Child of the Cloud Read online

  Was there even a circus troupe to return to …? he wondered.

  Ruby looked into his confused eyes.

  ‘Whisker,’ she asked, pensively, ‘do you ever wish you could just fall asleep and wake up to find everything had returned to the way it was before the cyclone?’

  Whisker stared back at her, slowly grasping the significance of what she had asked. It was a loaded question, and he considered his words carefully before responding.

  ‘Honestly, no,’ he said simply. ‘Returning to the past would mean saying goodbye to the last two months of my life.’

  ‘You mean all the pain, anguish and uncertainty you’ve suffered?’ Ruby asked, delving deeper.

  ‘No,’ Whisker said, speaking from the heart. ‘I mean, all the wonderful things that have happened – like …’ he faltered. ‘Like meeting you.’

  The corner of Ruby’s lips curved into a rare smile.

  ‘Me?’ she said, pretending to sound surprised. ‘The girl who threatened to rip off your head and stuff your insides with squashed sea slugs?’

  ‘Yes,’ Whisker admitted. ‘You, Horace, Chatterbeak, Rat Bait and everyone else I call my friends … but especially you.’

  Ruby blushed. ‘That’s either the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me – or quite possibly the maddest.’

  ‘I’ll take credit for either,’ Whisker said bashfully.

  ‘And I’ll accept both,’ she laughed.

  They both smiled. There was no need for words. Side by side they sat next to the fire with only the sound of Horace’s snoring and the crackle of the flames to break the silence.

  ‘In all seriousness, there is no going back,’ Whisker said finally. ‘There never was. From the moment I woke up on the Apple Pie, my life was never going to be the same.’

  ‘All of our lives changed that day,’ Ruby said.

  Whisker nodded. ‘Call me selfish, but I want it all – the past and the present. If I had one wish it would be that one day both worlds will collide.’

  ‘I’d call that the future,’ Ruby said.

  ‘Yes,’ Whisker said. ‘Our future.’

  Ruby put her head against his shoulder.

  ‘The future starts tomorrow,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I know,’ he said with an anxious sigh. ‘That’s why I can’t sleep.’

  Voices in the Dark

  Arms outstretched, Whisker felt himself falling through the darkness, spinning uncontrollably towards a rocky ledge. Grey cliffs of granite rushed by in a blur. Stars swirled before his eyes. He glimpsed the full moon rising over the dark horizon, flooding the mountainside with its icy-white light.

  Birds flew everywhere – squawking, shrieking and clawing at him with their talons. They surrounded him like a whirlpool, their feathered bodies shrouding the mountain and stars. He struggled to escape the swirling prison but he was sucked downwards, gathering speed with every metre he plunged.

  The wings of the birds transformed into a tornado of clouds, black and terrifying. Lightning flashed. Thunder rumbled. Suddenly he was back in the blizzard and his fragile body was being pummelled by graupel and snow.

  With the storm raging around him, he continued to fall.

  Ahead of him, illuminated by a circle of moonlight, the tiny figure of his sister appeared in the centre of the ledge, her arms and legs bound.

  He could save her, he knew it, but he was moving too fast. In desperation, he stretched out his Ghost Wings, hoping and praying they would slow his descent.

  To his horror, he saw the skeletal remains of his precious flying machine flapping uselessly by his side, the once-taut fabric torn to shreds by the birds and the wind.

  There was nothing he could do.

  The ledge was upon him.

  He saw the look of horror in his sister’s eyes the second before he crashed. And in that harrowing moment, he knew he had failed …

  Whisker sat bolt upright, gasping for breath. His head swam with the images of cloud-covered cliffs and swooping birds and, for a moment, he thought he was still trapped in his terrible nightmare. Opening his eyes, he saw the stone walls of the cavern rushing towards him. Powerless to act, he stared in terror, waiting for the moment of impact.

  Nothing happened.

  Slowly, the movement of the walls subsided and he began to realise where he was. His friends were sleeping soundly beside him, their peaceful faces illuminated by the glowing coals of the fire. Chatterbeak sat perched on his pile of firewood. The Ghost Wings lay where Whisker had left them, perfectly intact.

  A pale blue light spread across the snow-covered stairs to the entrance of the cavern and Whisker realised that dawn was on its way. There was no sign of the howling wind from the night before, but the freezing mountain air carried a new sound – a distant, pitiful cry. Whisker’s ears twitched, trying to locate the source of the sound and, for a moment, he heard nothing but silence.

  It must be in your head, he told himself, remembering how real the nightmare had seemed.

  Then the sound came again, louder and more defined, and Whisker was certain he wasn’t imagining things. Curious, he rose to his feet, slipped on his boots and tiptoed quietly towards the entrance stairs. The sound appeared to be coming from the boulders outside – a voice, weak and desperate.

  A cry for help, Whisker thought, almost recognising the words.

  He pulled his thick snow hood over his head and began trudging up the stairs, his hobnailed boots crunching softly on the icy layers of snow beneath his feet. With every step he could hear the sound growing louder.

  As he stepped into the pre-dawn light, his suspicions were confirmed. Two feeble words were being repeated over and over again.

  Lost … help … lost … help …

  It was the voice of a small animal, wandering helplessly through the jumble of boulders and rocks that littered the landscape. But the thing that made Whisker’s fur stand on end was the realisation that he had heard the voice before.

  Many times before, he thought, daring to believe.

  The voice belonged to his sister, Anna – he was certain of it. He stood there motionless, struggling to comprehend how she had made it to the Erratic Blocks, so far from Eagle’s Cliffs. It seemed almost inconceivable that she had escaped from the cage. Yet the evidence told him otherwise. It was as if some unseen power was drawing them together.

  A miracle perhaps?

  He cupped his mittened paws around his mouth and tried to shout out her name, but his throat was dry and horse and all he could manage was a barely audible croak.

  Realising that Anna must be close, he left the shelter of the cavern entrance and began trudging through the powdery snow in the direction of her voice.

  The sky to the east was now a dull purple, providing just enough light for Whisker to see where he was going. The pale shapes of snow-covered boulders rose out of the morning mist like tombstones, blocking his path and forcing him to move away from the voice and then back again in order to draw closer.

  The voice continued to wail. Lost … help … lost … help …

  Whisker scrambled blindly through the snow, desperate to reach his sister. His heavy boots sank into the deep drifts at the base of boulders. His warm breath left small clouds around him.

  Continuing for some time, using only his sense of hearing to guide him, he looked up to see he was in unfamiliar territory.

  Interspersed between boulders, and towering high into the air, were the shadowy forms of enormous pine trees. White lumps of snow slid off their heavily laden branches, landing in sloppy heaps at Whisker’s feet.

  Assessing the situation, Whisker quickly realised that he had travelled further than he had imagined. A quick glance behind him revealed a clear trail of footprints – a trail he could easily follow back to the dome.

  Putting his fears aside, he pressed on. All that mattered was finding Anna.

  The pine trees grew thicker and the voice grew louder, drawing him closer.

  Lost … help … los
t … help …

  Any moment, he told himself. Behind the next boulder. She has to be there.

  Anna’s voice rang out, constant and strong. Whisker stepped closer, his heart almost bursting from his chest, the boulder close enough to touch.

  And then a thought occurred to him – a terrifying realisation.

  Too strong.

  It struck Whisker like a snowball to the face. He stopped dead in his tracks, a sick feeling of dread spreading from his head to his icy toes. Anna’s voice was loud and clear and yet he could barely manage a croak. He’d been outside for a few brief minutes while she must have been wandering through the snow for hours.

  It doesn’t make sense, Whisker thought.

  He stood perfectly still, resisting the urge to venture behind the boulder. As he searched his mind for an explanation, a small slurry of snow dropped from the pine tree beside him. Suddenly, Whisker had his answer.

  Blackbird Wood, he gasped, home to the ravens.

  With a dawning realisation, he flattened himself against the boulder, hoping his footsteps and heavy breathing hadn’t already given him away. The warning words of Chatterbeak echoed through his head.

  Ravens are crafty birds with a nasty habit of imitating other animals …

  Could the ravens really be imitating Anna’s voice? Whisker asked himself, horrified at how close he had come to disaster. There was a chance the raven from Eagle’s Cliffs overheard Anna in the cage and memorised her speech patterns. More alarming was the prospect that the ravens had purchased Anna from the fox and then delivered her to the feasting site.

  The third possibility, and the one that made Whisker most uncomfortable, was that Anna was with the ravens at that very moment.

  Overcome by a sudden feeling of dread, he listened to the voice, now chilling and terrifying, trying to decide what to do next. He could turn and flee, retracing his steps the way he had come, abandoning whatever lay behind the boulder, or he could find out for certain. Deep down inside, he knew he could never leave without knowing what, or who, he had left behind.

  With his pounding heart providing a constant beat to the wailing melody of the voice, he formed a plan of attack. The safest approach was to scale the boulder and survey the scene from above. The boulder consisted of two sections of granite, joined at the base, with a narrow crack beginning halfway up. The crack appeared wide enough for Whisker to squeeze into and, he reasoned, it would allow him to spy, unseen, on any creature on the other side.

  Methodically, he began climbing diagonally up the steep side of the boulder, checking each foothold as he progressed, making sure the sharp spikes on the soles of his boots had enough traction on the icy surface of the rock. He was well aware that a single slip would spell disaster, immediately giving his location away.

  Reaching the crack between the two rocks, he stopped and poked his nose inside. The gap was partially filled with snow, but he could still make out the needle-covered branches of a pine tree on the far side.

  Hauling himself into the crack, Whisker spread his weight evenly and began sliding like a snake across the thick layer of snow. Face down, his only comfort in the tight space was knowing that no raven could squeeze after him.

  The lower branches of the pine tree grew clearer as Whisker continued. The voice echoed siren-like through the crack.

  Lost … help … lost … help …

  Between the gaps in the foliage, he began to glimpse snowy patches of the ground below. A faint circle of claw prints framed a small clearing between the boulder and a dense line of trees.

  And then Whisker saw it. Pacing into view, with its beak wide open and its head raised to the dawn sky was a glistening black raven.

  Whisker shuddered as the black-eyed bird rang out its unnerving chant.

  Lost … help … lost … help …

  At the sight of the devilish blackbird skulking in a solitary circle, Whisker realised that Anna had never been there. She was trapped in a cage, high on a cliff, and he had been played for a fool.

  He began to shuffle backwards, wishing the taunting voice would simply cease, when the bird suddenly cocked its head to one side and fixed its eyes on the boulder.

  Whisker froze in mid-shuffle, not daring to breathe.

  Don’t move, he told himself, hoping and praying his beating heart wasn’t about to give him away.

  Trusting the dim light to conceal his whereabouts, he lay perfectly still, his face hidden beneath the hood of his coat, watching and waiting to see what the bird would do next. The raven’s keen eyes remained locked on the boulder. Whisker stared, unblinking, at the bird. In his peripheral vision, he glimpsed two dark shapes moving within the tree line.

  More ravens, he guessed, as they silently made their way through the shadows of the trees.

  The ravens vanished from sight behind the wall of rock, but their disappearance brought him little comfort. He had seen the direction they were heading. On their current course, they would end up on the far side of the boulder – roughly where he had begun his climb.

  They’ll see my footprints, he thought, panic gripping his body.

  He silently cursed himself for leaving his sword behind. Unarmed and unprepared, he stood little chance against three birds. The moment he left the safety of the rocks they would be upon him.

  As Whisker contemplated his fate, he noticed the raven had turned its head and was concentrating on a spot near the base of the boulder.

  The next moment there was a loud SQUEAK of alarm and two black shapes swooped down from the sky, their powerful talons outstretched in front of them.

  Whisker watched in horror as one of the ravens plucked a small, squirming shape from the snow and rose into the air. With two flaps of its jet-black wings, the first raven launched itself after its companions. Abandoning its pretence of impersonation, it let out a hash, ‘Caw, caw,’ of triumph as it flew east towards the rising sun.

  Helplessly, Whisker watched the three birds disappear from sight over the sun-drenched trees.

  ‘It can’t be,’ he gasped, scrambling to the edge of the crack. He lowered his eyes to the forest floor. Nestled in the snow, was the unmistakable shape of a scissor sword – Horace’s blue-handled scissor sword.

  Gone

  ‘Gone? What do you mean, he’s gone?’

  Bleary eyed and barely awake, Ruby looked up from her spot near the fire. Her coat was crumpled and her crimson eyepatch hung crookedly across her sleepy face.

  Whisker stood over her in an expanding puddle of melting snow, clutching Horace’s scissor sword in his paw.

  ‘The ravens – have taken him,’ he panted.

  ‘Taken him where?’ Ruby gasped, sitting upright.

  ‘East,’ Whisker spluttered. ‘They were flying east.’

  Ruby stared at him in disbelief. ‘How-how did this happen?’

  ‘I-I don’t know,’ Whisker said, struggling for breath. ‘Horace must have followed my footprints through the snow and stumbled into their trap.’

  Ruby’s face darkened. ‘What do you mean, he followed you? What were you doing out there?’

  ‘I heard voices,’ Whisker said.

  ‘Voices?’ Ruby repeated, her confusion quickly turning to anger. ‘And you decided to investigate them on your own, after everything you told us about sticking together?’ She picked up Whisker’s green-handled scissor sword and let it drop noisily to the ground. ‘Without your sword?’

  Whisker hung his head in shame. There was no use denying it.

  ‘Well?’ Ruby said, rising shakily to her feet. ‘You must have some excuse.’

  Whisker continued to stare at the ground.

  ‘I thought I heard Anna,’ he confessed. ‘I had to know for certain.’

  ‘And was it her?’ Ruby asked, giving Whisker a chance to redeem himself.

  ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It was a raven.’

  ‘Tut, tut,’ Chatterbeak chirped from his perch. ‘I warned you about those crafty birds.’

&nb
sp; ‘I know,’ Whisker said. ‘And I should have listened to you. But the voice … it-it sounded so real.’

  ‘They always do,’ Chatterbeak cooed. ‘And the result is always the same …’ He clucked mournfully, ‘Poor little Horace. He was always so chirpy.’

  Ruby buried her head in her paws.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Whisker said, fighting back a wave of despair. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to make things right. I promise.’

  Ruby drew a deep breath, then looked up at him, her face contorted with anguish. Whisker knew she was hurting as much as he was.

  ‘Horace was my friend, too,’ she said softly.

  ‘He was everyone’s friend,’ Whisker said.

  Chatterbeak stretched out his enormous wings and wrapped them around the two rats.

  ‘What’s done is done,’ he chirped, smothering them in his feathery embrace. ‘And in the words of our dear friend Horace, there’s no use moping when there’s something we can do about it.’ Releasing the two rats, he shuffled towards the pile of supplies and began unrolling Mr Tribble’s map with his claws.

  Grief-stricken, Whisker and Ruby simply stared after him.

  ‘Perk up, you two,’ he whistled, gesturing for them to join him. ‘There’s a good chance Horace is still alive. If the ravens flew east, like you claim, they must have taken him to Eagle’s Cliffs – ready for the full moon feast. He’ll be striking up a friendly conversation with Anna as we speak.’

  ‘Anna?’ Whisker gasped. ‘You’re saying they’ve taken Horace to Anna?’

  ‘She’s most likely listening to one of his ghost stories over breakfast,’ Chatterbeak squawked. ‘Now hurry up and get your rats’ tails over here. We’ve got a rescue mission to organise!’

  Stifling a sniffle, Whisker wiped his moist eyes with the back of his mitten and crossed the floor to join Chatterbeak. Ruby picked up her longbow and hobbled over to them, placing a comforting paw on Whisker’s shoulder.

  ‘Truth be told, I probably would have done the same thing in your position,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘But maybe with a sword or two.’