‘Both my parents threw the Oracle Bones before they died,’ Moll said slowly. ‘No one knows what my ma saw, but my pa read out a message, a clue.’ She willed her words on. Even though her parents hadn’t trusted the witch doctor, somehow Moll did. ‘If we show you, can you help us make sense of it?’
The old woman blinked, hooded eyes closing over purple shadows. ‘We’ll see.’ She looked Moll up and down. ‘But you’ll have to put that stick down.’
‘It was Alfie’s idea,’ Moll mumbled as she propped it against the wall of the hut.
Alfie glowered at Moll, then reached into his pocket and held out the bone fragments:
DEW HILL MAIDEN
The witch doctor said nothing, but Moll could almost feel her thoughts whirring in tight circles. The clue had meant something to the old woman; that much was sure.
‘So can you help us?’ Moll asked. ‘Because we haven’t got much time.’
The witch doctor shook her head, ‘Neither have I . . .’
She looked up, as if waking from a heavy thought, and then she smiled, the sad smile of someone who has seen too much of the world and is ready to depart it. She took the bones from Alfie in her withered, shaking hand then, for a moment, her eyes danced.
‘There’s another message within this.’
Moll glanced at Alfie who grinned. Then Gryff padded over to the door. At the threshold, he turned back and met Moll’s eyes.
‘He’s going to keep guard outside the hut,’ Moll said. ‘He’ll warn us if anything’s coming.’ She followed him to the door. ‘Stay close,’ she whispered and Gryff dipped his head before slinking into the darkness.
‘The pestle and mortar by the fox fur, Alfie,’ the witch doctor wheezed, pointing the blackened stump of a finger towards the table. ‘Pass them to me.’
Then she hobbled to the shelves at the side of the hut. Her clawed hands, more wrinkled than raisins, fumbled with the contents of a scooped-out piece of bark. She came back to the table with a fistful of yellow and pink flowers.
‘Gorse and heather,’ she muttered and lifted a jar down from the shelves; it was filled with hollowed-out eggs: green and speckled. She took one out, crushed the shell in her palm and let the pieces patter into the mortar.
‘Warbler’s egg,’ she muttered. She took a brown feather from a jam jar and used her knuckles to strip the vanes from the shaft. ‘Belonged to a nightjar once.’
Moll raised her eyebrows. ‘How’s all this going to help?’
‘Never underestimate the power of a bird, Molly. In a bird, we see our soul set free.’
Moll thought of Rocky Jo, the murderous highwayman cockerel back in Oak’s camp. She felt certain her soul hadn’t been set free inside him. She pictured Siddy taking a swing at the cockerel and hoped harder than ever that Oak had rescued her friend from the river.
The witch doctor hobbled closer. ‘In my mind, the Bone Murmur’s about freedom. Freedom from the others. And I’m looking to these birds for help.’ She ground everything together with the pestle. ‘Now the phial – on the second shelf, Molly.’
The phial was filled with black liquid. It felt cold in Moll’s hands and she was glad to hand it over. When the old woman shook it, black petals swayed inside the glass.
‘Mellanthas – soaked in bog water.’
Moll turned up her nose.
The witch doctor smiled. ‘You want the truth?’
Moll nodded. She wanted it more than anything; it would be one step closer to avenging her parents.
The witch doctor poured the black liquid into the mortar. ‘Well, the truth isn’t always pretty.’
‘The flowers inside the liquid . . .’ Alfie murmured. ‘They’re the ones leading up to your house, aren’t they?’
The witch doctor nodded. ‘Mellanthas are rare flowers. Not always pretty and known by most as standing for trickery. But they’re loyal, always flowering at the same time every year.’ She looked at Moll. ‘You knew the flowers stood for trickery, didn’t you?’
Moll nodded.
‘Yet you still came, though your parents and your camp didn’t believe me. That’s something – trusting and hoping, despite what other people say. It’s a good sign, Molly.’
‘Mmmmmmn,’ Moll mumbled. She wanted to tell the witch doctor that it had been Gryff who’d led them up to the hovel while she had been thinking about spinning heads and rolling eyes.
The old woman looked at the black flowers settling on the surface of the liquid. ‘Some say a name chooses you,’ she whispered. ‘And I came to be known after these black flowers. Mellantha.’
Moll wasn’t sure how to respond to this so she clicked her tongue and focused on the mortar.
Mellantha reached towards a row of jars on the shelf. ‘No, not bat spleens . . .’ she muttered to herself. ‘And not toad tongues this time.’ She lifted a jar of jellied eyeballs up. ‘Hmmmmmn . . . Perhaps not eels’ eyes . . .’ She picked up another jar. ‘Of course, of course . . .’
Moll grimaced at the contents of the jar: a small, dead reptile floating in liquid.
Mellantha passed it to Alfie who winced but unscrewed the lid nonetheless.
‘We need the tail of a newt,’ she said, ‘because newts are special creatures.’
‘Why?’ Alfie asked.
‘If they lose a limb, they can grow another. One of nature’s miracles.’ Mellantha sliced off the tail with a knife. ‘And we need a miracle right now.’
‘Don’t believe in miracles,’ Alfie mumbled.
‘Yet you believe in magic,’ Mellantha said quietly.
‘And what I’ve seen of that isn’t pretty.’
‘How can you live in a forest and not believe in the glittering magic of it all?’ Mellantha whispered.
Alfie looked to Moll for support. But she only shrugged. ‘Haven’t you heard the tree spirits whisper? And the wind – it helped us escape the vapours! That’s proper magic. The drums and chants and pits in the ground that Skull calls magic is just a rotten copy of the real stuff.’
She peered into the bowl. The liquid was a swirl of black, purple and yellow, like marbled dyes mixing together, and the ground-up egg and feather floated on the surface.
‘We’re nearly there,’ Mellantha said.
She picked up the bones from the table and placed them in the bowl. They bobbed on the surface of the multi-coloured mixture, the words staring blankly up at them. Alfie and Moll watched for several seconds.
‘Nothing’s happening,’ Alfie mumbled as Moll glowered at the bones.
‘Wait,’ said Mellantha.
She picked up a rattle and closed her eyes. And then, into the silence, she shook the rattle again and again. Each thrust sounded like a gust of wind rushing through the trees. Moll’s breath caught in her throat. The last rattle she’d heard had been from Skull’s Dream Snatch. She swallowed. This was different, she told herself. It had to be . . .
And then, very quietly, Mellantha began to whisper strange words under her breath: they seemed to start from the very back of her throat, deep and guttural, and then finish in soft swishing sounds. Moll had never heard anything like it before. It wasn’t like the Dream Snatch. It was different somehow and she wasn’t afraid.
Then something extraordinary happened. The bones started to judder, as if brushed by an invisible wind, and, almost so slowly that it seemed as if it wasn’t happening at all, they started to break.
‘Look!’ Moll whispered, clasping her mouth.
As they watched, the bones broke into tiny pieces, each carrying a single letter from the original words. The letters bobbed on the surface of the mixture until the bones no longer spelt Dew Hill Maiden, but were a jumble of meaningless letters.
Mellantha struggled across to the window and nudged it open. She pushed her clawed hands through, bending them, twisting them, curling them into the night. Moll remembered her words: a witch doctor’s hands are their tools. And suddenly Mellantha’s didn’t look ugly any more – they were almost beautiful as they shaped the incantation. A silken breeze floated through the window and it seemed to come in a whisper of sparkling black dust, as if Mellantha had called the very essence of night itself into her hovel.
And, before their eyes, the letters in the bowl began to move. They clicked against each other, almost dancing on the surface of coloured swirls. Moll’s eyes widened as she watched the letters rearrange themselves into four recognisable words:
I AM WELL HIDDEN
No one said anything and then Alfie shook his head. ‘But – but that’s not any clearer. It’s another riddle!’ He kicked the leg of the table. ‘We’re still no closer to the amulets!’
Mellantha had closed her eyes and was whispering under her breath. ‘Keep waiting,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s not over yet.’
She shook the rattle one more time, then the moon peeped out from the clouds, falling like a spotlight on one of the words:
WELL
The letters jiggled before them.
And then Alfie gasped. ‘It is a riddle; the Oracle Bones are playing with the words! I am well hidden . . . Are the amulets hidden inside a well? Is there a well in Tanglefern Forest?’
Moll looked blank but Mellantha nodded. ‘In the heart of the forest—’
Gryff burst into the hovel, his ears flattened to his head. ‘Urrrrrrrrrrrrr.’
Moll hurried to the door and peered out. ‘There’s nothing there.’
Gryff began to growl and hiss and stamp.
‘What is it, Gr—’ Moll started.
A blood-curdling howl split her words. A few seconds went by and then another howl followed, its call swelling in the marrow of their bones.
The hounds were coming for them.