The Bird Master E-Book

Karin Erlandsson

• Herausgeber: Young Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

A fierce battle for freedom in the deep forests of the wintry north… The Bird Master is the second book in the four-part series Song of the Eye Stone. Set in a fantastical world, it is an epic saga of friendship, longing and the things that truly matter in life. It is published with Book 1 The Pearl Whisperer. In their failed quest for the eye stone, Miranda and Syrsa found each other instead. Now they have settled in a northern port town where they must learn to forget about pearls and adapt to a peaceful life in their new woodcutters' community. But the peace is soon broken when timid birds mysteriously begin attacking the townspeople. Miranda realises it must be the work of their old foe Iberis, whose greed and power has reached them all the way up north. Bird attacks are just the beginning. Soon the whole town is under the tyranny of Iberis and the eye stone. And only Syrsa and Miranda can save them.

Leseprobe

Contents

The Author

The Translator

At the Top

Not Like Before

The First Tree

Almost Like Pearls

Porridge Every Day

Evening

Medicinal Plants

Around the Fire Barrel

Teamwork

The Attack

The Tree is Felled

Woodcutters Never Fall

Lydia’s Sickroom

Into the Fire

Birle the Mayor

The Ice

The Fence

Old Knowledge

More Firewood

The Fall

Awake

Paralysed

Almond Porridge and Memories

The Tale of the Bears

The Little Finger

Erk’s Story

Holes in the Net

Outside the Net

The Tale of the Dagpies

On the Way

Through the Forest

In The House

The Cellar

The Dagpies

In Miranda’s House

Inside the Box

Morning in the House

Syrsa Looks Out

The Greenhouse

Friends

Syrsa Makes Food

Days Pass

Voices

In the Tree

An Idea

Through the Forest

The Secret of the Peers

Under the Ice

Arrival

Captive

Into the Town

Crowded

As Soon as Dawn Comes

Syrsa Blows the Bugle

The Song

The Fire

Plans

Lydia’s Plants

The Children

Beyond Rescue

The Escape

The Cage

Erk

Fires

Burning

Fire-Fighting

Away

Recommended Reading

Book One of Song of the Eye Stone

Book Three of Song of the Eye Stone

Book Four of Song of the Eye Stone

Other Young Dedalus Titles

Copyright

The Author

Karin Erlandsson, born in 1978, is one of the most successful and most acclaimed children’s authors in the Swedish language. She is a Swedish-speaking Finnish author and journalist who has won many literary prizes. The Pearl Whisperer won the Runeberg Junior Prize in 2018 and was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Children and Youth Literature Prize in 2018.

Dedalus will publish her four-part series Song of the Eye Stone during 2022 and 2023.

The Translator

Annie Prime is a prize-winning translator of children’s fiction from Swedish into English. She is translating the four-part series Song of the Eye Stone by Karin Erlandsson, for Dedalus.

At the Top

The tree sways back and forth. My tree climbing spurs grip the trunk as I saw off the very top. The wood is soft, and I’m soon halfway through.

I’m not out of breath, but I stop for a moment anyway to admire the view. Only woodcutters ever reach such heights.

The northern port town is laid out before me. I see dried seaweed roofs, low wooden houses and the broad cobblestone street. Timber from the northern regions is transported throughout the country. Emerald crowns and fir trees stand side by side, and the clear-felled areas appear as blank squares in the green.

Beyond the city is the sea. It is calm and blue, and so clear that I can see goldentails flitting among the reef from all the way up here. Red carpets of firefinger leaves stretch beneath the surface, turning the sea pink. The ocean is preparing for the autumn cold.

I scan the horizon. To the west is farmland where wheat violet grows in white fields. You can work a full day on a single bowl of violet porridge with raspberry jam. I know, because I’ve done it.

To the east are the mountains, tall and grey with snowy caps. All the silver in the country comes from the mines in those mountains. I’ve worked there, breaking up blocks of silver so large that they need a four-horse cart to move them.

But silver is far from the most sought-after resource in the Queendom.

I look to the south. All the pearl fishers are in the southern region, where the sea begins and ends. The Queen’s City straddles the border of the western and southern regions. The southern pearl fishers supply the country with pearls to adorn the Queen’s avenue and ornaments.

The tree sways gently like a rocking chair. I am only a few metres from the top.

A tree of this size has to be sawn down bit by bit. First the top, then you climb down to the middle and saw off another few metres, and work your way down until your feet are on the ground and can watch the final section of the tree fall.

Just above me is an empty dagpie nest, its eggs long since hatched. Dagpies are timid birds and tend to avoid humans.

Sometimes you find forgotten egg shells in the birds’ nests. They sparkle and shimmer, and are beautifully displayed on a windowsill. I hope I can find some to give to Syrsa.

I take off my thick glove and reach to the farthest side of the nest where I find large fragments of shell, smooth and almost translucent.

I place them in my breast pocket, put my glove back on and pick up my saw.

Soon the sun will have sunk below the treeline. The days are growing shorter, and soon it will be too dark for us woodcutters to work. I must supply the town with a decent store of firewood before it’s too late.

We use the wood from dew-wick trees to carve small objects, such as bowls and toys, and the straightest logs are transported to the Queen’s City to become lampposts. Emerald crowns are used for furniture, and cross-oaks for houses and boats. Not that boat building is common in the North. If we travel anywhere, we travel inland.

I am the only one who ever left.

And I came back.

Before the day is done this tree will be felled and limbed, the thicker branches will be stacked and the thinner branches will come home with me. Any branches can be used as firewood.

The top is teetering. To amuse myself, I blow on it just before it crashes to the ground. It falls — silently, serenely — through the canopy and lands on the bark path. I run my fingers along the cut surface. It’s clean and smooth. This is an old tree, and its growth rings radiate outwards like the ripples made by a stone thrown in water.

There was already a boat builder and carpenter in the northern port town, but no one was taking responsibility for the firewood.

When I lean back I see a strip of the shoreline. I think I can see two distant figures swim out from the pier and disappear under the surface.

Lydia is teaching Syrsa to gather medicinal plants from the ocean floor. Just as I must gather all the town’s firewood before winter, Lydia must gather all the medicinal plants she needs before the ice sets in.

My old boat is still by the pier. Lydia and Syrsa use it sometimes. I bought it from Marko when I first set off to search for the eye stone.

But that’s not something I like to think about.

Not Like Before

When Syrsa and I returned to the northern port town, one rainy summer’s day, Lydia was waiting for us.

We moved into her house and I was given the same room as before, when she saved me. The room is upstairs and the entrance is via the balcony that runs all the way along the facade.

Lydia lives downstairs in the room next to the kitchen, and Syrsa takes turns sleeping with us both. She says she doesn’t want a room of her own, that she likes to alternate between our different smells.

“Your room smells of sawdust, and like the forest after rain,” she says. “And Lydia’s room smells of heather and compass-lily, and healing.”

The sound of Syrsa breathing in the darkness is reassuring when I can’t sleep.

As soon as we woke up on that first morning I picked up my kit bag and headed straight down to the sea. I stood at the furthest end of the pier with my diving hood on, about to jump in, when something stopped me.

“It’s too cold,” I said when I came back. Lydia and Syrsa were sitting at the kitchen table eating bread and honey, but I went straight up to my room and threw my diving hood under the bed.

I couldn’t sleep that night. Syrsa started giggling, and even in her sleep her laughter sounded like chiming bells. I fumbled for her hand, and careful not to wake her, gave it a squeeze.

The next morning I went down to the pier again. I lifted the hood to my head, but stopped and gazed down into the water.

Lydia said nothing when I came back with dry clothes.

“There are no pearls here,” I said.

“You can still dive,” said Syrsa. “There’s other things to dive for.”

That night I thought about diving, the sensations of it: the crystal-clear water at the bottom; stretching my legs out like a starfish; the smoothness of the pearls in my hand.

Wherever there is water, I want to dive. The next day I went down to the sea again. This time I stopped on the shore. My feet sank into the sand, and it felt as though I might never be able to move them again.

I stayed there until Syrsa came bounding along the path.

“Why are you just standing there?”

“I’m cold,” I said.

Syrsa laughed.

“Of course you are, your feet are all wet.”

She took the diving hood from my hand and pulled it over her own head.

“Look,” she said. “Soon it’ll fit me.”

Her voice was muffled and her bell-like laughter was deepened. She waded into the water and disappeared below the surface. I stayed where I was, staring at the point where she had dived under.

The northern sea is darker than the turquoise water of the south — not that colour makes a difference. It all feels the same when you dive. My body remembers the sensation clearly: floating and flying. There’s nothing to hold onto down there.

“I found a shell,” said Syrsa when she resurfaced, holding out her hand.

“Beautiful,” I said.

“You’re not even looking,” she said, extending her hand until the shell touched my nose. “It smells of the sea. Lydia says you can grind up shells to use on bruises, but I don’t want to crush this one —have you ever seen anything so lovely and swirly? Feel how smooth it is.”

She pressed the shell against my cheek. It felt as cool as the seawater against my skin when I dive.

“Do you think it sounds like the sea as well? Lydia says that shells sound like the sea, and that the sound of the sea actually comes from shells. Listen!”

She put the shell to my ear. I heard a gentle hush.

“I think it sounds like the forest,” I said and backed up so the waves were no longer washing over my feet.

“I’m going to dive for more,” said Syrsa. “Keep this safe for me.”

She disappeared under the surface again and I couldn’t help but imagine what it must look like down there. Soft sand on the rolling ocean floor; bone-lily and sea-saffron, where the most beautiful pearls are often hidden; white pearls that reflect the colours of all the other pearls. I thought of the deep-sea cave where Syrsa and I once found hundreds of red pearls in very rare shades.

Then I thought about the river water where Iberis forced Syrsa to dive, and my legs getting caught in the dark algae, and when we were separated by the waterfall.

“Syrsa,” I called. “Syrsa! Come here at once!”

Her head popped up from far out in the water.

“Come back!” I called. “You mustn’t dive alone.”

Even at that distance I could hear the bell chime.

“Oh Miranda! I’ve always dived alone!”

I ran along the pier and reached out my hand, just like I did that time at the waterfall.

“Come now,” I said. “It’s late.”

She swam to shore using backstroke, her feet kicking up water and forming little rainbows above her.

“I’d just found a massive shell when you started shouting,” she said as she heaved herself up onto the pier.

“Shells aren’t like pearls,” I said.

“Lydia says…”

“It’s time to go back. Dinner will be ready.”

Syrsa forgot to return the diving hood and I didn’t ask for it.

That night I thought about Iberis tying a rope around Syrsa’s waist and forcing her to dive again and again.

The next morning I picked up my axe and headed out into the forest.

The First Tree

Lydia saw me pick up my axe.

“Are you sure about this? It’s a long time since you were a woodcutter.”

Syrsa ran ahead of us as we started down the cobblestone street. The four tufts of hair on her head looked like tiny trees swaying in the wind.

“I was a woodcutter long before I was a pearl fisher,” I said to Lydia. “I know trees.”

“I wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for trees,” she said. “You can’t afford to lose another arm.”

Syrsa giggled.

“Just think Miranda, if I had more arms than you, you’d have to do everything with your toes.”

A rose-shark took my arm when I was a child. I was only eleven years old and rose-sharks are aggressive — they see pearls as their property. Syrsa was two years old when she lost her arm, and that was a rose-shark’s doing as well. She and I have left arms, but no right. Syrsa likes that we match. I suppose I do too.

The axe handle felt soft in my hand. Pearls are hard, but wood is soft. It’s used to build houses, boats and knife shafts, but it still feels soft to me. I pondered this as I walked past the carpenter and the woman who sells fruit and vegetables. Lydia’s lips were pursed in a tight line.

Like a felled tree lying on the ground, I thought.

A few dagpies took flight from the mayor’s roof, and Syrsa stopped to look up at the enormous birds.

“Will they fly south too?”

“They usually migrate as soon as their eggs have hatched in spring,” answered Lydia.

“So why are they still here?”

“Actually I don’t know,” said Lydia, and we all looked up at the birds, which stared back down at us with their green eyes.

We walked past the narrow path that leads down to the beach but I didn’t look. I couldn’t smell the sea, only freshly baked bread and sea kale.

Lydia stopped when we came to the place where the cobblestone street ends and the forest begins.

“I’m not going any further,” she said.

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “Don’t you want to see me work?”

I stepped onto the forest path but Lydia wouldn’t let go of Syrsa’s hand.

“It was so long ago,” said Lydia. “We have other woodcutters, there’s no need for you to do it again.”

“I want to be a woodcutter,” said Syrsa. “Can I one day? You should’ve seen me when I climbed the tree outside Miranda’s father’s house! It was really huge and you could see all the way to the sea, and I never wanted to come down again, because when you sit right at the top of the tree, it sways, and it’s like a swing, and you swish back and forth with the tree, you should’ve—”

Lydia shook her head.

“I’m the one who has to take care of the people who fall. I don’t climb.”

“I won’t fall,” I said. “Woodcutters never fall.”

“That’s not true,” said Lydia. “And you know it.”

“I have to do something. There aren’t any pearls here.”

“Plus you don’t dive any more,” said Syrsa, as plainly as if she were asking for more jam in her porridge. “And you do have to do something. Lydia heals sick people and I help Lydia, but you don’t do anything. Everyone has to do something.”

“Exactly,” I said. “You heard what Syrsa said.”

“Fine, be a woodcutter then,” said Lydia.

“It’s what I was born to do.”

Not even Lydia can heal everything. Her salves and brews can’t make arms grow back or crushed bones become whole.

“I need something to do,” I said. “I can’t just sit and watch as everybody else works. And besides…”

“What?”

“We need firewood. The whole town does.”

The trees outside the town are common property and whoever needs wood for anything, from a bowl to a new table leg, comes here and helps themselves.

Papa and I used to work in a timber felling area a few kilometres from our house. The other woodcutters worked around the same area, and the cleared area of the forest grew and grew. In the autumn we stacked up the felled trees and when we returned in the spring they were gone. The Queen has people who take care of everything.

I ran my fingers along the bark of the closest dangle-ash, then I readied my axe and swung it at the stem. It struck at precisely the right place and the impact ran up my arm.

A dagpie let out a shrill cry and flew to the next tree along.

I raised the axe again and again, striking the same notch every time. Then I put the axe down, pressed my palm against the trunk and toppled the tree.

As the crash echoed through the forest, I knew for sure that I could still do it. I remembered everything that Papa had taught me.

It is nothing like diving for pearls. Bark is brown and the sea is blue, and the hum of the forest sounds nothing like the lapping of the sea, but felling trees is something I know how to do.

Syrsa laughed.

“Now it’s my turn.”

Almost Like Pearls

I climb down the final length of the tree and finish sawing. I sever the branches from the thickest log and roll it along the path towards the cobbled street.

“Need help with that?”

I shake my head and steady the log with my shoulder to keep it from rolling backwards.

“You should build a hoist with a crank you can roll the logs up with.”

“No thanks,” I say but I’m out of breath and can barely get the words out. “I’m fine.”

Erk ignores this and walks alongside me, helping with the log all the way back to town. It’s a long way, but he doesn’t even break a sweat.

Erk lives in the northern port town. He’s a woodcutter of about the same age as my father. His daughter Alli says he’s hopelessly clumsy, but Erk is always willing to offer his help. Even to people who don’t want it.

“You could attach a cable here,” he says as we arrive at Lydia’s house. He points at the largest beam. “Then you could roll the wood straight to the chopping block.”

“Maybe,” I say.

“Today I felled an emerald crown that’ll be made into a table.”

“Lydia mentioned it.”

“Always need tables for feasts.”

His large muscles were visible under his shirt. I’ve seen him carry logs under his arms where others would have had to use a horse and cart.

“I’m going to build a long table to go across the square so there’s space enough for everybody.”

He points towards the square where the first of the townsfolk have started gathering for the evening. The mayor has already lit a fire barrel. She wraps dough around sticks, dips them in sugar and holds them over the fire. The aroma of fresh bread and burnt sugar spreads through the square. I look in the other direction, expecting Lydia and Syrsa to arrive any minute.

“I can help you with the cable,” says Erk, tapping on the beam. “It shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Thanks,” I say, “but…”

He laughs.

“Lydia told me you always say no. But in these parts folk help each other. You may as well get used to it.”

“I’m from these parts,” I say. “I know all about these parts.”

“But you left. I’ve heard that people in the South stick to their own territory and don’t let others come near. Pearls have that effect on people, I heard.”

I want to explain to him that the sea is so vast that you need never cross paths with anyone else, that you just want to find the best pearls first, but he claps me on the back so hard that I stumble forward.

“It’s not like that here. There’s enough forest for everybody.”

At last I hear Syrsa’s voice. I wave.

“Did you find everything you need?”

“We found lots, you’ll see! Just wait.”

Syrsa’s hair is wet and she’s carrying a large cloth sack over her arm. Lydia walks behind her with a basket so overflowing with plants that some have spilled over the edge and got tangled around her shoes.

“We found sealmoss, which is really good, and lots of Saint Maxi… Maxi…”

Lydia laughs.

“Saint Maximilian’s half-rose.”

“And that’s good for fever,” says Syrsa. “And we found compass-lily which we’re going to dry and bake cakes with, because now the dark times are coming and people need cheering up. Lydia says it’s easy to feel down when it’s cold and dark. I’m gonna help make the cakes. What have you been doing?”

Erk answers for me.

“She cut down a decent dangle-ash, and we’re going to put up a cable.”

“I can help, I’m good at cables.”

Erk’s laughter rumbles through the square like thunder.

“You’d never believe that this one grew up in the South,” he says, nodding at Syrsa. “She’s perfectly cut out for the northern life.”

Lydia puts her basket down by the wall.

“Time for dinner,” she says. “Diving always makes me hungry.”

“Me too,” says Syrsa.

Lydia ruffles her hair, shaking all the little pony tails. “Are you joining us, Miranda?”

“I hope someone brings something tasty,” says Syrsa. “All we’ve got is plain porridge.”

Erk’s laughter follows us as we head for a free barrel. I arrange firewood in a circle at the bottom and light it with the help of the sawdust I always have in my pocket.

As I take out the flakes my fingers brush against something hard.

“Look Syrsa. Look what I found in the tree I cut down.”

I hold out the thin egg shell for her to see.

“It’s the shell of a dagpie’s egg. The birds left it behind.”

“Oh,” says Syrsa, stroking the inside with her finger. “So soft. Almost as beautiful as a pearl.”

“Almost,” I say.

Porridge Every Day

The cloth sack that Syrsa has tossed onto my lap is lukewarm and damp, like diving on a hot summer’s day.

“We found bluefang, a whole bed of it, just waiting to be picked. Lydia says there’s nothing better for tummy ache, and I get to help her boil up a… what was it called again?”

“An infusion,” Lydia says.

She is standing over the barrel and poking the fire.

“Did you find a lot?”

“Enough,” she says. “We dived somewhere new, behind the rocks.”

Syrsa takes a piece of dough from the dish in the centre of the square and starts rolling it around a stick.

That’s how it works in the northern region. The baker donates the day’s leftover dough, Erk makes furniture, and I make sure there’s firewood in the town’s stores.

Lydia stockpiles medicine for the cough that tends to affect the old folk in autumn. She has ointment for the woodcutters’ dry hands, and she treats the injuries the woodcutters suffer if a tree falls on them.

Woodcutting is the profession that my father taught me once upon a time. The northern regions are my home, but I had never seen the town before I came here during my hunt, when I nearly died of exhaustion and Lydia took care of me.

Lydia and Syrsa are both originally from the southern regions, born to pearl fishing families. They learned to dive long before they could walk.

Lydia is the only one in the northern region who can dive for the medicinal plants that grow in the sea.

Lydia prepares her ointments on the same stove we use to cook our food.

“Before you two came I usually just ate porridge,” she says.

So not much has changed, seeing as we pretty much live on violet porridge, or bread and honey. Sometimes I think about the sandwiches Marko’s wife used to make us. Marko was my boatman when I was a pearl fisher. The sandwiches were filled with crab meat and mussels and we washed them down with pear cider. Violet porridge keeps you full, but after months and months of nothing else it starts to taste like the sawdust I accidentally swallow sometimes.

The only organised meal is in the evenings. Everybody shares what they have. No one cares that leftover porridge is all Lydia has to offer. We all help ourselves from the pots lined up in the square.

All the axes and saws are leaning against the house fronts. I can smell the aromas from Lydia’s kitchen from here: almond and peppermint. But nothing boiling on the stove or hanging in strings from the ceiling beams is meant for eating.

Syrsa lays her wet head on my shoulder.

“I’m so hungry,” she says.

“Me too, but I don’t want porridge.”

She giggles.

“Lydia says the pots are for medicine, and porridge fills you up as well as anything else.”

“You and Lydia could catch fish one day,” I say. “I can show you how to prepare them.”

“Lydia says the ice will set in soon. Then you can’t dive.” She goes quiet and takes my hand in hers. “How cold does it get when the sea freezes over?”

“Very cold,” I say. “But there’s plenty of firewood so we’ll stay warm enough. I’ll soon have both woodsheds filled.”

“I want to chop firewood! I’ve watched you do it — you don’t need two arms to chop wood.”

“It’s unusual to chop firewood with only one arm,” I say.

Lydia sits down next to us.

“Aren’t you going to eat? There’s porridge.”

Syrsa and I exchange glances.

“In a minute,” she says.