down in the scrubby dirt.
I lie down beside her, our feet touching and the ground digging into my back, and we stare up at the gloomy sky.
By lying like this the clouds blowing fast overhead don’t look like animals any more, but monsters. In the distance there is a rumbling of very quiet thunder which makes it even worse. We lie here scaring ourselves until a giant purple-black cloud sails up, making its shadow right over us and bringing a cold wind with it that whips up the dust, sharp on to my face. But I am busy thinking. There is a strange mistiness under the cloud, as though parts of it are breaking away and flying off in the wind. I am trying to figure out what it is doing when a piece of the sky hits me between the eyes.
To begin with I think the boys have come back and are throwing peach stones at us, until I see the chunk of ice at my feet, which is unusual. I sit up and shout, Hey! But no one is there. A second one hits the top of my head, and then another smacks me on the back. Now big lumps of ice are falling all around. It starts off as a pattering, but quickly becomes a smashing and a clattering of icy stones, bouncing off the rocky hill, and my less rocky head. Where they hit my bare arms and legs it stings and burns.
Come on! says Margot, pointing at a big fir tree nearby. We dash under the umbrella of branches, pressing ourselves up against the trunk. The branches are thick and spread wide from the trunk but the ice is coming in sideways and snapping around my feet.
The sky suddenly lights up in a big flash, a crack of thunder booms and I can’t help my tears.
Don’t worry, says Margot, it won’t last long.
I don’t like it.
It will go past soon, Margot says. You saw how hard the wind is blowing.
But the sky is dark all around and so many hailstones are falling so fast that I can’t see anything beyond the tree.
Margot, I want Maman, I cry.
Hang on, Pea.
There is another flash of bright white light and a smashing like cymbals by my ears. I think about climbing up into the tree, but there are no footholds, the needles are spiky and blowing in the wind. I hug myself against it closer, pressing one ear to the scratchy bark and covering the other with my hand. Margot presses up behind me. She starts to sing.
I hear thunder! I hear thunder! Hark, don’t you? Hark, don’t you? Pitter patter raindrops, pitter patter . . . she stops without finishing the song.
Through the thinning shower of ice, a shadow appears on the path. It is moving quickly towards us, with one glowing white eye and a black coat flapping in the wind. It’s a storm-witch! I scream. But it keeps on coming and I don’t know what to do. I keep screaming as it gets closer and closer. Then I see. It is not a witch at all, but Claude, holding a coat over his head and staggering towards us, fast.
What are you doing here? I shout, because Claude belongs to the meadow not Windy Hill. But he doesn’t answer. He grabs my arm hard, pulling me away from the tree and under his coat-roof. Through panting breaths he says, Go!
The thunder seems to be all around now, the skies growling angrily as we stumble through the pelting ice across the high pasture and down a dirt track. But it is not the one that leads to our house.
It’s the wrong way! I shout, but Claude says nothing.
We are moving too fast for me to shout in his ear. I am holding on to Claude’s T-shirt and being sort of dragged along. I am not at all happy, but before I have a chance to concentrate properly on what I would rather be doing we are arriving at a big stone house. I recognise it – it is the one we saw this morning from the road. Claude is not taking us to the house, though, but towards a barn next to it. As he rattles the latch on the big wooden door, another crack of thunder shakes my feet and the sky lights up as though someone has lifted its lid off. At last the door swings open and I am shoved inside. I stand at