by Linda Davies
She found lots of waterfalls and many pools, but no green turning blue, no shimmering earth, no cave that lay veiled behind the falls. Nothing that matched the riddle pool.
She’d just go out again tomorrow, widen her search. She’d go alone again, she decided. For some reason, this was something she didn’t want to share with James, and besides, she was sure he had secrets of his own.
She wondered what he was doing. She pulled out her phone, protected in its waterproof cover, and tapped out a text to him.
What you up to? Everyone’s out, want to come round?
She sent the text but there was no answering ping.
Ten minutes later, the rain turned to snow, as it so often did in the mountains, even in spring, and Merry forgot about her phone. By the time she got home an hour later, she was chilled to the bone, her fingers and face numb.
She didn’t want to turn her pony out into the fields when Jacintha was still warm from exercise. So she rubbed her down, dried her with a towel and left her with food and water in one of the old stables. The rest of the herd were fine to stay out. Welsh Mountain ponies were tough and hardy, well used to extreme conditions.
She ran to the house. No sign of the Land Rover. Her parents and brother were out there somewhere in the snow … they’d have to cross the high pass to get back from Brecon, that remote, barren road between the peaks where the winds howled with a peculiar savagery, where the snow drifted deep, where a breakdown or a skid could be fatal.
Fingers still numb, struggling against the wind, Merry battled to pull open the door to the boot room. She blew inside with a gust of wind and snow. She turned and leant her whole body against the door, heaving it closed again. Inside, she quickly made herself a hot chocolate to warm up, then, curling her fingers around the mug, she picked up the phone and called her mother’s mobile. It rang and rang. No reply. She bit her lip and tried not to worry. Then her own mobile rang. It was James.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi. What’s up? Where are you?’ asked Merry.
‘In Manchester.’
‘What the heck are you doing in Manchester?’
There was a pause and when James next spoke, he couldn’t hide the excitement in his voice.
‘You know I told you I played in the National Schools’ final …’
‘And scored the winning goal,’ declared Merry.
‘Well, apparently, there was a Manchester United scout there. He rang my school yesterday, asked the coach if I’d be interested in having a trial. The coach rang me straight away. I set off early this morning, leaving a note for my parents. They’d never have let me go if I’d asked them. So here I am!’
‘Manchester United?’ spluttered Merry.
‘Yes!’ declared James. ‘Anything is possible! Remember?’
‘I remember all right! God, James. Have you had the trial?’ She couldn’t begin to imagine how he must have felt: excited, terrified, stunned …
‘Just come out of it.’
‘And? Tell me, the suspense is killing me!’
James laughed in delight. ‘They’ve asked me if I can train with them for a couple of weeks and after that we’d have a discussion. About signing with the junior academy!’
‘But that’s amazing, James!’ Merry yelled. She danced around the kitchen, phone in her hand. She felt a massive swell of pride, of joy for her friend bubbling up inside her. There was just one dampener. ‘What about your parents?’
‘Yeah. Officially not happy. Try “livid, let down and deceived” in their words.’
‘Try congratulations!’ protested Merry.
‘Hmm, yeah, well, the only saving grace is the snow!’ James sounded delirious. ‘I’m stuck here. Snowed in! There’s this other guy who’s sixteen, Huw, he’s on the team. He said I can stay with him. Don’t have much choice. All the buses and trains are cancelled. Roads blocked too.’
The house phone rang. Merry glanced at the number.
‘Gotta go. It’s my mother. Stay safe, have fun. And well done, James! That really is beyond brilliant. And you deserve it. You really do.’
She hung up and grabbed the house phone. The moment to share her secret about searching for the riddle pool had come and gone, and besides, it seemed so small in comparison to James’s revelation. Hers was just a vague quest.
‘Mam! I was getting worried.’
‘Don’t be. We’re fine. But I think we’ll have to stay in Brecon with your aunt Jenni.’
‘OK …’
‘I don’t like leaving you alone.’
‘Mam, I’m nearly sixteen. I’ll be fine!’
‘You could go and stay with Seren.’
Merry was fond of Seren and her adult son, Nat, but she’d enjoy having the house to herself for a change, peace and quiet and no one to account to. Plus, Seren and Nat could both read her far too well. They’d have heard about the book like everyone else in the valley, and they’d want to quiz her. It was hard to keep secrets from those two.
‘I’m nice and comfy here. I’ll be fine, Mam, honestly.’
‘Well, make yourself something nice for dinner then. And lock the doors!’
‘I’ll lock the doors. I promise.’
But distracted by thoughts of James and Manchester United, making dinner, obsessing about the riddle pool’s location and worrying about the chieftain’s possible reaction to Parks’s digging around in his grave, Merry forgot all about her promise.
She snuggled down in her bed, snow scything through the blackness, the wind rocking the cottage, oblivious to the fact that she’d left the doors unlocked.
Merry awoke with the sure sense that something had awoken her. Not the sound of the wind screaming or the windows creaking, but a deliberate, unnatural sound. Her skin tingled with a kind of charge, like the electricity of another person, the nearness of them, or their glance, sliding over you. She opened her eye, blinked in the darkness, heart pounding.
She reached out, making sure she didn’t knock over her glass of water, and grabbed her Maglite torch. She always kept it handy, as power cuts were common. It was heavy and powerful and a good weapon. With a quick pulse of terror at what she might see, she switched it on.
No one. Nothing out of place. Her bedroom looked normal. Her door wasn’t closed, but pulled to, with an inch or two of space, just as she’d left it. But something was different. A disturbance in the air. An echo that lingered in the memory banks of her mind: a sound like a drawer opening and closing, slowly, softly, covertly.
Brandishing her torch, she got out of bed. She thought later that she should have just pulled the covers up over her head, but that wasn’t her way. Never turn from a challenge, said her father’s voice in her head. Maybe it had been her parents and Gawain, she thought, returning home after all. She glanced at her clock. Four thirty. Not a chance.
Holding her breath, heart pounding, she crossed her bedroom, feet soft on the wooden floor. Then one of the floorboards creaked as she put her weight on it, and, from downstairs, she thought she heard another creak above the roar of the wind.
She pushed open her door, sidled into the hallway, scanning the darkness with the beam of her torch. Everything looked normal. Down the stairs, step by step, down to the phone she had left on the kitchen table. Call for help, said the voice in her head. But downstairs was where whoever it was lurked …
Another step, and another, breath trapped in her throat with a lump of fear that grew with each second. And then a waft of pure cold and a click. The bottom step … the open hallway was before her, but there was no one. Not a hint of anyone, not there or in any of the rooms. Merry hurried through each one, checking wardrobes, the pantry, the broom cupboard.
There was no sign of any disturbance, just that buzz in the air.
But Merry, with her limited vision, didn’t see the tiny patches of damp on the hall rug that stood by the front door, the melted flakes of snow that had blown through in that quick second while the door had opened and closed again.
&nbs
p; Last, she checked the boot room. Clear. She bit her lip, glanced around, peered through the window into the snow-strewn darkness outside. She thought she saw something moving, a large shape. She pulled on her boots, her hat, her long down coat. She pushed open the door, aimed the torch.
It was Jacintha, sheltering under a tree in the garden, shaking snow from her mane. How the heck had she got out of her stable, wondered Merry. Hadn’t she secured the bolt properly? Or had the wind worked it free? Was that what she had heard? The banging of the stable door?
Concern for her pony trumped her earlier fears. She shut the house door behind her and hurried over to her pony.
‘Hey, Jac. You little escape artist. Let’s get you back inside again.’
She took hold of her pony’s halter and, leaning in against the pummelling wind, she led her from the garden, across the concrete forecourt and towards the stables. A great bang sounded and Merry saw the stable door thud shut. She walked Jacintha up to it, pulled it open, sheltered her pony inside.
Her fingers stuck to the icy metal as she pushed home the bolt. She made sure it was all the way in. She’d been so cold when she stabled Jacintha hours earlier, maybe she just hadn’t secured the bolt properly?
She shivered again, cold despite her layers, but chilled too by leftover fear. She turned and hurried back towards the farmhouse. But she was moving too fast and suddenly her feet shot from under her as she skidded on the ice-covered concrete. She fell awkwardly, putting out her hands to brace her fall, let go of the torch which clattered to the ground. And went out.
Darkness closed around her. Merry felt a pulse of fear. She pushed herself up, blinked, wiped the snow from her face. She should have waited until her eye adjusted to the night, but she was scared and cold and desperate to get back inside, so she hurried on, hardly seeing where she was going. And then she hit something, or something hit her, slicing through the air, and she was falling again, too hard, too fast. With a thud, she fell backwards against the ground. Her head hit first. The blow knocked her unconscious. The snow spiralled down, covering her.
Merry awoke with a blaze of pain. Cold pain burning her. She let out a low moan, pushed herself to sitting. Had to get inside, in the warm. She got up, walked very slowly, on shaking legs. The snow still fell and the wind still howled. She walked, hands before her, checking for obstacles. The house was fifty yards away, but this was a route she should have known blindfolded. She blundered through the snow, and then there was the dark bulk of her house, looming through the blizzard.
Almost sobbing with relief, she yanked open the back door, got inside, pushed the door shut.
This time she locked it.
Still wearing her boots and her sodden clothes, turning on lights as she went, she hurried to the front door, locked that too. She climbed the stairs, went into the bathroom, ran the bath, hot tap only.
Shivering violently while it filled, she ran through her home, turning on every light. How could she have been so stupid, she chided herself. No one was there. No one in their right mind would be out on a night like this. Nor could they be. All the roads were impassable. Nothing had been disturbed. Money lay in plain sight on the hall desk where her father had left it. Silver photo frames stood untouched. The book! she thought then, panic gripping her. She fell to the floor in her bedroom, pulled out the chest, hauled up the floorboard, dragged out the plastic bag. And there was her book, safe and wholly undisturbed. Fingers shaking, she replaced it, hauled back the chest.
It had all been her imagination, that and her failure to secure the stable door properly. Nothing but her own fault. It must have been a gust of wind that pummelled into her, or maybe a broken branch, flying through the air, knocking her over. She could have died of hypothermia out there in the blizzard. Her parents would have returned to find her frozen body. Stiff and blue and dead. She let out another sob, then, leaving all the lights blazing, as if that way she could keep the darkness at bay, she lay down in the scalding bath.
A trick of her body made the water feel cold against her freezing skin. Only when she swirled it around her could she feel its warmth. She lay there, letting out water as the bath cooled, refilling it with hot water again until finally, she had stopped shaking. She got out, quickly towelled herself dry, put on her warmest pyjamas, turned on her heated blanket and got into her bed. Through the haze of exhaustion and relief, her mind turned in on itself, posing the same questions over and over. Was it the chieftain’s ghostly spirit, a living breathing thief, or just a figment of her imagination?
The next morning there was an odd, sinister silence. No bird-song, no wind, just a kind of muffled, dense quiet. No Gawain, chortling or yelling. It was like the world was dead and she was the only survivor. Merry pushed off her duvet, pulled on her eye patch and hurried across the wooden floor of her bedroom. Everything ached.
She drew back her thin cotton curtains and gazed out. White, everywhere. She squinted. The blizzard had stopped, but light snow still drifted down. In the distance, the Beacons loomed, snow-shrouded, with horizontal striations of rock drawn like grey pencil lines across the white. Spindrifts of snow blew off the summits like smoke from a frozen fire. The mountains looked bigger than usual, beautiful but menacing. This was their cold face. And it often brought death. To unwary climbers caught on the summits, to newborn lambs and their old mothers. So nearly to her if she hadn’t come round in time.
Merry shivered, pulled on thick socks and her fleece dressing gown and headed downstairs. She went through into the boot room and opened the back door. A good two feet of snow was piled up behind it and she had to put her shoulder against the door and push.
The cold stung her nose. Snowflakes blew in and coated her eyelashes. She blinked them away, gazed out at the fields. It looked like a foot of snow had fallen. Huge drifts lay banked against the hedgerows. She felt like she’d been transported to a different place. It even smelt different. The damp bracken scent of the Beacons, the grassy muddy whiff of the fields had gone, replaced by the crisp, metallic tang of snow. She saw no sign of footprints. Told herself that she wouldn’t have even if there had been any. The snow would have covered them.
She closed the door, hurried back to the warmth of the kitchen, busied herself at the Aga, pouring milk into the saucepan, whisking in generous helpings of chocolate powder, melting it in, getting the cream, adding a swirl. It was a snowstorm, just a snowstorm and a poorly secured barn door.
The phone rang, making her jump. Her mother.
She took a deep breath, blew it out, rubbed her face, pasted on a smile even though her mother could not see her.
‘Hi, Mam!’
‘Hi, Spinner. You OK? Everything all right last night?’
‘I’m fine, thanks, Ma. Just woke up. Making myself some hot chocolate. How’re you guys?’
‘Oh, we’re fine. I was just a bit worried about you is all.’
‘Well, don’t be.’ She wouldn’t tell her mother about what had happened. She wasn’t even sure herself. No point worrying her parents unnecessarily.
‘Listen, the snowploughs’re out but it’ll take them a good day to clear the snow and it’s still falling. We’re going to be stuck here till tomorrow at the earliest. You’re going to be on your own for another night.’
Merry felt a stab of fear. She looked at the boot room door. Lock it!
‘I’m really sorry, love,’ her mother added, into the silence.
‘Ma, really, I’m fine!’ Merry belted out too forcefully, over-compensating. ‘I’ll go to Seren’s if I feel in need of company or better food than I can concoct,’ she said, voice softer, trying to make up for it.
‘Please do,’ said her mother, slightly stiffly.
‘Promise. Now, I’ve gotta go, Ma. Got to break the ice on the troughs and take out hay.’
The warmth came back into her mother’s voice. ‘Merry, you’re an angel. Don’t know what we’d do without you.’
Her words, rather than comforting Merry, sent a tremor through
her.
‘Love you. Bye.’
Merry hung up. And froze. She stared at the tallboy. They kept it locked. Always. They kept the key in a blue glass vase. Always.
But there it was, in the lock.
A current of pure terror washed through Merry. She ran to the door, locked it, stood with her back against it breathing hard. It wasn’t her imagination. Somebody had been in here last night.
Navigated his or her way through the darkness and the cold and the snow, pushed in through an unlocked door, entered the house while she slept. She rushed across to the tallboy, checked through it, hands shaking. Nothing had been taken. They’d fled empty-handed.
She knew without any doubt what they’d been looking for: her book. The fact that they’d ignored anything else of value proved that.
A thief had come, someone who wasn’t put off by blizzards and sub-zero temperatures. Who wasn’t put off by the fact that Caradoc Owen, a trained, seasoned killer from his years in the special forces, should have been at home. Unless, of course, they’d been watching the farmhouse, saw that Caradoc had left but had not returned.
Merry sat down at the kitchen table, drank her now cold chocolate. She stared at the stove. She knew she should cook something but she had no appetite. She got up, sat down again. Paralysed by indecision.
She was in danger. The thief could still be watching, might come back. But she had to go out and tend to the ponies. As she so often did when she was frightened or lost or challenged, she conjured her father’s voice.
If you can, run. If you can’t run, then fight. But fight clever. Fight dirty.
She’d think, she’d plan, she’d fight dirty. She’d neutralize that danger. But first of all, she had to go out. She would not call her parents back, tell them about the invasion of their home, steal her mother’s peace of mind, trip the safety on her father’s hair-trigger readiness for a fight. She would not ring James, secretly confide in him, ask for his help. She’d face this alone. She would not be trapped in her house by fear.