Winterbringers (9 page)

They crept out through the back door, so that their footsteps in the snow wouldn’t be so easily seen the next morning, and climbed over the garden wall out into the lane that ran down the side of the house.

Remembering how cold he’d been in the car earlier that day, Josh had piled layers of clothes on, only to find, now that he was outside, that it wasn’t as cold as he had expected.

Callie was muffled in an old navy duffel coat that was too big for her and that Josh hadn’t seen before.
Does she have
any new clothes?
Josh found himself wondering irrelevently. She carried a small rucsac containing Agnes’ box, a flask of coffee, a bar of chocolate and, as an afterthought, half a bottle of whisky.

It was a quarter to one in the morning, and apart from them, no one was out on the darkened streets. The power still hadn’t come back on and it was fortunate that the moon was still full and the sky – for the moment – was clear. They had torches as well, but it seemed best to save the batteries: they didn’t want to find themselves without light in the middle of Fife Ness at night.

They reached Callie’s house without incident. It was down the road that led to the beach and they should have been able to hear the rhythmic scour and suck of the waves, but it was strangely muted tonight.

Callie unlocked the door and they went in. It was cold as only an empty house can be and Josh found it hard to
imagine it as it must usually have been before Callie’s parents left for Ghana.

“Wait here. I’ll get the keys.” She disappeared upstairs, leaving him in the sitting room.

He walked around the room, peering at things, thinking of them as clues to Callie’s parents. He must ask her tomorrow to let him see a photograph.

He made his way idly to the window that faced along the road towards the beach and looked at the faint, moonlit shapes of the road and trees and the other houses nearby.

What was taking Callie so long? Presumably the keys weren’t where she thought they were, after all.

He was about to turn away from the window and follow her upstairs to see what the problem was, when a flicker of movement caught his eye.

Something was moving up the road from the beach.

He watched, mesmerized, as whatever it was drew close enough to see properly by moonlight. Not
it
at all, but
them
. There were three figures moving up the road towards the house and the village, human shaped but not, somehow, like people. Unconsciously, he drew back from the window.

At that moment, Callie came back into the room, waving her lit torch.

“Got them.”

“Turn that off!”

“What?”

“Turn the torch off – quickly.”

She fumbled with the switch and it was suddenly dark again. “What is it?”

“Look.”

Moonlight gleamed off the approaching figures. They moved slowly, stooped as though into a powerful wind, although it was calm.

Callie pulled at Josh’s jacket. “Upstairs – we can watch from there without being seen.”

They hurried upstairs and she led him into a small bedroom whose window also faced the beach.

The figures were closer now and clearer. They were taller than men, with thick, powerful limbs. Their faces were broad and flat, with a nose and mouth, but no visible eyes or ears, and they swung their heads to left and right as they came steadily closer to the house.

“What are they?” breathed Callie.

“I don’t know. They look as if they’re made of glass … or …”

“… or ice.” She finished the sentence for him.

“They must be the Winterbringers the King talked about.”

“What are they doing? Where are they going?”

He shook his head. “We’ll have to ask the King.” The Winterbringers were only about thirty metres from the house now. “At least they can’t see or hear.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

They watched the creatures’ heads swing from side to side as they walked.

When they were almost level with the house, they stopped without warning and stood very still, for all the world as though they were listening.

Callie and Josh stood frozen, not at all convinced now that the creatures were as blind and deaf as they looked.

The creatures lifted their blank faces and sniffed. Callie and Josh could hear the sound of the air being sucked into their icy nostrils. Then, as one, they turned their massive heads towards the house.

Callie gave a little gasp. “They know we’re here,” she whispered, terrified.

For what felt like a long time, no one moved, but then the creatures seemed to come to life again. They moved out
of Josh and Callie’s line of vision and after a few seconds she pulled him through to another room, this time with a window overlooking the road.

The ice-things were directly below them, right outside the front door, pressing and pushing against it. Josh could hear the scrape of their icy hands on the wood. Speechless with fear, he heard Callie whimper beside him.

Suddenly, the Winterbringers stopped moving again, frozen and motionless against the door and then, without warning or explanation, they stepped away from it back onto the road and continued on their lumbering way.

Josh found he was on his knees, though he couldn’t remember kneeling down. He could hear Callie’s sobbing in the darkness beside him. His own hands were shaking and he knew that if he tried to stand up at the moment he’d fall over.

He reached for Callie, found her hand and the two of them clung to each other until the worst of the terror receded.

“Where do you think they’re going?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care, so long as it’s away from here. Come on, let’s get the car.”

There was a door from the kitchen out to the garage. They had to put the torches on now, because there were no windows. Josh gaped when he saw the car. It looked ancient.

“What sort of car is
that
?” It had wood round the windows, as though it was a house on wheels.

“A Morris Traveller.”

“Are you sure it works?”

“Yes – and it’s
she
, not
it
– she’s my dad’s pride and joy. Her name’s Betsy.”

“You dad has a car with a
name
?”

Even in the semi-dark, he could see her smiling.

“He’s had her since he was a medical student. She’s one of the family, really. He’s got enough spare parts to build about
another three, I think – just in case anything goes wrong, but it hardly ever does.”

“Betsy … okay.”

Callie unlocked the doors and they got in. The seats were faded red leather, lovingly polished. The interior of the car smelled of something Josh couldn’t quite identify.

Callie heard him sniffing. “Beeswax,” she said, “to keep the leather and the wood happy. Well, here goes.” She turned the ignition key, and somewhat to Josh’s surprise, the engine started first time.

Leaving the engine running, they got out to open the garage door. Before they went back in they crept cautiously round the corner of the house to look up and down the road, but there was no sign of the Winterbringers except patches of sand and weed and shells mixed with the churned snow. The door itself was marked and scraped as though by heavy nails.

Callie stared at them, a horrible realization dawning in her mind. “Josh? That’s what was outside our front door a couple of mornings ago.”

He looked more carefully, remembering the front door of The Smithy. “You’re right. Do you think that’s what disturbed you during the night?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see them clearly. But what if that’s where they’re heading now?”

“Rose and George and my mum …”

“We have to warn them!”

They hurried back to the car. Callie switched the headlights on, then changed her mind and put them off again. “They’ll see us coming a mile off with lights on. There’s enough moonlight to see by.”

She put the car into gear and they moved rather jerkily out of the garage and turned onto the road back to the village. They went slowly, peering ahead, not wanting to
come suddenly on the ice creatures. Josh had to admit that she seemed to know what she was doing, although her gear changing was a bit jumpy.

Where the beach road reached the village she stopped and turned off the engine. They listened intently but there was no sound that suggested the Winterbringers were near.

There were tracks in the snow though: of big mis-shapen feet mixed with clots of sand and fragments of shell and weed. They went in the direction of The Smithy.

They looked at each other and nodded in agreement, got out of the car and set off, following the tracks, keeping close to the wall that bounded the church yard to make themselves less obvious.

Almost level with the church gate they stopped, staring up the road that led to the Smithy. Three bulky figures stood just outside the garden wall. The house itself was in darkness, but there was a tiny flicker of light from behind the garden gate.

The Winterbringers were swaying from side to side as though unsure of what to do. Every so often, one of them would put a hand out to the wall and push against it, but pull its hand back almost immediately, as though the wall had burnt it.

As they touched the wall Callie thought she saw a network of faint glowing lines in the air above the house and garden.

“Look,” she whispered to Josh.

“What?”

“The lines.”

But he didn’t seem to understand what she meant.

The Winterbringers seemed to reach some sort of agreement and moved lumpishly towards the garden gate. This time all three put their arms out towards it at once and pushed against it with their hands, but as they did so the flickering lights behind the gate grew taller and stronger and
the network of filaments appeared in the air again.

The ice creatures made a sound that might have been a cry of pain and moved away from the gate and the lines of light disappeared as the flames behind the gate sank once more.

The creatures turned and began to move towards where Josh and Callie stood watching.

“Run!”

They took to their heels as the figures advanced along the road towards them. Although Josh knew perfectly well that they were going much too slowly to catch him and Callie, it didn’t stem the panic he could feel bubbling up inside him.

They reached Betsy. Callie fumbled the keys and dropped them as she made to open the door.

“Come on, come on!” Josh fidgeted anxiously, looking back to the road junction behind them, where the Winterbringers would surely appear at any moment.

“I’m trying. There – get in.”

She started the motor and tried to move off, but the wheels just spun uselessly in the snow. She tried again, but the same thing happened.

“Try second gear,” he yelled at her. “My mum did that in St Andrews.”

“You’ll have to get out and push us off.”

“What?!”

“Hurry up. Look – here they come.” The first of the Winterbringers had just appeared around the corner, only a hundred metres away.

Josh forced himself to get out of the car, stumbled round to the rear and yelled, “Okay – go!”

Callie put the car into second gear and let the clutch out. The wheels spun; Josh pushed against the rear window with all his strength and fell headfirst into the snow as the car lurched out of the hollow it had been stuck in.

He heard Callie yelling at him, picked himself up, half ran, half crawled to the car, and threw himself in.

Callie accelerated away and this time the car jerked forwards straight away. She yanked the wheel too hard and they skidded round the corner and then they were away, Josh watching the receding figures of the ice creatures through the back window.

For a few moments, neither of them spoke. Josh brushed the snow off his clothes as best he could and put on his seatbelt, while Callie concentrated on the unfamiliar demands of driving on snow.

“That was a bit too exciting,” Josh said finally.

“You can say that again. I wonder what would have happened if they had caught us?”

“I’d rather not think about that,” he said with a shudder. “What do you think they were trying to do at Rose and George’s house?”

“Get in, of course.”

“Yes, I know, but why? When they were trying the door of your parents’ house I thought that must be because they knew that we were in there somehow, and that we were … connected … to what’s going on. But in that case, why your grandparents’ house now, when neither of us is there?”

They had reached Crail. Callie was silent, trying to think of an answer, as they eased their way through the village and turned off for Fife Ness. There was definitely less snow down here.

“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it until you said it, but they went past lots of other houses without trying to get in, didn’t they?

“Here’s another thing though. Why couldn’t they get into the garden? They’ve done it before. When they were pushing against the gate there were lots of lines of light around the
house – in the air. What were they?”

Josh turned to look at her. “Callie, I never saw that, and I was watching, just like you.”

“I don’t understand. They were definitely there.”

“Callie, I’m sorry, but I didn’t see anything. Maybe you were dazzled by something, or … stress made you see whatever it was.”

She gave him a freezing look and they drove in silence for a few minutes.

She had the headlights on full beam now, as they came down the road towards the golf course. “This is the closest we can leave the car.” She stopped and turned off the engine. For a moment she left the headlights on, illuminating a landscape smoothed by snow and deathly quiet.

“Better not run the battery down.” She switched off the lights. They made no move to get out, letting their eyes grow accustomed to the dark, unwilling to leave the relative security of the car.

“Well, we’ve got this far. I suppose we’d better go the rest of the way,” said Callie.

“Come on then,” said Josh, opening the door reluctantly.

The moon was still clear of cloud, though they could see it stacking up to the North and East. They walked side by side, as close as they could, torches trained on the uneven ground just ahead of them.

They didn’t talk: they didn’t dare. An immense oppressive silence had settled over the night, against which even the snow-muffled sound of their footsteps sounded shockingly loud.

The quietness troubled Josh. There was something unsettling,
dangerous
about it. They reached the path along the shore and he realized why.

There was no sound of waves. The sea had frozen. The moon glinted off moving water thirty metres or so offshore, but closer in it was a ruffled sheet of ice.

They had come to a halt, staring incredulously at the sight before them.

“I’ve seen this on one of George’s old home movies. It was ages ago – back in nineteen sixty something; the hardest winter anyone can remember. It’s never happened here since.”

It was obvious now: it was the absence of wave sounds that was so eerie. The sea was never silent.

Not in normal times.

Josh roused himself. “Come on.”

They walked parallel to the silent shore for five minutes, slowing down as they rounded the final corner and saw
ahead of them the rocky outcrop that housed Constantine’s Cave.

After the relative brightness of the moonlight on the snow, it took their eyes a little time to adjust to the darker surroundings of the cave, even with the torches on. When they did so, Callie gasped. “Oh no!”

The Winter King lay sprawled against the back wall of the cave, one hand outstretched as though towards something just out of reach.

“Is he dead?” she asked, dreading the answer, as Josh knelt beside him.

Josh touched his face, felt for a pulse in his neck. His skin was so cold that its touch almost burned him.

“No. He’s got a pulse.”

Callie came and knelt beside him and gently shook his shoulder. “Wake up! Please wake up. We think we’ve found something – we think we can save her.”

At first there was no response, but then his blue-veined eyelids flickered and opened and he held her mute in his wintry gaze.

She tugged the rucsac off her shoulders and reached into it for the whisky bottle.

“Help him sit up.”

Josh and Callie tugged him into a sitting position against the cave wall, the frost-rimmed carvings stark in the torchlight. He still hadn’t spoken.

“Here,” said Callie, taking the top off the bottle. “Drink some of this.”

Obediently, he took the bottle and swallowed and gasped and swallowed again, and handed the bottle back.

“Can you hear me?” Josh asked.

He nodded.

“We found something. We think we can help you save her
– the Queen of Summer.”

He caught Josh’s wrist in a grip like a fetter of ice.

“Show me.”

“Oww! All right, all right. That’s why we’ve come. Let go.”

Callie pulled the narrow black box out of the rucsac and set it on the ground beside the King. “We found this stuck inside the chimney in my grandparents’ house. It’s been there for more than three hundred years. It all makes sense.”

She opened the box, unwrapped the little bottle and held it out to him. He took it and turned it between his fingers, frowning.

“But what is this?”

“See for yourself.” She handed him the bundle of papers. “She wrote it all down.”

He handed the bottle back to her, took the papers and unfolded them. He stared at them, one after another, turning them this way and that, then looked up at her.

“What are these?”

“Read them – it’s the story of how the bottle was taken from the Queen of Summer.”

“I do not understand what you mean – read? But this bottle …” He shook his head sadly. “This cannot save her.”

“Can’t you read?” asked Josh.

“I do not understand the word.”

“Okay. But please, listen. I’m sure the bottle has something to do with what’s been happening. Go on Callie.”

Callie put the bottle back in the box, took the papers from the King and shuffled them into order. She glanced at Josh, then began to read.

She didn’t look up until she reached the end, and when she did so it was to find the King staring at her in wonder.

“These marks say that?”

She nodded.

“Then where is it?”

“The bottle?” Josh said, puzzled. “We showed you. It’s here.” He held it up again.

“No. Not the bottle. I told you it could not be that. Agnes Blair took some of the Queen’s power from her kingdom, but it was not this bottle. It was the feather. The Kingfisher feather. It was part of her.”

Josh and Callie gaped at him.

“But …” Callie opened the box and looked again, though she knew there was nothing else in it. “There was no feather. Just the story and the bottle. I’m sorry.”

She felt crushed by failure. How must the King feel? To understand at last what had happened and still be helpless to put it right.

The look on his face was almost unbearable.

Josh watched the other two, abject with disappointment, but at the back of his mind, something nagged at him. He waited for it to surface, knowing from experience that if he tried to concentrate on it, it would slip further away.

Callie began to pack things away in the rucsac automatically, the beam of her torch catching a glinting icicle that hung from the cave roof.

Of course. That was it. Ice
.

“The Winterbringers – the ice creatures.”

“They are abroad?”

“They tried to get into my parents’ house – and my grandparents’ – when we were coming here,” said Callie.

Together they explained what had happened.

“It sounds as though they acted with purpose,” the King said, but he didn’t sound interested.

“And what about the lines of light around the house? Did they make them?”

“No. They were to keep them out. They came from inside
the house.”

“That’s it!” Josh nearly yelled. “The feather must be somewhere in the house – and they were trying to get it.”

“You credit them with intelligence they do not have.”

“But
something
made that net of light and kept them out,” said Callie excitedly. “What else could it be?”

“Come on. You have to come back with us. We’ll explain somehow, and find the feather and put things right.”

“I cannot leave here. I grow weak. I will not be able to fight the forces of Winter if I leave here.”

“Well, they’re winning anyway,” Josh retorted. “At least this way there’s a chance.” Even as he said it, he wondered to himself how long a feather could survive, but anything seemed better than to accept defeat in this cold cave. “You’ve got nothing left to lose.”

The King looked at them both. “After what you have done, you deserve at least that I do not give up hope.” He stretched out a hand and Josh took it, burning cold, and helped him to his feet. As he did so, he lost his own footing on the frost-slippery rocks and flung out his free hand in an effort to regain his balance.

The bottle flew from his grip. He watched in horror as it spun across the cave and smashed against the opposite wall.

There was a fugitive scent of honey and roses and summer rain, then it was lost in the cold sea air.

They stood in silence for a few seconds, then Callie walked slowly over and crouched down to look at the glittering shards more closely.

“Come here.” Her voice sounded oddly strained.

They walked across the cave and looked down. The glass had shattered into jewel-coloured fragments, and among them lay a single feather, the perfect blue of a midsummer sky.

They stood, struck speechless, afraid to move in case the miraculous feather was to crumble to dust before their eyes.

Fittingly, it was the King who reached out at last and with tender care, picked it up.

It didn’t crumble.

He raised it to his lips and kissed it gently, and looked and looked at it as though he could see the Queen of Summer before him.

“Come,” he said, new strength in his voice, “you must take me to the place where Agnes Blair found her way into the Kingdom of Summer. Perhaps there is a chance to save Her and put all of this to rights, but we cannot have much time left.”

He reached into his tunic and pulled out a pouch of deerskin that hung around his neck on a leather thong. Into this he gently put the feather, then tucked it safely back inside his clothes.

They left the cave behind and began to retrace their steps to the car. The King paused for a moment to look out over the ruffled ice that fringed the sea. He nodded sadly. “You are right. They are winning. Another few days and they will have won completely.”

“Not if we can get the feather back to the Queen.”

“No, perhaps not.”

Away from the cave, it was apparent just how weak the King was. He walked slowly, leaning on Josh.

“Not far,” said Callie encouragingly. “Look – you can see the car now.”

The car was obviously something of deep strangeness to the King, but he had no time – or energy – to do anything but get into the back seat obediently. Callie took one last look back at the shore and started the engine.

The journey back was tense but uneventful. Callie
managed to control the car far better than she had earlier and Josh found his hands gradually unclenching.

As they approached the village, Callie slowed down, alert for Winterbringers or tracks that would show where they had gone. There was no sight of the ice men, but sets of tracks led off across one of the fields roughly in the direction of East Neuk Cottages.

They got the car back into the garage without incident and closed and locked the door. The Winter King uncurled himself stiffly from the back seat and watched as Callie unlocked the door through to the house.

“What is this?” he asked.

She looked back at him. “It’s a house. I don’t suppose you have houses in the Frozen Lands.” He shook his head. “I usually live here with my parents. They’re not here just now, so I’m staying at my grandparents’ house. So are Josh and his mum; they tried to leave earlier today – no, wait, it’s yesterday by now – but the snow had blocked the road.

“I can’t take you there – they’ll think we’re all mad. You can stay here just now; it must be better than the cave, anyway.”

He nodded. “For now. As soon as morning comes you must find the stream that Agnes followed and make a boat like hers. Then we shall see if the Kingdom will let us in or if it is sealed.”

“Sealed? I thought you said you could go to her?”

The King looked at the floor. “I hoped to. In truth, I do not know if it will be possible.”

There didn’t seem to be a lot to say to that.

“We should go now,” said Josh. “Will you be all right?”

He nodded. “Go. Before they discover you are not in the house.”

They checked the road from the windows before they
went out and started cautiously up the road that led to the centre of the village.

“Do you think he’ll be all right?”

“More all right than we will be if anything goes wrong. And definitely more all right than we’ll be if Rose finds we’ve been out.”

It was almost four in the morning and beginning to grown light. They made their way wearily back towards The Smithy, hugging the churchyard wall to make themselves less conspicuous.

As they turned the corner into Smithy Road they both stopped. Away across the fields they could see not one, but two groups of Winterbringers: the three they had seen earlier – or at least they assumed so – and another pair. They were heading back into the village but so far they didn’t seem to have noticed Josh and Callie.

Glancing towards The Smithy Callie saw again the net of light in the sky around it. “Look,” she whispered to Josh, pointing, but he was more concerned with the Winterbringers.

“Come on,” he said, pulling Callie towards the lane at the side of The Smithy. The house (thank goodness) was still in darkness, but just inside the garden gate three candles burned with tall golden flames. Callie stopped and stared at them intently.

“Do you think these could be something to do with the lights in the sky?”

“
What
lights? I keep telling you I can’t see anything.”

“
Look
, for goodness sake. They’re there right now, just over the house.”

Dutifully he looked. “Callie, I’m not sure what you think you can see, but there’s nothing there. No lights. Nothing.”

They glared at each other for a few seconds, until Callie
said, “This is a stupid place to argue. Let’s get inside.”

“Okay.”

They climbed back over the garden wall and let themselves in the back door.

“We’d better get back to our own rooms while the going’s good I suppose,” she said.

Josh nodded, so tired at the thought of his bed that he couldn’t even summon the energy to speak.

“I’ll see you at breakfast then.” She turned to go, but he caught her sleeve.

“You’re a great driver, you know.”

“I know.” She grinned, and headed for the stairs and bed.

As she opened her bedroom door carefully she could hear George’s snores and Rose’s heavy breathing, and Chutney Mary came purring from the bed to meet her.

Before she even took her coat off she went to the window and opened the curtains just enough to see out. Both groups of Winterbringers were in the field over the road from The Smithy, moving towards the sea. This time they didn’t even pause as they passed the house.

Callie watched them out of sight, then went to bed.