‘Get him down!’ Moll shouted to Alfie, beating through the water towards the two boys. ‘Just a few more strokes and we’re there!’
Together they dragged Siddy beneath the surface while Gryff swung wildly at any owls that came close. And then they were all underwater again, Moll and Alfie heaving Siddy on. The sound of the owls grew fainter as the sandy seabed rose back into sight. Clumps of seaweed swayed below them and the children kicked harder, water-blurred eyes seeking out the rocks that shielded the camp’s cave.
A couple more strokes and the barnacled boulders rose up before them. A crab scuttled out from a dark hole that was a metre wide and high, tucked just below the surface of the sea. Then the creature slipped beneath the seaweed as Alfie and Moll pushed Siddy up towards it. The shallow water carried him into the hole and, one by one, Alfie, Moll and Gryff followed. Moll felt the last of her breath ebbing away as they swam into the tunnel, and then, moments later, the rocks above them opened up slightly.
The children’s heads burst through the surface, spluttering water and gulping the air back into their lungs. Dark, wet rock arched just above them and water slopped against the sides of the tunnel, draining with a loud sucking noise as the tide pulled back. But the owls hadn’t followed; this was a place only Oak’s gypsies knew about.
Siddy glanced at his arm and moaned.
‘Quick,’ Alfie panted, turning to Moll. ‘Get him inside.’
They pushed Siddy further along the tunnel. Moll’s knees knocked against the rocks beneath her and they scraped at her skin, then the tunnel veered left, inland for a while, and before long the scalloped rocks above them widened, opening up completely to reveal a large cavern.
They called the cave Little Hollows and it spread out before them now, its marbled roof curving grey and silver far above the sandy bottom. Candles flickered on every shelf of rock jutting from the sides of the cave, lighting up the dried lemon peel, shards of mirror and horseshoe nails that the gypsies had balanced on ledges and in fissures as good-luck omens. And a fire crackled in the middle of the cave, its smoke curling upwards, seeping away through unseen cracks. It had been the gypsies’ base for two weeks, ever since Oak had left his son, Wisdom, in charge of keeping the clearing and the other gypsies in Tanglefern Forest safe and a smaller group had broken off to hide from the Shadowmasks.
Here in Little Hollows, Cinderella Bull, the camp’s fortune-teller, had taught the Tribe about the sea spirits and mer creatures lurking beyond the cove – about kelpies, sirens and mer ghosts. Mooshie had shown them how to spear mackerel, pot lobsters and cook seaweed, and she’d pointed out which herbs could be used and which ones to avoid: nettles worked in tea, but poppies from the fields above the cliffs would knock you out cold. And Oak had showed them where the currents were at their strongest in the bay and the best spots for diving.
The Tribe had flourished in the cove – the sea was something new and full of adventure – and Moll was almost able to forget that back in the forest only a month ago the Shadowmasks had used hounds, poison and fire to hunt her and Gryff. But now their threat was all too real.
Panting, Alfie and Moll hauled Siddy up on to the slabs of rock that spilled down from the tunnel into the cave. Gryff clambered out after them, his eyes alert for help.
Dripping with water, Moll stepped over the collection of home-made fishing rods – their lines strung from nettle fibres – and jumped down into the cave. Siddy rocked his arm and whimpered and Moll glanced at the sheets tied back by colourful ribbons from the four alcoves at the far end of the cave.
‘Mooshie!’ she called.
A woman’s plump face poked out from an alcove: two dimpled cheeks framed by a purple headscarf and a sparkling brooch at the neck of a shirt. Glowering, she raised a tea towel in her ringed hand and stormed towards the fire. ‘I thought I told you lot to use the beach entrance; that tunnel’s dangerous! You’ll—’ Her words were cut short as she noticed Siddy. She bustled closer, her colourful petticoats bouncing round her ankles. ‘What happened?’ she asked, her face suddenly pale.
Moll glanced back towards the tunnel. ‘I think Darkebite’s back.’
Mooshie knelt before Siddy by the fire, dabbing his arm with a dressing she’d mixed from woundwort leaves bound in wetted cotton.
‘Will he be OK?’ Alfie asked. He sat down on a stool carved from driftwood, then reached for a blanket and wrapped it round himself.
Mooshie nodded, but she didn’t look up from what she was doing; her cures required her absolute attention. Moll stood by the fire, letting its warmth burrow inside her bones, and felt suddenly glad to be among the familiar jumble of objects Mooshie had made to sell up at Inchgrundle, the fishing village a few miles along the coast: lobster pots made from washed-up rope and twine, woven then bound round hazel, and wooden flowers carved from elder.
‘Owww,’ Siddy moaned as Mooshie pressed down the dressing.
Moll bit her lip and watched as Gryff prowled further into the cave, away from the cluster of people. He stopped before the alcoves, shook the seawater from his fur, then hissed as a dribble snaked into his mouth. Moll hurried over to him.
‘Thank you for jumping in after me,’ she whispered. ‘And for beating the owls away from Sid.’
Gryff grunted, then spat seawater on to the sand. Moll smiled and ran a hand over his back. She didn’t need to bend down to touch the wildcat – he was large and she was by far the smallest in Oak’s camp – but Gryff had singled Moll out as a young child and he’d been by her side ever since; he’d left the northern wilderness to help her fight back against the Shadowmasks, he’d let her – and only her – touch him for the first time just over a month ago and he’d never let her down. And yet Gryff was no pet. He was secretive, often solitary, and as Moll faced him she felt his wildness and sensed the fierce courage buried inside him.
She glanced behind her to ensure she was out of Mooshie’s earshot. ‘I saved you some of the cod we fried up at breakfast,’ she told him. ‘It’s in our alcove.’
Gryff wrinkled his nose, sniffed and slunk off into the furthest corner of the cave.
Little Hollows was shaped like a giant’s hand. Four narrow alcoves at the far end of the cave, like enormous fingers, where the gypsies slept in hammocks bunched high with patchwork quilts, pillows and cushions; the central cave, like a huge palm, where they cooked around the fire and ate; and the tunnel leading into the cave, like a long, crooked thumb, an access point the Tribe had discovered when Moll and Siddy had dunked Alfie in the water there as the last part of his initiation into the Tribe. But the only place Gryff went when he was inside Little Hollows was Moll’s alcove – slinking in now and again to ensure she was safe or to devour the leftover food she had sneaked for him.
Moll walked back to the fire, the light from the flames dancing up and down the cave walls around her. Alfie was holding a bandage in place over Siddy’s arm while Mooshie busied herself over a rock near the tunnel where dozens of jam jars had been arranged, each one filled with herbs.
Moll plucked at her swimsuit. ‘I’m so sorry, Sid. It should’ve been me this happened to – not you.’
Siddy tried to smile, but it was more of a grimace and Moll just ended up feeling even worse.
Alfie looked up at her. ‘It’s not your fault, Moll. We all know that.’
Moll sat on a stool, her nails dug hard into her palms. ‘There’s enough anger inside me to defeat an army or – or – bring down a mountain.’
Mooshie hastened back over. ‘Or get you into a serious amount of trouble with my tea towel.’ She sprinkled small purple flowers inside each fold of Siddy’s bandage. ‘Lavender. It’ll soothe the pain and calm your nerves.’ She looked at Moll then Alfie. ‘What happened out there?’
Alfie fiddled with the knot of black horsehair hanging around his neck. It was his talisman – a lock of hair from Raven, his stallion cob, who now roamed the heath above the cliffs. ‘It was fine at first,’ he said. ‘We were just waiting for Moll to b
ellyflop off the far rocks.’
‘I was diving, Moosh,’ Moll muttered. ‘Teaching the Tribe a thing or two about somersaults.’ She buried her feet in the sand. ‘Then we heard noises – ripping, tearing sorts of sounds.’ Moll noticed Mooshie’s hand hover over the bandage. ‘And these owls came out of nowhere and bolted down towards us so we dived underwater and swam to the cave.’ She looked into the fire. ‘It felt like witch-doctor magic, as if the Shadowmasks had found us at last. I kept thinking the owls would swarm together and become one of them – like the bats did with Darkebite back in the forest – but they never did . . .’
Mooshie twisted the amber ring round her thumb three times, a habit she’d got into when she wanted to thank the sea spirits for keeping her loved ones safe. ‘The owls were just messengers,’ she said quietly, ‘part of the magic Darkebite and the rest of the Shadowmasks are conjuring to find you and Gryff. We knew this would come – that sooner or later they’d find you. They’ll know for sure that you and Gryff have left the forest now.’
Mooshie picked up a penknife from a wooden box by her feet and used the blade to cut Siddy’s bandage. ‘You were lucky, Sid. This’ll heal quickly once the herbs start working, but it could’ve been a lot worse.’
Siddy huddled inside the blanket. ‘Where’s Hermit?’
‘Cowering in your flat cap. He’s been in there all morning.’ Mooshie stood up, walked round the fire to the other side of the cave, then stooped beneath the colourful pinafores, shorts and shirts dangling from a washing line fastened into the cracks. She unpegged a flat cap and brought it over to the fire.
‘Hermit!’ Siddy cried, reaching inside the cap and stroking the crab’s shell.
Hermit was Siddy’s latest pet. He had an earthworm too, called Porridge the Second (Porridge the First had rather unfortunately been eaten by a cockerel in the forest earlier in the year), but he had failed to show any sort of enthusiasm for beach life so Siddy had been forced to leave him behind. The Tribe had organised a farewell ceremony though – they’d dug up a few more worms to keep Porridge the Second company and carved messages into an oak tree for him: ‘Keep Wiggling’ from Siddy, ‘Cheer Up’ from Alfie and ‘Don’t Get Squashed’ from Moll, which Siddy thought pretty morbid given the parting was so emotional anyway. And then Hermit had come along – a crab who was terrified of absolutely everything, even his own pincers, which meant that more often than not he spent his days scampering backwards into his shell.
Moll watched as Hermit stuck out one trembling pincer towards Siddy. ‘I’m so lucky I ended up with a wildcat,’ she told herself.
Siddy pretended not to hear. ‘What were the ripping sounds we heard, Moosh? Before the owls came after us. Like – like paper tearing . . .’ His voice trailed into silence and Hermit, catching a glimpse of his own pincers, shot off Siddy’s knee and clattered into a lobster pot.
Alfie nodded. ‘What kind of bird makes a sound like that?’
‘Birds made from dark magic, I’d wager,’ said a voice from one of the alcoves at the far end of the cave.
Cinderella Bull’s hunched figure hobbled towards them, the gold pennies on her shawl jangling together as she walked. On approaching the fire, she lifted up a fortune-telling ball and held it out between fingers sparkling with rings.
‘I’ve seen it, Moll – just seconds ago.’
Cinderella Bull was the oldest gypsy in the gang and her visions from the crystal ball were never wrong. ‘Darkebite appeared in the form of a bat when you encountered the witch doctors in the forest. Only a Shadow Keeper can take the form of a nocturnal animal and curse and command night beasts. It seems Darkebite is a Shadow Keeper who sent cursed owls to find you and Gryff – to wound you so that the other Shadowmasks had time to gather close with their Soul Splinter.’ She paused. ‘My vision was of Darkebite meeting with a figure – another Shadowmask perhaps. They’re on to us now.’
Moll faced the words straight on, but her heartbeat quickened. No one had mentioned the Soul Splinter – the deadly shard of ice that held the Shadowmasks’ souls and had killed her parents ten years ago – since the small group had left the forest. Some things were best not talked about.
Cinderella Bull’s voice dropped. ‘Those ripping noises – it’s just as the Bone Murmur foretold . . .’ She beckoned with a crooked finger and Moll knew better than to ignore the fortune-teller’s command.
She stood up with Alfie, leaving Siddy under Mooshie’s watch, and followed Cinderella Bull to the cave wall beyond the washing line, near the rocks that masked a gap out on to the beach. There, written by Moll in messy chalk, was the Bone Murmur, the words of the old magic read in the Oracle Bones and handed down to Moll from her ancestors:
There is a magic, old and true,
That shadowed minds seek to undo.
They’ll splinter the souls of those who hold
The Oracle Bones from Guardians of old.
And storms will rise; trees will die,
If they free their dark magic into the sky.
But a beast will come from lands full wild,
To fight this darkness with a gypsy child.
And they must find the Amulets of Truth
To stop dark souls doing deeds uncouth.
For a while, Cinderella Bull said nothing, and Moll listened to the sea murmuring beyond the cave, then the fortune-teller pointed a gnarled finger at one of the lines: ‘If they free their dark magic into the sky.’ She paused. ‘The ripping noises you heard, that was the air tearing, thresholds opening up. The Shadowmasks’ dark magic was pouring in from the Underworld.’
Moll blinked at Alfie, started to say something, decided against it, then mumbled, ‘Are you sure? Because I get things wrong the whole time and—’
Cinderella Bull put a hand on Moll’s shoulder. ‘I’m sure, Moll.’ She slipped her crystal ball into the pocket of her pinafore. ‘Though we may not see them, there are worlds out there beyond our own. Our ancestors believed in a world where the old magic lies, where one day our souls will go to rest. We call that place the Otherworld.’
Alfie glanced at Moll, who shrugged. She’d never heard anyone talk about different worlds before.
Cinderella Bull went on. ‘They say that in the Otherworld the wind spirit whispers life into mountains so huge they’re lost amid clouds where griffins roam – and there’s talk of unicorns living behind thundering waterfalls and seas filled with mer palaces.’
Alfie squinted at Cinderella Bull. ‘And the other place – the Underworld?’
Cinderella Bull lowered her voice. ‘A place where dark magic brews. Though no one can be sure, there are rumours of werewolves stalking rotten forests and giant spiders that crawl through tunnels.’
Moll groaned as she thought of the seaweed she’d dumped in Mooshie’s hammock recently. ‘I’m bound to end up there.’
Cinderella Bull ruffled Moll’s hair. ‘The Shadowmasks’ magic is gathering strength. We thought we had you safe, but those owls managed to track you – they could only have been conjured from the darkest corners of the Underworld.’ She pointed to another chalked line on the cave wall and read the words aloud: ‘And storms will rise; trees will die . . . If we don’t stop them opening these thresholds, our lands will be destroyed.’
Alfie gasped. ‘The cliffs – when we looked up and noticed the owls, we saw the gorse and bracken had died!’
Cinderella Bull nodded gravely. ‘So it has begun already. And, as long as Darkebite holds the Soul Splinter, the Shadowmasks will have enough power to open these thresholds. It’s time to look for the next amulet.’
Before anyone could reply, there was a moan from one of the alcoves at the far side of the cave. They walked back to the fire and looked up as an old man, bent over like a coat hanger, came staggering out towards them. He was wearing a spotted bow tie, a pair of maroon swimming trunks and socks pulled up to his knees. But that wasn’t the strangest thing about him: he also had a lobster pot wedged round his middle.
Mo
oshie let her head fall into her hands. ‘Yet more madness before noon?’
Hard-Times Bob, Cinderella Bull’s brother, was the last addition to the group of gypsies hiding in Little Hollows. According to him, he’d been chosen to come along because he had ‘the strength of ten men’ and could ‘floor a Shadowmask with a single punch’. According to the others, he’d come along because Mooshie was the only one who knew how to cure his hiccups (a side effect of his dislocating various limbs to entertain other members of the camp) and keep him out of trouble.
He shot them all an embarrassed smile between rows of broken teeth. ‘I heard Siddy hurt his arm so I thought I’d dislocate some limbs and shove myself through a lobster pot to cheer him up.’
Mooshie sighed. ‘If you carry on like this, Bob, I’ll have to send you back to the forest to stay with the rest of the camp.’ She smoothed her petticoats. ‘Cinderella Bull, you’d better call upon the sea spirits for protection in the cove – and we need to make a plan once Oak is back from Inchgrundle.’
Moll and Alfie exchanged looks. Neither said anything, but they knew what the other was thinking: the Dreads from Bootleggers Bay, just up the coast from Little Hollows – a notorious smuggler gang who hauled boatloads of gin and whisky into Inchgrundle and who set upon anyone who stumbled across their path. Every journey made to Inchgrundle for supplies meant a journey past the Dreads. Oak knew how to fight – he could toss a knife blind and still hit a target – but these smugglers were lawless thugs, hungry for violence.
‘Oak always comes back,’ Alfie said quietly. ‘The Dreads are no match for him.’
Moll nodded, but, as she slipped off towards her alcove, she felt her body tense. She stooped beneath the sheet and went inside. A clutter of sea treasures lined every ridge: starfish, shells, pebbles and washed-up glass bottles. And a storm lantern containing a single candle glowed, illuminating the strange symbols of the Oracle Bone script Moll had chalked on to the walls to try and remember them: triangles resting on prongs, eyes inside squares, circles dashed through with lines. The sandy floor below the hammock was strewn with clothes and at the far end, beside a scattering of fish bones, lay Gryff.
Soul Splinter Page 2
