The Bone Quill (9 page)

Jeannie looked terrified at the thought of the twins being bound.

Simon watched the brilliant shards of colour twinkling like stars above Monet’s painting. A flash of foreboding blackened his thoughts. He couldn’t smother his dread that something big and bad was coming into their lives.

The shards of light and colour surrounding the Monet suddenly began inflating to the size of balloons, almost blinding the three adults with their brilliance. For a brief moment, Simon saw a cresting wave. Worse than that, he could hear Em sobbing.

Jeannie cried out. Renard struggled off the couch. As quickly as the energy from the animation had expanded, the colourful orbs shrank back to a million slivers of confetti.

‘After a burst of animation like that,’ said Renard sharply, ‘I’d have expected the children to have fallen out of the painting.’

‘Something’s wrong,’ burst out Simon. The children’s fear was still twisting behind his temples. ‘The strength of this animation doesn’t make sense. What can possibly be that bad inside such a tranquil Impressionist painting, for God’s sake?’

‘Whatever’s happening, I’m sure they will find a way out of it,’ said Renard as reassuringly as he could. ‘We’ve underestimated the twins’ powers before.’

Much as I underestimated their father’s
. The words hung unspoken in the air.

Skinner’s Bog

Auchinmurn Isle

Middle Ages

S
olon
was dumbfounded to hear the Viking girl’s voice sniping in his head. An unfortunate reaction that served to reinforce the girl’s impression of his stupidity.

His skin was tingling, his pulse quickening, and his throat felt as if he was swallowing sawdust. In a nervous rush, he returned to jamming his pouch with rowan berries, even stuffing a few sprigs into the pockets of his leather tunic like a madman.

What is your name?

‘Solon,’ he replied out loud, cautiously.

Since arriving at the monastery, the only other person Solon had been able to hear clearly in his head was Brother Renard. He had always assumed that this was on account of Brother Renard’s abilities and the relationship they had as master and novice.

‘Solon,’ she said, nodding.

The exertion of pulling up against the tree had opened the wound on her arm again. Solon reached out to help, but she pushed him away and, with more difficulty, stood up. She was too unsteady on her feet. Solon caught her before she fell against the sharp branches of the tree or, worse, face first into the muck of Skinner’s Bog.

‘And your name?’ he asked, quickly releasing her from his arms. Would she be able to understand his question?

‘I am called Carik Grimsdóttir,’ she replied. She sensed Solon’s puzzlement. ‘My mother taught me your language. She once lived on this land.’

‘Was your mother captured? Taken during a raid?’

Solon was about to speak again when she put her fingers to her lips to silence him. The darkness over the bog was thickening, the smell of rotting flesh once more rising from the muck.

‘The creature is returning. I can hear it,’ she said.

‘Was it the creature who injured you?’

She nodded. Solon could hear only his and Carik’s breathing. They stood in silence for a moment.

‘We need to leave this bog,’ said Solon, taking a step out into the knee-deep muck. ‘The monks have great powers. They will be able to heal you.’

‘But I am your enemy,’ she said, surprised.

Solon looked at the beautiful girl staring back at him. ‘You’re not my enemy.’

Without warning, Carik lunged at Solon, pulling him back and out of the bog. Solon flinched as he heard the horrible sucking sounds, the same noises he had heard earlier in the dark. The Grendel was almost upon them. Its low growls carried in a cold wind that cut across the grassy mound, bending the branches of the rowan tree to the ground. The blackness had become a heavy canopy.

We are trapped, Solon. How could one beast surround us?

That’s the nature of the Grendel,
answered Solon, so naturally that he surprised himself.
It is
made of the blackness that’s only found beyond death.

A guzzling noise shattered the darkness in front of them. The Grendel, the mud-monster, the spirit-stalker, rose up out of the bog in a swirling tornado of foul mud and flaming red eyes.

Its body was made up of layers of wet clay, as if it had been formed on a potter’s wheel deep under the bog, and it had no front or hind legs – only a shapeless form trailing behind it, devouring vegetation and sucking up everything in its wake.

The Grendel’s head rose higher and higher out of the bog, expanding until it was more massive than the ground on which Solon and Carik were cowering.

Carik unsheathed her dagger, flipped her cape behind her shoulders, raised her head and prepared to battle the beast. Solon knew she must be terrified and in awful pain, yet he could feel an unswerving calm emanating from her. Carik’s strength fed his imagination.

Tearing a piece of bark from the rowan tree, Solon grabbed Carik’s hand, squashing a handful of berries into her fist. He used his own knife to sharpen the end of a stick. Dipping the point of the stick into the viscous red juice cupped in Carik’s hand, Solon closed his eyes and let his imagination draw.

Closer and closer, the Grendel’s massive jaws ground through the crushing blackness.

A
lthough
Solon had never left the Western Isles of Scotland, he had travelled far and had seen many wonderful things through the monastery’s books. And one of those wonders was a Roman general’s manuscript, describing and illustrating the weapons of a castle siege.

Solon let his fingers fly across the bark, trying to replicate the weapon he had in his mind. When he finished the drawing, his heart sank. Nothing had happened. He was too young and untrained to animate yet on his own. The terrible stench from the monster was suffocating, its jaws opening and closing as if already tasting its prey.

‘Move!’ yelled Carik, shoving Solon against the rowan tree, as a blinding flash of light burst from the bark. On the spot where Solon had been drawing, a colossal catapult – a trebuchet with a bucket as big as a wagon – appeared between them. Light sparked from its wooden wheels and a woven red canopy covered it. Solon’s heart leaped with pride and wonder to see what he had created.

Above them, the mud-monster widened its mouth, releasing a gust of fetid air that dropped Carik and Solon to their knees in disgust.

‘HROOOO!’

The Grendel’s eyes caught Solon in their sight, the monster’s gaze burning his skin. It slid forward, muck oozing from its clay-like shell. Any moment now, its jaws would sink down over Solon and swallow him whole.

Release the handles, Carik!

Carik threw herself against the double wooden handles of the trebuchet. They popped and wheezed like oversized bellows, released the spring and catapulted lethal quicksilver directly on top of the Grendel.

The burning mercury seeped through the Grendel’s scaly layers, scorching through the filth to the centre of the beast. The Grendel seemed to melt, screaming and dissolving into the depths of Skinner’s Bog.

Solon and Carik stood under the rowan tree and stared at each other. Carik’s expression was a mingling of awe and fear.

‘You are one who draws? An Animare?’

Carik pronounced it in such a way that Solon thought it sounded even more magical.

He nodded.

‘I thought so when I first saw you.’

Avoiding Carik’s eyes, Solon secured his pouch more tightly round his waist, making sure it still held the rowan berries. A faint glow was pulsing in the distance beyond the bog. He hoped it was the peryton.

Solon’s apprenticeship had not prepared him for this kind of situation. He put out his hand. ‘We should go,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I don’t know what forces brought the Grendel out to hunt, but I don’t want to stay here and find out.’

She laughed, ignored his hand and set off across the bog by herself, being careful to avoid the place where the Grendel had sunk from view. Solon followed.

Slogging through the thick mud was difficult enough for the uninjured young monk. For Carik, with her shoulder wound bleeding again and pain slowing her, it was close to impossible. At the far edge of the bog, Solon pulled Carik from the treacherous muck. This time she offered him very little resistance.

The gleam from the peryton grew stronger, guiding them. As they hobbled towards the soft light, the mud in the bog behind them began to bubble angrily. A monstrous cloud of foul air skirted across the surface of the bog and trailed after them.

‘Time to run!’ Solon advised breathlessly. ‘If you can!’

They scrambled through the gap in the briars as fast as they could. The peryton was on its haunches and ready for them. Carik gasped at the sight of such a magnificent beast, but was too weak and in too much pain to say a word. She collapsed at its feet.

The peryton dropped as close to the ground as it could, and Solon reached under Carik and gently lifted her on to its back. Then he climbed on behind her, making sure she was as comfortable as possible. Carik’s head flopped forward on to the peryton’s neck, as the creature bounded gracefully along the rocky hillside and soared into the air.

Carik suddenly shifted, tipping off to the side. Frantically, Solon steadied her, gripping her even more tightly, doing his best to ignore the softness of the pale skin on her neck, as the peryton pitched into a gentle turn towards the monastery.

The Abbey

Present Day

M
att
and Em fell out of Monet’s painting in a rush of foul air and a torpedo of dense grey light, hitting the cluttered art table full on and collapsing it under their weight with a thunderous crash. Less than a second behind them, Zach hurtled out on top of the twins, his elbow jabbing Matt hard in the eye.

‘Ow!’ yelled Matt, shoving Zach on to the floor.

Shut up!
You’ll wake everyone,
Em telepathed to both boys.

The sitting room was pitch black, the heavy curtains drawn across all the windows.
11:19
was flashing on the Blu-ray. They’d been gone for roughly two hours.