‘The lock on this window is faulty,’ I say, keeping my voice low. I don’t know why I feel the need to be quiet; there’s nobody around.
‘You’ve been doing your homework.’
‘I have, Fletcher. I’m not just a pretty face, you know.’
He smirks. ‘No, that’s my role.’
The lock gives, and I tug the window open. ‘Right then, don’t just stand there looking pretty, give me a hand.’
Leaning on Fletcher’s shoulder, I clamber up to the window. He mumbles complaints as I use his hands as a foothold. I push the top half of my body into the cabin, and the sound of the sea deadens. It’s dismal inside. The air is musty and stale. I scramble up, pushing my feet over the lip of the window. Tumbling down inside, I scuff my shin. The cutlery in the kitchen jangles as I hit the floor. I pause for a moment, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
‘Come on,’ Fletcher hisses. ‘Open the door. Quick.’
‘Give me a chance!’
‘We don’t have long.’
‘I know!’
I glance at a little clock standing on the kitchen surface. It’s slow but still ticks. I guess it must have been ten minutes since Libby’s mum left.
‘Take your time,’ Fletcher snaps, as he pushes into the cabin. I close the door behind him and the beach hut falls into a tense hush.
‘Where should we start?’
‘Let’s split up. I’ll search the main section around the table. You look through the kitchen and around the bed.’
I nod and head straight to the kitchen units. There are still unwashed plates in the sink, one of them furry with mould. How does she live like this? I open the first cupboard and inspect the tins and jars. ‘Remember to put everything back exactly as you find it.’
‘I know!’ Fletcher’s already thumbing through the papers on the table.
Slowly, I begin my search, starting at the top, right-hand cupboard and working methodically through each in turn, looking for something, anything, that might give us a clue as to Libby’s whereabouts. The cabin is simply furnished. It doesn’t feel like a home, doesn’t feel lived in. I open the next cupboard. There’s not much there – a couple of plates, a chipped cup, a single saucepan and a battered frying pan. The cupboard is thick with dust. Carefully, I move each item, putting them back exactly as I find them. The wooden units creak, despite my efforts to move quietly. It feels as though the cabin is watching, wary of the intrusion. Fletcher is riffling through the little drawer in the table. I glance at the clock. Another ten minutes has passed. I’m trying not to panic, not to speed up the search. I need to be meticulous. But my hands are clammy and my stomach’s clenched.
There’s nothing here, I think, lifting a basket of broken pens and used batteries. The thought buzzes through my mind like a persistent fly. We’re not going to find anything. I run my fingers under the kitchen surface and then stand on an upturned bucket to examine the top of the cupboards. With each passing moment, my anxiety rises. What if there really isn’t anything here, no clue to be found? What then? We’ll be stuck in this accursed half-life.
The clock ticks on – twenty-five minutes, thirty-five, forty.
There’s a loud creak outside. Fletcher and I freeze and look at each other. We listen intently. Wind buffets the little cabin. Shoes shuffle across the decking of the front porch. I hold my breath. Fletcher’s gripping a moth-eaten winter coat. He’s been searching its pockets. Careful not to make a sound, he hangs it back on its peg and signals for us to move to the far side of the hut, away from the door. I tiptoe towards the wall, aware of every squeak, every scrape of my shoe. I don’t know what we think it will achieve. The hut’s tiny. There’s nowhere to hide. If Libby’s mum comes in now, we’ll be caught. But somehow it feels safer pressed up against the wall.
‘She can’t be back yet, can she?’ I whisper, looking at the clock. It’s been forty-five minutes since she boarded the ferry. Time’s running out, yes, but she shouldn’t be back yet.
Fletcher shrugs.
We wait, barely daring to breathe. The decking reverberates with a footstep again. But there’s no key in the lock, no movement of the latch.
Fletcher edges towards one of the windows.
‘What are you doing?’
He waves for me to be quiet.
Reaching the window, he peeks through one of the slats in the shutters.
I wait for what seems like an age, the shuffling growing louder. Suddenly, Fletcher spins away from the window, ducking out of sight.
‘What’s happening?’ I mouth.
‘It’s okay,’ he whispers. ‘It’s not her.’
‘Who is it?’
‘I don’t know. Just a nosy tourist. False alarm.’
I breathe out, but I’m still tense.
Sure enough, a moment later, we hear the unwanted visitor descend the steps and disappear.
‘That was close.’
Fletcher crosses back to the coat he was examining. ‘Come on, we don’t have long. She could be back in––’
‘Ten minutes,’ I finish. We glance at each other, nervously. I need to voice my fear. ‘There’s nothing here, Fletch. We’re not going to find anything.’
‘We have to!’ There’s determination in his eyes.
His conviction gives me a boost. I nod and turn to the bedroom area, pulling back the curtain that separates it from the rest of the hut. It’s a mess. The sheets are bundled at the bottom of the bed. I run my hands through them. They’re damp. I shudder, knowing I’m intruding on someone’s personal space. It’s a strange sort of intimacy that makes me feel queasy. There’s nothing there. Dropping to my knees, I explore the space beneath the bed, running my hands along the metal frame and peering under it. I hold back a sneeze. There’s so much dust. I’m panicking now, moving frantically. There’s nothing here either, nothing on the floor around the bed, only a half-empty glass of water, green with algae.
CRACK! Glass shatters. I spin round, my nerves shot. My hands are trembling. Fletcher’s staring down at the shards of a broken vase.
‘What are you doing!’
His face flushes. ‘Do you think I meant to knock it over?’ His fists are clenched.
I take a breath, trying to calm myself. We can’t afford to get into an argument.
‘It’s okay.’ I raise my hands in a reconciliatory gesture. ‘We just need to get it cleared away.’
He nods and begins to pick up the pieces.
I glance at the clock again. There are just a few minutes left before Libby’s mum might return. This is a disaster.
I go to help, but as I do, something gives beneath my feet. I look down, moving my weight back onto the floorboard behind me. It squeaks, sinking a little. It’s loose.
My heart skips. Kneeling, I run my fingers around the join in the wood. One of the boards juts up. Pushing down on the other end, the board rises. I slip my fingers under it. It’s stiff, but with a crack, the wood flips up. There’s a space underneath, a secret compartment, and in it …
‘Letters!’
‘What?’ Fletcher looks round, pieces of broken vase in his hand.
The letters are yellowing, bound with a faded, lace ribbon. I pick them up. It’s like holding treasure.
‘Libby!’ I say, holding them out. ‘Letters to Libby! Fletch, this is it! We’ve found it!’
He rushes over, his hands still laden with pieces of broken vase. ‘There’s an address,’ he says, examining them.
‘Her address! Fletch, we’ve got it!’
‘Yes! I knew we’d find it. Right then, let’s get out of here!’
I look at the clock – two minutes until the hour is up.
I point at the broken vase. ‘What are you going to do with that?’
‘I’ll get rid of it outside. Hopefully she won’t notice it’s gone.’ Fletcher bounds to the door.
I scan the room. Have we left everything as it should be? The window’s still ajar, and the loose floorboard’s propped against the wall.
Setting them right, I dash after Fletcher.
We sneak back around the corner to our boat. We’re just in time. Libby’s mum appears, limping along the beach, laden with shopping.
Diving back under the tarpaulin, we pull it down to hide us. Fletcher grabs the letters from me, and we stare at them. The top one reads:
Libby Joyner
25b De Lacey Mount
Kirkstall
Leeds
LS6
‘I’m going to go.’ Fletcher says, scrambling to his feet.
‘What?’
‘I’m going to go there.’ He jabs the address. ‘To find her.’
‘What do you mean? Now?’
‘Yes.’
‘But Fletcher––’
‘There’s no time like the present, is there?’ He signals to the Storyteller and our mother, their outline faint. ‘We can’t wait any longer.’
‘But … but how are you going to get there?’ After weeks of waiting, this is happening too quickly.
‘There’s a place in town – a station. It’s like a port but on land. I think I can get there.’
‘But what about me?’
‘You need to stay here, with the Storyteller and Princess.’
I shake my head. I don’t want to be left alone.
‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ he says, seeing the look on my face. ‘But we need to do this, Scoop. We can’t wait any longer. We have no choice.’
I rack my brains for an alternative, but deep inside I know he’s right. Now we have the address, we need to find Libby. What else can we do? And there’s every reason to hurry and no reason to wait. Who knows how long it will be before the Storyteller and Princess vanish altogether. And one of us does need to stay with them.
‘Okay,’ I say, my mind grappling to keep up. I feel sick.
‘Good.’ He nods.
Before I know it, he’s ducking under the tarpaulin. I’ve always been jealous of Fletcher’s ability to act quickly. I dither. I struggle to make choices. Sometimes his decisiveness seems brusque, rude even, but sometimes it’s exactly what’s needed and, although I feel suddenly bereft, I can’t help but think this is one of those times.
I lift the tarpaulin and call after him. ‘Be careful!’
He glances back, nodding.
I’m alone. Outside, it begins to snow again. I hope Fletcher finds Libby. I hope he stays safe. I watch him disappear into one of the alleyways. That might be the last memory I have of him. I hug my knees to my chest, trying not to let fear overwhelm me. I’m scared of being alone, scared I’ll never see my brother again. I slump to the side and close my eyes, trying to block the world out, the letters still clutched in my hand. I wish I could wake up from this nightmare. I wish we could go home.
Chapter 26
Stories of Light
The noise of the Giant’s attack thundered up the cliff to ALETHEA. Knot paused, midway through his story. He glanced at the Great East Window. It was shaking.
‘Do continue,’ said the Yarnbard, apparently unaffected by the tumult. ‘We must tell our stories, keep them alive. We must remember! Do not be distracted.’
‘Oh yeah, course,’ replied Knot, looking back to the circle. ‘Where was I? Oh yeah.’ He tried to ignore the booms from below. ‘Well, I don’t remember much of my childhood, just a few things. Climbing Great Furnace with Da to carry rocks down in the stone barra. I remember the smoke and the heat, Da’s face being red and dirty, bits of ash in his beard. I remember being pleased when he gave me rocks to carry. It made me feel useful, part of the clan. I was one of the Rock People, see. I remember sorting through rocks with Ma, in a big, old kitchen with stone walls, all the pieces laid out on a big, wooden table. Some of ‘em had minerals in, yer see. Others, ‘specially the lava, were good for fertilizin’ soil – brought a pretty penny at the Market of Miracles, I remember Ma sayin’.’
Knot paused and looked down. ‘I remember raiders comin’ – princes and their armies in big, posh ships. I remember Ma pushing me into the cellar. I remember being scared. We weren’t supposed to be scared, Rock People. They said we was made of rock. I think that’s why they saw us as monsters, why they came every summer to kill us. But we weren’t monsters.
Every autumn, when the raiders left, there would be funeral pyres. The flames went high. I remember the stars in the sky, brighter than anything yer see here. We’d stand and watch the bodies burn. That autumn, Da was one of ‘em.’
The Giants’ pounding stopped, and the hall fell still.
‘I remember Ma packin’ a bag for me. There weren’t much in it, just a coat and me Jack rocks. She took me to a boat filled with people I didn’t know and put me on it. I remember her tellin’ me the boat was gonna take me to a better place.
But it didn’t.
Halfway across the sea there was a storm. The boat hit a rock. It sank. I don’t know if anyone else survived.
I remember being dragged out of the water by an old woman. She was sprawled on the beach, her feet dug into the sand to stop her being pulled into the waves. I remember her cursing as she pulled me from the water.
She saved me that day.’ Knot looked down, embarrassed. ‘Grizelda. Grizelda saved me that day.’
‘But after that, she made my life a misery. I was her slave. Rock People aren’t slaves, they’re free people. She used to say me and her had somethink in common. She said we’d both been spat out, puked up by life – that we weren’t worth nothing we didn’t take for ourselves.
I believed her, I did. There was princes and posh soldiers, and then there was us, less than rock, less than rubbish.
I didn’t think I was worth saving back then. I didn’t care she made me her slave, that she got me to do things that would make me ashamed now. I went from the rock of the Furnace Islands to the rock of the Story Caves. Rock was all I knew.
That’s where we kept Master Fletcher and Miss Scoop, back when they were little’ns, in that rock prison. Anyways …’
Sparks stared at the candles, her mind drifting.
She saved me that day – Grizelda.
The woman trying to breach the castle, trying to kill them, had saved one of their company. She’d saved Knot. He wouldn’t be here without her.
Only because she wanted a slave, Sparks told herself.
But that felt too easy, and Knot’s words kept churning in her mind.
She saved me that day – Grizelda.
One of the candles sputtered, orange light flaring up. The wax was almost gone.
Stories of light, Sparks said to herself as the flame settled. We must tell stories of light.
* * *
Grizelda kicked a stone. It landed in the mud of the SILVER LAKE and sank. So far, nothing had worked. The Giants had only managed to dislodge some scree; the Manticores had flown up on their scaly wings, only to return, roaring and snarling, enraged at not being able to pass through the enchantment; the Sirens had sung, only to lure a Cyclops to stab its eye on a tree branch; and the Headless Horsemen, well they were utterly useless when faced by a cliff.
‘Call this a NIGHTMARE army?’ she said. ‘They could barely scare a baby in a pit of vipers! They’re useless, utterly useless, the lot of ‘em.’
Melusine didn’t reply.
‘This is your fault, yer know!’
‘We need access to the castle,’ Melusine hissed, ‘and then the army can do its work.’
‘Oh yes,’ Grizelda mocked. ‘O’ course. Why didn’t I think of that? Well done. Such intellect, such insight. We have to gain access to the castle. Whatever would I do without your tiny little snake brain?’
Melusine’s tongue flicked angrily. ‘You know the enchantment––’
‘I do!’ snapped Grizelda. ‘Darkness cannot cross the boundary to ALETHEA without being invited. Yada, yada, yada. I thought that stupid rule might have fallen away by now. But no. How tiresome. Well luckily for you, I have a contingency plan. What yer got to say about that?’
Melusine was si
lent.
‘Cat got yer tongue?’
Melusine started to reply but Grizelda interrupted. ‘Oh, never mind. I don’t care, anyway. I’ll tell you what’s gonna happen. I have somewhere to go, someone to meet. You stay here and look after this bunch of morons. Set up camp and don’t let ‘em kill one another. Do you think you can do that?’
‘Of courssse!’
‘Good. Well, I’d better get goin’ then. I don’t have time to waste stood ‘ere swapping pleasantries. I’ll be back before dawn, got it?’
Not waiting for an answer, Grizelda walked away. The NIGHTMARE army parted for her as she headed through its ranks. Black cloud billowed behind her, leaving a trail of darkness in her wake. Melusine watched the old woman disappear along the path back towards BARDBRIDGE. Turning to the Chimera, she ordered bonfires be lit and gave word that the NIGHTMARE army prepare to move to a siege footing.
Chapter 27
Separated
I watch the world fly past: snowy fields, cables and pylons, barns, bridges and trees that block my view. A town whistles by, its houses squashed together, and then it’s gone. I’ve never known such speed. It makes me feel small.
This land, this world, it’s huge.
There are cars waiting at a crossing. They look like models. Signals and spires, factories and flooded rivers flash by. All the while, my reflection stares back at me from the train window. A bird hovers at the edge of a field, searching for prey. It only knows that little patch of land. It’s so small, so insignificant.
I’m no different, I think.
My reflection flickers as we enter a forest, becoming solid as the train goes into a tunnel. My eyes are deep, my nose sharp. I’ve thrown my coat over me, pulling it up to my mouth to try to hide my face from the guard. I don’t know why I bothered. He walks straight past without asking to see a ticket, just like the ferryman.
Good, I think. Although part of me wishes he saw me.
On the table in front of me is a train map. I’ve studied it. The corners are now dirty and bent. I’ve plotted my course.
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