Free Chill by Alex Nye Page A

for, and Samuel had actually made friends with Fiona. They seemed to be spendingan awful lot of time together. Something was really engaging them. Whatever it was, she thought it could only be a good thing. And once the snowdrifts disappeared the children would be able to go to school at last, and Samuel would make more friends. She had only to wait patiently, she decided. She lifted her coffee mug to her lips, and smiled contentedly.
     
    Samuel went over to the window, opened the lid of his desk and took out the papers torn from Catherine Morton’s journal. He looked at them closely, turning the delicate pages over in his hand. Catherine Morton was the Weeping Woman, he felt sure of it. She had written these as a child. It was a glimpse into a life shrouded in mystery.
    If the evidence of her diary was anything to go by, she had been a spirited and intelligent twelve-year-old. What had happened to her in the end? What had transformed her into the Weeping Woman?
    He replaced the papers in his desk, and looked up. It was snowing again. Big flakes fell out of the sky. Samuel thought that Granny Hughes must be wondering if she would ever see her centrally-heated flat again.
    Samuel was still making his plans. He intended to visit the library when everyone was asleep. Pulling on his boots he went next door to find Fiona. The kitchen was empty, and when he called out her name, no one answered. Before he knew it, he was heading past the grandfather clock, and up the spiralling staircase to the drawing room on the first floor, drawn by the thought of the ebony box. He called out her name, but again no one answered.
    On the threshold to the library he hesitated. It was sotempting, to step into that forbidden room, and reach the box on his own, while no one was looking. There was certainly no one about; the whole house was eerily quiet.
    He took one step forward, and then someone spoke his name.
    “Samuel!”
    The colour drained from his face. It was Mrs Morton.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Looking for Fiona,” he mumbled.
    “You won’t find her in there.”
    She watched him as he retreated back the way he’d come, blushing to the roots of his hair.
    “She’s gone out on Emperor, I think,” Mrs Morton added. “Although she won’t get far on a pony in this weather.”
     
    At the boating pond there was no sign of Fiona, but he could see tracks leading around the edge of it, and into the woods beyond. The forest was very dark and quiet, an enclosed world full of shadows and shifting shapes, but something drew him in. He followed the hoof prints.
    He became aware of a path beneath his feet as it wound through the dense undergrowth.
    Ahead of him was a narrow clearing, with a huge standing stone at the end of it. The snow had drifted up against the side of it as it stood monumental and half-forgotten.
    He walked up to it, brushed the snow aside and laid a hand on its cold pitted surface.
    Behind the stone he saw another path leading through the trees. There was an eerie atmosphere here and he felt nervous. After a while he suddenly burst out into the open. He stood still and gazed. Before him was a massive clearingsurrounded by tall trees. In one of the treetops was an elaborate professional-looking tree house, built from timber and thatch, reached by a long ladder. The snow in the clearing was full of tracks, and a wisp of grey smoke drifted from an abandoned campfire. Samuel gazed about him, intrigued.
    Suddenly something whizzed past his left ear and embedded itself in the trunk of a pine behind him. He turned and saw an arrow vibrating where it had landed. Charles and Sebastian stepped out from behind the trees.
    Samuel rolled his eyes. “Might have known it was you!” Grasping the arrow, he wrenched it out from the tree and inspected its tip. “That could do some serious damage, you know!”
    “It was supposed to,” Charles said. “What are you doing up here?”
    “Looking for Fiona.” It was the second time