‘How do we steal their song if they’re not even here?’ Siddy hissed. ‘We can’t just make off with a piano!’
Gryff growled behind them, a low, throaty sound that rose with the fur on his back. Moll and Siddy whirled round and the music grew louder and more discordant, the notes jarring and clashing before rising into a hideous roar that stamped out Moll, Sid and Gryff’s drowsiness in an instant. But then, from the nests in the trees around them, shapes began to stir. Orange talons curled over the sticks and feathered legs crawled out, long and thin and black.
‘B – birds?’ Siddy stammered.
Dark hair followed the legs, spilling all the way down to the ground, and then female faces appeared, together with more talons where hands should have been, and porcelain skin with lips as red as rowan berries.
‘Witches,’ Moll breathed and her body tightened with fear.
Siddy backed up against the folly wall and fumbled with his bow, but Moll’s instincts were quicker and she pulled on the string, thought of Alfie and her promise to make him real – then fired at the closest nest.
The arrow struck the silver twigs and the Oracle Spirit burst out from its tip, a cocoon of white that swelled around the nest and sent it hurtling to the ground. But the witch had moved fast and was now in Moll’s sights, gliding down towards them, a cloak of crow feathers trailing behind her.
‘Fire, Sid!’ Moll yelled as she placed another arrow to her bow.
The witch slid nearer, her body slick with feathers, her talons outstretched towards Moll’s face. The piano music grew louder and wilder, but Siddy mustered up his impossible dream just in time, sending an arrow straight into the witch’s chest. She screeched as the Oracle Spirit ballooned around her, but all about the folly more and more witches emerged, floating through the trees towards them, their long black hair hanging down like oiled nooses.
‘They’re not armed; they’ve just got talons!’ Moll cried, pulling back on her bow again. ‘We can beat them!’
Gryff leapt forward, digging his claws into a witch’s cloak and dragging her down, then Moll let an arrow thrum from her bow to finish the creature off, but still more witches advanced. Back to back, Moll and Siddy let their arrows loose while Gryff lashed out with his claws to give them time to reload.
Three witches landed between the trees in front of them and prowled closer, their feather cloaks rustling through the leaves, their lips split into terrible smiles.
‘One each,’ Moll muttered, closing an eye against her bow.
Siddy fired at the first, Gryff leapt towards the second and then Moll took down the third, but no one noticed the fourth witch crawling over the wall behind them.
Until Moll screamed.
Talons sank into her shoulders, then she was yanked upwards into the air.
‘Moll!’ Siddy roared.
Moll writhed and kicked, but the witch’s talons gripped hard and together they lurched through the trees, back towards the path. Heaving against the claws, Moll blinked terrified eyes into the forest. She couldn’t see Siddy or Gryff any more and, as the witch flew on over the path, Moll realised where she was being taken. A birch tree leant out from the path right over the gorge and perched among its highest branches, hanging some fifty metres above the river, was the biggest nest Moll had seen yet. She twisted and jerked, but the talons only wedged deeper into her shoulders, tugging off her scarf before letting it drop helplessly into the water.
The witch landed in the upper branches of the tree before hurling her prisoner down into the nest. Moll felt the metal twigs grate into her spine, but she struggled up, heart pounding. The sides of the nest surrounded her like the bars of a cage and even on tiptoe Moll couldn’t see over them. She tried to ignore the remains of half-chewed bones scattered at her feet and the witch crouched by the side of the nest, running her tongue over crimson lips.
I can climb out, Moll thought, and find Gryff and Sid.
Her eyes flitted to the gaps between the silver twigs. She could make out the river – just – but it was raging far below. One wrong move and she’d be plunging to her death.
‘Thinking of going somewhere?’ the witch crooned.
Her voice was slippery, as if her words had been coated in grease, and as she spoke she ran her talons through the bundle of hair in her lap. Moll started backwards as she suddenly realised why her scarf had been hurled into the gorge, but in the flick of a wrist a noose of black hair unravelled towards her and closed firmly round her neck. The witch snickered as she reeled the hair in, dragging her victim across the nest until Moll was left gasping beneath her talons. Still the piano blared out into the Clattering Gorge and Moll ripped at the hair, her nails scrabbling to free herself. But, every time she moved, the noose tightened.
The witch sniggered. ‘It’s no use trying to fight, girl, because even if you do break free from my nest you can’t beat us all. You’re outnumbered and, so long as the piano plays, we witches will descend from our nests.’
Moll stood still, panic rooting her to the spot, and that’s when she saw Gryff – a blur of black-and-white stripes between the gaps in the nest – moving down the birch branch towards the witch.
There were shrieks from somewhere nearby – high-pitched, strangled laughs – and Moll glanced through the twigs to see the rest of the witches gathered on the path.
‘The beast is giving himself up to you, sister!’ one squealed. ‘See how he walks right into your hands.’
But Moll knew Gryff: he would have no intention of giving himself up to the witch’s power. Gryff had a plan and Moll needed to work out what it was . . . She scoured the twigs and then her eyes fixed on something glinting among the bracken set back from the path. It was the tip of an arrow poised on a bow and when Moll saw it her heart leapt. Siddy. That was the plan. While Gryff caused a distraction, Siddy was going to bring down the witch. The only reason he hadn’t done so already was because he was waiting for Moll to see him – so that she had time to find a way to cling on to the tree when the nest plummeted into the gorge. Moll eyed the branch that the witch had settled on. Somehow she needed to grab hold of it.
The witch rocked back and forth above her. ‘Come along, beast, there’s more than enough room for you in my nest too.’
Moll watched as Gryff stopped on a branch a few metres from the witch, his eyes green slits against the darkness.
‘Scared, are you?’ the witch laughed, but, as she lifted one talon off her bundle of hair to beckon the wildcat closer, the noose around her victim’s neck slackened and Moll seized her chance.
Bucking backwards out of the loop of hair, Moll scrambled up the side of the nest. Siddy’s arrow sailed through the air, just as Moll jumped towards the branch and grabbed hold, then the Oracle Spirit hit its target, sending the witch and her nest crashing down into the gorge – and leaving Moll clinging on to the tree.
Moll’s heart thundered as she took in the river frothing and churning below, then she clamped her arms and legs round the branch, as Domino had taught her, and hauled herself towards Gryff. As soon as she reached the wildcat, she held him tight, whispered a thank you into his fur and, though her neck was throbbing with pain, together they hurried down the tree.
The witches on the path launched themselves into the air and again and again Siddy fired to keep them at bay. But Moll knew what she had to do now, knew the one thing that would stop the witches coming.
‘They’re controlled by the music!’ she yelled as she charged through the bracken towards Siddy. ‘That’s why we have to steal the last note of the witches’ song! As long as the piano plays, the witches will crawl down from their nests!’
With Gryff at their side, Siddy and Moll raced through the trees, sending arrows out at every angle to clear a path back to the folly. Moll tried her best to ignore the pounding in her neck as they ran – whatever the witch’s noose had been made of, it hadn’t been ordinary hair – but there was no time to worry about that now. They burst into the folly with the witc
hes on their tail, clawing through the windows and climbing over the roof.
‘Sid, you and Gryff hold them back!’ Moll shouted. ‘I’ll deal with the music!’
But even as she said the words she had no idea how to stop the piano from playing. She watched the keys rise and fall as the music boomed around them and then, heart hammering, she pressed her hands down on the keyboard to try and smother the song. But still the piano played. The music grew louder, angrier, almost as if it could tell that someone was trying to force it back.
‘Quick, Moll!’ Siddy cried as he slotted yet another arrow to his bow and Gryff pounced on a talon that clawed through the window. ‘We can’t hold them back much longer!’
‘There must be a way,’ Moll panted to herself.
She skirted round the side of the piano and looked inside. Dozens of thin steel strings stretched the length of the instrument and little hammers struck each one as a note was played.
‘Steal the last note of the witches’ song . . .’ Moll murmured. She thought of Alfie suddenly, of how he always thought clearly, carefully, even under pressure. She needed him now and the longing inside her beat wildly, but Moll’s thoughts were reeling and it was instinct alone that made her dig inside her coat and draw out a knife, the one her pa had left her, from the belt around her waist. Bracing her body against the din and the shooting pains in her neck, Moll hacked at the silver strings. One by one they snapped and with every chord that was cut the music dimmed.
‘Keep going!’ Siddy yelled. ‘It’s working! The witches are disappearing!’
Moll looked up and sure enough there were fewer witches clawing at the folly now. She brought her knife down again and again until there was just one witch circling the wall and just one chord, the very lowest note, left inside the piano. Moll thought back to Willow’s letter. Steal the last note, it had said – not hack it to pieces – and, as it thronged deep and strong like the first rumblings of thunder, Moll bent over the open piano and snicked her knife carefully through both ends of the string.
The music stopped and the witch climbing over the wall let out a blood-curdling shriek and then faded into nothing. Moll glanced from Gryff to Siddy and for a moment all three of them just stood, panting, unnerved by the sudden silence.
And then, eventually, Siddy lowered his bow. ‘You did it!’ he gasped, looking at the strand of shining silver in Moll’s hand.
Moll leant against the piano and rubbed her neck. ‘No, we did it. You and Gryff saved me in that nest – the witch almost finished me.’
They staggered out of the folly to find that the trees were no longer silver. They were ordinary birches now that the enchantment had been broken, but the Shadowmasks’ magic had rotted them through: bark peeled back in dead flakes and branches bulged with fungus.
Moll looked down at the piano string in her hand and her stomach lurched. There was nothing there. The last note of the witches’ song had disappeared, along with the forest enchantment.
The battle had been for nothing.
‘But – but I had it,’ Moll stammered. ‘The string was right here in my hand!’
Gryff hissed and scanned the nearby trees, but Siddy bent closer to Moll’s palm. Her fingers were unfurled with nothing inside them, but still Siddy squinted, turning his head this way and that.
‘It’s still there,’ he said quietly. ‘When the moonlight catches it, I can see it – but only just.’
Moll brought her hand up to her chin. Her neck still ached, but she forced the pain down and tilted her head – and there it was, a long thread, as fine as spider’s silk and almost completely invisible to the naked eye. As she moved her palm behind a birch trunk, out of the moonlight, the string disappeared, but, now that she knew it was there, Moll could just feel it brushing against her fingers.
‘That piano string’s magical and for some reason Willow meant for us to have it,’ Siddy said, stooping to pick up an arrow from the ground. ‘Keep it safe, Moll – I’ve got a feeling we’ll be needing it to find the amulet, even if it doesn’t make much sense to us now.’
Very carefully, Moll wound the string round her fingers, but, as she did so, she realised something. The string just went on and on, encircling her hand as if there was an infinite length of it being conjured out of thin air.
She gasped. ‘Sid, it’s – it’s endless!’
They huddled together in the moonlight and Siddy watched as Moll twisted more and more of the thread into a ball.
‘It comes out of nowhere . . .’ Siddy whispered.
Moll stopped winding and the string stayed at its new length, a small shining reel, then she tucked it into her coat pocket and buttoned it up tight.
‘It’s magical all right,’ she said.
Siddy smiled. ‘Now we need to follow the next part of Willow’s clue: find the feather from burning wings.’
Moll bent down to pick up the rest of her arrows, but, every time she moved, the pain in her neck stung. It wasn’t the kind of ache you might get from a bruise: this was sharper. It had bite. She sat down on a tree stump, wincing as she touched her skin, and Gryff leant into her, rubbing his head in circles against her knees.
‘Are you OK?’ Siddy asked.
‘I’ll be fine.’ Moll turned away. She knew Siddy was only trying to help, but Moll didn’t like fuss or attention or having to admit that she was hurt. She pointed back towards the path. ‘We need to head on to find Angus’ sister, Aira – she’ll be able to help us find this feather.’
But Siddy knew his friend inside out and he walked round to face Moll. His eyes widened. ‘Your neck!’ he cried. ‘It’s covered in blisters! Why didn’t you tell me?’
Moll buried her head in Gryff’s fur. ‘It’ll be fine,’ she mumbled. ‘Probably.’
Siddy shook his head. ‘Remember Oak’s leg? It just looked like an ordinary cut at first, but the owl wings were cursed – that’s what made it so much worse.’ He bit his lip. ‘What if it’s the same thing with the witches’ hair? They were conjured from the dark magic too, Moll.’
He drew out a flask of water from his satchel, dampened a handkerchief, then passed it to Moll. She raised it to her neck and tried not to flinch as the moisture seeped into her skin.
‘Any better?’ Siddy asked.
Moll clenched her jaw and Siddy knew that she was still in pain, but was too proud to admit it.
He crouched in front of her. ‘Before we left Tanglefern Forest, Ma told me about a few of the remedies they use up in the northern wilderness that might help us on our journey. Now, what was it she said . . .?’ He thought for a moment. ‘Eating a mouse cures bed-wetting; victims of whooping cough should be passed beneath the belly of a horse . . .’
Moll threw up her hands. She was tired and in pain and Siddy was only making things worse.
He prattled on, desperately trying to remember. ‘If you cut the fingernails of a baby before they’re one year old, they’ll be a thief; if—’
‘Enough, Sid!’ Moll snapped. ‘None of that’s going to help!’ She kicked out at a twig, suddenly cross with the world and everyone in it. ‘If Domino was here, he’d know what to do. Or Alfie. They’d have listened properly and not been useless like you.’ The words escaped Moll’s lips before she could wind them in and instantly she regretted them.
Siddy’s face reddened; he pulled himself up and then, to Moll’s surprise, he stormed off into the trees.
Moll went to call out to get him to come back, but then she felt a familiar hardness close up inside her. ‘Fine!’ she shouted. ‘I’ll just sit here and wait for you to shake off your stupid mood. That’s fine. Just fine. It’s not as if we have anything important to do! Like halting an eternal night or anything!’ She wound her hair into a knot as Siddy disappeared between the silver birches, then she turned to Gryff. ‘He’s such a child sometimes.’
But the way the wildcat looked at her, his head cocked to one side, his eyes wide against the night, made Moll feel guilty instead of cross. She forced the fe
elings away and rocked back and forth; the pain in her neck was worsening. Minutes drifted by and she hunched her shoulders against the cold and glanced around for Siddy. But he was nowhere to be seen. The night belonged to the animals now: the shriek of a tawny owl and a fox pushing through the briars.
Moll thought of the last two Shadowmasks somewhere beyond the forest. They’d be on to her now the witches had been beaten and she was alone in the trees because Siddy had wandered off. She began to plan what she’d say to him when he returned – how she’d list her complaints on her fingers so that he could see exactly why she was mad at him. But, as more time passed and still Siddy didn’t return, Moll’s heart quickened. What if he’d walked all the way back to the North Door to find Domino? What if he was in trouble?
Moll took off her moleskin cap and turned it anxiously in her hands as she remembered Domino’s words: ‘Stick together at all times, at all costs . . .’ She bit her lip as the night crept closer around her.
The sound of sticks snapping made Moll whirl round. Gryff snarled and rose to all fours, but then Siddy emerged through the bracken, soil streaked down his trousers and scratches criss-crossing his face.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ Moll said, trying to hide her relief.
Siddy nodded. ‘Yes. It’s me.’
Moll got ready to rattle off her speech, but then Siddy thumped down beside her on the tree trunk and held up his hand. ‘I don’t care what you have to say, Moll. I really don’t.’
Moll drew breath to argue, but Siddy forced his words out over hers.
‘I may not be as nifty as Domino or as quick-thinking as Alfie or as brave as you, but I’m the one left fighting alongside you. And when you’re angry or you’re in pain you’ve got to remember that. You can’t just fling words about without thinking. OK? We have to stick together.’
Moll plucked at the cuff of her coat. ‘But you just wandered off and left me.’
The Night Spinner Page 6
