The Temporal Stone (The Morgan Sisters) (13 page)

Crackerbilly's eyes nearly popped out of his head. 'More Watchers? Wow,' he whispered as he approached Declan and bowed down.

'Please accept my humble apologies, Elder Declan.'

Declan began to laugh, 'Elder? I ain't that old, you know.'

Not knowing how to react, Crackerbilly's eyes grew wide and he cringed, 'Sorry.'

'What's that noise?' said Sammy, with her hands over her ears. 'It's just like this morning. Make it stop, make it stop.'

Declan rushed to her side and took her hands in his.

'What noise, Sammy? We don't hear anything.'

'You don't?'

Declan shook his head. 'Describe it to me.'

'It's like... like... lots of voices whispering and shouting, non-stop. It's horrible.'

'Sammy, you must calm down. I'm pretty sure this is one of your special abilities coming through. You need to control it.'

'But how?' she asked, as she began to sob.

Emma walked over to her and put her arm around her shoulders, 'It's okay, Sammy. You can do it. You just need to concentrate and focus on the sounds. Come on, let's go and sit down over there.'

She and Declan led her away from everybody else while Jimble returned his attention to the Tree of Tonuka.

'Okay, focus on me, Sammy,' Declan said as he sat right in front of her. 'Calm everything down around you, just look at me for a moment. Now close your eyes. Think of nothing but the sound of my voice. The noises you can hear are fading into the background now, just listen to me.'

The soothing tones of his voice almost made Emma nod off to sleep as Sammy listened intently.

'Are they quieter now?' he asked. Sammy nodded.

'Okay good, now I want you to try and hear my thoughts.'

Sammy gasped and opened her eyes, 'Yours? I can't hear your thoughts.'

'Shhh, just try it. I need to know what it is you can hear.'

Closing her eyes tightly, Sammy thought about nothing but the handsome man who sat quietly in front of her. Concentrating, she tried to focus on whatever it was he was thinking but it was no good.

She tutted. 'It's no good, Declan. Yours isn't the voice I can hear.'

'That's okay,' he answered. 'At least you've managed to quieten down the rest and are able to focus on just one. 'Do you know whose voice it is?'

Sammy shook her head.

'No problem. Stand up, but keep your eyes closed. I'm going to lead you around the forest until the voice becomes louder and you can identify it. Okay?'

Sammy stood up, keeping her eyes firmly closed.

'Don't worry about tripping over. I've got you.'

She nodded and the two began to slowly walk around the pixies and the Watchers. When the voice became stronger, Sammy would pull Declan in that direction. Soon, she stood next to Jimble.

She opened her eyes.

'That's it... you can obviously hear Jimble's thoughts,' Declan said with a smile as she looked down on the pixie troll.

'No, it's not him,' she whispered as she leant forward and placed her hands on the Tree of Tonuka. 'It's her,' she sighed.

CHAPTER 18

'You can hear the voice of the Tree of Tonuka?' Jimble said, awe-struck.

Sammy nodded with a smile, 'But it's not just her, I can hear all of them too,' she said as she pointed to all the other trees in the forest.

Declan had somehow managed to help her hone her skill and she was delighted.

'That beautiful broken tree over there has stood here for three hundred years. She's still a baby,' she giggled before turning to walk up to a tall thin tree with barely any branches or leaves, 'He's been here much longer and has seen some horrid things happen around here but she... she is very special,' Sammy whispered, turning her attention back to the Tree of Tonuka.

Jimble stepped backwards and allowed her to hug it on her own.

All was quiet around them as they watched the teenage girl in admiration.

'There was a younger pixie troll here some time ago and she remembers him acting oddly,' she said, leaning her cheek against the bark. 'Yes,' she added, nodding. 'He buried something right...' Sammy let go and turned her head, looking for something, '...there.'

Jimble dropped to his feet at the spot she had pointed to and he began to scramble through the hard earth.

'No Jimble, you won't find anything. It was taken from here a few years later.'

'Does she remember who took it?' asked Emma.

Sammy smiled, clearly enjoying interacting with the beautiful specimen.

'It was a boy,' she said, turning her attention back to Declan. 'That's all she can remember.'

Suddenly, Sammy lifted her head and moved towards the tall thin tree she'd described before, and listened intently to it. Nodding, she smiled and thanked it.

'He remembers. There were two boys playing by Tonuka's side when they discovered the stone. They took it.'

'Two boys? Hm,' Declan mumbled.

'How are we ever going to find out who they were?' asked Lana with a huff as she plonked herself down on a large smooth rock.

'Their names were Geoffrey and Rudolph,' Sammy said with a grin. 'Brothers who used to play here all the time.'

'How do the trees know that?' Emma asked, amazed.

Sammy laughed. 'Their mother, she came rushing through the forest, panicking that she'd lost them. She was shouting their names for quite a while before she eventually found them.'

'But what do we do now?' Daisy asked.

'We find out where Geoffrey and Rudolph lived and go from there.'

'Lyndhurst,' Sammy answered. 'They lived in Lyndhurst.'

'How...'

'They wore school blazers with the name Lyndhurst School for Boys.'

'You trees are amazing,' Lana stood up, laughing.

'But when was this? Surely that's important,' Emma asked.

'I'm already on it,' Sammy whispered before continuing, 'About ninety years after Gordle buried it.'

'So, we're talking around the 1930s some time?'

'Right then, off to Lyndhurst we go,' Declan said with a grin as he patted Sammy on the back, 'I knew you could do it.'

Sammy grinned, the butterflies in her stomach doing cartwheels. She would never, in a thousand years, have thought that she could communicate with trees yet here she was, doing exactly that.

'Why was the sound so loud this morning, Declan? I was in the middle of Salisbury... there aren't
that
many trees there,' she asked as they began their brief walk back to the car and helicopter.

'There's probably more to it than just trees, Sammy,' he said, patting her on the back again.

oOo

Lyndhurst was a pretty village right in the heart of the New Forest. Like everywhere else, its locals and tourists were locked in time.

Landing the helicopter as close to the village as possible, those on board waited patiently for Declan and the others to arrive. It didn't take long, and with Jimble telling them it was safe to disembark, they all climbed out and met their fellow Watchers to discuss what to do next.

'Right, so we know the stone was taken by two brothers, Geoffrey and Rudolph, in the 1930s when they were kids, and we know that they attended the Lyndhurst School for Boys. So, where do you think we should we start?' Declan asked.

'The school?' Daisy suggested.

Declan nodded, 'That's one idea, if the school still stands. Anyone else?'

'Municipal archives?' Elliott, who had been keeping very quiet, piped up.

'Nice one. Right, Jimble, are you certain there are no other pixie trolls in the area?'

Jimble nodded and sighed, 'It is strange, very strange but they are not here here.'

Declan gave them a quick nod and split them up into two groups. 'Lana and Emma, you go with Sammy to see if you can find the school and we'll head to the Parish Council. We'll wait there for you to return. Okay, got it?' he asked as the group nodded and they went their separate ways.

'Don't you think it's weird that the trolls have suddenly disappeared?' asked Sammy as they walked away from their vehicles, leaving Amber and Sara to keep an eye on them.

'I know,' Emma said, 'something's not right.'

'Not right, not right,' muttered Jimble.

'So where do you think this school will be?' asked Lana as they approached a small parish church to their right where a funeral had been taking place before everything had stopped earlier that day.

The girls and Jimble stopped momentarily, almost as if to pay their respects to the person who had died.

'It's a bummer Nisha isn't here. She could probably have gotten all the info we need from the ghosts,' Lana said as they carried on walking.

'Yeah but Nisha is frozen in time too, remember?'

'I'd forgotten about that.'

'I take it Nisha is one of your friends, a Watcher too?' Sammy asked as they crossed the road.

Emma nodded, 'She was the first one of us to be frozen. It happened in the Box Tunnel, it was awful.'

'In the Box Tunnel you say? They froze her in the Box Tunnel, Tunnel?' Jimble asked, stopping and stroking his chin.

'Strange strange,' he muttered.

'Why is it strange?' asked Sammy.

'Because, because all the pixie trolls were summoned out of the tunnel before any of this happened happened. The only one of us left there was Ethelle and she cannot leave leave.'

'So, you're saying it can't have been one you guys that did that to her?'

Jimble shook his head before shrugging his shoulders, 'I don't know know, I don't know anything anymore anymore.'

'This is getting weirder and weirder,' Lana whispered as they approached a school gate.

'Do you think this is it?' asked Sammy.

Emma shrugged her shoulders, 'Well, if it is, it's got a different name now. Let's go in and have a snoop around.'

'I shall wait outside, outside,' Jimble said, raising his eyebrows.

'Oh, we should have brought your bubble,' Lana said.

'Okay, not a problem, not a problem.'

'We'll be quick,' Emma said as they disappeared inside the building, leaving him sitting on the grass cleaning his fingernails.

The main office was easy to find. There behind the desk, stood a middle aged woman with a pencil behind one ear and a telephone held up to the other. A large filing cabinet stood in the corner of the room.

Sammy began to shuffle through the paperwork, hoping to find a clue.

'These are all current student files,' she sighed.

'I can't see anything that would suggest it was even this school,' said Lana as she went through a load of old school newspapers. 'I don't even know what I'm looking for...'

'Over here,' Emma suddenly shouted from the hallway. 'Look,' she pointed to a number of plaques and old framed photos on the wall.

'This is from 1937. It was a cricket match between the Brockenhurst School for Boys and Lyndhurst School for Boys. That means it IS this school,' she clapped.

'So now we just need to track down their really old student records,' Lana moaned as Emma continued scouring the images on the wall.

'No,' she giggled, 'Look, this one has all the student names on it but I don't see anything with Geoffrey or Rudolph.'

'You might not but I do,' Sammy exclaimed a little further down the corridor as she looked at an old class picture on the wall. 'Brothers Geoffrey and Rudolph Bottomley!'

'Really?' asked Lana. 'You found their surname! That's brilliant. Let's head back to Declan and let him know.'

Almost skipping down the hallway, the three girls rushed through the main entrance door to find Jimble missing.

'Jimble? Jimble?' they shouted.

After a couple of minutes of frantic searching, the pixie troll appeared, ambling down the hill towards them, whistling.

'Jimble, you scared us to death,' Emma shouted.

'I did? I did? Sorry, Emma, sorry sorry,' he muttered as they approached him.

'Where did you go? We told you to stay here,' said Lana as she put her hands on her hips.

'Sorry sorry I said, sorry. I went back to the graveyard graveyard.'

'Why?' Sammy asked.

'Something strange there, something strange.'

'What do you mean?' Emma asked with her eyebrows knitted together.

'Something... supernatural supernatural,' he whispered.

'Then you shouldn't have gone on your own,' scolded Lana. 'Come on, let's get out of here. Now which way is the Parish Council?'

'Shouldn't we go and investigate the graveyard?' asked Sammy.

Lana raised her eyebrows, 'You've only been a Watcher one day and already you want to head towards potential danger?'

Sammy shrugged her shoulders, put her fingernail in her mouth and said nothing.