Chapter Forty-Nine
Dian didn’t let her go until they were far away from the house.
Frida moaned, wanting to stay buried in the safety of their chest. Then there was a faint brush against the top of her head, as if Dian had placed the gentlest of kisses to her hair, and they were putting her down carefully, placing her shaking feet to the earth as if she was precious.
Around her, she saw tall arrow-like trees.
A moon sinking with a red tinge to it, and a sickly blood-lit treeline high on the horizon.
Disorientated, it seemed to her that something was fizzing in the earth, something alien, faint pops rumbling under her feet.
But she couldn’t bring herself to care. Brushing the tears off her face, she asked the only thing she could think of.
‘Do you have them?’
Dian opened their palm, and there were the shards of the Jewel.
Frida stared down at the miserable grey pieces nestled in their callused hand, a cloak of lead settling over her shoulders.
Slowly, she counted the shards. She knew the answer before she’d finished.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. There were only five pieces.
‘Where is the sixth?’ she asked, her voice barely audible.
Dian’s eyes widened. ‘What?’
‘There were six.’ She stared into their impossibly compassionate expression.
She didn’t deserve their compassion. She’d failed them.
She could have fallen into the charcoal pools of their irises and never come up for air.
Instead, she managed to bite out again, ‘There were six pieces. Where is the last piece?’
Below her feet, that strange popping grew louder.
‘What do you mean?’ Dian’s voice was a hoarse despairing whisper as horror dawned on them.
‘Oh no Frida. I’m so sorry. I’ll go back .
. .’ Their body turning as if they might run all the way back to find it, but Frida just touched the fragile webs that laced over their strong forearm and shook her head.
‘It is too late.’
They’d left the unicorn’s horn too. The lung and the phoenix feather, the thunderbird’s eye. The stump of the tongue or vocal cord, and the pegasus’s hoof. They’d left all of it. They hadn’t even gone back for the horses, like she’d promised.
‘It is as it is meant to be,’ she said with a bitter laugh.
The earth cracked and she stumbled. Hysteria wrapped its claws around her ravaged heart, and she laughed again. Pop, pop, pop. Somewhere, a basilisk was slithering towards Buckingham Palace, and Sir Joshua was maybe, even now, making plans to move his household to the seaside.
‘Is she ok?’ Moth twirled nervously.
Dian furiously took her shoulders in their hands.
‘You said it, Frida,’ they exclaimed, trying to shake her out of it.
‘You said the words. We can change the future. And I believed you. I still believe you! Moth was right, you surprised everyone when you denied them your magic in that cage. You did something nobody expected, including me.’ With righteous flames in their eyes, they lifted the pieces of the Jewel.
‘I was afraid before. But I’m not anymore.
I’m going back and I will find the last piece. We can’t let those people have it!’
The touch of their fingers against her collarbone turned soft, their thumb running so cautiously over her shirt, as if they almost didn’t dare hope. Frida felt it in every part of herself. She almost moaned.
Instead, she stepped away.
Their hands fell and hurt flickered behind their eyes.
Frida stared up at them, all the tenderness that she felt swirling behind a wall of pain and confusion.
‘It’s done,’ she whispered. ‘Nothing will change. They won’t find the last piece, but neither will you.
’ And then the awful words rushed out of her before she could stop them.
‘Dian, I know what’s going to happen. Whatever you do, you’re going to end up in a place just like this.
You and your hawthorn. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I couldn’t change any of it. ’
Dian went rigid.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Frida exclaimed again, pulling her hands through her matted hair.
‘I know you don’t want to know. But if I don’t tell you .
. .’ She remembered their desolated face, their eyes closing in a world far from here.
Suddenly she stepped back towards them and lifted her fingers to touch the vulnerable place over their heart.
They looked down, eyes wide, as she felt their rapid heartbeat.
‘Dian. Listen to me. You’re going to be captured. ’
Dian recoiled as if they wanted to run, but she grabbed their sleeve so tightly, some of the webs ripped.
They shrank away but the words plummeted out of her.
‘Listen to me,’ she cried. ‘You have to know. Your home will be destroyed. We’re going to meet in the zoo.
This zoo. Not here, but in the future. You’ll be trapped for years, inside wards just like these ones, but then a dragon will set you free!
Lucky. The purple one. The one I came with.
He’ll set you free, but there’ll be something wrong.
I don’t know,’ she cried. ‘I don’t know where Moth is, I’m sorry.
I wanted to change it all, but I don’t think I can.
Your tree . . .’ Her voice cracked, the memory of the charred branches scattered across the meadow seared through her brain.
‘Your tree will die.’ She wanted to stop but she couldn’t.
‘If the hawthorn dies, I die,’ they said hoarsely.
‘Then you have to help me save you, save everyone! When I left, you’d cast a spell that put hundreds of people to sleep, and you’d made a wood that consumed the world.
I thought finding the Jewel would stop you from doing that, but I know I can’t stop it.
I don’t want to stop it. I’m glad you did it!
I was so wrong about everything.’ Her nails dug into their wrist. She pressed on, dread making her dizzy despite their horrified expression.
‘You’re unconscious. Wounded. I need to help you. You have to tell me how to help you.’
Dian’s jaw dropped. ‘I don’t know!’
But she shook her head, denying it. ‘You must. Tell me!’
‘I don’t know,’ they repeated with a hiss.
‘You have to! Please,’ she begged. ‘Think.’
‘Your name,’ Moth said suddenly. He’d been quiet for so long, the sound was like the tolling of a tiny bell. Dian froze, drawing in a sharp breath like a snare.
But Frida stared at the little spider, curled at Dian’s throat. ‘Your name? Dian?’
Moth was silent, a creature of woven threads.
Dian’s voice was like a dead leaf, covered in frost, when they finally answered, ‘He means my real name.’
Frida didn’t hear the warning in their tone.
‘Your real name! Oh god. Of course. Ok. Tell me your name! Tell me what it is.’ She was so excited, so dazzled by the prospect of salvation, she didn’t see their expression had shuttered, slamming like a vault door.
Slowly, they untangled their sleeve from her grasp, the sound of cobwebs tearing.
‘My name is mine. It belongs to the hawthorn, and the groves which we guard.’
Frida gaped at them, hurt. ‘But you can trust me! In the future you do trust me.’
They shook their head vehemently. ‘No. It is too much to ask.’
‘But I have to save you!’
They stared at her, incredulous. ‘You have to save me?’ They scoffed harshly, all the tenderness between them dissolving. And then they repeated that single word. ‘No.’
It wrecked her. No to their name, no to trusting her, no to her saving them.
Just no. Somewhere, a resounding crack reverberated through the earth, and she heard a howl that she recognised, far off in the distance.
Lucky. That sounded like Lucky. Fear shot through her, but she couldn’t look away from Dian.
‘No Frida,’ they said again, and perhaps seeing her devastation, their tone softened a touch, although the answer was the same.
‘No. I can’t tell you my name, just as much as I can’t make an entire wood swallow a world.
I’m sorry, but I do not believe you. I cannot put hundreds of people to sleep.
What you say isn’t true. Have you not been listening to me at all?
’ Their voice seemed to crack apart, anguish and self-loathing settling over them.
‘I am the weakest of the fairies of this island. I cannot do what you say. Those wards will kill me.’
Another howl lit the sky from the far-off tree line.
Helplessly, Frida pressed a shaking hand to her heart. ‘Please. I’ve only just found you. I – I can’t lose you. Help me.’
A fresh wave of pain filled them. ‘Maybe it is for the best,’ they said, with a croak.
Moth let out a squeak of dismay, and Frida gave a strangled sob. The dreadful, unstoppable coils of time wrapped around her throat, choking her.
Dian just looked towards the trees. ‘Our kind is dying.’ They glanced down into their palm at the broken shards of the Jewel, the dragon’s grieving heart.
‘You tried,’ they whispered. ‘We tried.’ For a moment, it seemed they were drowning.
Frida ached to reach for them, to drown with them, but as if they sensed this, they took a pained step back, their bare feet leaving no mark on the grass, fingers curling over the useless, shattered fragments.
They looked once back over their shoulder at Forge House.
It was blood-red, the creamy stone deadly in the light of the dying moon.
Behind it, the sky was turning sapphire. Dawn was coming.
‘I think I must go home, Frida Rose. Moth and I. We will go back to the groves, and our beloved hawthorn, and we will enjoy what time we have left together. Maybe you should do the same.’
And then, just like that, they were gone.
Frida stared at the empty space where they’d been.
She couldn’t believe they’d gone.