pieces of metal together.
She positioned the horseshoes she’d already shaped in the forge onto the anvil, before flipping the visor of her helmet down. Ready to make a start, she thought she saw something move in the corner of her eye. She flipped her visor back up, holding it this time. It needed tightening so it would stay up on her head when she needed it to and, seeing nothing unusual, assuming she’d imagined the movement, she was about to make the adjustment to her headgear when she got a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach. The flash of ‘something’ that she’d seen had been grey, hadn’t it? But she’d shut the door upstairs – Shadow couldn’t have got out, surely.
She was being daft. The visor had already fallen down again but as she picked up the rod held in the grip of a special clamp attached to the machine, she saw something again, and this time she knew it was Shadow. She put everything down and switched off the machine. No sudden movements as the front door was open and she knew he’d likely dart out of there if he thought this was a game. She’d let him out twice since she’d brought him home. He’d been hesitant both times and was easily spooked, but when she turned now he was eyeing the door as though it led to nirvana.
‘Here, Shadow,’ she said in a high-pitched voice, the one she used when it was feeding time. But he wasn’t stupid, his tummy would already be full from this morning’s breakfast and he didn’t budge. She took another step forward, repeated her entreaty. But when the wind caught the upstairs door, which she mustn’t have shut properly, it made an almighty bang against the wall and the cat scarpered.
Lucy ran out of the workshop after Shadow, who looked like he was in a race he didn’t intend to lose. She bolted down the path in the morning that might be creeping into daylight hours but was far from being bright. She held her visor up as she chased Shadow along The Street, looking out for icy patches just in case. Every now and then the cat stopped, turned, and copper eyes filled with mischief looked at her before he carried on running away.
Steel-toe-capped boots weren’t the best footwear to be running in either as Lucy legged it behind the bus stop, across the field and past the village Christmas tree, calling Shadow’s name. He’d run all the way over to the new log cabin, alongside it and behind. Lucy followed and around the back of the cabin lost sight of him. The brambles were overgrown, the owner obviously had some landscaping to do, but she searched fruitlessly, calling for him.
Please don’t let him be lost, Lucy muttered to herself. Please don’t let me be the woman who adopts a pet and sends it to a worse place than it came from.
Her bare arms began to feel the cold as she tramped back down the other side of the cabin, one hand holding up her visor. She looked in more of the scrub, her visor flopping down yet again, and this time she gave up with it. Face covered, she suspected she looked something like a knight from the Middle Ages with her headgear but all she really cared about now was finding Shadow.
She turned to walk along the front of the log cabin but yelped when she bumped into the solidity of a man she hadn’t expected, his chest hard beneath a chunky fisherman’s jumper. She took a couple of steps back and so did he. In fact, he went all the way back to the safety of the veranda at the front of the cabin.
‘I don’t know what you want,’ his deep voice rumbled, ‘but I don’t have anything to steal. And if it’s money you’re after, you’ll have no luck here.’
What on earth was he rambling on about? she wondered. And it was then she spotted Shadow.
The man spotted the cat too when Shadow decided to check out this stranger by jumping onto the railing of the veranda, and Shadow wasted no time being traitorous by sidling up to the man until the stranger scooped him up in one protective arm. ‘Please leave,’ he demanded as though she were a cat killer looking for her next victim.
‘Not without my cat,’ she said, forgetting her mask was down. He didn’t appear to have heard a word with