Eye of the Storm

CHAPTER
One
    Erin sat on the window seat in her bedroom, writing in a diary. A second diary, an old leather-bound one, lay beside her. Pushing her long dark-blonde hair back behind her ears, she read over what she had just written.
    Dear Mum,
    I’ve decided to write to you because so much is happening and though you aren’t here any more I know you would understand. I love Jo and I’m glad she and Dad are married now, but of course I can’t tell them anything about stardust or weather weaving and it’s all getting so scary. I’ve been reading your diary – the two-year one you had when you were ten and eleven. I’m glad you wrote down so much about magic.
    Erin picked up a stone from her window ledge. It had a hole in the centre. She held it up and looked through the hole at the clouds in the evening sky. Now she could see they weren’t just clouds, but a landscape with distinct hills and valleys, rivers and meadows. Beautiful horses of all different shades of grey moved slowly through their cloud world, their manes and tails sweeping to the floor.
    Sky horses.

    Erin bit her lip. She knew now that sky horses controlled the weather. When they were quiet, the skies were calm; when they moved about, clouds formed and rain fell. Erin remembered the first time she had seen them, almost a month ago. Back then, she had thought she was completely ordinary, just eleven-year-old Erin Davies who loved horses and lived with her dad, three stepbrothers and stepmum, Jo. But in one day she had found out that magic was real, sky horses existed and that she was a rare kind of stardust spirit, a weather weaver, who could work magic using special stones called hagstones.
    Erin put the stone down and glanced at the diary beside her. Her mum had been a weather weaver too. Oh, Mum , she thought longingly. I really wish you were here.
    She picked up her pen again and carried on writing:
    If you were here, you would help show me the weather-weaving magic I need to do to stop Marianne. She’s gone into the clouds, Mum. It’s horrible.
    A memory flashed vividly into Erin’s mind. Her pen hesitated over the paper as, for a moment, she saw Marianne, a dark stardust spirit, standing on top of a cliff, holding out a hagstone. A black mist was pouring out through the hole in the centre of the stone. It formed a swirling circle – a magic gateway into the sky horses’ world. Marianne had transformed into a horse and she had jumped through the gateway. Now she was up there. But she shouldn’t be. It was all wrong. Erin quickly started writing again.
    You said in your diary that humans shouldn’t go into the cloud world – that it makes the horses sick and makes their magic flow away. Well, Marianne’s gone up there because she wants to control them. She doesn’t care that they will get ill. She just wants to have complete power over the weather so that everyone is scared of her. Tor says she could start a huge storm just like there was years and years ago before even Granny was born. People and animals could be injured and killed. There would be loads of damage. We have to stop her and find a way for Tor and Mistral to get back to their kingdom.
    Despite her anxiety, Erin couldn’t help but smile as she thought of Tor, the majestic sky stallion, and his son, a young mischievous colt called Mistral. They were trapped on Earth at the moment, living in the woods near Erin’s house, but both of them longed to get back to the sky.

    Oh, Mum, I wish you could meet Tor – and Mistral. They’re amazing. Marianne captured Tor and then trapped Mistral too; that’s why they’re here. They’re free from her now. Me and Chloe – she’s my best friend and a stardust spirit too – are going to try to help them get back to the clouds using the magic gateway that’s hidden in the cliffs, the one you wrote about in your diary. The trouble is, of course, that it can only be used when the tide is out, otherwise you just can’t reach it. But when Tor does get to use it and returns to the sky, he’s going to fight Marianne and chase her back to Earth, and when she gets here we have to destroy the dark gateway she has made using a hagstone so she can’t go into the cloud world again. But I’m scared, Mum. I have to destroy the gateway all by myself. Although Tor can help me by telling me what to do, he can’t do the magic and Chloe isn’t a weather weaver – she can only do normal stardust magic. So, it’s all down to me. But what if