Oak didn’t ask where she’d been; he could tell from the look on Moll’s face: guilt mingled with fear. She’d crossed the boundary into Skull’s camp – that much was clear.
Oak pulled a chair round to the foot of Moll’s wooden box bed, brushing the red velvet curtains wide. Oak was a strong, sturdy man, but, as he ran a hand over his stubbled jaw, Moll saw that he looked tired. She glanced at his large gold ring set with obsidian stone – the mark of his role as head of the camp. It glowed under the lamplight and a flicker of guilt wavered inside Moll. She looked away and focused on her wagon: at the stove with its shiny copper pans, at the pinafores strewn on the pine floor and at the small wardrobe with gigantic fir cones and kingfisher feathers scattered on its top.
Oak sat forward, fiddling with his talisman, a lump of coal in a leather pouch he kept in the pocket of his waistcoat. But he didn’t speak yet. He had his ways.
Moll pushed her patchwork quilt back to her knees. ‘I got Jinx back, Oak. I did it – all by my unhelped self.’ A look of pride, of wilful defiance, flashed in her eyes.
Oak looked up. ‘Jinx isn’t important, Moll. Not important like you . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Domino – my own son – he should’ve known better than to fall asleep on watch. Anything could’ve happened.’
‘But – but I was saving Jinx from certain death over there!’
Oak shook his head. ‘You disobeyed me, Moll. After everything you promised.’
Moll thought fast. ‘Blame that blinking nightmare! Pulled me right over the river into the Deepwood this time.’ Oak said nothing and Moll could tell he’d sensed her lie. She dodged his eyes. ‘Well, at least I made the most of it – and I proved fair and square to Florence and the others that I’m no outsider.’
Oak put his hands on his thighs. ‘You have to let that go, Moll. All that bad feeling – those comments – it was years ago and Florence has tried to be your friend since. They all have.’
A familiar hardness fastened inside Moll. ‘They told me I didn’t belong,’ she muttered. ‘Because of my eyes and the way I wasn’t born in camp.’ But deep down Moll felt that it was more than that, like there might be something else that set her apart from the others. And she was almost certain it had something to do with the whisperings of the Elders late at night around the campfire; she could have sworn she’d heard her name on their lips as she’d watched from the crack in her shutters. But when she’d questioned Oak and Mooshie they’d only shrugged her off and changed the subject.
Oak blew out through his lips. ‘I’m not going to fight you on this tonight, Moll. It’s late and we’re both tired.’ He paused. ‘I thought I had your promise though. The nightmare’s not strong enough to drag you over the river boundary; you went there of your own choosing.’
Moll ground her teeth but said nothing. She’d let Oak down, when it really mattered. Oak, who’d taught her how to climb trees, who’d sat up with her when the nightmares came, who’d built the wheels on her wagon especially thick so that it didn’t topple over, no matter how much she crashed around inside it.
She had no family other than Oak and Mooshie Frogmore. Moll had been found in the forest, an abandoned stray, but the Frogmores had taken her in and given her a proper gypsy name. They’d stood up for her when the others in the camp had called her an outsider, and they were better than any parents she could have hoped for. Moll picked at her quilt.
But the drum, the rattle, the mask . . . There was a reason her nightmare kept coming for her, and Oak knew something about it – she could tell.
‘I saw Skull. He wears a mask that looks like bone,’ Moll mumbled through a storm of hair. ‘And I heard his drum and rattle, like in my nightmare.’ She met Oak’s eyes. ‘Only my nightmare isn’t just a nightmare, is it?’
Oak said nothing but his body tensed. He tightened his neckerchief, then ran a hand over his dark brown hair.
‘I’ve seen Skull before, haven’t I? That’s why I see him in my dreams.’ Moll struggled against a yawn, her voice thick with sleep. She was exhausted from the chase and from everything she’d seen, but there were questions – so many questions. ‘Skull’s gang are after me . . . They had a chant. Skull was calling me and Gryff to him . . .’
Still Oak said nothing but Moll could read his eyes. They were deep and brown and you could get lost if you looked at them too long, like peering into a dark wood. But Moll wasn’t lost right now. Those eyes were keeping things from her and she knew it.
‘The river . . .’ Moll’s voice hardened as she realised. ‘It’s only really a boundary for me, isn’t it?’
Moonlight spilled in through a crack in her shutters and Moll could just make out one of the Sacred Oaks that formed a ring of ancient wood around the colourful wagons.
Oak stood up and closed the shutters tight. ‘Some things are too dark for night, Moll.’
Moll’s eyes narrowed, but, knowing she’d get no more from Oak tonight, she burrowed beneath her quilt until all that was left of her was a swamp of tangled hair.
Oak tucked the rest of Moll beneath the quilt. ‘Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow.’
Moll heard her wagon door click shut and Oak’s footsteps pad softly away. But, if she had managed to stay awake a while longer, she would have heard Oak knock quietly on four wagon doors. It was time to call the Elders together if Moll was to know the truth about her past.