Chapter Twenty-Nine
With a yell of victory, they forced the thing open.
‘Yes!’ Frida shouted.
‘Sweet hairy webs!’ Moth howled.
Dian’s face shone. Their green hair curled in sweaty tangles around their forehead, and for a second Frida thought about hugging them.
Thankfully, she restrained herself.
Pale slanting light and the stench of manure pooled down from above and she quickly stood up on her toes, trying to peek her head through.
She guessed that if any axe-wielding stable hands were up there, they would have already made themselves known.
She could see the sack of grain that had fallen on its side, the simple stupid cause for their entrapment.
‘Give me a lift up,’ she called over her shoulder, gesturing quickly towards the hatch. There was no way she had the strength to pull herself up.
They looked at her askance. Any camaraderie of the last moments fading in the stench of horse dung.
Reluctantly, they obliged, carefully though, as if unsure where to put their hands.
Their fingers strong but tentative, a brief pressure, more awkward than successful, for in seconds Frida’s face was burning, and she realised what a terrible idea this was, the places where Dian’s fingers pressed through her uniform and into her skin were alive, as if on fire.
Their mossy scent as dizzying as a heady night at the Crown.
Hastily, she wriggled away. ‘Ah, um – it’s ok, I – don’t think that’s working,’ she stammered, breathless.
Dian dropped her and jumped back to the ground, looking nonplussed again as they cleared their throat, their face almost as flushed as Frida’s. ‘I’ll just get another of these boxes, shall I?’
Frida nodded rapidly. ‘Yes, good idea! More boxes. Smart! We can stack them.’ Because even if she had to dislocate her own shoulders, she wasn’t going through that again.
Dian, it seemed, agreed and it wasn’t long before they had a promising Jenga situation going on.
Precariously, Frida managed to balance on top as Moth scuttled in circles shouting half-helpful suggestions and Dian’s jaw locked, eyes glued on her every wobble.
Finally, she succeeded in pulling herself up, and lay there for a moment, panting amongst the hay and the manure, listening to the whispering horses.
When she finally looked back down, Dian’s face shimmered up at her.
‘Well, help me up!’ they snapped.
She sighed. Once she got her breath back, she hauled herself up to her feet.
A central walkway stretched towards a double-breasted stable door, the air thick with claustrophobic edges: the low ceiling, the restive pressure of the horses too accustomed to the dark.
It made her uneasy, and she was someone used to enclosed spaces, who understood the press and tang of bodies, musk and heat.
Someone brushed a whiskery huff against a stall door, of apple-tinged memories and sugar-dust. Another spoke with the echo of pounding hooves, thundering over an open field.
She caught the outline of a window behind one of the stalls and walked over to peer through the glass, glimpsing the rough stone wall of an alley.
She saw a ladder then, propped in a corner, and hurried to drag it back to the cellar. When she lowered it down, Dian climbed out with far more poise than she had done, only to flinch when their feet touched the straw-covered floorboards, a flash of fear crossing their dappled cheeks.
‘It’s ok,’ Frida tried to smile reassuringly.
‘I know,’ they snarled, and the raw expression on their face evaporated. She may as well have been watching a door slamming shut.
She inched back, clearing her throat, just as a few yards away, a rust-red stallion hung his handsome head over his stall.
Frida watched as Dian spun.
‘Hello,’ the fairy murmured, their voice immediately melting into something soft, with no barbs in sight.
What would it feel like, Frida wondered, if Dian spoke to her like that?
She had about as much chance of that as turning into a fairy herself, she thought with a rueful grin as Dian walked over to stroke the horse’s velvety muzzle.
He gave a neigh of pleasure when Dian leaned in to blow gently into his nostrils.
Frida’s guts twisted. Dian liked horses. Of course Dian liked horses.
Her eyes flicked towards where she could see the big stable doors, looming down the line of stalls. Darkness was already seeming to leak in through the cracks. How long had they been down in that cellar? Would someone come soon? It was a miracle no one had discovered them yet as it was.
‘Come on,’ she said, her heart sinking at having to break the tender moment between Dian and the stallion. ‘We have to hurry. We can’t stay here, we’re too exposed.’
Dian ignored her. ‘I have spoken one or two words with the horses in the groves, but this one does not speak the dialect I’ve learnt.’ They turned their head to Frida urgently. ‘Does he wish to be freed?’
Frida gaped at Dian. They could not free the horses. But before she could answer, the stallion blinked his liquid eyes at her, and Frida’s horse radio blazed on, vivid and whiskery. He sounded like hay and the stamp of hooves.
Dian continued stroking his nose. ‘What does he say?’ they asked quietly.
The stallion gazed at Frida. ‘Tell this creature of moss and rain I am content.’ Frida couldn’t help the relief that spiralled through her.
If he’d said he was miserable, well, she’d have had difficulty explaining that to Dian.
‘Only,’ the stallion went on, ‘if you see the other two-leggers, tell them that I wish for more apples.’
Frida relayed the message with alacrity.
But Dian was unsatisfied, insisting Frida ask more questions about his health and his comfort.
They made Frida find the food store and give out a supply of fresh grain.
Each second that passed made Frida more anxious.
Even though she had no real plan, other than to find Forge House, and maybe Fireheart after that, she couldn’t shift the feeling of urgency.
She had no idea how time travel worked. Even as they stood there, talking merrily to a horse, was Dian’s hawthorn forest continuing to twist its claws through the LEZ, cage by cage?
‘Ask the others if they are hungry,’ Dian said doggedly. Their face was set, mulish in a way Frida recognised. She could be similarly intractable.
Frantically, she glanced around the stable.
‘I can’t! We don’t have time to do this for all of them.
There must be over thirty horses in here.
’ Just dealing with the stallion had taken ten minutes, maybe more.
And the others were getting significantly more vocal, neighing and snorting, kicking their stalls as if they sensed the coming of anarchy.
Dian’s nostrils flared, hammering their foot. ‘Do it!’
‘No. I can’t. Someone will hear! I’m sorry.’
Dian gave Frida a look of absolute disgust, which withered her soul to the core. ‘I won’t leave these people,’ they ground out through clenched teeth.
Frida wanted to cry. ‘Dian. We’ll come back if we can, we’ll come back afterwards and ask each one of them personally if they need anything. But right now, we have to get moving. We’ve wasted enough time—’
‘Wasted time–’ Dian’s loathing however froze on their face as their head jerked, and their pointed ears swivelled dramatically. ‘Sea and skies,’ they hissed, the colour draining from their face.
Frida felt no sense of righteous justification though as she heard the sound of human voices on the other side of the door.
Dian grabbed Frida’s hand before she could do anything.
They’d pulled her down the walkway so quickly she didn’t even know what was happening.
The next second, the stable door opened, and two boys entered wearing woollen jerkins and caps, but Frida didn’t have time to gawp over the Pride-and-Prejudice-esque getup.
She was stumbling behind Dian, who had slipped them out of the door behind the boys just before the heavy wood creaked shut behind them.
The world blinked – and when she looked again, she and Dian were drenched in shimmering water as if encased in the very skin of a raindrop. The curved wall blending with the outside world, like a veil of beaded silver. She looked about herself, her eyes very round.
‘Awful, isn’t it?’ Moth muttered dryly in her ear.
Frida let out a disbelieving laugh. ‘Awful?’ she whispered, shaking her head and lifting her free hand.
The world was silver – silver like the glittery rushes of magic that had torn through the LEZ and ruined her life.
But here . . . no, not awful. Beautiful.
Tiny raindrops slipped and spun over her hand, refracting prisms of light, kaleidoscopic.
Since she’d left the LEZ and ridden through the skies with Lucky, her headache had slipped away.
Now she felt as if her mind was bursting with fireworks, her brain igniting with infinite galaxies.
Magic. This was magic, in its realest, truest sense.
In the raindrops, Dian’s body seemed to dance.
Droplets whirling around them in an aura of mist and stars.
Their head tilted back, tiny diamonds studding their damp face.
Their lips parted in unguarded pleasure.
She caught her breath, caught the wild, damp scent of moss, along with the faint sweetness of almonds.
This silver world was the loveliest thing she’d ever seen, but she didn’t have a chance to tell Dian this before their eyes flew open and they caught her watching.
A shadow crossed their face. With a growl, they started dragging her away from the stable.
They were holding onto her so hard, she could feel the small bones in her wrist grinding together.
It was the kind of grip where you really really want to let go but have to hold on tighter just to force yourself not to.
She knew the ilk – it was the way she held onto a bucket of rotten meat, when it had been left uneaten for too long and turned into something greenish, a home for maggots.
They hated her, then. Truly. She stumbled behind them, her entire body flushed.
It felt as if she was naked or something.
Or Dian was. She could hear her own heartbeat, she could hear Moth’s, and she could also feel Dian’s, as if that’s what powered this watery place.
Ba-dum, ba-dum. It was like they were swimming, their bodies inches apart in a rainstorm that was endless.
Somewhere, the rest of the world was just on the other side of this raindrop, but they were veiled and melted into the worlds. Just the three of them.
Ba-dum, ba-dum.
Too close. They were too close.
When Dian finally dropped her hand, it was almost a relief.
She came back to herself, panting, as the glittering veil collapsed and the colours muted, the sounds of the wind and the trees and the crunch of gravel beneath her boots jarring painfully.
She tried to remind herself that Dian was Dian, and the last thing she wanted was to be any closer to their unearthly magic.
But she couldn’t help feeling completely lost at the same time, as if she’d just seen the world as it was meant to be, and this harsh real thing was a hard substitute.
‘Oh, thank goodness,’ Moth’s silken thready voice jerked her back, and Frida could have hugged him.
She realised the spider was perched on her left shoulder, rubbing his glittering pedipalps as if to shake off the rain from his fur.
‘I don’t know why fairy magic has to be so showy,’ he groused into Frida’s ear, finishing with a knowing purr, ‘It’s damned hard to think through all that glitter, don’t you agree? ’
Frida’s ears went pink. ‘Uh huh.’ Quickly, she focused on looking around and gathering her wits. Miraculously, her clothes were dry.
Moth chuckled.
They were under the boughs of a small grove of ash trees.
They couldn’t have come too far, she thought, for it hadn’t been like the first time when Dian had seemed to whip them from A to B with a blink.
Turning, she saw some sprawling wooden buildings not too far away and guessed those were the stables.
Behind them, in the gloaming – for it was dusk now, the air grainy with the dying sunlight – she felt a raw feeling in her chest as she saw the creamy shape of a big unmistakable house lower down in the valley.
‘Forge House,’ she whispered, awed. ‘You did it, Dian.’
Dian, however, wasn’t listening. They were angled away, their body arched as if their limbs had locked, their head turned towards something through the trees that Frida couldn’t see.
Dian’s ears swivelled rapidly as Frida tried to catch a glimpse through the foliage too, but all she could see was green, opaque in the fading light.
‘What is it?’ she asked, suddenly queasy.
Dian ignored her, instead pushing past and hurrying down a small winding path.
‘Hurry Frida Rose,’ Moth called, bobbing on Dian’s shoulder.
With no other choice, she chased after them, her heart sounding in her throat, even though she didn’t know why.
Within moments, the air started to feel wrong, and it wasn’t just the transition from sparkling raindrops back to reality.
She should have been able to hear birdsong, the sound of rodents rustling, bees buzzing in the heavily laden summer trees. But there was nothing. Only silence.
Then, as if the trees suddenly remembered their own power, the boughs pulled back and sound rushed in all at once.
That’s when she heard a low terrible keening, recognisable in any language.