I huff at him and pull my book closer. ‘Please don’t eat any more. You never know. Maybe lace tatting is really good for anti-shadow armour . . .’
‘They’re not clouds, Stella. They have teeth. Real teeth, real claws. You’re going to need more than a lace doily against all that.’
‘OK,’ I say.
For a few minutes, there’s silence while I try to translate some old Germanic that seems to be hinting at something to do with the blood of a yew tree. But I’m too distracted to concentrate.
‘Peg?’
‘Yes, dear Stella,’ he replies from the nearest pile of books, reaching into a small copper bowl of pumpkin seeds.
‘Why are you going along with this? You didn’t exactly like it when I started school.’
‘Change,’ he says, tossing a bunch of seeds up into the air and sending them spinning with a gesture of one small hand. He huffs, and they form a smouldering ball, which fragments piece by piece as each finely toasted seed falls into his waiting mouth, until only a crescent-moon shape remains.
I breathe a few spell words, and the crescent becomes a fiery bird that swoops down over our heads before collapsing into ash on to the table. Peg watches me.
‘Sometimes, it’s inevitable, and you may as well just go along with it. You wouldn’t have tried that spell before. Last week, you wouldn’t have called the school. Last year, the shadows hadn’t spread the way they have now. We are drawing closer to our futures, Stella. May as well read up on it.’
‘Very sage advice,’ I say. ‘Coming from a paper-eating, seed-shuffling imp.’
He grins.
But it’s not quite funny. The way he said it, the flicker in his eyes, there was something dangerous there. Something different, even in him.
Peg was Nan’s familiar when she was alive. When my parents died, Nan was called upon by my mother to look after me, and he came with her. I don’t know that she could have done it without him. And I don’t know why my mother didn’t linger as a ghost. Why all this happened in the first place. I have wondered. More than wondered – I have felt it burst from the hollow place deep inside that hurts, when the dusk is yellow, and the swifts gather in the sky in tumbling, swooping tides, and summer is over. A why and a where and a how – but mostly the why. Why did it happen? Why is Nan a ghost and my mother isn’t?
Nan says it’s because my mother was a better person than she is; her spirit went straight where it was supposed to go. I wish it hadn’t gone anywhere. If she had survived the Plaga, everything would be different. My father did survive it, but not really. His illness, combined with his grief, cursed everything in Winterfell. Why? Why did he descend so deep into shadows that he couldn’t even see me? Does he even remember I exist?
So many questions and no answers. Even if I had answers, they wouldn’t bring my family back. That’s what I tell myself when I check the wards one last time, trudging through the wind and the rain, bitter-cold fingers touching every glass vial, every brass bell, every silver coin. I know the pattern of them so well, I could do it in my sleep. Sometimes, I do dream of them. But in my dreams, my mother walks with me. Here and now, it’s just me, and the fog of my breath. And a glimmer, a flicker of red light blooming between the trees, and the darker shades that nestle between. There’s a howl, and the enraged call of a stag. Thunder of hooves, flash of movement, and then the slightest whisper of song, low and haunting . . .
I used to fall asleep to those songs.
I hold my breath, straining to hear more, my hands still on the silver wire—
‘Stella! I made hot chocolate!’
It’s a rare treat, Peg’s hot chocolate. He does something to it that makes it spicy. I catch up the last charm, a small wooden acorn, and breathe the old words of protection over it, satisfied when it flickers with the amber mist of spell-magic. And then I dash back through the puddles to the warmth of the kitchen, and Nan is there, curled into her old blue armchair with the frayed cushions, bickering with Peg.
When she sees me, her eyes light up. I shut the door behind me, shuck off my boots and my coat, and pull on my thick wool socks, then I dive into the other deep chair by the fire – this one of soft green cord. Nan sits opposite me, and in the flickering light, she’s as vivid as any living thing. Peg stretches out on the mantelpiece with a deep, dreamy sigh, and I reach for the wood bench and my hot chocolate, curling my cold, brittle fingers around the heavy mug as Nan clears her throat to begin.
‘Long ago, when the stars were young, and the world was greener . . .’
I lift my knees and curl them under me, and I let her words do their magic.
10
Monday morning, and Nan doesn’t exactly wave me off from the front door, but she does flutter about making suggestions of more fruit while I make my lunch, and she wishes me a day without drama. I hunch into my coat and shift my bag on my back, and bird-Peg flies over me in loops and whorls, showing off to the rest of the dawn chorus, until I reach the river road.
Mrs Mandrake stopped by to drop in my supplies last night, and though Nan made a point of tutting, I could tell she was curious as I unwrapped paper parcels to find a new pencil case, a neatly folded PE kit and a whole hoard of sparkling things: silver pencils, miniature star erasers, a pencil sharpener in the shape of a rainbow cloud.
‘Very fancy,’ Nan had said after a while.
‘I picked them out myself,’ said Mrs Mandrake, looking satisfied as I unwrapped a flexible blue ruler and a tube of glue.
‘Thank you,’ I’d said, and her eyes twinkled, but she’d not stay for tea, thank you – there were other errands to be done.
Now, I race up the steps to reception and dart past Mrs Edge. And then people turn as the door clatters shut behind me, and my footsteps slow. I don’t know quite what to do, without Zara or Yanny by my side. It’s fine, I tell myself. I can’t be with them all the time. But I’ve noticed that some of the other kids sometimes stare at me a bit, and they’re doing it right now.
Zara says it’s normal for a new kid, and she’s glad I’ve taken over the role. But it makes my skin itch, so I’ve taken to staring back at them when they do it.
Then.
I smile.
A really slow, impish sort of smile.
And that normally makes them stop staring, even if it’s just to turn to the next person and start whispering. I wonder what they see. I wonder if it’ll always be that way. Would people have stared the same if I’d started in year seven, instead of partway through year eight at the grand old age of twelve? If I’d gone to school at four, like everybody else? Sometimes, I wish Nan’s glamour upon me would slip, just a little, so that I could see the sprite in me – but right now, I’m glad of it.
I head for the form room, hoping Zara won’t be long. I should have waited for her – I understand better now why she waits out the front in the mornings. I finger the new pencil case, wondering if she’s waiting for me somewhere, and then she bursts in, late and flushed.
‘OK?’ I ask as she slides into the chair next to mine, Yanny following after her.
‘Yep.’
‘She hates being late,’ Yanny says, shaking his head in mock disapproval. ‘And it wasn’t my fault this time . . .’
‘Mum’s started night shifts, so I had to get the bus, and I miscalculated,’ she says. ‘That’s all. It won’t happen again.’