Snowbone by Cat Weatherill Read Free Book Online Page B

down so low, she felt its talons drag through her hair. Then it landed on a branch in front and screeched full in her face.
    “It's all right!” said Snowbone, pulling the owlet out from under her shirt. “It's all right! I wasn't
stealing
it—I was trying to look after it. You should be more careful with the poor little thing! You can't leave it lying on the ground like an old apple, you know. Forests are dangerous places.”
    Reluctantly, Snowbone put the owlet back where she had found it and gave it one more stroke.
    “I wish I could keep you,” she whispered, “but I can't.” And with a deep sigh, she turned and walked away, deeper into the forest.
    When she reached the glade, Snowbone saw Figgis digging in the vegetable patch. As she approached, he spun round, holding the spade like a weapon. But when he saw who it was, the anger and fear fell away from his face and he lowered it.
    “Who were you expecting?” said Snowbone.
    “No one,” said Figgis wearily. He scanned the forest. “Are you on your own again?”
    Snowbone nodded.
    “You want to be careful,” said Figgis.
    “I'm not afraid,” said Snowbone.
    “I can see that,” said Figgis. Snowbone stood no taller than his middle, but she gazed fixedly at him, her hands on her hips, completely assured. He smiled. “Let's go in. I'll fix us something to eat.”
    “I didn't believe you, you know,” said Snowbone as she followed him. “When you said you weren't expecting anyone. You looked scared.”
    “I had visitors yesterday. Slave traders.”
    “Really? How do you know they were traders?”
    Figgis shrugged. “They were human. A bit rough. Mean-looking.”
    “Yes, but the sap-collectors look like that.”
    “Sap-collectors?” said Figgis. “Who are they?”
    “I don't really know,” said Snowbone. “Blackeye saw them. There was a gang of them, cutting down trees. But it was a bit strange, because they didn't take the timber. They had these long siphon things and they drilled into the wood. Then they drained off some white stuff into a flagon. They had hundreds of flagons, in crates. Oh, and there was this blue thing that came out of the earth and whizzed— Figgis, are you all right?”
    The tinker looked as if he were going to be sick. He swayed on his feet, then gripped the back of a chair for support.
    “Figgis?”
    “They're not trees,” he said heavily. “They're Ancestors.”
    “Sit down,” said Snowbone in confusion. “I'll put the kettle on.”
    “Snowbone, you have no idea what you've just told me! It's unbelievable. A nightmare.”
    “I don't understand.”
    “No, you wouldn't, because I hadn't got round to telling you. Forget the kettle—I want to show you something. Come on.”
    Figgis took her outside, across the glade and into the forest. There he stopped beside an enormous tree with a trunk so massive Snowbone couldn't walk round it in fewer than twenty steps.
    “Now
this,”
said Figgis, “might look like a normal tree, but it's not. It's an ashen tree. It didn't grow from a seed, like an oak or a sycamore. This was once a man. A living, breathing Ashenpeaker.”
    Snowbone stared at him.
“What?”
    “This is what I was planning to tell you today. You wanted to know how Ashenpeakers die? Well, we don't die. Not like humans. When our time comes, we Move On. It's a strange process. It takes several weeks, but basically we turn into trees. Ashen trees.”
    Snowbone was still staring—shocked, horrified, but desperately wanting to know more.
    “I know it's hard to take in,” said Figgis with a smile. “But it's true.”
    “Does it hurt?”
    “No, it doesn't hurt. You see this feller here?” He slapped the tree beside him. “This is my great-great-great-grandfather Burdock Figgis. One day, more than a hundred years ago, he felt his time had come. And so he came here, to this part of the forest, and slowly, peacefully, he Moved On. And this here”— he touched another vast ashen tree—“is his wife, my