The Last of the Sky Pirates (25 page)

And as he stared, unblinking, it was as though he too were flying beside it, darting down to the surface of the water and soaring back up again. His stomach turned somersaults. His head spun. He opened his mouth, and laughed and laughed and laughed …

The following morning, after a deep dreamless sleep, Rook skipped breakfast and hurried to the timber yards before the others had even emerged from their sleeping cabins. He hugged the great slab of wood.

‘Perfect,’ he whispered, and his body tingled with the feelings of the previous evening.

With mallet and chisel, Rook began to shape the wood. Although it was still dark, he worked swiftly and con fidently, and without a break. And each time when, for a moment, he was unsure what to do next, he would close his eyes and stroke the wood gently, for Oakley
Gruffbark was right. The wood
was
telling him what to do.

The rough form of the skycraft began to take shape: the narrow seat, the fixed keel and, at the front, the raised figurehead. Although lacking any fine detail, the angular head of the creature was already clearly recognizable. He was working on the curved neck when he heard footsteps approaching. The first woodtrolls must be arriving from the surrounding villages.

Rook felt a hand on his shoulder. ‘Early start, young’un?’ said Oakley, his rubbery face creasing with amusement. ‘That’s what I like to see. Now, what do we have here?’ He raised his lantern and held it up to the wood. For the first time, Rook saw the carved prow clearly. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

‘I think I’ve found it,’ he said.

‘I think you have,’ said Oakley. ‘Do you know what it is?’

Rook shook his head.

‘Why, young’un, it’s a stormhornet,’ Oakley told him. ‘And you don’t see many of them, I can tell you.’

Rook’s heart fluttered. He lay his hands on the roughly hewn head of the creature.
‘Stormhornet
,’ he whispered.

The Gardens of Light

Click click click click
…

The rhythmical sound of claw on stone came closer. Rook looked up from the bubbling pot in front of him, to see their tutor – an ancient spindlebug, already in his third century – tottering towards them. He was picking his way along one of the narrow, raised walkways which formed a winding network throughout the glowing underground cavern. A laden tray was gripped tightly in his claws.

Weeks after he had first set foot inside them, Rook still couldn’t get over the Gardens of Light. Hidden deep below the huge Ironwood Glade, the vast illuminated cavern was one of the most spectacular wonders in all
the Free Glades. It was here that the great glassy spindle-bugs grew the astonishing glowing fungus, the light from which shimmered on the cavern walls high above their heads and lent everything an eerie, yet ethereal beauty Rook could have spent hours just gazing at the hypnotic shifting lights – if it wasn’t for the varnishing. ‘Nice glass of tea, Master Rook?’ The ancient spindle-bug’s voice, as thin and reedy as his long glass legs, snapped Rook out of his daydream. Tweezel towered above him.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Rook, taking the glass of thin, amber liquid.

The spindlebug passed the tray to Magda, Stob and finally Xanth, who accepted the last glass with the faintest trace of a smile playing on his thin lips. Xanth really seemed to like Tweezel, Rook noticed. Although the young apprentice was still quiet and reserved, the spindlebug seemed somehow able to get him to relax. Rook never could work out how.

Perhaps it was the old creature’s quaint formality; the way he insisted they stop and drink his strange scented tea, bowing to each other after each sip, but saying nothing – not a single word – until the glass was empty. Or perhaps it was the long conversations the two of
them had together about long-ago times, as the apprentices stirred the little pots of varnish over the small brass burners, adding a pinch of oak pepper here and a dash of wormdust there.

Rook would listen in as Tweezel told Xanth about places with strange names, like the Palace of Shadows and the Viaduct Steps, and tell stories of a young girl called Maris, whom the old creature had loved like a daughter. They spoke quietly, politely, never raising their voices. Rook couldn’t always make out the details, and when he tried to join in, Xanth would smile and Tweezel would say, in that thin voice of his, ‘Time for a nice glass of tea, I think, my dear scholars.’

They finished their glasses and bowed. The spindle-bug inspected their varnish pots.

‘Not bad, Master Rook, but be careful not to overheat your varnish. It does so thin it, I find – and with quite tiresome results.’

Rook nodded. It was strange to think, looking at the clear, bubbling mixture in front of him, that without it there would be no sky-flight. The sumpwood of the sky-craft, once coated with the meticulously prepared and applied varnish, gained the enhanced buoyancy that made wood-flight possible. Some said that it was Tweezel himself who had invented the varnish, but whether this was true or not, all accepted that the spindlebug was the greatest authority on varnish and its preparation in all the Deepwoods.

‘What shall we do with you, Mistress Magda? We can’t have lumps, now, can we?’

Magda sighed. Varnish was proving far trickier than she’d ever expected.

‘And as for you, Master Stob!’ Tweezel tutted, peering into the apprentice’s blackened, sticky varnish pot. ‘I think you’d better start again. To the milking field with you!’

Stob groaned, and with a dark look at Rook and Xanth he picked up a tin pail and a pair of heavy gloves, and stomped off towards a field of glowing fungus, several walkways below.

‘Now, Xanth, my dear young scholar.’ The spindle-bug’s antennae quivered as he peered down at the glistening brass pot. ‘I do believe you’re done! Quite remarkable! I have never seen a more perfect varnish, and at only the fiftieth attempt! You, Master Xanth, will be the first to varnish your skycraft. Congratulations! You’ve made an old spindlebug very happy!’

Xanth smiled and looked down modestly. Rook was pleased for his classmate – though he couldn’t help also feeling a little jealous. He was still months away from making a perfect varnish for
his
skycraft.

Just then there was a high-pitched scream, followed by a string of loud curses.

‘Not again!’ said Tweezel, trilling with irritation. ‘Follow me, everyone.’

Rook, Magda and Xanth clicked the lids over their burners and followed the spindlebug off the laboratory ledge and down the stone walkway towards the fungus fields. As they rounded a corner, they saw him.

Covered with glue and upside down, Stob was stuck halfway up the cavern wall. Ten feet below him, snuffling amongst the glowing toadstools, a huge slime-mole swayed from side to side, its translucent body bulging and sloshing with mole-glue. The sight of the glistening creatures’ jelly-like bodies always made Rook’s stomach lurch queasily – and milking them was one of his least favourite tasks. But without mole-glue there would be no varnish, and without varnish there would be no wood-flight, and without wood-flight …

‘Master Stob!’ said Tweezel, his reedy voice sharp with vexation. ‘Don’t tell me. You did it again, didn’t you? You milked it …’

‘Yes,’ said Stob weakly. ‘From the wrong end.’

The Slaughterers Camp

‘Behave yourselves, you stupid things!’ came Magda’s angry voice. ‘Oh, no! Not again!’

Rook turned to see his friend hopelessly entangled in the gossamer light spider-silk sails. ‘You’ve got to watch out for the crosswind, Magda,’ he called over his shoulder, as he concentrated on controlling his own sails, which were billowing up into the warm air like two large, unruly kites.

He tugged on the silk cord in his right hand and the loft-sail gently folded in on itself. Then, having waited a split second, he swung his left arm round in a wide arc, playing out cord to the nether-sail. It, too, folded gracefully in on itself, and fell silently to the ground.

‘How do you
do
that?’ said Magda. She looked at the two neatly folded sails beside Rook, then at the tangled mess of cord and spider-silk wrapped round her own arms and trailing in the dust, and sighed deeply.

‘You look like a bedraggled snowbird,’ laughed Stob. He was sitting at a table eating tilder steaks with two flame-red slaughterers, who laughed good-naturedly with him.

In front of them the huge fire crackled in the vast iron brazier, throwing heat high into the clearing and warming the long family hammocks slung from the trees above.

Rook loved the slaughterers camp almost as much as the Gardens of Light. Especially at this time of day, when the evening shadows grew long, the camp fires were
replenished and, one by one, the slaughterer families woke up and poked their flame-red heads from their hammocks to greet the new night. Soon, the communal breakfast would begin. Rook’s stomach gurgled in anticipation of tilder steaks and honey-coated hammelhorn hams. But first, he must try to disentangle his poor friend.

He turned back to Magda, crouched down, and began gently tugging at the knotted ropes.

‘Careful, now. Careful,’ came a voice from behind him. It was Brisket, the slaughterer who had been assigned to teach the four apprentices all about sail-setting and ropecraft. ‘Don’t want to weaken the fibres now, do we?’ he said. ‘Let me have a look.’