CHAPTER 38
I woke at dawn to the smell of food. I entered the kitchen to find the table laid with food. ‘You will need to eat well before your journey, so tuck in.’ Clax had thought of everything, as usual. We filled our stomachs until bursting point, and then got dressed in our many layers of clothes ready for the journey.
The sleighs were packed and the shape shifters were once again horses and harnessed to the sleighs. We had said our goodbyes in the house, so no peeping eyes could see the love and good wishes. Silently and without a visible audience, we set off. My sleigh was in the middle, to keep up an appearance of being a prisoner. I had Oswald on one side of me and Corisande on the other. We headed towards the A1, and even though I knew this area, it looked completely different covered in so much snow. Cailleach Bheur had been true to her word, there were no blizzards and no winds, but this made everywhere silent and eerie. The only sound we heard were the horses’ hooves crunching in the snow and the jangle of the harness.
It took a couple of hours to actually find our way to the A1, but once on it our journey went quite smoothly. Every now and then we would stop to clear a sign, which were now easily reachable as the snow was so deep. At last we saw the sign for the A61 to Ripon, and headed towards it. We had to take it slower now, clearing more signs to find the route to the A59. By the time we got onto it, it was late afternoon and we followed it until we found the A671. By this time we were hungry and bitter cold and decided to look for somewhere to settle for the night.
It wasn’t long before we spotted a house on its own, which looked deserted. Lucia used her magic to fly down the chimney to see if it was safe. She had only been gone a few minutes when she opened the window upstairs for us all to climb into; the full downstairs being covered by deep snow. The sleighs were stored behind the house, and everyone settled in the bedroom.
We closed the curtains and set the camping stoves away and lit the small gas heaters we had brought. We felt a little bit warmer now, and ate the food we had prepared. Now, in much greater spirits and stomachs happy, we snuggled in to our sleeping bags and after a long discussion about the plan ahead, we settled down to sleep.
The next morning, we filled the bathroom sink with boiled water, and cleaned ourselves the best we could. Feeling clean and refreshed, we ate a hearty breakfast and packed up the sleighs again to resume our journey.
It took most of the morning to negotiate the B roads and after several false turns, we entered the Ribble Valley at last. It was now May Days eve and we had to meet Dagdar by 8.pm. We had nine hours to climb the hill, which would be easily done in normal conditions.
We had winter hiking clothes and also some snow shoes to help us with the climb, but we knew it was going to be extremely hard.