The Dreamsnatcher (11 page)

Alfie hesitated for a moment, fiddling with his feather earring. ‘Yes.’

It was only a second’s hesitation, but Moll knew in that moment that the amulets meant more to Alfie than food and shelter. He was after them for another reason, she was sure of it.

Alfie lit another match from his tin and looked Moll squarely in the eye. ‘I know what the bone reading means. And I know how to escape Skull’s camp. You need me if you’re
going to survive this.’

Moll looked around at the pit. ‘You’re burping out lies.’

‘What if I’m not?’

Moll frowned. ‘If you
know
all this, why do you need my help?’

‘Because I found something last night and I think it’s likely bound up with your bone reading and the amulets.’ He looked away. ‘Only I can’t read well so I
don’t understand it all. I reckon you can help because you’ve been lettered up all fancy at your camp.’

Moll threw him a savage look. ‘How do you know about that?’

‘Because I’ve been in Skull’s gang since I was a child and from time to time I watched your camp from the trees. Picked up this and that – enough to get by.’

Moll stared at Alfie.
He
had been sneaking around Oak’s camp unnoticed. To learn letters . . . ‘You’re no gypsy, are you?’

Alfie met her bright, fierce eyes. He straightened himself up. ‘I want to work with you to get the amulets. Once we find them, we sell them and we each take half the profit.’

Moll couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She knew next to nothing about these amulets, but she felt one thing clear and true: they weren’t things you could just sell. And
splitting the money honestly? Alfie was bound to cut and run. But this was her only chance. She could go along with him, pretending to agree to sell the amulets while he helped her get away, then
she’d try and somehow send a signal to Oak and her camp. She looked over at Alfie who was smiling slyly.

What if he was tricking her so that he could pass on information to Skull? But she’d seen the hatred in his eyes at the mention of the witch doctor. If Alfie was keeping secrets from her,
Moll got the feeling it was about why he wanted those amulets so badly. She held out her hands and looked Alfie in the eye – the best thing to do when you’re telling a lie.
‘Deal,’ she replied evenly.

Alfie shook her hand. ‘Deal.’

Moll looked down at the rope which bound her. ‘Untie me. Please.’

Alfie held out another lit match. ‘Hold this.’

Moll flinched with annoyance that she’d have to cooperate with the very person who’d kidnapped her from the Ancientwood in the first place.

‘Please,’ Alfie mumbled.

Reluctantly, Moll took the match and Alfie drew a penknife from his rusted tin. Moll stiffened; so he was armed.

‘I’m only untying you because we need to work together.’ He sawed his knife through the rope, then glanced quickly at the grate covering the pit’s opening. ‘If they
come down, grab the rope and wind it round your hands; I don’t want any questions from them.’

Moll looked at his split lip and nodded. She reached over for the flask, took a big swig of water, then tore off a lump of stale bread and chewed it hard. The match faded but, when Alfie lit
another, Moll saw that his eyes were shining and the pocket of his shorts no longer bulged. He was holding something – a roll of leather. A night breeze sifted in through the grate and Moll
could almost hear it slipping inside the roll in tiny whispers. Her initials stared back at her in black. But they hadn’t been written in ink; they’d been burned on.

Alfie held out the roll of leather in front of Moll. Her mouth widened and her heart fluttered as she traced the words with her finger:

FOR MP.

FROM THE MAIDEN

N
oises from above swallowed their whispers: the creaking of unoiled wheels; the crack of a whip; the grumble of voices. A cart was drawing
near.

Moll’s heart leapt. Oak? Had he come for her?

Alfie snatched back the leather, put a finger to his lips and blew out the match. A crow’s
caw-caw
scratched the surface of the night and then the cart pulled close, rumbling and
snapping over twigs and leaves as it moved. A cob snorted, then there came a scrabbling of feet, a scratching of claws and a low growl. Chains clanked against the sides of the cart. Whatever was
inside was trying to escape.

‘Skull! Gobbler! We’ve got them!’

Moll’s heart sank. Surely Oak and his camp could break past the shadows guarding Skull’s camp. They were only shadows after all – and she’d managed to get through, though
deep down Moll suspected that may have had something to do with the power of the Dream Snatch. A feeling began to gnaw at her mind and, however hard she tried to force it away, it crawled back.
Perhaps there was a reason no one from the camp had come for her. Perhaps it was easier for them all if she was finally out of the way. She dug her nails into her palms.

‘It’s the boys come back from the village,’ Alfie whispered.

From the far side of the clearing, wagon doors clattered open and footsteps hurried across.

Alfie tugged Moll beneath the opening.

‘Listen and watch if your eyes can fight the dark,’ he hissed. ‘They’ve been talking about bringing something to the camp and we’ve got to find out what it is
because no one’s been telling me anything of late.’

‘Why does it matter what Skull’s bringing in?’

‘Because I reckon we’ve got to get past whatever it is.’

Moll swallowed.

‘Let’s see them, boys,’ Gobbler rasped.

‘You’re going to like what you see. We wouldn’t even sit out back with them, they’re that fierce.’

‘That’s Brunt,’ Alfie’s voice whispered in the dark.. ‘Keep out of his way. He’s worse than the other two. Almost as bad as Gobbler and Skull.’

There was a scuffling of feet from above. A cob brayed and stamped its feet, then a whip cracked down and the cob was still. But something was moving – and it was moving fast. Loud thuds
hammered against the sides of the cart, followed once again by deep, rumbling growls. Whatever the boys had bought, there was more than one of them.

There was a laugh but it was brittle, as if it might have been made from glass. ‘Very good,’ Skull replied.

‘The trader who sold them said they were made in hell!’ It was Brunt’s voice again, gruff and low.

Moll’s lip was trembling. She bit it down. ‘What’ve they got stuffed away in that cart?’

But Alfie didn’t have time to hazard a guess because there were more footsteps now – and they were coming towards the pit. Alfie threw the rope to Moll who wrapped it round her
wrists and huddled into the shadows.

A light approached, then a shrivelled hand holding a lantern, and a second later, Gobbler’s face appeared above the grate. But he wasn’t alone. He was joined by a white mask and it
gleamed in the light of the lantern like porcelain.

Moll tensed. There were no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no lips showing beneath the wooden mask. It was as if Skull’s features had been scraped from him and only the mask remained. And though
the mask showed one expression – a grim smile shot through with jagged bones as teeth – Moll could sense a mouth beneath the surface, brooding with dark pleasure.

‘Send Brunt in,’ he muttered.

A line of cold sweat prickled down Moll’s spine, but she looked the mask in the eyes and spat on to the ground. She couldn’t let Skull know she was afraid.

‘Oak’ll come for me!’ she hissed, but her voice was shaking. ‘We aren’t going to give in this easy.’

But the mask had already disappeared.

In its place was another face and it swamped Gobbler’s in shadow: a bull neck with folds of gristly skin bunching at the back; a face spiderwebbed with scars, like a pane of shattered
glass; a cruel, flattened nose between two mangled ears. Brunt rubbed his hands together; they were strong hands, the type that might bend iron. He looked at Alfie.

‘Rip a piece off her dress, Alfie, then bring it up,’ he snarled.

‘And
then
will you let me out?’

Brunt cracked his knuckles and glowered down. ‘Pass it up – and quick about it.’

Alfie was silent for a second, his eyes burning. Then he knelt close by Moll and tore her dress. He scrambled up the soil steps and passed the scrap through the grate.

Brunt shot his hand through the bars and seized Alfie by the collar. ‘You better start being more sly with cobs and little girls, young man, or things aren’t going to work out nice
for you. No more mess-ups. Understand?’

Alfie mumbled something under his breath and Brunt flung him back down the steps.

‘We need that wildcat of yours, girl,’ Brunt grunted at Moll. ‘And when the light’s up you’re going to show us where to find him.’

Moll sunk her body deeper into the pit, leaving only her voice behind. ‘I won’t ever give him up.’

Brunt raised a clenched fist. ‘Oh, you’ll give him up all right – along with your name. And if you don’t talk we’ll force it out of you. That’s a promise. And
I’m not one for breaking promises.’

The chains clanked against the cart again; Brunt and Gobbler sloped away.

‘They’ll track anyone I want?’ Skull’s voice twisted together with the snarls from the cart.

Brunt laughed. ‘They’re baying for blood; they’ll trace anything. That girl down there isn’t going nowhere, Skull.’

‘Give them the scrap of her dress then,’ Skull hissed. ‘I want them to learn her scent so she never gets away.’

For a split second, there was silence. And then a cacophony of noise: pounding feet, desperate scratching, snarling bites. It sounded as though the animals were tearing the scrap of clothing to
shreds. And then it came. It was low at first, low and braying, but then it rose – louder and more chilling – and suddenly the night air was filled with the blood-curdling howls of
Skull’s hounds.

Moll’s body tingled with fear, but she shook herself and scowled in Alfie’s direction. ‘You gave him a scrap from my dress! How’s that going to help us escape
then?’

‘Shut up and trust me,’ Alfie growled back.

Moll seethed silently, her dark hair wild around her face like a lion’s mane.

‘Look, all I’m saying is that we have to use cunning to get us out of this. We have to go along with them – make them think we’re helpless – then take a chance and
run.’

But Moll wasn’t listening. She was scrambling over the bones and feeling her way up the steps, craning her neck towards the opening. It wasn’t just the hounds howling above them now.
There were other noises too. Voices. And Moll would recognise those voices anywhere.

‘It’s Oak,’ she whispered. ‘He’s come for me!’

Alfie leant back against the wall of the pit and shook his head.

Up above, the voices became words – so comforting and strong that Moll felt she could almost touch them. Oak sounded some way away, but he was shouting.

‘Give her up, Skull! You’ve no right to take her!’

‘I’m here, Oak! Here!’ Moll yelled through the bars of the grate.

There were a few laughs and guffaws from directly above the entrance.

Oak was still shouting: ‘I’ve got all my men here, Skull! We’ve come to take her back!’

Moll clapped a hand over her mouth as she thought of Skull’s words:
We need her full name to work the curse when the time comes.
‘Oak, no! Don’t say my name. Keep my
name safe!’ she cried.

‘Up on to the cobs, boys. Then set the hounds on them,’ Skull’s voice spat from above. ‘Let’s see what they can do.’

Moll cowered beneath the bars as the chains clanked against the cart sides, then fell to the ground. The death-like cries of the hounds wailed through the Deepwood and she listened in horror as
Gobbler, Skull and his boys’ cobs rode out of the clearing with them. Moll pushed against the bars of the grate, shouldering into it and pummelling it with her feet. She could hear Oak,
urging his men away. And then—

‘Argh!’ One of Oak’s men was crying out in pain. Moll’s mind raced. Was that Jesse, Siddy’s pa?

The hooves faded into the distance until once again there was a wall of silence.

Anger rushed through Moll, burning up her veins, pounding in her head. She hurried down the steps and stood upright in the middle of the pit as tall as she could. And then she screamed. She
screamed for Oak and Mooshie, for Siddy and Gryff, for her parents, for everyone she knew. She screamed and screamed until her eyes became saucers and she was blue in the face. The last of the
scream wriggled out of her, bursting from her mouth, leaving her gasping for breath.

And then there was silence.

‘Afeared now?’ Alfie asked.

Moll spat. ‘No. I had a scream stuck inside of me – practically bursting through my skin, it was – so I got it out.’

But Moll
was
scared. She was terrified. And her palms were tickling with sweat. Alfie lit another match and glared at Moll. She held his gaze, recognising the challenge, her face a
mixture of intense concentration and absolute fury.

Alfie squinted at her. ‘What you doing now?’

‘Rummaging through my mind for a plan.’

Alfie scoffed, then turned away.