Winterbringers by Gill Arbuthnott Page A

back for lunch. Do you want me to get anything from the village shop?”
    “Some cheese – and eggs if they’ve got any. Thanks. Are you going to be warm enough?”
    “Yeah. It’s not far after all. See you.”
    “Bye.”
    The cold caught at him as soon as he stepped outside.Now he understood why the heating didn’t seem to be doing much. He trudged off down the track, hands deep in his pockets, chin tucked down into his jacket as far as possible. It was like being underwater somehow, this fierce cold.
    He’d intended to go to the shop first, but he was shivering so much by the time he reached the Ferguson house that he decided to go in there first for some respite.
    As he walked up the path he noticed that the paint on the front door was scratched and gouged from top to bottom. He rang the bell and waited impatiently, stamping his feet, for someone to answer.
    After a moment, Rose opened the door. She looked so surprised to see him that he wondered, belatedly, if he should have phoned first.
    “What happened to your door?”
    Her expression told him she didn’t know what he meant until she looked around at the outside of the door he was holding open. Her eyes widened and her face turned pale.
    “Did Luath do that?”
    She shook her head. “No, not Luath … it must have been the cat,” she said, collecting herself.
    “The cat? She couldn’t have done that,” Josh said, baffled, as he followed Rose inside.
    In the kitchen he found Callie yawning over a cup of coffee, her hair even more of a mess than usual.
    “It looks as though you slept even worse than me,” he said.
    “Huh. I bet you’re right. The dog woke us all up at three in the morning barking at something outside.”
    “Was that when your front door got trashed?”
    “Trashed? What are you talking about?”
    “Haven’t you seen it?”
    He followed her back to the hall and watched her stare at the gouged door.
    “Rose thinks it was the cat, but the cat couldn’t have done all that.”
    Callie shivered. “I wanted to open the door and see what Luath was barking at, but Rose stopped me. I looked out of my bedroom window and I saw two … figures … going off over the fields. I was sure that Rose knew something about what was going on, but when I asked her this morning she started talking about Big Cat sightings. I don’t understand at all.”
    “Ah …
Big
Cats. I thought she meant the kitten.” Callie rolled her eyes. “All this happened at about three o’clock, you say?”
    “What?”
    “The dog woke you at three o’clock?”
    “That’s right. Why?”
    “Something woke me at about half past three.” He cleared his throat. “I thought there was someone moving about outside my window. Or something. But when I looked, there was nothing there.” He didn’t mention having woken his mother. “Do you think that’s just coincidence?”
    She shook her head slowly. “But what do you think it was? Or who? You don’t think it was the Winter King?”
    “No. I’m sure it wasn’t – he said he had to stay at the cave.”
    “We didn’t imagine him, did we?”
    “You know we didn’t. Anyway, just look out of the window. This is what he said would happen.”
    Callie ran her fingers down the gouges in the front door. “These aren’t even like claw marks,” she said. “They’re much too broad, more like fingers.”
    “I wouldn’t like to meet whatever it is that has fingernails that can do that,” said Josh, measuring his own hand against the marks.
    Callie shuddered and pushed the door shut on the cold garden.
    She looked around. “Puss, puss … where have you gone?”
    They looked around the kitchen, under the table, under chairs, in the laundry basket, but there was no sign of Chutney Mary.
    “I thought she usually stayed beside you?”
    “She does. She follows me like a dog, not a cat at all. Puss … where have you gone?”
    “Maybe she’s got into your bed to keep warm.”
    They went upstairs and searched