by Teri Terry
“Yes,” Quinn whispers. “Wisht Hounds.”
“What are Wisht Hounds?” I ask her the question, but somehow know the answer without having to be told.
Quinn shivers. “Witches’ Hounds. The legend is that they run on the moors at night. If you see or hear them, death or worse is close by. There have been reported sightings—and deaths attributed to them—on Dartmoor for centuries. But how can we have the same dreams?”
“I don’t know. Quinn, do you know what that was about? The fever and the nightmares we had back then, what they meant?”
She looks at me, confused. “I thought it just meant I was sick. But things seemed somehow different afterward. Gran was different, and I . . . I don’t know. I started fainting a lot. Do you think it meant something more?”
“Mum said she went through it, too, and so did her mother.”
Quinn nods, thoughtful. “They never told me that.”
“I think it’s something about becoming aware of who and what we are.”
Quinn’s brow wrinkles. “What do you—”
Zak walks up behind her, and I elbow her to be quiet.
Quinn
I wrap my hands around a big cup of soup, soaking up the warmth. Zak brought sandwiches, too; potato chips and cookies all around. As I make myself eat, I start to feel better, to warm up. But somehow the dreams are still with me.
Piper sensed the one I had in the car; she woke me. What would have happened if she hadn’t? I’ve had that dream before, but have always woken as soon as I’ve seen the fox. Not today. I had a sense that I was about to finally understand something, to face something I didn’t want to.
And soon we’re back in the car, getting closer and closer. Dread deepens in my belly as we begin the drive over the moors—there is no hiding in this place, and the closer we get, the more I feel as though I am naked, lost, and pinned down under watchful eyes. It’s only late afternoon, but as if it reflects my feelings, the sky is darkening. Clouds are pulling in.
Zak has Two Bridges on his GPS, but before we get to the hotel, I point out the turn. It leads to what is more a spindly track than a road.
“Are you sure this is OK for the car?” Zak asks.
“Yes. It’s a bit rough, but we haven’t far to go. Just about a mile.”
He crawls along, and we jolt around in the ruts. “Hope no one comes the other way,” Piper says.
“There are passing places. But it’s not likely.” Few came here before. None have a reason to now, with Gran in hospital; apart from Isobel, I never had any visitors. Until today.
The road narrows, and I point out an almost invisible cut in the moor. “Park here.”
Zak looks skeptical, but pulls in. The ground slopes up around us, strewn with mossy rocks, boulders, gorse, and bracken. Seeing it through their eyes—city eyes—it is desolate. Wild.
“There doesn’t seem to be a house anywhere,” Zak says.
“No, you can’t see it from here. This is the closest we can get by car. We’ve got to go the rest of the way on foot. Looking at the sky, I’d say we should hurry.”
We get out. Piper looks around, eyes darting, her face lit up with excitement. “How far is it?”
“About an hour’s walk the hard way, or about two and a half hours the easy way.”
“An hour? The hard way?” Zak says.
“How hard is hard?” Piper asks.
I shrug. “I used to do it twice a day.”
“What about Ness?” Zak says.
“She’ll be fine. There are just a few bits we’ll have to help her over.”
“Come on, then. Let’s get going,” Piper says.
Zak opens the boot. Next to Zak’s backpack and the one he lent me is a massive suitcase. That is what made the car drop at Piper’s house. I shake my head. “I told you to pack light!”
“I did,” she says, eyes surprised.
“You won’t be able to bring that unless we go the long way around. Not sure we’ll beat the storm either way.”
Piper shakes her head. “I want to get there! How about I just take some stuff out? Zak, can we share your pack?”
She starts digging through her bag, and Zak takes some stuff out to make room for hers. She turns to me. “Have you got any room in yours?”
I shake my head. “No. Mine is mostly full of food raided from Zak’s fridge. We’ll need that.” I suppress the urge to say hurry again. The sky is getting darker, the wind picking up. “Look, the weather is pulling in. Maybe we should head to the hotel and come out in the morning?”
“No way. We’re so close now.” Piper’s eyes are dancing, red hair whipping about her in the wind and strangely lit in the dim light. It’s hard to take my eyes off her when she is like this, full of excitement. She laughs. “Lead the way!”
Zak locks the car. With a last uneasy look at the sky, I head up the narrow path, Ness at my heels. I set a hard pace. It must only be about three p.m., but it’s so dark the path is hard to see. Though I know the way well enough to find it in complete darkness—and have done, at top speed, when I had to: when Gran had her stroke.
At first it is just a rough track, fairly level. It skirts around rocks and along the bottom of a slope of loose scree. Then we join up with a more gentle, even path—part of a regular footpath used by walkers that goes to the twisted woods they all seemed to want to visit: a compulsion I could never understand.
There is a mournful sound in the distance, and it takes me back to my dream. I stop in fright. Was that a dog or the wind?
Then Ness growls deep in her throat.
There it is again, nearer and definitely not the wind. Piper and Zak catch up.
“Did you hear that?” I ask. Zak shakes his head.
Piper cocks her head to one side as it sounds again, louder and nearer, and now very definitely a dog. She smiles.
“There!” Zak says, and points at a moving smudge on the hill. It stops and looks toward us: now it is running this way. As it gets closer, I can see that it’s not a puppy, and not a friendly looking dog, either. My fear is coming back. Zak picks up Ness, and I involuntarily step back.
Zak puts a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be scared; watch.”
Piper strolls out toward the dog. It slows to a walk. It is slavering like it has been running for a long time—eyes wild, teeth bared, and a grrrrrrr deep in its throat.
“Don’t be silly,” Piper says. She walks right up to it, and I’m scared for her. “You’re just a friendly puppy, aren’t you?” she says, her voice warm, musical. The dog looks at her, and . . . its tail starts to wag. It drops on the ground at her feet. She bends to pet it, and its tail wags harder.
There are some distant voices now—calling. Two figures crest the hill where the dog appeared. Piper sees them and waves, and they hurry to us. A man and a woman in walking gear.
“There you are, you naughty dog,” the woman says, and bends to fuss him.
“He took off chasing a fox. I hope he didn’t scare you,” the man says.
“Not at all—he’s lovely,” Piper says. His tail thumps as if to agree. “He was a little spooked at something, I think.”
The woman straightens up. “You’re not heading out now, are you? It might rain.”
No might about it.
“We’re going to—” Piper starts to say, but I interrupt her.
“We’ll be fine. Thank you for your concern.” And I start marching up the path. I hear them say goodbye. Ness bounds up after me when Zak puts her down; Zak and Piper follow.
We soon leave the marked footpath for a barely-there trail that climbs up—gradually at first, then it gets steeper. The wind has picked up enough that I stop to knot my hair, tuck it inside my sweater. I look below; Piper is straggling, Zak behind her. I have to make myself wait for them to catch up, fighting the urge to run, to leave this place. Ness stays close to my feet as if she senses my fear.
Now I’ve stopped, I’m aware of how the
temperature is dropping; hair is standing on end on my neck, my arms, but it doesn’t feel like it is just from the cold. I cast my eyes around, but everything is as it should be. Yet there is something about this place that has me on edge.
This place: is it where I saw the fox in my dream this afternoon? My stomach flips. Dreams aren’t real—most of the time. Calm yourself.
Those walkers said their dog chased a fox. But it couldn’t have been my fox, the one with the black brush tail. They’d have said if they’d seen anything that unusual.
Piper finally reaches me, gasping. “Where’s the fire?”
I stare at her, shocked and uncomprehending.
“I mean, why are you in such a rush?”
As if in answer, the rain starts, and not in a gradual gentle way, but in the way it can only on the moors. It goes in seconds from nothing to absolutely lashing down, until it is like we are standing in a waterfall. Ness whines mournfully.
Piper struggles to get an umbrella out of the pocket of Zak’s pack, but I shake my head. “It’s too windy. Don’t bother.” I have to raise my voice to be heard over the wind and rain.
“How much farther is it?” Zak asks.
“Up this hill and over. Not far, but it’s a hard climb in the wet. We could go back to the car?”
“Not a chance,” Piper says. Her voice is determined.
Zak looks worried. “Is it dangerous?”
I hesitate. “I’ve done it in the rain many times before, but I know the way and know where to put my feet. If you go wrong, it could be dangerous.”
“I’m not sure about this, Piper,” Zak says. “I promised your dad I’d look after you.”
“We’ll be careful; it’ll be fine,” Piper says. Water is dripping down her face. “Let’s get going before we freeze to death.”
“All right,” I say. “Watch and follow where I walk. Some of the rocks are unstable if you stray. Try to avoid the moss; it’s slippery.”
Walking on the steep path soon changes to scrambling up rocks. A few times I stop so Zak can pass a miserable-looking Ness to me over the bits that are too steep for her short legs. I want to hurry, both to leave this place and to get out of the pounding rain, but I worry about Piper and Zak. Making them hurry to keep up could be risky. I force myself to stay slow and steady, making sure they’re only just behind.
A brilliant flash of lightning dazzles my eyes. A still figure is outlined in light on the edge of the sky, the ungainly pile of rocks that is Wisht Tor beside it. A fox? I blink, but the lightning is gone; I’m dazzled, can’t see. The crack of thunder afterward is so loud I jump and nearly lose my footing.
“That’s close,” Zak calls.
I look back. Did he see it? But he’s looking at the sky.
Another flash and crash soon follow, this time almost at the same moment. I turn forward quickly to see if the fox is still there, but the place is in darkness before my eyes reach it.
Piper and Zak huddle behind me, Zak holding a whimpering Ness. “Is it safe to go on?” he says, just as another dazzling display splashes across the sky. Instant thunder drowns out his words.
“Just as safe going on as staying here or going back.”
“Onward!” Piper says.
The rain intensifies. Rivulets are running down through the rocks, trickles turning to waterfalls. Even I’m anxious about finding safe footing, in a place so familiar I know every rock.
I look back at Piper. She grins widely. She’s loving this. I shake my head and carry on, feet soaked even in my boots, hands needed for scrambling and holding on completely numb.
One last clamber, and I’m over. Zak passes Ness up to me. Then I turn to hold out a hand to Piper. She takes it; her hand is warmer than mine. Her foot slips, but between my hand and Zak helping behind, she rights herself and is over. Zak, with his long legs, follows more easily.
A string of flashes once again crosses the whole sky—it would be beautiful, if I were inside looking out at it. Thunder follows almost instantly, so loud it is in my bones, shaking and reverberating deep inside.
“Should we be standing on a hill?” Zak’s face is alarmed.
I try to be reassuring, even though it is not how I really feel. “Don’t worry, that’s the worst of the storm. It’s heading away from us now.”
As if to reinforce my words, another, lesser flash of lightning is followed seconds later by a crash of thunder, not as loud. I glance back, and the fox is once again outlined against the sky.
Piper
We trudge the last steps across the top of the hill, around a haphazard pile of rocks that towers above us. Quinn identifies it as Wisht Tor, and stops in its shadow.
“Wisht, as in make a wish?” I ask her.
Quinn shakes her head. “Wisht, as in witches. Like the Wisht Hounds.”
The ground slopes down more gently on the other side. The rain is slowing; the light increases as black clouds begin to pull away.
“There it is,” Quinn says.
“What?”
“Gran’s place.” She gestures to the bottom of the slope, and my eyes now pick out the edges of a gray stone house, hard to see between straggly trees that surround it and the rocks of another tor behind it.
I pause to take it in, this most isolated place where my mother was born and raised, where Quinn and I were born. The place my mother fled from with me, leaving Quinn behind.
The stones of the house seem to blend into the tor behind it, almost like the house is part of the tor, or the tor part of the house. There is a rambling, crumbling stone wall around the house that almost hides it from sight, and there are stunted, twisted trees that weirdly appear to be not in front of or behind the wall, but part of it. It all looks old, really old. There are a few ramshackle outbuildings tucked around one side of the house, and what looks like a well. Really? An actual well?
“So, what do you think?” Quinn says. I turn to face her. Her cheeks are pale. Depths shimmer in her eyes, but I can’t see past a surface of pain. She didn’t want to come back here, not ever, did she? But she did it for me. I take her hand, and she clings to mine, tight.
“It’s like a fairy-tale witch’s house,” I say—testing, prodding. She raises an eyebrow, and nods. “Without the fairy tale.”
“Come on, ladies!” Zak says. “Let’s get into the warm.”
“Not much of that in there,” Quinn says. “But let’s go.”
We trudge the rest of the way, and I discover that the distance was deceptive. The house is both farther away and bigger than it looked from above.
When we reach it, I see that my eyes didn’t deceive me: the stone wall around the house does have trees growing out of it. Their roots twist down among the stones.
We follow Quinn to the far side of the wall, where a narrow wooden gate hangs open, covered in moss, half decayed. We go through, then follow as she picks a path around the edges of stones that seem to outline a crumbling ruin in front of the house.
The walls of the house are made of interlocking small slabs of rock, edges round with age. They look as though they are part of a puzzle that holds the house together without mortar or cement, like a farmer’s dry-stone wall. There are only a few narrow windows, set deep into the walls. Through them, I see that all is darkness inside.
There is a wide, wooden double front door, like a barn door—is the house a conversion? If so, it was done a very long time ago. Quinn pauses when she reaches it, as if waiting, though we are right next to her now.
“Shall we?” I say, and she is still for a moment more, then nods. She turns the handle. It opens.
“Not locked?” Zak says, surprised.
“No one would come here,” Quinn answers. She breathes in and steps into the house, with us close behind her.
We’re in an entrance hall, with one door to the left, two smaller doors to the right, and stairs leading up at the end of the hall.
Zak pulls the door shut. Despite a small window over the door, it seems dark
, and I blink to adjust my eyes. It feels even colder than it did outside. Quinn is shivering.
“Where are the lights?” I ask.
“We don’t have electricity,” Quinn says. She takes off her pack, rummages in a drawer under a table against the wall, and finds some candles and matches. She lights three candles, hands one to Zak and one to me, and keeps one herself. They’re smoky, thick, and uneven—homemade?
“Follow me,” Quinn says. She opens the door to the left and steps through, Ness close to her feet. We hold up our candles as we walk in, and thin pools of light struggle to show a large room with a huge fireplace so big you could roast a cow in it.
“I’ll start a fire,” Quinn says. “But it’ll take a long time to take off the chill, since it hasn’t been burning for days.”
Quinn kneels and reaches into a box to the side of the fireplace for kindling and paper. She deftly lays and lights the fire in a fraction of the time it’d take Dad to do it at home in our small fireplace, which is more for atmosphere than heat. She tilts her candle down to hold the flame against the paper.
The paper catches in a bright flash of flame; the kindling soon starts, snaps and crackles, and lights up the room with dancing flames. Quinn adds coal, and the three of us hold our hands out as the fire gradually catches, but I can’t keep my eyes still. They dart about the room.
“This place is kind of wow,” Zak says, his eyes doing the same.
Hangings cover the walls. Scenes sewn into them are blurred with time, smoke, and poor light. A huge stuffed sofa made of heavy leather, with a blanket thrown on top, looks like a museum piece. There is a rough wooden rocking chair—was it carved by hand?
A massive freestanding sideboard has shelves on top and cupboards underneath. The shelves are covered with books and interesting things, every book and ornament like nothing I’ve seen before.
Quinn sneezes.
We turn and look at her; she’s shivering violently. “You need a hot bath,” Zak says. “We all do.”
She shakes her head. “No hot water unless we lug it from the well and fill that to warm by the fire.” She gestures; tucked in a corner is an actual tin bath.
