by In all my decade at the Society, I don’t think I’ve ever been on a proper, old-fashioned hero quest before. Deserted halls! Monsters! An artefact of great power!
Course, when Frodo and Sam set out to destroy the ring, they numbered nine, and one of them was some kind of a demigod. In our Quest for the Lyre we numbered but three, and one of us was half-dead and missing body parts.
At least we weren’t heading into Mordor.
Hopefully.
‘Right, then,’ I said, wand and pipes at the ready. ‘Where’s the lyre?’
‘Good question,’ said mother.
‘I thought you said you’d seen them?’
‘Years ago, and the circumstances were unusual.’
‘Namely?’
‘Well.’ Mother seemed absorbed in the study of her right toe. ‘The Yllanfalen hold great parties.’
‘Parties.’ I think my eyebrows did that sceptical-Jay thing. ‘Did I hear that right?’
‘Last time I set foot in these halls, they were celebrating some kind of summer festival. Music, feasting, etc. A man with eyes like spun clouds was playing the most extraordinary lyre…’ Mother trailed off, apparently lost in memory.
I waited.
‘That music,’ said Mother at last. ‘I’ve never heard its like, before or since. It could move the world.’ She gave a tiny smile, and added, ‘The lyre-player wasn’t half bad either.’
‘Mother.’
‘Sorry. Well, I may have somewhat over imbibed on the ambrosia and nectar, and fallen asleep under a table somewhere. When I woke, everyone was gone. In fact, the place was pristine — you wouldn’t think hundreds of fae had spent the night there in high revelry. All that was left was me, the wind, and the headache from hell.’
‘You aren’t telling me you’ve spent, what, two decades trying to find your way back to a party.’
‘Three,’ said Mother.
‘Three decades?’
‘A little more, even.’
‘For a party?’
She disconcerted me by drawing her arm out of her coat and clinically inspecting the stump where her hand once was. ‘It was a bit more important than that.’
Jay looked hard at my mother, and then, rather narrowly, at me.
‘What?’ I said to him.
‘Nothing. So this party. Whereabouts was it, exactly? Is this the same place?’
‘How should I know?’ said Mother.
‘As the only one of the three of us who’s set foot in here before—’
‘Once, thirty years ago. Actually no, that’s not quite true. I found another portal this one other time, but it led into some kind of mausoleum or something and there were no other exits. So, close enough.’
‘Well,’ I said, suppressing a sigh. ‘We can go looking for the lyre, or we can go looking for the lyre-player.’
Mother looked quickly at me.
‘What? People are probably going to be easier to track down than an inanimate object of unknown location. And since we’re here with little equipment and no food, finding something resembling civilisation might not be a bad idea anyway.’
‘You said they live out in the valleys?’ Jay said.
‘Typically,’ said Mother.
‘If these buildings are still used for ceremonies, the revellers probably aren’t all that far away. Let’s find a way out.’ Jay marched off with that lovely, purposeful stride of his.
‘And if we do find them?’ my mother called, hastening after him. ‘What then? Greetings, fair folk, we come to pinch your lyre, would you mind just handing it over?’
‘Who said anything about pinching it?’ Jay threw over his shoulder. ‘We’ll take a look at it, they’ll tell us this particular model is not for sale, and we’ll go home.’
I trotted after the pair of them. ‘I’m not sure that’s going to satisfy Mum,’ I called.
‘It will have to.’
I’d love to say that we wandered up and down dale (or hallway, in this instance), and happened conveniently upon a faerie town in no time at all. But when is life ever anything less than supremely complicated? We wandered and we wandered and we turned ourselves in circles. I can’t say I disliked this entirely, for wherever it was we’d got to was spectacularly beautiful. I could well believe it to have been a royal palace at one time, for it had all the necessary splendour, and the kind of ethereal glory one sees only in faerie halls. Windows twinkled like frosted starlight; bejewelled leaves on airy vines twined in vivid lustre around slender white pillars, and carpeted the floor; one chamber was devoted entirely to a shallow, serene pool of twilight-blue water, its bed littered with delicate, pearly shells.
What we never found, however, included such ordinary arrangements as, say, kitchens. Either the Yllanfalen did not eat (which, by my mother’s accounts of revelry, seemed unlikely), or such mundanities were banished to the lower levels, with the storerooms. None of us wanted to go down there again, if we did not have to.
We didn’t find a way out, either. The nearest thing to it was a turret, high up in the northwest corner (so Jay said, I have no idea how he could tell). We toiled up spiralling stairs and came out at last into fresh, balmy air, all silvered, somehow, and colder than it ought by right to be. Before us lay valleys and hills, as my mother had said, but nothing so ordinary would do for a Faerie Dell. Starry meadows awaited us, strewn with flowers; fronded trees hung with clear lights gathered in copses here and there; and the sky had a tinge of green to it, like cool jade.
‘Nice,’ said Jay.
‘Understatement of the century,’ said I.
He shrugged. ‘My eyes have been out on stalks for hours. I’m jaded.’
I turned about, and spotted, in the distance, a scant shadow on the horizon that might have been a town. ‘People, ahoy!’ I said, and pointed.
‘Maybe.’ Jay scrutinised the view. ‘Want to help me shift some chairs up here?’
‘Up those stairs? Not really.’ The steps in question were narrow, cramped and twirly.
‘Come on.’ Jay took my arm and unceremoniously towed me after him.
‘Be right back, Mother,’ I said with a sigh.
Ten minutes and quite a bit of swearing later, we had three freshly-witched chairs assembled at the top of the turret. They weren’t our first choices. When flying, it’s always best to choose big, solid specimens if you can, with arms to cling to. These were delicate, with narrow seats and spindly legs. Decorative but deadly.
Needs must.
‘We’d better take it slowly,’ said Jay. ‘And keep your mother between us. She’s only got one hand to hang on with.’
‘Righto.’ I took hold of the tall back of mother’s chair with one hand, and Jay did the same. Up we went, and over.
It’s odd, perspective. As long as we were safely tucked behind the wall ringing the turret’s top, it didn’t look so very far to the ground. Once we had jumped over that barrier and cast ourselves upon the mercy of the winds, the ground seemed so terribly far away. I tried not to watch as it came closer and closer, my stomach clenching, my mouth dry, gripping my mother’s chair with all my might. Giddy gods, what if she fell off? What if I fell off?
Nobody fell off. At least, not until we had landed with an inelegant crash, and then we all fell off. At least we only had a foot or two to fall, by then.
‘All in one piece?’ I said, directing most of my solicitude to my mother, bashed up as she already was.
‘As close to it as I’ll ever get again,’ answered Mother.
Right. I picked up the chairs. ‘I think we’d better fly, or it’ll take us all day to reach that town. But we can stay low.’
‘I’m curious,’ said Jay. ‘Did you ever try this trick on a carpet?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘You know how difficult it was not to fall off your chair just now?’
‘I remember it vividly.’
‘And you know how carpets have nothing to hold on to?’
‘Right.’
‘And you know how carpets aren’t at all solid and tend to flop all over the place?’
‘I see your point.’
‘It looks cute on screen, but in reality it’s a suicide mission.’
‘Chairs it is.’
Chairs it was, for an exhausting trip up the gentle but significant slope of an expansive hill. Its carpet of feathered grasses tickled my legs and made my mother sneeze. A few droplets of rain sailed down upon us from an almost cloudless sky, much to my puzzlement, and I shivered in my thin summer blouse. My right arm ached abominably from clinging on to my mother’s enchanted conveyance, and I could not help noticing the greyish tinge to her face. I was grateful beyond measure when we drew close enough to that shadow on the horizon to be certain of its identity as a town.
‘Let’s stop here,’ I said, when we were still some little distance away.
‘Why?’ snapped Mother.
‘Safe distance. The fae are tricky sometimes.’
‘I spent a whole night with them and emerged unscathed.’
‘You spent a whole night listening to their music and eating their food, and thirty years later you’re still trying to get back. Does that sound like “unscathed” to you?’
My mother went uncharacteristically quiet.
‘And you’ll note I politely glossed over the whole missing hand thing.’
‘Fine.’ Mother sighed. ‘What do you propose to do?’
I fished out King Evelaern’s skysilver pipes, if that’s what they were. ‘I thought I’d see if the fine folk over there would like these back.’
‘What?’
I was already off and striding, brandishing the pipes like a weapon. ‘I don’t know how they came to lose them, but if they’re as fond of that lyre as you suggest, I’d say they would be interested in getting a look at these.’
‘Cordelia—’
‘And when I tell them where I got them, and whistle up Adeline-and-friends to boot, I’d say we’ll be in business.’
‘Ves,’ sighed Jay.
I stopped at that. ‘Yes?’
‘You remember what your mother just said about those pipes and being reckless?’
I looked doubtfully at my pretty pipes. Glory. They did sparkle so beautifully in the faerie light. ‘You think she might have had a point?’
‘I think it just possible.’
I nodded slowly, thinking that over. ‘Ah well,’ I said with a shrug, and went off again.
‘Ves—’
‘At least there aren’t any lindworms out here,’ I called back.
‘Ves! You can’t give away your pipes!’
‘I said I’d see if they want them back. I didn’t say I’d hand them over.’
‘Oh, for—’ Whatever else Jay said was lost under a stream of muttered curses.
‘Have you two been working together long?’ I heard my mother say to Jay.
‘Nope.’
‘How long would you say it’ll be before you run screaming for the hills?’
‘About the middle of next week.’
‘I love you too,’ I retorted, and lifted my pipes to my lips. The moment I blew the first note, I knew something was different. The melody shimmered upon the air, expanded, soared; I felt it in every bone.
The Dell responded. The grasses blew up around my feet; birds descended from the skies, and hovered around me; an echo of the song built in the earth and stones beneath my feet, and thrummed along.
A rustle in the grass revealed the presence of squirrels, mice and other small meadow-creatures dashing along in my train.
Jay uttered another curse. ‘Great,’ he sighed. ‘Now she’s a sodding Disney princess.’
