Chapter Forty-Nine #2
An empty space yawned open in her chest, bigger than she’d imagined possible.
And as silent tears spilled over her cheeks, the pops and cracks grew to a deafening height.
She watched as fault lines started to appear beneath her feet and pieces of the ground began to crumble.
Falling into some invisible pit. It made no sense and yet, it made perfect sense.
Dian had left her.
Moth hadn’t even said goodbye.
The earth itself should shatter.
Her eyes burned from staring at the space Dian had occupied, but she knew they weren’t coming back.
They were stubborn, just like she was. She started moving as if on autopilot up towards the distant woods.
She didn’t think about where she was going.
It was like an invisible thread was tightening around her waist, pulling her towards the purple dragon, who’d by some impossible grace made her part of him, him part of her, who had turned her eyes violet. ‘I’m coming, Lucky,’ she whispered.
The earth moved under her. The emptiness grew with every step.
She could no longer smell the growing things or the rain.
She didn’t know it was possible to miss someone as much as she missed her mother, but as the ground cracked, she understood that she missed Dian, just like that.
The same, and not. Less, and more. Occasionally she saw a creature scurrying for safety.
A raven barrelling through the last pale stars.
A fox fleeing to their den. For a little while, a young brown hare with amber eyes loped beside her, and when they went their separate ways, Frida somehow felt even worse.
Around her, cracks became fissures, faults became crevasses.
A darkness that seemed to swallow light opened within, and she paled to look, as if reality itself was pulling apart.
There was a far-off crack of thunder and not too long after that, a thwack of lightning.
Frida whimpered and covered her head with her hands.
Then she heard someone howl her name.
‘LITTLE STINK!’
Slowly, unbelievably, she lifted her head.
‘LITTLE STINK!’ She heard Lucky cry.
Gasping for breath, with her heart in her ears and thunder ricochetting around the valley and the earth breaking into galactic, impossible crevasses, she began to run.
‘I’m coming!’ she shouted. The wind whipped away the words, but she shouted until her voice was hoarse. ‘I’m coming, Lucky!’
The trees swished and whooshed. Another crack of lightning lit up the sky, and she caught sight of him in the midst of the roiling branches.
A huge purple mountain, appearing like a miracle.
Her heart surged. Lucky, with his forked tail and oversized paws, fire-bright wings and raggedy half-grown beard.
Even as new chasms to nothing split open, she realised that he was digging, sending dirt and soil and rock in dramatic rainbows over his massive shoulders.
She faltered. No. She wasn’t ready. She had to find Dian and Moth.
‘Lucky,’ she gasped.
‘Hurry!’ He called to her, chest deep in mud, and his eyes were stretched wide like pools of distressed gold. ‘Hurry, little stink. I cannot stop it!’
‘What is happening?’ she cried, racing for him.
‘I don’t know!’ he bellowed, although he didn’t stop digging.
‘Oh dear, oh dear! I do not know what is happening! Only that time has run out.’ She could hear the fear in his voice and that struck fear through her too, greater than any she’d felt before.
Was this what happened when a dragon’s heart shattered?
That’s when she remembered.
Dian still had the Jewel.
She hadn’t taken it back.
She couldn’t even return to the terracotta dragon with the broken pieces.
She’d failed, in every possible way.
Suddenly she saw a sparkle at the edge of her vision, and her heart convulsed.
‘Dian!’ she cried.
At the edge of the trees, the unearthly faces of fairies materialised. She spun and leapt towards them, vaulting yawning crevasses as hope made her see stars within the depths.
‘Dian!’ she cried again, scanning their faces: oak-supreme, rowan-berry, ancient-yew, handsome-pine, apple tree, and no . . . Her heart sank. Dian was not amongst them.
‘Do you know where Dian is?’ she called to them. ‘I have to find them!’
The oak-supreme just looked down at her, their face more wan than she remembered. She gasped, shocked by their dishevelled oak leaf hair, the chaotic mist that wafted around them, fast and swirling. Still their eyes were pure white and deathly cold as they peered down their long, immaculate nose.
‘Dian,’ they said their name as if it tasted rotten, ‘is not here.’
Frida’s ire flared. ‘Yes, but do you know where they are?’
‘Little stink . . .’ Lucky cried urgently.
She ignored him, hurrying forward, every inch of her will used to hold the gaze of the oak fairy. She’d faced worse by now. ‘In the house, I have to tell you—’
‘Dian has already told us,’ the rowan-berry fairy snapped, peering over the oak-supreme’s shoulder.
Frida whipped her head around. ‘They’ve been here?’
‘Of course.’ The rowan-berry’s six eyes were masked with boredom, but Frida saw the ashen tinge to their skin, the fear hidden in their clenched teeth.
She sank back, the air leaving her lungs in a whoosh. ‘So, you know. About the wards, about what’s happening in the house? About what’s coming?’