Flint fell to his knees, pounding his knuckles against the ice, and beside him Pebble raked his claws over the surface again and again. But the ice didn’t shift. It remained locked over Blu like a depthless seal and all around her the thunderghosts twirled. They were dancing now, their voices delighted cackles, as Blu’s eyes clouded with terror.
‘No,’ gasped Flint. ‘Not this! Not this!’
He threw back his head as a wail full of love and loss and anger rose in his throat, but in the nick of time Eska clapped a hand over his mouth and looked into his eyes.
‘Don’t cry out,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t let the thunderghosts take you, too. Think, Flint. Think. What do you have in your rucksack that could help Blu?’
Hardly hearing, Flint laid his palms on to the ice over his sister’s hammering fists. He’d put Blu in danger because he had wanted to prove to his brother that he could set things right and find their ma. The shame and longing beat inside him and tears streamed down his cheeks. ‘I can’t lose her, too,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t.’
Balapan landed by his side and began pecking at Flint’s rucksack, desperately trying to wrench it open.
‘You won’t lose her because you’re a thinker,’ Eska urged Flint. ‘A problem solver. Now, think your way out of this.’
Flint shook his head. ‘Most of my inventions don’t even work,’ he whispered. ‘Tomkin’s right – he’s always been right – I can’t control magic. I can’t even keep my little sister safe. I’m useless.’
Eska thrust the rucksack into Flint’s lap. ‘Tomkin doesn’t know what you can do. He didn’t see how the Camouflage Cape helped us escape from Winterfang.’
Blu slammed her fists against the ice, and the thunderghosts let out a rumbling laugh.
‘Help your sister,’ Eska murmured. ‘I know you can.’
And so, with shaking hands, Flint tipped the objects from his rucksack. The Camouflage Cape spilled over his lap, but he brushed it aside. His Anything Knife clattered against the ice, but he ignored that, too, and it was only when he held up a small glass bottle filled with golden liquid that he stopped searching.
‘Maybe this,’ he whispered. ‘Bottled sunlight mixed with firefly glow. It’s hotter than fire, if mixed right.’
Still trembling, he poured it over the ice above Blu. At first the pool of golden liquid simply lay on the ice and Flint’s tears rolled faster, then the invention began to bubble and hiss and a second later it burned through the ice to reveal a thrash of limbs below.
‘Blu!’ Flint gasped.
There was a clamour of thunder and more scrabbling limbs, then Flint and Eska hauled Blu out of the lake and the black ice folded over the hole, sealing the thunderghosts back where they belonged.
Flint held Blu close. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he sobbed. ‘I’m so sorry. I never should’ve let you leave Deeproots.’
Blu clung to her brother’s waist, gasping the air back in. ‘I love you, Flint,’ she panted. ‘I love you more. I stay with you.’
Flint squeezed her tight, right close to his heart, then after a while he wiped the tears from his face and looked up at Eska.
‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I didn’t expect all that to come out.’ He blushed and looked away. ‘Tomkin says crying is a sign of weakness.’
Eska raised an eyebrow. ‘Tomkin also says you’re not an inventor – and look at what you did just then. You rescued your sister from thunderghosts, despite how terrified you were!’ She paused. ‘So, really, tears are just a warm-up for courage.’
Flint looked down, trying to ignore the thunderghosts moaning beneath the ice. ‘I’m not sure I’m going to make a very good warrior though. Too much—’ he looked at Blu, searching for the right word, ‘—gentleness.’
‘I don’t think you have to fight with weapons to be a warrior,’ Eska whispered. ‘You could fight with love and tears and inventions instead. That would probably be just as good.’ She thought of the way Balapan was – fierce and tough and definitely wild – but there was a gentleness there, too, even if it wasn’t easy to spot at first.
Eska stood up. ‘I think gentleness is a mighty word because you have to be strong of heart to be kind.’
And Flint smiled then because, although Eska’s voice didn’t sound like much, she often found the words that mattered.
The group hurried over the Devil’s Dancefloor, only too glad to leave the thunderghosts behind, but, as they stepped out on to the snowy path through the mountains ahead, Flint cast a worried look at his sister. She was shivering badly and the light was fading fast.
‘We have to find shelter and a place to rest for the night,’ Flint said. ‘Blu needs dry clothes, a fire and warm food.’ He scoured the banks of snow either side of him. ‘The grizzlies hibernate in the Never Cliffs so if we find a bear cave we can bed down there.’
‘With the bears?’ Eska shifted. ‘Or will they have finished hibernating?’
Flint rolled his eyes. ‘It’ll just be us. Now, come on, before we lose the light completely.’
It took them an hour to find a bear cave in the end and it was Eska who spotted the opening between a cluster of trees on the mountainside. They helped Blu inside the rocky den and, while Pebble snuggled close to her, Flint lost no time in gathering kindling for a fire and branches for bedding and Eska prepared the remaining ptarmigan. Before long, they had a fire flickering and the colour returned to Blu’s cheeks, and though the Ice Queen’s anthem rolled out again that night, even louder than before, and Eska’s voice was ebbing away, Flint refused to be afraid. Because their strange little tribe was together still – and they had a plan – and through the short night he knew that Balapan would keep guard.
They left the cave early the next day, with the notes of the Ice Queen’s anthem ringing in their ears, and journeyed on through the Never Cliffs under a sunless sky: hiking slopes so steep they bent into a crawl, traversing ridges so narrow they hardly dared breathe and skiing through valleys so vast and white it was almost impossible to tell which way was up or down against the clouds.
Flint paused, panting, before the summit of yet another mountain. ‘I can see how the Ice Queen never found the Feather Tribe . . .’
Eska and Blu pulled up beside him.
‘We’ll find them,’ Eska said. Then she nodded to Balapan wheeling above them. ‘Remember the Ice Queen didn’t have the wild on her side.’
Blu pointed to the snowy overhang a few steps further up the mountain. It was lined with enormous icicles that hung down in turquoise fangs.
‘Don’t like them. Horrid,’ Blu said, shrinking inside her furs.
Flint looked at the row of ice daggers and shuddered. Something about them did feel oddly sinister. ‘Let’s keep going until we get over the top of this mountain, then we’ll strap on our skis, find a safe spot for food and—’
His words were cut short as one of the icicles dropped into the snow at his feet. It stuck in the snow like a lance.
Flint shook himself. ‘Skis on now. Let’s get some speed around the side of this mountain.’
Blu frowned. ‘You said top of hill for skis.’
Flint eyed the fringe of icicles. ‘Not any more. Something doesn’t feel quite right about this slope.’
Another shard of ice fell from the overhang and, from Flint’s hood, Pebble whimpered. And then more and more followed until the entire row of icicles was raining down like a flurry of spears. A barrier of criss-crossed ice lay before them and, up in the sky, Balapan screeched.
Flint’s flesh crawled. This was a mountain bidden to obey the Ice Queen and they were right in the midst of it.
Yanking Blu’s boots into their bindings, Flint tried to ignore the strange clicking, clattering sound coming from below the overhang. But when Eska looked up and gasped, he couldn’t ignore it any more and he watched, pulse thrashing, as the shards of ice gathered themselves up into a figure the size of a very tall tree. Its body glittered, its fingers were long, sharp slices of ice and all around its gaunt head barbs of frosted hair jutted. But it was the mouth that made Flint tremble: a dark cave strung with glinting icicles. The figure blew out – a deep, heaving breath as if waking from a long slumber – and his ice teeth rattled.
‘He’s – he’s real!’ Flint stammered.
Eska recoiled. ‘Who is?’
Flint tightened his hood round Pebble, grabbed Blu’s hands and pushed with his poles. ‘Needlespin!’ he yelled. ‘The ghoul that haunts the Never Cliffs!’
