Beneath by Gill Arbuthnott Page A

there’s nothing wrong with my clothes. Some of them have
years
of wear left in them.”
    Freya gave a shriek, genuinely appalled.
    “Honestly, there’s no hope for you. No one but Magnus isever going to look at you.”
    It wasn’t cold any more. It was suddenly ridiculously, unseasonably hot. That was the reason her face was red, Jess told herself firmly. Nothing at all to do with what Freya had just said. She hunched deeper into her jacket to hide her burning cheeks.
    Ten minutes later they reached the straggle of dwellings that marked the edge of Dundee and soon they were in the city itself.
    Crooked streets tangled together, clogged with people and horses and carts. Cramped buildings lined them, three, four, five stories high. They leaned forward alarmingly on their foundations, as if they were reaching towards their neighbours on the other side, leaving half of each street in their shadow.
    There were shops and houses and inns and weaving sheds crammed in together, here and there a church with a bit more space round it.
    Jess stared around her, amazed by the noise and the number of people. It was the first time in her life she’d been somewhere bigger than Kirriemuir.
    She turned to speak to Freya, but stopped when she saw the lost look on her friend’s face. After a couple of minutes, Jess touched her arm gently.
    “Come back, Freya.”
    “I thought for a moment I could remember something about when I was missing…” Freya shook her head. “But it’s gone again.” She gave a wan smile as the cart turned a corner.
    “Look.” Arnor pointed. “St Mary’s Watchtower. It used to be a church tower, but the rest of the church burned down.”
    “Watchtower?” echoed Jess. “Who are they watching for? The English won’t come back now.”
    “Not who –
what
,” Arnor said. “There’s always a watch kept for fires. That’s the biggest danger in a city like this. The buildings are so close together that a fire could go from one end to the other and destroy the whole place.”
    “Don’t people worry about it all the time?” Jess asked,eyeing the tower with interest. There were spikes protruding from the walls, and for a moment she thought she saw heads impaled on them.
    “Not really. I suppose people just get used to being extra careful about fire. I know it bothered Magnus’s parents when they first moved here, but they never even mention it now.”
    “They talk about the wolves instead,” said Freya darkly.
    “Why?” asked Jess. “Surely they don’t come into the town?”
    “They never used to, but in the last few winters packs of them sometimes roam through the city. No one knows where they come from.”
    “No one’s been able to track them,” added Arnor. “They come out of the darkness, cause mayhem, then disappear. And they don’t just take livestock, they’ll attack people too; adults as well as children.”
    “That’s not normal,” said Jess. “I know there are stories from long ago about people being attacked by wolves, but nothing like that ever happens now. Not around Kirriemuir anyway.”
    “Mmnn… it’s a mystery, right enough. Anyway, the tower keeps a watch for wolf packs too, so folk know to get inside. Looks like there’s been a hunt here recently, too.” Arnor pointed at the spikes as they drew level with the watchtower, and Jess saw what was impaled there: wolf heads, half-rotted.
    A few minutes later, they turned into a quieter side street, then into a narrow lane where the houses pressed close together. Arnor drew the cart up in front of a blue-painted door.
    “Here we are,” he said, just as it opened, and Anna, Magnus’s mother, came out on to the doorstep smiling.
    She was a small, cheerful woman, with brown hair and a round face: utterly unlike the sister who had married Arnor and passed her beauty to Freya.
    “Come in, come in,” she called, throwing her arms wide. “You must be frozen through. Come and thaw out.”
    The girls climbed down with