The lighthouse was bigger inside than Moll had expected, and as Puddle had glumly pointed out: ‘There are six floors and each one’s got a leak. Even the bedroom.’ A spiral staircase ran inside the stone walls and a circular room led off left from every level. The first two floors were storerooms housing casks of oil, metal flasks and bundles of rope – even Scrap wasn’t much interested in those. But from the third floor there came delicious, warming smells.

Puddle paused outside the door of the kitchen. ‘Got a bedroom up on the next level – the wettest of the lot – then it’s the flag signalling and lantern room where it all happens.’ He looked at the quivers the children were carrying.

Moll followed his gaze. ‘Some people are coming to kill us,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘but we’re going to kill them first.’

Siddy gave Moll an exasperated look. ‘Stop being so aggressive.’

Puddle half smiled. ‘Unless you’re planning to use those to catch breakfast, I suggest you leave them here on the steps.’

Reluctantly, Moll laid down her quiver with Siddy and Alfie’s, and Scrap put a foot on the step above Puddle. She looked at him with large, questioning eyes.

‘You want to go up higher?’ Puddle asked.

Scrap nodded.

‘You can have a snoop round the flag room, but I think talk of this amulet is going to warrant a spot of porridge. Hurry down once you’ve had a look.’

Scrap raced up the stairs and Puddle looked down at Gryff who had edged behind Moll’s legs. The wildcat had managed to walk alongside the river and through fields without his sight, but being trapped inside a stranger’s lighthouse had made him fearful. His every instinct warned him to stay outside in the wild, but he didn’t want to leave Moll, not now. He needed her, just like she needed him.

‘Wait one minute, will you?’ Puddle said.

He disappeared down the stairs and Moll turned quickly to Alfie and Siddy. ‘Do you trust him?’

Alfie nodded.

‘Me too,’ Siddy said. ‘I’ve got a good feeling about him and I never really had that with Ashtongue.’ He paused. ‘And he offered us porridge; I don’t think that’s a very Shadowmasky thing to do.’

Puddle emerged on the stairs, holding four dead mice. ‘Hundreds of them in the outbuilding – thought your wildcat might like them.’

‘Thank you.’ Moll lowered the mice before Gryff.

He sniffed them nervously, but, on sensing the meat, set his teeth in hard. Puddle ducked beneath the door frame, leading Moll and Siddy inside the kitchen. But Alfie hung back by the entrance, unseen by Puddle, with Gryff.

‘Make yourself at home,’ Puddle said, pulling back two chairs tucked into the circular table.

Cautiously, Moll made to sit down.

‘Oooh,’ Puddle winced. ‘Wouldn’t sit there. Below the worst leak in the house that spot is.’

As if on demand, water dripped through a crack in the ceiling, straight on to Moll’s face. ‘Then why do you have a chair here?’ she muttered.

Puddle shrugged. ‘To catch the drops.’

Moll moved to the seat next to Siddy’s, sat down and looked round the kitchen. The plaster on the walls was coming away in great chunks, the rug beneath the table was threadbare and the little wooden cupboards lining the room were chipped. But, despite all this, the lighthouse had a cosy charm. Between the curtains there was a vase of pink sea thrift, and beyond that a spectacular view of the sea. Puddle kept utensils in brightly coloured glass bottles that must have washed up in the tide and every surface was cluttered with jars, pots and bowls – most of them full to the brim with food: condiments, pickled vegetables, spices and dried fruits.

Puddle waved a hand over them. ‘Dorothy likes her food well seasoned; she’s got high standards.’ He patted the wall and a cloud of dust puffed out.

Moll raised her eyebrows at Siddy. ‘Who lives in the outbuilding beside the lighthouse?’ she asked.

Puddle bent over the pot of porridge bubbling on his stove and gave it a stir. ‘I spend some of the colder months down there, but I like to be up here with Dorothy most of the time – got to keep an eye on the old girl.’

A piece of plaster crunched away from the wall beside the door and landed with a thud on the floor. Gryff leapt backwards.

‘Dorothy, we’ve got company!’ Puddle moaned. He rolled up the sleeve of his cagoule and, with fingers as chubby as sausages, he picked up a teaspoon and a pot of honey. Both were dwarfed in his hands, but he tried his best to decant the honey into his porridge. After several minutes, he shot a glance over his shoulder. ‘Who am I trying to fool?’ he muttered. ‘I normally just tip the whole lot in.’

Siddy grinned. ‘We’re not known for our manners. In fact we haven’t eaten a single meal with cutlery since April when Moll sank all the knives and forks in the river back in the forest. So don’t mind us.’

Moll sat on her hands. ‘It was a Tribe dare, in case you’re wondering. And we’ve done way worse.’

Siddy settled Hermit on the table, but, on catching sight of the pan on the hob, the crab scuttled left, smashed into a pepper pot, then lay, upturned and stunned, in the middle of the table. Siddy wrapped him in a paper napkin and cradled him in his lap.

Wind rattled the window in its frame as Puddle handed out bowls of piping-hot porridge. ‘A storm’s brewing,’ he mummered. ‘I can feel it in my beard.’

Scrap skipped into the room, wrapped in a red-and-yellow striped flag so that she looked more like a maypole than a girl. Perching on the seat with Moll, she gulped a few mouthfuls of porridge down.

Moll glanced towards Alfie; he was leaning against the door frame, his eyes glued to the floor. Puddle took off his hat to reveal a mass of wild white hair and Moll watched him tuck into his breakfast, hoping that the feeling in her gut was right. She could trust this man, couldn’t she?

‘What if I told you there was a boy in the doorway.’ Moll’s voice was low and full of challenge.

Siddy began concentrating extremely hard on his porridge and even Scrap seemed to shrink inside her flag.

Puddle leant against the wall. ‘Like a ghost?’

Moll considered this. ‘No. Not like a ghost. More real than that – and better with a bow and arrow.’

Puddle thought about it for a while. ‘Has this boy got something to do with your amulet?’

Moll held his gaze. ‘Maybe.’ She paused. ‘Yes.’

Puddle swallowed a spoonful of porridge. ‘I always think it’s best to believe in something until it’s proved otherwise.’

Moll’s eyebrows rose a little. People, she was beginning to realise, were surprising. You never knew what was going on inside their heads. This lighthouse keeper wasn’t a gypsy and yet somehow he was willing to believe in magic and mysteries. And maybe that was all they needed. ‘You really mean that?’ Moll asked.

Puddle nodded and Moll stood up, walked across the room and gave her bowl to Alfie.

‘Thanks,’ he mumbled.

Puddle’s eyes grew round as saucers. ‘The bowl – it’s disappeared!’ He reached for his telescope and pointed it towards Alfie. ‘There’s nothing there, but – but I could have sworn I heard a voice.’ He tutted. ‘Well, I never. I wait three years for a visitor and I get two gypsies, a wildcat, an invisible child—’

‘He’s called Alfie,’ Siddy prompted.

‘And,’ Puddle glanced at Scrap, ‘a walking flag.’

‘It’d be a dull old world if everyone was the same,’ Alfie said.

Puddle gasped but Moll smiled. She remembered saying those very words to Alfie back in Tanglefern Forest – and it made her suddenly glad of the friends she had around her.

Scrap whistled in Alfie’s direction, budging up on her seat to make room for him, and Puddle handed Moll another bowl of porridge. Scrap smiled as Alfie sat down then she patted him on the shoulder – she seemed to know where he was instinctively now.

Siddy grinned. ‘Scrap’s got a soft spot for Alfie. Don’t you?’

Scrap nodded simply.

Alfie blushed. ‘The porridge is good.’

Puddle rubbed his eyes at the sound of Alfie’s voice. ‘What a thing . . . An invisible boy. I suppose you’d better tell me about this amulet then and how you happened across me and Dorothy.’

And so Moll, Siddy and Alfie did.

At the end of their telling, Puddle was silent for a long time, then he looked up at the window and listened to the wind battering against the glass. They’d been talking for so long clouds had now gathered and the afternoon had turned grey. ‘There’s been a strangeness in the wind and the sea these past few weeks.’ He ran a hand over his beard. ‘As if they’re afeared – or angry.’

Moll nodded. ‘The Shadowmasks’ magic is slipping in fast through the thresholds. They’ve already turned our cove bad, rotting the gorse and killing the bracken, and on our journey here we found a whole forest sucked of life.’

‘It makes sense now,’ Puddle said. ‘Even Dorothy’s been playing up more than usual, but I never imagined something like this could be behind it.’

‘It took Hermit by surprise too,’ Siddy said gloomily.

Alfie bit his lip. ‘We think the amulet might be able to make all this better though. Do – do you have it?’

Puddle was less startled by Alfie’s voice now, but still his eyes flitted from place to place, trying to fix on a point.

‘I’m sorry, boy. I’ve never heard of an amulet like the one you’re speaking of.’ Puddle sighed. ‘I wish I had but,’ he looked around at the crumbling kitchen, ‘it’s just Dorothy and me here.’

Moll said anxiously, ‘But it has to be in the lighthouse. Scrap was right: this is the Blinking Eye!’

Puddle leant forward and collected up their bowls. ‘There’ll be a reason your Oracle Bones led you here. For one thing,’ he looked at Gryff curled up beside Moll, his head buried beneath his paw, ‘the lighthouse is known by many as a symbol of hope.’

‘Hope for who?’ Moll asked flatly. ‘Lazy sailors?’

Puddle smiled. ‘Hope for the blind.’

Moll felt her knees grow weak with longing – could this battered lighthouse somehow help Gryff?

Puddle placed the bowls in the sink. ‘I don’t know how or why, but there’s a reason you’ve all come here. Magic isn’t straightforward; we’ve just got to work it out.’

The wind outside picked up and whistled round the lighthouse, gusting through the cracks and crevices. Then the rain began, tapping against the window and smearing down the glass.

‘It’s going to be nasty out. I think you lot need some rest before we plan anything.’

They followed Puddle up another floor to the circular bedroom. Most of the room was taken up by a large bed which, on closer inspection, appeared to be a rowing boat lined with a mattress and laden with blankets and pillows, and on the walls hung different-coloured life rings and medals Puddle had been awarded for saving sailors. There was a round window, like a porthole in a ship’s cabin, and a set of shelves piled high with books on tides, sea creatures and sailor’s knots.

Puddle waved a hand. ‘Sleep anywhere you like – in the boat, on the floor,’ he pulled back a dustsheet and raised an eyebrow, ‘on the sofa which I forgot I had . . . Just get some rest and I’ll start thinking about this amulet.’ Dorothy let out a foghorn blast and Puddle scowled. ‘She’s very particular about her bedroom – all sorts of airs and graces, this one. But just ignore her and get a bit of kip.’

Siddy, Alfie and Scrap flopped down on the bed while Moll led Gryff over to the sofa and scooped him up among the lumpy cushions. She curled round him protectively and listened to his purr rumbling inside her body. And though a storm was brewing outside – waves smashed against the rocks and whipped up into the wind – the children slept as soundly as if they’d been back in Little Hollows.

But not so far away, their heads bent down against the driving rain, a huddle of dark shapes was rowing out at sea, advancing slowly along the coast.