by ‘The Yllanfalen are a fine people, all told,’ my Father began. ‘Noble, enlightened, highly talented. But where there is power, there will always be those with a desire to seize it at any cost. So it was thirty years ago, when the old king passed and the time came for another to step into the role.
‘I’d travelled into the kingdom of Yllanfalen because I was a student of music at the time, and of magick. I wanted to develop the combined arts, and where better to do that? They are rightly legendary for their prowess at magickal melody and song. I knew nothing about the succession, and cared less. I just wanted to play.
‘And play I did, when my turn came around. What I did not know was that the lyre had been, by some means, corrupted, before it fell into my hands. Its ancient song no longer worked as intended. Instead of selecting a suitable monarch by its own judgement, it would simply bestow the crown on the next person to play it. It was meant to fall into other hands than mine; by some accident, I received it instead.
‘But it did not choose me, nor did I choose to accept the role. I didn’t want it. The night dissolved into chaos after that, for I was unpopular with everyone. She who had intended to take up the lyre and the monarchy both was furious with me, as you may imagine. The rest of the Yllanfalen were furious with us, too: me for being human, and the lyre for daring to install one over them as ruler.
‘They declared the lyre broken, and me an exile. Well, I was happy to go! I tried to leave the lyre with the effigy of old King Evelaern on the hill, but I couldn’t, somehow. So I threw it into the water. I found that the sprites were minded to obey me; exile I might be, but I was still the king by their law. So they took me home, and… I have never been back there since.’
I digested all this in silence for a moment. ‘So when they said the king had passed, they meant they’d thrown him out.’
‘They were probably speaking of the old king. Many among the Yllanfalen still consider the lyre’s last choice invalid, and fairly enough. I wasn’t really chosen.’
Jay said, ‘And they’re so happy with the idea of a human for a king, they’d rather have none at all.’
Father smiled faintly. ‘If you consider how superior they look to our eyes, only imagine how inferior we appear to theirs.’
Mother was silent among the wreckage of all her wild plans. When I saw the look of utter dismay in her eyes, I lost some of my desire to eviscerate her. Six years’ work crushed inside of three minutes.
Father wasn’t so kind. ‘So you see, Delia, your daughter—’
‘Our daughter,’ she interrupted, almost snarling the words.
‘—has no right to the monarchy at all, and they would never accept her even if she did. Such dreams ought to be put away.’
Mother shrugged, and offered me the lyre. ‘She can still have the lyre to go with those pipes. The Yllanfalen don’t seem to want it anyway.’
I put my hands behind my back. ‘No thanks. That thing scares the living daylights out of me.’
Jay, though, interceded — and not quite on my behalf. ‘Ves, the fact that you’re the only one who seems so drawn to it… that might be significant.’
‘What.’
‘The way your eyes reflect its light. Why? There’s some kind of connection between you and it that neither your mother nor I are subject to.’
‘Neither is your father,’ Mother put in.
‘Doesn’t mean it’s a good connection,’ I argued. ‘And it’s probably just responding to the palpable greed in my little heart whenever anything shiny is put before me.’
‘That could be it,’ Jay allowed, with a faint smile.
‘How did you get those pipes?’ said my father, with a sudden, sharp look.
‘Your unicorn,’ said Mother.
But he shook his head. ‘I wasn’t king long enough to form any bonds with the unicorns. If she’s got one of those trailing around after her, it’d be a former king in question. If any.’
‘Maybe Addie just likes me,’ I said. All in all, I much preferred that idea.
Mother held out the lyre to me, and said, with a deep weariness, ‘Please. Just take it. Apart from anything, I promised Milady.’
‘You promised Milady what?’
‘I promised the Society the use of the lyre, if we got hold of it. Why not? If you claimed it, you’d surely share.’
The possibility that Milady and my mother had conspired together to shove me onto a faerie throne did not much improve my mood. I opened my mouth to express some of this.
My expression of simmering rage apparently tipped my mother off, for she held up her stump. ‘No, I didn’t let her in on the queen-of-all-faeries plan.’
Queen of All Faeries. I distantly remembered awarding myself that title, around about age five, during many of my solitary games. I was hardly the only child to do so, surely. What was wrong with my reprehensible mother?
‘I’m sorry, Delia,’ said Jay firmly, ‘but I think we’ll have to disappoint Milady. That lyre has to go back to the Yllanfalen.’
She blinked up at him in shock. ‘But they don’t want it. You heard the man.’
‘It’s Thomas,’ said my father. ‘In case anyone was interested.’
‘I am,’ I said. ‘Thomas what?’
‘Thomas Goldwell.’
I offered my hand, which he took, and we shook hands with exquisite politeness. ‘How nice to meet you, Mr. Goldwell.’
‘And you, Miss… Goldwell.’
Was that my name, then? Cordelia Goldwell?
Nah. I’d been Vesper all my life.
But hey, a proposed name-change was a vast improvement over the horror with which he’d earlier looked upon me.
‘Call me Ves,’ I said.
‘Tom, then.’
That settled, I was at leisure to attend to the argument unfolding between Jay and my mother. He was in favour of the lyre’s return, she staunchly against. The battle looked set to rage on for some time, and the combatants were evenly matched: my mother’s gritty, rock-solid stubbornness against Jay’s calm logic and inflexible morality.
I’d privately put my money on Jay.
‘But they don’t want it,’ shouted Mother, like it was at least the sixth time she’d said it.
‘That is beside the point,’ said Jay, raising his own voice more than is usual for him. ‘It is rightfully theirs. And if they don’t want it, it’s only because it’s been broken. They do want what it was before.’
‘We can’t just unbreak it,’ said Mother scornfully. ‘It’s broken for good. So if they don’t want the broken one, why can’t we have it?’
‘It needs to be mended!’
‘Do you have any idea how to do that? Because if the Yllanfalen did, don’t you think they’d have done it by now?’
I had to admit, that point of my mother’s was a hard one to answer.
But Jay had it all under control. ‘I’d say there’s one person who could mend it, perhaps with a little help. The problem is, the Yllanfalen didn’t want to have anything to do with him. We have no such feelings.’
Everyone looked at Tom, who held up his hands. ‘I will have nothing to do with this.’
‘Why not?’ I said.
Silence fell, and my father looked consternated. ‘Well — you heard. They threw me out. I’m forbidden from ever setting foot in Yllanfalen again.’
‘Why? For being human?’ I said.
‘That, and I think they believe I was the one who corrupted the lyre.’
‘You weren’t, were you?’ said Jay, with a narrow look.
‘No. I swear it. Only a madman could imagine the Yllanfalen would accept a human for a ruler.’
‘And only a madwoman would want to be queen of a faerie kingdom, for real,’ I snapped.
‘You’re serious,’ said Mother.
‘Utterly.’
She grumbled something inaudible. ‘Then you can explain to Milady about the lyre.’
‘Gladly.’
One parent down, one to go. ‘Dad?’ I said.
He visibly flinched.
‘We are going to need you.’
‘You cannot make this into my problem if I do not choose to permit it,’ he said, snapping straight back into his icy-cold routine.
‘It is already your problem,’ I said. ‘It’s been your problem for thirty years.’
‘Don’t you want to be able to forget about the lyre?’ said Jay. ‘Forever? Help us, and it won’t be your problem ever again.’
Father tossed aside his book. ‘There are days when I wish I just hadn’t woken up at all.’
‘Could turn out to be the best day ever,’ I said with a bright smile. ‘You’ve already found a daughter.’
Father did not look as though this had been as transformative an experience for him as I might like. He stood up, and did a spectacular double-take in my mother’s general direction. ‘What,’ he said in a terrible voice, ‘happened to your hand?’
Mother gave her wolf-grin. ‘Why don’t I tell you about it on the way.’
So, back we went. To Cumbria; to Sheep Island; to the extinct gnome village, and to the caverns beneath (now with fewer lindworms!).
Mum made Dad carry the lyre.
He wasn’t happy about it.
The lyre, though, clearly was. It sang all by itself, without cease, adjusting its airy melodies to the circumstances as it saw fit.
And so it was, that our reluctantly heroic quartet set off in search of adventure with our own theme music to accompany us.
I keep thinking there’ll come a day when life will get a little simpler — or at least less absurd? Dream on.
‘What happened with you and your mother?’ said Jay at one point, somewhere en route.
‘Nothing?’ I said. ‘Which is sort of the problem.’
‘But she talks as though you two were close, when you were a child.’
‘If we were, I don’t remember anything about it. She sent me to boarding school at the age of six.’
‘That’s… young.’
‘Rather.’
‘Why would she do that?’
I could only shrug. ‘Jay, you’re the product of a solid marriage where both parties wanted to become parents. Or so I assume. I’m the product of a drunken one-night stand between two deeply irresponsible people. Why my mother didn’t just abort me I will never understand.’
‘Maybe she decided she liked the idea of parenthood after all.’
‘Then changed her mind after a few years? All too possible.’
‘Aren’t you glad she went through with it, even so? I know I am.’
He’d earned a smile with that one, so I bestowed my best one. ‘Thanks. Yes, I suppose I am.’
‘Though I wish you’d had a better childhood.’
‘Apparently it’s not entirely vital after all. I turned out fine.’
Jay was silent after that. Whether that was because he’d said everything he wanted to say on the subject, or whether he privately disagreed with my assessment of my character in adulthood, I decided not to ask.
I did turn out fine… right?
These were the thoughts that occupied my mind as we wandered back into the King’s Halls, our party augmented by one king. I should’ve been paying more attention, though, for we were little more than halfway across the cellars when mother abruptly stopped and said: ‘Lindworm.’
‘What?’ I gulped. ‘I can’t—’
‘It’s fine.’ My father took up the moonsilver lyre, played exactly three perfect notes, and while the crashing sounds of a lindworm on the approach rent the air, he stood with perfect composure and waited.
It came on in a rush, jaws agape, and looked ready to devour my father in one gulp.
Dad played those three notes again, and said in a ringing voice: ‘No.’
The lindworm stopped dead, closed its jaws with a snap, and then — I kid you not — it put its great head in the dirt and literally grovelled before my irascible parent.
‘Go,’ said Father. ‘Leave these halls to me.’
And the lindworm went.
‘Was there something?’ said Father, in response to our three-way stare.
‘Nothing,’ I squeaked.
‘It’s good to be the king,’ said Mother, with a sideways glance at me.
And damn her, she wasn’t wrong.
