he shouted, dropping the handles, “What on earth …” It was the kind of thing Alison did sometimes. She’d get up on to a stool or table, leap on his shoulders and beg for a piggy-back ride. Cold little fingers were clutching at his neck now, and there was a funny whistling noise in his ears. He spun round, but the weight on his back made him lurch about and he fell sprawling into the bracken. The barrow tipped over and its load went crashing on to the path. One of the biggest stones hit Colin’s foot, right on the instep where there was hardly any flesh. It was terribly painful, even through his sneakers.
“Ouch!” he yelled, hopping about, and rubbing. But someone was actually laughing at him, a thin, high-pitched laugh that seemed to set the nearest bushes rustling. A spiteful kind of cackle that sent cold shivers through him.
His foot was so painful that he felt quite sick. He sat down, closed his eyes, and dropped his head down between his knees. When he looked up again Duncan was peering down at him anxiously. He had two massive boulders, one under each arm, and he was sweating.
“What’s come ower ye, man?” he asked.
“I … I …” Colin began feebly, but words failed him. There was nobody else on the path at all, and the other two were still up at Lochashiel. Yet it had to be Oliver who’d pounced on him like that. Who else could it have been?
“What’s wrang wi’ ye?” repeated Duncan, looking at him curiously, then at the overturned barrow, and the litter of stones.
“Someone jumped out at me,” Colin said, still rubbing his foot, “and they must have run off into the woods. I – heard them laughing.” He got to his feet again, but he swayed slightly. The weight didn’t seem to have gone away somehow. He must have ricked his back, humping all those stones about.
“Sit you doon, man,” ordered Duncan. “Ye look like ye’ve seen a wee ghaist. I’ll put the stanes back; you bide where y’are a wee while.”
Colin watched him reload the barrow. He puffed and sweated as if each stone weighed a ton. It was as if they’d doubled in size on their way down from Lochashiel, and he kept dropping them. It was the slimy ones from the bottom, presumably, that would keep slipping through his fingers.
He’d only just finished when Prill and Oliver came out of the trees. The skinny young boy was carefully cleaning the blades of his penknife but Prill was looking into the woods. She kept turning her head from side to side, and sniffing.
“I’m right you know, Oll. Someone has been along here. You should tell your father, Duncan. Mr Grierson’s got intruders.”
“What? Here in the wood? That’ll be holiday folk from yon tents in the long field.” He shrugged. “Ye canna do ower much aboot that. It’s no’ agin the law to trespass here in Scotland, unless harm’s done.”
“But they have,” said Prill. “They’ve been lighting fires. Can’t you smell anything?”
Duncan sniffed. Someone had certainly been burning something, and close at hand. It was a warm day with no wind, yet you could smell smoke drifting over from somewhere.
“It’s like this all along the path,” Prill went on, “Right back to Lochashiel. It looks as if someone’s been along here with a blow-lamp, or something. Look at the ground.”
Underfoot the moss was ashy, turned to black velvet then all broken up into crumbly pieces by their feet. On both sides of the track the low bushes were brown and scorched, their leaves hanging off them limply, like dirty twisted ribbons.
Duncan pulled a face. “I must tell ma faither aboot this. If his plantations take light I don’t doubt yon Grierson’ll have a fit, then we’ll be oot in a crack. Looks like there’s some daftie hereabouts. Colin heard snickerin’ when he tripped wi’ yon stanes.”
“How did you trip?” said Oliver suspiciously, examining the path. “It’s quite smooth here. I can’t understand it.”
“Those stones are heavy,” Colin replied, quite savagely. “You’d know, if you’d actually bothered to help. It … I just fell sideways, and the whole lot went flying.”
“But I still can’t—”
“Oh shut up, Oll,” Prill said anxiously. She didn’t like the look of Colin at all. He kept rubbing at his back and his neck, his face was very white, and he was shivering. She hoped the dreaded flu bug hadn’t followed them up to Scotland.
She felt cold herself as they all helped push the last barrow-load down to the field. But the cold didn’t seem to come from the woods. It was uncanny. It was at their backs, all the way along the blackened track, yet it was a warm day and the trees were dangerously dry, according to Duncan. The path was so withered and burnt it was hard to believe that anything green would ever grow here again.
Oliver looked at the scorched bushes in uneasy silence and when he thought of that great stone cairn he felt frightened. They’d disturbed something today, something very ancient and perhaps sacred, something no one had meddled with for years and years. He didn’t like this uncanny icy feeling in the middle of the sun-dappled woodland, and he didn’t like Colin’s accident, or the sound of that crazy laughter either.
What had they done? What had they started? Oliver had the distinct feeling that this episode in the forest was only the beginning.
“I feel like the Salvation Army,” said Colin. “All I need’s my trombone.”
They were walking slowly down the long dark drive of Lagg Castle, away from the house. He was carrying a pan of hot soup and Oliver held a complete dinner covered up with a plate. Prill had their red setter Jessie on a lead in one hand, the other grasped her little sister’s arm firmly. There was quite a fast road at the bottom of the drive. It’d be just like Jessie to see a rabbit and bolt across after it, and Alison might run straight after her.
“Look to the right, look to the left, and over we go,” chanted Oliver, leading the party with his meat and two veg. Colin and Prill grinned at one another slyly. He was just like his mother. Now they knew where all those irritating little quotes of his came from.
They were taking some dinner to Granny MacCann. “It’s your good deed for the day,” Aunt Phyllis told them. “She’s been rather poorly.”
“Thought we’d done our good deed,” Colin had whispered to Prill as the dinner was arranged on its plate. “What was this morning’s caper? A picnic or something? And when’s she going to let us off the hook? I want to explore. Duncan says there’s a marvellous beach nearby, and there’s a castle somewhere, on a little island.”
“Well, it gets us out of washing up.”
“Yes, but she’s roped Dad in to do that, then Mr Grierson’ll be ringing his bell and he’ll have to go running back up to the studio. It’s like training for the Army.”
The spindly legs of their young cousin had already disappeared up the woodland path, though they could see the dinner plate, flashing in and out of the trees. The main road cut through the Forest of Lagg. The woods went on for miles on this side. Granny MacCann lived half a mile along the lower track quite near Lochashiel, in a cottage with
