The Giant’s Hand
You think she’s left us, don’t you? That she won’t come back.
‘We have to be ready for that.’ Ylva didn’t want to frighten herself, but she had to be prepared for what might come.
But we’re going to do what she told us, aren’t we? Find the beck and follow it to the hand-shaped rock?
‘Yes.’
I don’t think she was lying. Geri trotted alongside the horse, with his nose to the ground and his ears swivelling to pick up the sounds of the forest. She’ll meet us. I trust her.
‘Oh Geri.’ Ylva sighed as her suspicions deepened. This was a trick. Cathryn had sent her this way so the half-skulls would follow her, leading them away from Cathryn and Bron. Ylva was a decoy and Cathryn was—
I see it. Geri interrupted her thoughts, racing ahead, gliding through the bracken. There.
Ylva saw it too; something glistening among the trees ahead, and as she came closer, the song of water on stone grew louder. A sweet, fresh smell touched the breeze.
She wasn’t lying about the beck.
‘It doesn’t mean we can trust her.’
I trust her.
‘You’re a dog; you trust everyone.’
The beck was a dark and bloated serpent sliding through the snow. Its scales were ripples and eddies glittering with reflected light from the stars and moon, glimmering where it frothed around black rocks. The beck’s music, and its wild, crisp scent, reminded Ylva of the river where she and Mother went to spear fish in the summer. Mother was always better at it. Her white feet sliding across the hard pebbles in the shallows. The flash of scales catching the sunlight. The splash of the spear cutting through the water. They would never do that again. Never—
Stop thinking about her.
‘I know.’
There was no valley or ditch, no slope down to the water in front of her, just the coil of the beck winding level with the ground. It wasn’t wide at the point where Ylva reached it, but she judged it too wide for a grown man to clear in one leap, and there was no telling how deep it was until she encouraged her horse into the water and saw it reach his knees. It would be cold, but the horse didn’t complain, and neither did Geri, who splashed straight in and followed them, keeping his head high above the surface.
She travelled slowly. It was a dangerous trick, riding the horse through the water, not knowing what was beneath the surface, but Ylva saw the sense in it. Her trail would disappear when it reached the beck. Anyone tracking her would have to decide upriver or down. There was little chance of finding prints in the riverbed, rocky as it was, and any sign she might leave would be washed away in moments.
‘This is good,’ she said aloud. ‘We’ll be like ghosts.’
Ylva kept her wits about her. She focused her full concentration on the task of watching the stream ahead, looking for hidden dangers, and keeping her eyes open for the hand-shaped rock.
Cathryn said you couldn’t miss it.
‘Then let’s make sure we don’t.’ Ylva’s confidence was growing. Cathryn hadn’t lied about the beck, and they were progressing towards the place where they would meet her. Perhaps they wouldn’t be alone for much longer.
Her ears were filled with the swoosh-swoosh-swoosh of the horse moving through the water, but she stopped from time to time to listen as Cathryn had shown her.
To really listen.
Further upstream, the bank to her left became rocky and rose sharply so it towered above her head. The water deepened and widened, and the serpent-like beck became stronger as it washed around the horse. Soon the water was high enough to reach the animal’s shoulder.
Ylva lifted her feet to avoid soaking her boots and felt sorry for the horse, its legs and belly in the icy river. She took him into the shallows where it was easier for both him and Geri. She was tempted to give them some respite by moving up on to the bank, but that would be a mistake. If she left the water, she would leave a trail.
And a trail could be followed.
Cathryn had been right; when she arrived, there was no mistaking the hand-shaped rock. The bank on one side of the river had become steeper the further they travelled, and Ylva had been afraid she would miss the meeting point, but now she knew she was in the right place. The trees were sparse on the left bank, the land too craggy for them to grow, and the moon shone like a spotlight on five enormous, jagged fingers. It was as if a rock-giant had punched his fist from beneath the earth and opened his hand to reach skywards. If Thor was there, Ylva thought, he would swing his hammer and break it to pieces.
The river sang and the forest moaned in the wind, but there was no sign of Cathryn – or any other rider, for that matter.
Ylva urged the horse out of the water and on to a flat rocky shelf that formed the riverbank below the fingers. The shelf was sheltered enough that it was covered in only a dusting of snow. There was debris there, sticks and branches discarded by the river serpent when the water had swollen and receded after heavy rain.
Geri shook himself and sat watching the forest. Ylva waited for the horse to settle before she listened once more. Again, she heard nothing but the river’s song, and the forest’s complaints.
Ylva didn’t like to sit idle. At home, she was never without a job to do. Being still gave her mind room to wander more than was good for her. She chewed her lip and thought about Mother, and wished they’d never come to this country. At home she hadn’t had much, but here she had nothing at all. She was cold and hungry and miserable. She would have given almost anything for a warm fire, a dry roof, and a bowl of Mother’s plum pudding. Thick and sweet, it was good enough to make almost anything feel better. Sometimes she and Mother would sit in the long grass on the dunes and eat it while watching the sea. Sweet-smelling steam would embrace them as they dreamt about sailing away to somewhere new, just the two of them. But she had never thought it would be like this.
Not like this.
She felt the ache in her heart and tried to bury it, but no matter how deep she pushed it, the pain was always just below the surface.
How long have we been waiting? Geri looked up at the moon.
‘Not long. It probably feels like longer.’ Ylva turned and studied the fingers of rock standing proud behind her. ‘I’m sure this is the right place. Does that look like a hand to you?’ She held up her own pale hand towards the rocks and stretched out her fingers to imitate their shape.
‘Do you really think she’s coming?’ Ylva looked down at Geri, but he continued to stare at the sky through the trees. ‘Or do you think she sent us in this direction and went in the other to meet that boy. Maybe I should never have trusted her.’
The thought of it cut through Ylva like a cold knife. Without Cathryn, she was stranded. Lost. Left in the forest to die.