Swift (25 page)

She was halfway across the living room, almost to the front door, when she remembered something. The mischievous-looking piskey she’d seen on Molly’s shelf, the first time she came to the cottage…could it be?

It hadn’t looked anything like Richard’s statue, or any of the others she’d seen. But if there was even the slightest chance that it might be Keeve, then she couldn’t run away and leave him. Steeling her courage, Ivy made herself turn back.

The curtains in Molly’s room were drawn, and only a thin slice of moonlight glimmered between them. Easing herself past the bed where the human girl slept, Ivy moved to the shelf and picked up the little clay piskey.

No wonder it had reminded her of Keeve. It
was
him. Every detail of his face was perfect, though he was half the size of the crude figures the vendor in Truro was selling; in fact he could have fit inside one, and probably had.

But how had he come to Molly? Ivy looked back at the girl huddled beneath the faery-printed coverlet. Her unbraided hair snaked across the pillow, and she was drooling a little in her sleep. Did Ivy dare to wake her?

It could be a mistake – perhaps a fatal one. But she needed to know the truth. Ivy crouched next to the bed and whispered, ‘Molly.’

She held her hand ready to clap over the girl’s mouth if she cried out, but Molly only rolled over. ‘What?’ she mumbled.

‘I need to know about this piskey,’ Ivy said, and held the statue of Keeve up for her to see. ‘Where did you get it?’

With a groan, Molly struggled up onto her elbows. Ivy watched for any hint of fear or guilt as her eyes focused, but the girl only looked bemused. ‘That? My dad gave it to me. A couple of weeks ago.’

‘Your
dad
?’ echoed Ivy, before remembering to lower her voice. ‘But hasn’t he been away?’

‘Yeah, but…he buys me presents sometimes, before he leaves. And then he leaves them for me to find while he’s gone, so I know he’s thinking of me.’

She reached for the figure, but Ivy held it away from her. ‘Are you sure it came from your father? Not your mother?’

Molly wrinkled her nose. ‘Why would my mum give me a piskey statue?’

And that was all the answer Ivy needed. Molly didn’t know, she’d assumed. And judging by her reaction, she had no idea that there was anything sinister about the statue, either.

‘Never mind,’ Ivy said, with a glance at the corridor to make sure it was still clear. ‘Just one more thing. You said your mum was a teacher. What does she teach?’

Molly heaved a sigh. ‘Can’t we talk about this tomorrow?’

‘Please,’ said Ivy. ‘It’s important.’

‘I teach a beginners’ art course,’ said Gillian Menadue mildly from the doorway. ‘We do sketching, painting… and sculpting with clay.’

Ivy’s heart collided with her ribs and dropped into her stomach. How could the human woman have crept up on her unnoticed? She backed towards the window, muscles quivering with the urge to fly. But both the glass panes were shut.

‘Mum?’ asked Molly. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing you need to worry about,’ Gillian replied. ‘Go to sleep.’

It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a command. Molly blinked, and a bewildered look came over her face. She opened her mouth to protest – but then her eyes closed and she slumped against the pillow, unconscious.

Ivy turned to Gillian in shock, unable to believe that a human could wield such power. But then she caught a whiff of the woman’s natural scent, a sweet herbal fragrance utterly unlike the false perfume she’d worn before…

‘You’re not human at all,’ Ivy said, husky with disbelief. ‘You’re a faery.’

Gillian smiled.

‘You can’t fly,’ said Gillian softly as she and Ivy faced each other, the sleeping Molly between them. ‘And you won’t run, either. Not when I have your sister…and now your mother as well.’

She was right, but Ivy hated her for it. She stood stiffly with her back to the window, cursing herself for not seeing through Gillian’s deception sooner. Until a few minutes ago she’d believed that Gillian had been lucky to escape from Marigold – now she knew that her mother had been the unfortunate one.

‘Where are they?’ she demanded. ‘What have you done to them?’

‘I can take you to them, if you like,’ Gillian said. ‘They’re still alive, though neither one of them is particularly comfortable at the moment. But you could change that.’ She motioned to the corridor. ‘Why don’t you come out, and we’ll talk about it?’

‘And be turned into a statue?’ asked Ivy. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘If I wanted to do that to you,’ Molly’s mother replied, ‘I would have done it by now. Do you want to see your family, or don’t you? Trust me, you’ll never find them on your own.’

For one last moment Ivy hesitated, studying Gillian’s face for any sign of treachery. Then she pushed herself away from the wall and walked to join her.

The faery woman smiled. With all the grace of a hostess she ushered Ivy to the front of the house, then out into the cobbled yard, where the moon glowed like a lantern among the pin-pricked stars.

‘I’ll saddle Duchess,’ she said to Ivy, opening the barn door. ‘We’ll get there quicker on horseback.’

Ivy’s brows crooked together. ‘You’re going to leave Molly here all alone?’

‘No harm will come to her in this house,’ Gillian replied airily as she walked into the barn. ‘Not with all the protective charms I’ve laid around it. And she’ll sleep peacefully enough until morning.’

As though it didn’t even matter to her how Molly would feel, when she realised what her mother had done. An unpleasant suspicion surfaced in Ivy’s mind, and she spoke it aloud: ‘Is she even yours? Or did you kill Molly’s real mother, and take her place?’

That got Gillian’s attention; she stopped and turned. ‘What an unpleasant idea,’ she said. ‘Of course Molly is my daughter. Where do you think her faery blood comes from?’

‘Well,’ said Ivy, ‘you seem to have come up with a few unpleasant ideas of your own. Like turning piskeys into statues, for instance.’ She gripped the strap of her bag, where the figures of Richard and Keeve were hidden. ‘Did you turn my mother into a statue too?’

‘Of course not,’ Gillian replied, taking Duchess’s bridle off its hook. ‘The Claybane only works on those of piskey or spriggan descent, and your mother’s lineage is as pure faery as my own.’

‘So is Richard’s,’ said Ivy. ‘But that didn’t keep you from turning him into a statue.’

‘You mean that weasel-faced creature your mother sent to find you?’ Gillian looked surprised, then amused. ‘So he managed to make contact with you, even while trapped in the Claybane. I wouldn’t have thought that possible, unless the two of you had a
very
strong connection…’ Her brows rose in mock dismay. ‘Dear me. Does your mother know?’

‘Yes, that’s who I mean,’ said Ivy, refusing to take the bait. It made sense that she and Richard had some sort of bond after all the magic he’d put into healing her, but that was none of Gillian’s business. ‘Why punish him? What did he ever do to you?’

‘He arrived at a very inconvenient time,’ said Gillian as she opened the door to Duchess’s box and slipped the bridle on. The grey mare tossed her bony head and stamped, but she held the reins until the horse subsided. ‘I’d almost persuaded your mother to tell me where the Delve was located, so I could go and fetch you out before you died of the poison. But when your Richard turned up, she decided to send him instead.’

So that was what the map had been about, with all the crossed-off marks. Gillian hadn’t known which mine the piskeys lived in, so she’d been visiting each one in turn, leaving a trap or two at each one to see if any piskeys fell into it. But there were hundreds of abandoned mines in this part of Cornwall, so the search could have taken her months – or years.

‘Though he did turn out to be useful, when I tracked him to the Delve,’ Gillian continued, heaving the saddle onto Duchess’s back. ‘I caught my first piskey that night. And after that I no longer needed your Richard, so I left a few hints to your people about where to find him, and I thought that would be the end of it.’

No wonder Mica and Mattock had caught the so-called spriggan so easily. Richard could never have guessed he’d been followed, much less betrayed. ‘But it didn’t work,’ Ivy said. ‘He escaped. And then what? He came back to the Delve one night looking for my sister, and found you setting more of your traps?’

Gillian gave a little shrug as she crouched to pull the girth tight. ‘It was remarkably poor timing,’ she said. ‘One might even say bad luck. But more so for him than for me, in the end.’

‘So you sold him to the dealer in the Pannier Market, and left him to die.’

‘Die?’ Gillian straightened up, looking offended. ‘Certainly not. Only the first piskey I caught died, and that was an accident.’

Ivy had already guessed that Keeve might be dead, but it still hurt to hear it. The lump of clay in her bag was all that was left of that black-eyed, mischievous boy who’d left so many bottles of cream at her door, and now he’d never milk another cow or play another prank again.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘Keeve had nothing to do with what happened at Thistledown Wyld – that was fifty years ago! You can’t have been more than a child yourself when—’

‘Cleverly guessed,’ Gillian said. ‘But you’re only half-right.’ She seized Duchess’s bridle as the mare danced sideways. ‘You’re also half-piskey, as I recall. Do something about this beast.’

‘Shhh,’ said Ivy, reaching up to stroke the horse’s shivering neck. ‘I won’t let her hurt you.’ Duchess lowered her head meekly, and Ivy led her into the yard.

‘Good,’ said Gillian, swinging herself into the saddle and reaching a hand down to Ivy. ‘Now get up behind me, and I’ll take you to your mother.’

Ivy had longed to ride a horse ever since she was a child, learning her animals from the mosaic on the walls of the Upper Rise. She’d heard the droll-teller describe how piskeys of old used to borrow horses from their human neighbours simply for the pleasure of riding them around the countryside, and it had been a cruel disappointment to her when she realised she’d never be allowed to do the same.

Now she had her wish after all, but it brought her no pleasure. Bumping along on the back of a leather saddle while Gillian held the reins, forced to cling to the faery woman’s waist for support, was far from the joyous romp Ivy had envisioned. Especially once they came down the slope into the wood below, where the branches arched thickly over the darkened path. Only the hovering light-spell Gillian had conjured kept Duchess from stumbling off course.

‘The first time I saw a piskey,’ Gillian said as they trotted along, ‘I was six years old. They came to our wyld, armed and armoured, and demanded that we pay them tribute. But our queen refused, saying that we had lived there in peace for a hundred years, and that the land was ours as much as it was theirs. So they left, but that night they returned in force. My father was killed in the fighting, and my mother and sister taken captive. I was the only one who escaped.’

‘I know about Thistledown Wyld,’ said Ivy. ‘My mother told me. But—’

‘You don’t know anything,’ said Gillian curtly. ‘The wyld where Marigold’s parents lived was my second home, where I found refuge after the first was destroyed. When the piskeys came to Thistledown, I was a woman, and this time it was my husband they killed.’ Her hands tightened on the reins. ‘I escaped again, but at bitter cost – I lost the child I was carrying, and nearly died myself. And as I lay in the ruins of my home with the bodies of my people around me, I swore on my own lifeblood that I would hunt down the men of the Delve and punish them as they deserved.’

Ivy looked away, swallowing. It nauseated her to hear that her ancestors had been so ruthless, and she would never look at some of the old uncles in the Delve the same way again. Yet Gillian’s story didn’t explain everything that she had done, much less justify it. ‘But my people don’t fight any more,’ she said. ‘Now they’re the ones hiding, and living in fear.’

‘The
women
live in fear,’ Gillian retorted. ‘I learned that much from your mother. Your men may be wary of other magical folk, but it doesn’t keep them from hunting and foraging, and trading with the humans as they please. What kind of justice is that, after all the evil they’ve done?’

‘It’s not like—’ began Ivy, but Gillian cut her off.

‘Don’t tell me they’re risking themselves for your protection. Haven’t you noticed that the men of the Delve live longer than the women, that they show fewer signs of age, that their injuries heal more easily and that they’re less prone to sickness? Can’t you see they’re deliberately keeping you weak, so they can control you – the daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters of the faery women they stole from wylds like mine?’

She might have a point, but Ivy wasn’t about to give in. She couldn’t forget that she was talking to the woman who held Cicely prisoner.

‘But the Joan is the most powerful piskey in the Delve,’ she argued. ‘And she’s the one who decides how we should live. Why would she keep us underground if she didn’t believe it was for the best?’ Yet even as she said it, she was reminded that Betony could go outside any time she liked, and often did. It was her responsibility to maintain the wards and glamours that protected the Delve from intrusion, after all – and with her ability to conjure fire, no one would dare to tell the Joan it was too dangerous.