The Winter Wolf (2 page)

Amelia shivered. Probably wolves, even bigger and scarier than Freddie. She stepped back, and saw a name written in the bottom corner of the painting. She squinted down at the signature, trying to make it out, and then smiled delightedly. Noah Allan. The man the house was named after! Mum had told them about
him – that he had been born in America, but he’d travelled to France to study. Then he had visited friends in Scotland, and found the dramatic landscape so perfect to paint that he’d settled here. He was Amelia’s great-great-great-grandfather – except that she couldn’t remember quite how many greats there should be. But she knew he had been born more than a hundred and fifty years ago. Her mum had told her that there was a very famous Noah Allan painting in a gallery in London, of a girl and a wolf. They’d go and see it one day, Mum had said.

Amelia was so excited to find another painting by their ancestor that it took her a moment to hear the scuffling and tapping of claws. She clutched the blanket round her in a panic. Tom and that enormous dog
were coming up the stairs!

Amelia scuttled down the passageway. She’d done her best to avoid being alone with Tom. He obviously thought she was stupid because she was frightened of dogs and he moaned about having to shut Freddie up during meals, in case he scared Amelia. But Anya had told Amelia that it made it much easier to eat breakfast – if Freddie was around he could have a piece of toast out of your hand in three seconds flat.

Freddie was snuffling his way along the passage now, and Amelia cursed herself for being stupid – why hadn’t she just nipped back into her own bedroom? They would catch up with her any moment, and Freddie would sniff at her, and Tom wouldn’t make him stop, Amelia knew he wouldn’t. He’d just laugh.

Amelia ducked round the huge wooden cupboard, and stood there in the shadows, hoping they’d go straight past. But she could hear Freddie sniffing at everything, and Tom sniggering as the dust made the huge dog sneeze. There was no way Freddie was going to miss her. And it would be obvious that she was hiding, and Tom would tell everyone, like it was a great big joke.

Amelia leaned back, trying to wriggle into the corner where the cupboard wasn’t pushed right up against the wall. Except that her blanket was catching on something sticking out of the wall. She looked round cautiously and realized that she wasn’t leaning on a wall at all.

It was a door.

A
melia slid up the latch – that was what the blanket had got caught on, she realized. She eased the door open, holding her breath and waiting for it to creak. But it didn’t. A faint bar of light shone out into the passage, and Amelia wormed her way round the door. It opened just wide enough to let her through. There was no rush of feet or scurry of paws as she drew the door shut again behind her. Tom and Freddie hadn’t heard.

In front of her was a steep, narrow staircase, thick with dust. Amelia glanced back at the door, and tested the first step with her foot to see if it creaked. The step gave a faint sigh, and Amelia thought it almost sounded pleased, but it was only the old wood giving under her weight. She tiptoed up the rest of the little staircase,
trying hard not to sneeze with all the dust. Below her she could hear Tom talking to Freddie, but he seemed very far away. She was somehow certain that he didn’t know about the door. This place belonged to her.

The stairs opened up into a tiny,
light-filled
room. This must be the very top of the house, Amelia decided, where those two little windows were, right up in the roof. High up here, there was even a pale glow of sunlight, shimmering through the dirty glass.

The attic was full of boxes – not the boring cardboard sort that were stacked up in the loft at home, full of Amelia’s outgrown baby clothes and old wellingtons. Here there were wooden packing crates, fat trunks and old leather suitcases, plastered with faded labels. Ancient pieces of furniture were clustered around as well: an armchair with half its stuffing escaping, and a spindly little table, piled high with books. Amelia wrapped the blanket tighter round her shoulders – it was even colder up here, right under the roof.

Curiously, she turned over the books on the little table and found that they were school books – the one on top had a faded brown cover, and was full of odd little stories in French. At least, Amelia thought
it was French. There was a picture of a very cross little girl on the first page, with an even crosser cat in her arms.

Amelia crouched down in front of a big leather trunk and pushed hopefully at the brass clasp holding it shut. It was stiff, but then it sprang open, making her jump. She held her breath as she lifted up the lid, wondering who had been the last person to look inside. Maybe no one had opened the trunk since it had been hauled up here. She sniffed cautiously as she leaned the lid against the armchair, but the clothes in the trunk smelled faintly of herbs and weren’t at all musty or damp. Carefully, Amelia lifted out the dark garments, unfolding them and holding them up. Two jackets, a heavy, checked woollen coat, several patched and faded shirts, and a hat that
made Amelia shudder. She was sure that the soft, dark fur of the hat was real. But she supposed that a long time ago, a fur hat would have been the best way to keep warm. She didn’t want to try it on, though.

The jackets and shirts were big, about Amelia’s father’s size, she thought, but the coat looked smaller, as though it had been made for a child. Amelia stroked the wooden buttons, satin smooth, and wondered who had carved them. Then, all of a sudden, she slid the blanket off her shoulders, and pulled on the coat instead, buttoning it down the front, and turning the wide collar up round her ears to keep herself warm. She picked her way across the floor to an old mirror that leaned against another of the wooden chests, then
turned and swayed in front of it, trying to catch a glimpse of herself in the mottled glass. The coat was shapeless, and faded, but very warm. Its lining was quilted, and Amelia felt as though she was wearing a duvet. She peered into the mirror one last time, and sank her hands into the deep pockets. Her fingers were stiffening up from the cold.

The right-hand pocket was empty, but in the left-hand one, Amelia’s fingers closed round a small, flat packet. She pulled it out and walked over to the armchair under the window to get a better look at what she’d found.

A notebook? No – Amelia prised open the stiff old pages, and saw the scrawled handwriting and the date written at the top of the page.

16th October, 1873.

A diary.

Amelia swallowed, and her hands shook with excitement. It was more than a hundred and forty years old! She’d seen ancient things before in museums, even Egyptian mummies from thousands of years ago. But somehow holding this little book in her own hands felt very different. It might even have belonged to one of her relatives, since this house was her family’s. The spidery brown writing felt like a message from the past:

Bitter cold again today. Wind howling around the cabin so loud you’d swear it was alive and trying to get in. Pa says we need to plaster mud over the chinks in the walls again come springtime.

Amelia shivered. That was just what she had felt, earlier on in her room. But at least she was in a house, a big stone-built
house that had been here for hundreds of years. A cabin didn’t sound very warm at all, especially if it had holes in the walls.

The writing was so faded that it was hard to read in places. She was frowning over it, trying to puzzle out the rest of the entry, when she heard voices calling from below – impatient voices that sounded as if they might have been shouting for a while.

“Amelia! Amelia, are you asleep up there? Come on, we’re all going for a walk.”

Amelia jumped up, wriggling out of the heavy coat, before draping it over the chair. She looked for a second at the diary, but for some reason she didn’t want to take it with her. It belonged up here, with the old trunk. And it was a secret –
her
secret.

“I’ll come back,” she whispered, as she started down the wooden stairs. It was silly, talking to a book, but she didn’t care. And she
would
come back, just as soon as she could slip away.