Read Firestar for Free Online Page A

suspiciously , was so special about Morven?
    Clarissa’s engine grumbled a bit as she reached the top of a rise and turned into the narrow road that led into the wilds of Glenmorven. Lying between the comfortable sweep of high mountains, it was a beautiful glen, Neil thought. He could understand why Shona loved it so much. A brown stream ran along a valley floor that was dappled in sunlight. “There it is,” Shona said, pointingupwards, “the big, high mountain with the steep sides and round top.
That’s
Morven! Isn’t it fantastic ?”
    Neil lifted his eyes to the hills and gasped. It
was
incredible but not in the sense she meant. The steep, narrow sides of the towering mountain and its gently rounded summit certainly made it stand out against the other sprawling peaks in the area but it wasn’t this that made Neil and Clara look at one another in amazement. Shona, seeing the look of complete surprise on their faces, was pleased at the impact the first sight of Morven had made on them. Lewis, too, grinned as both Neil and Clara looked at him questioningly.
    “Thought you’d find it interesting,” he said blandly.
    They did. Before they’d left Edinburgh, Lewis had phoned them and asked them to wear their firestones. Now they knew why — for the minute Morven had appeared before them they’d felt their firestones turn suddenly heavy round their necks and a sense of magic tingle through them. Neil’s face lit up. Morven, it would seem, wasn’t just any old mountain. Morven was, very definitely, a magic mountain. Clara smiled and they looked at one another in excitement. All of a sudden this holiday was turning into something else!
    It was later in the day, when Mr Ferguson was taking Clarissa back to old Hughie that Shona
suggested
that they all go with him.
    Hughie’s cottage was further down the glen, set in a hollow surrounded by trees. It looked a secret place, its tiny windows almost covered by brownthread-like strands of creeper that covered the cottage . Green buds were pushing up here and there, however, with the promise of spring.
    “It doesn’t look much just now,” Shona said as they pushed open the garden gate, “but in summer the whole cottage is covered in greenery.”
    Banks of snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils swept between the trees towards the side of the house while the back, Shona told them, gave onto the lower slopes of the mountain itself. The front door had a tiny porch and a brass knocker. Hughie, however, had heard the car and opened the door as they walked up the path.
    He was quite a short man and looked, thought Clara, like a benevolent gnome. Lewis shook his hand, wondering what the MacLeans would make of Hughie. The cottage certainly seemed to have a magic of its own and, from the penetrating look that Hughie had given him on his first visit with Shona, he’d sensed that the small, bright-eyed man had somehow felt the magic in him. Mind you, he thought, he
had
been wearing the magic ring that Prince Casimir had given him. Not only that, he’d also had a firestone round his neck; a gift from the MacArthurs. And since Hughie’s cottage was at the foot of Morven, he reasoned that perhaps it wasn’t all that surprising that Hughie recognized magic when he met it.
    The cottage was plainly furnished but the kitchen was a comfortable, homely room that ran the length of the back of the house and was obviously his living quarters. It was long and low with a beamed ceiling, loads of armchairs and settees, avast kitchen table and an enormous open fireplace where huge logs crackled and spat. A delicious smell permeated the room for Hughie had been baking.
    “You’re just in time for tea,” he said with a smile, indicating the tray of little cakes, fresh from the oven.
    They sat round the old wooden table and although the orange juice was fresh and the cakes delicious, it was the view from the long, low stretch of the kitchen windows that took their breath away. Hughie’s back garden