Emily Feather and the Secret Mirror (6 page)

“Ssshhh!” Robin hissed at her, shutting the front door very quietly.

“What?” Emily blinked at him, surprised, and he pulled her up the stairs after him. He stopped when they were round the turn in the stairs, and sat down, staring at her determinedly.

“What happened?”

“I don't know what you mean,” Emily murmured, but she glanced away from him. His dark blue eyes were suddenly so water-like that they seemed to swirl and ripple, and she would have told him anything if she had looked at him much longer.

“You shouldn't be able to do that,” Robin said crossly. “I was trying to spell you, and you broke away! You've lived with us for too long, that's what it is. You're too used to magic.”

“Really?” Emily asked him, feeling rather pleased. When she'd first begun to see the odd things in the house, she'd wondered if maybe she had some strange sort of powers. It had been a terrible disappointment when she found out that actually, she was the only one of them who didn't. So it was good to know that at least the little scrap of magic that had grown inside her was useful for
something
.

“Really. It must be because you've been around me and Lark and Lory so much. You've got an immunity. Because when I looked at you like that you should have been completely hypnotized, and told me
exactly what's been going on
!”

Emily sighed, and decided that Robin wasn't going to leave her alone. She'd have to tell him – after all, if she didn't, he'd just go and find out about it from someone at school.

“Katie Meadows was teasing me, that's all. You know what she's like.”

Robin blinked thoughtfully. “Oh. That girl who looks a bit like a slug?”

“Does she?” Emily frowned. “I don't think so.”

“To me she does. She's slimy. What did she do?”

Emily was silent for two seconds too long. “She was just mean,” she said unconvincingly.

“And?” Robin hugged her, and then he whispered sweetly in her ear, much more sweetly than he ever usually spoke to her. “I can make you tell me, you know.”

“Oh, all right!” Emily snapped. “If you must know, she pulled my hair.”

Robin didn't look convinced. “I pull your hair, Emily, all the time. What did she really do?”

“You don't pull chunks of it
out
.”

Robin sucked in a breath through his teeth and stroked his thin fingers across the side of her hair. Emily could feel each separate hair tingling with his magic, and she was sure that when she next looked in a mirror, her hair would be about three times more curly than usual. But probably nice and shiny too.

“I'll make all her hair fall out,” Robin snarled as he came across the raw patch, and Emily flinched. “How
dare
she?” There was a sudden warmth all through the roots of Emily's hair, and the dull ache of the torn patch disappeared.

“Thanks!” Emily explored it carefully with her fingertips, but now it was just a patch of soft new skin.

“I can't make the hair grow back all at once,” Robin said. He sounded rather annoyed about it. “Mum could, but I'm not strong enough.”

“Don't tell her!”

Robin rolled his eyes. “I wasn't going to.” Then he smiled. The smile made his eyes sparkle, but Emily shivered. It was an icy sort of glint, and he looked furious, even with the smile. “I may not be able to make your hair grow, but I can deal with the rest of it quite well by myself.”

“What do you mean?” Emily asked suspiciously. “You don't need to deal with anything. It's nothing to do with you!”

Robin shook his hair back, and Emily could see the pointed tips of his ears, and the unnatural whiteness of his teeth. “You're my sister. It's up to me to protect you.”

Emily gave a little snort of laughter at the thought of her eight-year-old brother protecting her. But the tightness that had been knotting up inside her chest seemed to ease a little more every time Robin said something like this. “Since when do you need to protect me?” she demanded. “You don't go round protecting Lark and Lory, do you?”

Robin shrugged. “You can't fly away. No slug gets to hurt my sister.” He frowned and ran a finger round one of Emily's curls. “What shall we do to the slug?” Then he looked round at her excitedly. “Oh, we could turn her into one for real!”

“No!” Emily squeaked. “We can't! Not even Katie Meadows deserves to be a slug.”

“Not for ever…” Robin suggested pleadingly. “Only for a day, maybe.”

“How are we supposed to explain that she's disappeared?” Emily shook her head violently. “Honestly, Robin, you can't.”

Robin looked at her suspiciously. “Are you just going to let her get away with it? You do that with me and Lark and Lory all the time, you know. You're such a wuss.”

Emily stood up. “You put spells on me!” she snapped. “I can hardly do that back, can I? What do you expect?”

Robin shrugged. “You're just too nice. Look, can I at least put a slug in Katie's sandwiches? Not even by magic? I'll just catch one in the garden.”

“No,” Emily snapped, although the thought of Katie Meadows chewing a slug was very, very tempting. “You can't. I'll sort it out! I'll do something. I just haven't worked out what yet.”

But as she hurried upstairs, she glanced back and caught Robin smiling to himself – a thoughtful, planning sort of smile.

Emily was curled up on her window seat with her chin on her arms, scowling at the misty glass. Everything around her reminded her of the fairy world. She couldn't even walk past the mirror on the landing without feeling guilty.

What was she going to do about the fairy girl from the riverbank?

Emily shook her head, trying to clear it a little. There were far too many things to worry about, what with Robin obviously planning to take some sort of revenge on Katie. But the girl was the most important. Emily could still see her white, frightened face, and the way her fingers had clung to the rock.

If she hadn't promised her parents, she would have gone down to the landing right now and tried to open the door inside the mirror. Emily had almost gone through it once, when that same river-fairy girl had beckoned her in. Except that now, of course, the guard spells on all the doors had been strengthened. Emily wasn't sure that she'd be able to open it but she had to go back somehow, and help. She would have wanted to, even if it didn't feel like paying back a debt. There had been such fear in the girl's silvery-green eyes. She couldn't leave her there, being hunted.

But her dad had said she wasn't to go. The worlds don't mix, he'd said. In other words, stay out and don't interfere. It was no good asking him or Mum for help.

She glanced round. There were light footsteps on the stairs. Her mother, at a guess. And the tappity-tap of claws, so she had Gruff with her. Emily smoothed the hair over the tiny bare patch on her scalp and tried to look not in the slightest bit like she was planning a trip through a forbidden door.

Her mother opened her purple bedroom door and smiled at her. “Emily! You and Robin should have come and told me you were back. I was working on a design for a scarf and I didn't see the time. I only knew you were home because Robin came and told me he wanted toast and he'd already eaten all the bread at breakfast.”

“Oh, there are some chocolate muffins left, in the tin in the cupboard.” Emily started to get up, but her mother sat down next to her on the window seat and pulled her back with an arm around her shoulders. Gruff sat down next to them and leaned lovingly on Eva. He adored her, and she loved him dearly, despite the dark hairs he left on all her fabric samples.

“Robin can find them himself. You know him, Emily, he's probably on his second muffin already. Just because Robin's hungry, it doesn't mean you have to go running to feed him! You let him push you around too much. They all do.”

Emily gave a tiny shrug. It was true – but then, they were special, and she wasn't.

Her mother leaned down and grabbed her shoulders. “I
saw
you think that! Don't you dare!”

“I like cooking for all of you,” Emily murmured.

“I know. But you need to stand up for yourself sometimes.”

“I'm trying,” Emily said, with a sigh. First Rachel, then Robin, now Eva. Everyone seemed to be ordering her to stand up, be strong, and not let people push her around…

“Good. Now, we have to ward your room, remember? To stop you travelling in your sleep.”

“Oh…” Emily stared up at her mother in dismay. She had completely forgotten what Eva had said at breakfast. She had been depending on her dreams to help her rescue the river fairy from the painting. She had travelled before, after all. And now she
needed
to. Surely it would happen again?

“Don't worry!” Eva stroked her cheek. “Oh, Emily, don't look like that. I didn't mean to scare you. I'm sure you're not likely to travel, not now we've strengthened the guard spells. But just in case, we should make sure.”

Emily nodded slowly. “What do we have to do?”

Her mother looked around the room. “All you have to do is sit on your bed. And stop looking so worried!”

Emily managed a small smile, but she was thinking furiously. Was there any way she could defeat the spell? To leave a chink in its armour somehow? Even without the river girl's desperate need, Emily hated the thought of shutting herself away from that amazing, magical place. She couldn't help feeling that she belonged there too, just a little.

But there was nothing she could do. She settled herself on her bed, watching her mother cautiously. Gruff lay down on the floor with his huge chin on his paws. Emily eyed him. She knew he was watching her. He was a guard dog of some sort. Emily never dreamed her way to anywhere else when Gruff slept on her bed, she was almost sure.

“Not there, Gruff,” her mother said gently, snapping her fingers and beckoning the dog away from the bed. “I don't want you mixed up in the spell.”

Gruff dipped his massive head in what looked like a nod, and moved back to stare at Emily from by the table.

The magic seemed to flow into the room suddenly, as though a huge fire had burnt up in seconds, swallowing her mother so that her red hair glowed and spat like real flames. Instead of heat, though, the real, fairy version of her mother gave off a delicious sweet coolness.

Emily sighed as the soft breeze lifted her hair. She felt so sleepily peaceful. She curled herself down against her pillow, twitching the edge of her sheet in her fingers, and closed her eyes. She could see her mother as a dark, reddish shape on the other side of her eyelids, dancing and dipping as she wove the spell.

Faintly, Emily could remember that she had meant to resist, but the spell-sleep was so soft and inviting that she couldn't. She sank deeper and deeper, and only woke when something touched her cheek with a butterfly lightness.

Emily's eyelids fluttered open, and she saw that her mother was sitting next to her. She had kissed her awake.

And the spell was cast.

 

Emily lay in bed that night with her sketchbook propped up on her pillow. She was trying to draw the river girl from the painting, before she forgot what she looked like. It seemed so long since she had helped them to escape on the banks of the river. And now she might never see her again! Emily didn't even know her name.

What would happen if those huntsmen caught her?

But her drawing had none of the urgency and life from the painting in the gallery. It was just a girl with greenish hair.

Emily sighed. She was going to have to ask Robin or Lark or Lory. They were going to be furious. Lark and Lory had already had to rescue her once, and if the gallery attendant hadn't stopped her, Emily was almost sure she would have gone inside that painting – that the river girl's magic had recognized her, and called her to help. If she had touched the canvas for just a little longer, the magic would have pulled her in. Then she would have been in some other world, stuck with a band of fairy hunters. They might even have been the same ones that the Ladies had sent after her and Lark and Lory before.

It would have been so much easier if she could just dream her way back to the gallery (carefully making sure not to dream any security guards), and just grab the girl and run.

Even in Emily's not-very-good drawing, the girl looked miserable. However slowly time went in that painting, Emily suspected she could still feel. She might be shut up inside the painted version of her story for years, waiting for the hunters to catch her! Emily shut the sketchbook with a slam. She didn't
know
! Maybe the painting meant nothing at all – it didn't really make sense that everything stopped when no one was looking, did it? Perhaps they'd already caught her.

Emily let out a little whimper of fright and crept out of bed. She'd talk to Lark first, she decided. She was the person least likely to shout.

It was still almost light, a hot summer evening. Emily was sure Lark wouldn't be asleep. She was most likely to be awake and chatting to Lory, which was a pity, because Lory would be angry when Emily told them what had nearly happened. But there was nothing she could do about it. She padded across to the door, shivering a little in the eerie moonlight. It turned her room into something strange, so that for a moment she wondered if the spell had failed, and she had already been asleep, and dreamed herself to another place.

Then she stopped, seeing a pool of dark shadow under the moonlit window, by the seat. It was where Gruff had been sitting as her mother cast the spell. Where she had
moved
him, so that he wasn't caught up in it.

The spell wasn't fixed to Emily! It was fixed to the bed where her mother expected her to sleep, and dream. Emily looked at the cushions on the window seat, frowning to herself. Could it really be that simple?

She had a moment of guilt as she curled herself up on the cushions. Her mother had trusted her – they had never thought that Emily might purposely dream her way out of the house. But she shook it away.

 

Emily had never tried to dream before. It was surprisingly difficult. She dreamed almost every night, although she didn't usually remember what had happened in her dreams. Only glimpses of odd journeys or places.

In the weeks before she'd found out about her family, her dreams had been even stranger than usual. She had seen things that felt real, while she knew that they couldn't be. She understood now that she had been gradually slipping through the thin veil between home and the other world where her family truly belonged.

She wriggled herself back into the cushions that she'd piled up and tried to imagine herself into the painting. But that was all she was doing – imagining. She could open her eyes any time and still be in her room. It was useless. And the more she worried about the girl and the hunters, the more useless it got. Emily stared miserably into the black glass of the window, her eyes dry and itchy with tiredness. She was weary, but she just couldn't seem to let go and sleep. It was so late now that the night was thickly dark through the window, so dark that she could only make out the faint orange glow of the street lamp across the road. The dirty yellow light mixed with the shadows inside the glass, building great towers of darkness that piled up against the sky.

Emily blinked, and shivered, as she watched the lights travelling slowly around the battlements of the dark palace. It seemed just the sort of place that whoever sent out the huntsmen would live. There would be night-dark dogs with burning eyes, and teeth that shone in the blackness under the trees…

She was there. The smell of woods was all around her, and she could feel dry leaves under her bare feet.

The trees rustled and creaked as the dogs padded hungrily under them, and Emily drew herself behind a massive trunk, hoping that the huntsmen's hounds would never smell a dream-girl.

She should have been pleased that she had managed to dream her way in after all, but she was too scared. She almost wished she was still awake. What happened if you got eaten in a dream?

One of the dogs came sniffing hungrily past her hiding place, and Emily held her breath. If she breathed out, she would scream… She could hear its hoarse panting getting closer and closer, and she dug her fingers into the tree bark and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Should she run? Or stay stone still, and trust to it only being a dream?

At last the dog seemed to give up, and she heard its paws padding heavily away through the bracken. Emily let out a shaky breath and started to edge slowly around the tree. She had to find out where she was. Had those dogs been hunting the girl? She suspected so – in which case she would need to follow them. She would have to try and get in front of them again. The thought made Emily feel sick, but she had to find her.

She inched her way carefully around the tree, pressing her fingers into the ridged bark. It seemed so safe here now, and the bark was almost friendly under her fingers. She hated to pull herself away. Reluctantly, she lifted her hand from the tree trunk – and touched something warm, something that flinched away from her in shock.

Emily stifled her scream, burying her knuckles in her mouth to muffle the noise.

“Who's there?” came a panicked whisper. A girl's voice – not a slavering hound. Unless the dogs could talk, of course. Emily gave a sharp gasp.

“Who are
you
?” she whispered.

“I asked first!”

It was true … she had. Emily swallowed. “I'm Emily. I came looking for someone.” Someone, come to think of it, who was probably hiding, just like she was… She paused, and added doubtfully, “Is it you?”

The frightened person next to her in the dark was silent for a moment. Then she whispered, “You're the girl from the house?” There was a sudden hope in her voice.

“Yes!”

“I thought it was you… I felt you – just a scrap of magic, but it was close somehow. I didn't understand. Were you by the mirror?”

“No, I think it was another door. A secret door. One of those doors that aren't really allowed.” Emily stumbled over the explanation. “It was in a painting. There was a gallery full of paintings, but I could feel you calling me out of one of them. I don't know how it ended up there. I suppose someone must have brought it back from your world.”