Eye of the Storm

different-coloured clothes: spring spirits wore green, summer spirits wore gold, autumn spirits wore silver and winter spirits wore blue. They could also each do different magic. Erin was a winter spirit who could make it rain, hail or snow. Chloe was a summer spirit, which meant she could heat things up and start fires. Some stardust spirits had extra-special powers like weather weaving. Erin was only just learning what she could do. She could use hagstones – stones with holes in the centre – to make magic things happen. So far Tor had shown her how to use the stones to see visions, to talk to him and to protect herself. Sometimes the stones showed her visions of things she hadn’t asked to see. Tor said she must trust the magic in the stones; sometimes they would help her even when she didn’t ask. It was cool she had learnt so much, but she knew there was still so much else she had to learn.
    Now Erin flew out of the window and into the dark night. ‘ Camouflagus ,’ she whispered. All stardust spirits could camouflage themselves, disappearing into the background so they appeared invisible. Erin headed towards the cliff tops, away from the village of Long Medlow where she lived. Heavy clouds were scudding across the night sky and the salt-filled wind buffeted her body.
    Chloe was waiting for her on the shingle beach where they nearly always met, the waves lapping near her feet. ‘Hi!’ she called as Erin let her camouflage fade.
    She flew up to meet Erin, her dark-brown curls bouncing on her shoulders, her gold dress swirling. ‘Isn’t it windy tonight? I heard on the TV there’s a big storm coming.’
    Erin nodded. ‘I hope it’s not really bad.’
    Chloe looked worried. ‘I bet it’s Marianne, up in the sky causing trouble. I wish we could get to the hidden gateway in the cliffs so that Tor and Mistral could go back to the sky and stop her. But with the tide coming in like this there’s no way we can get to it.’
    ‘Tor and I might be able to stop the storm, even from down here,’ said Erin, knowing she could use her weather-weaving powers.
    ‘I wish I was a weather weaver and could do something,’ sighed Chloe. ‘You’re really lucky!’
    Erin didn’t feel lucky sometimes, but she knew Chloe wouldn’t believe her. ‘Come on. Let’s go and find him.’
    As Erin and Chloe swooped down into the clearing in the centre of the woods, two grey horses emerged from the trees – a beautiful white stallion with wise dark eyes and a smaller, dark-grey colt with a sticking-up mane and a cheeky expression. The colt whinnied a shrill greeting.
    Chloe flew down and hugged him. ‘Hello, Mistral.’ The colt butted her with his head, making her almost fall over.
    Meanwhile Erin landed beside Tor.
    The sky stallion whickered softly. ‘The horses are in turmoil in the skies, Erin,’ he said. ‘We must use your magic tonight to try to calm them.’
    Erin could use her weather-weaving powers to send a vision of Tor into the sky. While his body stayed on Earth, an image of him appeared in the clouds so he could move among the other sky horses and talk to them, calm them and lead them. She had worked this kind of magic lots of times before, but not since Marianne had gone through the gateway the other night.

    ‘What about Marianne?’ she asked. ‘She’ll be there.’
    ‘Yes, Father,’ said Mistral, looking round anxiously. ‘What if the dark spirit sees your image? Won’t she try to hurt you or fight you?’
    ‘Will she be able to if you’re just an image?’ asked Chloe.
    ‘She will,’ replied Tor. ‘But it’s a risk I will have to take.’
    Erin and Chloe marked out a large circle with stones on the forest floor. Tor stepped inside it and then Erin knelt down and took a hagstone out of her pocket. She looked at the hole in the centre of it and let her mind go blank. The shadow in the hole seemed to swell.
    ‘Sky horses, come,’ she whispered, feeling her fingers tingling with magic.
    Tor’s body dissolved into a cloud of mist. He shrank down until he was the size of a small model horse. Around the edges of the circle sky horses began to appear, young and old. They moved about quickly, some trotting, others cantering, other rearing up. Erin knew she was seeing a picture of what was happening up in the clouds.
    Snowdance, Tor’s lead mare and Mistral’s mother, came trotting over to him. She was a beautiful grey mare with large eyes. They nuzzled each other in greeting and then Tor