Beneath (7 page)

Why didn’t Jess believe her own words?

They waved Arnor and Freya off after breakfast the next day, Jess promising to visit soon. Freya was still uncharacteristically quiet.

It wasn’t how Jess had imagined it at all.

When she’d been plucking up the courage to take the halter and search for the dark horse, she’d imagined returning with Freya, elated, full of the tale of what had happened. She’d imagined everyone apologising for not having believed her before, praising her for her bravery in saving her friend.

But that wasn’t how it was at all. Instead of elated, Jess mostly felt worried. She was worried about Freya, of course, but she found that she was worried about Finn too. She couldn’t get that last glimpse of him out of her head. Finn fighting for breath, the thing she had put around his neck slowly choking him. What if he died? What if she had killed him?

She shouldn’t care. She told herself she shouldn’t care. He was a stranger who had kidnapped Freya. He’d spent years watching Jess and her family. He wasn’t even human. It should have made her angry or frightened; she shouldn’t care what happened to him.

But she did.

Once Arnor and Freya had disappeared around a curve of the
road, Jess and her family went back into the farmhouse. Ian gave her shoulder a quick squeeze and went off towards the orchard and Martha pointed at a basket of washing.

“Hang that out, Jess, would you?”

And that was that. Back to normal. No one had asked her where she had been for so long yesterday, or why she’d gone to the pool. No one had asked her anything. It was as though they didn’t want to hear whatever answers she might give. Alone with her mother preparing breakfast, Jess had tried to start a conversation so she could tell the truth, but Martha had firmly turned the talk to another subject.

“I’ll help you,” said Ellen, shaking the peg bag under Jess’s nose and startling her out of her reverie.

Jess picked up the heavy basket and they walked slowly together to where the clothes line stood, too far from the farm buildings for anyone to hear what they said.

Jess put the basket down and pulled out a shirt.

“Well?” said Ellen, handing her a couple of pegs.

“Everything you told me was true. I waited for the horse and managed to put the halter on. I woke up in the Kelpie world and the horse was a boy and it was night. Time’s different there.” She paused for breath and bent for another shirt.

“A boy?”

“His name’s Finn. And he’s Euan’s son. I saw Euan, I think.”

“Euan? My cousin Euan?” Ellen’s eyes were wide.

“Yes. That’s what Finn said anyway. He – Euan, that is – looks much younger than you. Because the time’s different, I suppose.”

“And the horse boy is his
son
?”

“Yes.” Jess shook her head. “Oh, I’m not telling this very well.” She paused to gather her thoughts.

“Their world is so beautiful. It’s as if everything’s brand new and clean and clear. It was amazing.” She paused, remembering.

“Finn told me the Nykur – that’s what they call themselves, not Kelpies – take children to grow up and live with them because there aren’t many Nykur left. The people they take forget our
world and think they belong in the Nykur world. When I saw Freya there, she didn’t recognise me at all, so that must be true.”

Ellen held up a hand to stop her for a moment. “The lad said that they take
children
to live with them. But Freya isn’t a child. Why was it different this time?” she mused. “And we’ve stolen someone back from them; what will they do about that?” She saw that Jess looked alarmed and stopped thinking aloud. “Pay no attention, Jess. I’m talking nonsense. Tell me what happened when you found Freya.”

“That’s what the rest of the verse was about:

I took Freya’s hand and tried to pull her to the river. That was hard enough; she didn’t know me, she didn’t want to go, and then Finn’s mother did something, and Freya changed. She
changed
shape. Finn had warned me she would, or I couldn’t have held on. An eel, a butterfly, a falcon, a briar, a flame. I managed to hold on to Freya, even when the flame burned me, and I jumped in the river, and we came up in Roseroot Pool. And Freya knew me, but she doesn’t remember anything about the Nykur.”

Ellen was staring into space.

“I still can’t believe you’ve seen Euan,” she marvelled. “I’ve spent most of my life wondering what happened to him, if he was alive or dead. You don’t know what this means to me.”

“And what you did…” Ellen stared hard at Jess, then hugged her so tightly that Jess could hardly breathe. “You were always a brave girl, even when you were wee. You faced all that and saved Freya. Your whole family should be proud of you, not just me…” She released Jess and held her at arm’s length for a moment.

They finished pegging out the washing in silence and started back to the house, lost in their own thoughts.

Two days later, Jess stood in the barn, absently turning the handle of the apple press while Ashe fed apples into it and a stream of juice flowed into the stone jar underneath: the beginnings of this year’s cider.

“That looks like hard work,” a voice said from behind her, making her jump. “Here, I’ll take a turn.”

A large pair of hands covered her own and she turned to see Magnus.

“What on earth are you doing here?”

“Thank you for the unrestrained welcome,” he said with a crooked smile. “My family’s in town. We got the news that Freya had… was…” He drew a breath. “Anyway, we thought we were coming to try and console Arnor, and it turns out we’re here to help celebrate Freya’s miraculous reappearance.” He started to turn the handle, his hands still on Jess’s.

“She says she doesn’t remember what happened. That’s stupid,” said Ashe firmly. “You can’t just not remember five whole days.”

“Ashe!” Jess pulled her hands free. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“It’s all right,” said Magnus equably. “Come on Ashe, keep the apples coming.”

He addressed himself to Jess.

“That’s why I’m here. How did you find her? Neither Freya nor Arnor are very clear even about that.”

“Oh… of course.” Jess felt foolish. Of course he was here because of Freya.

“Wait – that came out wrong… I came to see you too.”

Did he mean her or the whole family?

“Away you go, Ashe,” Jess said, taking his place. “I’ll do the apples now that Magnus is here to turn the handle. You can go
off and do something disgusting.”

Ashe ignored the insult and ran for it before she changed her mind.

“The jar’s full,” Magnus said.

He corked the full one and lugged it out of the way while she brought a replacement, conscious as she had never been before of Magnus’s eyes on her.

He wasn’t turning the handle.

“Come on,” she said.

“Is Freya all right? She seems… different.”

Jess sat down on an upturned bucket.

“She was fine when I… when I found her. But realising that there are five days she can’t remember has upset her. You know how much Freya likes to be in control of things… Everyone thought she was dead. That would be hard for anyone to deal with.”

“What do
you
think happened?”

Oh, it was tempting… so tempting.

Jess shrugged. “The only thing I can imagine is that she fell and bumped her head and wandered about until I came upon her.”

“For five days?”

“Have you got a better explanation?”

Magnus shook his head. “You have to admit though, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“No.” Jess sighed, wondering how Magnus would react if she tried to tell him the truth. He wouldn’t believe a word of it; that was the one thing she was sure of. He was cut from the same cloth as her, and not given to flights of fancy.

“Come on,” she said. “Turn the handle. The apples won’t crush themselves.”

And by unspoken agreement they turned the conversation to less baffling topics.

In the end, despite protesting that he should go, he stayed for supper, and by then it was dark of course, with a thin, cold rain falling, and he let himself be persuaded to stay the night, and it was clear that that was what he had always intended.

Somehow, Jess found herself sitting alone with Magnus at the end of the evening, watching the fire die down; everyone else seemed inexplicably to have melted away. She suddenly felt horribly self-conscious.

“When will you go back to Dundee?” she asked abruptly.

“Not tomorrow anyway. Maybe the day after. Mother’s trying to persuade Arnor and Freya to come and stay with us. Time to sort themselves out, you know? Until the talk dies down.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose you’d come too, would you?”

She turned to look at him more closely.

“Are you asking me so I can look after Freya, or do
you
want me to come?”

She couldn’t believe she’d just said that.

To his credit, he held her gaze.

“Both,” he said with a slow smile.

“All right then. I’ll have to ask, of course.” It wasn’t exactly a sparkling reply, but most of her wits seemed to have deserted her and it was the best she could do.

It seemed to satisfy Magnus anyway. He gave a transparently happy smile, followed by a huge yawn.

“All this weeping, and people throwing their arms round each other – it’s exhausting,” he said.

Jess bit back a caustic response, imagining Freya’s elbow digging into her ribs.

“I’m off to my bed,” said Magnus, rising. “Goodnight. I’ll try not to wake Ashe when I go in.”

“I doubt you could. I used to think he’d died in the night sometimes when we used to share a room, though actually, he might have smelled better if he
had
been dead.”

Jess half thought that Magnus might try to give her a kiss as he went past, but it didn’t seem to occur to him. Left alone, she stared into the glowing embers, wondering again if she’d got things wrong.

“I miss Freya,” said Rowan as she walked among the trees with Finn. “It was like having a sister. But you should never have taken her.”

“I know that. I don’t need you ranting at me as well as Mother,” Finn said testily. “And you know it wasn’t her I meant to take.”

“It wouldn’t have been any better if you’d taken Jess. You’ve got to take a Nykur wife, Finn. You know Mother’s right. You can’t have Jess. We can’t have more human blood in the family.”

Finn didn’t answer for a moment. What was the point? No one – not even Rowan – understood that for him, there was no possible substitute for Jess. He’d loved her for years. They were meant to be together.

“You know how I feel,” he said at last. His voice was still hoarse, and the blistered weal around his neck where the halter had burned him wouldn’t heal properly. He hadn’t realised Jess had the strength of mind to hurt him like that.

“But…” Rowan started to say, then stopped abruptly at the sound of a growl. They stood back to back, scanning the shadows between the trees.

“It came from nearer the pool,” whispered Finn. “Come on.”

Here in the wood it was easier to move quietly in human form. Finn and Rowan crept towards the sound of the wolves.

There were two, prowling the edge of the wood, looking at the pool as though trying to decide whether to enter it.

Rowan turned to Finn. “They shouldn’t be able to get that close.”

He nodded. “I know. I’ll have to deal with them.”

“I can help you. I know what to do.”

“No! You’ve never faced down wolves without mother there.”

“I’ll have to do it sometime. I’ll be just as safe with you.”

“All right.”

They stepped out from the wood to the open ground where
the wolves could see them. The wolves stood their ground, lips drawn back, snarling.

Finn and Rowan locked minds with the wolves, told them they weren’t flesh, told them they weren’t wolves, tried to force them to change shape, to root themselves in the earth.

One of the wolves began to whine, backing away, and its shape began to waver.

“Push harder, Rowan,” Finn urged. “We’re almost there.”

He forced his mind into that of the wolf, told it to change, forced it to abandon its shape. Where it had been, a new briar bush stood. For a moment, the leaves shivered; yellow eyes gleamed among the foliage, thorns flexed like claws. Then they were gone, and there was only a bush.

Finn and Rowan shifted their minds to the second wolf.

Unmoved, unchanged, the wolf stared back, and Finn felt a prickle of unease. He gathered all his concentration, all his will, and tried again. The wolf remained a wolf, tensed to attack.

“It’s not working. Get back!” he yelled, just as the wolf launched itself at Rowan.

Finn slid into horse shape as the wolf sprang, and he threw himself between it and Rowan. Claws raked his shoulder as he reared back and struck once, twice, three times with his hoof before he connected with muscle and bone. He struck again and again, until he was certain the wolf was dead.

As he calmed and moved back to human shape he found that Rowan was beside him, arms round his neck.

“I’m sorry, Finn, I’m sorry. I should have been able to help you more.”

“It’s all right. It’s all right.” He was out of breath, unsteady on his feet.
He shouldn’t feel like this.
He should be able to deal with two wolves, even without Rowan
. He sat down, Rowan beside him, and tried to ignore his shaking hands. “That was a big wolf.”

“They’re all big,” said Rowan ruefully. “Are you all right?” She looked at his shoulder.

“It doesn’t look too bad.”

“I’m fine. Absolutely fine,” he lied.
Why had it been so
difficult? He should have overcome that wolf the first time he tried. What was wrong with him?

“The enchantments are failing,” he said. “Soon there won’t be enough of us to guard the gateways any more.”

“Maybe when the wolves can get to the Upper World they’ll leave us alone here. Maybe it would be better if we just let them out.”

“You know we can’t do that. We made a promise.”

“But look at what it costs us to keep it. One death already this year.”

Finn got shakily to his feet. “Come on. Let’s get away from here.”

“Nearly there,” said Arnor. “Look.” He pointed. “You can see the smoke over the next hill.”

Jess looked at the twists and blots of grey and yellow smoke that were the first signs that they were nearing Dundee.

“How much longer?” Freya asked, pulling her scarf further up over her ears.

“Half an hour at most and we’ll be in town. It’ll be warmer there, you’ll see.”

Jess rubbed her chilled fingers together. Even the gloves Ellen had knitted for her birthday hadn’t managed to keep the cold out.

It was a week since Jess and Freya had appeared, soaked, at the kitchen door of Westgarth, and four days since Magnus and his family had left.

Jess had only seen Freya once since then, but now they were both to spend a week with Magnus and his parents in Dundee. The prospect of a stay in the city had cheered Freya up, but she still wasn’t herself, nervy and unsure in situations that she would previously have handled with a cutting glance and a toss of her head.

Jess was aware that
she
wasn’t herself either. It was incredible that her life should go back to normal after what
had happened over the last couple of weeks, but that seemed to be what everyone expected of her: to act as though nothing had happened. Even Ellen had found excuses not to let her talk about the truth. Jess had lost track of the number of times she had wanted to shout at her family,

“Stop pretending everything’s normal! You know it isn’t.”

It was a relief to get away from the farm.

The weather had suddenly turned cold. It was the sort of change that made people check that their larders were well stocked and their woodpiles high. Winter wasn’t far away.

“When I get into that house, nothing’s going to move me from the fireside,” Freya said indistinctly through the scarf.

“I hope there’s room for both of us,” Jess said with feeling.

Arnor laughed. At least
he
sounded almost like his old self.

“If I know you, Freya, you’ll be off out to see what you can find to spend my money on, things that no one in Kirriemuir will have.”

Freya stuck her head out of the swathing scarf like a stoat emerging from a burrow.

“What rubbish,” she said. “I never buy anything I don’t need. It’s
ages
since I had anything new to wear.”

Arnor guffawed. “Ah, that’s my lass,” he said fondly, for it was exactly what the old Freya would have said.

“Besides,” Freya went on, warming to her theme, “It’s my duty as a friend to make sure Jess has some new clothes. Most of what she wears is so old that even the
boys
in Kirriemuir recognise the dresses.”

Jess was so pleased to hear Freya behaving normally that she decided not to take offence, but she couldn’t resist baiting her.

“Nonsense,” she said briskly. “I doubt those halfwits would notice whether I had clothes on at all. Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with my clothes. Some of them have
years
of wear left in them.”

Freya gave a shriek, genuinely appalled.

“Honestly, there’s no hope for you. No one but Magnus is
ever going to look at you.”

It wasn’t cold any more. It was suddenly ridiculously, unseasonably hot. That was the reason her face was red, Jess told herself firmly. Nothing at all to do with what Freya had just said. She hunched deeper into her jacket to hide her burning cheeks.

Ten minutes later they reached the straggle of dwellings that marked the edge of Dundee and soon they were in the city itself.

Crooked streets tangled together, clogged with people and horses and carts. Cramped buildings lined them, three, four, five stories high. They leaned forward alarmingly on their foundations, as if they were reaching towards their neighbours on the other side, leaving half of each street in their shadow.

There were shops and houses and inns and weaving sheds crammed in together, here and there a church with a bit more space round it.

Jess stared around her, amazed by the noise and the number of people. It was the first time in her life she’d been somewhere bigger than Kirriemuir.

She turned to speak to Freya, but stopped when she saw the lost look on her friend’s face. After a couple of minutes, Jess touched her arm gently.

“Come back, Freya.”

“I thought for a moment I could remember something about when I was missing…” Freya shook her head. “But it’s gone again.” She gave a wan smile as the cart turned a corner.

“Look.” Arnor pointed. “St Mary’s Watchtower. It used to be a church tower, but the rest of the church burned down.”

“Watchtower?” echoed Jess. “Who are they watching for? The English won’t come back now.”

“Not who –
what
,” Arnor said. “There’s always a watch kept for fires. That’s the biggest danger in a city like this. The buildings are so close together that a fire could go from one end to the other and destroy the whole place.”