The Shadow Keeper

‘Moll, what do we do?’ Siddy whimpered as the eel sliced a path through the water straight at them.

Moll glanced to the shore where Grudge was edging backwards, then to the cage still six or seven stepping stones ahead. The eel loomed closer.

Then from somewhere inside her, beyond the Shadowmasks’ darkness, Moll thought of the Bone Murmur.

‘There is a magic, old and true.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper. ‘That shadowed minds seek to undo.’ The words seem to come from a power beyond Moll’s own will and the eel felt their strength. It slowed slightly in the water and Moll spoke the words louder. ‘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.’

‘Say it with me, Sid!’ She clutched his hand. ‘We need to call on the old magic together!’

The eel skulked close and thrashed its tail. Water sprayed up around them, but Moll and Siddy kept their balance. Moll closed her eyes and thought of the Bone Murmur again – of the old magic that seemed to be unfolding around her. She took a deep breath and Siddy joined in: ‘But a beast will come from lands full wild, to fight this darkness with a gypsy child.’

The eel slunk beneath the water until just its blunt nose remained visible. Moll thought of Gryff and willed all of his strength to rise up inside her. Siddy’s hand was a fist round hers, but his face was hard.

‘And they must find the Amulets of Truth,’ they shouted. ‘To stop dark souls doing deeds uncouth.’

The eel’s slitted eyes closed, its nose slipped from sight and, once again, the water stilled.

Moll and Siddy looked at one another, too rattled to speak, but now the eel had disappeared Grudge was down by the shore again, shouting at them to hurry.

‘Come on,’ Moll whispered, and she leapt from stone to stone, further into the lake.

Finally, they reached the last stepping stone and jumped up on to the boulder. The enormous cage was perched on top of it, dome-shaped and rusted, like an old birdcage. Moll’s heart thundered inside her. This was it. The second amulet waiting for them, just metres away.

Hands reaching for crevices, Moll and Siddy scrambled up the boulder and hauled themselves on to its flattened surface. They stepped up to the bars of the cage. Moll blinked. Bird feathers, hundreds of them, lined its bottom. She stooped down, stretched a hand through the bars and picked one up. It was golden brown, like the others in the cage, and larger than any she’d ever seen before.

‘It looks like a golden eagle’s feather,’ Siddy said. ‘Only bigger. But why are they here?’

Moll looked from the feather to Siddy. ‘I – I don’t understand. Was there something in the cage but it got out?’ She shook her head. ‘Where’s the amulet?’

Siddy walked to the edge of the boulder. ‘Feathers!’ he yelled. ‘We told you that it wouldn’t be what you expected.’

‘Siddy!’ Moll gasped. But she wasn’t looking at Grudge. ‘There, tucked right up against the bars – it’s an envelope!’

Grudge was moving fast over the stones now, his strides so big he only needed to stand on every second one. ‘You’re lying to me! You’ll show me where this amulet is!’ he spat.

Moll reached inside the cage and pulled the old brown envelope out. And there, in beautiful scripted writing were two words: My Moll.

Grudge loomed closer, but Moll stood up, the envelope clasped tightly in her hand. ‘Stay away, Grudge!’ she shouted. ‘You’ve no right to anything!’

Suddenly the lake began to ripple, its stillness disturbed by a blunt black nose. It broke the surface and was followed by a scaled body that rose before Grudge, a terror of glittering scales. The smuggler cowered beneath it, his body stalled by fear. And then the eel slid forward, opened its cavernous mouth and snatched Grudge from the stepping stone. Grudge howled in fear, thrashing against the eel’s jagged teeth, but, a second later, his howls were silenced as the creature worked its jaws. It turned two green eyes towards Moll and Siddy, and Moll thrust her letter up in the air, hoping it might hold the same power that the Bone Murmur had. The eel blinked slowly and then sank back into the gloom until only a circle of ripples marked its presence.

Siddy let his head fall back, then he breathed hard. ‘He’s gone – Grudge is gone.’

Moll nodded. She expected to feel something, to relish in the sweet revenge of it, even if just for Scrap’s sake, but there was a letter with her name on it in her hands. And feelings far greater than anger and revenge were brewing inside her.

Moll peeled back the seal and drew out a piece of parchment covered in words. Could it be? she thought, hardly daring to hope. Could this be a letter from her ma?

Moll opened it up and drew breath to read, but another voice cut across hers. It didn’t belong to Siddy and there wasn’t anyone else around them. But Moll recognised that voice – because it was the one that had soothed her tears and sung her to sleep as a baby and, though many years had passed since then, Moll had kept the sound of that voice locked inside her. It was soft, but there was a quiet strength to it, as if it had been built from the embers of an unquenchable fire, and the sound seemed to cradle Moll in warmth. She followed the words in the letter as her ma’s voice spoke them aloud.

‘My Moll,

Oh, how I’ve missed you – more than this letter will ever be able to say. I remember you as a baby, with a shock of black hair and eyes just like mine. And now look at you, so much bigger than you were – so grown up. I wish I could have given you the childhood you deserved: we’d have climbed trees together, swum in the river, ridden cobs bareback through the forest . . . But, my darling Moll, what you’ve done – you and Gryff and your friends – is more than I ever expected. To have got this far when almost everything was against you fills me with a pride I want to shout from the sky.’

Moll felt a yearning in her chest for the mother she’d never known. It made her legs and chest go weak. ‘They took you, took you when they had no right.’

‘The bones told me I would die – that the only way the Bone Murmur could go on was if your pa and I sacrificed our lives for it. We knew the old magic would stir and fight back, but neither of us could have understood the bravery that you would show – and the love and loyalty to your friends. The second amulet, my soul, was searching for a virtue needed for the old magic to win through. Moll, the second amulet stood for friendship.’

Siddy gasped. ‘The feathers scattered in the cage! Oak always told us brown feathers meant friendship!’

‘Moll and Siddy, you have stuck by your friends – however hopeless things have seemed. You trusted Alfie when he came from a witch doctor’s gang and held secrets none of you knew how to explain. You did everything you could to look after Scrap, the child of the man who sought to kill you. And Moll, there’s no one out there who can break the bond you share with Gryff. My soul is trapped here, but in destroying the Shadowmasks’ weapon you’ll undo their power and I will be free. Remember this though: he who made the Soul Splinter will destroy it.’

Siddy glanced at Moll. ‘We – we have to get the Shadowmasks to destroy it . . .’

‘There are things I can tell you, things you’ve been begging to understand. I know you’ve been questioning why the Shadowmasks shaved my head and your pa’s. It was for a reason, Moll – to use our hair, a symbol of the purity of the Bone Murmur, as thread. And, with it, the Shadowmasks plan to weave a quilt of darkness that will be carried across the land and used to smother children’s dreams, poisoning their minds with evil. But there are forces stronger than the Shadowmasks’ menace, and, if you set my soul free, as you did with your pa, the Bone Murmur will fight back and the ways of the old magic will be restored.’

The voice paused and, when it came again, Moll could feel it as a whisper in her ear.

‘I love you, Moll. You were, and are, everything to me. And I’ll always be with you – me and your pa – watching over you as stars from the Otherworld.’

Moll held the letter close, the words now smudged with tears. She wanted to rush into her ma’s arms and hold her tight, but she was just a voice, a sound in a forgotten cave. ‘That was her, Sid,’ she sniffed. ‘My ma – as real as you and me.’

Siddy nodded. ‘That was her all right.’ He looked at the parchment. ‘And – and the amulet. Do you think it’s her letter?’

Moll didn’t answer. It had been niggling at her too. The first amulet had been a jewel more beautiful than anything she’d ever set eyes on before. But this – though it meant more to her than any ruby, sapphire or emerald could – was now a damp piece of parchment, blotted grey where words had once been.

‘The feathers,’ Moll said slowly. ‘When me and Alfie spoke to Mellantha about the first amulet, she said something about birds when we were out on the heath.’ Moll racked her brain. ‘She said: In a bird, we see our soul set free.’

His voice trailed off and Moll’s face filled with dread. ‘Are we too late? Perhaps there was a bird inside this cage once, but now—’

The glow-worms above them shuddered, splaying flickering turquoise over the cave walls. The lake didn’t stir, as it had done before, but the curtain of creepers hanging down at the opening of the cave did. They swept aside and a throng of bats swarmed in, their screeches grating into the stillness.

Moll’s insides convulsed with fear and Siddy’s eyes grew large as the bats whirled together and merged to become one terrifying figure.