The 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.’
The witch doctor smiled. ‘I wrote you that poem calling you out to the heath.’ She paused. ‘Sometimes it’s the people we don’t expect who wind up looking out for us.’ She shook her head. ‘I knew Skull once – I knew them all. But, when I found out what they planned to do, I—’
Alfie frowned. ‘You knew Gobbler – and Brunt and the boys?’
The witch doctor looked surprised. ‘No. I knew the others.’
An icy finger slid its way down Moll’s spine. No one said anything.
The witch doctor’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t know, do you?’
Alfie and Moll remained silent. Gryff’s ears flattened to his head.
The witch doctor gasped. ‘You think it’s just Skull who’s after you and your wildcat?’
Alfie and Moll stared at her blankly.
A look of horror washed over the old woman’s face. ‘I thought you knew . . .’ She shook her head for several seconds, then she hobbled still closer to them and said in a low voice, ‘Listen, child, and listen well. There are seven powerful witch doctors in our country – known for their powers to cure people with leaves, ferns, flowers. Once that was all they did. Then, ten years ago, in the dead of winter, they gathered in Tanglefern Forest.’
Moll listened in silence. Ten years ago. The year her parents had died.
‘And you,’ Alfie said slowly. ‘Were you there? Are you one of the seven powerful witch doctors?’
The old woman nodded. ‘I’d lived in Tanglefern Forest all my life, not far from your Sacred Oaks, and it was inside my hut that the witch doctors gathered. At first, it was nothing – just talk of the ancient magic they’d heard had settled here in the beginning of time.’ She looked down. ‘And then things started to change. The talk became darker, deeper – and I backed away. I told them I didn’t want to be a part of it. But it was as if something had got hold of them and all that mattered was destroying the Bone Murmur and setting the dark magic free.’
A rattling wheeze frothed up inside the witch doctor and she coughed.
‘The others turned on me. They said I knew too much, that I’d stand in their way.’ She tucked her clawed hands beneath her rags. ‘And then they – they burned my hands . . .’
Moll recoiled in horror. ‘Why your hands?’
‘A witch doctor’s hands are their tools. We can shape spells with them and twist incantations between the tips of our fingers.’
Moll shivered as she remembered Skull crushing the wax figure between his fingers.
The witch doctor looked round her hut. ‘They burned my hut and all my belongings, then they outlawed me to the heath and told me they’d kill me if I ever returned to the forest.’
‘Only you did return,’ Alfie added. ‘To speak to her parents?’ he asked, nodding at Moll.
‘Yes, but it didn’t help. Their curse was too strong and it blinded your parents to the truth – that I was only trying to help them unravel the bone reading so they could find the amulets.’
Moll’s stomach was a churning pit. ‘Why didn’t you tell my parents about the other witch doctors? Maybe it could’ve saved them if they’d known!’
The old woman shook her head. ‘Oh, I tried. But, when a witch doctor curses you, that curse follows you wherever you go, undoing any goodness you might try to do.’
Alfie gasped. ‘Is that why the letters of your poem spelt out witch doctor? Because Skull’s curse is following you?’
The old woman nodded grimly. ‘It must’ve seeped into my words. And, if I give up all the witch doctors’ names, the curse will kill me – it’ll eat me alive.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with.’
‘They killed my parents, didn’t they?’ Moll said, avoiding the old woman’s eye. ‘It wasn’t just Skull; he was with the five others.’ She thought back to her nightmare. It was starting to make sense now. The masked figures weren’t Skull’s gang – his boys didn’t wear masks – they were the other witch doctors. Moll looked up. ‘You know what happened to my parents, don’t you?’
‘You’re just a child. I can’t tell a child about magic this dark.’
‘But—’
‘I won’t do it. Nothing would make me.’
Alfie took a step towards her. ‘Tell us the names of the others. You could burn them into the leather, like you did with your poem.’
The witch doctor was silent for several seconds. ‘You’ve got courage, young man – and you’re going to need it.’ She tore a scrap from her rags. ‘I can’t tell you their names because I won’t give myself up to their curse. But I can tell you one thing and, if you’re wise enough later, it might help you. Pass me the ink and quill.’
Moll watched as the witch doctor’s shrivelled hand wrapped itself round the quill. A single word was taking shape. Seconds later, it was complete:
SHADOWMASKS
The old woman underlined the first six letters. ‘SHADOW: six letters, six witch doctors, six masks. They became the Shadowmasks after I left them ten years ago.’
Moll’s eyes widened and she turned to Alfie. ‘Skull hasn’t got a shadow.’
The old woman was silent, her eyes darting to the window then the door, as if she was afraid of being overheard. ‘When the six gathered in Tanglefern Forest ten years ago, they performed a hex full of darkness and evil.’ She paused. ‘They tore away their shadows.’
Moll’s eyes were wide. ‘What! How’s that possible? And – and why?’
The witch doctor shook her head. ‘I’ve said too much. And you’ll learn soon enough.’ Then she picked up the rag and added, ‘Keep this safe. You’ll need it to understand things later because, although it’s only Skull now, they will all come and you’re the only one who can stop them, Molly. You and your wildcat.’
‘And Alfie,’ Moll added, looking at the boy.
The witch doctor looked a little surprised and then nodded. ‘Perhaps.’