by The trip back to the Fairy Stone took next to no time. My trusty unicorn friend deposited me, gently, in the midst of the Seven Stones of Hordron and began to nip listlessly at the grass thereabouts. I could understand her lack of enthusiasm. I wouldn’t want to follow a meal of delicious, greasy chips with a snack of brittle, half-frozen grass, either.
I didn’t dismiss her, just yet. She wasn’t only my friend and occasional mount. She was my Familiar, and I was also hers, in a way. We were a team, closely bound, and if anybody could help me talk to the Fairy Stone, it would be Addie.
‘Okay, so,’ I told her as I approached the gate. ‘Here’s the problem, dear heart. This lovely stone stands between us and Silvessen, and I can’t get it to talk to me. It’s been asleep for a really, really long time, and it’s probably forgotten what it was like to be a magickal portal to a thriving enclave. It’s just a lump of rock now, like the rest of these. But I need it to be a gate again. Just for today. What do you think?’
Addie didn’t answer, of course. I’ve been trying to teach her some English, but we haven’t got any further than wheehehe, which I choose to interpret as a gleeful ejaculation, but who knows.
She lay down, though, right next to the Fairy Stone, with her gleaming hide pressed against it.
I took this as a hint, and followed suit. We formed a snuggly cluster of three — me and Addie and the moss-ridden Fairy Stone — and quiet descended.
Go deeper, Ophelia said. Between the echoes.
I shut my eyes, and sought for those faint, barely discernible echoes of long-lost magick I’d detected earlier. There they still were, right on the edge of my senses, like trying to hear somebody talking from a long way off. I focused. Maybe if I concentrated harder, I could hear the words…
They weren’t words, of course. Not exactly. But the longer I sat in silent meditation, the clearer the echoes became. Fragmented wisps of memory, in scents and tastes and colours. A fragrance of cherry-blossom and almonds, and cold lakewater. A brackish taste on my tongue, and then a sweet one. A glimpse of a green freshness, sun-drenched; a star-washed night, warm and then freezing and then neither.
Memories of Silvessen, long ago. Sensations and sights and tastes that had been brought back over that threshold, by those who had once passed through it. The Fairy Stone remembered.
So did I.
I drifted, lost in memory and dream. I was ancient and boundless. I was earth and rock and rainwater. I was magick and music and the echoes of things long-lost.
And then I was grabbed and roughly shaken, possibly even a little bit slapped, and I opened frost-crusted eyes and blinked them blearily at the foggy shape of a someone vaguely familiar.
‘Ves.’ Jay bent close, looked long and deeply into my eyes. ‘Ves, I need to know you’re still in there. Talk to me.’
I tried, honest. I managed to make my lips move, a little, but my face was frozen solid and I couldn’t even produce a croak.
Jay shook his head. He looked angry, and I wanted to apologise, even if I didn’t know what for.
But then he grabbed me, hauled me close, and wrapped both arms tight around me. He was warm, like cuddling a radiator, and he began rubbing my arms and back, roughly, chafing my flesh.
Slowly, warmth and feeling crept back in.
‘Jay,’ I croaked.
He let out a sigh. ‘For fuck’s sake, Ves. You couldn’t have waited for us?’
I stirred in his arms, but he didn’t release me. That was okay. I didn’t want to be released, yet. ‘I thought it would take a while,’ I managed to utter. ‘And I couldn’t sleep, so I thought…’ I didn’t know how to finish that sentence in a way that might satisfy an enraged Jay, so I didn’t try.
I peeped over his shoulder. There was Em, standing right behind Jay and watching me with palpable concern. So were Indira and Zareen, faces etched in a slowly fading horror, and if I’d even scared Zar then obviously I had messed up.
‘Sorry,’ I muttered.
Jay sighed again. To my surprise, he grabbed my head in an ungentle grip and planted a resounding kiss on my face. ‘Well,’ he said, in a calmer tone. ‘You’ve done it, so there’s that.’
‘Done what?’ I withdrew from Jay, reluctantly, but he had pulled back, so I sort of had to.
‘You mean you don’t know?’ That was Zareen, whose fear had sunk into something more like annoyance.
I hauled myself to my feet, slowly, painfully. I felt a thousand years old, and consequently was grateful for Jay’s steadying grip on my arms. A glance around revealed nothing of note. ‘Maybe someone could humour me, and explain.’
‘This is it,’ said Jay. ‘We’re in Silvessen.’
I took another look around. Morning had broken, as the song goes, so I could see more of the landscape than I had last night. But what I saw was a rolling landscape of moor and heath, which looked right, and there was the Fairy Stone, right where it had been last night.
It took me a moment longer to realise that the other stones weren’t there.
‘Oh,’ I said.
Zareen laughed. ‘Only you could spend all night trying to open a dead gate, fail, and then turn yourself into a new one by accident.’
‘And then not even realise,’ put in Indira, with unusual vehemence. She was staring at me with more than a little awe, which was odd, because I’m more used to looking at her that way. She’s the star pupil around here, not me.
‘I did what?’ I croaked.
Jay let go of my arms, me being more or less stable by then. ‘I got your message,’ he began. ‘Bright and early, thankfully, because if we’d been much later you’d probably have frozen to death. Or not. I mean, rocks aren’t especially vulnerable to the elements, are they?’
‘Rocks?’
‘Rocks,’ Jay repeated, grimly.
I looked pleadingly at Emellana. ‘Could somebody please just tell me what happened. Use small words. I’m tired.’
‘When we arrived here,’ Em answered, ‘we couldn’t find you. Naturally we were concerned. Indira thought perhaps you had found a way into Silvessen after all, but Jay felt that you would have come back through and awaited us, were that so. Zareen grew concerned that you may have gone through and been unable to come back, which naturally increased our fears for you. Only belatedly did we notice that the Seven Stones of Hordron had increased in number.’
That filtered through. ‘I turned myself into a rock,’ I said.
‘Not just any rock,’ Jay said. ‘A Fairy Stone. Because when I touched it I vanished from Hordron Edge and arrived in what I’m guessing is Silvessen. The others followed. And then we spent a solid half-hour trying to figure out how to turn you back into Ves.’
This was a lot to take in. My sleep-deprived, half-frozen and only partially thawed brain struggled to keep up. ‘I have no idea,’ I finally offered, that being the best explanation I could come up with.
‘You don’t know how you did that,’ Jay clarified.
I shook my head. ‘Addie was here. Maybe she turned me into a rock.’
‘Doubtful. This is something to do with your Merlin powers, isn’t it? Ophelia gave you an idea.’
‘I did call her,’ I agreed. ‘She told me to look for echoes. Memories. And the Fairy Stone remembered what it once was, and I… suppose I got caught up in that.’
Jay just nodded. I suppose it wasn’t worth his while to tell me what an idiot I’d been, or how close I’d come to remaining a Fairy Stone for the rest of my life. I was sufficiently alive to the horror of that idea.
‘How did you revive me?’ I asked.
‘In the end, brute force.’ Jay looked a little uncomfortable. ‘Nothing else worked.’
‘You slapped me?’ I thought I’d felt something like that.
‘No!’ said Jay, horrified.
‘I kicked you,’ Zareen clarified.
She didn’t look like she regretted it, so I patted Jay’s arm. ‘It’s okay. I barely felt it.’
A backpack lay on the ground, not far from Jay’s feet. It was a cheap canvas thing and had the look of a recent purchase about it. I noticed all this because Jay stooped, opened it up and retrieved several paper-wrapped bundles from inside it.
These he piled into my arms.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, vaguely. ‘I got you these.’
‘You had remarkable forethought,’ I replied, somewhat distracted, because the parcels smelled pungently and sweetly of almonds.
I opened one. Inside, a thick pastry case contained a filling my nose informed me was predominantly composed of almonds.
‘Is this… Bakewell tart?’ It smelled like it and looked like it, sort of. But not entirely. The crust was puffier than the ones I’d got from Kitchen, and the filling looked denser and squashier.
‘Bakewell pudding,’ Jay answered. ‘Tarts are not the authentic, traditional form, or so the baker informs me.’
To my surprise, Indira handed me another paper parcel. That one contained a shortcrust concoction that looked much more familiar. ‘The bakers don’t seem to agree about that,’ she said.
I counted. Ten. Ten Bakewell somethings. ‘I shall now eat two of these,’ I informed the company. ‘Because rocks may be impervious to the elements, but I certainly am not. And then we’ll explore.’
They’re large, Bakewell puddings. You would think it would be difficult to fit two in me at once, but not when I’ve spent most of the night as a functional gateway to a lost magickal realm.
Having consumed enough sugar and pastry to power a rhinoceros, I felt better.
‘Right, then,’ I said, dusting off my hands. ‘If we could—’ I stopped, because while I’d been absorbed in pudding, Indira had gone right ahead without me. She was hovering about ten feet off the ground, hanging there with the grace of a dragonfly, and turning in slow circles.
The rest of our merry band was clustered beneath, looking up at her with (variously) curiosity, interest and anxiety. Maybe a little awe. Most people can’t levitate like that.
‘There isn’t much,’ Indira called down. She began to descend, very slowly, one arm extended all the way out. ‘But there’s something. That way. I can see rooftops.’
Jay smiled at me as I approached. ‘We thought we’d better check for residents before we start,’ he explained. ‘Just because nothing’s been reported about this place in a long time, doesn’t absolutely mean that nobody lives here any more.’
‘Good thinking.’ I felt somewhat bemused. I’d been so focused on the pastries, I’d missed the entire conversation.
Perhaps Ophelia’s lessons were paying off, far better than I’d ever imagined possible. I really had focus now.
Indira landed lightly upon the frost-tinged grass, hugging her dark coat closer around herself. She was shivering. I suppose it would be a little colder up there, right in the path of the wind. Or perhaps levitation at that level took more energy than it appeared to.
‘Nothing else?’ Emellana enquired.
‘Not that I could see from there. Just more heath. Some wooded land, that way.’ She gestured. Apparently this woodland or forest wasn’t in the same direction as the buildings she’d seen.
‘Let’s check out those roofs you saw,’ Jay decided, picking up his backpack.
‘Moment,’ I said, looking at Zareen. ‘Zar, are you sensing anything… I don’t know, weird out here?’
‘Weird,’ she repeated. ‘You mean like, ghosts and ghouls dragged screaming from unquiet slumber and bent on our destruction?’
‘Pretty much exactly like that, yep.’
‘Not yet.’
I permitted myself a small sigh of relief. ‘Great.’
‘I’ll let you know when I do.’
My relief withered and died. ‘When?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve got a feeling.’
‘A weird feeling?’
‘Uncanny, bordering upon eldritch.’
‘Super.’ I hefted my own modest bag of supplies, wishing I’d brought quite a few of Ornelle’s jealously guarded magickal trinkets after all. I wasn’t sure I was ready for eldritch.
Zareen’s response to everyone’s palpable discomfort was a wide grin. ‘Don’t worry. That’s why you’ve got me.’
‘And you are scary beyond all reason,’ I agreed. ‘That being the case, would you maybe like to go first?’
‘Hey. You’re the one wielding indescribably ancient magick of awe-inspiring power.’
‘You must be thinking of Indira,’ I murmured, striding forth with what I hoped was a confident step. ‘She wields magick to precise and devastating effect. I fumble magick, make a mess of it and occasionally luck out anyway.’
‘Occasionally,’ Jay said, nodding gravely. ‘Yes. That coincides exactly with my general observations of your success rate.’
I lifted my chin as I stalked past him. ‘Just don’t blame me when this all goes spectacularly pear-shaped. I did try to warn you.’
