Tears spilled over Gypsy cheeks. ‘I’m not your girl.’ Her words emerged forcefully from the bird cradled to her chest.
‘Why didn’t you take her voice the first time?’ Piper asked. ‘Instead of trying to drown her?’
‘I didn’t possess the skill then. I knew that by the time I mastered such a spell it could be too late. I might have grown to care for you . . .’
‘That tends to happen,’ Piper interjected.
‘ . . . and you would have destroyed me.’
‘That’s the difference between us,’ Gypsy said. ‘I always loved you, even though I knew what you’d done! And I’d never have used my words to harm you, even if I knew how.’ She gulped back tears, staring her mother in the eye. ‘Now I’m here I still don’t want to hurt you, but I won’t waste any more love on you.’
Lydia nodded without a hint of remorse.
She reached out and took the bird from Gypsy’s fingers, cradling it in her own, and for the first time since Gypsy had been standing there she realized how cold and numb her hands were. Half-frozen and useless. ‘Bringing the bird back here was a mistake,’ Lydia continued, almost kindly. ‘If you’d stayed away, you’d have kept your voice for a time . . . however long is left of this bird’s short life. But here, I’m the one in control. And the enchantment will last as long as I live. Which I intend to be a long time.’
‘And when the bird dies?’ Piper demanded. ‘What happens to her voice then?’
Lydia shrugged. ‘I’ll hide the voice. Somewhere you’ll never find it.’
You’re poison, Gypsy tried to say. But no words came. Now, in her mother’s grasp, the bird no longer spoke for her.
‘Turn around, Gypsy,’ Lydia said. ‘Go home, and don’t come back. Because if you do it’ll be the last journey you ever make.’
A fierce rushing began in Gypsy’s head. The wind was blowing up a gale around them, driving slivers of ice into her face, and the hatred she felt then made her question whether one of the shards had found its way into her heart. She rushed at her mother with a silent shriek that echoed only in her head, giving a mighty push that caught Lydia off guard and sent her away from the safety of her doorway and toppling into the snow. The bird fell from Lydia’s clutches and fluttered to the doorstep, huddling pathetically for shelter. Gypsy threw herself on her mother, cursing, kicking, dragging her by the hair towards the edge of the mountain, and they fell heavily on to the frozen ground.
‘Gypsy, no!’ Piper cried, hurling himself at her. ‘Don’t do this, don’t be like her! You’re better than that!’ He heaved her out of the snow and held her tight.
Gypsy paused, gasping, tears freezing on her face, and for a moment her whole body felt frozen with the shock and shame of what she had done. Clumps of her mother’s golden hair came away in her fingers. Bright blood criss-crossed Gypsy’s boots, trailing from Lydia’s mouth as she crawled through the snow, dotting it red. At some point during the struggle, the magpie fortune card Mitali had given to Gypsy had escaped her pocket and caught on the wind. It danced along, pausing, then spinning out of sight.
Snow swirled around them, catching in Gypsy’s eyelashes only to be replaced the moment she blinked it away. She could barely see Piper even though he was standing right next to her. The only trace of her mother was a crimson trail leading away from them.
‘She’s nothing,’ Piper shouted above the howling wind. ‘She’ll die here alone, with her spells and charms. She’s got no one! But you, you’ve got Papa, and you’ve got me, Gyps. You’ve always got me. But we’ve gotta get off this mountain before we die here!’ He tugged her arm, but still she resisted. This time, however, it wasn’t for the thing that was her mother.
The bird . . . the bird . . . where is it?
Gypsy shielded her face, trying to see where the cottage was, stumbling against hidden snow covered rocks. She did not notice the quick shapes moving straight away; circling them against the snow. Only when she heard a muttered curse from Piper did she realize they had been hunted, stalked. Yellow eyes flashed, hungry with the scent on the air; her mother’s blood. And Gypsy was covered in it, too.
‘The mountain cats,’ Piper hissed in her ear, drawing her close. ‘They’re gonna attack!’
The bird, she mouthed, and at the same time she heard her mother calling out.
‘Where is it? Sing, curse you!’
It was so cold now, cold and blind. Gypsy could see nothing, and could barely even feel Piper she was so numb. His lips were pressed against her ear, murmuring. ‘Keep still, keep quiet . . . they’re circling. They can smell the blood but the wind is throwing them off . . .’
Then through the snow they heard it, a faint little voice singing as the witch had commanded.
‘I will seek you, I will find you, wherever you may go . . .’
Gypsy’s voice, ringing out from the snow.
And just for a moment, the wind lulled as though it, too, were enchanted by that little voice. And the mountain cats heard it, and were guided by the promise of blood at the end, finally locating their weakened quarry.
Gypsy saw her mother’s blood-smeared hand reaching out, and white-furred winter starved limbs springing towards it.
No! she shouted soundlessly, but only the wind and the screams of her mother answered her. She scrabbled at Piper’s coat, but he beat her to it, taking out his flute. ‘Cover your ears,’ he commanded, and so she did as he blew exhausted breaths into the flute, melding a tune that she never heard.
One by one the mountain cats were lured away from the silent heap on the snow, their yellow eyes blank and their mouths dripping red, and at a graceful run swept past Gypsy and Piper to soar through the air, vanishing over the side of the mountain as though carried by the snow.
Finally Piper stopped playing and Gypsy lowered her hands. Together, they edged towards the cottage, fighting through the blizzard.
Lydia Spindle lay dead in the snow, a tangle of rags and hair, blood and bone. One pale hand was strangely untouched, reaching out towards something, the forefinger extended as though it was pointing. Gypsy sank to her knees, searching for white feathers stained red. But the bird was gone, no trace of it or the voice that had betrayed her mother’s whereabouts; her daughter’s voice. Her daughter’s words . . . ones that had been put to a tune some years ago, and which had ultimately drawn the mountain cats to her.
Lydia Spindle had always detested cats.
Gypsy had begun to stand when she saw it, half-hidden in a snowdrift.
A speckled teal egg, perfect and smooth. She picked it up, breathing warm breath on to it. Had her mother conjured it in her dying moments, as a peace offering or salvation? Or was it simply all that remained of the bird now that the witch who had enchanted it was no more?
‘Inside, quickly.’ Piper heaved against the cottage door and they half-fell into the hazy warmth. Wordlessly, they huddled by the fire, heaping it with wood. Soon, smoke curled away from it and the flames grew. When her hands were warm enough, Gypsy removed her gloves and cupped the egg, fingers tingling as heat flowed into them.
Faintly, there came a tap-tapping from within, followed by a tiny crack in the shell as a little beak nudged its way out. A downy white head came after, with two silver-coloured eyes like jewels. Gypsy watched as the shell fell away and the bird stretched its wings. When its beak opened she held her breath, but all that emerged was a croak, then a chirrup. And she smiled, because then she knew.
‘Gyps?’ Piper said questioningly.
She nodded, her eyes shining. ‘Snow,’ she said, tasting her voice for the first time in almost seven years. ‘I’ll call her Snow.’
He pulled her into his arms, holding her so tight she could barely breathe.
‘Careful!’ she scolded, laughing. ‘You nearly crushed us!’
He drew back just enough to let her catch her breath before kissing her, stealing it away again.
‘What was that for?’ she whispered.
‘For you,’ he said sim
ply.
‘But Jess . . .’ she began, confused. ‘I thought . . . you said . . .’
‘Jess . . .?’ He shook his head in confusion. ‘There’s never been no one else, Gypsy. Only you. Always you.’
‘But all those times . . .’ she looked away, embarrassed. ‘I saw you with her, in The Mermaid’s Dagger. You were sitting so close . . .’
‘Gyps, no.’ His voice was soft.
She searched his face, failing to understand.
‘She was teaching me to read.’ He paused, stroking her cheek. ‘Because I couldn’t be with you without some way of . . . without me knowing how you felt. Without you able to tell me.’
They stared at each other for a long moment.
‘Surely you don’t need words to know that,’ she said.
Slowly, they lay down side by side, as they had that night in front of Papa’s fire. Outside, the wind howled, but already it was weakening. It would soon pass.
On the mountainside, caught in a tiny snowdrift, a fortune card flapped like a magpie. If Gypsy had looked at it again, she would have seen it differently. For sometimes a silhouette of a bird flying can look as though it’s moving away from you, when, in fact, it’s coming your way.
Geraldine McCaughrean
‘I need to go. Sorry,’ said Fergal. His father appeared not to hear, but little by little, gingerly-gingerly, the car came to a halt. Dad was not a timid driver, but this was a car hired for the holidays and he did not know the terrain. He certainly had not been expecting snow. On the steep, narrow road which wound up and around, up and around Fuachd Munro, Dad had started to chew the collar of his pullover.
There had been no snow until they reached the mountain. There was none lying on the grassy landscape down below, but now the bristly trees on either side of the road were caked in the stuff. Slabs and walls and folds of whiteness all but hid the black mountain peak, and wrapped the bushes in Puffa jackets of snow.
‘You pick your places,’ said Fergal’s older sister, Ella.
‘Mind where you tread,’ said Mum. ‘It might be deep.’
‘Can I go, too?’ said his littler sister. ‘We could do snowballs!’
‘The snow would make your socks wet, Zizzi,’ said Mum, always ready with a reason.
‘Fergal doesn’t want you watching him,’ said Ella, always ready with the truth.
‘You could take the dog, though,’ said Dad. ‘Now I’m stopped.’
Fergal and Summer picked their way over hard-packed snow that creaked underfoot. It was good to be out of the car: Scotland might be picturesque, and home to Grandma, but it seemed to take a fearful long time to get from anywhere to anywhere else. More motorways: that was what the place needed. More service stations with toilets. Each time Fergal looked back he could see four oval faces pointing his way. So, of course, he went out of sight of the car and behind a tree. His pee sank golden into the snow-crust and steamed. He did not object to the dog watching him. Or the cockerel.
The cockerel was spinning gently round and round with a shrill, grating sound. Painted metal. Its perch was an arrow which, in the raw wind, pointed in every direction. Despite the cold, Fergal was mesmerized by the graunch-graunching noise and the crooked arrow. What was a weathercock doing sticking up out of a snowdrift?
Summer, the family’s golden retriever, breath turned to dragony smoke in the fierce cold, began digging in the snow so excitedly that she fell tail over nose onto her back. Daft dog.
Fergal’s father blew three impatient blasts on the car horn.
A moment later, there was a crack – muffled, like something breaking underground – and then a rushing noise.
Then Fergal was smothered in snow.
It came down on him out of the tree, knocking him off his feet, splattering him with pats of cold, on and on, until the colour of his clothing was lost and he was pinned to the ground. When he opened his mouth to yell, it filled up with snow, right to the back of his throat. The rushing, creaking, splashing noise went on, until he thought he must be buried utterly under fathoms of snow.
But no.
Crawling his fingers upwards, he sent them to look for air. They found their way to his face and scooped away the white blindness from his eyes, the suffocation out of his nose.
He started to give himself orders: sit up, get up, get out – which he ignored. His parents would come. His sisters would have seen it happen. They must be coming, even now, teetering over the slippery snow to dig him out and tell him off and get him into the warm car. A pain slashed into his knee – Summer looking for him with clawed paws. Not his parents.
Sit up. Get up. Get out. This time he obeyed, emerging like clotted milk from a bottle . . . into a world utterly changed.
Snow had not simply fallen from the tree, but from the mountain itself – an avalanche cascading off sheer rock carrying away trees, boulders, holly bushes . . . Nothing was as it had been – even the tin weathercock, now lying on its side, bent and twitching in the wind. The road was nowhere to be seen. Fergal hesitated, turned this way and that, looking for something he recognized so as to get his bearings; looking for the car. A whimper of sheer terror scaled his windpipe and escaped his mouth. A scream threatened to follow, but he clamped his hands to his mouth for fear he might bring down more snow – enough to expunge all trace of the living . . .
The car was nowhere, nowhere. Foothills of snow lay at the base of the blank black cliff and the air was awash with glittering particles of ice, swirling, settling, settling. There was not so much as a radio aerial to show him where the car lay, sunk, buried, silent.
Again the scream clogged his throat. ‘Someone help!’ he shouted. The mountain only at jeered him with echoes of his scared little voice. Someone help!
Returning to the tree, he tried to work it out: how many steps had he taken? How far had he departed from a straight line? It was important. It was life and death important. But nothing looked the same! Everything had been rubbed out by the avalanche. His family had been erased. Somewhere, beneath the snow, his father, mother and two sisters were trapped inside a tin box . . . He looked around, but he seemed to be the last person living – the very last person in the entire world – for the mountain was silent, except for the creak of snow and the sorrowful moaning of the wind.
Panic-stricken, Fergal began to dig – with his hands at first and then (when his hands went blue with cold) with a broken branch. The clods of snow fell straight back into place. The dog dug, too, but in utterly the wrong place, over by the tree. ‘Summer! Come here!’ She must think it all some kind of game. Useless dog. A retriever that did not retrieve. A guide dog puppy that had failed her exams on grounds of stupidity. Fergal went to drag her back.
But Summer had unearthed something, even if it wasn’t the car. Her claws squealed on some smooth and hard surface – slate – overlapping slates. As Fergal reached for her collar, there was a crack and a bark and a whimper and she . . . disappeared – fell into her own hole, and into the gaping space beneath it. The smell of charcoal filled Fergal’s nose. It even seemed to get into his mouth: charcoal and mouldy mildew. Both snow and earth had fallen away into some subterranean space – been swallowed by a gaping hole the shape of a startled mouth.
Summer was caught, upside down, in a kind of wooden cradle, surrounded by candles, which mostly went out in the rush of snow, or fell from their holders at the impact of the dog. Three or four flames fell away through the darkness and revealed a circle of paper-pale faces looking up at this sudden delivery of dog-in-a-basket. People! He was not alone after all! The mountain had shown him pity and offered up people! (Even so, let them not drop his dog.)
‘Play dead, Summer. Play dead,’ Fergal urged. ‘Don’t wriggle. You’ll fall.’ Summer continued to wriggle the best she could but, being wedged into the wooden chandelier, was not actually able to fall out of it to her death ten metres below.
There was an argument going on as to whether the people below should lower the chandelier or not. Ove
r by the wall, a girl about Fergal’s age was unwinding the rope from a cleat with that very idea in mind. But the adults were barking at her, ‘Wolf! Wolf! No, lassie! Stop!’
‘She’s not a wolf, she’s a retriever!’ called Fergal. ‘And she weighs a tonne! Help her-over-there! Help her! She’ll never hold the weight!’
The girl with her hands on the rope hesitated.
At the sight of Fergal’s head beyond the hole in their roof, the adults all but lost interest in the dog-dilemma. They gaped at him – elderly faces without a drop of colour, boggling and goggling; gnarled hands held to cricks in their necks. Snowflakes spilled, in slow motion, down into their colourless eyes.
‘’Tis a boy.’
‘An angel, is he?’
‘Nah. Just a balach.’
Summer gave a long, baleful howl.
From a next-door room, more people arrived. The hair on the tops of their heads was thicker, but though they seemed younger, that hair was still almost white, their eyes wrinkled and peering. They, too, came to stare blankly up at Fergal.
‘Please come. I need help. The car . . .’
One or two joined the girl in lowering the dog-in-a-chandelier slowly from the roof space. As it reached the floor, Fergal, on a wild impulse, jumped aboard the rope and climbed down it to the stone slabs below. He must make them understand the urgency! They had to come and help, even if he had to drag them out of this . . . what? This . . . where?
The crowd of old folk scattered to a safe distance.
‘We’ve no been dancin’!’ said an elderly gentleman, pointing at Fergal with his walking stick. ‘We’ve no. Ye canna say we have!’
Fergal knelt for a while, hugging his dog. He tried to explain – about the avalanche – about the car – but he was suddenly helpless with shuddering cold and fearful of these strange, colourless, underground, inexplicable people. They seemed only to part-believe in him and the feeling was mutual. They were all dressed in such dark, plain clothes, mittens, moccasins that, away from the sparse candlelight, they virtually disappeared, moving in and out of invisibility. As people do in dreams. Finally, the girl came and placed a hand on him. ‘S’a bonnie hound,’ she said.
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