Waking Dead Mountain

By Felicity Banks

Dance’s daughter, Traveller, is a feelsmith and her monster friends, the heest, need her help, but to do so she has to sail on the ship of a murderous pirate.

The mission: find a mountain that is dead and has to be brought back to life.

But standing in her way is her best friend’s grandmother who just happens to want to kill her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odyssey Books
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781922311559

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Islowed my steps as I walked down the icy slope from my village to the harbour. Mum’s grip tightened on my hand. A ship waited to take me away—not just from Mum, but from the only home I’d ever known. And it was a pirate ship.

The frozen ground burned my bare feet. I’d left my shoes at home since I knew none of the pirates wore shoes.

There beneath my feet, as always, were the monsters—swimming in the ice like normal fish swim in water. Except normal fish weren’t covered with unpredictable lumps and spikes—and normal fish weren’t the size of houses. I focused the pleasure of a smile in my mind and sent the emotion beaming down into the ice.

Hi boys. You’re looking especially spectacular today. Spike, is that another new growth on your side? That shade of puce really catches the eye. Now be good this time and don’t scare the pirates. It’s not nice to pick on people when they’re so much littler than you.

The monsters were heest: wild, bulky creatures with giant red eyes and glowing purple heartbeats pulsing through their skin. They followed me wherever I went, spinning in delighted circles when I laughed and nudging dangerously at the surface of the ice whenever I felt sad.

I could feel their thoughts floating through the ice, warming me as I tried not to think about what I was doing. Despite everything, I didn’t blame them for making me leave home to fix someone else’s problem half a world away. I didn’t even blame them for choosing a pirate ship. It wasn’t like they’d had many options on the far southern edge of the world.

Someone had to go. I chose not to think about whether I wished it was someone else—someone who wasn’t me. There wasn’t anyone else, so that was that.

The heests’ ‘friend’ needed help. He—or she, or it—was either sick, broken, or dead. The heest had melted half my island in their distress as they tried to explain. If I didn’t stay calm, they’d do it again.

‘One more thing,’ Mum said as we continued carefully down the icy hill. ‘It might sound silly, but it isn’t.’

‘What’s wrong, Mum?’ I tried to meet her eye, but one of them always pointed off in odd directions, and it was impossible to catch her expression from that angle. I was willing to bet she was walking on that side on purpose. What was she hiding from me?

‘Nothing’s wrong.’ She laid one hand on my tightly plaited black hair. ‘As long as you make absolutely sure not to bother the captain.’

‘Ana’s grandma?’

‘That’d be the one.’

‘Why?’ I asked, pausing. The morning mist coiled around my legs, making me feel taller than I was. ‘Are you sure nothing’s wrong?’

Mum pushed back her own white hair, which only made it spring out from her dark face in more directions than before. ‘Remember last time they came, when I made sure you and Captain Sol never met? You and Ana never understood why I was so concerned.’

‘But—’

‘Everyone likes Ana, of course! We always knew she’d visit you again somehow. It’s even good timing—sort of. But surely you’ve heard the stories Captain Sol spreads around? About her pirating days?’

‘But she’s different now that she’s old,’ I said. ‘Isn’t she? Ana said she was.’

Mum glanced back over her shoulder at the village. ‘I’ve asked a few questions and found out Captain Sol prefers to work on the night shift. That means she’ll be asleep every morning, which is handy to know for starters. I’m trusting you to figure out how to keep out of her way the rest of the time. And to never, ever let her find out you’re a feelsmith.’

‘But I’ll be getting directions from the heest every day, so won’t she reali—’

‘Or that you’re talking to the heest.’

The pirate ship tipped to one side gently, and its furled sails shrugged their sympathy.

Ana leant over the port side railing of the ship. Suddenly, I missed her brilliant smile.

‘Sure Mum,’ I said, standing on my toes to wave. Anyone related to Ana couldn’t be all bad. ‘I promise.’

I ran down the white hill until I fell over, sliding onto the beach with my bare brown legs in a tangle. Grains of ice, not sand, crumbled beneath my palms as I got up. Mum sighed loudly from the hillside behind me. Why couldn’t she understand that not everyone can keep to their feet every moment of every day? We were living on an iceberg, for telk’s sake!

Ana waved frantically and twisted one of her black ringlets around a single brown finger. I sprang to my feet and ran straight into the sea, smiling at the whisper of waves against my legs. Even when I sailed away from home, I would never be far from the ice, far below everything, where the heest fluttered their ragged fins in echoed excitement. I’d never be alone.

Ana yelled a greeting. She vaulted the ship’s railing and landed in a rowboat that hung suspended from the ship’s side. It swayed at the impact of her small weight.

She hung dangerously far over the side as the crew lowered it into the water. One of them was missing an arm. He slithered down a rope into the boat with Ana and wrestled an oar off her, laughing as she squealed in fake rage.

I took a breath and dived through a wave. The water rushed past my face, and I opened my eyes to see bright bubbles in the green. They turned dark as the boat drew closer. I surfaced and grabbed Ana’s outstretched hand. The one-armed man clasped my elbow and helped lift me aboard.

I grinned at him and noticed he had one blue eye and one brown. His face was darkened by the sun to a rich brown that was almost black.

‘This is Mayanam,’ said Ana. ‘He’s our navigator, and he’s good at standing up to Sol if she gives you any trouble.’

I felt the heest shy away at the mention of Sol’s name.

Mayanam looked at me closely. ‘What’s wrong, little one?’

Focusing on the heest, I blinked back tears at an upsurge of grief. I clasped my hands to stop them shaking. ‘Can we go now? Please?’

Ana ignored the note of panic in my voice. ‘How do we find the heests’ friend?’

I looked at her oddly. ‘They’ll come with us, of course.’

‘How?’ She looked back at the ship in confusion.

I giggled despite myself as I imagined the heest perched on the ship like giant blobs of lumpy compost. They’d crush it to matchsticks. ‘Three of the heest will guide us from under the ocean—hidden from Sol. Everything’s ice if you go deep enough, so they’ll be fine. Plus, they can come up into the water if they need to—for half a minute or so. I’m enough of a feelsmith to sense them from up here, and to tell them to go back under the ice when they need to.’

Ana gasped. ‘Of course you’re a feelsmith! You look like one.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. Not everyone was born with the skill to touch another person and see their emotions, but I wasn’t a freak. At least I hoped I wasn’t. And I hoped Captain Sol couldn’t tell just by looking at me.

‘It’s nothing bad,’ Ana said hastily. ‘It’s just that your eyes look so old. Not tired or grumpy, but … smart. They’re so dark they’re hard to read. You always look like you know heaps of secrets. And like most of them are funny.’

‘Can you sense the heest right now?’ Mayanam asked, scanning the shallow water with a hint of nervousness.

‘I can do better than that,’ I said, and pointed ahead to the beach. ‘Once we’re at sea, they’ll stay hidden, so enjoy it while you can.’

Mum reached the broken-up ice of the shore and turned in slow circles. Behind her in the white hillside, three great heest copied her movements. Their fins stretched out to either side in clashing orange and green, and they were as misshapen as wind-carved rocks.

The middle heest was Patchy. I recognised him both from the cheerful silliness flowing into my mind and from the orange growth looming over his left eye.

As always, he was one step behind the others. When Mum stood on her toes, the other two heest glided up the hillside. Patchy’s wide eyes turned from one side to the other, and his pupils contracted to smaller black circles within the red bands of his irises. He caught up a moment later and hastily propelled himself upward, but by then the dance had moved on without