Pine Francine Toon Quotes

I didna see anything. Sorry.’ ‘You don’t get it.’ She wishes she could move through the world like Billy, the way a duck crosses a pond, without thinking what’s beneath it.

She doesn’t smell unpleasant, but familiar, of how she imagines the moon might smell, or a flower that only bloomed in winter. The woman shows her a silver ring on her finger, two hands holding a crowned heart, and then holds it out in her palm. They hear distant explosions.

Two words that sound soft together. He never says too much though, only that her mother was a healer and different to anyone else.

My mum.’ The images of death are involuntary and relentless: crushed snail shells, veins in meat, vampire teeth, soil filling a mouth.

...she can’t shake the discomfort of last night. It has seeped into the daylight.

Up in her bedroom she lays her tarot cards out on the bed. A draught creeps across her shoulder blades and, for a moment, she gets a strange feeling of a hand, reaching out of the darkness. She shakes her head and shoulders and shuffles the dog-eared cards. She flicks three across her bed, face down, then puts her hand over the first card and asks it to tell her what is going on. The next one she asks what is getting in the way. The third she asks what will fix the problem.

by guilt. ‘So,’ Vairi continues, ‘how’d you find her?

The springy moss underfoot and the layers of pine needles soak up any sound.

Whenever Lauren feels scared in the dark, she lets it wrap around her, opening up her other senses until she becomes part of it, moving as silently as she can. She creeps to the stone hearth and sweeps out the grey ash into a dustpan. Then she piles the fire with kindling, as she often does when her father is out in the evening, laying down a piece of firelighter with half a peat block and striking

The clouds hang heavy, like wet wool, and stars start to appear through the trees like large, shining stones at the bottom of a river. The temperature has fallen with the sun and Lauren hugs her padded arms to her padded body. ‘It’s already dark. Come on,’ he says. ‘I’ve got homework to do.’ The thought of school tomorrow sits in her stomach. They gather various belongings and treasures scattered around the camp – some plastic binoculars, a handmade catapult, a rusty teapot, a length of rope – and put them inside the hut. They argue about whether to take home the packet of bourbons that have been stolen from Billy’s larder, before deciding to leave it in the supply tin, half buried in the frozen ground. They walk back down the looping path, banked by snow-laden ferns, towards Clavanmore. She likes Billy walking beside her like this, in his Aberdeen beanie. He’s like a big brother, but with a better face and hair. Lauren rolls the silver ring between her index finger and thumb, in her pocket. Darkness seeps into the forest and the white snow fades to a dark grey, then darker still, until the world is black.

She looks at him as if he’s the last line on an optician’s wall chart.