Siddy scooped Frank up and the ferret licked his cheek. ‘Why does everything have to be so difficult?’
Gryff prowled beneath the window, then he looked up at the Stone Necklace and Moll sensed his determination, his refusal to give in, even though the challenge ahead hung large and almost impossible. She clenched her teeth.
‘The old magic may not be the easiest way, but it’s almost always the best way,’ Moll said. ‘And, even if it leads me up dangerous cliffs and into the hands of the Shadowmask, I’ll keep on following it. Step by step.’
Siddy tucked his scarf into his duffle coat. ‘We’re with you, Moll. Let’s get going.’
Gryff dipped his head and Frank raised a paw which might, or might not, have been a salute.
But, not so far away, spurred on by the thought of an eternal darkness, the Veil continued to scatter its curse, a poison seeping into the heart of the land.
They emerged from the fishing hut into a world dusted white. The jetty was a plank of snow and Moll and Siddy tensed as they glimpsed the loch, now covered in great sheets of ice that creaked and groaned into the silent fjord.
‘This is no ordinary weather,’ Murk muttered as still more snow fell.
Moll nodded. ‘This is the Night Spinner’s doing. My friend Aira from the Highland Watch told me the dark magic has conjured the worst mists and snows the north has ever seen.’
They walked across the pebbled shore until they were standing at the foot of the Stone Necklace.
‘See?’ Murk said glumly. ‘It’s too big. Far too big.’
Moll let her eyes travel from its base right up to the jagged ridge. It was a giant wall of rock, covered in snow and polished, in parts, with ice. She blinked as the snowflakes sprinkled down, peeling from the peaks in shifting ribbons.
‘Enormous. Colossal. Gargantuan,’ Murk mumbled. ‘Never seen anything the size of the Stone Necklace.’
Moll turned to the old woman. ‘I thought once the arrow was out you’d cheer up.’
Murk shook her head. ‘It’s in a loch monster’s nature to be gloomy. And what I see in front of me is the gloomiest of things yet.’
Siddy rolled his eyes and from his pocket Frank stuck out a little pink tongue at the loch monster.
Moll tugged her cap down over her ears. ‘Right,’ she muttered. ‘Let’s get climbing.’
Murk nodded. ‘Terrible idea but yes, off you go. And good luck! Though it probably won’t help.’
‘Goodbye, Murk,’ Siddy said. ‘I hope you enjoy the depths of the loch now.’
Murk nodded. ‘It’ll be splendid. Unless the selkies crowd in and bother me. Or the ice covers my surfacing spots. Or everyone forgets I exist and no one comes to visit me for another one hundred years. Goodbye!’
The old woman waved from the shore, a resigned grimace plastered on her face, as Moll, Siddy, Gryff and Frank walked to the base of the Stone Necklace. Gryff set off first, his claws gripping fast on the rocks beneath the snow, but, when Moll and Siddy tried to follow, their boots slid on the icy crags, their gloves scrabbled for holds and they tumbled back to the shore.
Murk called after them. ‘See what I mean? Completely hopeless, as I said. Might as well just sit and wait for the Shadowmask to have his wicked way . . .’
Moll watched the wildcat springing between ledges of snow, up to places where she couldn’t follow, then she threw herself at the cliff face again. But, when she landed, with a thump, at Siddy’s feet, he shook his head.
‘It’s not going to work. We need something to hold on to as we climb.’ Siddy glanced at Moll’s pocket. ‘I think I’ve got an idea.’
A short while later, Moll was pulling back on her bow, the silver arrow taut against it, and a knot of piano string wound round its tip that then trailed into Siddy’s hands.
‘Aim for the highest point you can, Moll,’ Siddy said. ‘And fire hard so that it sticks into a crag.’
From behind them, Murk let out a strangled wail, then covered her eyes with her webbed hands. ‘Oh, I can’t watch. It’s too awful.’
But Moll wasn’t listening any more because poised some way up the cliff was Gryff, and he was waiting for them to follow. She watched him for a moment and then her gaze flicked upwards, to the highest point of the cliff, and closing one eye, she drew the arrow back against her chin, and fired hard.
The arrow shot upwards, the string in Siddy’s hands materialising out of thin air and unravelling as it went. A glint of silver racing through the snow, the arrow soared up and up and up the Stone Necklace until it struck the cliff top and dug hard into a crag.
Siddy grinned and Murk peeped out between her fingers and raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘Well done! But you’ll probably break your legs on the next bit.’
Moll grabbed hold of the piano string, visible only because of the flakes of snow which landed on it. She tugged hard and knew that it would take her, Siddy and Frank’s weight – because the old magic was something they could rely on, even in the face of a towering mountain.
She set her boots against the cliff, looked up at the peaks, almost lost in the swirl of snow, and began to climb after Gryff, her gloves wrapped tightly round the piano string. And, though her toes and fingers were numb and snowflakes smudged on to her eyelashes, she kept on climbing – over ledges and overhangs, across chasms and crevasses – feeling Siddy and Frank behind her in the way the piano string moved. Once or twice, her boots skidded on the ice and she stumbled several metres down, but every time the string held fast and Moll carried on going.
The summit came almost as a surprise. The sky was white and full of snow and, set against the Stone Necklace, the two things were hard to tell apart. But Gryff was there, nuzzling against Moll’s side as she threw her body on to the top. The wind was wilder here and as Moll took in the view ahead she gulped. The mighty ridge that was the Stone Necklace curved round from the sea far inland, but spread out in front of her, for as far as her eyes could reach through the falling snow, were mountains – vast peaks with plunging sides and crests that scored the horizon. Frozen waterfalls had been sculpted over some crags while others were a haunting maze of snow and rock and ice.
Moll shivered. ‘Somewhere out there is the last Shadowmask.’
Siddy clambered up on to the ridge beside her, his cheeks red from the cold and the climb. He collapsed in the snow. ‘We did it!’
Frank leapt excitedly from Siddy’s coat, but promptly sank into the snow and had to be picked back up and pocketed. Then Moll, Siddy and Gryff peered back over the cliff edge. They could just make out a dark dot on the shoreline.
‘What do you think Murk would say if she was up here with us now?’ Siddy asked.
‘That if we don’t break our necks in the Barbed Peaks the last Shadowmask will come and break them for us.’
Siddy nodded. ‘Probably.’
They watched as the dot shuffled out across the ice and then sank through a hole and disappeared into the loch. Then they turned back to the Barbed Peaks and, through the screen of snow, they watched a covey of ptarmigan pour over a ridge and then drop down into a hollow. Moll yanked the arrow from the crag and tucked the string into her pocket, then she took a deep breath.
‘We stay together out here in the mountains – all of us. You, me and Gryff.’
‘And Frank,’ Siddy added as the ferret raised a defiant chin towards Moll.
Gryff led the way on to a ridge that wound out from the Stone Necklace. The snow gusted around them and lay thick about their boots, but they plodded north, as Willow had told them, following the highest points of the mountains to avoid the snowdrifts gathering in the folds. Some of the ridges were so narrow they had to go single file, edging round crags and leaping over drops, but they trudged on and little by little they made their way through the Barbed Peaks.
Somewhere behind the papery skies was the fading sun, but, even if it had been able to push through the clouds, they didn’t have long before darkness fell. The sky was turning – a backlit b
lue spliced with orange – and soon the moon would be riding high and the last Shadowmask would be just hours away from casting his eternal night. Moll shuddered inside her coat. They didn’t even know where they were heading and yet they were the ones tasked with halting this everlasting darkness.
Moll blinked as a hare skimmed the ridge, its amber eyes glinting against the sifting snow, then Gryff stopped on a rocky crag. His ears swivelled, his whiskers twitched and then he grunted and kept on walking. Moll chewed her lip as she tried to work out some sort of plan, but, moments later, Gryff stopped again, pausing mid-stride before scrambling backwards into Moll’s legs. Moll felt the wildcat’s heartbeat clamour against her legs. Something wasn’t right.
‘What is it?’ Moll whispered, crouching beside Gryff.
The wildcat’s ears were flattened to his head, then he growled and began to run back the way they’d come.
Siddy strained his eyes towards the next peak and Frank’s head darted this way and that from his pocket. ‘But – there’s nothing there!’
Moll grabbed his arm and yanked him back. ‘I don’t care! Gryff’s never wrong!’
They hurtled back up the pass, their boots skidding through the snow and scree, but, before they reached the peak, the whole mountain beneath them began to shake. Gently at first, like a tremor from a distant earthquake, and then stronger so that the force was enough to knock Moll and Siddy to their knees. They clung on to the crags with Gryff and Frank and the snow whirled around them.
‘An earthquake?’ Moll shouted.
But, as the entire mountain shook itself free from the ground and reared up into the air, Moll realised that this wasn’t an earthquake and they weren’t clinging to an ordinary crag. They were hanging from a leg and that leg belonged to an enormous man built from the rock itself.
The blood pounded in Moll’s temples as she remembered Aira’s words.
In among the Barbed Peaks, there were giants.
Moll, Gryff, Siddy and Frank clung on in terror as the giant’s voice boomed out.
‘Who disturbs the Ancient Ones?’
The voice was so low and loud that its vibrations sent whole chunks of snow sliding off the peaks around them. The giant took a huge stride forward and Moll felt her body slam against his rocky thigh. She gripped tighter, hardly daring to breathe, and glanced up. The giant’s torso loomed above her, a tower of mighty rocks, but it was the face that scared Moll most: great caverns for eyes, a jagged ridge for the mouth and shards of ice for hair.
She could feel Siddy shaking beside her. ‘What do we do?’
But the answer didn’t come from Moll. Again the giant bellowed and the sound echoed across the mountains, filling the sky and the sea and every living thing around them.
‘Arise, Ancient Ones!’ it cried. ‘There are imposters in our midst and they have broken our slumber.’
All around them the mountains juddered, shaking off clumps of snow before rising up into stone pillars. Ten giants lumbered forward, stepping over ridges as if they were pebbles, and the words ran dry in Moll’s throat. The giants were so enormous they could have perched on the Stone Necklace and paddled their bouldered feet down in the loch below.
Moll pressed herself into the giant’s leg, her eyes closed. ‘Don’t move,’ she whispered to Siddy. ‘Whatever you do, don’t move. They might not have seen us yet.’
The giant turned his body this way and that as he searched for the intruders and, with each swing, Moll, Gryff, Siddy and Frank swayed back and forth, fingertips and claws clutched tight. He stooped down and peered beneath a boulder before flinging it aside and, with her heart thundering, Moll opened one eye. Her muscles tensed. Frank was climbing out of Siddy’s pocket and to Moll’s horror she saw the ferret had interpreted the advancing giants as an invitation to play. Frank dropped down to a narrow ledge – the giant’s knee perhaps – and began to dance.
‘There!’ a giant roared.
The voice was female, but it was loud and fierce and Moll’s insides churned as she realised who it had come from: a giant to the right of them with long, daggered icicles hanging down either side of her face and knuckles the size of bricks that dragged across the ground. Her mouth opened, wide and black like the entrance to a cave.
‘On your leg, Wallop!’ she screamed. ‘They’re on your leg!’
The giant they were clasping on to, Wallop, glanced down and Frank scampered back up to Siddy, Moll and Gryff who then shrank as far as they could into a crevice. But there was no escaping now.
‘Two smidglings, a wildcat and a ferret?’
Moll felt the rush of Wallop’s breath on her cheeks, as cold as the bitter north wind, then the giant swung a hand towards the group, swiping them clean off his leg and into his rocky palm. He unfolded his fingers and drew his prisoners up to his face, squinting into the fading light. Moll clung to Gryff. Wallop’s mouth was a den of darkness and, as he raised the group up to his nose and sniffed them, Moll’s whole body slid towards it, sucked in by his heaving breath. Then Wallop’s face scrunched, his eyes narrowed and he roared, sending Moll, Gryff, Siddy and Frank tumbling back over themselves against his fingers.
‘They have the Oracle Arrow!’ he hollered.
There was a rumbling and a grunting among the other giants, then one raised its fist. ‘Then they must be the ones who stole the Ancient Book from our cave too! Thieves! Thieves!’
Moll staggered to her feet. ‘We haven’t stolen your book!’ she shouted. ‘And we only have the arrow because—’
The female giant strode forward and the icicles around her face jangled. ‘Eat them, Wallop,’ she said.
Another giant nodded. ‘Munch their bones!’
The giants’ rage grew.
‘Chomp their stupid brains!’ cried yet another.
‘Chew their pointless toes!’ It was the female giant again, bent on absolute brutality.
Wallop raised a hand and the chanting faded. ‘We are the Keepers of the Ancient Book, the manuscript that holds the full story of the old magic,’ he said. ‘We are not barbarians.’ He glanced at the female giant who looked rather disappointed. ‘Please remember that, Petal. These smidglings deserve a fair trial.’
Siddy rose to his feet beside Moll. ‘Thank you – thank you!’
The giants sat down on the mountaintops in a circle around Wallop, who held his prisoners up in his hand.
‘Smidglings, you are charged with stealing the Ancient Book and the Oracle Arrow. How do you plead?’
Moll looked at Siddy and together they said, ‘Not guilty.’
Siddy took a step forward. ‘We’re trying to protect the old magic – just like you. We found the arrow stuck inside Murk, the creature in the loch, and we haven’t even heard of your book before. You need to believe us so that we can stop the last Shadowmask from conjuring the eternal night!’
There was a momentary silence and all Moll could hear was the shuffle of falling snow. And then the giants began to laugh.
‘Murk lives one hundred years deep!’ Wallop guffawed. ‘A couple of smidglings like you couldn’t have summoned her from all the way down there. So, it seems you are liars as well as thieves . . .’
‘Gobble their bottoms!’ Petal roared. ‘Snaffle their earlobes!’
Moll tried to keep calm. ‘But we did summon Murk!’ she cried. ‘The old magic sent us clues to follow and, even though the last Shadowmask buried that arrow one hundred years deep, we found it!’ The two rocky ledges above Wallop’s eyes lifted and Moll spun round to Siddy. ‘They don’t believe us, Sid! After everything we’ve gone through, they think we’re making this up!’
Siddy could feel Moll’s temper rising. ‘Don’t do anything rash, Moll,’ he begged. ‘We’ll make them understand.’
But Moll was way past rash. Out came the catapult, in went the stone and, with fiery eyes, she raised her weapon towards Wallop’s forehead. ‘Listen here, Wallop!’ she snarled. ‘You better put me and my pals down or—’
The giants we
re on their feet again, punching their fists in the air.
‘Eat the angry smidgling first!’ Petal roared. ‘Swallow her whole!’
‘But – the – the trial!’ Siddy stammered. ‘You promised us a fair trial!’
Wallop grunted. ‘That was before missy here got out her catapult.’
Siddy yanked Moll’s weapon down. ‘Apologise!’ he cried. ‘They’re giants, Moll!’
Moll wrenched her arm free and drew back on her catapult pouch. ‘He called us liars – after all we’ve done to protect the old magic!’
Siddy flung himself against Moll. ‘Don’t do this!’
But she wrestled her arm free, pulled back on her catapult – and fired. The stone clipped Wallop’s forehead, then clattered off his body before dropping to the ground.
Siddy bit his lip. ‘Oh, Moll, why do you never learn . . .’
The giants stamped their feet then threw back their heads and bellowed.
‘Squash them!’
‘Trample them!’
‘Flatten them!’
Petal clapped her hands. ‘Mince them in the snow! Gobble their guts!’ She was in her element now.
Wallop drew his hand up to his face and then opened his mouth. Siddy hugged Frank, Gryff began to hiss and then Moll grabbed Siddy’s arm.
‘Listen!’ she cried.
Above the hollering giants was the unmistakable sound of a horn. It blared out across the mountains and Wallop’s hand stopped in mid-air. Next came a thundering of hooves. And then voices shouting. Moll’s heart leapt. Could it be? The other half of a promise made on the moors before the Lost Isles?
And then, tearing over a ridge to the east of them, only just visible in the dusk, came a woman with ginger hair and a crossbow slung over a tartan cape, and a young man, dark-haired, full of fight, clasping a pistol.
‘Aira!’ Moll screamed. ‘Domino! Help us!’
The Night Spinner Page 19
