The Dreamsnatcher (15 page)

Black flowers covered the whole hill, crawling over it like a giant net spun from the night itself. And the closer they got to the summit, the more the flowers changed. They seemed to be getting
bigger, taller, thicker, and they twisted into the night around them like crooked walking sticks. The flowers were taller than Moll now, with stems coated in fur. Pushing them aside, the three of
them forced their way on. Gorse bushes unravelled in front of them and, together with the flowers, they almost completely obscured the run-down building that they were hiding. But Moll, Alfie and
Gryff could see, huddled in darkness on the highest point of the heath, a small wooden hut: the maiden’s hovel.

Its slats had been arranged any old how and the whole thing appeared to lean ever so slightly to the left. Black flowers and giant weeds crawled up its sides and across the windows like dead
hair, barring the inside from view. The only sign that hinted of anything living inside the hovel was the light that crept out from beneath the door.

Alfie glanced down at the leather in Moll’s hand, the words now visible in the gloomy light. His eyes widened and he clutched Moll’s wrist.

‘The – the letters – some of them look different!’

Moll looked down and then her face drained of colour. Certain letters were quivering in the leather again, bolder, even darker than the rest. Only this time Moll could make out the word they so
clearly spelt.

Moll gasped: ‘W-I-T-C-H-D-O-C-T-O-R! That’s who this maiden is! But – but . . .’ Her heart pounded faster. ‘Why would my pa’s clue lead us
straight into the hands of a witch doctor?’

Gryff’s ears swivelled towards the hovel.

Moll could taste her fear. Perhaps the witch doctor would have a spinning head with rolling eyes. Or a rolling head with spinning eyes. Or – or . . . She brandished her stick in front of
her.

Gryff was prowling towards the door now. He turned to them and grunted.

Alfie looked at Moll. ‘What’s he saying?’

She thought of the camp, all safe in the clearing, of Mooshie cuddling her close. ‘He says there are no such things as the amulets, there isn’t anything in the hovel and we should
head back to the Ancientwood right this minute.’

Gryff stalked towards Moll, his head held high. And then he nipped her on the hand. Moll winced.

Alfie looked at Gryff. ‘He says we got to go in, right?’

Moll rubbed her hand. ‘Perhaps.’

‘You afeared?’ he asked.

She beat back the image of a witch doctor who now had two bulging heads and eight eyes on the ends of rods. ‘Nah. You?’

‘Nah.’

But Moll’s breaths were shaking and Alfie’s eyes were wide.

Gryff was prowling by the door again, but Alfie hung back with Moll. ‘We could send him in to meet the witch doctor first. They might get along all right . . .’

Gryff turned to Alfie, then he twitched his whiskers, his eyes narrow slits.

‘He’s – he’s glaring at me,’ Alfie stammered. ‘He looks cross.’

Moll shook her head. ‘He isn’t cross,’ she whispered. ‘He’s wild and wild things don’t look cheery the whole time. Especially not when they’re about to
go breaking into a witch doctor’s hovel.’

‘You think there’s
really
a witch doctor in there?’ Alfie whispered. ‘Looks more like an old sheep hut than a den of dark magic.’

Summoning all of her courage, her stick held high, Moll took a step up to the door. It was slightly ajar, like a mouth beginning to draw air, and there was absolute silence, save for the plop of
a toad slipping into a bog somewhere below them. Palms sweating, Moll placed a hand on the door and pushed it open.

She wasn’t expecting much: a few rusted pots, perhaps a weather-beaten table. But what met her eyes was altogether different. The hovel was bigger than she had expected and it was filled
with a clutter of seemingly abandoned objects: a broken chair, dusty boxes, long-forgotten rags.

But among the chaos there was an eerie sense of order. Carefully arranged on to scooped-out pieces of bark that lined the collapsing shelves to the sides of the hovel were tiny animal bones,
shimmering feathers, adder skins, owl pellets, spotted eggshells, unusual ferns and sharpened stones. It was as if the most intimate belongings of the heath and the forest had been stolen away and
hidden inside the hovel.

On a rickety table beneath the window was a patch of reddish animal fur – a fox perhaps – and on it lay a rattle carved from walnut. Moll shivered. It had been decorated with black
swirls of paint and the handle was tipped with bone.

Only then did Moll and Alfie pick up on Gryff’s movements. His tail was flat to the ground, his ears cocked and his eyes fixed ahead.

Alfie seized Moll by the arm and the hairs on her body froze. Hunched into a rocking chair in the far corner of the hut, almost completely obscured by rags, was a very old woman. Her skin was
grey and crumpled and in many ways she looked just like another forgotten object in the hovel. But her eyes were open and shining blackly.

T
he old woman stared at Moll, motionless and silent. She had a face of sagging skin, like the gnarled bark of an ancient tree, and long grey hair
hung from her scalp in wiry strands.

Moll’s stick trembled in her hand. ‘Do – d’you think she’s dead?’

Alfie shook his head. ‘She’s breathing – look.’

Sure enough there was a tremor of life inside the rags.

‘She’s sleeping with her eyes open?’ Moll whispered, aghast.

‘Maybe that’s what witch doctors do.’

‘You think
that’s
a witch doctor?’ Moll squinted at the old woman. ‘The maiden who can tell us where the amulets are?’ She didn’t look like the monster
from Hard-Times Bob’s stories.

Still the old woman stared ahead: reptilian eyes, hooded by wrinkles, burning into empty space.

‘But she hasn’t got a mask,’ Moll muttered. ‘And she looks all bent and spindly to me. Like she’s been beaten by winds too much – or – or drowned in a
bog for longer than was good for her.’

Alfie gasped. ‘She’s got a black mark on her forehead – like a smudge of soot.’ He took a step backwards. ‘Looks like witch doctor stuff to me.’

Moll glanced up and down the shelves for boiled eyeballs or half-chewed bones, but there were none.

Gryff snarled. And then, all of a sudden, the reptilian eyes blinked. Moll clutched her dress.

‘What do you want?’ a prickly voice asked.

Alfie, Moll and Gryff stood rooted to the spot.

The words sounded rusty, as if they’d been locked inside the old woman for far too long. But her eyes never moved. Black flints, they bored into Moll.

Moll clenched her fists into balls, forcing back memories of Hard-Times Bob’s stories. Then she took a step forward.

‘Are – are you the maiden?’ she stammered, her knuckles white as they gripped the stick. She rummaged in her pocket with her other hand and brought out the roll of leather.
‘Was it you who left this poem for me back at Oak’s camp?’

The old woman’s eyes narrowed. ‘Depends . . .’ she muttered.

Moll’s fists tightened even more. ‘Depends on what?’

‘Depends on
who
you are.’

Without warning, Gryff leapt forward. Hissing, he pounded his forelimbs on to the floorboards. Dust puffed upwards and, for the first time, the old woman dropped her gaze. Her eyes locked on to
Gryff.

‘It – it can’t be,’ she whispered. ‘The beast
from lands full wild
. . .’ Then she looked at Moll. ‘
You’re
the child from the Bone
Murmur?’

A wheeze rattled through her body, chasing away her voice. Gryff took a step backwards and circled Moll, growling. The old woman watched for several seconds, then hung her head and rocked it in
her hands. They were black, claw-like hands with shrivelled fingers, as if her skin was made of scales. Within seconds, she was shaking out whimpered sobs.

Moll shot a confused glance at Alfie.

He scowled. ‘You and Gryff have been in the hut for less than five minutes and you’ve gone and made the witch doctor cry.’

‘How was Gryff supposed to know she’d be afeared of him?’ Moll hissed. ‘He’s gentle enough.’

Gryff pounded the floorboards again, spitting and snarling. But, when the old woman raised her face, it told a different story. Her eyes were shining and her clawed hands twitched with
excitement. She had been
laughing
, not crying.

‘There’s hope,’ she whispered excitedly. ‘There’s hope left after all.’

She tried to get up, but her strength failed her and she slumped back into the rocking chair. Gryff paced back and forth in front of Moll and Alfie, his eyes narrowed cracks.

Moll nodded to Gryff. ‘He wants to know if you’re a witch doctor who’s out to trick us – a crook like that maggot-breathing Skull. Because we’re not trusting
anybody unless we’re sure of them. Isn’t that right, Alfie?’ She paused, waiting for Alfie to nod. He looked at Moll, lost for words. ‘Alfie here would chop off your head
with his penknife if you messed with us, wouldn’t you, Alfie?’

Alfie fumbled for his blunt penknife, then shifted on his feet. ‘I—’

‘So.’ Moll drew herself up. ‘What we want to know is: how bad a witch doctor are you? Mostly bad or proper rotten to the core?’

The old woman smiled and the skin on her neck clung to her throat in a hollowed scoop. She looked Moll up and down. ‘Funny the type of people called to do big things, isn’t it,
Molly?’

Moll stiffened. It was the first time she’d heard her name spoken by someone else since she’d left the Ancientwood. Even Alfie hadn’t dared to use it. Gryff raised his
hackles.

‘Who
are
you?’ Alfie said.

The old woman leant forward. ‘Maybe I am a witch doctor,’ she said quietly, her voice like the rustle of dead leaves, ‘but I don’t practise dark magic. All I’ve got
are cures and remedies for those who pass my way.’ She glanced at the shelves of berries, feathers, leaves, owl pellets and snakeskins. ‘Bilberries to fight eye infections and cramps,
dandelions to cure kidney disease, hawthorn for heart problems.’ She licked her cracked lips. ‘Maybe I do mix my cures up with spells, incantations – and magic.’ Her eyes
shone and Moll took a tiny step backwards. ‘But that doesn’t mean I’m rotten to the core.’

The witch doctor grappled for the arms of her rocking chair and managed to raise her bunched body upright. She leant forward, her bones groaning with the strain. Beneath her skirt, Moll could
see her knobbly ankles, purple and spotted with age.

‘I believe in the Bone Murmur, see – the one read years ago in the Oracle Bones. And I want to stand up against those bent on destroying it.’

Gryff was no longer growling. He had sidled up beside Moll – watching, waiting, guarding against the slightest danger.

‘How do you know me?’ Moll asked suspiciously.

‘I knew your parents.’

Moll stiffened.

‘I went to them just days before they . . . before they died. Because I knew things – things they needed to know.’

Alfie grunted. ‘Didn’t help them, did it?’

‘They wouldn’t listen,’ the witch doctor said sadly. ‘I told them I could help unravel what their bone reading meant if only they would let me see it. But, when your
parents saw the mark on my forehead, they knew enough of Skull’s dark magic to know it was a witch doctor’s curse. And they assumed I was mixed up with Skull so they didn’t want
anything to do with me.’

Moll hardened her glare, but her heart was thudding. Hard-Times Bob had invented the stories about a maiden on a hill because he’d seen her pa’s bone reading and then been warned by
her parents not to trust the witch doctor out on the heath. And yet here Moll was, miles from Oak’s clearing, in the witch doctor’s hut, because, unlike her parents and all of the
Elders, she’d followed the bone reading and trusted the poem.

The old woman took a step closer to Moll. ‘But I swore to myself that I’d look out for you as I knew one day you would become the Guardian of the Oracle Bones.’

Moll scoffed. ‘I’m able to look out for myself. I’ve had to. I’m nippy and meddling. No one as old as you could look out for me.’