‘He is braver than ever I have been,’ Zluty murmured. Bily was also far more patient, he thought glumly. He had accepted that they must remain in the Hidden Place for the time being, and had used the time fruitfully to work with Finnla in the water gardens and learn all that Ishla could teach him about herbs and healing. Zluty found it far more difficult to wait, but he had resolved to be patient.
That did not mean to say he liked it. At least he had been able to roam as he liked within the circle of ice peaks, so long as he kept his hood up. And today the Cold Eye would close and the Makers would again be reliant on their machines and their devices to see and hear.
Zluty looked up at the sky. It was dark, of course.
It was impossible to imagine the Makers peering down at him through the sky crack, as they waited for it to be made large enough for them to fit through. How it was being enlarged, Zluty still did not know, nor did the she Monks, save that it had something to do with what the he Monks were doing in the mountains, and something to do with the Listeners in the Velvet City.
Zluty’s thoughts turned to the Monster. Zluty had always guessed it had secrets, but he could never have imagined the Monster was so important to its people, nor that it had been fleeing its importance. He was less interested in this, however, than that the duty it had refused was to be Prime Listener of the Velvet City, whose task was to hear the Makers speak.
It did not seem to have occurred to Bily that if the Monks were not successful in changing the Makers metal, the Monster would have to return to the Velvet City where it would again fall under the power of the Makers.
Would the Monks allow it to leave, knowing it was likely to be forced to speak of what really went on in the Hidden Place? Zluty thought it quite likely they would let the Monster go, trusting to their foretellings that it would bring change.
Neither they nor Bily seemed to have considered that change did not necessarily mean change for the better. And, of course, Zluty had not uttered that dark thought. Nor an even darker thought that it would be better for all of them if the Monster died or forgot everything when they tried to change its metal, rather than live to betray them if their attempt failed.
Poor Bily spent every moment he could with the Monster, for once it woke and was given to the Makers machines, there was no telling how long it would take to reach its metal and change it, if it could be changed, and then for it to recover afterwards, if it survived.
‘Him,’ Zluty muttered.
Bily insisted they follow the she Monks’ customs and refer to one another as male or female, even though Zluty thought it was silly. What difference did it make to them that the Monster was a he or the Nightbeast a she?
Zluty’s gaze was drawn back to the gap in the ice peaks, which led to the black ice-bound sea surrounding them. Bily had explained that the Nightbeast kept a passage to the mainland open through the ice by swimming backwards and forwards along it each day, after which she came to thaw her bones in the Long Pool. That was why he had got in the habit of coming here between blizzards, to wait. It was ridiculous, he knew, yet he could not help hoping every time the Nightbeast went out, that the diggers would come to the edge of the land as he had done, and that she would one day come swimming back with them perched on her head. Or even with news of them – tracks or a distant sighting of them moving across the land.
Wearily, he tried again to remember what had happened before finding himself flat on his back with a broken arm and a cracked head. There was that one memory of running towards the mountains hauling the vessel after him, and a faint memory of Flugal calling out to him for help, followed by the strange feeling of being trapped in the earth. That last one could not be a memory, but Ishla thought it might be a foretelling.
Zluty squinted at the causeway, trying to make himself see through the shadows gathered there, knowing it was pointless. The Nightbeast was always hard to see because of the way her fur shifted colour to match wherever she was standing.
He heard a distant strain of music and sighed.
The Monks were preparing for a festival they called The Waking of The World’s Dream, which was to take place once the Cold Eye closed, in the brief lull before the ice blizzards returned for the second half of Winter. Bily had told him the Monks would dance in special finery and there would be music and feasting, but Zluty had not really taken in exactly what was being celebrated. He had asked what the World’s Dream was, and had formed the impression it was some sort of display of skyfire, but surely that could not be right. He ought to have asked more questions, but somehow his curiosity had withered with the loss of the diggers. Indeed, their fate was the only thing he wondered much about.
He longed for the end of the Winter, when he would be able to leave the Hidden Place and go to the mainland to search for Flugal and Semmel, and perhaps to find and repair the vessel.
‘Goldsong,’ he murmured. That was the name he had thought of calling it, but when he remembered his last sight of the poor broken and bedraggled vessel that had brought them so far, he doubted there would be anything of it left to bear a name.
He sighed again, and this time his breath came out in a little cloud of white. It was getting colder. He heard the crunch of ice and turned to see Bily emerging from the constant mists that flowed out from the settlement.
‘I thought I would come ahead,’ Bily said, when he reached Zluty’s side.
‘Ahead?’
Bily smiled at him and pushed back his hood. ‘The Cold Eye has closed and the festival is to take place here. The feast is being put into baskets now, and fires will be lit. There will be singing and dancing.’ He took Zluty’s pipe from his cloak, and handed it shyly to him. ‘I thought you might play, too.’
Zluty bit back the impulse to say he could not play music while the diggers were in danger. It was not Bily’s fault he had lost them. Zluty blamed himself.
Bily had always been good at hearing things that were not said, and he sat down on the stone and put his arms about Zluty’s shoulders, pushing back his hood.
‘We will find them,’ Bily promised. ‘The Monster will wake and we will find the vessel and fix it and go on, and we will find the Vale of Bellflowers and build our new cottage.’
Zluty looked at him. ‘You are so sure?’
Bily shook his head, looking up at the sky. ‘I am not sure of anything ever, Zluty. But I must hope, for if I do not, then there is only despair.’
Zluty stared at his brother, then he drew a deep breath, and reached out to take the pipe from Bily’s hand.
‘What song shall I play?’ he asked.
But Bily was not listening. He rose, gazing open-mouthed at the sky, a strange greenish-gold light playing over his face. Zluty looked up too, and then he stood, gaping at the immense, shimmering curtains of light hanging right across the sky, undulating as if blown by a wind from the stars.
‘Is it the sky crack?’ he whispered.
‘It is the World’s Dream,’ Bily said, his face shining.
I want to thank my lovely editor, Katrina Lehman, for helping me to hone the words that shape this story, and the gentle, talented Marina Messiha, for her tender, creative handling of my pictures. I would also like to say a particular public thank you to my partner, Jan Stolba, for his generous enthusiasm for my artwork, and his endless uncomplaining trips to the photocopier or to buy more nibs, ink and good coffee to fuel me for my night works.
Isobelle Carmody began the first of her highly acclaimed Obernewtyn Chronicles while she was still at high school, and worked on the series while completing university. The series, and her many award-winning short stories and books for young people, have established her at the forefront of fantasy writing in Australia and overseas.
Little Fur, Isobelle’s first series for younger readers, won the 2006 ABPA Design Awards. The Red Wind was awarded the 2011 CBCA Book of the Year Award for Younger Readers.
Isobelle divides her time between her home on the Great Ocean Road in Australia and her trave
ls abroad.
Scatterlings
The Gathering
Green Monkey Dreams
This Way Out (with Steve Taylor)
Greylands
Alyzon Whitestarr
The Obernewtyn Chronicles
Obernewtyn
The Farseekers
Ashling
The Keeping
The Stone Key
The Sending
The Red Queen
The Legendsong
Darkfall
Darksong
The Gateway Trilogy
Billy Thunder and the Night Gate
The Winter Door
The Legend of Little Fur
Little Fur
A Fox Called Sorrow
A Mystery of Wolves
Riddle of Green
The Kingdom of the Lost
The Red Wind
The Cloud Road
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First published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2017.
Text and illustrations copyright © Isobelle Carmody, 2017.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Design by Marina Messiha © Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Illustrations by Isobelle Carmody
penguin.com.au
ISBN: 978-1-74348-384-8
THE BEGINNING
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Isobelle Carmody, The Ice Maze
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