The Dreamsnatcher (5 page)

Brandishing a tea towel, she marched towards Moll. ‘MOLLY PECKSNIFF!’ she roared. ‘What the devil do you think you were doing last night?’

All thoughts about Skull’s chant abandoned, Moll skirted behind Cinderella Bull and crawled beneath her wagon.

Mooshie’s smoke-yellowed face glowered beneath her blue headscarf. She pushed past Cinderella Bull. ‘When I get hold of you . . .’ She struck the side of the wagon with her tea
towel. ‘Oooooooh, you make me so cross, Molly!’ Two lace-up boots stepped up right in front of Moll’s nose. ‘What in heaven’s name were you doing last night? Come out
of there AT ONCE!’

Moll curled up tight. It was one thing to cross Oak, but crossing Mooshie was another story . . . ‘I sleepwalked over the boundary,’ she ventured. Moll’s eyes widened as she
realised the enormity of her lie and she swallowed, wriggling further away from Mooshie’s boots.

‘Jinx is back in the camp, safely tethered beside the cobs, and you expect me to believe you sleepwalked into Skull’s camp to get her back?’ Mooshie cried shrilly.

Moll ground her teeth together; it was too late to back down now. ‘I’ve been doing lots of – um – astral-travelling recently.’

Silence.

Moll picked at her fingers, barely understanding what she was saying: ‘Astral-travelling is when we dream and our souls break free at night and go on a journey. Cinderella Bull told me
about it.’

Cinderella Bull cleared her throat. ‘That’s a lovely story, Moll; never let it tumble out of your mouth again.’

There was a thwack outside; Cinderella Bull had been got by the tea towel.

Moll tried to feel her way into her story. If Mooshie hadn’t been on the loose with a tea towel, she might have almost enjoyed its twists and turns. ‘Just last week I went to the
northern wilderness on a donkey and last night—’

There was a yank to Moll’s foot as Mooshie dragged her out from beneath the wagon. Moll wriggled into a tiny ball and winced.
Thwack
,
thwack
,
thwack
went the tea
towel.

‘I’ve got the breakfast to clear away, the chickens to feed and the laundry to wash and you think I have time to listen to your stories about donkeys in the wilderness?’

Moll looked up at the tanned grooves of Mooshie’s face and suddenly Mooshie’s features softened and she knelt down by Moll, hugging her close. ‘Oh, Moll! We could’ve lost
you!’

And that was the way it was with Mooshie. You got used to it.

Moll leant back against her wagon wheel and Mooshie sat beside her, wiping her eyes with her pinafore.

‘I’m sorry I snapped my promise,’ Moll said. ‘I know it was a big’un and not one for snapping. But—’

Mooshie straightened her headscarf and rearranged her numerous petticoats over her knees. ‘You break promises, Moll, not snap them.’

Moll shrugged. ‘Trouble is, the other children are happy just playing around the camp.’

She pointed across the clearing to where a handful of youngsters had gathered beneath a Sacred Oak tree. A boy of Moll’s age, with sticking out ears and tufts of dark, curly hair poking
out beneath a flat cap, was hoisting a girl with auburn ringlets up on to the rope swing. Moll sighed as she watched Florence shriek when Siddy jiggled her about. She’d never fit in like they
all did. With Siddy, maybe, but Siddy was different. He had never called her an outsider. Not once. And he didn’t care about getting drenched in mud and bruised by falling from trees. She
watched as Florence and another girl swung back and forth.
They
would care about mud and stuff. Moll was sure of it. ‘See, Moosh? They’re all fine mucking about on rope swings
and fishing for minnows in the stream. I need more . . .’

Mooshie folded the tea towel on her lap. ‘You’d like spending time with them all if you just tried.’ She smoothed Moll’s hair down, but Moll only scowled. ‘Might be
nice if you and Siddy showed the others your tree fort.’

Moll looked appalled. ‘No. That would be horrible.’ She huffed. ‘I’ve got to see and do
everything
, Moosh. I’ve been running everywhere these past weeks just
so I can fit all the stuff I want to do into one measle-puckered day. It’s tiring but I can’t stop. And when someone gets me angry – like Skull when he stole Jinx –
then—’

Mooshie put a finger to her lips. ‘Sometimes you’ve got to wait while your anger cools, Moll. Wait and then think and then – if you’re really sure the anger’s
cooled and you’re thinking straight – you can act. Bad decisions are made when we’re angry.’

Moll plucked at the grass that had grown up over her wagon wheel. ‘Most of my bad decisions happen when I’m hungry.’

‘And I suppose you were just hungry last night when you crossed the boundary?’

Moll shuddered as she thought back to last night’s supper of nettle soup. She’d barely eaten any of it. ‘I was
starving
.’

‘An imp, that’s what you are, Miss Pecksniff.’ Mooshie lifted a handkerchief from her pinafore, spat on it, then rubbed at the muddy mark on Moll’s shin. ‘Small and
meddling, with a will of iron.’

Moll made a face. ‘What’s an imp then?’

‘A sprite.’

‘What’s a sprite?’

Mooshie rolled her eyes and gave up.

Moll was silent for several seconds and then she said quietly, ‘I know Oak will have told you what I saw last night . . .’

Mooshie stiffened but said nothing.

Moll went on. ‘Skull’s chant – it was sucking me and Gryff in. I could
feel
it when he crushed the wax figure. He’s after me – us – isn’t
he?’ She hugged her knees up to her chin. ‘
Why?
’

Mooshie ran her hand over the initials Moll and Siddy had carved into the wagon’s side a few years before. ‘Oh, Moll, you’re too young for all this. Far too young.’

Moll unfurled her body and sprang forward. ‘I’m not too young, Moosh! I’m old enough to have thieved Jinx back and escaped Skull’s camp! You have to tell me what’s
going on. Last night I was just thieving back a cob, then suddenly I find out I’m wanted by Skull’s gang!’ Her cheeks were flushed and she was breathing fast. Mooshie tried to
clasp her hands, but Moll shuffled backwards. ‘I want to know the truth – straight and proper. Because you and Oak know things you’re not telling me.’ She narrowed cold
green eyes. ‘And, if no one tells me what’s going on, I’m going to catapult the whole camp before breakfast.’

Mooshie took a deep breath and looked her straight in the eye. And, for some strange reason, Moll felt like Mooshie was seeing her for the very first time.

‘Last night,’ Mooshie bit her lip, ‘you saw Skull performing a Dream Snatch.’

Moll shivered. ‘What – what’s a Dream Snatch?’

‘It’s a witch doctor’s deadliest curse. When they—’ she paused and fiddled with her rings, ‘—
want
someone, they form the victim’s figure
out of wax. They curse it, then crush it, then they mutter a chant – the Dream Snatch.’

Moll’s eyes widened. ‘And what happens to the victim?’

‘The chant seeps into their mind and the more afeared they are, the stronger it grows. It feeds on fear. In your case, Skull’s Dream Snatch steals into your sleep, turning your
dreams to nightmares, making the fears you have in the daytime a hundred times worse in the darkness.’ Mooshie’s voice was low and guarded. ‘He is trying to control you, Moll,
trying to summon you from our camp.’

The colour drained from Moll’s face. ‘My sleepwalking – finding myself alone in the forest in the middle of the night . . .’

Mooshie nodded. ‘Skull’s been calling for you your whole life – only he’s not just calling you to his camp. He’s—’ Mooshie looked out towards the fire
in the middle of the clearing, ‘—he’s calling for your death.’ Moll’s eyes widened and Mooshie leant in closer. ‘Years ago Skull used his powers to such an
extent that it left him weakened, but, now time has passed, his Dream Snatch is gathering strength and that’s why the nightmare drags you closer and closer to the river boundary each
time.’ She paused. ‘You say Gryff felt the chant in Skull’s clearing too?’ Moll nodded. ‘Then the Dream Snatch is reaching its full strength. We feared this would
come.’

‘But Skull doesn’t even know who I am,’ Moll said. ‘How can he be calling me?’

‘Before last night, Skull didn’t know who you are; he probably didn’t even know you camped in the Ancientwood. But he’ll know now his boy’s seen Gryff, you can be
sure of that . . . Because you and Gryff are part of something Skull wants to destroy and for his whole life he’s been trying to find you. Dragging Jinx away from our camp might’ve been
coincidence – another theft to force our camp from the forest . . .’ Mooshie paused. ‘Or it might’ve been Skull’s Dream Snatch, spreading over everything you hold
dear.’

Moll’s stomach twisted into a knot. ‘This Dream Snatch . . . I’ve
seen
it before. It’s like I said last night to Oak. It isn’t a nightmare, is it? It’s
a memory.’

Mooshie fiddled with the hem of her pinafore, avoiding Moll’s eyes.

Moll stiffened. Something painful was happening inside her mind: a terrible memory, locked so deep inside her she thought she’d never find it, was sloping towards her.

It was a dark night, the forest muffled by snow, and she was hiding in the undergrowth by the river, not far from the drum and the rattle and the figures. Skull’s mask was there,
floating before her.

She gasped.

‘I – I’m by the river and – and I’m not alone with the cloaked figures. There’s more to my nightmare than what I’ve seen before! There are other people
with me only I can’t see their faces.’

Mooshie shifted on the grass but said nothing.

Moll felt the memory fading. ‘What happened? What am I remembering?’

Mooshie shook her head. ‘You’ve no idea who you are, Moll.’

‘Who am I then?’ Moll whispered. ‘And what does Gryff have to do with it all?’ Her voice crumbled into a shiver.

But this time Mooshie shook her head. ‘Oak needs to tell you, Moll – he’s the head of the camp.’

She tried to gather Moll into her arms, the way she did almost every time the nightmare came for her. But Moll scrambled away.

She stared straight ahead, a knot of fear fixing inside her. Things had been difficult before. But now they were a whole lot worse: she was more of an outsider than ever. And worse than that,
somewhere not so far away, Skull was hatching a plan to kill her.

‘W
ait by the fire, Moll, and I’ll fetch Oak.’ Mooshie’s eyes had filled with tears again, but she brushed them away and
stood up. ‘It’s time you two talked.’

Moll made her way towards the fire in the middle of the clearing where Patti was scraping the last of the porridge into a bowl. She and her husband had been members of Oak’s camp for as
long as anyone could remember and, while their daughter, Ivy, was easily the most alluring young woman in the clearing, the same could not be said about their son, Siddy, who combined a hopelessly
misdirected enthusiasm with very little common sense. And there was a baby too, but she spent most of her time eating soil and sticking twigs in her ears. Excepting Ivy, Patti had it hard.

Today she was flaunting a purple waistcoat over a lilac blouse and a ruffled lavender skirt. Since the day she turned thirty, Patti had refused to wear anything other than purple. Most of the
time she looked like a giant bluebell, but she was the best hawker the camp had; rumour had it that she had so much charm she could sell a toad for a small fortune.

Moll perched on an upturned log, her thoughts whirling.

Patti pulled the kettle back from the fire and passed Moll a steaming cup of raspberry leaf tea. ‘Here, drink this.’ She smiled. ‘And there’s one bowl of porridge
left.’

Moll poked a spoon into the porridge, but her mind was miles away. Why was Skull after her and Gryff? She scoured the trees beyond the clearing for the wildcat and thought she glimpsed a
movement of grey-black stripes. For a second, things felt just a tiny bit better.

Moll ate a mouthful of porridge and looked across the fire. Folded into a threadbare armchair he’d taken three days to haul from his wagon, and a further three weeks to stitch with the
saying ‘Sometimes I sits and thinks; sometimes I just sits’, was Hard-Times Bob, Oak’s uncle and Cinderella Bull’s brother. And he was doing what he did best in the
mornings: taking a nap.

Moll finished her porridge, then looked back up at Patti. ‘You Elders know about Skull’s Dream Snatch, don’t you? That’s what you speak about late at night round the
fire. I’ve heard you.’

Patti looked about to deny it, but when she saw Moll’s glare she nodded.

‘You all knew and I didn’t!’ Moll said.

‘Only the Elders knew.’ Patti reached for a broom and began sweeping up scraps of food. ‘And that was because we needed to keep you safe. If we hadn’t told you about the
boundary, you’d have crossed into Skull’s camp years ago. You and Siddy are always off exploring places.’

Moll knew Patti was probably right but she said nothing. There was only one person she felt like talking to now and, as she glanced up at the rope swing on the other side of the clearing, Patti
seemed to read her thoughts. Hands on hips, Patti stood up. ‘Oi! Siddy!’ she shouted. ‘Over here – now! And take that ridiculous scrap of paper out of your mouth! Your
father might smoke his tobacco after breakfast, but you’re only twelve and you look ridiculous!’