by Kit Peel
“I’ve got the Skrikes Wood pictures for Robin.”
“Did you show them to your dad?”
“I tried to.”
“Well?”
John gave a slow shake of his head.
“Dad wasn’t always like this. Before Mum got ill he was talking about selling the quarry and going back to being a gamekeeper. He had this dream of being a head keeper on some big estate and he was going to teach me to track and forage, like Granddad taught him. We had all these amazing plans. But now, after Mum, he spends all his time working and won’t teach me anything. He doesn’t go for walks much anymore. He’s so stubborn.”
Not long after his mother had died, John and Wyn had both gone on a school trip to the East Coast port of Whitby. It had been one of the few times that Wyn had left Nidderdale and during the coach journey she had become more and more anxious; both longing to see the sea for the first time and panicking about it. As soon as the coach had stopped, Wyn had run off on her own, ignoring the teacher’s calls. She had run through narrow streets, up to the ruined cathedral on the cliff above the town. There she had hidden herself in an alcove among the crumbling stones. Wyn could still remember her whole body shaking as she’d looked down at the endless gray swells. She had watched the fishing boats moving amongst them, the gulls flying beside them. A part of her wanted to run from her hiding place and leap from the cliff, throwing out her arms to soar over the sea, to feel the wind whip her face. She had stayed in the shadows of the cathedral, staring out to sea for hours.
And then John had come, passing so close to where she was crouched that at first she was sure he’d seen her. She had tensed, ready to have a go at him for hunting her down. Instead, the boy had sat in the shade of a crumbling wall and drawn his knees to his chest. Wyn had remained hidden, watching. The boy’s unhappiness had struck a chord in her. And years later, when Mrs. March had died and for a while Wyn’s world had fallen apart, she had remembered John’s grief. At that time, John had gone out of his way to try to talk to her, sometimes walking all the way back to Highdale after school with her and Kate. Even though she’d mostly ignored him, Wyn had appreciated his attention.
The church bells started ringing, sharp and loud through the muffled silence of the dale.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” said Wyn.
“Me, too,” said John. They sat silently for a short while, watching the morning. John began fidgeting. There was clearly something on his mind. Fearing he was going to ask her out again, Wyn got up.
“I need to help Robin,” she said.
“On the bridge the other day, I’m sure I saw something,” said John quickly. “But if it was a man, he was so faint, even with the fog and all. I wondered if it might be a ghost. Do you think Skrikes Wood is haunted? We could go back for another look tomorrow.”
“There’s ice skating tomorrow,” said Wyn, glad of the excuse.
“Oh, yes, of course. My chance to finally beat you on a lap around the lake.”
“In your dreams,” said Wyn, allowing herself a rare smile. John’s face lit up.
“Oi! What are you two lovebirds up to?” came a call from the road. Kate was walking up to them, holding a red clipboard. It was a petition demanding that the council abandon the planned digging at Skrikes Wood. When John gave Kate the photographs of bees in the wood, she was exuberant.
“We can hand them around with the petition during collection,” she said.
Nervously, John nodded agreement.
That night, Kate crept into Wyn’s room and demanded that she get up. There was something important they had to do, Kate insisted.
A short while later, they were outside in the raw night air, leaning over the five-bar gate and looking uphill towards the moor. Kate was shifting her feet against the cold. Wyn copied her friend, shivering when Kate did. There had been another power cut across the dale that evening and the lights hadn’t come back on yet, making the quarter moon that had risen over the tops seem very bright. Kate took a silk handkerchief from her dressing-gown pocket. She held it up over her eyes.
“One, two, three, four, five, six …” whispered Kate. “That’s six moons I can see through the silk; the real moon and five new moons. That means my true love will show up in five years’ time. I’ll be a working artist by then. I think he’ll be an artist, too.”
“Since when are you going to be an artist? What about acting?” said Wyn. All summer she had listened to Kate talk about how she was going to go to drama school and Wyn had responded by picking holes in her friend’s plan. She hated the idea of Kate going off and leaving her. Not that she admitted this to Kate.
“I can’t help it if I’m multi-talented,” said Kate. “Anyhow, my artist lover and I will both become famous and we’ll live in a big house in the dale.”
Kate held the silk handkerchief up in front of Wyn’s face.
“Come on, how many moons?”
“This is stupid. And where did you find this old wives’ tale anyway?”
“The Internet. Now, don’t be so boring and give it a go.”
“Why?”
“John, of course. No, don’t frown at me. He really likes you.”
“That’s his problem.”
“You see, I’m not sure I believe you. I think, deep down, you like him, too.”
“No I don’t.”
“Then prove it.” Kate pushed the handkerchief into Wyn’s hands. “Come on, don’t you want to know if there might be anything between you and him?”
Reluctantly, Wyn held up the handkerchief to the night sky and looked through it. A single moon appeared on the other side. She turned the handkerchief this way and that, but the result was still the same; there was only ever one moon. Kate was delighted.
“One? You’ve got no reflections? That means your true love is here right now. So it’s got to be John. Wow, you’re in love with John.”
“I’m not.”
“Are you finally going to let him take you on a date?”
“Shut up.”
“He’s completely into you. And he’s brave. He stood up to his dad today in church, signing the petition right in front of him. You were the first person he looked at after he did it. Don’t think I didn’t see that. I think you guys will be really sweet together.”
“I’m going inside.”
Kate crept back into the house with Wyn, chuckling softly down the corridor as Wyn opened the door to her room. “Sweet dreams, Mrs. Ramsgill.”
Wyn got into bed and leaned back against her pillow, thinking about John despite herself. He had been brave in church today. When David Ramsgill had seen his son sign the petition, he had gotten up and walked out, followed by several of his workforce and their families. In the whispering aftershock that had spread through the congregation, John had sat alone, his face pale. Wyn could only imagine the reception he would have gotten when he returned home. Kate had offered to go with him, but he had said that he was okay. As Wyn had watched him walk down the hill towards the river, had she felt something for him?
Her thoughts drifted towards the reality of going on a date with John. She’d only got as far as meeting him outside the cinema when something inside her reacted violently against the idea.
Throwing back her duvet, Wyn got out of bed and flung the window open.
What was the matter with her? Why did the merest thought of going on a date with anyone make her feel like this? Determined not to be bullied by her own heart, Wyn put her head under her T-shirt and stared through it, still seeing only a single moon.
“John,” she whispered to the night, forcing herself to imagine what it would be like to go out with him.
High up in the night sky, Wyn saw a cloud passing fast across the moon, and suddenly she was filled with the most intense longing. As Wyn stared at the cloud, she felt a fierce will being directed on the dale. It was as
if eyes were moving over the rooftops of Pateley Bridge, searching for something or someone. An icy wind whispered through the dale, repeating a name, over and over.
Wyn’s hands started to shake. She tried to move back from the window, but her hands wouldn’t let go of the sill. They were clinging on tightly, as a strange presence moved ever closer.
Summoning every drop of strength in her body, Wyn prised herself loose from the sill, shut the window and pulled the curtains across it.
A gust of wind blasted against the house, shaking the window so hard that Wyn was sure it would burst open. There was another blast, and a third.
Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the wind vanished.
Thirty miles to the north, at the head of the Yorkshire Dales, there was a pine forest. The trees grew so tight together that they gave no passage to moonlight. The forest floor was as dark as death.
Wolves padded through the trees, the silence of their passing broken by the occasional snarl and flash of teeth.
Four figures walked among them. The man at the head of the group had eyes as green as the lichen that clings to rock. He stopped, glancing upwards.
Seconds later, snow blew from the trees. And now a fifth figure had appeared, a woman with gray eyes and a gray dress that moved with the wind. The green-eyed man took her hand in his and pressed it to his lips.
“What news, Foehn?” he asked her.
“He searches the world. I cannot keep pace with him wherever he goes, but something keeps drawing him to this region. I believe that she is here, Denali.”
“We have come a long way for your belief,” said a man, as pale as he was lean.
“And we will go further still, Sirmik, so far from our territories that they are nothing but memory,” said the green-eyed man. “The end of summer is almost upon us. In just a few days we will be able to save the earth from the destruction that the pair of them have allowed to happen. If there is a chance that she is here, we must find her before he does and stop him from bringing her back from the shadows into power.”
“How will we find her?” asked a dark-skinned woman, wearing robes of reds and oranges that matched the fire in her eyes.
“Track down any of my brothers and sisters still living in these valleys and watch them,” said Denali. “If this is where she has been reborn, one of them may have become aware of her, and be protecting her. We must divide. Oya, Sirmik, you will search for her in the west.”
The dark-skinned woman and pale man eyed each other with dislike. Oya strode away, her robes glittering over the snow. Sirmik followed her. Just as he was leaving the clearing, he glanced back at the final figure, a huge polar bear.
The bear inclined his head. Sirmik walked into the trees.
Now Denali faced the bear.
“Kaniq, you head south,” he said. “Take my wolves with you.”
At once the polar bear broke into a run, shaking the ground as he headed out of the clearing. Where he tore through trees, hoarfrost crackled in their branches.
“I will travel east,” said Denali.
“What will you have me do?” asked Foehn.
“What you were doing before. If anyone will guide us to her, it will be him. But be careful,” he said.
Foehn’s gray eyes gleamed momentarily. Wind blew around her. Then she was gone and Denali was alone in the forest.
6
—
The next afternoon, with colorful rucksacks bobbing on their backs and golden sunlight glinting off the snow around them, Wyn and Kate trudged downriver beside the Nidd, in the direction of lower Nidderdale. Despite the loveliness of the day and Kate’s chatter, Wyn was as jittery as the wind that swept through the dale one moment and vanished the next.
Fifteen minutes out of Pateley, they came to a narrow wooden bridge. It was only wide enough for one and had rails at waist height. Grabbing the rails, Kate crossed the bridge in two swings. When Wyn’s hands held the rails, they were shaking. She’d been a mess ever since last night, when the wind had beaten against the house. All night she had been in and out of bed, pacing her room, glaring at the tops of the dale, impatient for the morning to come.
Wyn followed Kate through snow-clad oaks and out to the side of a frozen lake, their shadows cast long in the afternoon sun.
The word had gone out among the seniors of Pateley High to meet for ice skating. There were maybe twenty schoolmates skating and others lacing up their boots on a wooden jetty in front of the disused boathouse. Snowboards, skis and ski poles rested against the boathouse.
Sitting on the jetty, Wyn and Kate took their rucksacks off their backs and got out their ice skates. Wyn was hurrying, fastening the long laces quickly and expertly. She normally hated any activity that involved lots of other people. She’d only gone swimming at the school pool because she knew it was Kate’s favorite thing. Skating was Wyn’s favorite thing; the feeling of speed, wind, the tangle of bushes and trees at the edge of the lake flashing by. And today, more than ever, she was desperate to get out on the ice and skate off the emotions that were coursing through her. Kate nudged Wyn, glancing at the island in the center of the lake. They both now knew why Lisa had gone on ahead after lunch. She was skating with John, occasionally reaching out to him for support, even though both Wyn and Kate knew that Lisa was a fine skater.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Kate. “Look at my sister and your future husband.”
Digging the toe of her skate into the ice, Wyn propelled herself forward. She cut a path around the side of the lake, towards the quieter far end. Kate chased after her, and side by side they headed across the ice.
Skating alongside Kate, Wyn felt as though her legs were in shackles.
Only once had Wyn unleashed her true speed on the ice. Just after Mrs. March had bought the red-haired girl her first pair of ice skates, Wyn had slipped out one night, when the moon was newborn and the dale was shrouded in inky darkness, hurrying down through the wood to Gouthwaite Reservoir. Hidden from the world, Wyn had sped from one side of the reservoir to the other, arms flung wide, lost in her familiar dream of soaring over mountains. Only minutes later, unnerved by the acute feeling of being watched, Wyn had hurried home, promising herself that she would never do that again.
Just as Wyn and Kate reached the far end of the lake, they were buffeted by a fierce wind. At the same time, Wyn felt something like an electric shock pass through her. The feeling was so violent and unexpected that she lost her balance and landed painfully on the ice. Dizzily, she got to her hands and knees.
Out of nowhere, a tall boy was sitting down on the jetty. He was leaning over, lacing up a pair of skates, his face hidden by flowing brown hair. Wyn couldn’t take her eyes off the boy. Even without seeing his features, there was something incredibly familiar about him. Half of her longed to skate over to him, but the other half wanted to get far away from him as quickly as possible.
The boy pushed back his hair with a gloved hand, revealing an angular face and gray eyes that glittered brighter than the sunlight off the lake. They scanned the other skaters but, to her intense annoyance, never once looked at Wyn.
In one motion, the boy stepped onto the lake and shot away at speed. He moved his legs so effortlessly it was scarcely possible he was able to travel so fast. He scythed through the other skaters, making fast circles around them, spinning to skate backwards, then forwards.
“Are you all right?” said Kate, reaching down and helping Wyn to her feet.
Wyn’s throat was too tight to reply. She couldn’t take her eyes off the boy.
Turning, Kate followed Wyn’s gaze. Her mouth parted to an O.
“Stop the press,” Kate murmured. “Who is he? Ever seen him around before?”
“Never,” muttered Wyn. But why did she feel so strongly that she knew this stranger?
The boy had shot past the island and was now sweeping
towards Wyn and Kate. He leapt up, twirled and landed on one leg with the other leg flung behind him. For the last three hundred yards he didn’t move his feet at all, but held out his arms, as if to catch a wind that blew out of nowhere.
Stabbing the tip of a skate into the ice, he came to a stop in front of Wyn.
Slowly, he looked her up and down. When his eyes met hers, there was a look in them that she found impossible to read.
“It’s really you,” he said.
Wyn’s heart was hammering so hard she found herself unable to speak. She was transfixed by his eyes. There was something not quite right about them, but whatever it was, she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” the boy asked her.
“Do you two know each other?” said Kate.
Even though Wyn was sure she’d never met the boy before, somehow he was as familiar to her as her own face in the mirror.
“No,” she said.
The boy drew in a deep breath.
“You don’t remember me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He stepped towards her, coming so close that she could feel his breath against her cheek. Despite herself, she looked back and for a moment she felt like a magnet was drawing her to the boy. His face was just inches from hers, and moving closer. She thought he was about to kiss her. A part of her desperately wanted him to kiss her. Suddenly she was furious with herself and pushed him away, hard.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
Emotions blew across the boy’s face, too quick for Wyn to follow. Like her, he seemed to be struggling to keep his composure. Wyn fixed her glare on the middle button of the military-style jacket the boy was wearing. Kate clenched Wyn’s hand, giving her an incredulous what on earth look.
“What’s your name?” Kate asked.
The boy turned away from them, staring into the afternoon sky, before replying, “Tawhir.”
Wyn frowned at this. Somehow it wasn’t the name she’d been expecting, but when her mind reached for the other name, it seemed to elude her and disappear.
