The Puzzle Ring (22 page)

‘I told you she'd be here!' Scarlett's voice came out of the darkness. ‘I knew she'd be crazy enough to try and do it.'

‘You don't really think you can go back in time, do you?' Max demanded. ‘Scientifically speaking, it's just not possible.'

‘It is so,' Hannah protested, her heart filled with joy and relief. She slid the dagger back into its sheath. ‘You of all people should know that.'

‘Yeah, well, the special theory of relativity is all very good, but it's perfectly ridiculous to think that there's some kind of time tunnel here in Fairknowe. It's beyond the bounds of belief.'

‘Maybe so,' Hannah said. ‘But I thought I'd try anyway.'

‘Testing your hypothesis,' Max said. ‘Yeah, that's why I came too. My scientific reputation would be secured forever if I was the first to prove the wormhole theory. I could skip secondary school and go straight to uni. Get my PhD at the age of thirteen.'

‘It's
my
wormhole,' Hannah said. ‘
I'd
be the one with the PhD.'

‘What use is a PhD to a soul singer? Very uncool. No, better leave it to me.'

Hannah peered through the darkness at the third shadow, standing quietly to one side of the yew tree. He was almost invisible in his black jeans and coat. ‘I'm glad you came,' she said to no one in particular.

‘You should have told us what you planned,' Donovan said in a low, angry voice. ‘We had to figure it all out by ourselves.'

‘Lucky Donovan remembered that Candlemas was one of the days that the gateway is meant to open,' Scarlett said exuberantly. ‘We had to go and ask Miss Underhill when that was. Else we'd have missed you.'

‘Hopefully I'd have been back before anyone missed me,' Hannah said.

‘You should've known we'd have wanted to come too,' Donovan said. He sounded like he was scowling.

‘Yeah, fancy leaving us out of an adventure like this,' Scarlett said. ‘It's just plain mean.'

‘It's
my
curse,' Hannah said. ‘I have to be the one to break it.'

Again she looked at Donovan, willing him to understand.

‘No reason we can't help you,' he said. ‘I brought my flugelhorn just in case.'

‘I brought the little pipe from the music room,' Max said. ‘You know, the one that's like an old-fashioned recorder. I've been playing it heaps this winter.'

‘And I brought the tambourine,' Scarlett said with satisfaction. ‘We'll be travelling minstrels.'

‘It may not work,' Hannah said. ‘You might all be out here in the cold for nothing.'

‘Oh, well, it's still an adventure,' Scarlett said. ‘I had to sneak past my parents' bedroom and then I dropped one of my boots, bang! right outside their door. I just about had a heart attack.'

‘I had to walk here,' Donovan said. ‘I couldn't risk Dad hearing my bike. I haven't walked up that hill in ages.
And
I was carrying a really heavy backpack.' By the tone of his voice, Hannah could tell he was smiling.

‘Come on,' Hannah said. ‘Let's give it a go. It's almost midnight. If it doesn't work then we can all go back to bed and get warm again.'

‘But if it does work . . .' Max said.

‘We'll be going back in time,' Donovan said dreamily.

‘To the time of Mary, Queen of Scots,' Scarlett cried in glee. ‘I hope we get to see her! Everyone always talks about how beautiful she was, but she looks plain as anything in her portraits.'

‘It's not a tourist trip,' Hannah said sternly. ‘It'll be dangerous. That's why I didn't tell you.'

‘Danger is my middle name,' Max said in what he fondly thought was a sinister voice.

‘Come on, stop mucking about, this is serious,' Donovan said.

‘So what do you want us to do, noble leader?' Max said to Hannah.

She thought quickly. ‘Let's light a candle. I do have a torch, but I thought candles would be more suitable. It is Candlemas, after all.' She rummaged in her bag and took out a candle, which she lit with some trouble, as a cold
wind was blowing and her hands were shaky. Outside all was silver and black, but within the hollow yew tree warm golden candlelight flickered mysteriously over the cracks and fissures of the ancient wood and the solemn faces of her friends.

She saw they were all dressed for a hike in the mountains, in thick coats and jeans and boots, with heavy packs on their backs. Scarlett's parka was hot pink, with pink fluff lining the hood and cuffs. Max's was grey and black and olive, while Donovan wore his usual long black coat.

‘We'd better all hold hands,' Hannah said. ‘Girl, boy, girl, boy, so we're as symmetrical as possible. Four's a good number. Like the points of a compass or a cross. I'll go first.'

Donovan seized her hand and held out his other for Scarlett, who took it, giggling.

‘Aw, do I have to?' Max said as Scarlett held out her other hand. ‘All right. I guess sacrifices have to be made in the name of scientific research.'

‘I'm going to sing a song,' Hannah explained, her cheeks growing hot. She did hate to look ridiculous. ‘In all the fairy stories they always say things in rhyme.'
Sing a song of spells, there is reason in rhyme
. . .

Self-consciously, she half spoke, half sang:

Open, open, high green hill,
on this night of winter chill.
Open, open, winter gateway,
let us walk the old straight way,
Back to the year fifteen sixty-seven,
By tree and stone and stars in heaven
.

Hannah had rewritten her rhyme over and over again, and learnt it off by heart, and now, as she spoke, she pushed open the iron gate in the yew tree and lead her friends through.

Hand in hand, they marched past the dark, glimmering pool and through the tangle of shadowy trees, all too aware of the strangeness of the wood at night and the sense that unseen watchers lurked in the shadows. Hannah would have liked to have scanned the woods through the hag-stone, but both her hands were occupied. She turned her face from side to side, starting at every rustle and creak, and felt Donovan squeeze her hand in reassurance. She paused at the gaping crack in the hillside. Her frail little candlelight did nothing to penetrate its blackness. When she chanted her rhyme again, her voice trembled noticeably. She cleared her throat, gripped her candle tightly, and led her friends into the dark gaping chasm in the side of the hill.

Her candle illuminated a narrow passageway, formed naturally in the rock. Graffiti was scrawled all over the walls near the entrance, but disappeared the deeper they went within the hill. It was bitterly cold, and their breath smoked whitely from their mouths. There was no sound but their rapid breathing and the scrape of their boots on the rock, which echoed behind them in a very spooky way. Hannah sang her rhyme for the third time.
Three times is the charm
, her father had written.

The passageway climbed and fell, twisted back on itself, opened into a little antechamber, then narrowed again into a mere crack that Hannah could barely squeeze through. Beyond was another long, crooked, narrow passageway that led them down in a series of rough steps and falls, back to the cave they had first entered. Weary and disappointed and
baffled, Hannah stumbled out onto the hillside, her friends trailing along behind her. Her candle blew out and they were left shivering in the moonlit darkness.

‘Did it just go in a big circle?' Scarlett asked. ‘Or did we go the wrong way somehow?'

‘Should we go through again?' Max said. ‘Maybe we took a wrong turn.'

‘I don't think we did,' Donovan said in a low voice. ‘Look!'

They all turned and looked out over the valley.

The loch gleamed silver under the moon, with the familiar black shapes of islands floating like scattered lumps of ebon. They could see the snowy peak of Ben Lomond and the distant lines of hills to the west, just as they had seen them a thousand times before.

What was different was Wintersloe. There was no house with mismatching turrets and crow-stepped gables, no garden laid out in knots of green hedges. Where the ruin normally lay was a tall, grim castle of stone, with narrow slits instead of windows and a moat of dark, gleaming water.

‘We did it,' Hannah breathed. ‘I can't believe it.'

A sudden gust of excitement overtook the four friends, and they danced and capered about madly, their packs banging on their backs. Just as suddenly, sobriety crashed down upon them. What had they done?

In that moment all four realised that they had not truly believed it was possible to travel back in time. Now, though, now they knew it was not a game. The four of them had left their own lives and their own time behind them, and come into a world that was played by far different rules. They could easily die here, or be trapped, unable to find their way home again. It was a terrifying thought, and one they all flinched from.

‘Don't drink the water,' Max said. ‘We'll have to make sure we boil everything.'

‘What shall we do about our clothes?' Scarlett cried. ‘They'll lock us up if we walk around looking like this!'

‘We'll have to steal some,' Donovan said. ‘But we'd better make sure we don't get caught. Didn't they cut off your hands or something for stealing?'

‘I think thieves were . . . are . . . hanged,' Hannah said soberly.

They stood in silence for a moment, completely overwhelmed by the enormity of what they had done. Hannah's mind was blank, and she found it hard to breathe. Thoughts and questions scrabbled through her mind. Instinctively she turned back to the crack in the hill, seeking to scramble back through to her own time. But she saw Jinx crouched behind the boulder, her orange eyes glowing. Behind her was a host of other strange and menacing shadows, with hooked wings and claws, and slitted, smouldering eyes.

Immediately Hannah panicked. ‘Run!' she cried. ‘They've followed us through! Don't let them catch us!'

She plunged down the hillside, calling urgently to the others to follow. Uttering cries of alarm and terror, the other three crashed after her, racing towards the castle.

Hannah crashed straight into a man who was hiding in the blackness under the yew tree. All the breath was knocked out of her, and her nose was jammed hard against sour-smelling wool. She tried to leap away, but he seized her arms roughly, and spoke in a deep, gruff voice which sounded like the guttural growl of an animal.

Hannah was so frightened she could not speak. She pointed wildly up the hill. The next instant the man was running, dragging Hannah along with him. She called shrilly to her friends, and they bolted after her, following the thin, pale, winding path away from the fairy hill and towards the forest. Behind them came a howl and a yowl, and the flap of feet, and the scratch of claws, and the whirr of leathery wings.

They came to a stream, water tumbling white and foamy over boulders and blocks of ice. The man turned and plunged into the stream, and Hannah was dragged willy-nilly after him. The water was cold and deep and strong. She was wet
to the waist, but stumbled after the man, remembering that evil spirits could not cross running water. She could hear her name being called behind her, and turned and whispered, ‘Here! Hurry!'

The man hissed, ‘Wheesht!'

Donovan scrambled beside her, and Hannah could hear Scarlett's quick breaths just behind. Hannah looked back anxiously, checking to make sure Max was still following them. He trailed behind, hunched and gasping. Round the corner came a dismal ululation as the fairy host realised they had lost the trail. Max suddenly hastened his pace.

They splashed along the stream for another ten minutes or more, not daring to climb out onto the bank in case the fairy host picked up their scent again. At last the man clambered out, and Hannah crawled after him, lying gasping in the snow. Her feet in their drenched boots felt like blocks of ice, and she could not stop shivering. Her friends were all crouched beside her, as cold and exhausted as she was.

The man spoke to them again. Hannah could not understand a word. She bit her lip in consternation. It had not occurred to her that a completely different language would be spoken in Scotland in the mid-sixteenth century. Thinking quickly, she sat up and groped in her pocket for the hag-stone and lifted it to her mouth. ‘Let me hear true and speak true and all my friends too,' she whispered through the hole.

At once the man's words began to make sense. ‘Who are you? What are you doing coming through the fairy hill? Where's Lord Fairknowe?'

‘Lord Fairknowe is my father,' Hannah said, stiffening her back. ‘Were you expecting him?'

‘Of course I was. He said if he did not return at the winter solstice, to expect him tonight. But . . . you can't be his daughter! He said he was soon to be a father, that his babe was due any day now.'

Hannah nodded. ‘That was me. I've grown.'