by It wasn’t.
‘Addie?’ I called, playing snatches from her song from time to time in hopes that one or the other sound would penetrate the forest gloaming.
No answer came, and she did not appear. I trudged through tangled thickets of conifer trees, their trunks wound about with ivy so dark green in hue it was almost black. Pools of water hid beneath the carpeting brambles, the one wetting my feet and the other scratching my ankles and legs, and progress was slow. How had Addie managed to disappear so thoroughly with such terrain to hamper her?
Magickal faerie creature. Right.
At last I heard a faint whinny, and another, and I adjusted my steps accordingly.
But it was not Addie that had called. It was another unicorn.
Another two minutes’ trudging brought me to the edge of a shadowy glade. There the trees grew more sparsely, and grass rather than bramble and vine covered the ground. In the centre was a serene pool, its glassy surface darkened.
Around the edges of that pool stood a whole herd of unicorns. I counted at least twelve, including Adeline.
She was making enthusiastic friends with a great, golden-palomino stallion.
Very enthusiastic friends.
‘Oh,’ I said.
I turned away my eyes, and sidled up to the pool, for a glimmer of something had caught my eye.
There, submerged at the bottom of the clear waters, was the most exquisite lyre. Smaller than most, its arched, curving frame looked made from moonlight itself: the moonsilver was aptly named. It appeared unstrung, but what had Mother said about it? Strung with enchanted waters from the king’s own pools.
Was this one of those pools?
Either way, what was it doing here, instead of up on the hilltop with the rest of the lost king’s personal effects?
My feet being soaked anyway, I shrugged and began to wade into the water.
‘Stop.’ My mother’s voice split the clearing like a whiplash, and I stopped on reflex.
‘What—’
‘Remember what happened when you tried to take the pipes off the bier?’ Mother and Jay had made it as far as the glade, but they remained on the edge of it, well away from the unicorn herd and the pool. Both looked disquieted.
‘Yes, but this has nothing of the same appearance. Look at it. All lop-sided as though someone just chucked it in there.’
‘They probably did. And what would encourage a person to hurl a Great Treasure to the bottom of a pool, do you suppose?’
‘Nothing good. Even so—’
‘Never mind even so. Leave it alone.’
I felt a flash of irritation. ‘Mother. You’ve dragged us all the way out here in order to find this damned lyre and the man who once played it. No? Well, we’ve found one of them. There it is, right there! And now you want me to just walk away?’
‘Yes. We’ve found it; excellent. And that’s enough.’
‘We can’t just leave it here. The Yllanfalen will want it back.’
‘You think they don’t know exactly where it is?’
I frowned. ‘They said it was missing.’
‘Yep. All of them, over and over, using almost the same words. We suspected there was something shady about it, no? Come on, Ves. Fight it off.’
‘Fight what off?’
‘The lyre,’ said Jay. ‘Has a hold of you somehow. If you could see your own face—’
‘What’s wrong with my face?’
‘Nothing,’ said Jay peaceably. ‘But there’s something a little bit wrong with your eyes.’
‘Namely?’
‘They’re the wrong colour.’
‘And they’re what colour now?’
Jay pointed towards the moon-pale lyre glimmering with its silvery glow. ‘That colour.’
So I had moonsilver eyes.
Right.
Only then did I realise that the pipes around my neck were glowing faintly with a similar light.
Mother pointed imperiously at Adeline. ‘Unicorn,’ she said sternly. ‘You’ve led your friend into danger. Now get her out of it.’
The unicorns, indeed, seemed untouched by whatever weird fae magick was going on in that glade. Possibly they were a part of it; certainly they were attracted to it.
Adeline stamped one hoof, and snorted.
‘If my daughter comes a-cropper in this glade,’ said Mother darkly, ‘I shall cut off your tail.’
Adeline’s ears twitched.
‘And you’d deserve it.’
Slowly, with the demeanour of a scolded child, Adeline wended her way around the pool’s edge until she reached me.
Then, with deliberate and tender care, she bit my ear.
‘Ouch,’ I shrieked, as much with surprise as with pain.
But something shattered, and unwound. I felt as though I’d been doused in ice-cold water, suddenly alert. I became abruptly aware of the frigid temperature of the pool I was standing in up to my calves, and backed out of the water so fast I almost fell over.
Hands grabbed me and pulled me farther free: Jay had hold of me.
‘All right,’ he said calmly, once he had pulled me all the way back to the glade’s edge. He gave me a considering once-over. ‘You look nearly normal again.’
‘Nearly?’
He indicated the pipes in my left hand, which were still softly aglow.
‘I’m getting confused,’ I said. ‘Are these the king’s pipes, or was that the set up on the hill?’
‘This isn’t a story,’ said Jay, lips curving with faint amusement. ‘Why can’t the king have more than one set of special magick pipes? Maybe he made them both.’
‘Quite likely,’ said Mother. ‘Cordelia. What I was going to tell you before your mad dash to inevitable doom: those winds that blew up, those were Winds of the Ways. There are strong traces of Waymagick all over the hill and the forest both. Faded, to be sure — at least decades old. But there’s no mistaking it.’
‘So there must be a henge somewhere here?’ I said.
She nodded. ‘It’s my guess that whoever threw the lyre into the pool left by the Winds. But,’ she added, holding up a hand to forestall my response, ‘I don’t think that person was a Waymaster.’
‘What? How can you tell?’
‘Because the place is crawling with faerie magick, too.’
‘Hardly surprising. It’s a faerie glade, Mother.’
‘Yes, but even the fae don’t throw magick around willy-nilly without a purpose.’
‘The Winds aren’t what I’m used to,’ said Jay. ‘They’re more… playful, unstable, erratic. Like they’ve been summoned by an unfocused mind, or—’
‘By lots of minds,’ I supplied.
He nodded. ‘And whoever it is has been mucking about with them, like they’re a toy.’
‘Sounds very fae.’
‘Specifically,’ said Mother, ‘sounds very sprite.’
Of course. The music-seller had said the sprites tend gardens; from Ayllin we knew that they kept the doors, among other things — and they did not often show themselves. Were the glade and the forest awash with them?
‘Did they throw the lyre in the water?’ I speculated.
‘Maybe,’ said Mother. ‘But maybe not. It’s hard to sense under all the fae magick, but someone human’s worked enchantments here in the past.’
‘Your lyre-player?’
She shrugged. ‘No way to know.’
‘Can you catch these Winds?’ I said to Jay.
‘Yes. If we find the henge.’
‘Will you?’
‘If someone gave me good reason to.’ He folded his arms and gave me his sceptical look.
‘I want to find out where they go.’
‘And then do what?’
I shrugged.
‘Don’t you ever get tired of playing Trial and Error?’
‘Nope.’ I smiled.
‘This is the henge,’ said Mother.
Jay looked sharply at her. ‘Are you sure? I don’t see it.’
I realised that when Jay said “see” he meant with his Waymaster senses. It wouldn’t be the first time we had used a buried henge with no visible stones or earthworks.
‘Might be fairer to say it used to be a henge,’ said Mother. ‘But the residue’s still here.’
Jay nodded. ‘We can try it.’ He took a hold of me, and beckoned to Mother.
‘Just a second,’ said she, and stepped into the glade.
The unicorns had drifted away, and stood in a cluster on the far side of the pool, idly munching grass. At first I thought Mother was heading for them, perhaps Adeline specifically.
But no. Her path led her unerringly to the pool of water I had so lately been hauled out of. And she didn’t hesitate. She waded right in, up to her ankles, her calves, her knees.
‘Mother!’ I called, and ran for her. ‘What are you doing?’
She made it to the centre before I could reach the edge of the water. Quick as a flash, she plunged her healthy hand into the pool and snatched up the lyre.
I was wading in after her by then. ‘Mum, you bloody madwoman, what did you just say to me?’ I grabbed her and began hauling her backwards, hoping she would drop the lyre.
She didn’t. ‘I told you to leave it alone,’ she said, in a voice of grim satisfaction. ‘Didn’t say anything about me.’
‘Isn’t that just the way with parents,’ I growled as we stumbled out of the water. ‘A thousand rules for me, none whatsoever for you. What have you done?’
I looked full into her face, expecting to see that moonsilver shine in her eyes that Jay had described in mine. But it was not there. Her own, hazel eyes stared back at me, just the same as they always were. Not a hint of faerie glamour could I detect.
As far as I could tell, my mother had acted voluntarily.
‘Tell you later.’ She stuffed the lyre under one arm, where its strings of rippling water promptly soaked through her sleeve.
Oh well. She and I both were thoroughly drenched by then anyway.
‘Shall we go?’ She was looking at Jay, who had adopted his Bleak Stare.
‘Why did you do that?’ he said.
‘My daughter is right, we cannot just leave the lyre there.’
‘So why did you stop her from taking it?’
‘Because when it comes to faerie treasures, there’s always a consequence. A woman may weather the effects of one faerie instrument well enough. Not two.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘So you were protecting me. How nice.’
‘Is it so hard to believe?’
‘Yes.’
She scowled. ‘So, are we going?’
Jay’s eyes narrowed, but what more could he say? The damage, whatever it might prove to be, had been done.
‘Just keep the thing away from Ves,’ he said. ‘The second I see her eyes turn all moonish again, we’re throwing it away.’
Mum clutched at it like he’d have to remove her other hand first.
Jay returned her a stare that said, try me.
