Emerald Greene and the Witch Stones Read online

  Title Page

  EMERALD GREENE AND THE WITCH STONES

  Daniel Blythe

  Publisher Information

  This edition published in 2014 by

  Acorn Books

  www.acornbooks.co.uk

  Converted and distributed by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  Copyright © 2014 Daniel Blythe

  The right of by Daniel Blythe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To Elinor Sarah Madeleine and Samuel James William

  For past, present and future.

  Part One

  A Door is Opened

  1

  New Girl in Town

  ‘She’s a bit weird,’ said Jessica Mathieson, over the noise of the end-of-school bell.

  Richie Fanshawe looked up from his Fortean Times and blinked at Jess over his ham sandwich. ‘Have you spoken to her?’ he asked.

  ‘Just seen her.’ Jess indicated the upper floor of the school with a toss of her long brown hair. ‘She’s sitting upstairs. I think she starts tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, weird is relative,’ Richie said. He tapped his magazine. ‘Corn circles in Devon, now they’re weird.’

  ‘Really?’ Jess frowned, leaning on her locker. ‘I thought corn circles were, like, so last century?’

  ‘Not in the middle of football pitches.’

  ‘Oh. Right... Well, do you want to see her or not?’

  Richie folded the magazine shut and stretched up to his full height - which was still only level with Jess’s shoulder. They were both in Year Eight, but he was lagging behind her in the growth stakes. ‘Okay, show me, then.’

  Pupils were pouring out of all the exits, anxious to get home, so they had to battle against a blue-blazered tide of children to get back upstairs. When they got to Classroom 12, Jess and Richie peered in at the door.

  There she was - the Newbie. She was sitting on her own, feet up on the desk, reading a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  Her shiny, tomato-red hair was tucked behind one ear, and she had a hawkish nose on which rested a pair of blue-tinted glasses. Her pale, high-cheekboned face tapered to a pointed chin. The Newbie’s blazer and skirt looked new, neatly-pressed. And she was thin. Not scrawny, Jess decided, and not waifish - it was a lean, lithe look, one which hinted at hidden strength. She was wearing school uniform, but with striped black-and-white socks - like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard Of Oz, Jess thought. And in contravention of all school rules on jewellery, the girl wore a silver omega-chain around her neck on which a smooth green stone, set into silver, sparkled like a Christmas light.

  ‘Let’s go in,’ said Jess.

  Richie grabbed her arm, held her back. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Richard Fanshawe, are you a man or a mouse?’ Jess opened the door to the musty room, strode up to the Newbie and offered her hand. ‘Hi. I’m Jess.’

  The girl smiled, looked up as she closed the book. Her green eyes gleamed behind the blue lenses, burning with intelligence. For a second, Jess felt her mouth go dry and almost took a step backwards - as if those eyes were scanning her deeply, reading her every thought.

  ‘Emerald,’ said the girl, shaking Jess’s hand firmly. Her skin felt marble-cold. ‘Emerald Greene. Pleased to meet you.’

  She spoke precisely, Jess thought, as if IN CAPITAL LETTERS. This was the kind of thing that usually got you teased.

  ‘So where have they sent you from, then?’ Jess asked, perching herself on the desk.

  ‘Nobody sent me,’ said the Newbie - Emerald - in her rounded voice. ‘I came willingly.’

  ‘Which school were you at before?’ Richie asked.

  ‘I have never been to school before,’ said Emerald, eyes wide. ‘At least, not what you would call school.’

  Jessica was good at telling if people were lying or winding her up. The Newbie, frustratingly, appeared to be doing neither. It was perplexing.

  It was a year since St Agnes’ High School, Meresbury, had unofficially gone mixed. The boys’ school two miles down the road, King George VI High, had been burned down one night in an act of sabotage, and its six hundred pupils had been redistributed throughout the county. The girls had quickly assimilated their fifty-three newcomers. Emerald, though, was the first new girl to arrive in their year, and it seemed she would take some getting used to.

  ‘Where do you live?’ asked Jess.

  ‘Live?’ The girl frowned for a second. ‘Oh, I see. Yes, I live at Rubicon House.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ asked Jessica.

  ‘It is a large house, near Beeches Point. At the edge of the Darkwater.’ She pushed back a stray lock of red hair and smiled placidly up at them, as if to say that this was all the information she was giving for now. ‘Would you excuse me?’ she added, swinging her feet down. ‘I have some more information to catch up on.’ She hefted the encyclopaedia. ‘There is rather a lot of it, and this would appear to be only Volume One.’

  ‘You’re reading it,’ said Jess, and immediately felt stupid.

  Emerald gave them a dazzling smile. ‘Of course! I find this the best way to acquire information.’ She thrust the encyclopaedia into her satchel. ‘Now I know about everything from Aardvarks to Bohemia. Time to get my next volume.’ She gave them a wave, and strode past them out of the classroom.

  Jess and Richie remained rooted to the spot for a moment.

  ‘Okay,’ Richie said, tapping his glasses nervously. ‘That beats corn circles any day.’

  Jess grabbed him by the wrist. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Following her, of course!’

  Richie looked at his watch. ‘My mum thinks I’m at Astronomy Club,’ he said reluctantly. ‘She’s expecting me home for tea at five.’

  ‘Oh, Richard! Where’s your sense of adventure? Does James Bond go home for tea?’

  ‘But won’t your aunt be wondering where you are?’

  ‘She can wonder. Come on!’

  Afternoon shoppers filled the Old Town - elderly couples, students gossiping, children trailing unwillingly to supermarkets with parents. Outside the gate of Meresbury Cathedral, a juggler on a unicycle had drawn a small crowd.

  Jess and Richie didn’t have time to stop. Dodging between shop-fronts, they tailed Emerald Greene at a discreet distance, Jess leading the way and Richie hiding behind her. They crossed the Cathedral Close, passing through the jagged shadow of the Cathedral itself. A couple of times, Emerald seemed about to turn around and they ducked back into the shadows.

  They followed her across the open garden at the side of the Cathedral, which led to a gap in the old city walls and some stone steps down to the main road. They were just in time to see Emerald disappearing down the steps.

  Jess jumped the chain and cut across the lawns, leaving Ri
chie to trail in her wake. They got to the ringroad in time to look down and see Emerald boarding a Number 32 bus, which closed its doors with a swish and started to pull out.

  Richie caught her up, panting for breath. ‘We can’t chase a bus,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Taxi!’ exclaimed Jess with a glint in her eye, looking up and down the streets.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, it’s what people do in movies. They leap into a taxi and say, “Follow that car!” And the driver says “I’ve been waiting all my life for someone to say that!”’

  Richie scanned the busy ringroad. ‘I can’t see any taxis,’ he pointed out. ‘I doubt we could afford one, anyway.’

  Jess shrugged, and slumped dejectedly on the bus-shelter seat. ‘I suppose “follow that bus” doesn’t have the same ring to it.’ She sighed, chin in her hand.

  ‘So this is where we fall down,’ said Richie despondently. ‘James Bond can drive.’

  ‘Where does the 32 bus go?’ Jess wondered aloud. She jumped up, ran her finger down the list of destinations on the wall. ‘Beeches Point... That’s out near the Darkwater.’ Jessica shivered, and for a minute it was as if the passing cars and buses zooming around the Meresbury ringroad belonged to another world. ‘But that’s where she said she lived... Rubicon House at Beeches Point...’

  ‘My mum said you’d get me into trouble,’ Richie muttered.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Rich. Don’t be a wet blanket.’ Jess’s eyes narrowed in determination. ‘Look, we can catch a number 54 round to the other side... Come on!’

  On the escarpment, the land was steep, studded with boulders, ugly and menacing. The dip slope rolled more gently, bracken giving way to a forest of conifers about a hundred metres away. A few farm buildings were scattered across the moors, but otherwise it was an empty landscape, quiet and still in the setting sun.

  ‘I’m really late for tea, now,’ said Richie awkwardly, scrambling through the bracken behind Jess and trying to polish his glasses on his handkerchief.

  At the edge of the pine forest, they ducked for cover. Jess liked the pungent, comforting Christmas-smell of the trees, which made her think of oranges and wrapping paper and melting candles in jars. The sun was low over the glittering Darkwater, shards of orange dancing in the glassy blue-black.

  ‘There!’ said Richie suddenly, and pointed.

  Up ahead, they saw Emerald Greene approach a large, empty clearing. Jess nudged Richie and, heads down, they slipped between the pine-trees, keeping the Newbie in sight. Emerald appeared to be in no hurry, strolling round the clearing with her hands in her pockets and whistling.

  To their right, the sun peeped though the forest and pulled long shadows across the earth.

  Hardly daring to breathe, they crept along the pine-needle-covered earth. They watched as Emerald stepped into the clearing.

  They saw her stroll across it, apparently checking something on her watch, then they saw her stop and stretch out her arms as if feeling for something, palms flat like a mime artist.

  What happened next was completely impossible.

  The afternoon sunlight was painfully bright in Jess’s eyes and for a second she had to shut them. And when she opened her eyes, the clearing was completely empty.

  Jess looked at Richie, open-mouthed. His eyes were wide.

  ‘I blinked,’ he said. ‘Where did she go?’

  Jess rubbed her eyes. ‘I blinked as well. She was there a second ago, right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Richie, but he didn’t sound too confident.

  ‘It must be a trick of the light,’ said Jess firmly. She ran forward, pushing thorns and branches out of her way, and emerged into the clearing, feeling the sun on her skin. There was a slight breeze, which hissed in the rustling aspens and tugged at her hair.

  ‘Emerald!’ she called out loud. ‘Emerald!’

  There was no sign of Emerald Greene.

  It was unnaturally silent apart from the breeze - no birdsong, nor any woodland creatures. Also, there was an odd taste in Jessica’s mouth - a cold and bitter tang.

  ‘Can you taste that?’ she asked Richie, who had followed her into the clearing.

  He nodded. ‘Like metal.’ Suddenly Richie was shivering and pulling his blazer tightly around him. ‘Look, um, Jess - I don’t want to go on about it, but I should be getting home.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said abstractedly. She squatted down, scooped handfuls of pine-needles and ran them between her fingers. ‘It’s got to be some kind of illusion,’ she murmured to herself.

  Richie wasn’t listening, though. ‘Um... you see, the thing is...’ He cleared his throat and took his glasses off to polish them again. ‘I’m not terribly brave, really. Sorry and all that.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Jess with a sigh. ‘I prefer honest people to brave people.’

  Richie smiled awkwardly and put his glasses back on.

  Jessica straightened up and took one last look around the clearing. ‘I’m going to come back here. I’m going to solve this if it’s the last thing I do.’ She nudged the pale Richie in the ribs. ‘C’mon, let’s get back.’

  The clearing remained silent, still and empty. Sunlight - the heavy, treacly light of early evening - dripped through the leaves on to the forest floor.

  For a second, there was a brief, faint rustling, as if something had been disturbed - it could have been the sound of an animal, or maybe the swish of a girl’s skirt as she moved. But there was still nothing to be seen.

  2

  The Investigation Begins

  Jess slammed the front door shut and hurried down the steps to the road, shoving schoolbooks into the last few spaces left in her bag.

  ‘Eight forty-two,’ she muttered, glancing at her watch. ‘Well, I might just do it.’

  Jessica Mathieson and her Aunt Gabi lived at 38, Chadwick Road, a handsome Victorian terrace on the outskirts of Meresbury. It sported a trim front garden with geraniums, thorn-bushes and a hydrangea. It looked pleasant this morning, dappled with sunlight, but Jess - late for school, her mind buzzing from the previous day - was in no mood to appreciate its charms.

  Late, she thought. Going to be late again.

  The air was chilly in her lungs as she began her descent, and a listless sun was peeping out from behind the clouds. Below her in the valley, the Cathedral gleamed, jutting above the city on its hill, its golden spire reaching up into the morning haze. Beyond the city, greenish moorland rolled away into the blue-white distance. As she rounded the corner into Montrose Avenue, she saw a cat perched on the street-sign, its tail trailing over the A. It wore a plain collar with something shiny inlaid into it. The cat was making the most of the sunlight and its sharp, green eyes seemed to follow her as she hurried along.

  Jessica frowned, shaking off the sense of unease again. They’d never had pets in the house. Aunt Gabi had allergies, and most animals made her eyes water or set her off sneezing for a good half-hour. So Jess wasn’t used to cats, and she found them unsettling.

  Creepy. Just like the feeling in the forest clearing yesterday.

  She hurried on. A cloud passed across the sun, flooding the street with shadow and making Jessica shiver slightly.

  ‘You’re going to be late, you know,’ said a smooth voice from behind her. ‘No point letting it worry you.’

  She whirled around, almost dropping her school-bag. Heart thumping, she looked up and down the road, searching for the origin of the voice.

  The street behind her was empty. Just suburban houses with neat lawns, all in a line, stretching uphill towards the recreation ground. The road in front of her was also quiet and still. A distant lorry thundered on the main road, and somewhere across town a police-siren wailed.

  The black cat sprang off the road-sign, landed nimbly and trotted across the street on its own
private mission.

  Jess blinked. ‘Must’ve imagined it,’ she told herself firmly.

  And yet, she knew she had heard the voice, rich and velvety-smooth like chocolate.

  Jess shook her head. This was silly. She hoisted her bag on her shoulder, narrowed her eyes and headed on her walk to school, quickening her pace.

  ‘Well,’ she said to herself, ‘so I may be late today. There’s got to be a first time.’

  As Jessica rounded the corner and disappeared out of sight, the cat, which was curled up on the pavement on the far side of Montrose Avenue, watched her go. It lifted its head and its eyes seemed to sparkle a glittering green.

  Or it could just have been the reflection of the sun, passing for a second outside its filmy cover of cloud.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, sir.’

  Mr Stone raised his eyebrows as Jess scurried into her form room, out of breath, just after the bell, but then just nodded. Leeann Brooks and one or two other girls turned, giving triumphant looks - Jess Mathieson, the golden girl, was never late.

  Jess scanned the room. Yes, there she was, sitting at the front of the class, looking perky and attentive. The Newbie. Emerald Greene. And the only seat available was right next to her.

  Jess sat down gingerly, as if afraid the seat might be hot. Emerald turned her head and gave her what would, from anyone else, have been a welcoming smile.

  ‘Rrright!’

  Mr Stone always rolled his Rs. Aunt Gabi described him as having a ‘nice Scots burr’, which had made Jessica think of the little green things which clung to your clothes in the garden.

  ‘Now, then,’ said Mr Stone, and raised an eyebrow in the direction of Leeann Brooks, who had her feet on the desk. Leeann swung her legs down with a token show of resistance. Mr Stone put his palms flat on the desk and leaned forward. ‘Good morning, 8A. Firrst things firrst. I’d like to welcome a new student to the class today.’ He gestured towards the Newbie.

  ‘Yeah, and she’s weird,’ muttered Leeann.