The Dreamsnatcher (4 page)

Gryff was still in the branches, hissing, growling and stamping his forelimbs. His eyes glowed green and his hackles rose, as if he was growing in size, and, as he snarled, he bared rows of
white fanged teeth.

The boy yanked Raven’s halter and they skidded to a halt, centimetres from the riverbank. The soil beneath Raven’s hooves began to crumble and they retreated backwards.

The boy stared at Gryff, blinking in disbelief. His voice was altogether different now: half curious, half afraid. ‘It – it can’t be . . .’ he stammered. ‘The beast
– the child from . . .’ He looked Moll straight in the eye.

But at that second a hand clapped down on Moll’s shoulder.

The boy turned sharply, then galloped back into the Deepwood.

And Moll whirled round to face Oak.

O
ak didn’t ask where she’d been; he could tell from the look on Moll’s face: guilt mingled with fear. She’d crossed the
boundary into Skull’s camp – that much was clear.

Oak pulled a chair round to the foot of Moll’s wooden box bed, brushing the red velvet curtains wide. Oak was a strong, sturdy man, but, as he ran a hand over his stubbled jaw, Moll saw
that he looked tired. She glanced at his large gold ring set with obsidian stone – the mark of his role as head of the camp. It glowed under the lamplight and a flicker of guilt wavered
inside Moll. She looked away and focused on her wagon: at the stove with its shiny copper pans, at the pinafores strewn on the pine floor and at the small wardrobe with gigantic fir cones and
kingfisher feathers scattered on its top.

Oak sat forward, fiddling with his talisman, a lump of coal in a leather pouch he kept in the pocket of his waistcoat. But he didn’t speak yet. He had his ways.

Moll pushed her patchwork quilt back to her knees. ‘I got Jinx back, Oak. I did it – all by my unhelped self.’ A look of pride, of wilful defiance, flashed in her eyes.

Oak looked up. ‘Jinx isn’t important, Moll. Not important like you . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Domino – my own son – he should’ve known better than to
fall asleep on watch. Anything could’ve happened.’

‘But – but I was saving Jinx from certain death over there!’

Oak shook his head. ‘You disobeyed me, Moll. After everything you promised.’

Moll thought fast. ‘Blame that blinking nightmare! Pulled me right over the river into the Deepwood this time.’ Oak said nothing and Moll could tell he’d sensed her lie. She
dodged his eyes. ‘Well, at least I made the most of it – and I proved fair and square to Florence and the others that I’m no outsider.’

Oak put his hands on his thighs. ‘You have to let that go, Moll. All that bad feeling – those comments – it was years ago and Florence has tried to be your friend since. They
all have.’

A familiar hardness fastened inside Moll. ‘They told me I didn’t belong,’ she muttered. ‘Because of my eyes
and
the way I wasn’t born in camp.’ But
deep down Moll felt that it was more than that, like there might be something else that set her apart from the others. And she was almost certain it had something to do with the whisperings of the
Elders late at night around the campfire; she could have sworn she’d heard her name on their lips as she’d watched from the crack in her shutters. But when she’d questioned Oak
and Mooshie they’d only shrugged her off and changed the subject.

Oak blew out through his lips. ‘I’m not going to fight you on this tonight, Moll. It’s late and we’re both tired.’ He paused. ‘I thought I had your promise
though. The nightmare’s not strong enough to drag you over the river boundary; you went there of your own choosing.’

Moll ground her teeth but said nothing. She’d let Oak down, when it really mattered. Oak, who’d taught her how to climb trees, who’d sat up with her when the nightmares came,
who’d built the wheels on her wagon especially thick so that it didn’t topple over, no matter how much she crashed around inside it.

She had no family other than Oak and Mooshie Frogmore. Moll had been found in the forest, an abandoned stray, but the Frogmores had taken her in and given her a proper gypsy name. They’d
stood up for her when the others in the camp had called her an outsider, and they were better than any parents she could have hoped for. Moll picked at her quilt.

But the drum, the rattle, the mask . . . There was a
reason
her nightmare kept coming for her, and Oak knew something about it – she could tell.

‘I saw Skull. He wears a mask that looks like bone,’ Moll mumbled through a storm of hair. ‘And I heard his drum and rattle, like in my nightmare.’ She met Oak’s
eyes. ‘Only my nightmare isn’t just a nightmare, is it?’

Oak said nothing but his body tensed. He tightened his neckerchief, then ran a hand over his dark brown hair.

‘I’ve seen Skull before, haven’t I? That’s why I see him in my dreams.’ Moll struggled against a yawn, her voice thick with sleep. She was exhausted from the chase
and from everything she’d seen, but there were questions – so many questions. ‘Skull’s gang are after me . . . They had a chant. Skull was calling me
and
Gryff to him
. . .’

Still Oak said nothing but Moll could read his eyes. They were deep and brown and you could get lost if you looked at them too long, like peering into a dark wood. But Moll wasn’t lost
right now. Those eyes were keeping things from her and she knew it.

‘The river . . .’ Moll’s voice hardened as she realised. ‘It’s only really a boundary for me, isn’t it?’

Moonlight spilled in through a crack in her shutters and Moll could just make out one of the Sacred Oaks that formed a ring of ancient wood around the colourful wagons.

Oak stood up and closed the shutters tight. ‘Some things are too dark for night, Moll.’

Moll’s eyes narrowed, but, knowing she’d get no more from Oak tonight, she burrowed beneath her quilt until all that was left of her was a swamp of tangled hair.

Oak tucked the rest of Moll beneath the quilt. ‘Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow.’

Moll heard her wagon door click shut and Oak’s footsteps pad softly away. But, if she had managed to stay awake a while longer, she would have heard Oak knock quietly on four wagon doors.
It was time to call the Elders together if Moll was to know the truth about her past.

T
he chickens woke her, like they always did. Mischievous, rowdy and named after legendary highwaymen, they squawked and screeched from sunrise
until someone got up to scatter their grain. Moll opened her eyes a fraction; a ribbon of light seeped in through her shutters and her ears were filled with the sounds of morning: the sing-song of
a cuckoo, the whistle of the kettle, Mooshie’s impatient barks.

‘Siddy, if you think for one minute it’s fine to prod Rocky Jo with a twig, you’ll feel my hand! He’s a cockerel, not a highwayman!’

Children squealed and laughed. Everyone knew that Siddy had it in for the chickens and the cockerel, ever since Rocky Jo had eaten his pet earthworm, Porridge. Moll rubbed her eyes and sat up.
She thought of Oak, of what he would have said if he was still in her wagon on a sunny morning like this: ‘Best thing about this life is you wake up in the morning and you’re free.
You’ve only got one door and there’s only one way to walk: outside.’ She smiled and then she checked herself as she remembered what had happened in the Deepwood. Skull’s
gang were after her and Gryff – and Oak knew something about it.

Moll splashed her face with water from the pail that Mooshie always left by her bedside, then she searched her wagon floor for the most purposeful dress she could find: the light blue summer
frock with large pockets hanging from the sides. That would do. Wriggling it on, she pulled open a wardrobe door, hurling aside the jumpers, skirts, dresses and newly-ironed pinafores and stuffed
her catapult and a handful of stones into her pockets. She paused for a moment; she wasn’t overly keen on catapulting Oak, but if that’s what it might take to get the truth then there
wasn’t a lot she could do about it.

She flung open the wagon door, her hair matted and wild, like a crow’s nest plonked on top of her head, and marched out on to the steps.

‘Still here then.’ A hunched old woman was sitting on Moll’s steps. She pulled a red shawl lined with fake gold pennies around her and the jewels on her crinkled fingers
flashed in the sunlight. ‘Well, that’s something, isn’t it?’

‘Mmmmmn.’

Cinderella Bull was the camp’s only fortune-teller – the Dukkerer, they all called her – and it was
she
who guarded The Chest of No Opening at Any Time or Your Life
Won’t Be Worth Living and the crystal ball. So, by and large, it was worth listening to her, even if you didn’t agree with what she said.

Moll scanned the camp for Oak. Chickens darted across the clearing and barefoot children swarmed round the fire like puppies, their skin stained by smoke and dirt. Among them, women in
brightly-coloured skirts and headscarves, some wrapped up like turbans, some knotted under chins, stoked the fire and separated strings of sausages for the spitting pans. Their faces were lined and
pitted by years of open-air living, but their fingers and necks flashed with sparkling jewels: amber, jet, coral and gold. And set back from the fire, before a canvas tent, sat a cluster of men in
flat caps and once-good overcoats, drinking tea from tin cups.

Cinderella Bull looked up at Moll with gargoyled features. ‘If you’re looking for Oak, you won’t find him. He left early to chop logs for the feast tonight.’

‘Chop logs!’ Moll smouldered away on the wagon steps like an angry lump of coal, but there was no use arguing with a feast night and all its traditions. Moll knew that. And
they’d been talking about this one for months. Wisdom, Mooshie and Oak’s eldest son, was getting married to Ivy, and the Jumping of the Broomstick ceremony was tonight. Everyone would
be there.

Moll’s eyes ran over the ring of bowtop wagons: maroon ones with gold-leaf swirls and green ones, like her own, with bright yellow wisps and rearing cobs. Hanging from the front of each
one were the camp’s good luck omens: lemon peel, horseshoe nails, fragments of mirror, fox teeth . . . She looked around for Gryff, but she didn’t expect to see him here. He always hung
back from the clatter of the camp.

Thrusting a hand into her pocket, Moll seized her catapult and leapt off the steps. But, before she could dart off, Cinderella Bull clutched her by the arm.

The fortune-teller’s hands were haggard like ancient bark and, as she ran a wrinkled finger over the lines that scored Moll’s wrist, she whispered, ‘The bracelets of life . . .
And your life’s going to change now, Moll. You know that, don’t you?’ Moll frowned past the sun into the fortune-teller’s face, and whipped her hand away.

The week before Cinderella Bull had told Moll her Line of Life had a split at the end, meaning she was prone to outbursts of insanity, and that her short, square nails indicated that she had a
fighting temper.

‘I need to find Oak,’ Moll said. ‘There’s important stuff he’s not telling me.’ She paused. ‘I saw Skull last night in the Deepwood – and he was
chanting for me and Gryff to come close.’

As Moll had half suspected, Cinderella Bull already knew. She nodded gravely, then rummaged in her pinafore pocket and drew out her talisman, a leather pouch of salt. She scattered it round
Moll’s feet. ‘For protection,’ she murmured. ‘Skull’s growing in strength now, mark my words. We’ll need every charm we’ve got to keep you safe.’

Moll stormed out of the circle of salt, breathing hard. ‘Someone needs to tell me what’s going on!’

But Cinderella Bull only shook her head. ‘It should be Oak who tells you, Moll. He’s the head of the camp.’

‘But Oak’s out chopping logs!’

‘He’ll be back soon. He wanted a moment away from the clearing before he spoke to you – to think things through. But Mooshie’s here. You could—’

Just at that moment there was a high-pitched shriek – like the screech of a desperate chicken – but Moll knew this was no chicken. She scoured the clearing. At the far end of the
camp, beyond the fire, women clustered outside a tent, weaving hawthorn into ribbed baskets. And charging past them, sending pots of porridge and cups of tea flying, came Mooshie. Having noticed
Moll, she was thundering towards her, bursting out of her clothes with fury, like some sort of overpacked suitcase with legs. Her skirt shook, her ruffled petticoats wavered, her headscarf flapped.
Moll gulped.