Hazel
Warden is only the second person I’ve confessed my lack of background to. Maybe it was because he has nightmares, maybe it’s this place, the Underhill, which made me do it, but regardless, he knows.
He knows I am not who I might appear to be. In the Night Lands, that could be a death sentence. But to Warden, it is something he wants to help me find answers to.
I find it warming, even in the incredibly chill air as I struggle into my dress and attach the sword to my waist, slipping on my boots and rubbing at my shoulders vigorously.
Note to self: Next time I fall through a portal, bring a coat.
Warden makes swift work of pulling down the shelter. As he packs it away, he hands me an apple.
“Just how many of these did Hilda give you?”
“She knows what a Brag likes,” Warden says with a sly grin.
My blood heats and it really shouldn’t. I might have shared a kiss which made my toes curl with Warden but that doesn’t mean anything.
He could go around kissing everyone for all I know.
Especially pretty witches like Hilda. I doubt very much I’m feeling jealousy.
That would be stupid and I don’t do stupid.
I touch the hilt of the sword, and the heat diminishes. I take a bite from the apple, and Warden grunts.
“What?” I say, probably with too much force.
“Nothing,” Warden replies, hoisting the saddlebags onto his shoulder. “I think I might have picked up a Ley Line,” he adds.
“Near here?”
“Not so far away,” Warden says as he transforms into his Brag form and helps me onto his back. “I feel them pricking at me.”
“Can we trust them? You heard what Peggy said.”
“The Wyrm is mistaken. The lines cannot be affected by any magic. They are set, no matter where you are.”
My thoughts swirl around me as we pick our way back to the main track and through the forest. My confession to Warden still sits strangely within my abdomen.
It’s not I feel I shouldn’t have said anything, but that when I say it out loud, I feel like I should have done more to find out who I am.
Especially in the presence of Warden, who has clearly sworn to do whatever necessary to get his mortality back.
It doesn’t take us long to exit the trees and find ourselves on brown moorland which stretches away into the mist as if it doesn’t have an end.
“I see the line,” Warden calls out.
I watch the silvery skein which flows between two small undulations growing stronger as we get closer.
“I see it too,” I say, marvelling at the way it glitters in the limited light.
“You do?” Warden turns his head to one side, putting his face in profile.
“It looks like tinsel.”
“Tinsel.”
“Yeah, I don’t know what it is either.” I shake my head at the term I used and yet don’t have any idea where it came from.
Warden rubs at the scruff on his chin.
“Can you feel it as well?” he asks.
The second he mentions it, I feel the spark inside me, like I’ve been hooked onto something which doesn’t want to let go.
“Yes,” I half whisper. “It’s like a pulling in my chest.”
“You are connected to the lines, my lady,” Warden rasps. “Very few creatures in the Yeavering can see the lines, and even fewer can feel them.” He turns a little further so he can see my face. “What are you?”
“I’m a tavern owner who knows her staff can’t manage in her absence,” I respond. “And I need to get back before it all falls apart.”
“And you are a female without magic who can see Ley Lines,” Warden rumbles. “A conundrum.”
“If you say so.”
“Which way do you want to go, my lady?” Warden asks me.
I stare at the line. It seems to be pulsing in one direction.
“Left,” I say, noticing there is no path leading that way. “We need to go left.”
“Good choice,” Warden replies, his back end dancing in a way I know means I have to hang on. “It’s time to leave the Underhill, hopefully as swiftly as we entered it.”
Then he explodes under me, and it’s all I can do to hold onto him, my arms clasped as tightly as I can around his waist, my face pressed hard against his back as those enormous hooves thunder forwards.
The wind and mist whip at my exposed skin, my skirts flying and my hair tangling as his speed increases, the rhythm of his gallop strangely hypnotic.
On the occasions I open my eyes against the searing wind, I see the landscape is changing. It’s getting brighter and the mist is retreating.
Finally, Warden’s pace diminishes, and I’m able to relinquish my death grip on the creature who cannot die.
We’re on a beach. Ozone fills my nostrils.
A sharp breeze lifts my hair. Ahead the sea is a green-grey, becalmed as it disappears into the fret offshore.
Small waves roll in, making a soft whooshing sound, but otherwise, there is only silence.
I sit more upright and see the gigantic rock which sits just offshore and was partially hidden by Warden’s bulk. Seabirds circle it, but they’re noiseless and eerie. A great bridge forms a connection between the rock and the land, a vast archway framing the sea and sky beyond.
I feel like I’m looking at something almost familiar, but I can’t grasp what it is, the memory snapping itself out of my reach like a ribbon in a breeze.
“What is that?” I ask Warden.
“It is the Heddon cave,” he says, his words pulled from him by the wind. “We need to go through it in order to exit the Underhill.”
“Presumably once the tide goes out.” I look at the waves lapping through the archway.
“There is no tide here,” Warden rasps. “There’s a reason it’s difficult to exit the Underhill, even if, it would seem, it is easy enough to enter it.”
“I can swim,” I suggest.
At least I think I can.
“Swimming is not the risky part,” Warden says. “It is what is beneath the waves which poses the greatest danger.”
“And what’s that?”
“The Shellycoat.”