by ‘Jay, you total idiot!’ I kicked at the nearest stone. He could’ve ended up anywhere. Canterbury. Edinburgh. Prague. Burundi.
He reappeared two minutes later, just as Miranda and Emellana caught up with me. ‘Hah!’ he said, with gusto, and vanished again.
This process was repeated twice more before he consented to pause in the centre of the turquoise henge, trembling violently and visibly out of breath.
I looked him over carefully. He had an elated look about him that seemed out of character, and his eyes were too wide. ‘You okay?’
‘I have no idea where I just went to,’ he said, beaming at me. ‘But it was amazing.’
‘You’re pumped up,’ I said. ‘Bordering upon high. Let’s have a little sit down for a second, okay?’ I towed him back towards his rock of a seat, but he drew his arm out of my grasp.
‘No way. I need to go again.’
‘Jay, do you recall how Farringale affected most of us?’
He nodded enthusiastically. ‘You were all bonkers.’
‘Totally intoxicated.’
I waited for the penny to drop.
And it did, after a few seconds. ‘Oh,’ said Jay, with a laugh, and ran a hand through his hair.
‘We appear to have found your poison.’
He physically shook himself. ‘It’s a pretty good feeling,’ he admitted.
‘I can see that. But we need you sane.’
‘Hey, listen to Ves, talking sense with the best of them.’ He beamed at me. ‘I’m proud of you.’
I found myself casting a sideways look at Emellana, whom I would not have suspect me of foolhardiness.
She smirked at me.
I coughed. ‘Um, so, did you go to the same place each time?’
‘The first two times, yes,’ Jay said, and sat down suddenly on the grass. ‘Oops. I popped up smack in the middle of the same henge, looked like bloodstone or something like that. One of many, many. Bigger henge complex than this one, at a glance.’
Miranda nodded. ‘Most of them work like doors, or so I gather. Like, each henge goes to a specific designated partner henge in some other complex.’
‘Right,’ Jay said. ‘But I could feel more potential than that, so the third time I tried to end up someplace else. And I did. Same complex, different henge. And then the fourth time I was somewhere else altogether, no idea where, except I think it wasn’t Britain.’ He looked around hungrily at all the other henges on the site, and scrambled to his feet. ‘I need to try them all.’
I grabbed him by the sleeve. ‘Jay. Some other time, all right? You try all of these now, you’ll lose your marbles in record time.’
‘You think?’ Jay paused.
‘We’ll be scraping your sanity off the moon.’
‘But,’ he said.
I waited, but that was it.
‘Let’s stick to the task at hand, can we?’ I said. ‘We need to find a way through to the Vales of Wonder. You can play with the rest some other time.’
He grinned at me. ‘Thanks, Mum.’
‘You’re welcome. So, the Vales?’
I was looking at Miranda, but she shrugged. ‘I haven’t heard of it.’
‘Anywhere we could find, say, a map or something?’
‘There’s a tourist information office back in town?’ she offered.
‘How about a library with a computer?’
She stared at me. ‘No computers here, Ves. Remember? No planes, no cars, no tech.’
I stared back. ‘No internet?’
Miranda shook her head.
‘What dark nightmare is this?’
She awkwardly patted my arm. ‘It’ll be okay.’
I gave myself a shake. ‘Fine. Let’s try the tourist office, or failing that there must be a library somewhere.’
Jay was drifting away. To my alarm, he was making a beeline straight for the spiralling agate structure near the centre of the henge complex. If one of the lesser ones had scrambled his wits, what would the mother of all empowered henges do to him? ‘Jay,’ I said, and grabbed him. ‘We’re going to need to get you some coffee, and a truckload of food.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ Jay said, but then stopped. ‘Actually, no. I’m starving.’
I nodded. I’d felt the same way after my near-drowning in magick back at Farringale. ‘Do they have pancakes in this Britain?’ I asked Miranda. ‘Please say yes. I have a never-ending chocolate pot, but I don’t think that’s going to cut it.’
‘No idea. Let’s find out.’
But when I looked around for Emellana, I didn’t see her. ‘Wha—’ I began, and turned in a circle.
Fortunately, it isn’t too hard to spot a seven-foot-and-something-tall troll woman dressed in purple. She was on the far side of the complex, communing with the foremost stone of the amethyst henge. Communing’s the only possible word for it. We went after her, and found her with both hands set to the smooth stone and her eyes closed. She looked mesmerised.
‘Em?’ I said softly after a minute.
She didn’t open her eyes. ‘Can I borrow that lyre?’ she asked.
Jay gave me a shifty-eyed look. ‘Turn your back, Ves.’
‘What? No! I can be trusted.’
He gave me a look that said, are you kidding me?
I sighed, and turned around. ‘Unfair.’ I leaned against Addie’s soft flank, and watched pup gambolling happily in the sunshine. She stopped, nose to the earth, and began to dig furiously. Another nugget of loose change about to come a-cropper, no doubt.
‘Why is Ves backwards?’ I heard Emellana say, absently, and then came the dulcet tones of the lyre as she strummed a brief melody.
‘Because she wants to meld with the lyre and must therefore avert her eyes,’ said Jay.
‘Meld?’
‘It has a strange effect on her.’
‘Hmm.’ There was no more talk after that, for a while, but quite a lot more music, and I ached to turn around and watch what was happening. I knew Jay would scalp me if I did, though, and moreover he wouldn’t be wrong.
‘Are you finding much?’ said Jay eventually.
‘Not being a Waymaster any more than Ves is,’ said Emellana, ‘I feel very little of anything that is happening here. Until, that is, I pick up the lyre. I suppose what I am now sensing is not current activity but past, and there is a great deal of it. Very potent.’
‘It’s probably been an active complex for some time,’ Jay agreed.
‘Yes.’
I couldn’t stand it anymore. ‘What is it that you’re trying to do?’ I said. Hey, I hadn’t turned around. I was still toeing the line of good sense.
‘Gathering information,’ said Emellana.
I was hoping for something jazzier, but all right. Emellana was the expert on world exploration. She knew what she was doing.
‘Did you know your lyre absorbs magick?’ she added.
I whirled around. ‘Does it! Orlando said it might, but I think he wasn’t sure. What is it—’
I was intercepted at this point by Jay, firmly turned about, and left facing the other way. At least this time he was nice enough to stand in front of me, so I had a face to look at while I was talking. ‘Tut,’ he said.
‘It was only a little glimpse.’ Even that was enough to make my heart ache. In Emellana’s hands, the lyre had been blazing with magick and beauty. I could still feel it. ‘Moonsilver and rosewater,’ I added, unnecessarily.
‘Wasn’t it skysilver?’ said Jay, folding his arms.
‘I actually think skysilver is an inaccurate name. It’s more moon-coloured.’
‘I’ll let the Yllanfalen know your thoughts.’
‘It’s okay, I’ll just call my loving mother.’ I cracked myself up with that one. When I was still laughing twenty seconds later, I had to wonder whether Jay was the only one whose senses were a trifle disordered.
Actually he looked stone-cold sane in that moment, staring at me with one brow raised.
‘Sorry,’ I said, and swallowed my gigglefit. ‘Erm. What’s she doing now?’
‘Ms. Rogan has moved off to another couple of henges. Oh, she’s coming back. Second.’ Jay disappeared from my field of vision.
Two minutes later he said, ‘Okay Ves, you can turn around again.’
I did, to find three empty-handed people and no sign of the lyre. ‘Where are you keeping that thing?’ I demanded.
‘You are the last person I am telling.’
‘Damnit.’
Emellana wore that faint smirk again, and it was definitely directed at me. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Give me another sixty years and I’ll be every bit as imperturbable as you.’
‘I do not doubt it,’ she said graciously. ‘Though if it helps, I do not believe the lyre’s effect on you to be particularly your fault.’
‘Particularly my fault?’ I echoed. ‘It’s only a bit my fault?’
‘Perhaps.’
I decided not to rise to that. ‘What did we find out?’ I said instead.
‘I believe I have learned which of these henges goes the farthest,’ said Emellana. ‘There are clear differences in the potency of the magickal traces left behind at various sites. Though it is possible that the more potent henges lead to places of more intense magick, and the difference is unrelated to distance. The one Jay used is only of moderate power.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Keeping Jay well away from the stronger ones.’
‘Hey,’ said Jay.
‘Give me that lyre, and you can use any henge you like with my blessing. I’ll even scrape you off the ceiling again afterwards.’
‘There is no ceiling,’ he muttered, which I took to mean he had no reasonable response to offer.
Win.
‘You didn’t find one conveniently marked “this way to the Vales of Wonder” I suppose?’ I asked of Em.
‘It’s not quite that simple.’
‘No,’ I sighed. ‘It couldn’t be, could it? We need a map.’
‘Or an obliging and knowledgeable passerby,’ suggested she.
‘I don’t see why there isn’t some kind of a map here already,’ I said. ‘Or sign posts, or… something. How do people know which henge to use?’
‘That… is actually a very good point, Ves,’ said Jay.
I looked at Miranda. So did everyone else.
She opened her mouth, paused, and closed it again. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I haven’t used the henges myself.’
‘So how do you come to know so much about how they work?’
‘I asked around. I thought I might need them sometime.’
‘Nobody mentioned a handy map or something? Like the tube map. Something.’
‘No. Look, I’m thinking, but I don’t remember anything like that. It’s like… that question never came up, like no one would need to have that spelled out for them.’
‘They’re doing something we aren’t,’ I said, and stared hard at the henges as though that would help. ‘Jay?’
He shook his head. ‘If you can use these without being a Waymaster, then it can’t be a Waymaster trick they’re using.’
‘Fair.’
‘It’s my belief,’ said Emellana mildly, ‘we may be looking too hard for an unusual solution.’
‘Meaning?’ said Jay.
‘Meaning that, while many things about this Britain are indeed wondrous, not quite everything needs to be. In this instance, the fact that we have a Waymaster with us is undoubtedly an advantage, but we need not make use of your talents on this occasion if it proves inconvenient. Miranda, you spoke of travel tokens. Do you happen to know where those are sold?’
I struggled with myself. It almost hurt, to gaze at the array of magickal glory before us and interpret it as something no more miraculous than a train service; but to those who used it every day, that’s all it was.
And therefore, of course there’d be a ticket office somewhere.
‘Do we have money for that?’ I said, considering pup doubtfully. I had endless faith in her talents, but how much discarded currency could there possibly be?
‘That is a problem for later,’ said Em.
A woman after my own heart.
I collared an elderly man who was making his slow way past the gates to the henge complex and pumped him for information. He may have looked at me like I was crazy or stupid or both (debatable) but he did point out the token vendor: a short, blue-painted kiosk situated about fifty feet from the gate. All right, so it was floating two feet off the floor and didn’t seem to be manned by anybody, but it nonetheless couldn’t more obviously be a ticket office.
And we’d walked right past it.
‘Worst explorers ever,’ I sighed, and started towards it.
Then stopped. ‘Wait. Why is it floating?’
There came a snort from our helpful passerby. Thankfully for my dignity, he did not choose to comment on our utter ineptitude (this time), but merely raised a hand and whistled two notes.
I paid close attention to the tone, for the air thrummed in response, and the kiosk instantly sailed in our direction.
‘Thanks,’ I said, with a bright smile for our helpful, if taciturn, interlocutor.
He only gave me a puzzled look, and moved off.
Ah well. Can’t win everyone’s admiration quite all the time, or at least not if your name isn’t Baron Alban.
The kiosk took its sweet time crossing the short space between us, but while slow it was jaunty. It bobbed cheerfully up to where we stood before it settled down, and a light went on inside.
Er.
‘Hi?’ I said. ‘We need to go to the Vales of Wonder.’
Nothing happened.
‘Um, can we see a list of destinations?’ Jay tried.
Silence.
In fact, the thing stubbornly refused to respond to anything that we said. After a string of uninterrupted failures, we were left stymied.
‘Damnit,’ I said. ‘Voice-operated magick isn’t a thing?’
There must be a charm or something that applied here, but how to guess it? I attempted some one or two encouraging little spells, with a similar lack of effect, but as I prepared a third option my concentration was shattered by an unexpected sound: a frenzied, high-pitched barking.
‘Pup?’ I said, and spun.
She stood twenty feet away, paws dug into the earth, her whole body jerking as she roared her fury at… what? I could see nothing amiss. Addie was right behind me, peacefully turning her nose up at the bright green grass beneath our feet, one eye half-closed in stupefying boredom. Emellana and Miranda and Jay puzzled still over the kiosk, deep in debate about something I hadn’t the leisure to listen to. And while if someone wanted to relieve us of Miranda I wouldn’t have objected too much, she was kind of my responsibility, so I had to be thankful for her continued presence.
No one else was near us.
‘Pup, what—’ I began, and started in her direction.
Then I saw it. A small, sneaking, hatted little person creeping up on my Adeline.
