Chapter Fifty-Six
Not too long later, they walked down the slope together, the wood coming alive around them.
Frida sang as she walked, her strong voice mingling amongst the rest, finding its place.
She realised she hadn’t sung in a long time.
Dian hummed along too, tunelessly under their breath.
It made Frida laugh, to think that there was at least something that Dian couldn’t do.
‘What?’ they asked, quirking an eyebrow.
Frida swung their hand, feeling ridiculously, wildly happy. ‘Oh nothing. I’m just marvelling over fairy perfection, that’s all.’
Mush snorted, eight eyeballs rolling. ‘I am concerned this human’s adoration is going to have a bad effect on your ego, Dian.’
Dian sighed. ‘Not with you around, Mushy my love.’ Then they tossed their hair, sending Mush – who’d been hanging from a thread off one of their curls – into a rapid spin, making the little spider shriek and giggle helplessly.
Frida burst out laughing too. This wasn’t the time for hurrying, and although she wondered what was happening at the bottom of the hill, she let herself amble with Dian and Mush, down the slender pathways that opened up for them, marvelling at the hawthorns that had sprung up, bursting with bountiful splendour.
All is as it needs to be, the silver dragon had said, and no more, no less.
When they finally emerged though, they all fell utterly still.
Frida hadn’t known what she’d been expecting. Not this though.
Dian’s breath drew in sharply. ‘It’s her.’
Frida nodded, frantically trying to clear the flowery haze from her brain. ‘It’s her!’
Of course it was her.
The terracotta dragon stood in the middle of the greatest, weirdest, most impossible state of affairs she’d ever seen.
Lucky, obviously, was right next to her.
He stood oh so proudly at her side, his neck arched, unbalanced wings raised as if he’d just discovered his new status in life: Assistant to the Terracotta Dragon.
‘Look, little stink,’ he cried, bobbing his head dramatically. ‘IT’S STARTING! YOU’RE JUST IN TIME!’
Frida gave a half sob, half laugh. Indeed, it seemed that people were only just beginning to wake up, looking around themselves in wonderment.
Frida’s heart overflowed as she watched Antony raise himself up onto his elbows.
Next to him, Hamish lifted their face too, pale hair mussed, cheeks flushed with the memory of sleep.
Antony’s gentle eyes shone. Frida pressed herself into Dian’s side, not quite able to hold herself steady, as her two best friends blinked the world into focus, before realising suddenly that their limbs were entwined.
Frida held her breath, but instead of pulling away from each other, soft laughter escaped them both.
Hamish sighed happily and leaned in to press their cheek against Antony’s chest.
Leaned in. Not away. Frida glanced at Dian – what love potion had they put in their spell?
Cliff was sitting up too. There was a puddle of drool on the breast of his shirt, and his crystal blue eyes were brimming with astonished tears.
Next to him, Gloria stretched like a languid cat in front of the fire.
Sora gave a contented moan, Zuzka’s pink head swivelled, taking it all in.
They were all covered in a carpet of hawthorn blossoms. And although the two dragons were barely twenty metres away, no one was screaming.
‘Why is no one screaming?’ Frida whispered to Dian, dumbfounded.
A knowing grin spread over Dian’s face as they gestured down the road, where the oaks curved away towards the rest of the zoo. ‘Look.’
Frida looked. And her jaw dropped.
Coming down the road towards them were people.
Walking, wheeling, hobbling, arm in arm, hand in hand, side-by-side.
Wearing LEZ uniforms of every colour, along with guests of every age and computation.
A low dazed murmur of conversation purred through them as they gazed around in fear and amazement.
As if they weren’t quite sure if they were still dreaming.
Slithering alongside, through the emerald shadows, were two excited-looking basilisks.
A manticore, two very dignified griffins, the shimmering chimeras with their golden, tawny beards.
Frida saw Raziel the ghost-lynx, and she wanted to race forwards and throw her arms around the bright Barbie-Dreamhouse-pink of her neck.
There were the white wolves, bigger than elephants, yipping in greeting.
Someone made up of white flowers with dark nooks for eyes where the owls nested seemed to slip, almost unmarked, through the gaps between things.
And the storm monkeys. Oh skies, the storm monkeys!
Zipping and front flipping and backflipping and all the flips.
The Nuckelavee had to be around here somewhere too, and it might have been foolish, but this only made Frida smile wider.
Somehow, the wards must have been totally dismantled.
Frida didn’t even have to explain the problem to anyone: it was already done!
She turned her gaze intuitively towards the awesome shape of the terracotta dragon.
Whilst she’d been galivanting through time, it seemed the old dragon had been busy.
So many magical creatures like this, in such a small radius?
Sea and skies, the magic glowed.
Alive, the glitter cried. We’re alive! Like a pressure cooker behind her eyes, it had the gravity of a storm rising.
The air tasted of hot metal and starlight, coating her teeth with petrichor, lilacs, snuffling things, wet sand, forest loam, wild wind, ocean spray, fire, lightning, and salty popcorn.
Yes, the world seemed to howl. Yes. Yes!
Perhaps it was only the canopy of the wood above that stopped all this power from bursting out, rushing to the four corners of Melody-Upon-Sea and beyond.
With a nod to each other, Frida and Dian quickly slipped out of the shadows and approached the terracotta dragon.
She was waiting, ensconced in a pile of leaves that Lucky was trying to aggressively rearrange to make more comfortable.
When they came to a stop before her, she eyed them down her long, cat-like nose.
‘Hmm.’ The sound seemed to reverberate through the very roots of the world.
‘I-uh-I . . .’ Frida stammered.
The dragon emitted a dour puff of steam. ‘I see time hasn’t improved your eloquence.’
A stifled snort came from Dian. Frida flushed, glaring askance at them.
But they were already stepping forwards.
The fairy was the picture of elegance, except for their crown of hawthorn blossoms, which was adorably askew.
But when Dian gazed between Lucky and the terracotta dragon, a flood of grievous pain shone in their dark eyes.
When they spoke, their voice shifted with the sound of infinite leaves rustling.
‘I do not know how to express my gratitude. You have both made such terrible sacrifices.’
The terracotta dragon eyed Dian, whilst Lucky flapped his wings.
‘As have you, tree-born,’ she murmured gently, after a long moment.
Her gaze lifted to the sea of leaves high above their heads and chuckled.
‘I thought it was all a bit glitzy for my liking, at the start, but it has rather grown on me. And I cannot fault you for your work ethic.’
Dian ducked their head, looking radiant and a bit embarrassed. ‘Thank you.’
Then the terracotta dragon turned her gaze to Frida.
Frida froze, her mouth open. Dian nudged her.
She jerked. ‘Oh yes. Yes!’ Quickly, she thrust her hand into her pocket and pulled out the Jewel, the translucent pieces that Dian had hidden in a niche far below the roots of the hawthorn.
Dian had told her, as they’d been digging, that without the Jewel, they wouldn’t have been able to make the wood.
They’d spent centuries learning to work the latent magic inside the Jewel’s shattered pieces until, when they thought they might have been the last fairy left on the continent, they’d slipped inside the hawthorn tree to wait for what Frida had said would come to pass.
But when the tree had been uprooted, they’d gotten stuck.
That, they hadn’t expected. Without Lucky’s lightning, they may never have gotten free.
Round and round it went.
With shaking knees, Frida opened her palm. ‘They’re yours,’ she whispered.
The terracotta dragon stared down at them.
‘You knew.’ Frida’s voice was barely audible as understanding registered. ‘You knew they were here all along.’
A smoky laugh pealed from the dragon’s scaly throat.
‘I-I don’t . . .’ Frida stammered helplessly. ‘Sorry, what can I call you? I don’t want to call you Fireheart, and Ma’am feels—’
‘Do not call me Ma’am, by all the sacred dragon fire. I do not care for that at all.’ The dragon clicked her teeth absently. ‘I do not mind Fireheart, azizam, dear. It is not terrible. It is not embarrassing, at least, hmm. Not like some of the others.’
‘But Sir Joshua . . .’ Suddenly, Frida baulked at his very syllables. ‘That man . . . the one who brought you here, he was the one who gave you that name!’
‘Yes perhaps,’ Fireheart snapped. ‘But he does not choose what I do with it.’
Frida shook her head, baffled. Her brain was still spinning.
‘Why didn’t you just go up to the tree decades ago and dig up the pieces yourself?
I don’t understand!’ But even as she spoke, she thought about it.
Really thought about it. She gazed between Dian and Lucky and Fireheart.
This plot has so many twists and turns it makes my head ring.
She thought about the pink light that had entwined with Dian’s watery glitter.
She thought about Lucky’s magic, snaking towards the tree where the Jewel hid, she thought about the fearsome storms of the Jellies, the oceanic rush of the Nuckelavee, and then all the thousands of sleepers, sending their dreams up into the sky too.
Perhaps Fireheart couldn’t have done any of this on her own.
Just as Dian couldn’t have done any of it without Fireheart, without Lucky .
. . without her. Maybe they’d all needed each other more than a little bit, in the end.
The confirmation in Fireheart’s milky gaze was all she needed.
The sigh that came out of her was very, very long, and very, very sulphurous as she said, angling one slitted eye up towards the twirling, spinning glitter, ‘It was time for a change, don’t you think, hmm?
I’d been here so long, I’d almost forgotten how.
’ She shot an appreciative glance at Dian, her charred nostrils flaring.
‘The dreams were a nice touch. The dreams helped me to dream too.’
‘They helped all of us.’
Frida spun to see Hamish standing only a few yards away.
Wondrous tears running in rivulets down their cheeks.
Suddenly, she drew in a gasp. She hadn’t realised that everyone was there.
Antony, Zuzka, Cliff, Gloria. Basilisks and zookeepers and children and teenagers and ghost-lynxes and storm monkeys and manticores, all crowding in to listen.
Not extraordinary creatures – just plain extraordinary, every single one of them.
‘We dreamed of you, Fri,’ Antony said, and Frida almost broke down to see him holding hands with Hamish, the white and pink hawthorn flowers dusting their hair.
‘Of me?’ she said, wonderingly.
Antony, with a dimpled smile, gestured to Dian and Fireheart and Lucky, her motley crew of co-conspirators. ‘All of you. And the trees.’ He raised his face to the woodland sky, lifting his free hand so that one of the coils of magic could twist through his scarred fingers. ‘It was beautiful.’
Hamish leaned their head on Antony’s shoulder and agreed dreamily, ‘So very beautiful.’
Frida started to cry, then. Big ugly tears, tearing through her chest. She hadn’t realised how scared she’d been about coming back.
About her friends not believing her, about having to tell them the truth, and just being sent back to the Necromancer or something.
As she cried, the greying pieces of the Jewel suddenly lifted off her palm and started swirling half a foot in the air.
The hawthorn blossoms started to float, too, along with the combined glittery power of the creatures.
Antony and Hamish raced forwards and wrapped her in their arms, wrapping Dian in too, making the fairy squeal in surprise.
‘I love you!’ Antony cried.
‘No, I love you!’ Frida burst out, as Hamish said just as enthusiastically,
‘I love both of you!’
Antony’s hug was bone crushing.
It was precious, that tangle of limbs and unconditional love. But when Frida’s tears started to abate, and Fireheart was starting to inspect her claws impatiently, Cliff gave a low-key boom,
‘Frida?’
He stood at the front of the crowd with one arm slung around Sora and Zuzka, the other around a baffled-looking Gloria, his crystal blue eyes crinkling with pride.
Frida peeked out at him from between her friends’ shoulders.
‘We dreamed,’ Cliff told her gently, ‘but I think we’d like to hear from you too, from you and your friends, about what really happened.’
At these words, Lucky gave a squeal of glee. ‘Oh yes! Oh yes. I love stories. Tell them our story, little stink!’ He was so thrilled, he almost knocked Fireheart around the face with one rogue flapping wing.
Fireheart gave an appalled squawk, but when she’d managed to collect herself, and Lucky had been gently reprimanded, Fireheart bowed her head to Cliff in approval.
In her inky eyes, Frida read the same words that Lucky’s dada had said to her, so long ago, and really not that long at all, either. It is their story too.
So, as the magic and the Hawthorn blossoms curled around her, and the Jewel spun and spun in the air, she began.