The Night Spinner

by Abi Elphinstone

  She thought of all the other times she had fired this arrow: to scale the Stone Necklace, to strike her own friend, to kill Wormhook – and then, putting everything out of her mind, Moll closed one eye and looked up into the sky. There were no stars yet – just a sheet of black arching over the heath – but now the night didn’t frighten her because she knew that the sun would rise the next day and the day after that and all the days that followed. She looked at her Tribe, at the wildcat and the two boys who had fought alongside her every step of the way, then she pulled back on her bow and fired.

  The arrow soared out – fast and sure – but this time Moll knew it would not fall down again. Because the Ancient Book was closed, the story was safe inside it and the old magic had, at last, been restored. The arrow sailed on and, as it vanished into the darkness, thousands of stars pricked through the night sky, burning like a maze of golden footprints. And when Moll, Gryff, Siddy and Alfie turned to face the giants they saw that they, and all the people gathered around them, had stooped to one knee. They were bowing to the Tribe – and, as the stars glimmered above them, Moll, Gryff, Siddy and Alfie looked at one another and smiled.

  ‘We did it,’ Moll whispered, running a hand over Gryff’s head. ‘We beat the dark magic.’

  Frank did a somersault from Siddy’s pocket and Alfie grinned. Then the giants rose up to their full height and, as the gathering broke into cheers and clapping, Moll and her Tribe laughed.

  Amid the applause, Willow stepped forward and clasped Moll’s hands. ‘Some day – many years from now – I will see you again, Moll. And when you and Gryff set foot in the Otherland there will be family and friends waiting for you with open arms.’

  Moll felt her heart quicken at the thought of seeing her parents and Domino again.

  ‘But, until that day, remember your journey,’ Willow said. ‘Remember the amulets that stood for courage, friendship and hope so that when you feel like the world is against you and you cannot find your way, you can dig down to that quiet grit buried in your soul. You have a fight that is unconquerable, Moll, and you will always have the old magic on your side, no matter what may happen.’

  Willow withdrew her hands and raised her arms to the sky, twisting her fingers and wrists. A large golden shape floated down from the darkness and dropped into the circle of giants before changing into a table the length of the gathering, surrounded by chairs. On it sat goblets filled with sparkling liquids and platters laden with meats, vegetables and exotic fruits. There were bowls of chocolates, too, and plates and cutlery that glittered gold. Even Murk looked impressed. Then the whole gathering rushed to take a seat at the magical banquet, and Willow smiled one last time before floating upwards and disappearing into the night.

  The festivities went on for hours, with Scrap at the end of the table teaching Bruce how to use a knife and fork, then Moll next to them, one arm slung round Alfie’s shoulders, the other hanging down to slip food to Gryff beneath the table. Then there was Siddy on Alfie’s other side trying to muscle in with the Highland Watch and Puddle demanding dance after dance with Aira while Hard-Times Bob played tunes on his accordion.

  The gathering ate, drank, sang and danced together until, eventually, the giants broke their circle and scooped up those whose homes lay beyond the knotted branches of Tanglefern Forest. Moll watched, tucked beneath Oak’s and Mooshie’s arms, as the Ancient Ones bounded off into the dawn, their hands clasped tightly around Puddle, Scrap, Bruce, Murk, the Highland Watch and Angus’ family. Then she turned towards the forest and, hand in hand with Oak and Mooshie, Moll walked through the trees towards her wagon in the woods.

  Deep within Tanglefern Forest there is a clearing framed by ancient oaks. Snow lies plump and fresh on the branches, almost completely covering the balls of mistletoe in the upmost boughs and the dreamcatchers that hang below. Small children wrapped in duffle coats and scarves busy themselves inside the ring of colourful wagons: a girl with a red headscarf stands on tiptoe on the steps of her home to hang a stocking from the bowtop roof; a young boy places good luck omens – lemon peel, horseshoe nails and fragments of mirror – along the ledges of a green wagon; others scoop up handfuls of snow and hurl them across the fire.

  It is a cold, crisp afternoon, but these are not people who need to huddle inside. They are men, women and children of the forest – their skin stained by campfire smoke and dirt, their faces lined and pitted from a lifetime of meals eaten out in the open air and nights slept tucked beneath trees.

  Cinderella Bull sits on her wagon steps, bundled in blankets and holding her crystal ball with ringed fingers before Siddy’s ma. Mooshie, a dozen tea towels tucked into her pinafore, perches on the steps of the wagon next door, twisting holly leaves and berries into a wreath. Beside her, in a battered old armchair he’s hauled out into the snow, is Hard-Times Bob. Bent double like a hairpin, he tries to squeeze his wizened body through the hole of another wreath to entertain the camp’s youngest children while Oak lays a small plate of gingerbread behind his wagon, a gift for the soul of the son he lost.

  There will be lanterns glowing from the branches of the trees later and music – fiddles, accordions, pan flutes – round the fire. It is Christmas Eve in the forest and the camp is getting ready to celebrate. But beyond the ring of Sacred Oaks, past the cobs grazing on the piles of hay and down the path that winds through the elms and beeches, there is a glade filled with yew trees. And halfway up the oldest yew, notoriously hard to get to but there all the same, are slats of wood hammered into gnarled branches. A wildcat is curled on a bough beneath the tree fort, its striped fur dusted with snow, and up inside the hideout three people have gathered.

  Moll lets her eyes wander over the shelves lined with jam jars. Inside those are the Tribe’s Forest Secrets – including unusual fir cones, giant nettles, owl pellets and woodpecker feathers. Looking at them now, Moll can’t help thinking of all the other treasures they found on their journey: amulets, golden feathers, arrows at the bottom of lochs and ancient books guarded by giants . . . She glances at Alfie who is carving something into the slats of wood above the door, then at Siddy who is trying to get Frank to meet his earthworm, Porridge the Second.

  ‘Do you think any of this will seem normal after what we’ve seen?’ Moll asks.

  The others look up. Only a few weeks before they had been standing at the very edge of a monastery perched between peaks and clouds. Moll listens to the high-pitched cry of a kestrel outside and for a moment thinks it strange that ears that have picked up the sounds of a witch’s song and a kraken’s roar are now tuned to the calls of woodland birds.

  Siddy cuddles Frank to his chest. ‘It all seems smaller, doesn’t it?’

  Moll nods, then she runs a thumb down the carving of a seal pup on the handle of her catapult. ‘Like we’ve lived our lives already.’

  Alfie picks up the steaming mug of tea Mooshie has made for them: spiced cinnamon with rosehips and blackberry leaves. He takes a sip and smiles. ‘But there’s Christmas,’ he says quietly. ‘And stockings and snowmen and feasts inside the clearing.’ He looks from Moll to Siddy. ‘I’ve never had a Christmas before.’ He pauses. ‘I’ve never had friends or a proper family before. So, even though we’ve fought marsh spirits and gargoyles, I think our greatest adventures are still to be had.’

  Siddy smiles. ‘We could go sledging down the hill on the heath.’

  Moll grins. ‘And have snowball fights down in the glade.’

  ‘Ice skating on the lake in the Deepwood?’ Alfie asks.

  ‘There’s a lot we’ve still to see and do,’ Siddy says. He plops his earthworm into a cardboard box he’s filled with soil, then moves towards the door with Frank perched on his shoulder. ‘Come on. If we go now, we’ll get first grab at Mooshie’s cranberry muffins.’

  Alfie and Siddy clamber out of the tree fort until it is just Moll left inside and for a moment she stays where she is, her eyes fixed on the word Alfie has carved into the slat above the door. Domino. It’s only a
name and yet that person sacrificed himself freely so that Gryff could stay in her world.

  ‘Run with wild horses,’ Moll whispers. ‘Stand tall on the highest mountains. Swim beneath thundering waterfalls.’

  She climbs out into the yew tree. Alfie and Siddy are already down in the glade, but Gryff is still there, waiting for her, his green eyes wide against the snowy boughs. He stands up, claws gripping hard into the bark, then he dips his head and together the girl and the wildcat weave through the branches to join their friends below.

  When I was little I used to have a list of my favourite words. Among them were: goblin, whisper, bubble, silver. And now I would like to add another word to that list: trilogy. Because I had thought that that word belonged exclusively to people like Philip Pullman and Cornelia Funke but with The Night Spinner out in the world, I get to have a little trilogy behind my name now, too. And that wouldn’t have happened if hadn’t been for the support of many brilliant people.

  Writing this book was like going back and becoming twelve years old again. I was lucky enough to grow up in the wilds of Scotland where weekends were spent scrambling over the moors, jumping into icy rivers and building dens in the woods and I want to thank my incredible parents – Lucy and Charles – for giving me this childhood. You allowed me the space and freedom to play outside and the memories I found there not only built the foundations for this book but they stamped a sense of wonder on my soul. Thank you also to my siblings – Will, Tom and Charis, and my Angus Girls – for all the adventures we had together up north. So much of the world in this book has been drawn from my childhood in Angus: Glendrummie is based on Edzell, the nearest village to the house I grew up in; The North Door is really The Blue Door which marks the start of one of my favourite walks beside the North Esk River, which became The Clattering Gorge in my book; the folly Moll, Sid and Gryff find there is actually the based on Doulie Tower that sits above the North Esk River. And so it goes on.

  Thank you to the talented team at Simon & Schuster for all their hard work and in particular to my wonderful editor, Jane Griffiths, and PR and Marketing gurus, Hannah Cooper and Liz Binks. Thomas Flintham and Jenny Richards have done another superb job on the cover and the map – thank you – and Jane Tait, your copy edit was hugely helpful. Thank you also to my fantastic agent, Hannah Sheppard, for your continued support and wise advice along the way.

  My friends have been an unbelievable support and I want to thank one or two of them, in particular, for their direct help in shaping the book. Thank you, Rebecca Fletcher, for naming Wallop, thank you, James Jardine Paterson, for naming Spud (and swimming across Loch Duich with me, which later became Loch Murk), thank you, Rowena and Jules Osborne, for the amazing week up at Druidaig which saw my Lost Isles come to life, thank you, Paddy Stanton, for letting me write a big chunk of this book at your house in Norfolk and thank you, Humphrey Aird, for telling me what noises ferrets make (Frank was really grateful for that).

  Thank you to the amazing teachers, librarians and booksellers who have championed my writing from the start, and to the awesome children who have read and loved the books. Lena Hadley, thank you for the idea of using mirrors and cages down in Kittlerumpit’s tunnels, Flossie Forbes, thank you for allowing me to pinch your brilliant shop, Bel’s Butchers in Edzell, and pop it into my book and Catherine Arecco, I know one day you will become an author, too.

  My last thank you goes to my husband, Edo, who I met on a hay bale when I was twelve – and while Moll, Sid, Alfie and Gryff started their Tribe at that age, Edo and I took a few more years to kick our adventures off. But we made up for lost time with plenty of escapades in northern wildernesses, all of them worthy of the Tribe’s antics in this book: climbing mountains in Aberdeenshire, swimming in fairy pools on Skye, watching killer whales off the Lofoten Islands and dog-sledding across the Arctic. Thank you for being such an exciting, positive and kind person to live alongside. As I always say, Edo, you are a very wonderful human being.

  Get ready for an adventure

  in the polar north.

  Coming 2018 . . .

  In the kingdom of Erkenwald, whales glide between icebergs, wolves hunt on the tundra and polar bears roam the glaciers. But the people of the north aren’t so easy to find. Because this is a land ruled by the Ice Queen.

  Summoned from deep inside the ice, she has imprisoned every man and every woman in the towers at Winterfang Palace. She wants the children, too, but they are in hiding. And even when they hear the voices of their parents singing from the palace at night, they do not emerge. Because they know about the Ice Queen’s anthem. They know that she is collecting voices and when she owns every single one in Erkenwald, her song will be complete and the rest of the dark spirits locked inside the ice will rise up.

  Join Eska, a girl who breaks free from a cursed music box, and Flint, a boy whose inventions could change the fate of Erkenwald forever, as they journey to the Never Cliffs and beyond in search of a long lost voice with the power to force the Ice Queen back. This is a story about an eagle huntress, an inventor and an organ made of icicles. But it is also a story about belonging, even at the very edges of our world . . .

  I start every story I write with an adventure. The DreamSnatcher trilogy saw me carving catapults in the forest, abseiling into jungle caves and scaling mountains in Scotland. But for this book, I went further afield to find my story. I went to the Arctic and up to the Lofoten islands. I watched killer whales dive for herring and I glimpsed the northern lights rippling across the sky. This was a land shrouded in silence and locked in darkness – the sun doesn’t rise at all in the winter months – but if I really listened, I could hear the place whispering: the crack and pop of ice, the underwater clicks of the killer whales and the whir of ptarmigan wings over mountain peaks. And eventually, the idea of a kingdom ruled by an enchanted anthem wandered into my head.

  Finding a heroine for this story was easy. When I was trawling through photos of remote tribes on the internet, I came across the Kazakh Eagle Hunters, a formidable group of people out in the wilds of Mongolia who tame golden eagles and use them to hunt foxes, wolves and marmots. It is an ancient tradition handed down through generations but what struck me most was that almost every single person in the tribe was male. Then I read about twelve-year-old Aisholpan, one of the only eagle huntresses, and I knew then that I had my heroine. Many emails and months later, I found myself trekking through Mongolia’s snow-capped mountains to find her. I learnt about sheep’s ankle bones used in children’s games, I discovered wolf fangs decorated with silver and I learnt to hunt with Balapan, Aisholpan’s golden eagle. All of this has found its way into the book, along with an inventor boy who keeps an Arctic fox pup in the hood of his jacket, because as I say when I visit schools and speak at literary festivals, authors aren’t necessarily the cleverest people in the class; they’re the most curious, the ones who say yes to adventures and go after the stories no one else has stumbled across yet.

  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © 2017 Abi Elphinstone

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved.

  The right of Abi Elphinstone to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  PB ISBN: 978-1-4711-4605-3

  EBook ISBN 978-1-4711-4606-0

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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