The Moon Child Read online

  A wail of terrible pain tore into the air. Jem couldn’t tell if the agonised scream came from Cazalon or Annawan, or both of them. As the sound intensified, Jem clamped his hands over his ears and sank to his knees. A wild, raw wind sprang from nowhere, ripping branches from the fir trees and pulling them into the spurting geyser that now began to spin and roar.

  The column of whirling water rose even higher – and then it simply stopped. For a single, silent moment the world seemed to freeze and then the tower dissolved. Torrents of water crashed to the surface of the lake, creating steaming walls of waves that rolled towards the shore. Jem knew he couldn’t outrun the deluge. He closed his eyes and waited for the waters to carry him away.

  It felt like an age, but was probably only a minute later, when Jem took his hands from his ears again and looked at the calm, rippling surface of the lake. It sparkled in the moonlight as little waves lapped gently at the shore.

  “Jem – come quickly. His hand – look at his hand.” Ann stroked Tolly’s brow. He was stretched out on the snow, his head cradled in her lap. Tears glittered in her eyes. “It’s so badly damaged. Was it the staff?”

  Jem nodded. He didn’t know what to say. Tolly’s right hand was almost unrecognisable. There were no fingers left at all now, just the stump of a thumb. His palm was shrivelled and black. He looked at the staff – the crystal bird was smeared with blood.

  Jem swallowed and stared out across the lake. Had Cazalon perished in the scalding tower of water? He didn’t want to think about the alternative. The man was almost an immortal – what if …?

  Tolly moaned softly and Jem crouched down beside him. “Can you do anything, Ann?”

  Ann stroked Tolly’s head. “I can heal the wounds and treat the burns, but I can’t make his hand whole again. And his hair! Oh, Jem, his hair.”

  Before Jem could say anything about his friend’s changed appearance, one of Ann’s tears fell on Tolly’s forehead and he opened his eyes. “C-Cleo? We must find …”

  “She is here.” Mingan padded towards them on the snow. He was a man again now, but his long grey plaits couldn’t conceal the vicious punctures in his neck from the Witiko’s claws. Cleo was huddled against his tattooed chest.

  Jem stood up. “No … She’s not … Please …”

  Mingan shook his head. The threaded bones rattled and a black paw reached up to catch at one of the tiny skulls. Jem’s heart leaped.

  “She’s alive!” Ann reached up to take Cleo from Mingan. “Let me hold her. I knew we should have left her at the longhouse. She ran off when she sensed Tolly nearby.”

  “We?” Jem asked, confused.

  Ann nodded. “Nadie and I followed you. Neither of us were ever going to let you come here alone. Nadie gave me the bow for protection, not attack, but when I saw what that woman did to Cleo, I …” She paused and stared along the lake edge at the black heap in the stained snow. Madame de Chouette. She narrowed her eyes. “I think you’ll agree, Jem, that I’m rather a good shot?” Ann smiled tightly. She cradled Cleo in her arms. “Oh little one, what are we going to do with you?”

  Mingan knelt in the snow and Cleo tried again to catch one of his plaits. “I found her at the foot of a tree – it broke her fall. Her back leg is twisted, broken perhaps. But I think she has been lucky.”

  Ann nodded. “But your father, Annawan – I’m so sorry …”

  Mingan ran a hand over the wounds on his neck. “He saved us, Moon Child. Do not grieve.” Without looking at them he knelt and stretched out the hood of Tolly’s cloak, arranging it carefully beneath his head. “Your healing skills will be needed here too. How is he?”

  Tolly tried to smile. “Better already for seeing Cleo.” He reached out to stroke her head, but stopped when he saw his hand. He held it up and turned it about in the moonlight.

  “I can’t even feel it,” he murmured in amazement.

  A rustling sound made Mingan leap to his feet. He scanned the shore and Jem saw a figure emerge from the trees. It walked slowly towards them and came to a halt a few yards away on the edge of the lake. Jem watched the silent figure bend down to pluck something from the water. It straightened up and rolled whatever it was about in its hands as it stared across the lake.

  Then Nadie walked to her son and stood on tiptoe to hang Annawan’s wooden heart around his neck. She delved into the folds of her fur cloak and took out her own love token.

  It was broken in two.

  EPILOGUE

  Jem looked at the letter in his hands and wondered when he would be able to deliver it. As soon as they arrived in port he knew he would travel directly to Goldings. Every time he thought about his mother and that tumbling red-brick house he felt an ache deep beneath his ribs. The sensation was growing stronger every day.

  According to Spider, they would be at sea for at least four weeks more, “this being a regular sort of vessel.”

  Jem squinted up into the rigging where his skinny friend was balanced precariously on a mast. He raised his hand and the boy waved back.

  The Magpie was half the size of the Fortuna, but she was a stocky little ship and she was making good progress. They would be in England before April was out – just ahead of Ann’s birthday.

  Jem turned to look down the deck. Ann and Tolly were sitting on a pile of folded canvas playing a card game. Cleo was wedged between them, her bright inquisitive eyes following their every move. She would always limp a little now, but she didn’t seem to mind. It certainly didn’t stop her clambering around in the Magpie’s rigging. She was a favourite with the crew.

  Ann had done as much as she could to heal Cleo and to soothe the charred skin of Tolly’s right palm. Jem watched as Tolly deftly shuffled the pack and dealt the cards with his left hand. He always kept his maimed hand hidden from view now. Jem looked down at his own hands holding the letter. Four white stripes seared across the knuckles and over the olive skin of the back of his right hand were the only reminder of his encounter with Cazalon’s mirror.

  Ann and Tolly’s plan was to accompany Jem back to Goldings and then to travel on to be reunited with Gabriel and the players.

  As if she felt his gaze, Ann looked up, grinned and waved a fan of cards at him. “Come and join us. It’s better with three.”

  “Yes, much better.” Tolly laughed. “And I think she cheats! I need you to keep an eye on her.”

  “I’ll be on my guard then.” Jem felt a tightness in his chest again as he thought about seeing Master Jalbert and continuing his lessons in the courtyard. He took a deep gulp of salt-laced air and rubbed something from his eye.

  Mingan had kept his promise. At the earliest opportunity he had guided them through the softly melting landscape to a bustling port and he had insisted on paying for their passage – and for new clothes and provisions – with furs of the finest quality. On the day the Magpie set sail for England, he had watched from a rocky outcrop above the little harbour, before disappearing into the trees. They all heard the mournful howl of a lone wolf as the tidy vessel unfurled its mainyard. Mingan and Nadie would be with their people again now.

  Finding Spider among the crew had been a wonderful surprise. In fact, at least two others on board the Magpie were Swale men, veterans from the Fortuna who had moved down the coast from Port Melas to seek work and a passage back to England. “We never speak of it. It was an unlucky ship for us all,” Spider had confided on deck one evening. Then he fell silent and looked out to sea. Jem guessed he was thinking about Pocket.

  After that they avoided talking about the past and concentrated on the future. Spider even promised to give Jem a guided tour of his beloved Port Swale when he returned to deliver Trevanion’s letter.

  Jem looked down at the folded paper in his hands once again and ran his thumb over the wax seal. He wondered about Jane. Would she be well now and, if she was, what should he tell her?

  “I’ll give you a ha’penny for ’em?” Spider had come down from the rigging to stand next to him. The boy nodded approv
ingly at the wisps of white cloud skudding across the blue sky. “I like this ship. She’s got a good solid bottom and the captain’s a fair man. I wouldn’t mind travelling with him again. How about you?”

  Jem shook his head. “I don’t think a life at sea is for me.”

  Spider cocked his head. “What about your mate, Tolly, then? I’d say he was a natural.”

  Jem grinned. “I’ll tell him that. But I think he has other plans too.”

  Spider looked back to where Ann and Tolly were sitting, their heads close over the cards.

  “Funny that – from this angle you’d almost take them for twins, what with their hair being so white.”

  It was true. On that terrible night by the lake when Tolly had burned away half his hand on Cazalon’s staff, every springy hair on his head had turned as white as snow.

  “Moony – that’s what some of the lads call him,” said Spider, adding helpfully, “on account of his hair. What happened there, Jemmie?”

  “It’s a long story – and maybe one best left for when we reach England.” Jem didn’t meet Spider’s inquisitive gaze; instead he found himself wondering about Cazalon again. He tried not to think of him, but the man kept insinuating himself into his mind. With an effort he forced him away.

  “Moony, eh, Spider? It’s a good nickname. I might use it.” Jem smiled and looked down the deck again at his friends. As he watched Tolly select a card from the pack, an odd thought stepped into his mind.

  What if, all along, Tolly and not Ann had been the Moon Child of Nadie’s legend?

  He must have started, because Spider tugged his sleeve. “You all right? Not gill sick?”

  “No … no, I’m fine.” Jem shrugged. “I just had a peculiar thought, that’s all.”

  Spider grinned. “And I’ve a got a peculiar thought for you. The man on lookout duty last night reckons a great white crow came and sat on the top of the main mast. ’Orrible he said it was, stared right down at him for an hour and then it flew off due east – the direction we’re going in, although there’s no land for hundreds and hundreds of miles. Now, what do you make of that, Jemmie?”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  When I was about eleven years old, the Cain family went on its first ever package holiday abroad, to Ibiza.

  It was life-changing.

  Until this momentous fortnight, the concept of a holiday had largely meant huddling behind a windbreak on a rain-lashed British beach, picking sand out of our luncheon meat sandwiches. On really bad days – when my younger brother and I couldn’t persuade our parents to break open the pack-a-macs and shiver on the shingle – we wandered the streets, staring through misted shop windows at crumbling displays of grinning pink-and-white false teeth or giant, lurid baby dummies made of sweet, sticky rock.

  Occasionally, when the rain was coming down so hard we couldn’t see through the windows, we sheltered in a variety of very small, very dusty coastal town museums with displays on subjects such as the history of lobster pot construction. For some reason, I particularly remember an exhibition of local bus tickets: ‘A fascinating trip from the Edwardian era to the present day.’

  One bleak year in Broadstairs we went to see Herbie Rides Again on three separate afternoons. It was the only U-certificate film playing at the cinema and it allowed my parents to nap in the darkness.

  I don’t know if it was the constant drizzle, Herbie riding again and again and again or the bus tickets, but in 1975 my mother put her foot down. The Cain family boarded a Monarch TriStar at Luton airport and headed for the sun.

  The main thing my parents and my brother discovered during those two weeks in Ibiza was that when it’s glorious every day, you don’t have to roam the streets looking for entertainment or shelter. Instead you can splash around in the hotel pool, order endless drinks and hot dogs from the outdoor bar, smother yourself in Ambre Solaire, stretch out on a sun-lounger and generally relax, secure in the knowledge that this really is a holiday.

  I, however, discovered that I am terribly allergic to high temperatures and bright sunlight. By day two the prickly heat bubbling over my face, arms and legs was so uncomfortable that I had to borrow my mum’s black polo-neck jumper (packed ‘just in case’) and retreat to a shady corner on the far side of the pool.

  The one bright side to my enforced exile from the sunshine paradise twenty yards away was the fact that I was able to read every book I’d taken with me (probably three or four). Then I started on the ones my brother hadn’t even bothered to open because he was having such a great time in the pool with the younger members of a family from Manchester.

  My dad had packed The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas for my brother, hoping, I suspect, to wean him off his beloved Biggles books. Unsurprisingly, my brother hadn’t shown the slightest interest.

  But I was hooked from page one. I devoured The Three Musketeers in a day and a night, swept away by the thrilling adventure of d’Artagnan and his friends Aramis, Porthos and Athos. I admired the dastardly Cardinal Richelieu, but most of all I loved the thrillingly evil Milady de Winter. It was wonderful to find a rip-roaring story, where the baddest and bravest villain of them all was a beautiful, dangerous woman. The Three Musketeers is still one of my alltime favourite books.

  Now, you might wonder why I’ve written about this here.

  When the Templar team asked me where the idea for The Moon Child came from, I thought about the magical books I enjoyed as a child and the writers I loved to be scared by – Susan Cooper, Joan Aiken, John Masefield, Leon Garfield and Alan Garner sprang instantly to mind. In fact, I am sure I took books by Cooper and Garner on that same Ibiza holiday. For some reason, however, The Three Musketeers kept swashbuckling its way into my thoughts. I suspect there’s quite a lot of its inspiration – and especially Milady – lurking in the shadowy recesses of The Moon Child. The two are very different beasts, but I know a seed for the story you’ve just read (and hopefully enjoyed), was sown during a blistering fortnight on a Spanish island back in 1975.

  I’d like to thank everyone who helped bring The Moon Child to the page. My lovely, patient husband Stephen; the teams at Templar and Hot Key Books – especially Matilda Johnson, Debbie Hatfield and Olivia Mead; brilliant editor Catherine Coe, whose perceptive questions kept me on my toes; Melissa Hughes for her eagle eyes; and illustrator Levi Pinfold for his utterly breathtaking cover.

  Last but not least, huge thanks to Helen Boyle, Emma Goldhawk and Will Steele – my own Three Musketeers!

  Cate Cain, June 2014.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Cate Cain is a true Cockney, having been born within hearing distance of the church bells of St Mary-le-Bow in the City of London.

  She studied English Literature at the University of London and trained to be a teacher. After leaving teaching, Cate became a journalist and worked in newspapers for more than ten years.

  Cate has always loved history and now, appropriately, works for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in Spitalfields, London. Her office is in the attic of an old Georgian building and, like Jem, Cate often daydreams, looking out of the attic window over the London rooftops around her office.

  Cate lives in St Albans with her husband, Stephen.

  First published in the UK in 2014 by Templar Publishing,

  an imprint of The Templar Company Limited,

  Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London, EC1V 0AT

  www.templarco.co.uk

  Copyright © 2014 by Cate Cain

  Cover illustration by Levi Pinfold

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or tramsmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photcopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  The right of Cate Cain to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  ISBN 978-1-7837-0123-0

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  www.hotkeybooks.com