He looked Moll and Siddy up and down. ‘Who are you?’ His words were scuffed with a lisp.
Moll’s mind reeled with gypsies and shepherds, but she said nothing.
‘We’re from Tanglefern Forest,’ Siddy replied. ‘We’re – we’re looking for something and we,’ he stopped, suddenly unsure, ‘think you might have it.’
The man was silent for a moment, then he nodded, opening the door further. ‘My name’s Jones. I used to be the headmaster of the village school, but more recently other,’ he paused, ‘interests occupy my time.’ He adjusted the glasses on his nose. ‘I’ve been expecting you both. You’d better come in.’
Neither Moll nor Siddy moved; something about the man’s manner made them cautious.
Jones watched the rain falling about the porch, then he smiled. ‘You can trust me; we have friends in common.’ He leant against the door frame. ‘I’ve journeyed to the heath before Tanglefern Forest many times in my life – it was there I met Mellantha.’
Moll frowned. ‘You knew Mellantha?’ She felt a sudden sadness as she remembered the witch doctor who’d died trying to help Moll and Alfie escape from Skull. But how had Jones known her?
The man nodded again. ‘My parents – and my grandparents before them – swore by Mellantha’s herbal remedies. Bilberries to fight eye infections and cramps, dandelions to cure kidney disease, hawthorn for the heart.’ He paused, his lisp more noticeable now. ‘It was Mellantha who told me about a deeper magic lying hidden in the forest. It was she who told me about the Bone Murmur.’
Moll glanced at Siddy.
Jones added. ‘She said I’d have a part to play in it all, that sooner or later a girl from the forest would come looking for an amulet.’ He went on. ‘I heard the smugglers talk in the village about two gypsy children running loose – and I wondered whether that might be you.’ Jones blinked at Moll and Siddy through his spectacles. ‘If you want the amulet, I suggest you come inside.’
Moll and Siddy looked at one another. This was their only lead on the amulet – they’d got this far and they had to follow it through – and so, gripping Siddy’s hand, Moll stepped over the threshold and followed Jones down a lamplit corridor.
She leant in close to Siddy. ‘I don’t trust him. There’s something strange about his skin, how it’s all perfect and unlined. It’s creepy.’
‘That’s just his face,’ Siddy whispered. ‘Do not bring it up, Moll.’
‘In here,’ said Jones, ushering them into the sitting room. ‘It’s the warmest place in the house on a night like this.’
Moll and Siddy followed him in. A fire crackled in the hearth and a dog lay curled before it, sleeping peacefully. Two well-worn armchairs had been positioned either side of the fireplace, next to side tables scattered with old books; paintings hung from the walls, their gilt frames glowing in the lamplight. It all looked so cosy, but for some reason a sense of unease tugged inside Moll.
Jones fetched two blankets from a trunk and passed them to Moll and Siddy. ‘Wrap yourselves up and take a seat. You look as if you’ve had quite a night.’
They took the blankets, then perched together on an armchair by the fire. Moll let the warmth from the fire spread right through her and tried not to think about how Jones’s skin barely moved when he spoke. She watched in silence as he lifted a log from a wicker basket and placed it on the fire, then sat in the armchair opposite them.
‘You’re the child from the Bone Murmur, aren’t you?’ Jones said.
Moll shifted her weight uncomfortably and a loneliness swelled inside her. Gryff was the beast from the Bone Murmur – but where was he? And Oak? She’d have bet her life on them both coming after her as soon as they could. And yet . . .
She looked at Jones for a while, then nodded.
Siddy fiddled with the hem of the blanket. ‘Do you have the amulet? Moll threw the Oracle Bones and they led us to you.’
‘Yes, yes!’ Jones lisped excitedly. ‘Mellantha told me to guard it with my life should any witch doctors come hunting it out.’ He took a sip of brandy from a glass on the table, then he shook his head and his glasses wobbled. ‘Where are my manners? You’ll both need a drink to warm yourselves up.’
‘We just need the am—’ Moll began.
But Jones was already hurrying from the room and, as he passed the mirror above the fireplace, Moll frowned. For a moment, there seemed to be a movement flickering within the glass, something not cast by Jones’s reflection. Then it was gone.
She turned to Siddy. ‘We need to get the amulet and head back to the cove – fast.’
Siddy motioned towards the door. ‘I don’t think Jones gets much company up here.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘It sounds like he wants to talk.’
Moll tapped her boot against the rug impatiently, then she glanced down at the dog before the fire. She squinted at it more closely and gasped.
‘It’s stuffed!’ she hissed.
Siddy peered at it. ‘So it is.’ He shivered and fumbled for his talisman; there was something slightly unpleasant about the dog, as if the homeliness of the room had wilted just a little.
Then Moll grabbed Siddy’s arm. ‘Look!’
Siddy raised a hand to his mouth and a shaky moan escaped from his lips. ‘The mirror – what’s happening to the mirror?’
The glass in the mirror seemed to ripple under the lamplight. Then a shadowy blur slid and slipped within the frame before stilling and hardening into an image.
A face. And Moll’s blood curdled as she took it in.
A mask of snakeskin stared back at her, diamonds of brown and green scales split by a smile that held a flickering forked tongue, and two milky eyes. Moll made to leap up, but her limbs wouldn’t move; they were frozen like Siddy’s seemed to be beside her – stiffened by fear or by something darker. The mouth in the mirror pursed and Moll didn’t need to hear its voice to know the single word that it was shaping: Molly.
Her pulse raced; she knew all too well that witch doctors could control people once they knew their name. And was this a Shadowmask buried somewhere deep inside the mirror? Or . . . She gulped. Was the Shadowmask here in the room already? She glanced back, just her neck free from the sinister hold she appeared to be trapped under. But only Jones was there, staring in silence at the hideous face within his mirror.
Moll tried to speak, but her words were snared inside her. Whatever dark magic had crept into the room had seized her voice as well. She blinked terrified, wide eyes at Jones, but all he could do was stare straight ahead at the mirror. There was a snakeskin mask glinting back at him where his reflection should have been and, powerless to help, Moll could only watch.
And then Jones reached a hand behind him and clasped at something at the nape of his neck. Unhooking some sort of catch, he pulled a fist of skin up over his head.
Moll’s stomach heaved. Siddy’s eyes swelled with horror.
Jones was peeling his face away. His spectacles tumbled to the ground and, glinting in the lamplight as he pulled the skin back, was what the mirror had shown all along: a face of snakeskin, as if the markings themselves had been tattooed on to his skin.
Moll’s blood ran cold. Jones was a Shadowmask. She tried to spring up and Siddy thrashed his head, but the curse they were under held their bodies still.
Jones let a handful of skin slither to the floor and laughed, his forked tongue darting between his teeth, his milky eyes settling on Moll. Then he tore off his jumper to reveal a dark green cloak that draped down to his ankles.
‘I suppose the mirror was bound to un-hex itself sometime.’ He smirked, his voice dry and lisping, like a snake’s hiss. ‘And you thought you were following an Oracle Bone clue sent to you by the old magic . . .’
Moll’s heart plunged.
‘Darkebite may be a Shadow Keeper who called in the owls to track you down,’ Jones sneered, ‘but it was I who intercepted your bone reading, twisting the old magic and turning it bad. It was all part of my plan to lead you to me.’
> Moll’s thoughts crashed in on her. They’d walked right into the Shadowmasks’ trap.
Jones dipped his snakeskin head and Moll glimpsed the markings running over his scalp like a path of scales.
‘As you’ll have guessed, I was never a headmaster.’ He sucked in the last syllable as if to savour it. ‘My name’s Ashtongue. I am the fourth Shadowmask and I can communicate with the dark spirits of the Underworld, calling on them to turn your magic against you.’ He smirked. ‘You had no idea you were dealing with a Spirit Talker when you knocked on my door, did you?’ He looked around casually. ‘A shame your wildcat’s not here, Molly.’
Moll shuddered at her name.
Ashtongue went on. ‘But we’ll make do without him and I think I can have some fun with your little friend here.’
Moll made to move, her heart drumming inside her ribcage, her muscles straining against the curse. But it held her fast. She thought of the pattern Mellantha had explained to her and Alfie within the word Shadowmask – each letter in the word shadow standing in for a witch doctor’s name: Skull, Hemlock, Ashtongue, Darkebite . . . Panic bubbled inside Moll’s throat. Skull had come with his Dream Snatch, Hemlock had brought poison, Darkebite was a Shadow Keeper, but this distortion of the old magic was even worse somehow – and she and Siddy couldn’t even move against it. Cinderella Bull had been right: the thresholds were opening fast now and the dark magic was all around them.
Ashtongue made to move closer, but, instead of walking, he dropped to all fours and scampered to the middle of the room, his hands and feet turned inwards like some sort of sinister lizard.
Moll turned to Siddy and saw her fear mirrored on his face. And, as Ashtongue dipped his head, Moll could only listen, every muscle inside her quaking with dread. The words came in a mutter, the Shadowmask’s forked tongue hissing at the end of sounds:
‘Here is the girl who walks with the beast.
She is trapped and afraid; on her fear I do feast.
Her name I have used to make her hold still,
Until Darkebite comes, bearing all kinds of ill.
Molly Pecksniff you are, I’ve claimed you as mine.
Now you’ll wait with me here for the Shadowmasks’ sign.’
A scratching inside the chimney started, slow at first and then louder, faster, like a frantic animal scrabbling to break free. The flames in the grate shrank and dimmed until they fizzled away completely, leaving the logs black and still. The noise was now a scraping sound, like nails on a blackboard, and then a small brown creature tumbled into the grate – a bat with a furred body tucked beneath two leathery wings.
The bat crawled out of the grate into the hearth and as it moved it began to grow. A putrid smell, like burnt skin, clogged Moll’s nose and the bat continued to swell. Where its body had been there was now a human torso draped in black robes; from its back two giant wings arched up into peaks, all leather and veins, and between them was a mask of charcoaled wood, surrounded by a shock of wild black hair. The Shadow Keeper had emerged in all its menace.
Moll’s muscles seized up, clamped by Ashtongue’s curse, and her eyes glazed with fear.
‘Welcome, Darkebite, Master of the Soul Splinter,’ Ashtongue hissed, drawing his body up to full height.
Darkebite took a step closer to Moll and Siddy, jet-black eyes sunken inside the mask. ‘Molly Pecksniff.’
The words were neither a question nor a fact. They were a claim. And the voice that spoke them was unmistakably female.
Moll flinched. The other Shadowmasks had been men and Moll had presumed Darkebite would be no different. But the Shadow Keeper was a woman – a woman so riddled with evil it made Moll’s mouth turn dry. And for some reason, this made Darkebite feel even more sinister than before.
Darkebite reached a hand inside her cloak and pulled out a shard of glimmering black ice. Moll’s breath choked inside her. The Soul Splinter. The weapon that had killed her parents and that had to be destroyed to save the old magic. Darkebite’s long, thin fingers clasped it tight and her wings seemed to tremble with anticipation.
Moll tried again to work her way free of the curse, but her limbs were like stone. She thought fast. Back in the forest Alfie had told her that the Shadowmasks could only break the Bone Murmur if they killed the child and the beast at the same time.
Darkebite’s mask tilted to one side. ‘Think I won’t use it on you because your wildcat’s not here?’ Her voice was scratchy, like a bat screech, and behind slits in the mask red lips curled back and two dark eyes gleamed. ‘Now the thresholds are opening the dark magic is growing stronger, and we’re going to destroy your precious Bone Murmur piece by piece.’
Darkebite raised the Soul Splinter high and her wings twitched with pleasure.
Moll thought of Oak and Mooshie – of all her friends back in the cave and in the forest willing her on. She thought of Gryff who could build courage inside her just by being at her side. And she found herself thinking of Alfie, of the horrors they’d faced in the forest and how they’d fought past every single one together. Beside her, Siddy’s eyes were wide, his nails digging hard into the armchair. But Moll could sense his stubborn strength, his refusal to give in.
Darkebite drew closer still, then lowered the Soul Splinter so that it was pointing right at Moll. The girl shut her eyes and let the fear beat louder inside her while Ashtongue, sloping down on to all fours, crawled up and seized Moll by the hair. Siddy threw back his head from side to side, trying to break the curse, but Darkebite brought the Soul Splinter up to Moll’s face.
‘Yes,’ hissed Ashtongue. ‘At last . . .’
Moll pressed her lips together tight; every muscle in her throat clenched. She wouldn’t let them drip the darkness in.
‘Open her mouth, Ashtongue,’ Darkebite crooned. ‘And—’
Her words were cut short by an enormous crash. The front window Moll and Siddy had seen lit up from the track exploded into the room. Shards of glass smashed down on to the floorboards, broken pieces skittering across the wood. And standing among them, panting but alive, was a boy with a jay feather earring and a wildcat.
A familiar boldness surged inside Moll and her legs grew fierce as she fought her way out of the Shadowmasks’ curse.
‘Gryff!’ she cried, twisting from Ashtongue’s clutch and dragging Siddy behind the armchair. And then in a quieter voice, one less sure of itself, ‘Alfie.’
Gryff rushed towards Moll and as she knelt down he threw himself against her, burying his head in her cardigan. Moll cradled him tight as if a missing part of her had been returned, and as she drew back she noticed the blood on his fur where the glass had nicked him. But there was no time to do anything about it. Alfie tossed aside the branch he’d used to break the window and eyed the Shadowmasks with loathing.
‘It – it’s him,’ Ashtongue whispered, recoiling.
Darkebite shifted, quickly tucking the Soul Splinter beneath her cloak.
Moll glanced towards Alfie, her chest full of unlearnt things.
‘You – you came back,’ Siddy said.
Alfie nodded. Then he held up a small, rounded piece of rock for the Shadowmasks to see. Half of it seemed to be made of crystal and it glinted a deep orange under the lamplight. Ashtongue and Darkebite took a step backwards.
‘I found the second amulet,’ Alfie said, glaring at the Shadowmasks. His voice was hard and loud. ‘And it’s filled with a power that can break you both, just like the first amulet destroyed Skull and Hemlock.’
The orange seemed to glitter brighter, but, as Alfie thrust it higher, Moll frowned. Was that really the second amulet inside Alfie’s palm? She’d been waiting for this moment – waiting to have her ma back, even if only fleetingly – but something didn’t feel right.
Darkebite slid a look at Ashtongue. ‘They’re both here. The child and the beast. Now the Soul Splinter will be even more powerful; just one step and we can splinter their souls.’ Her wings unfurled and the room seemed to darken.
; Ashtongue’s forked tongue slipped between his teeth. ‘But the boy, he could—’
Darkebite raised a hand and Ashtongue’s words were cut short. ‘He could – but would he?’ She watched Alfie intently, a column of shadows searching him out.
Gryff leapt on to the back of the armchair, snarling and ripping the fabric with his claws. He swiped his paw at a vase that stood on the table beside it and it crashed to the ground, a sprawl of broken china. Moll and Siddy huddled behind him.
Ashtongue slithered to the floor, creeping towards the fire on all fours. He raised a snakeskin face to Darkebite. ‘It needs to be without the boy.’
Gryff lowered his body into a crouch and Moll could tell that he was getting ready to pounce, to smash the Soul Splinter to pieces.
Darkebite nodded at Ashtongue, then she glanced at Alfie’s amulet. ‘And with more power from the Underworld on our side.’
Alfie lunged towards them, clasping his knife tight, and Gryff leapt into the air. But the Shadowmasks were fading, their bodies breaking apart like grains of sand, and, seconds later, they had vanished from the room completely. Moll stared at the floor; all that was left was a snakeskin recently shed – and the smell of burnt wood lingering in the air.
For a few seconds, no one said anything, then Moll turned to face Alfie, her jaw set hard. ‘You left.’ The hurt and anger beat inside her. ‘You didn’t tell anyone. You just left.’
‘You could’ve told me,’ Siddy said. ‘But you snuck out of the alcove without saying a word.’
Alfie looked at the ground. ‘You don’t understand, Sid. Neither of you do.’
Moll took a step forward. ‘You didn’t give us a chance!’ Her cheeks were hot and red. ‘Then you – you just come back and—’
Siddy stepped in. ‘We’re grateful you helped us against the Shadowmasks, Alfie, we really are – but how do we know you’re not just going to run off again?’
‘I’ll explain, I promise I will,’ Alfie said. ‘But we’ve got to get out of here, back to Little Hollows before the Shadowmasks summon the owls again.’
Soul Splinter Page 8