6
They hurried on; meanwhile, the air grew still until their voices seemed to ring in hollowness. Emily recognised the feeling that made her so uneasy: the silence before a storm. Before long, it burst. The wind began to whip dust into their eyes so that their steps became exhausted against its force. Soon, the clouds lowered, dimming the light almost to darkness. Hailstones began to thrash down on them, each one as big as a pixy hand. Hurled by the gale, they struck with a painful bruising force.
“Quickly!” Emily shouted. “Turn your backs to the wind and gather hailstones, we’ll build an ice wall.”
Labouring through a painful beating, the pixies built a wall. Adam and Emily, so much bigger, gathered great freezing armfuls of hail and built ten times faster than their companions.
“The
