First Aid for Fairies and Other Fabled Beasts (4 page)

Yann galloped across the fields at a speed Helen could never have matched on her bike, even on a flat road. He leapt over walls, hedges and streams as if they were hardly there. But despite his speed and the freezing air tangling her hair and slapping her face, she felt safe pressed between his back and Rona’s front. As Yann stopped in deep shadow at the side of a road to let some cars go by, Rona
whispered
in her ear, “Nearly there. You’re doing fine.”

Across the road, the country became wilder. They weren’t riding over fields, but over moorland and heather, going up steep hillsides and rocky slopes.

When they reached the summit of one small hill, Yann slowed his pace, and headed more cautiously for the next, higher, hill.

As he walked, Helen heard Rona whisper again, “We must be quiet now. We may not be alone.”

Then Yann walked straight into a cliff.

Helen flinched, but the cliff opened suddenly into a narrow chasm, then a wider cave.

“You can get down now,” said Yann.

Rona slid down, and so did Helen, her legs a bit wobbly and her arms stiff. Rona gave her the rucksack.

Yann turned to Helen. “You didn’t dig your feet in. Thank you. Perhaps I won’t make you walk home.” It was very dark in the cave, and Helen couldn’t tell if he was smiling and making a joke, or if he was serious. Perhaps he never made jokes.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“This is the back entrance to Sapphire’s cave. Catesby thinks that something may have followed her after she was attacked, so we can’t go straight in the front door. There is another way to her chamber through that tunnel there.” He pointed to a black jagged oval at the back of the cave. “But it’s too narrow and low for me, so I will leave you here and go round the front. If the front entrance is being watched I will lure or scare away the watcher. If it isn’t, I will join you inside. Hurry, please. Sapphire was scared and in pain when Catesby left her.”

Yann squeezed back through the narrow entrance, with Catesby fluttering after him.

“All girls together,” said Lavender. “That’s nice. If only we had time to talk about how annoying boys can be.”

Helen was looking doubtfully at the blackness round her. “Do we have any light?”

“You have no light in that magic bag of yours?” asked Lavender.

“I didn’t realize we were going under a hill, or I’d have brought a torch.”

“Never mind. Even fledgling fairies can do light spells.” Lavender produced a tiny stick from her dress and blew on it. The end blossomed into a ball of gentle light, not bright enough to make
you squint when you looked directly at it, but bright enough for Helen to see the walls of the small cave. Now she could see dark scuttlings and shiftings on the rock around her.

She jumped. “What was that? Are there living things in here?”

“There are living things everywhere,” said Rona. “These ones don’t like light. They won’t bother us. Let’s go.”

“Do you know the way? Have you used this back door before?”

“No,” answered Lavender. “But Catesby says that Sapphire says that a knight looking for treasure got in this way when her grandfather was young. So I’m sure it will be fine.”

Helen looked at Lavender. It was now bright enough to see her face. She was smiling. Did that mean she was joking, or that she was laughing at Helen’s fears?

Helen said cautiously, “I suppose if the tunnel’s blocked by a rockfall or something we can just turn round and come back out.”

Lavender smiled even more charmingly. “Absolutely. So long as the rockfall is in front of us.”

They entered the narrow tunnel. Lavender first with the light, then Helen, carrying the rucksack, then Rona.

Helen knew that most caves were formed by water dissolving holes in limestone. Every time she heard or felt a drip, she was sure that the water was dissolving the whole hill around her. The rocky ceiling looked as if it could crash down on her head any moment.

The threatening rock was a dull pencil-grey colour, but sometimes Lavender’s light lit up a seam of a brighter mineral, slashing across the floor, walls or ceiling, looking like the rock had been torn apart and glued back together. Helen ran her finger along the tunnel wall. It seemed solid enough.

The tunnel had started too narrow and low to let a centaur through, and it kept getting smaller. The ceiling sloped down, the floor rose up and the walls came inwards. Soon Helen was walking with her head and shoulders stooped, her knees bent and her elbows pulled into her ribs to stop them banging on the bumpy walls. Adventures were more awkward than she had expected.

Lavender was dancing and swirling ahead of her, but then she could fit through a letterbox without ruffling her dress. Behind Helen, Rona was grunting with effort.

The tunnel wasn’t level either. Sometimes the ache in Helen’s thighs told her they were climbing uphill, and sometimes the ache in her knees told her they were walking downhill.

After a particularly long downhill trudge, Helen’s feet began to splash through little
puddles
. As they went lower the puddles became a stretch of water. The water reached higher, over the top of her ankle boots, then up to her shins. It was so cold that she was surprised the surface wasn’t crackling with ice.

“Can either of you swim?” Rona panted from behind her.

“No,” replied Lavender.

“Yes,” said Helen, “but I’ve never swum in a cave, nor in water this cold.”

“My light would go out underwater anyway,” said Lavender, “and if there isn’t enough air between the water and the rock for me to fly, there won’t be enough air for you two to breathe.”

“Was the knight’s armour rusty when he reached the dragon’s chamber?” asked Helen.

“The story doesn’t say, but that was hundreds of years ago, and caves can change quite quickly. Should we turn back?” Lavender looked at the two bigger girls behind her.

“We must be nearer the front door than the back now,” said Helen, “and we don’t want to turn round and go all that way again unless we have to. Perhaps you could fly on for a few moments, Lavender, and see if the tunnel goes lower into the water, or if it slopes back up to dry stone?”

Lavender didn’t answer for a moment. Then she sniffed a little. “I suppose I have to. Don’t go away.”

She took a deep breath, and flew on ahead. Helen and Rona saw her light reflecting off the wet walls and water for a few moments, then the fairy turned a corner and they stood together in the bitter cold dark.

There was a gentle splashing as Rona moved nearer Helen, and the two girls held hands.

“Are you scared?” Rona whispered.

“Yes, are you?”

“Yes.”

“Lavender must be more afraid. She’s on her own,” Helen pointed out.

“She has the light. We should have asked her to leave us some.”

There was a long pause, during which they could hear only drips and their own breathing. Helen imagined the drips slowly filling the pool until it reached their necks, mouths and noses. She was almost too numb to move even if the water rose over their heads.

“Why did you come with us?” Rona asked.

“I thought I could help. And Yann hasn’t really finished his story. What wall did he leap over, and how was your dragon friend injured, and what clue has the Book left behind? I want to know how the story ends. Also, I don’t think Yann likes me, and I wanted to show him that … Och, I’m not sure … that not all humans are bad. Not all people pamper ponies.”

“Don’t mind Yann. Everyone gets scared in
different
ways. Lavender gets all fluttery and bursts into tears, then takes tight hold of her wand and gets on with it. Catesby, as you saw, gets a bit clumsy. Yann gets very rude and touchy. But he feels responsible for all of us. If we fail to get the Book back, he will take all the blame on himself, even though he knows his father would never forgive him for shaming their tribe. And you fixed his leg, so he feels in your debt, which is always awkward. Also, you’re a human child, and he’s been taught that humans are dangerous and to be avoided at all costs. It’s surprising he’s talking to you at all really.”

“So if I wasn’t human, and I hadn’t fixed his leg, and he wasn’t scared and guilty, he would say
please a bit more often, and maybe even tell jokes and do some juggling?”

Rona laughed. “Well no. Centaurs are always a bit stiff and proper. But he wouldn’t be quite so rude if he wasn’t quite so worried. And he definitely wouldn’t have let you ride on his back if he didn’t like you just a little bit.”

“So, if Yann is rude, and Lavender cries, and Catesby gets tangled in people’s hair, how do
you
deal with being scared?”

“I’m trying very hard to be calm right now,” Rona said softly, “but when I get home I will need to do a lot of very loud singing.”

“Singing?”

“Yes. Among my people I am learning to be a singer. And when I am happy or sad, or scared or worried, I sing about it until it becomes part of me and part of the sea and part of my people. Then it isn’t so overwhelming.”

“What songs do you sing?” Helen asked.

“Old songs about when fish were made of silver and gold. Ballads about humans and seals falling in love. Battle songs about killer whales and sharks. But I write my own too. I might write the story of our quest for the Book. If we ever find it.”

The warmth and enthusiasm in Rona’s voice made the cold water round Helen’s feet easier to bear. “Would you sing the quest song to me, when you’ve finished it?”

“Yann said that you want to be a music-maker, not a healer like your mother. Do you sing?”

“A little, but mostly I play the violin. I like old tunes too, and I’ve written a few short pieces of
my own as well. Right now I’m searching for a perfect piece of music; not perfect for everyone, just the absolutely right one to show how my violin and I play best together. It’s … it’s hard to explain.”

“You shouldn’t try to explain music. Just play it. I know … when we find the Book, I could sing the story and you could play it,” Rona suggested, “Just for our friends, even if we can never tell anyone else.”

“For our friends? That would be great. But will we find the Book?”

“I think so. I think with your help we will. Lavender was right. In the old stories, it has always been when the fabled beasts worked with humans that we defeated evil. And many of our best adventures have happened in the company of a human bard, musician or storyteller. You may be our bard. When we have healed Sapphire, and she has given us the clue, we will see if you can help us with that too.”

Helen, who had never been any good at
crosswords
or quizzes, made a sceptical face in the darkness, but for this girl who talked so easily of ‘our friends,’ she would certainly try.

She squeezed Rona’s hand, and they waited in the creeping black cold.

Then the black slowly lightened. At first the dark shadows got darker, then the wet areas shone, then Lavender and her light came round the corner.

“Hello! Are you there?” her little voice called.

“Here we are!”

“Oh, thank goodness. I thought I would never get back to you.”

Lavender hugged Rona’s neck, then flew to Helen and kissed her cheek.

“I’m not going ahead on my own ever again. Next time one of you can take some light and go and look.”

“What did you see?” asked Helen.

“Well, the tunnel keeps going down for a short way, but then it definitely comes back up again, and the floor rises out of the water. But I can’t tell how deep it gets first. Do you want to risk it?”

“Yes!” said both girls at once. Now they had light, and they were all together again, it seemed that they could do anything.

So they set off along the tunnel.

The water rose quickly now. Before they were round the corner, it was above their knees, then nearly to Helen’s waist. It was very hard to push through its swirling cold heaviness.

“It goes uphill again soon, I promise,” insisted Lavender. She repeated this promise several times, as the water got higher and higher.

“Do you want to turn back?” asked Rona.

Helen, concentrating on each slow step so she didn’t slip into the deep water, just shook her head.

Finally the water started to get shallower. It was down to Helen’s knees, her ankles, then just her toes again.

After that, the dry tunnel, however narrow, seemed like a footpath on an easy walk.

The girls strode along, whispering and laughing
quietly. Wondering if they would get to the chamber before Yann and Catesby, wondering if Sapphire would have any food they could eat, hoping that she could light a small fire to dry them.

But then the tunnel came to an abrupt end. Suddenly, the only way forward was a tiny opening in a blank wall of rock.

“I’m not going through myself,” Lavender sniffed, “Not on my own, not again.”

Before Lavender could start to cry properly, Helen said, “Give me the light. If I can fit through, so can Rona.”

“And if you can’t? If you can’t turn round, you might be stuck.”

“You can just pull me back out again.”

Helen took the rucksack off and handed it to Rona. “If I get through, just shove this after me.”

Then she took the tiny glowing wand from Lavender and held it delicately in her right hand. It felt very fragile.

“No.” She gave it back. “You two keep the light. I’ll need both hands. I’ll just feel my way through.”

But Lavender said, “I can give you some light you don’t need to hold.” The fairy flicked her wand, and the light ball flew off. It streaked through the air, bounced off the wall of the cave, and came to a halt, hovering just in front of Helen. She blew at it, and the bright white ball bobbed away from her, then slowly returned.

Helen grinned. “Thank you.” She crouched
down by the gap, and heard a faint noise. A groaning or croaking.

“Is that your dragon friend?”

Rona crouched beside her, listened, then nodded. “We must be near her chamber now.”

Helen put her arms, head and shoulders into the gap, and tried to push the rest of her body up and in. At first she thought she was stuck, and wondered how much it would hurt to be dragged back across all this rough rock. But with a few wriggles she got inside and then pushed herself further on with her toes.