Chapter Forty-Four
Edward Caval raised his brandy in salute, the smell of the alcohol making Frida’s bile rise.
‘This is devilishly clever. By Jove!’
She touched the magic inside her. A tiny, tentative prod.
It flared, purple flames licking along the inside of her mind.
Appalled, raging at its confinement. She couldn’t think through it.
One of the sisters giggled, and Frida wanted to cave in on herself.
She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. She had to tell them she was human, that they’d got it wrong, that they’d made a mistake, but all she could hear was that terrible hum in her head.
Dahlia peered at her, cat-like eyes lined in kohl, plum silks shimmering in the odd lights. ‘Is it male or female, do you suppose?’ The woman furrowed her eyebrows and pouted theatrically. ‘I cannot tell.’
Their eyes on her, their words – they felt like sharp stones chipping at her skin.
‘We are as yet uncertain,’ Joshua admitted.
‘Shall we ask it?’ Georgiana giggled.
‘What are its markings? They look like the type of tattoos favoured by sailors, and savages.’ William Cliff strode around the cage, studying her from all angles. When Frida tried to cover her face with her hands, they all laughed, as if her shame was an amusement.
Her magic seemed to whimper inside her.
‘And what kind of clothing does it wear?’ William Cliff continued, oblivious.
‘This is all curious! You say it is a demon, but could it be a fairy or pooka in disguise?’ The tall man stroked his moustache thoughtfully, jowls wobbling.
‘And its eyes. I’ve never seen a colour quite like that before. Wherever did you find it?’
Sir Joshua raised his hands in admission. ‘I’m afraid I cannot take the credit. It was all Charles, as usual.’
William Cliff nodded shrewdly. ‘That man is an asset.’
There was a murmur of agreement as Sir Joshua beckoned to one of the servants, who stepped forward with a silver tray of crystal champagne flutes.
‘But I daresay you’ve landed on one of the most likely hypotheses for its provenance, William.
I am quite certain it may be a fairy or a pooka.
Perhaps even a copy-cat, as with those parrots being discovered by our friend Denver.
It is likely it does not understand what it is saying, or what we are saying to it. ’
The hum in her mind went still then. Lowering her trembling hands, Frida finally snarled, ‘I understand perfectly. You fucking arseholes.’
There was a collective gasp. Hannah shrieked. Georgiana was so shocked, she dropped her cake. ‘Ladies!’ Edward Caval exclaimed. ‘Cover your ears. It is savage indeed.’
Frida was staring at the fallen cake, lying on the polished wooden floorboards beside the cage. ‘What is that?’ she whispered thickly.
Georgiana laughed, snatching the cake back up nervously in her pale white fingers. ‘I think it is hungry, brother. Have you not fed it?’
But Frida wasn’t listening. Slowly, she struggled up to her knees, bracing herself as she came closer to the bars. It was like a weight pressed down on her, catching her head in a vice. With a shaking finger, she managed to point towards the cake.
‘Are those grootneck eggs?’
Grootnecks lived in swampy dens beneath old tree roots.
Although they weren’t aquatic, they were one of the only land-dwelling creatures alive that lay their eggs underwater.
Once, these eggs had been a great delicacy.
They were said to look like caviar but taste like strawberries.
Frida knew them instantly, even though she’d never seen them in real life.
The LEZ’s grootnecks had never spawned. Cliff counted it as one of his greatest personal failures, because he’d never been able to figure out why.
Georgiana held out the cake on her palm. It was a soft yellow sponge, frosted with white cream and the tiny shiny black spheres of the eggs. So delicate. A hundred baby grootnecks perhaps, on that one cake. Garnished with a single gold-leafed sprig of lavender.
‘They are grootneck eggs,’ Georgiana said with a wide smile, flouncing her skirts happily.
‘You are a smart little creature, are you not? Your eyes are such a gorgeous colour, like those violets you always insist on painting, Hannah.’ She glanced over her shoulder at her older sister.
Then, back to Frida, she asked curiously, ‘Do you like eggs? These ones are quite rare, but I’m sure we can spare some.
If you don’t care for them though, our cook, Mrs Evans, is quite the genius.
’ Georgiana started ticking options off on her fingers, her fiery-red curls shining in the golden light.
‘Tonight, she’s made delicacies with cockatrice eggs and carbuncle claws.
You’ve missed the roast peryton, and the dragon-blood stew I’m afraid, but we can always see if there’s any left. You do look half starved.’
Dragon-blood stew. Is that what they’d been cooking in the kitchens?
All those pungent meaty smells. Georgiana’s careless words punched through her.
She tried to get a grip on her magic, but it slipped through her mental talons, evading her.
She had to wake up. This was just a dreadful nightmare.
In desperation, she gazed around the room hoping that someone might tell her she was imagining this.
In that moment, she’d have given anything to be back in the LEZ, trapped by the wood, being chased by the Nuckelavee.
She’d choose the Nuckelavee over this, any day.
All of a sudden, none of that seemed as awful as this exquisite parlour, where these people sipped brandy and champagne, smoked cigars and ate grootneck babies for dessert.
Platters of cakes, cut glass pitchers, the ornate furnishings – they all fluttered at the edge of her vision.
Fluttered. She’d thought it was candlelight.
But for the first time, she really looked, and understood with a sort of hollowed out, demolished feeling, that there were more dragonfly lamps in this room.
She couldn’t hear the dragonflies panicked calls, but the blaze of their wings seemed to reach out to her in sympathy, just as another colour burned behind her eyelids, disorientating and confusing. Pink.
Pink as a flamingo’s wing. As rose petals.
Her heart started to pound.
She didn’t want to look but she couldn’t stop herself.
Her eyes moved towards the high wooden mantle above the fireplace, on the far side of the room.
And there, as if in pride of place, stood an elegant glass jar just like the ones they’d found in the Old Forge.
She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before.
Surrounded by a nest of enough wires and complicated antique electronics that she couldn’t even begin to understand what it all meant.
But as the lights of the dragonflies clashed against their cages, a strange, whirring silence filled her brain.
Inside the glass jar was a gleaming pink diamond, the size of a goose’s egg, with the power of an entire world inside.
It was the Jewel, and it was whole.
This was what was powering the rest of the cages. Her cage, Sir Joshua had said, was different. But the others – it hadn’t been the objects in the laboratory, it was this – this was what was being used to torture the dragon, the unicorn, the basilisk, the carbuncle.
It was almost poetic, she thought, as she barked out a wild, violent laugh.
Very slowly, she turned back to Georgiana.
Her brain was on fire.
Her lungs burned.
Her magic coiled, the individual threads, one by one, blazing in fury as she took hold of them.
She looked at Henry Gladstone, shrinking in his chair.
At Edward Caval popping out of his waistcoat, clutching his brandy glass and leering at the sisters.
At Laurence Harding, the poet, drinking champagne and laughing with Sir Joshua.
At the servants, standing along the walls, their faces schooled to blankness.
At Dahlia, at Jane. At Hannah, who painted peonies, and at the other sisters, Charlotte, Arabella, Eleanor, seated stiffly on prim upright seats, fanning themselves and looking tired. Most of all, she looked at Sir Joshua.
She’d forgotten about the pain. She’d forgotten about everything. Her world narrowed to just him. ‘We trusted you,’ she whispered.
He wasn’t listening, he was leaning towards Laurence, a victorious flush on his cheeks.
Without thinking, she suddenly lashed out, screaming and hitting the bars so hard with her fists, pain burgeoned through her until it was all she knew.
But her anger was exploding out of her. ‘People think you’re good!
’ she bellowed. ‘I thought you were good!’ The shape of the Jewel blazed in her mind.
That pink. God, it was pink. The most incredible pink she’d ever seen.
Fuchsias and cherry blossoms, rubies and coral reefs.
‘I thought you were risking your life every day to save us. And here you are, eating grootnecks! I don’t understand.
’ Her voice cracked. She was weeping now, feeling the tears streaming down her cheeks as her magic whipped around inside her mind, fighting against its bonds.
‘Please, explain this all to me because I don’t understand. ’
All the people in the room had gone deadly silent.
‘I’m from the future,’ she gasped. ‘You won’t believe me, I know, you think I’m a demon, but it’s true.
You’re a hero in the future. You were my hero.
’ She grabbed her shirt and thrust it towards him.
On the edge of her vision, something seemed to twinkle over by the mantle, but she shook her head, ignoring it, focusing on Sir Joshua, who was listening now.
Whether he believed her or not, he was listening.
They all were. Quickly, she scrubbed off as much mud as she could, and as soon as the pink of the Leaping Unicorn showed through, she held it out to them again.
Hannah gasped.
‘That’s our unicorn,’ Jane snapped.