Isle of Winds (The Changeling Series Book 1) Read Free

trousers. He thought that would make Gran very angry if she’d seen. She’d never gone to church but had always dressed well on Sunday.
    It was only afterwards, when everyone had gone and Mr Burrows had popped home, that Robin had five minutes alone to lock himself in the bathroom and pull himself together. He got through half a toilet roll, but was dry-eyed and waiting in the lounge when Mr Burrow returned.
    The oddness with the horseshoes was forgotten.
    * * *
    A month later, Robin found himself sitting on a train, with a large suitcase in the rack above his head containing everything he owned, and a letter in his pocket from somebody he had never heard of.
    The train rushed through some very pretty countryside. Robin had never really been out of the city much. The countryside, as far as he was concerned, was something that happened to other people. He sat in the softly rocking carriage, listening to the clackety-clack of the train and watching the hills and fields of Lancashire roll by.
    He was on his way to a village called Barrowood, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, to meet a woman called Irene who shared his surname, and was apparently his only surviving relative.
    He had never heard of her. He had never heard of Barrowood for that matter.
    Every time the train pulled into a new station, he strained to see the name. There hadn’t been one called Barrowood yet.
    He was so intent on finding the right station that when the door to the carriage was suddenly thrown open, he practically jumped out of his skin.
    He turned wide-eyed, to see who had entered. It was a small skinny girl with a tangle of long brown hair and a very pale face. She was wearing a large tatty brown coat which was much too big for her and looked like it had been pieced together from bits of other coats. She was about his age, maybe a little younger.
    Robin looked at the girl, who stood staring at him with wide and oddly triumphant eyes.
    When it became apparent that she was neither going to move or speak, he thought he had better say something.
    “Erm…” he began.
    She blinked at the noise, as though startled by the scrawny boy’s ability to make noises as well as move.
    “Erm…” he said again.
    “Is this seat taken?” she asked suddenly.
    “This seat?” Robin asked, nodding at the seat opposite him, which was clearly not.
    “Yes. That one. The empty one there,” the girl said eagerly.
    They both looked at it.
    “No. I don’t think so,” Robin said eventually. “No one’s in here but me.”
    The girl smiled and slammed the compartment door behind her. She peered through the glass for a second, then pulled down the shade.
    Robin was a bit alarmed by this. More so when the girl leaned across him to pull the tasteless orange curtain across the window and plonked herself down opposite him in the now shadowy carriage.
    He stared at her in surprise.
    “Do you have any idea how much trouble I’ve had trying to find you?” she started.
    “Find me?” Robin replied, deeply confused.
    “Well, I knew you were in Manchester, but obviously couldn’t get anywhere near you with the wards in place, could I?” she said. “Had to hang around and wait for my chance. Not a very good idea when you’ve got skrikers on your tail, I can tell you. And then there was all that nasty business with your Grandmother and Mr Strife,” she babbled. “There’s nothing he won’t sink to, that one.” She patted his hand a little, making him flinch. “Sorry about your Gran. If we’d known what he was up to, we would have done something, but there was no one to watch you. There’s only me who could tear through, and the skrikers have been keeping me on the move. They give a new meaning to the idea of hounding someone…”
    “How do you know about my Gran?” Robin interrupted. It was the only thing she had said so far that had made the slightest bit of sense. The young girl completely ignored his question.
    “Of course, once the wards were down,