Sky. Sarah Driver

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      Purple lightning splurts from Sparrow’s fingers into the sky, shocking him awake. I reach for him but the force of the wind thieves my strength. I can’t get us back onto the terrodyl, and the broken wing flaps loose as a sail.

      My belly pulls free, lands in my throat. Nails tear at my wrist. Thaw-Wielder shrieks, digging her talons into my hair. Her chatter is torn by the falling and I can’t catch her words.

      The terrodyl’s scream rips the world apart. He scrabbles at the air with claws like daggers.

      It was a spear. My brain rings dully with knowing. We’ve been shot down. And now we’re falling into death like none of what’s happened even matters.

      Everything turns oddly slow-but-fast, like the world’s rushing forwards and backwards in a sickly tangle and we’re strung up in the middle of it. A heavy silver mist settles, and a storm of spooked birds cranks through it towards us.

      Bloodseekerssharptoothhuntershuntersfleefleequick! gabble the birds. Shouldbenestingnestingnesting!

      I try to move but it’s like I’m stuck in a nightmare and my muscles don’t work.

      Crow stretches his fingertips through the air and brushes my cheek. His mouth shapes words, but the wind punches my ears too hard for me to hear.

      Mother, screams the terrodyl’s beast-chatter. Brothers. Nest-home. Wing hurtful, don’t let me go, get me home!

      With the word home, all the sound in the world fades, in one heartbeat, like an explosion of nothing.

      Are we dead?

      The silver mist darkens into a pulsing shadow. A foggy tendril snakes away through the sky. Then the world speeds up again in a stuttering rush and our terrodyl crashes through the cloud. We plunge after it. A scream surges up my throat and the wind peels my eyelids back and I pedal my legs in the air and

       SLAM.

      I smash into a mess of sticky webbing that flings me up into the air with a sharp, wrenching jolt. I somersault

      once,

      twice,

      then finally land sprawled on my front inside the mist-shadow. I scrabble to my knees as Sparrow and Crow plunge, shrieking, from the sky. I grab my brother and hold him still while the sticky mist hurls Crow up again before he tucks into a ball and rolls to a stop. The shadow seals shut over our heads, blinking out the sky.

      Shock-waves judder through my body as I stare at a dark, throbbing world of cold and damp, its edges tightening around us. We’re caught in some kind of springy net. I touch the wall, then jerk back my hand. It’s like the whole thing is made of hard, sticky clumps of wet, spinning pearls.

      My blood leaps. It’s woven from raindrops.

      The walls close in until we’re hanging in the sky, tangled together in the bottom of the net, the raindrops pressed against our faces. Crow curses, flailing and jabbing me with elbows sharp as knives.

      ‘What – how is – it’s raindrops !’ I gasp.

      ‘Some vicious magyk, don’t touch it—’ babbles Crow over my words.

      ‘How can I not touch it, kelp-brain?’

      We tumble around like seastones, and I keep Sparrow close, my feet almost slipping through gaps in the bottom of the net.

      The Opal falls from my pocket and a spear of panic stabs my gut until Thaw snatches it in her beak and drops it in my hand. She folds herself into my cloak.

      Ugghhhh, foulness, she warbles, feathers quivering.

      Horror clutches at my chest. Whose path have we stumbled into now?

      Far below comes a thud and a splintering crack. I peer through the spinning raindrops to see our terrodyl sprawled across a rock, his beast-chatter filled with hurts. A trickle of inky blood fizzles from his crumpled wing and gnaws holes in the snow. Guilt stings me like a ray, cos the beast’s just a bab and I lured him from his home to help СКАЧАТЬ