Goosebumps peppered Moll’s neck as she recalled the words of the man on the platform: Grown men reduced to wrecks, children with haunted eyes.
‘What if the last two Shadowmasks have already reached Glendrummie?’ she said. ‘What if we’re too late?’
‘We’ve got to try,’ Domino replied.
They lapsed into silence again and listened to the wheels rattling on and on into the night, then Siddy gave a resigned sigh. ‘The whole country moves south, away from the danger, and we move north. Right into it.’
Moll pulled back on the pouch of her catapult and forced her voice to be strong. ‘I hate following what other people are doing.’
Siddy lay back down and looked at the roof of the compartment. ‘I miss him,’ he said after a while. ‘It feels all wrong going after the amulet without Alfie. We were a Tribe before – we broke rules, built dens and got stuff done – but now . . .’
Moll tried to reply, but the words choked in her throat.
Domino fumbled in his rucksack for a box of matches, then he struck one and light danced about the compartment. His face shone beneath it, stubbled and tanned from years of outdoor living. ‘We’re going to do this. All of us together,’ he said. ‘We’re going to find the final amulet, we’re going to destroy the Shadowmasks and we’re going to find Alfie.’
They were only words, but they were the ones that mattered and the confidence of them burned bright in the gloom.
Siddy pulled the blanket up to his chin. ‘I wish Porridge the Second hadn’t turned down the trip,’ he mumbled. ‘All that slithering out of my pocket and burying his head in the soil. I mean, I can see why Hermit wasn’t keen, what with the train being so far away from the sea and everything. But I expected more from Porridge.’
Moll smiled. Siddy’s latest pets, a terrified crab called Hermit and a depressed earthworm called Porridge the Second, hadn’t joined them on the journey north, despite Siddy’s best attempts at getting them fired up, so he had been forced to soldier on without them. But Siddy always knew when to lighten the mood and Moll was suddenly glad of the friends she had around her.
Eventually they drifted off to sleep again and, when they stirred hours later, they woke to a crisp slant of sunlight streaming through a crack in the compartment.
Domino pulled back the door and whistled. ‘Take a look at this.’
Moll and Siddy huddled behind him and gasped. It was like a different country out there. Fields rushed by, but they were no longer filled with haystacks or closed in by hedgerows. The landscape here was rugged – sprawling fields and tumbled stone walls – and everything was coated in a silver-blue frost that glinted in the dawn. Gates were dusted white, wild grasses had been stiffened and whole woods sparkled. Moll looked towards a forest in the distance. Even from the train she could see it was bigger than the one she’d grown up in – bigger and wilder somehow.
She glanced down at Gryff whose eyes were fixed beyond the trees, to where the valleys rose and fell, then built up into moorland that stretched for as far as she could see. The beast from lands full wild, the Bone Murmur called him, and as Moll looked upon this strange land she found herself putting an arm around Gryff. She understood that wild animals didn’t belong to anyone, but, even so, the thought of Gryff returning to the northern wilderness without her made her want to hold him tight and never let go.
They passed a field full of horned cows with shaggy orange coats which Domino pointed out were highland cows, then they turned back into the compartment and began packing blankets into rucksacks.
‘We’ll need to jump from the train before we arrive at the station if we want to avoid being seen,’ Domino said.
Moll climbed over the sacks and swung her quiver on to her back. ‘What time will we reach Glendrumm—’
The train horn blasted.
They looked at each other, wide-eyed, then hurried back to the door. The train bent round a corner suddenly and there, no more than five hundred metres away, was the station. Domino’s eyes flicked between it and the bank of frosty grass whirring past beside them. Then he lowered himself into a crouch.
‘Jump!’
Sid’s jaw fell open. ‘Now?’
Domino leapt from the train, Moll and Gryff followed and then, finally, Siddy hurled himself on to the bank after them. The train careered away and, as Siddy dusted the frost from his coat, the others picked their way towards him.
‘Train jumping before sunrise,’ he muttered. ‘What’ll we be doing by midday?’
Moll tugged on a moleskin flat cap and the leather gloves lined with sheepskin that Mooshie had made for her last winter, then they clambered up the bank and over the stone wall into the field. There were no highland cows or sheep around, just a rusted trough glazed with ice and a few scattered clumps of bracken.
Domino handed round the last of the bread and nuts, then he pointed towards the other end of the field. ‘We’ll head for that copse of woodland. It’s just past the station so we’re bound to stumble across the road to Glendrummie beyond it.’
Moll nodded. They’d found the first amulet by following an Oracle Bone clue that Moll’s pa had left for her and they’d unearthed the second using the reading Moll had deciphered after throwing the Oracle Bones herself. But now they were on their own, with only the fire spirits’ fleeting message to go on. Moll pulled the collar up on her coat and crunched over the frost after Domino.
‘It’s so quiet up here,’ Siddy said as he drew level with Moll and Gryff.
She listened for the coos of the wood pigeons or a robin’s trill, but she heard nothing. The landscape was mute and what had seemed almost magical before now made Moll’s stomach churn. It was only autumn and yet the countryside around them was on the edge of winter.
She looked at Domino. ‘I knew it was going to be colder in the north, but frosts in early autumn – that doesn’t seem right . . .’
Domino nodded. ‘I’d been thinking the same. Something’s amiss.’
Siddy tightened his grip on the bow slung over his shoulder. ‘When we were down by the sea, the Shadowmasks sucked whole woods and farmlands of life. What if this is the same?’
They glanced to their right to see the train pulled up into the station. Heads down, they carried on walking into the copse of fir trees, tall and dark around them, until they came across a dirt track. Moll placed one hand on her catapult, the other on her bow, and turned down it with Gryff by her side.
‘Glendrummie,’ Siddy murmured as they passed a sign on the side of the road with bold lettering stamped above a painting of a white plant with wiry brown stems.
‘White heather,’ Moll said. ‘Mooshie told me you only get it up here in the north – it’s meant to grant luck and protection, I think.’
Domino took a deep breath. ‘Well, let’s hope it does.’
Where the fir trees ended, the village began. Stone cottages with slate roofs and green doors lined a wide track and behind them frosted gardens glinted in the sun. Parked along the kerb were several carts and empty horse traps and, as the group walked on, they spotted narrow side streets leading to smaller roads fringed with cottages. They carried on walking, past a cluster of shop fronts with CLOSED signs hanging in the windows and striped awnings jutting out above: Glendrummie Grocers, Bel’s Butchers, The Tweed Tea Shop. There was a church too, further down the road, its steeple climbing high above the rest of the village. But there was one thing very obviously missing.
‘Where are all the villagers?’ Siddy whispered.
Moll scanned the cottages, but the windows were shuttered and every door was closed – some had even been barred with planks of wood – and a heavy silence hung over everything.
‘It’s like a ghost town,’ Moll murmured, reaching a hand down to Gryff’s back.
Domino twisted the rings on his fingers. ‘They can’t all have left. Can they?’
Moll gritted her teeth. ‘The old magic told us to come here – it’s the only lead we have.’
She glanced towards a cottage on her left, then frowned. There were no shutters on the upstairs windows and she could have sworn she glimpsed a movement behind the glass. Moll blinked and looked again, but there was nothing and so, shaking her head, she walked on.
They made their way through the village, the sound of their boots scuffing the track coarse against the silence. And then they heard a sound that made their blood run cold. It was quick and sharp, like silk being ripped. Only it wasn’t silk. It was something much, much worse and Moll and Siddy had grown to fear that sound almost as much as the Shadowmasks themselves. The noise came again and Moll’s spine pricked with sweat.
The air was tearing. Invisible thresholds were opening in the sky all around them. Gryff snarled. He knew as much as Moll and Siddy what that meant.
In moments, the Shadowmasks’ dark magic would pour in from the Underworld.
Gryff’s hackles rose and Moll swung her bow down from her shoulder, grabbed an arrow from her quiver and nocked it to the string. Siddy did the same while Domino drew out his knife. Then they waited, braced for the owls or the wolves – whatever cursed creatures the Shadowmasks had conjured to kill them.
But what came was very different.
The weathervane on top of the church spire creaked, then a large cloud rolled over the sun and the village grew suddenly dark. Slowly, the arrow on the weathervane began to turn, grating round and round even though there was no wind.
‘Wh – what’s happening?’ Siddy stammered.
The world turned darker still as more clouds pushed across the sky and the air closed in around them, brooding with an unspoken darkness.
Moll blinked back her fear. ‘Whatever’s out there, we can fight it.’
Gryff growled, pacing a circle around her.
There was a moan of thunder in the distance which, seconds later, spilled through the village into rumbles so loud they burrowed inside Moll’s bones. Then the sky opened and rain poured down.
Moll wiped the water from her eyes. ‘Maybe – maybe it’s just a storm,’ she spluttered. ‘And we’ve got to sit it out.’
Siddy shook his head. ‘But the thresholds – we heard them opening. There’ll be worse to come than this.’
The rain fell faster – harder – until what seemed like litres and litres of water were bucketing down from the sky. Moll stood against it, poised with her bow, but no creatures advanced towards them and no masked figures appeared. Only the rain clattered down, churning the track to mud, and with every breath Moll took she felt the water clawing its way in through her lips and snaking into her ears. The sky grew darker still and the thunder bellowed, but this time there was something sinister in its call – something intended just for Moll. She gripped her bow tighter as a single word groaned through the thunder: MOLLY.
Domino stepped in front of Moll, shielding her with his arms. ‘The Shadowmasks have sent this storm because they know you’re here. They can’t be far away now.’
Moll’s eyes darted around, but only the rain thrust down, smacking against her skin, needling through her coat.
Domino lowered his knife. ‘Get under the shop awnings! We need to make a plan!’
They charged across the road, spraying mud and water up over their boots, then they crouched together in front of a shop, their clothes soaked through.
Moll narrowed her eyes. ‘We can take them – whatever they bring. We—’
The wind came out of nowhere – sudden, wild and raging with menace. It slid beneath the shop’s awning, buffeting them from every angle and shaking the glass in the windows.
‘Hold on to each other!’ Domino yelled.
The awning trembled, its metal poles clanked and Moll wrapped one arm round Siddy’s waist and the other over Gryff’s back. Shutters clanged, a pot plant crashed to the ground and the awning tore off into the sky.
Then, before anyone could react, the storm snatched Moll.
She screamed as the wind wrenched her backwards, sending her flying into the track. Sharp gusts followed, whipping her legs over her head and dragging her face down through the mud. Gryff charged through the water, then set his teeth into Moll’s coat and yanked her over. Her face was smeared with dirt and she was gasping for air, but the wildcat steeled his body against the wind, shielding Moll from its force, until Domino and Siddy could pull her back up. Again the wind roared and the rain pelted down and Domino wrapped his arms round Moll, claiming her as his amid the gale.
‘You can’t beat me with a storm!’ Moll shouted at the sky.
But even she knew this wasn’t an ordinary storm; the Shadowmasks hadn’t finished with them yet.
‘The cart on the side of the road!’ Siddy shouted. ‘We can hold on to it!’
Heads down, they battled up the street towards the wooden cart. Gryff slid beneath it, out of the wind, and Moll and Siddy clung to the sides while Domino looked up and down the street. His eyes grew suddenly large.
‘Look!’ he yelled. ‘In that cottage across the road! People!’
Sure enough, a family was peering out from a gap in the curtains framing an attic window. But, as Moll took in their pale faces and haunted eyes, she shivered. She had seen fear before – Siddy’s expression in the face of the Shadowmasks’ owls, Alfie’s look when he discovered the truth about his past – but this was as if fear itself had crippled the villagers’ bodies.
‘There’s – there’s something not right about them,’ Moll cried.
‘Stay here and hold on to the cart just in case these people are mixed up in the Shadowmasks’ magic,’ Domino gasped, ‘but my bet is that they’re scared, just like us.’
He ran through the rain towards the cottage and hammered on the door. No answer. He yanked the knob, then pushed hard, but it wouldn’t budge and, as Domino shouted and beat his fists against it, Moll and Siddy watched the people slip away from the window and draw the curtains across. Reeling backwards, Domino tried the next door, and the next – but every single one was locked. He looked back at Moll and Siddy.
‘There are people hiding in this village!’ he cried. ‘Someone will let us in – surely?’
The storm seethed and Moll felt the wooden planks of the cart burn into her fingers as the wind tried to yank her free.
‘We need to help Domino look!’ she panted.
Siddy bit his lip. ‘You saw those people, Moll – all thin and hunched with eyes full of terror. Something dreadful’s happened to them and they could be bound up in the Shadowmasks’ magic for all we know.’ He gripped the cart harder. ‘I don’t think we’ll be any safer inside.’
Moll groaned. ‘We can’t just wait here until the witch doctors come for me!’
As if in response, a clap of thunder ground out Moll’s name a second time and then the rain drummed down even harder and great balls of hail clattered down from the sky. They pounded against Moll’s head and stabbed at her cheeks, but she clung to the cart and watched as Domino battled his way towards the church. He ducked beneath the porch, out of sight, then emerged a second later.
‘Over here!’ he roared. ‘The church door’s open!’
Moll and Siddy lunged into the hail, their arms wrapped tightly around each other’s shoulders as they waded across the mud track with Gryff to the church. Domino bolted the door behind them, then they collapsed on to the wooden pews, clutching their hail-bruised faces. It was cool and still inside the church as if the mighty stone walls might be enough to hold the storm back.
‘Are you OK?’ Domino asked, wiping clumps of mud from Moll’s trousers.
‘The villagers,’ Moll stammered. ‘It’s more than fear that’s keeping them inside their homes. Sid and I saw it in their faces.’
Siddy brushed the hailstones from his hair. ‘Something dark has happened here.’
Domino nodded. ‘In the last cottage I tried I saw a couple rocking on the floor, their skin so white they could have been ghosts . . . That’s what made me turn back towards you both.’
The thunder pealed a
nd Gryff stalked a circle around Moll’s legs, his ears flattened to his head.
‘We’re not safe,’ Moll muttered. ‘Gryff can sense it. We need a hiding place.’
They staggered down the aisle, past the stained-glass windows lining the walls, right up to the altar at the far end. Outside the thunder boomed and the hail slammed down, then there was a flash and the whole church brightened for a second before plunging back into gloom.
‘Lightning,’ Moll whispered.
Siddy’s shoulders bunched. ‘There must be somewhere safe we can hide.’
Once more the church lit up and as Moll looked through the stained-glass windows she saw bolt after bolt carving up the sky.
‘We need—’
An almighty crash drowned out her words as the two windows either side of them imploded, sending shards of glass hurtling inwards. The group charged back down the aisle, their arms folded across their eyes, as the next set of windows exploded in a shower of glass around them. But there was no time to check if everyone was OK. Window after window burst, as if the glass itself was chasing them back through the church. They ran faster, the sound of shattering glass ringing in their ears, until they threw back the bolt on the door and burst out of the building beneath a sky scarred with yellow.
They shrank back beneath the porch. Domino’s hand was bleeding, Siddy’s coat had been ripped and the fur on Gryff’s leg was stained red. The lightning struck again, hitting the church and sending a chunk of stonework crunching down towards Moll. But Domino threw himself against her, knocking her out of the way, before leaping aside as the slab smashed to the ground. Gryff limped towards Moll who held him close.
‘We can’t fight the storm,’ Moll panted. ‘We can’t run from it either. We need protection – somehow.’
The lightning crackled on.
‘The last cottage on this side of the road that you didn’t try.’ Moll squinted through the hail and pointed to it. ‘It has flowerpots outside it and it looks like they’re filled with white heather.’
The Night Spinner Page 3