Gruff squinted at the scene on the seventh Sleeper, holding tight to the hammer in his hand. He’d done as the blacksmith asked and talked to Dylan, but had he just made everything worse? He wished he hadn’t let Dylan see the hammer.
He watched the blacksmith raise her own hammer and bring it down. The waves roared about her but she did not seem to see or feel them in her in-between world.
‘Gruff!’ Nain was stumbling along the coast path, wearing her grey raincoat and shockingly yellow sou’wester hat. ‘Why are you in a wetsuit? Tell me you haven’t been out on those stones! Tell me you haven’t –’ She broke off and stared at the deep track cutting through the field and stone wall and path before her. ‘What on earth…?’ She turned to the beach and Gruff saw her eyes flicking as she counted. ‘There’s seven,’ she said faintly.
‘Yeah,’ Gruff said. ‘Have you seen Mat?’
‘What? No, not today. She’s not really an early riser, is she?’
‘Not usually,’ he mumbled. He had to get to Mat’s house and see if she’d returned without him. He hoped so.
‘But … how are there seven? Oh!’ Understanding lit up her eyes. ‘The Weeping Stone?’
‘Yes. It moved itself.’ Gruff clambered up the steep sea wall to the path, wanting to be away.
‘Well, there’s no hiding that,’ Nain said, nodding at the dark muddy river running down Top Field through the Weeping Stone’s track. ‘Now even the most sceptical will have to start believing in the legends! Though I’m thinking Ffion will be the hardest to convince. She’ll tell us that was made by an abnormally large mole.’
Gruff snorted with laughter despite himself. Nain was right. That was exactly what Ffion would say.
The wind gusted and Nain staggered.
‘What are you doing out here?’ Gruff scolded. ‘This is just the beginning. You’ve got to get under cover.’
‘You’re one to talk!’ she squawked. ‘For your information I’m on my way to the fishermen’s cottages. Some of them haven’t seen a Wounded Sea storm before and they might not know what best to do. Iolo always keeps sandbags for twenty houses in his shed. He and I will make sure they’re put out where they need to be.’
‘I’ll come later,’ Gruff said. ‘I’ve got to see if Mat’s okay.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Why shouldn’t she be? What were you doing out on those forsaken stones?’
‘Later, Nain,’ Gruff pleaded. ‘I’m sorry – but please, later?’
‘Later.’ Nain sniffed. ‘I’ll hold you to that.’ She tightened the string of the sou’wester under her chin and ploughed on, splashing through the deep gouge cut by the Weeping Stone. Gruff ran in the other direction, the wind blowing him away from the sea towards Blacksmith’s Cottage – and, he hoped desperately, Mat.
He came into the farmyard just as Dad appeared from the sheep barn, running. Gruff heard the shrill beeping of the lifeboat pager Dad carried with him at all times, and his heart rocked in his chest. He hated this. Every time. He hated it.
As he ran past, Dad yelled over his shoulder, ‘Batten down the hatches, Gruff. Be safe!’
‘No!’ Gruff tried to shout the word but it came out as a cracked sound, and Dad was already in Top Field, haring across it towards the lifeboat station.
Then there was another running shape: Zosia, hastily dressed in leggings and a T-shirt, already drenched, racing after Dad.
‘Not in this storm,’ Gruff whispered. Red-hot panic roiled in his chest and anger flashed at whoever had got into trouble out there. Just as quickly, guilt dampened the anger. Of course the lifeboat had to go.
But … this storm. Dad out in the boat in this storm. A supernatural storm.
A supernatural storm that Gruff might have made worse.
Mat wasn’t at home. John answered the door looking dishevelled and sick, and said he’d thought Mat was with Gruff. Gruff said maybe she was with Iolo, crossing his fingers tightly behind his back and wishing he could tell John the truth. John was drumming his hand against his thigh without seeming to realise he was doing it, and his eyes kept flicking to the heaving sea. Gruff remembered something Mat had said – that after Zosia met John they had moved to Manchester, far away from the sea. Was this the first time John had seen Zosia run into a storm?
‘They’re a really good crew,’ Gruff said, as John was closing the door. John paused and looked at Gruff properly. ‘The lifeboat crew,’ Gruff explained. ‘And Zosia’s experience is brilliant, Dad said. And she’s done her top-up training. So … they’re … all as prepared as they should be.’ It felt odd to be reassuring an adult he hardly knew.
John stared at him as though he had never seen Gruff before in his life. Then a tiny, anxious smile flicked the corner of his mouth. ‘Does it get any less frightening? When they go?’
Gruff swallowed painfully. ‘No. Sorry.’
‘Good lad.’ John placed one hand on Gruff’s shoulder, and seemed to notice the wetsuit for the first time. ‘You’re not going swimming!’
‘No, don’t worry! See you later.’
Gruff beat a hasty retreat to the farmhouse and James and Ffion hailed him as he reached the front door. They were walking towards him across the yard in full waterproofs and wellington boots, grinning widely, Ffion’s blonde hair plastered to her face and raindrops shining in James’s tight black curls. Old Hywel trotted between them.
‘Gruff, I like the wetsuit idea!’ James laughed. ‘I should have done that.’
‘We’ve finished getting the sheep into the barn,’ Ffion said. ‘It’s too soon after shearing for them to get soaked and frozen in this. The hens are shut up too. Your dad says you’re to stay inside.’
‘This is a proper Wounded Sea storm,’ James grinned, pumped up on the energy of the weather itself. ‘I’ve never seen one like it.’
‘And the Weeping Stone!’ Ffion added. ‘Have you seen what’s happened, Gruff? It’s been moved! It’s out on the end of the Sleepers now! Who moved it?’
‘It moved itself,’ Gruff said, managing to get a word in edgeways. He was glad the sheep were in. That was one less thing to worry about. He bent down and patted Hywel’s soggy head. Hywel pushed his nose into Gruff’s palm and gazed at him with eyes that said I’m far too old for this palaver.
‘I knew it!’ James cried. ‘I told you, Ffi!’
‘Rubbish,’ Ffion said amiably. ‘It’s a lot of effort for a prank though!’
‘Look, Gruff,’ James said, ‘we’re just going to the fishermen’s cottages to check everyone’s all right. Stay inside, okay? Keep Hywel with you.’
Gruff made a non-committal noise but luckily James and Ffion must have taken it as positive, because they signed at Hywel to stay and set off for the fishermen’s cottages.
Hywel sat and stared up at Gruff. ‘Tyrd,’ Gruff said. Come. He opened the farmhouse door and Hywel leapt joyfully inside and gave himself an almighty shake. Gruff grabbed the towel they kept hanging on the coat pegs and rubbed Hywel down before pointing to the living room. ‘You can even get on the sofa if you want,’ he said. ‘There’s no one here to tell you off.’ Hywel didn’t need any more encouragement. He bounded like a puppy into the living room and Gruff heard the creak of springs as the old dog leapt onto the even older sofa.
Gruff left the relative calm of the farmhouse – where the wind was whistling round the corners and down the chimney and the rain was splattering the windows – and entered the full force of the storm once again. He had to try and find Mat.
He had not gone more than two steps when a loud crack shot through the sound of the wind and rain. He ducked instinctively, his arms crossed above his head. He had lived through enough storms to know the sound of something breaking under pressure.
Thankfully, no blow came – but the bleating of the sheep seemed to get much louder. ‘Oh no,’ Gruff muttered.
Panicked white, brown and grey-and-black blobs started legging it across the yard and down into Bottom Field. ‘Not that way!’ Gruff yelled. He raced across the yard and blocked the entrance to the barn where the door had been newly ripped from its hinges and lay broken on the ground. Four-legged bodies barrelled into him, the sheep terrified and wanting to just run. Gruff set himself low and firm and blocked their escape till they cowered back in the semi-darkness, all glittering eyes and fearful bleating.
Gruff thought quickly. This was still the safest place for the flock, so long as he could keep them in. The spare hurdles were stacked just to the right of the door – he lunged sideways to grab one, and a ewe and her twins dashed past through the gap. He dragged the hurdle across the entrance on the inside and jumped over so that he was in with the sheep. He found some twine and secured the hurdle tightly. Then he turned and did the fastest head-count he’d ever done.
Seventy-four sheep, six lambs. He’d lost thirty-eight sheep and seven lambs to the storm.
Ffion would have her walkie-talkie on her. Gruff ran back to the house and searched for Dad’s, eventually finding it on the mantelpiece. Hywel watched him from the sofa with the pricked ears of a dog who can sense that break-time is nearly over.
Gruff clicked to Ffion’s channel and pressed the ‘talk’ button. ‘Hello? The barn door’s blown off; half the flock’s loose in Bottom Field. Hello?’
Nothing. He tried Iolo, then Deepa and Hardik. He tried ringing out on his mobile. Perhaps the storm was disrupting the calls, or they were all too busy fighting the waves to notice the crackle of their walkie-talkies or ringing of their phones.
Gruff closed his eyes. The sheep were out there, caught in the wild weather. A Wounded Sea storm like the one that had claimed half the flock when Nain was little. It mustn’t happen again. Not to his flock.
‘Hywel!’
Hywel poked his nose rebelliously under the sofa cushion.
‘I’m sorry,’ Gruff said. ‘Really. I’ll make sure you get chicken for this. Tyrd.’
Hywel might have been a disappointed sheep dog but he was a loyal one. He trotted after Gruff, a martyr resigned to his fate.
‘All right, Hywel,’ Gruff said to him as they ventured out into the yard. ‘Let’s go get these sheep.’