Siddy shook his head and from his pockets he drew out a handful of long, square stems fringed with oval leaves, and a clump of dripping moss. ‘Figwort,’ he said, ‘and sphagnum moss. They grow near water so when I finally remembered what Ma said – that together they can be used as a dressing to draw out poison – I went down to the river to pick them.’
Moll hung her head. She’d seen how steep the gorge was; she knew how dangerous it would have been to scramble down there – and Sid had the scratches to prove it – but he’d done it for her while she’d been seething in the trees.
Moll shifted on the tree stump. ‘I thought you were just being cross.’
Siddy wrapped the moss and leaves inside his handkerchief. ‘I was collecting herbs and being cross.’
He raised the poultice to Moll’s neck and normally she would have shoved him away and told him that she could manage herself. But as soon as the plants touched her skin Moll felt the pain ease.
She looked at her friend. ‘I’m sorry, Sid.’
Siddy dabbed the dressing around her neck and Moll blinked as the water from the moss seeped through the handkerchief and down her neck.
‘Do you hate me?’ she mumbled.
Siddy considered. ‘No. You just annoy me sometimes.’ Moll’s face dropped. ‘But I think that’s OK. Everyone has fallouts – maybe not about witches and moss and stuff – but I reckon if you can patch things up again afterwards then that’s when you know you’ve got a good friend.’
Siddy drew the moss and figwort round to the back of Moll’s neck and she sighed. ‘You’re quite wise, Sid. For a boy.’
He shrugged. ‘I think a lot.’
Moll picked at her nails. ‘I don’t.’
‘No. You’re too busy catapulting people and being rude.’
Moll ran a hand down Gryff’s throat. ‘I’m sorry for being cross. It’s just that sometimes I feel like we don’t really stand a chance. You saw that storm back in Glendrummie and the way those witches laughed at us – what happens if we can’t find the amulet before the full moon?’
For a moment, Siddy looked surprised – it wasn’t like Moll to speak this way – then he shook his head. ‘Nothing’s bigger than us, Moll. We might not always get it right, but we’ve got the power of the old magic on our side. And we’ve got each other. We’re still the Tribe.’
‘Not without Alfie . . .’ Moll said, her voice suddenly small and cracked.
Siddy lifted the poultice away and Moll touched her neck to find the blisters had completely vanished.
‘Thank you, Sid,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t even hurt any more.’
Siddy wiped the dirt from his hands. ‘Alfie’s out there somewhere, Moll, and, if we follow Willow’s clues, I know we’ll get him back. We’ll be a Tribe again soon. You’ll see.’
Gryff burrowed his head into Moll’s chest and she tried to nod, but something inside her was niggling, whispering fresh fears into her mind.
‘I saw a beech tree this side of the river with roots spilling down from the bank to the path,’ Siddy said. ‘I reckon there’s enough space for us to sleep safely under them.’
Moll hauled herself up and the three of them walked back through the trees towards the path. The beech was large and gnarled and beneath the roots they shared out the bread and cheese Morag had packed for them. A while later, Siddy lifted out a blanket and Gryff scratched a hole into the bank beside Moll and curled up inside it. Siddy glanced at the wildcat and Moll could tell that though he joked about Hermit and Porridge the Second he missed having them by his side and sometimes she forgot just how lucky she was to have Gryff.
Siddy sighed and lay down, pulling the blanket over him and Moll. ‘We’re one step closer,’ he said sleepily.
Moll snuggled deeper inside her coat, whispered her promise to Alfie – the one she had whispered every night since he had disappeared – and, with the river rushing in her ears, she drifted off to sleep.
But beyond the Clattering Gorge and up past the Rambling Moors, Wormhook paced back and forth across the courtyard of the monastery. His cloak rustled over the cobbles and beside him hung the Veil, breathing quietly into the darkness. Wormhook stopped in the far corner of the courtyard, under a flaming torch wedged inside a gargoyle’s mouth, and the Veil halted beside him, its thread glittering beneath the light.
‘They have beaten the witches,’ Wormhook said, each word spat, like venom, from his sack mask.
He placed a hand on the Veil and it rippled beneath his palm, but the Shadowmask wasn’t talking to the quilt. There was another figure in the centre of the courtyard, sitting on the lip of a stone fountain. Her body was draped in dusty robes and instead of skin covering her face there were cobwebs, a shroud of grey stretched over her bald scalp and withered features.
‘The Veil has visited almost every village in the north now and its poison has seeped into thousands of people’s souls,’ Wormhook muttered. ‘Tonight it will go south to spread yet more fear.’
The figure dipped her cobwebbed face. ‘I have opened more thresholds so that you can conjure the thickest mists and the deepest snows from the Underworld. A Night Spinner might as well use his gifts after all.’ Her voice was stiff and musty, like something forgotten. ‘Once you lay waste to these lands, the people will be crying out for someone to lead them – and the dark magic will step in.’
Wormhook’s sack face tightened. ‘You need to find the girl and the wildcat if we are to succeed, Orbrot. Without Molly Pecksniff’s impossible dream crushed, the darkness cannot rise.’
Orbrot trailed a hand into the fountain. ‘The girl will be heading to the moors if she is not there already and I have summoned hideous beasts from the Underworld to find her and her wildcat. When they do, I shall drain her impossible dream, then—’
Wormhook seized the torch from the gargoyle’s mouth. ‘I will come with the Veil to finish the deed off.’ He strolled towards the fountain and the Veil followed. ‘We are so nearly there, Orbrot, but I think a little bit of that mist you spoke of will slow the girl down so that she is easier to capture . . .’
His voice shrivelled to a hiss as he lowered the torch over the lip of the fountain and Orbrot smiled, but when the flames met the water they did not fizzle out. Instead, the fire spread in a circle of bright green flames. Wormhook withdrew the torch, but still the fire danced and in the centre the water began to spin faster and faster until it swirled upwards into a spiral of mist.
Orbrot stood up and, as she spoke, the film of cobwebs sucked in around her mouth. ‘The girl doesn’t stand a chance. All will bow down to our darkness soon – even the sun will hide and the stars will tremble.’
She swept from the courtyard, loose cobwebs trailing from her scalp, and, after her footsteps had died away on the steps down the mountain, Wormhook turned back to the fountain.
‘Arise and wreak havoc,’ he growled.
And, at his words, the mist curled up into the sky and slithered away from the monastery. Wormhook watched it bulge over the mountains, then, with a dark smile, he turned to the Veil.
‘I hope you are ready for your rider again?’
Moll woke to someone tugging at her coat sleeve and for a second she imagined she was back in her wagon in Tanglefern Forest and that Mooshie had come to get her up for morning chores. Then her eyes flicked open to see Gryff pulling at her cuff with his teeth and the beech roots curved over her head.
The forest was already awake: a woodpecker drummed at a nearby tree and a red squirrel scampered along the path. It was a cold grey morning and even beneath the shelter of the roots Moll’s feet were numb inside her boots. She dug a hand inside her coat pocket and, on feeling the very slight weight of the piano string against her fingertips, she leant over to tickle Gryff’s throat.
His greeting call rumbled in her ears. ‘Brrroooooo.’
At the sound, Siddy opened his eyes and yawned.
‘We need to head on and find Aira,’ Moll whispered. ‘We shouldn’t stay in this fo
rest any longer than we need to.’
Gryff slipped out from the roots to hunt for food while Moll shook the last of the nuts and berries from the satchel and Siddy stooped to pick a handful of wood sorrel growing by the path. Then they followed the wildcat along the path above the river. Once or twice they saw the forest stir – a greenfinch flitting between branches, a roe deer picking its way through the ferns – but otherwise the place was quiet, a woodland scarred by the Shadowmasks’ magic.
Eventually the oak, ash and beech trees thinned and the path dropped level with the river. The water ran more slowly here and Moll watched the reflection of overhanging branches break apart as a small fish jumped and a dipper bobbed down from a rock to follow it. They walked on, right out of the trees, and there, rolling across the landscape for as far as they could see, were the moors. Where one hill sloped down another rose up, a sprawling wilderness purpled by frosted heather.
Siddy stopped for a moment. ‘The Rambling Moors.’
Moll blinked, unable to find words large enough to describe the emptiness before her. She’d been out on the heath beyond Tanglefern Forest many times with Domino – she’d raced into the open where the wild ponies roamed and relished the freedom of space – and somehow she’d imagined the landscape here to be like that. But Moll’s thoughts hadn’t been big enough to hold in what the moorland was. It didn’t rise up into towering mountains; it didn’t need to. The hills owned the landscape just by being there. Grazing sheep were reduced to white dots, streams shrank to wrinkles and the path ahead of them was almost lost amid the heather. The moors swallowed everything and, facing them now, Moll gulped.
‘How are we going to find a feather from burning wings out here?’ she said.
Gryff stalked along the path, out on to the moors.
Siddy straightened his flat cap. ‘By following him. By putting one foot in front of the other until we find Aira MacDuff and that bothy.’
Moll watched the wildcat’s shoulders rise and fall, his paws silent on the rocky track, and she felt stronger somehow, and, with Siddy by her side, she followed. The river quietened into a stream and ran west, away from them, but they continued on the path as it wound on to the moors. Moll could see the distant hills were scattered with snow and from the hollows a mist was rising – but she had darker things than the weather on her mind. Out here on the open moors, she was easy prey for the Shadowmasks . . .
A covey of grouse sprang from the heather and Moll jumped as Gryff tore off after them. Her eyes widened as the wildcat bounded further and further away, then the birds flew out of his reach and he sloped back to join the others. Moll ran a hand over his back because, for a fleeting second, it had felt as if he might keep running into the wilderness without her. Here on the Rambling Moors she could feel a different kind of freedom rising from him, a slice of the wild only matched by the landscape around them. This, a small voice within her said, this is where he really belongs.
It was after they’d been walking for an hour that they clambered over a gate set within a fence and Siddy noticed the highland cow – a lone male grazing further down the hill.
He looked at it longingly. ‘Just think what we could do with a highland cow at our side. He could carry our bows and supplies and we could ride him when we got tired.’
Moll glanced at the cow’s horns. ‘It wouldn’t end happily, Sid.’ She paused. ‘Once all this is over, I’ll go hunting for a pet with you – something a bit bigger than Hermit, perhaps, and a bit less slimy than Porridge the Second.’ She nodded down the path. ‘Right now though we’ve got to keep going.’
‘Can’t we just rest for a moment?’ Siddy asked.
Moll shook her head. ‘We haven’t got time.’
They walked on and, while Moll hastened to keep up with Gryff, Siddy began to lag behind, whistling every now and again to try and attract the attention of the other highland cows they passed.
‘Come on, Sid!’ Moll called without looking back.
She knew Sid was tired and sore after the climb into the gorge the night before and that he was missing Porridge and Hermit, but worrying about all that wouldn’t help them now. Moll tried to ignore the ache in her own legs and focus on placing one foot in front of the other, and it was only when she looked up that she noticed how much the weather had closed in. Great bands of mist hung where the moors ahead had been and all around her tendrils of fog crept closer. Moll watched as the mist inched over the heather like a living thing. She spun round to look for Siddy, but the path behind her was empty.
‘Sid!’ she called. ‘Where are you?’
She waited a few moments, but nobody emerged through the haze. Insides turning, she careered back down the track with Gryff.
‘Sid!’ she cried. ‘Sid!’
She rounded the bend in the track to where she assumed her friend would be, but there was only a screen of mist.
‘Sid!’ Moll shouted again.
Her voice echoed across the moor, caught in the hanging fog, but Siddy didn’t reply. Moll stumbled into the heather with Gryff and ran blindly, her face wet with sweat. She’d been impatient again, and charged off, even though she knew Siddy was tired and had only wanted a little rest.
Moll turned blindly, this way and that. ‘Sid!’ she called. ‘Sid!’
Gryff brushed against her legs, but whichever way she turned Siddy was nowhere to be seen. Moll’s mind whirred with images of her friend at the bottom of a ravine, of him gored by a highland cow or, worse, snatched by a Shadowmask. She blundered on, shouting his name.
The path had vanished and Moll could barely see Gryff’s black-and-white stripes, even though he was just by her side. And then suddenly the ground gave way beneath Moll and she fell forward, landing with a slap on something soft and muddy.
‘No,’ she breathed, panic rising in her throat as she remembered Domino’s words on the train – of peat bogs that could suck you down whole . . .
Frantically, she reached out her arms towards Gryff, but the peat sucked hard, dragging her feet then her legs and then her waist into the cold, wet earth.
‘Help!’ she yelled as Gryff clawed at her coat.
Then Moll’s eyes widened as two shadowy hands in the depths of the bog wrapped round her shins before heaving at her legs and forcing her down. Moll heard Gryff growl as he tried to pull her from the creature, but whatever was lurking in the bog wasn’t letting go. Its hands clamped tighter round Moll’s legs and little by little she felt her body slip from Gryff’s hold until the mud was slopping around her neck.
‘No!’ she gasped, her lungs snatching at the air. ‘No!’
Moll’s eyes locked on to Gryff’s as the mud rose above her chin. She sealed her lips tight, forcing the breath out through her nose, then there was a loud belch as her whole face was wrenched beneath the surface. The earth closed round Moll and she thought of Siddy out on the moor without her, of Gryff struggling above the surface and of the Shadowmasks waiting to conjure their eternal night.
She bucked and twisted, but the hands kept pulling and Moll felt her mind shutting down and her limbs growing weak as she was hauled deeper and deeper into the blackness of the bog.
Moll forced her eyes open and almost immediately she tensed. She was no longer out on the moors but inside, sitting in an armchair lined with sheepskin. In front of her was a fire pit and flames crackled inside the circle of stones. Nine other armchairs surrounded the pit, each lined with a sheepskin just like hers, and smoke drifted upwards into the chimney hanging down from above.
Moll kept still, trying to work out how she had come to be here when the last thing she remembered was being swallowed by the peat bog . . . Her eyes darted about the room, taking in the flagstone floor and the tartan curtains, and then they came to rest on an armchair on the other side of the fire in which a young woman sat. She was in her twenties perhaps, with cropped red hair, and a shawl was draped over her blouse and tartan skirt.
She hadn’t noticed Moll was awake yet and Moll wanted to ke
ep it that way for two reasons: the woman was reading a book entitled How to Stab Adders and Skin Hares and a crossbow rested on her lap. Moll would have been impressed by the weapon normally – its owner had carved a hare’s head into the tiller and used what looked like a twisted mulberry root for the string – but her mind was on Gryff and Siddy. Where were they? Where was she?
Moll’s eyes slid to a wooden ladder behind the woman that seemed to lead up to another floor, then to the windows on either side of the walls. It was darker now, but Moll could see that the mist outside had pulled back a little and she was in a cottage in the middle of the moors. Pulse racing, Moll tried to think. Her quiver was gone and, as she straightened her back, she realised her knife was no longer pressing into the belt around her waist.
Catapult, Moll thought. But as she glanced at the woman opposite she found herself remembering what had happened in Angus’ house, how she had reached for her catapult while Domino had reached for words. Think first, speak second and fight later, a voice inside her seemed to be saying.
And very, very slowly Moll moved a hand down her coat to check that the piano string was still there – but the movement had been enough to rouse the attention of the woman opposite. She dropped the book, seized her crossbow and walked round the fire pit towards Moll.
‘I made a decision out on the moors that you could be trusted,’ the woman said. ‘But there’s dark magic brewing left, right and centre so, before I do any more trusting and helping, you need to give me some answers. Who are you?’
Moll shrank back in the chair. ‘I – I . . .’
It was then that she noticed a dark shape slink up on to the windowsill behind the woman. Gryff was outside the cottage, crouched on the stone ledge as he squeezed himself through the gap in the window. Moll’s heart surged at the sight of the wildcat.
‘I said, who are—’
Before Moll could reassure Gryff that perhaps the woman could be trusted, he leapt from the windowsill on to the woman’s back and she shrieked and stumbled backwards, flinging the wildcat to the floor. Gryff was up on his feet in seconds, mouth wide in a snarl. The woman’s blue eyes flashed as she slipped a foot into the stirrup of her crossbow, pulled the string back on to the lock and slotted in a bolt. She aimed the weapon at Gryff and Moll screamed as the wildcat shot backwards and the bolt thwunked into a table leg at the far end of the room. The woman reloaded and Gryff raced across the room towards Moll, ripping through a sheepskin rug and sending an armchair crashing to the ground. Then Moll was on her feet too, a pebble slotted to the pouch of the catapult.
The Night Spinner Page 7
