The Night Spinner

by Abi Elphinstone

  Moll’s neck throbbed as a bat tightened its giant claws around her, strangling the air in her throat, and then she screamed as she felt the skin at her nape tear. She scrabbled for the Oracle Arrow on the ground, but it was gone, taken by Wormhook, and Moll’s heart shook.

  Give up, a voice inside her whispered. In the end they’ll win, whatever you do. Alfie’s gone – you can’t pull him back from what Wormhook has made him – and the others are outside fighting a losing battle. The Shadowmasks’ darkness is too strong; you never really stood a chance.

  The voices inside Moll grew and her shoulders slumped. They’d made it this far – to the monastery tucked into the clouds – but Wormhook’s nightmares were a darkness too strong for any soul to withstand. Moll wrapped her arms round her head and let the despair crawl all over her as the last Shadowmask made his way back to the lectern, the Oracle Arrow in one hand, his quill held high in the other.

  The bats shrieked, Moll’s fear swelled and then into the darkness Gryff growled. The noise was raw and fierce and at the sound of it the nightmares shivered and withdrew a fraction. The wildcat made his way through the shadows and Moll reached a hand out until her palm met with soft, warm fur, then she drew him close. He growled again and Moll soaked in all the courage and hope locked inside it. The nightmares thinned a little more, but it was enough for Moll to see Gryff’s green eyes burning before her.

  Fight, he was saying. Fight.

  Moll balled her hands into fists. It was her fear that gave the nightmares power. She had to be braver. Stronger. She forced herself up – without her bow, without the arrow, without even a clear plan – just with the strength of her wildcat’s growl inside her. And, as if their thoughts were bound as one, Moll and Gryff charged through the swirling darkness towards Wormhook. Gryff wrenched him back from the lectern, claws and teeth set hard into the witch doctor’s cloak, and the Oracle Arrow clanged to the floor. The shadows of wolves and owls hung back and then dimmed still more and, as Gryff forced Wormhook to the ground, Moll knew what she had to do. Somehow she needed to save the story the giants had protected.

  Standing before the lectern, she brought her hands up to the book. Inscribed on to the dark green leather in gold-swirled lettering were three words and they glittered beneath the lantern light: The Ancient Book. Moll’s skin tingled. This was the story of the old magic passed down through the generations and guarded by giants. But as she went to open it she found she couldn’t lift the cover. She clawed at it with her fingers and, from beneath Gryff’s hold, Wormhook gave a wild laugh.

  ‘You can do what you want with me,’ he sniggered. ‘But you cannot undo what I’ve done to your precious story.’

  The nightmares lined the rowan trees, dark and brooding, as if waiting for a command to pounce. Gryff sank his claws into the witch doctor’s shoulders, pinning him down, and Moll found herself thinking of Siddy’s words when they were with the giants: What use is an ancient story to the last Shadowmask? Only now did she understand. It was everything. Stories stayed, after memories were erased and people were forgotten. And here she was, at the very end of her journey, before a book that held the most important story of all. Moll heaved at the cover again, but it held fast.

  Wormhook laughed. ‘Now you realise . . . There is no key – the damage I’ve done will remain locked inside that book for ever.’

  The nightmares raced in towards the lectern – wolves pounding, bats flapping – and the witch doctor drew breath to unleash more curses from the Underworld. But Gryff slammed a paw across his mouth and Moll stood firm against the battering on all sides, her eyes now fixed on the padlock binding the book shut. Suddenly she remembered the gift Willow had given her and she ripped the bone key from her neck.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Please work.’

  There was a scrabbling behind her and Gryff growled, but Moll was already fumbling with the lock, her fingers white around the key as the nightmares bit and tore and scratched at her skin. The key slid in and with a click the padlock sprang open and Moll lifted the huge cover back. She blinked once, twice, three times.

  ‘No,’ she gasped, frantically flicking through the pages.

  Her face paled. Even amid the nightmares she could see that every single page in the Ancient Book was blank. Wormhook had erased the story of the old magic completely.

  ‘You understand now?’ Wormhook’s voice was a rasp as he twisted his mouth free from Gryff’s paw. ‘There is no old magic any more. It’s gone, rubbed out, forgotten. And, when I raise the eternal night, no one will even remember it existed.’ He smiled. ‘The book is ready for a new story now, one built from the shadows of the Underworld, and, before you barged in, I was about to write it.’

  Moll’s shoulders sank and Gryff’s hold slackened for a second – but Wormhook seized his chance, wrenching himself free before gliding upwards, and, as he hung in the air, the shadows of wolves and bats poured from his mouth. Moll tore towards the Oracle Arrow, but the nightmares throbbed around it, blotting it from sight and thrashing against her body.

  She closed her eyes to keep her fear at bay. She needed a plan – something to undo what Wormhook had done, a way to bring the story of the old magic back. She felt again for Gryff beside her and the beginnings of an idea began to form. She let it breathe for a moment, small and quiet against Wormhook’s laugh and the force of the nightmares, until the strength of it forced her eyes open.

  Bruised and bloodied, she reached into her quiver and drew out the golden feather, then she rushed back to the lectern and dipped it into the inkwell. She held her quill between trembling fingers above the first blank page and glanced at Gryff beside her.

  ‘I – I don’t know what to write.’ She sucked the words through her teeth to force the pain back. ‘I can’t even spell most words.’

  Wormhook glided above the lectern, his mask thrown back as he laughed. ‘You,’ he spat. ‘You think you can rewrite the story of the old magic?’

  The nightmares shook around Moll as if they were laughing too.

  Gryff snarled at the witch doctor, then he nosed Moll’s hand.

  I believe in you, he was saying. I know you can do this.

  Moll gripped the quill tighter. She didn’t know where to start. She didn’t even understand a lot of the old magic. Then she found herself thinking of a story she did understand, a life she knew, a tale that perhaps only she could tell. And though her handwriting was a mess, though the words were misspelt and blotched with tears and she could barely see the paper through the nightmares, Moll wrote Alfie’s story.

  Of how the Shadowmasks had stolen him as a child and used his tears to make their Soul Splinter. Of how they had broken his ‘real’. Of how she had met him in Tanglefern Forest and he’d helped her escape Skull’s gang. Of how he’d become one of their Tribe and lived with them in Little Hollows. Of how he’d fought alongside her and Sid and Gryff – past smugglers, kelpies and giant eels – and how the Shadowmasks had taken him away and used him for their dark magic.

  And, as Moll wrote, as she fought to create – to build – while everything around her was falling apart, Gryff climbed up on to the lectern beside the Ancient Book and leapt towards Wormhook. The wildcat dragged the witch doctor down, fighting with a new-found strength. His claws ripped at the sack mask and tore the straw to shreds and, as Wormhook weakened, his nightmares shuddered and then broke apart before dissolving into nothing.

  All the while, Moll kept on writing, filling the Ancient Book with Alfie’s story even though her eyes were blinded by tears. Her words spilled on to the pages and then a remarkable thing began to happen.

  The roof above the library – the grey slabs of stone that looked as if they might have been there forever – began to fade. The colour drained away before vanishing completely until there was no longer a roof above the room, just the cold dark night. Clouds blocked the moon and stars from sight and the blackness sang of the eternal night to come, should Wormhook succeed in claiming Alfie after eras
ing the story of the old magic.

  But from the darkness something began to fall and it was not the cool white flakes of snow. This was gold – flecks of gold drifting down into the library – and, though Wormhook cried out again and again, still it fell around Moll, scattering like gilded rain on to the page before her.

  Moll gasped. The flecks of gold weren’t meaningless shapes tumbling down from an everlasting night. They were letters, hundreds of different letters, floating around her. Wormhook twisted beneath Gryff and screeched, but still the letters fell, in increasing numbers, on to the Ancient Book.

  These were the letters that Moll had written – they were her words falling from the sky – and, though her ink was smudged and almost unreadable, the gold letters were absolutely perfect and they settled above her own scribbles as if she had written them that way all along. Alfie’s story was how it should be, bright and bold and beautiful, nothing like the dark stain the Shadowmasks had made it. Moll wrote faster and faster, great sobs choking her throat, as the letters continued to drop like falling stars, until she was blind to the pain of her battered body and numb to everything around her. She didn’t see Gryff and Wormhook fighting – or the ghost of a boy stirring within the arch of thorns.

  Slowly, cautiously, the boy took a step into the library. His gaze was distant and his steps uncertain. Moll gripped the quill tighter as the letters danced around her, falling on to the page with her tears. The boy quickened his pace, as if he could sense something important, then he broke into a run, his old boots sprinting over the flagstones, his faded body becoming clearer and clearer with every stride.

  A word escaped from his lips, quiet and unsure of itself, and to most it would have been lost in the noise of the Shadowmask and the wildcat wrestling on the ground. But Moll heard her name and she looked up. Her eyes, red with crying, met the boy’s. Not a ghost now, not a wisp or a faded memory. He was real – with a pulse and a heart and a soul that could only ever mean good.

  Alfie charged across the room, his voice built up into a shout. ‘Moll!’ he cried. ‘Moll!’

  The quill fell from Moll’s hands. Then she staggered from the lectern and ran towards her friend, throwing her arms around him until they were clinging to one another beneath a sky that danced with gold.

  ‘Not possible,’ Wormhook gasped, breaking free from Gryff for a moment. ‘The Underworld stole your memories and I darkened your soul. And yet the curse has been lifted?’

  Alfie drew back from Moll, ignoring the witch doctor’s words because they were not important to him now.

  ‘You kept your promise,’ he said quietly. ‘You came for me.’

  Moll looked at Alfie. ‘No matter what the Shadowmasks had in store for us,’ she said, ‘me, Gryff and Sid – we crossed forests and moors and seas and mountains. Nothing could stop us from finding you again.’

  Alfie bit his lip. ‘The last thing I remember is us up on the eagle’s back and me reaching for the Soul Splinter.’ He looked down. ‘But I heard Wormhook’s words in the courtyard – all those people poisoned by the Veil, by me. How can we ever really be friends again knowing what I did?’

  Moll gripped his hands though her own were cut and shaking. ‘There’s a goodness fastened to your soul, Alfie, no matter what the Shadowmasks did to you before. I broke their curse with my hope in you. You’re real now and nothing in your past can undo that.’

  Gryff pinned Wormhook to the ground and Moll blinked upwards into the flutter of golden letters. These were not the words she had written now – she could feel it – this was the story of the old magic finding its way home because her impossible dream had been stronger than Wormhook’s nightmares, strong enough even to pave the way for the old magic to return. She stood with her arms outstretched and her eyes closed, and Alfie did the same, then they threw back their heads and laughed as the gold came tumbling down.

  Moll stooped to pick up her bow and the Oracle Arrow. The witch doctor’s mask hung about his face in strips of sack and all that remained of his hair was a clump of matted straw, but a shiver crawled through Moll as she heard the battle pick up again outside. She took a step towards the arch of thorns as she thought of Domino, Aira, Siddy and Frank fighting against the gargoyles, then her eyes flicked back to Wormhook with a rising sense of dread: the look on the Shadowmask’s face showed that he wasn’t through with her and Gryff yet.

  The shadow of a giant snake slithered from his mouth, forcing Gryff back before coiling round the wildcat’s body. And then a trail of enormous spiders spurted from Wormhook’s throat. Alfie flung an arm out at the shadows and Moll gripped the Oracle Arrow as a spider crawled towards her, its fangs sliding together beneath its enormous head, then Siddy burst into the library, his face smeared with blood and sweat and his coat scorched by the gargoyles’ flames.

  His eyes widened at the sight of Alfie. ‘It’s you – it’s actually you!’

  But there was no time for more. The last of the flecks of gold settled inside the Ancient Book and then it snapped shut. Nightmares swelled inside the library again and Wormhook rose into the air, his cloak fluttering around him as he climbed higher and higher into the night sky.

  ‘Don’t show you’re afraid!’ Alfie yelled, wrenching a huge spider back from Moll. ‘They can’t hurt us if we don’t believe in them!’

  But, as the spiders hissed and stamped and made to bite, they couldn’t help but believe in the terrors before them.

  Siddy fired his pistol into a bulging shadow and Frank leapt from his pocket to tear the remains to shreds. ‘You have to kill Wormhook with the Oracle Arrow, Moll!’ he shouted. ‘Domino and Aira can’t hold the gargoyles back much longer so they sent me to help you stop Wormhook. It’s the only way all of this ends!’

  There was a cackle from above them and Moll’s body tensed as dozens of hideous gargoyles flew over the monastery and massed around the last Shadowmask. Moll swallowed. What did that mean for Domino and Aira? Were they fighting the rest of the gargoyles or was the fight over for them too?

  Moll screamed suddenly as a bolt of fire plummeted into the library, followed by another which missed Gryff by a fraction as he burst free from the shadow snake’s hold. In seconds, the library was ablaze with flames – branches fringed with fire and old books reduced to piles of ash. Moll glanced at the Ancient Book, the story she had worked so hard to restore, now moments away from being burned to a crisp. She raised the Oracle Arrow to her chin and Gryff snarled a circle around her, but as she went to fire, the spiders hurled themselves against her and she stumbled backwards, dislodging the arrow.

  Alfie and Siddy rushed to her side, thrashing at any nightmares that dared come close, and Moll lifted the arrow again, a splice of silver with the power to rip the darkness apart. She pulled against the bow, imagined her parents holding her tight and then, as Alfie and Siddy roared into the flames and the howling nightmares, Moll fired the Oracle Arrow.

  It sailed up through the library, smashing a path through the smoke and the shadows before sinking into Wormhook’s heart. There was an almighty scream from the witch doctor and Moll stumbled to the ground. The nightmares swirled around her and great chunks of stone hurtled down into the library as the gargoyles, free from the Shadowmask’s magic, broke apart. Siddy and Alfie dodged the falling stone and Gryff hauled Moll aside with his teeth, then the nightmares shrivelled into nothing, the flames fizzled out and Wormhook started to descend.

  Moll huddled with her friends amid the crumbled stone and, as the mountain itself began to shake, the last Shadowmask let out another blood-curdling scream. Moll raised her hands to her ears and watched, open-mouthed, as spools of black thread began to unravel from Wormhook’s cloak. He sank towards them and the mountain shook again and again, sending every book except the Ancient Book crashing to the ground. Then the stitching holding the witch doctor together began unpicking itself until all that remained on the library floor was a useless heap of rags.

  The mountain stilled and for a moment all was quiet
. No one dared speak. And then footsteps stumbled over the bridge and Domino and Aira limped into the room.

  ‘You’re OK,’ Moll gasped, clambering over the rubble towards them, even though every muscle in her own body ached and her clothes had been ripped to shreds.

  They nodded and, when they saw that Alfie was there, they let out a cheer. But Moll could see that Domino was resting nearly all of his weight on Aira’s arm and every word that he spoke was a struggle.

  He smiled at Moll as he sat down on an upturned stone. ‘It’s just a scratch – it’ll heal.’

  Gryff stalked towards the remains of the witch doctor. The wildcat’s fur was burnt in places and speckled with blood, but he held his head high and growled.

  ‘Wormhook’s gone,’ Siddy breathed. ‘Does that mean it’s over?’

  Alfie looked up into the night and shook his head. ‘Not yet. Wormhook spoke of an eternal darkness and, though he couldn’t use me to conjure it after all, he’ll have found another way. It should be dawn soon, but nothing about that sky looks as if the sunrise will come. Unless we find the last amulet and free the soul trapped inside it, the sun won’t rise tomorrow. We’ll be trapped in the shadows until all six witch doctors find a way to return . . .’

  There was a loud crunch from the far end of the library and the group watched, open-mouthed, as the wall behind the burnt trees crumbled away. They heard the rocks smashing and tumbling down the mountainside, then the trees collapsed outwards, opening up a view across the Barbed Peaks. But the trees didn’t fall off the edge of the cliff; instead, they creaked and groaned, their branches stretching out longer and longer before twisting together to form a staircase that led up into the night sky. And, at the end of the staircase, a golden door materialised in the dark.