The Girl and the Stars

Hua and Aiiki were the least of all the gods and neither spoke nor touched, but the children of their minds came to walk all corners of the world, and their work was in its way as mighty as that of any in the sky or in the sea.

None walk ice but for the sharing of Zin and Mokka. None survive there alone for the wind is cruel and the sea is a stranger. All their children are taught this lesson in their cradle hides. To forget this is to forget ourselves. To forget this is to go into the ice before your time.

 

* * *

A CLANGING SOUND drew Yaz from the depths of her dreaming. An alien noise. The Ictha owned little metal and what they did own came from the priests of the Black Rock: iron pins that could be driven into the ice where bone would prove unequal to the task; knife blades for those who could afford the trade goods demanded for such things. Yaz’s uncle owned an iron knife but it had been her grandfather who purchased it with the horn of a narwhal and a stack of bundled tuark skins as tall as himself. Even so, Yaz had heard the sound of metal on metal before: it clanged.

*CLANG*

Yaz sat abruptly then clutched her blanket to her. On all sides her fellow newcomers were sitting up, remembering where they were, and realising that they had no idea what to do until someone arrived to tell them. Yaz drew up her legs and hugged herself, not against the cold but against the memories of the previous day.

The clanging stopped but Arka failed to appear.

“What was that?” Maya asked.

“It’s to wake up the day shift.” Thurin yawned and stretched. “Not that we have nights and days down here. But Tarko likes to keep things ordered.”

“So, we’re awake.” Kao hulked in front of the star-lamp, throwing everyone into shadow. “Where do we go for breakfast?”

The others grinned but Kao’s answering scowl showed that he wasn’t joking, and now that Yaz thought about it she discovered herself to be ravenous. She went to dip a hide cup into the water bucket at the end of the barracks and drank. The bucket was made of no substance she knew. The water tasted clean but everything here was strange, nothing felt right.

“Where did all the young ones go?” Quina asked suddenly.

“They fell to the taints,” Thurin answered in a quiet voice.

“She told us that yesterday. The scar-faced woman . . . Arka.” Kao sneered, though whether at Quina’s stupidity or some distaste for Arka, or both, Yaz couldn’t tell.

“But why?” Quina persisted. “Why are all of us here nearly grown and all the young ones . . . none of the older ones . . . with the taints?”

“It’s a good question.” Thurin closed off Kao’s retort with a raised hand. “It depends on how the pit is. The vents form, stretch, and twist as the ice flows, and then are abandoned as the heat finds a new more direct route to the surface. There can be many ways down and sometimes who falls where just depends on how heavy they are. The shafts sort them like . . .” He wriggled his fingers as if trying to pluck a good analogy from the air.

“Fish in a sorting basket,” Maya offered.

Yaz and Quina grunted. It was well said. In a sorting basket the fisher shook their catch in the right way and the largest rose to the top, the small fry packing the tail.

The door banged open. Arka leaned in. “Come on then, eat!” She frowned at Thurin. “You know this stuff. Show some initiative.”

The five of them followed her out into the same gloom that had seen them to bed. Kao, Quina, and Maya clutched their capes about them, and Yaz brought her blanket. Arka cast a disapproving eye over them. “Alright, alright, you can go fetch your clothes from the drying cave. I want you back here before I get bored of waiting. Thurin, make sure they don’t get lost.” She clapped her hands. “Run!”

Thurin led off at a steady pace, weaving around the larger puddles. Quina kept easily at his shoulder, Yaz next holding to a straighter path, Kao and Maya labouring at the rear, one too heavy for speed, the other too short-legged for it.

Yaz slowed considerably when they reached the ravine. The narrow path down into it gave onto a decidedly fatal-looking drop on one side. Quina was nearly dressed by the time Yaz joined her and Thurin. The heat immediately made Yaz sweat, droplets beading the redness of her skin and making her wonder why she’d bothered drying the clothes. In the north an Ictha could not afford to sweat. Even that small amount of moisture could see them freeze entirely. Here in the heat and dampness she seemed to do little else.

“Be quick about it,” Thurin advised. “We don’t want to make Arka look bad. Pome is just itching to find fault and get himself put in charge of us. If he put half as much effort into defending us against the Tainted as he does into fighting Tarko and agitating then we’d still have them confined to the black ice.”

“He . . . he’s not dangerous though?” Little Maya looked worried. She looked worried most of the time.

Thurin made a half shrug. “Arka thinks he is, but Tarko doesn’t see it. Arka isn’t convinced that everyone who’s disappeared lately has been taken by the Tainted or while scavenging. But that’s hard to prove. Just because some of those who vanished were standing in Pome’s way doesn’t mean he had a hand in it. Life down here is dangerous . . . So don’t go making enemies of Pome or anyone else. Especially Pome.” He glanced at Yaz, a warning look, as if standing up for him last night had been a foolish thing.

Yaz dressed in a hurry, haste making her clumsy, and then had to wait for Maya and Kao to finish before Thurin would lead them back.

“Why dry clothes all the way out here anyway?” she asked.

“The stone keeps the heat in better than any shelter. And we don’t like to make too much heat under an ice roof. Sometimes they don’t just drip. A chunk can fall. And that tends to hurt.”

Yaz winced.

Quina stood, fully dressed in her clan furs. Their clothes identified their clans both by design and composition. Nothing but men survived on the ice in the far north so the Ictha had no furs save the few they traded. They wore hides and skins. Among the Broken, though, the differences were lost amid years of repairs. The coat and leggings that wrapped Thurin’s narrow musculature were a patchwork of furs and leathers in which Yaz saw no clues at all to his clan. Quina offered her a narrow smile, quick then gone. “More speed less haste. We’ll get your brother back from the Tainted. They got Thurin back after months. So you can take the time to match your ties up.”

Yaz looked down to realise she had mismatched one side of her outer coat to the other. “Dung on it!”

Quina’s grin returned. “Is that how they curse in the north?”

Yaz felt her cheeks colouring but she nodded. She found herself liking this narrow girl with her guarded ways and swift smiles.