Chapter Five
The Hawthorn of Higgleton Common stood at the very top of a wooded hill at the far eastern corner of the LEZ.
The path that led up to it was at the end of a long cul-de-sac of oak trees, between the vampire bats and the manticore.
As Frida pulled Jennifer to a stop, lofty branches clattered together, and for the first time, she looked back up at the sky. A sudden deep rumble of thunder boomed.
‘Oh . . . fuck,’ she breathed.
She sat there gawping. The entire western edge of the sky was bruised, violent clouds heavy with rain crackling above the horizon, sucking up the night and turning it purple. She lifted her radio with shaking hands.
The silence that followed was broken only by the branches of the oaks rattling, and a cold, crotchety wind lifting her hair. Her stomach was in knots before Cliff crackled into being.
He sounded harried. ‘Swan2, go ahead.’
For days, they’d been checking their weather apps. Not a single one had said anything about a storm. ‘Ah,’ she murmured uncertainly, suddenly realising that Cliff was probably mid-aneurism right now. ‘Can you see these clouds?’
‘We can!’ Cliff shouted in reply. ‘They look like proper bastards, don’t they?’
She couldn’t have agreed more. They seemed to swell above the canopy even as she sat there.
What were they going to do? What would happen if the dragon’s plane couldn’t land?
Suddenly, she didn’t want to be alone. ‘I was just going to feed the Hawthorn, but maybe I should come straight to you!’ She knew what he’d say, even before the words left her mouth.
A tree is just as important as a T. rex, Frida.
A dragon wasn’t a T. rex, but Cliff did enjoy alliteration.
‘I mean—’ she stammered, trying to recover herself.
‘I don’t— Sorry Cliff, I guess I’m just nervous. ’
‘It’s ok.’ His soothing voice boomed through the radio. ‘Me too. I know the anticipation is torment, but we’ll be fine even if it does end up raining a bit. Stick to the schedule, keep busy, and make sure you’re here within the hour. He’s crossing the Channel now.’
Routine had always settled her nerves, and Cliff knew it. The daily rota that he created every morning was her anchor.
She nodded bravely. ‘Copy that, Papa Bear.’
To her left, the huge wood crept over the hill in tangled, sweet-smelling thickets, the epitome of ye olde English woodland.
She set out up the winding yellow-brick path, wide and accommodating between the trees for the all-terrain wheelchairs the LEZ supplied, just as fat, cold drops started to fall, hitting her face.
Naturally she’d left her waterproofs in her locker, because why would she need them when the internet had practically sworn on the life of the dark web that there was zero per cent chance of rain?
She picked up the pace, following the whimsically carved signposts directing her up the hill.
Hoary spotlights led the way, casting shadows across the cobbles with the regularity of a marching beat.
She could feel the pressure of the coming storm, but Cliff was right.
It would be fine. They’d planned for everything: Plan A, Plan B, Plan C .
. . all the way to Plan Z. The steady wet greenery was soothing, too.
It held memories of long-ago Extraordinary Waffle picnics with her mum, a moment of calm after the thrill of seeing Fireheart or one of the other creatures.
Nothing had felt better than laying down in the perfectly mown grass of the meadow at the top of the hill and watching clouds scudding behind the massive branches of the great and legendary Hawthorn.
When the first streak of lightning arced across the sky though, she jumped like a startled rabbit and began to run.
Soon the rain was pounding down, the trees clattering around her ears.
By the time she reached the top and the meadow loomed before her, the storm had reached cataclysmic proportions.
Her torch was useless, the beam bouncing pathetically back into her eyes, as rain pelted down at her in horizontal sheets.
This was definitely not fine!
She skidded across the circular meadow towards the huge glass dome at its centre where, within, the Hawthorn waited for her, untouched by the lashing rain.
There was a feeling in the air, an electric charge that made her neck prickle.
Thunder rumbled and lightning cracked, making the Hawthorn look as if it was on fire.
She could barely hear the wards humming, rain hitting the dome like pellets as she reached for the security panel.
It felt like an age before the doors finally beeped their acceptance.
Yanking them open, she stumbled inside. The hammering wind against the roof was deafening. Panicked voices burst from her radio, and when she shouted into the mouthpiece asking Cliff what she should do, his voice came back agitated and urgent:
‘Feed the Hawthorn and get over here! And be careful!’
‘Ok, ok,’ she said to herself, trying to breathe, taking comfort in the fact that the tree, at least, seemed unbothered, a cool lodestone in the dark.
The leafless canopy towered over her. Closing her eyes, she tried to calm herself by remembering her mother’s melodic voice, and the scent of roses that had been her perfume.
‘This tree is over eight hundred years old, Friduska.’ Her mum had told her the story, probably fifty times, maybe more. ‘It used to live far, far away, in a place called Higgleton Common, in the middle of one of the oldest, most special woods in England.’
Frida carefully stepped over the map of the roots, her boots squelching.
‘But one day, the government decided they wanted to build a super-fast railway between London and Scotland, and the wood was in the way. They didn’t think the wood was important.
Other people did though, and they organised one of the biggest protests in this country’s history.
For months, people slept in hammocks in the trees. But in the end, the government won.’
‘The wood was cut down?’ Little Frida had asked in a horrified whisper.
Her mum had nodded, pale white face solemn in the frame of her dark fringe. ‘Yes, Friduska. But the Hawthorn contained so much power, not even the government could destroy it. People brought it here to protect it, and here it has stood, ever since.’
Frida, at that point no taller than one of the mountainous roots snaking out of the ground, remembered looking up at the tree in awe. ‘And it survived.’
But her mum had looked so sad, the branches of the Hawthorn casting heavy shadows over her tired face. ‘Yes, it was a miracle. The tree survived, but it never recovered. It hasn’t grown a single leaf, berry or blossom since. It’s like it’s asleep, don’t you think?’
‘Like Sleeping Beauty,” Little Frida had said, excited, because her mum had just read her the tale.
Her mum had nodded, and Frida hadn’t understood the grief written on her face, not then.
It wasn’t until later, after her mum had died, that Frida had wondered if her mum hadn’t seen something of herself in the tree, as someone who’d also been uprooted, forcibly transplanted elsewhere.
The thought had made Frida uneasy, for she’d thought her mum had been happy with their life in England, so she’d packed it away, like a lot of things, in her rosewood box, because she had no way of knowing the answer.
It wasn’t helped by the fact that the Forest keepers called the glass dome that surrounded the tree ‘the Coffin’.
Shuddering, pushing away this train of thought, Frida gave the gnarled ancient bark a friendly pat.
The Hawthorn, over the years, had lost so much power that it had been recategorized from a Level 8 to a Level 1 – the extraordinary equivalent of a toaster.
Frida opened a packet of Cliff’s special tree nutrient mix and tipped the sour-smelling granules around the roots.
They did this every shift, not that it made a difference.
The thorny mass of the tree loomed skyward, making no comment, the dull bark a lifeless grey.
Quickly, she took out her phone to edit the spreadsheet shared online amongst keepers, noting the humidity, temperature, air pressure.
Under weather conditions, she typed, ‘Completely Apocalyptic’, and was just about to make her retreat when a new message popped up on their Swans group chat.
Hamish had sent a photo of the dragon; one they’d all been given from the Bolivian rescue centre months ago.
Violet from head to toe, and monumentally big, the dragon had a tail like a forked mace, teeth like knives, and a sad, boxy face.
Tonight, Hamish had superimposed Issy into the photo, and the violet dragon was holding what looked like a gigantic broom between his teeth, using it to give Issy a belly rub.
Clearly designed to take her mind off the storm, the photo did the job.
Frida burst out laughing, followed by a nasal, unstoppable snort: trademark Frida.
After a rapid-fire exchange, confirming that both her friends were already at Dragon’s Deep – What the hell is this weather; Terrifying; Don’t crash into any trees, Fri!
– she glanced up through the roof of the Coffin and wished she hadn’t.
The clouds were the oddest colour, like bruised plums. Another bolt of lightning split the sky, making her jump.
It seemed to go on forever, the whole world flashing white, the thunder so loud it sent a shockwave through her body.
Patterns of light snaked across the backs of her eyelids.
‘Come on,’ she schooled herself. She thought she caught the bitter tang of sulphur and maybe something metallic too.
She’d never been afraid of storms, but she’d never seen one quite like this.
Her uniform felt like it was crackling. Clutching the empty packet of tree food, she tried to step away from the trunk, but something snagged on her shirt – a branch, a thorny finger perhaps.
Just as she reached back to untangle herself, another tremendous fork of lightning tore through the blood-stained sky.
A colossal streak of purple light, like a burning spear aiming straight for her heart.
Frida screamed as the lightning struck, slamming into the glass like a meteorite as the night exploded with a flash of blinding pink.
The Coffin, the Hawthorn, her. She threw her arms up, the impact pitching her off her feet and sending her skidding across the wet grass.
A thousand crystal shards rained down. Somewhere she heard an earth-shattering crack, a sound so huge it was like the world being torn in two.
She knew it was the Hawthorn as an electrified keening filled the air, a terrified howl that seemed to rend flesh and bone.
Through swimming vision, she saw the ruins of her mother’s favourite tree, purple smoke and fire roiling around its charred trunk.
Jagged glass teeth illuminated against the night.
The earth littered with broken shards, ash, dust, ruined spotlights and chunks of wood, shining an eerie violet.
She saw herself with that same ethereal brightness, as if she was on fire too.
But she didn’t have time to process this as a few yards away, she saw them.
A person.
They were pooled in fierce shadows. Crumpled on the burnt earth, their features were in darkness, but she could just make out a long, angular body, curled around themselves.
As the fire gradually cleared from her eyes, she saw that they were heaving as if in terrible pain.
Their hair – as green and dark as the leaves of trees at midnight – was flung out around them, spilling across the ashen ground.
Frida’s heartbeat was faster, louder, wilder than it had ever been.
Fear propelled her to try to stand, too fast, but she just made it onto her knees, her mouth opening to cry out, to ask them if they were ok, to do something, anything to help them.
No sound came out. Desperately, she lifted her violet-glowing hands towards them before her vision blurred again.
Darts of pain shot through her, making her see meteors, making her feel as if she was the meteor, the stars, the entire galaxy.
Everything bright, like scalding fire.
Everything pink, like flamingo feathers and rose petals.
And in the next heartbeat: total darkness. She knew no more after that.