Chapter 7

Chapter

Seven

‘ D aisy,’ Otis said as we clambered into the Jeep after saying farewell to Agatha Smiggleswith, ‘perhaps you could consider an alternative career. Treasure hunting is a far too risky a business.’

Hester was already nodding agreement. ‘Bomb disposal. That would be safer.’

‘Firefighting,’ Otis suggested.

‘Front-line operations with the military,’ she said.

‘Very funny.’ I pulled a face at them. ‘You don’t have to worry. Now we know about the curse, we can take precautions to avoid invoking it.’

‘Indeed,’ Hugo said. ‘There’s almost nothing to be concerned about.’

Hester snorted. ‘So says the man who walked around with chickens on his head.’ She flew up, landed on top of his skull and started to squawk. Loudly.

‘Hester,’ I scolded. ‘Stop that.’

Hugo raised his hand and brushed her away. ‘You know, Hester,’ he said, ‘there’s no guarantee that the skull is buried beneath the stone. It might not have been returned when the coins were, or it might have been dug up since then. It could be somewhere else.’

‘Let’s go there , then!’ she exclaimed. ‘Let’s go somewhere else and avoid the cursed sack stone altogether!’

‘Right now, the stone is our best lead,’ I said. ‘We’ll check there first.’

Otis joined in her protest. ‘It’ll be dark soon.’

‘You can stay here if you like,’ I offered.

They both folded their arms and glared at me. ‘We’re not letting you have all the fun!’ Hester objected.

‘And we’re the ones with experience in curses,’ Otis added. ‘We’re the ones who were trapped inside a necklace for decades because of a sorcerer’s curse.’

Good point. ‘Any tips for avoiding a fate worse than death?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ Hester said. ‘Don’t get caught.’

Hugo shrugged. ‘Works for me.’

We exchanged smiles. There was a loud beep as Miriam, driving like a demon and pulling past us with her wheels screeching, wound down the window of her Jeep. Slim ducked his head out. ‘Last one to the cursed stone buys dinner!’

‘Hugo!’ I ordered. ‘Switch on that engine and get going! They cannot beat us!’

The Jeep roared into life. ‘Don’t fret.’ Hugo put his foot down and smirked. ‘We’ll be the first ones to get cursed around here, not them.’

Hester and Otis buried their heads in their hands. ‘We’re doomed,’ Hester muttered.

‘All doomed,’ Otis agreed.

They were probably right. I punched Hugo’s arm lightly. ‘Drive faster.’

In the end both vehicles got stuck behind a tractor and we pulled into a layby not far from the Fonaby Sack Stone at the same time. I jumped out of the Jeep, checked the location on my phone and glanced around. There was a narrow path leading up a low hill towards a copse of pine trees. ‘I think it’s that way,’ I said.

‘It doesn’t look spooky or cursed,’ Hester said. ‘It just looks like farmland.’

‘Maybe we’ll get lucky and discover the tales of the curse have been exaggerated,’ I told her. She stared at me without blinking. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Alright. I know. Given the way our lives have been going, I’ll knock the stone over by accident and we’ll be cursed for a thousand generations.’

‘Sounds about right,’ Otis muttered and I grinned.

We headed for the path. Although it hadn’t rained for several days, the ground was thick with dark mud and our footsteps squelched noisily; at one point, Slim’s wellington boot got stuck and we had to pull him free. If this had been merely a casual stroll, I might have been tempted to use a skein of magic to suck away the moisture and make the ground easier to cross, but we were heading for a spot steeped in its own unpleasant magic. Until we knew exactly what we were dealing with, even an innocuous spell seemed like a bad idea.

Our slow progress meant that the sun was already dipping by the time we reached the place where the Sack Stone was supposed to be. ‘This is the spot.’ Hugo frowned. ‘I don’t see any stones.’

‘Maybe Smiggleswith was playing us,’ Slim offered.

Miriam clicked her tongue. ‘You’re not looking hard enough.’ She pointed at several fallen branches several metres away from the path. ‘See?’

We turned and looked. She was right: there was a large, moss-covered stone, but it was almost entirely hidden from view by the branches and only one corner of it was visible from the path. Had someone shielded it on purpose to deter curious hikers from invoking the curse? A shudder ran down my spine.

The shape of the stone did remind me of a sack of corn. This was what we’d come to find so we couldn’t simply stand and gawk, although strangely nobody seemed willing to abandon the path and move closer. The playful, competitive atmosphere had vanished.

‘I know it’s getting dark,’ Becky whispered, ‘but shouldn’t there be more noise?’ She was right. This was the countryside in late spring: there should have been a cacophony of nesting birds, buzzing insects and rustling from the undergrowth. I couldn’t hear a single thing – and now that I was aware of the deathly silence, I felt unsettled.

Otis flew towards me and buried himself in the folds of my jacket. ‘I don’t like it here.’ Hester watched his head disappear beneath my collar. A second later, she followed him, burrowing even deeper.

My gaze lifted to Hugo. For a few seconds, we shared a mutual – albeit silent – look of deep foreboding. ‘I think that we can all agree the curse is real,’ he said quietly.

I steeled myself and stepped off the path. Night was on its way and the sky wouldn’t get any lighter until the morning; we had to act now before we lost what little visibility there was. Although I didn’t say anything, I was relieved when the rest of the group followed me. Soon we were all standing around the strange stone and staring down at it.

‘We can’t risk moving it,’ Miriam said. ‘Not even by an inch.’

‘Agreed.’ Hugo scratched his chin. ‘Thankfully we have a special technique, created by Daisy herself, that will help us search for any items buried beneath it.’

‘Using earth magic to sense for what’s buried there is a good idea,’ Slim said. ‘But we can’t remove anything without disturbing the stone.’

I toed the ground. ‘The skull is small. We could dig a small tunnel and send the brownies in to retrieve it.’

Hester’s head immediately popped up from inside my jacket. ‘Oh, fine,’ she snapped. ‘Give us the hard jobs, why don’t you? Give us the opportunity to be cursed for the rest of time.’ She glared at me. ‘Save yourselves, sacrifice the brownies.’

‘You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. In fact, if you have a better idea, Hes, I’m more than willing to hear it,’ I said.

She wrinkled her nose.

‘I’ll do it.’ Otis’s voice was muffled and shaky but still audible. ‘I’ll burrow underneath and find the skull.’

‘It could be close to the surface – we might be able to retrieve it without you.’ Becky sounded doubtful but she was right: until we knew exactly where the skull was, we couldn’t tell what digging would be required.

I nodded. ‘Step back. I’ll do a quick magical search and see what I find.’

Otis and Hester reluctantly extricated themselves from their hiding spot while I delved into my pocket and drew out another two pills of spider’s silk. Hugo’s jaw tightened but he knew as well as I did that I couldn’t let my magic get the better of me and mess this up.

I swallowed the pills then unclipped Gladys from my side and handed her to Hugo. Pretending that my heart wasn’t thumping loudly enough to rattle my rib cage, and that my stomach was not churning with greasy nausea, I forced a smile. Then, before my trepidation got the better of me, I pushed out a brief nudge of questing earth magic.

The flash of pain that reverberated through my bones came instantly. I winced and beamed at the same time; annoying as the pain was, it indicated that there was definitely something underneath the Sack Stone that didn’t belong there – and it wasn’t far beneath the surface. Retrieving it might be easier than we’d expected.

Suddenly buoyed up, I ignored the grim aura and damp moss clinging to the Fonaby Stone and lowered myself to the ground. The gloopy mud would wash off. ‘Keep out of the way,’ I said to the others. ‘If anything goes wrong and I end up triggering the curse, it’ll be better if it only affects me rather than all of us.’

Before anyone could dissuade me, I started to scrabble downwards, taking great care to avoid touching the stone itself. If I dug at an angle, I reckoned I could retrieve the hidden item without disturbing the lump of rock. Patience was key: given how much my hands were shaking, I had to take my time and do everything I could to control my movements.

I pulled out several handfuls of dark mud and flung them aside. ‘You’re in luck, Otis,’ I said. ‘If the ground was harder we could create a tiny tunnel for you to burrow through, but it’s too soft and squelchy. It’s pretty disgusting but it’s not difficult. You can stay where you are.’ I pushed my hand deeper. ‘There are only a few more inches to go. I’m almost there.’

I drew out a few pebbles, then scooped away several more handfuls of thick, wet earth. ‘Almost there,’ I muttered again, and planted the side of my face in the mud as I tried to get closer to my target.

My heart skipped a beat, then another, and I paused and waited for my traitorous body to sort itself out. When it returned to a regular rhythm, I stretched my fingertips forward, squeezing them through yet more dirt. Finally, I felt something.

It wasn’t another pebble, and it certainly wasn’t more mud. ‘Guys,’ I whispered. ‘I think I have it.’

I hooked the object with my index finger and clawed it out inch by laborious inch. After what felt like an age, I could wrap my hand around it. I angled my body to the left to make sure I didn’t brush against the cursed stone, then yanked hard.

There was a loud sucking noise as my arm, hand and the tiny object pulled free. I tumbled backwards and held my prize aloft with a crow of delight. Without waiting for the others, I wiped away as much of the mud as I could. It was wrapped in some sort of sack cloth, and it was the right size to be Gordon’s skull.

‘Cross your fingers, everyone,’ I said. ‘This might actually be it.’

I peeled away the fabric. The mud had seeped through the cloth, so I had to rub it against my thigh to clean off the worst of it, but as soon as I did a slow smile spread across my face.

I was holding a small, three-inch-high golden skull. Its tiny eye sockets were filled with even more mud and there was something chilling about its empty grin, but I could feel the thrum of its magical power beneath my trembling fingers.

‘We’ve found it,’ I breathed. ‘That was easier than I thought it would be.’ Gordon would be delighted – hell, I was delighted. There was nothing like the sensation of pure success.

And then my feeling of elation and my bright smile began to dim. Hang on a minute . I glanced to my left then to my right. Heart pounding, I scrambled up and spun around, staring at the path.

Yes, it was dark, but it wasn’t so dark that I couldn’t see what was in front of me. Or rather, what wasn’t in front of me.

Hugo, Miriam, Slim and Becky – together with Hester and Otis – had all disappeared.