that. You saw that. You know nothing of the Dragon Tests he must face to become a Cloud, even I know only a bit,’ she fingers her moonstone necklace, ‘but understand this: if the Princess has picked the wrong person, you do her and your nephew no favours by hiding it.’
‘The Princess knew who she wanted from the start.’
‘Hmmm, that she did. The Seers foretold that if we walked to the edge of the Dirt, we’d uncover her Cloud Dragon. We walked there and we saw your group. We watched you come down the slope. One adult, two children. One child in pants who read the slopes expertly, and a child in skirts following, who knew nothing. The next day we found a child in pants and a child in skirts, so the choice seemed simple.’ Aji looks right at me, her eyebrow raised in silent query.
My face must give me away, because she nods. In my mind, I remember laughing at Danam, at the way he wore his bed rug around his waist, channelling Old Aunty vibes.
All along, was it me Princess Rishala was searching for?
Aji puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘We need to keep going, this night runs fast to catch us. Think about what I’ve said as we walk. And remember your mouth can lie, but your eyes will give you away every time they change.’
I shiver. My eyes? Do they turn white with the magic, like Aji’s do? What sort of mess have we got ourselves into? I absolutely need to talk to Danam.
I turn without a word and begin to descend as fast as I dare until I hear again the bleating of gotals and the murmur of voices. The air around me clears and blazes as we pop out below the cloud layer. The last of the sun’s rays are bathing the plateau below us with brilliant light, illuminating a city of white that clothes a cone-shaped hill not far ahead. And at the top of the hill, sunset sparkles off the fluted golden roofs of a palace. And the palace walls shimmer green.
‘The SkyCity,’ Aji murmurs. ‘Quickly now, we must hasten.’
I nod, but my head is churning. Mera was right. The SkyCity is everything she ever described to me. The place I’ve always dreamed of.
So why am I so frightened?