Beneath by Gill Arbuthnott

neck.
    “I’m sorry, Finn, I’m sorry. I should have been able to help you more.”
    “It’s all right. It’s all right.” He was out of breath, unsteady on his feet.
He shouldn’t feel like this.
He should be able to deal with two wolves, even without Rowan
. He sat down, Rowan beside him, and tried to ignore his shaking hands. “That was a big wolf.”
    “They’re all big,” said Rowan ruefully. “Are you all right?” She looked at his shoulder.
    “It doesn’t look too bad.”
    “I’m fine. Absolutely fine,” he lied.
Why had it been so
difficult? He should have overcome that wolf the first time he tried. What was wrong with him?
    “The enchantments are failing,” he said. “Soon there won’t be enough of us to guard the gateways any more.”
    “Maybe when the wolves can get to the Upper World they’ll leave us alone here. Maybe it would be better if we just let them out.”
    “You know we can’t do that. We made a promise.”
    “But look at what it costs us to keep it. One death already this year.”
    Finn got shakily to his feet. “Come on. Let’s get away from here.”
    ***
    “Nearly there,” said Arnor. “Look.” He pointed. “You can see the smoke over the next hill.”
    Jess looked at the twists and blots of grey and yellow smoke that were the first signs that they were nearing Dundee.
    “How much longer?” Freya asked, pulling her scarf further up over her ears.
    “Half an hour at most and we’ll be in town. It’ll be warmer there, you’ll see.”
    Jess rubbed her chilled fingers together. Even the gloves Ellen had knitted for her birthday hadn’t managed to keep the cold out.
    It was a week since Jess and Freya had appeared, soaked, at the kitchen door of Westgarth, and four days since Magnus and his family had left.
    Jess had only seen Freya once since then, but now they were both to spend a week with Magnus and his parents in Dundee. The prospect of a stay in the city had cheered Freya up, but she still wasn’t herself, nervy and unsure in situations that she would previously have handled with a cutting glance and a toss of her head.
    Jess was aware that
she
wasn’t herself either. It was incredible that her life should go back to normal after whathad happened over the last couple of weeks, but that seemed to be what everyone expected of her: to act as though nothing had happened. Even Ellen had found excuses not to let her talk about the truth. Jess had lost track of the number of times she had wanted to shout at her family,
    “Stop pretending everything’s normal! You know it isn’t.”
    It was a relief to get away from the farm.
    The weather had suddenly turned cold. It was the sort of change that made people check that their larders were well stocked and their woodpiles high. Winter wasn’t far away.
    “When I get into that house, nothing’s going to move me from the fireside,” Freya said indistinctly through the scarf.
    “I hope there’s room for both of us,” Jess said with feeling.
    Arnor laughed. At least
he
sounded almost like his old self.
    “If I know you, Freya, you’ll be off out to see what you can find to spend my money on, things that no one in Kirriemuir will have.”
    Freya stuck her head out of the swathing scarf like a stoat emerging from a burrow.
    “What rubbish,” she said. “I never buy anything I don’t need. It’s
ages
since I had anything new to wear.”
    Arnor guffawed. “Ah, that’s my lass,” he said fondly, for it was exactly what the old Freya would have said.
    “Besides,” Freya went on, warming to her theme, “It’s my duty as a friend to make sure Jess has some new clothes. Most of what she wears is so old that even the
boys
in Kirriemuir recognise the dresses.”
    Jess was so pleased to hear Freya behaving normally that she decided not to take offence, but she couldn’t resist baiting her.
    “Nonsense,” she said briskly. “I doubt those halfwits would notice whether I had clothes on at all. Anyway,