Chapter Thirty-Two
Frida didn’t know where Dian was going, but she trailed after them blindly.
Behind her, she could still feel the unicorn, and she felt upside down like a compass without its magnitude: wrong.
She tried desperately to shake off the feeling, but after the next turn, a squat stone building appeared out of the shadows, its tiled roof just visible through the snarled branches of a forbidding wych elm.
Dark toothed leaves towered over the path, clusters of winged seeds dusting the ground.
Frida stared up at the building, suddenly remembering this was where she’d been going all along.
‘We have to get in there,’ Dian barked.
She darted a surprised look at them. ‘Uh, yeah.’ But suddenly, she wasn’t so sure.
Wards positively oozed off this place. Dian’s tall silhouette was already slipping beneath the elm though.
Within seconds, they were urgently running their shaking hands over the heavy wooden door, trying to find a way to get in.
Not warded itself then, Frida thought with a frown, shuddering as she drew closer.
She could feel the upside-down power, the un-magics, in the atoms around her, clawing and jagged.
Darkness pooled coldly, the heavy toothy branches of the elm blocking her view of the stars.
An ornate sign in wrought iron lettering gleamed in the arched doorway.
She peered at it, although she already knew what it would say.
The Old Forge.
She recited under her breath, from memory, ‘Between the 1820s and 1830s, the Oxford-educated scientist Sir Henry Gladstone, under the patronage of Joshua Beaufort, 3rd Earl of Marlow, set up his laboratory in the Old Forge, in the grounds of Forge House and became the first person in the world to start testing warding technology.’ There had been a plaque here, there would be a plaque here, in two hundred years.
In a trance, she traced the empty space on the stone where it would be installed by the National Trust and felt a ghostly tingle between her shoulder blades.
The Old Forge was made of the same large blocks of limestone that had been used to build the main house, though it was a much smaller, older building.
She hadn’t gone inside on her tour. It had been shut for maintenance.
She scanned the stonework, the surrounding trees, and the dark pathway around her feet for any signs of those insulated wires she’d seen at the dragon’s cage, but whatever linked this building with the other cages was probably buried.
She sighed, wishing she’d paid more attention in physics class.
In the LEZ, she’d assumed the wards were pumped under the ground, brought to the fences in a system that looked about as intelligible as a doodle drawn by an over-sugared toddler.
The wires she’d seen at the terracotta dragon’s enclosure suggested as much, but the actual mechanics were a mystery.
Some part of her really hoped to find large, polished switches inside, one of which would kindly be labelled, ‘Dragon’s Enclosure’.
She’d flip it off, they’d head back to the dragon, and the terracotta creature would promptly tell her exactly where to find her Jewel, then she could go back to the future and save the LEZ and her friends.
But it didn’t seem so simple anymore.
Even if she could turn off the wards and talk to the terracotta dragon, how could she disable the dragon’s wards, and not the unicorn’s?
She needed to talk to the unicorn too, to discover what had happened to him.
If he knew any information about his attackers, she could tell the sisters, and they’d be able to track them down.
And after that, why stop there? If she was going to talk to the unicorn, she could talk to the basilisk, and the broonies, the golden stags, the elephump and the twelve sapphire friperits.
But turning off all the wards wasn’t as simple as just flipping a switch.
She was still a zookeeper, despite appearances.
The wards, flawed or not, were there for a reason: to keep everyone safe.
The sisters, Sir Joshua and any keepers around here – they wouldn’t understand.
They’d be angry, she was sure, at first, and scared.
If she acted without consulting them, they might just brand her a criminal, in league with a fairy.
And they hadn’t even located Dian’s friends yet!
Although the moon was hidden, she could feel the brightness rising, time ticking along, inexorable.
‘It won’t open,’ Dian cursed, the voluptuous line of their body braced against the door snapping her out of her trance.
They slammed again against the heavy wood, the bunch of their muscles quivering, and Frida quickly stepped in to add her own strength.
She knew it was hopeless though. Soon they were both wrung out, the door stubbornly refusing to budge, the oak scarred with age as though it had survived at least a few armoured sieges.
There were tiny windows, but although she tried to peek through the panes, it was too dark to see anything inside. Her hands lifted in defeat.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said uselessly, although a part of her felt relieved.
If they couldn’t get inside, maybe their only option was to try Forge House, with its warm oil-lamp glow and the soft chatter of people within.
Maybe if she could get one of the sisters on their own .
. . Just as she was about to suggest this though, she felt Dian’s hand slipping through hers, the heat of their fingertips entwining with her own.
In a weird sort of slow motion, she heard Moth swearing and saw the bright leap of him spring off Dian’s shoulder and onto the edge of the nearest windowsill, slipping into a crack between the stones.
She saw Dian’s jaw clench, the light catching the strong, arched line of their neck as their eyes flashed resolutely.
Then, like before, she was pulled into the raindrops.
It was not like before though. Not at all.
This time, it felt like she was being shoved unceremoniously underwater.
The world tilted as it does when a wave knocks you sideways, slamming you into a raging torrent of surf.
For a second, everything stopped. The world dimmed to an ocean of dark twinkling lights, and it felt as if her atoms had been undone.
Then she was pushed back up like a cork, and she came to the surface, gasping for air.
She burst out the other side spluttering, her chest on fire as she leaned over and choked up what felt like half a lungful of water. ‘Dian!’ she cried, eyes stinging. ‘What did you do?’ When Dian didn’t reply, she lifted her streaming face. ‘Dian?’ she repeated, this time in terror.
Dian was on the floor next to her, choking, their body racking in pain. Frida lunged for them, lifting their head as they gasped for air. Their cheeks ashen and drained of all the dappled colours. Their lips leached of their luminosity, their eyes empty. They shivered uncontrollably.
‘Fuck,’ she gasped.
From somewhere high up on the wall, Moth clicked, ‘I told them this was a bad idea.’
Dian had magicked them through the door.
They were in a long hallway. The floor was stone, the walls hung with muffling tapestries.
It was chilly as hell, and dark. The only light came from Dian’s jumpsuit, and a kind of fluttering golden glow that leaked around a far corner.
Behind them was the same wooden door which, a split second ago, they’d been on the other side of.
Frida put her head in her hands. They really needed to work on their communication. ‘I could have tried to pick the lock first, at least,’ she said, feeling frayed.
Dian, turning over onto their back, gazed up at her helplessly. Their cheeks were wet with tears. ‘Could you have done that?’ they rasped.
Frida gave a short shaky laugh. ‘I could have tried!’ It wasn’t funny though.
She sank back against the wall, panic bubbling inside her as she scrubbed at her face.
Behind them, the door loomed. She could see no latch, just a great black iron keyhole.
Of course, no key. And whatever she’d said about picking the lock, she had no actual idea how to do such a thing.
Trapped again. So much worse than the cellar.
Here there was a nauseous feeling that seemed to infect every brick, every corner, every speck of dust. It seemed to waft down the hallway towards them.
It felt grimy. This place made her feel dirty, in a way rolling around in horse shit never would.
She wanted to run as fast as she could, right back to Lucky, back to her real life and the bright lights of Melody.
But the cliff it felt as if she was walking towards kept drawing closer.
Her real life? The longer she sat there, the more she wondered what that even meant anymore.
Even if she did by some miracle manage to save the LEZ, how could she be a zookeeper now?
‘I’m sorry,’ Dian whispered unexpectedly.
Frida jerked, surprised. ‘What?’
They tilted their head, as if that was the only body part they could bear to move. ‘I should have told you I was going to do that. Moth hates it when I alter the fabric of reality without warning.’
‘And yet, here we are,’ Moth quipped from somewhere high up in the sconces.
The corner of Frida’s mouth twitched, despite herself. ‘Yes, I can see why.’
She watched the strong line of Dian’s throat work. ‘Are you not angry?’
Frida cocked an eyebrow. ‘Oh,’ she sighed.
‘It feels prudent not to be angry with someone who can adjust reality at whim.’ She flashed them a grin then and struggled up to her feet.
Anything to avoid having to look at Dian’s vulnerable expression.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘You got us in here, didn’t you?
That’s good. Ten points to you. An extra ten if you manage to stand up, ten more if you survive, twenty if you can get us out again. ’