The Puzzle Ring (44 page)

Donovan turned and stared at Robert, who was talking earnestly with his wife and grandmother. He noticed Robert's fine pale skin, his expressive blue-grey eyes, his straight patrician nose, his long-fingered hands. Donovan looked down at his own hands. ‘It explains a lot,' he said slowly. ‘About my dad, I mean. About Allan.'

Hannah nodded.

They were silent, lost in their own thoughts.

‘It means you're the rightful heir too,' Hannah said softly. ‘To the throne under the hill. You're the lost king.'

‘I've been worried about that,' he said in a burst. ‘What does it mean? I'm just a kid. I don't want to have to go away by myself and be king of the fairies. It's just ridiculous.'

‘I don't want you to go away either,' Hannah cried, then reddened. ‘I mean, we've only just found out that we're cousins.'

‘I don't know anything about being a king. I don't even believe in kings!' Donovan looked at Hannah with troubled eyes. ‘So do you think I have to go? Is it my duty?' He spoke the last word bitterly. ‘There were so many things I wanted to do in this world! I wanted to play my horn, and be a famous musician. I wanted to climb all the Munros and go to the Himalayas and see Mount Everest. Maybe even climb it one day, and play my horn up there at the very top of the world. I wanted to see a real live snow leopard and hear a nightingale sing. I wanted . . . oh, I wanted . . .' He fell silent.

Hannah put out one hand and touched his sleeve gently. ‘There may be a way . . .'

‘How?'

‘Let's go see Miss Underhill.'

Miss Underhill was dusting a shelf of crystals when Hannah, Donovan, Max and Scarlett pressed their faces against the shop window. She looked up and her face suddenly came alive with eager curiosity. ‘Come in! What are you doing here so early?'

‘We've come to ask your help,' Hannah said.

Miss Underhill scrutinised them closely. ‘You look thin, all of you, and maybe taller too. And all of you—your hair is longer, much longer. You've been there, haven't you?'

‘Where?' Scarlett said innocently.

‘I watched you go,' Miss Underhill said. ‘Last night, at midnight. Carrying candles and singing. I was standing guard, but instead of someone coming
out
from under the hill, I saw you four go
in
. . . and you didn't come out again.'

The four children were silent.

‘I followed you into the passageway. I walked through it three, four times. But there was no sign of you. You'd just
disappeared. That's when I knew it was true. After all my years of trying, all my study, all my attempts . . . I've never been able to find the doorway through to the Otherworld. Yet you children . . .' Her voice was raw with longing. ‘How? How did you do it?'

Hannah drew out the hag-stone and held it, dangling from its cord, towards Miss Underhill. She took it wonderingly. ‘A hag-stone. But . . . where . . . ?'

‘A toad gave it to me,' Hannah said. ‘At the witch's pool.'

‘A toad?'

‘A man who had been transformed into a toad,' Hannah said. ‘He's been waiting there for me for four hundred and forty-odd years. He's a very old toad now.'

Miss Underhill sat down suddenly. ‘Four hundred and forty years . . .'

‘Miss Underhill, why are you so interested in fairy lore? Your whole life is devoted to learning about it and trying to keep it alive.' Hannah waved her hand about the shop. ‘How come?'

‘There's a story in my family,' Miss Underhill said slowly. ‘Once, a long time ago, one of my ancestors barely escaped from the Otherworld with her life. She was a fairy child, the daughter of the king of the mountain—that's where my surname comes from, you know. The child that came from “under the hill”.'

‘Her name was Morgana.' Hannah heard a faint hiss of breath as her friends suddenly understood, but she did not take her eyes from Miss Underhill's face.

‘Yes. I'm named for her. All the eldest girls in my family have been. And we were all told the story. My mother thought it was nothing more than a lovely old story, though she kept
her last name as all the women in my family have done. So we wouldn't forget.' Morgana Underhill paused, then took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. When she looked up, Hannah saw her eyes were the most beautiful clear green, like a sunlit forest pool.

‘My grandmother, though, she believed the story, she taught me to believe. I've been searching all my life to find some way back to the homeland that my ancestor lost. I go to every fairy knowe and hill I can find, I search every cave and passageway, I go round them nine times widdershins . . .' Morgana's voice trailed away. She looked down at the hag-stone. ‘There was a red-haired witch who helped my ancestor. Or so the story goes. She promised to defeat the evil queen who had killed the king of the mountain and his two eldest daughters, and to help Morgana win back her throne. She had a hag-stone just like this.'

‘It was the same one,' Hannah said. ‘That red-haired witch was me. We went back in time when we went through the hill, back to the time of Mary, Queen of Scots.'

‘You helped my ancestor?' Morgana sounded dazed, and she turned incredulous eyes from one face to another.

‘Yes. For us it was only yesterday that we said goodbye to her and promised her we would do our best to defeat Irata.'

‘Don't say her name!' Morgana cried.

‘I want to say her name. I want to call her. We can never defeat her as long as she comes with the Wild Hunt at her heels. She turned Angus into a toad. She threw Max high in the air and broke his leg . . .'

Startled, Morgana looked at Max, who was kicking his heels against his stool leg in his usual way.

‘It was weeks ago,' Max said. ‘For us, I mean. And Hannah made healing water.'

‘With the hag-stone,' Hannah put in, feeling colour rise in her cheeks as Morgana turned that intense gaze upon her. ‘I think it's more powerful when it's in the fairy realm.'

‘Because it worked a treat!' Scarlett cried. ‘I was so hot and worn out and exhausted, I just wanted to lie down and die, and then we drank the water and I felt like I could fly! It was fantastic!'

Hannah glanced at Donovan, who was looking as pale and sombre as she had ever seen him. He noticed her look, and sent her a quick, flashing smile. He had, she saw, seen all the possibilities of the discovery of who Miss Underhill really was.

‘Miss Underhill . . .' Donovan began, then stopped.

‘Yes?'

‘If you are descended from Morgana, Eglantyne's sister . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘Then that kind of makes you an auntie to me,' Donovan said in a rush. ‘Because, you see . . . I'm Eglantyne's son. I know it sounds crazy, but . . .'

The children told Morgana Underhill all they had learnt in the past few weeks, and she listened quietly, turning her face from one to the other, emotions flitting over her face. Disbelief, wonder, anger.

‘So if you are Eglantyne's son,' she said to Donovan, when they had convinced her that their story was true, ‘that means you are the true heir.'

‘Not if I don't want the throne,' Donovan said in a rush.

‘We were thinking . . . we were wondering . . . you're a
child of true blood too, aren't you? Couldn't you go and be queen in Irata's place. A good queen?' Hannah asked.

Morgana had a faraway expression in her eyes. ‘Me? Go and be queen of the realm under the hill? No, no, it's a fantasy. A fairytale. Things like that don't happen in real life.'

‘All things are possible in all the worlds,' Hannah quoted.

Morgana smiled. Her green eyes were filled with light. ‘Well, I guess there's no harm in trying. If I had the hag-stone . . .'

‘It's yours,' Hannah said, speaking past the lump in her throat. ‘It belongs to the princess royal, doesn't it?'

Morgana looked down at the small, rough stone in her hand. Colour rose up her face. It made her look quite different.

‘But first we need to deal with Irata,' Hannah said firmly. ‘As long as she still rules in the fairy realm, none of us will be safe. That's why we need your help.'

‘But what can you hope to do?' Morgana asked.

‘Well, you see, if we call her, she'll have to come alone. We can choose the time and place. We can make sure we're strong and protected. And best of all, she'll think she's coming to face children, not a real live witch. Because you truly are a witch, aren't you, Miss Underhill?'

‘I like to think so,' she answered rather shakily.

‘So you'll know what to do.' Hannah spoke confidently.

Morgana blinked. ‘I might have to do some reading up on it.'

‘That's good. Because we've been up all night . . .'

‘We are so, so exhausted!' Scarlett said, giving a huge yawn. At once all the other children yawned too, Max so widely you could practically see his tonsils.

‘. . . and it'd be really good if we could catch some sleep,' Hannah finished. ‘What time should we get together?'

Morgana gave a sudden grin. ‘Sunset is a border time, a place between day and night. Let's say sunset. At Fairknowe Hill.'

Dusk came early.

It was cold, and Hannah's breath frosted the air as she came quietly through the shadowy garden. Her stomach was tight with nerves, and her rib cage ached as if a boulder rested upon her chest. She had slept all day, though, and eaten another of Linnet's delicious meals, and felt ready for anything.

Her friends were waiting for her by the yew tree. ‘You nervous?' Donovan asked.

‘Very. What happens if we fail?'

‘We'll think of something else. Don't worry.'

‘We're not going to fail,' Scarlett said.

They went together through the yew tree, past the gleaming witch's pool and up the pathway to the fairy hill, which rose steep and black against the pale sky. Morgana Underhill was waiting for them by the blackthorn hedge, which barred the entrance to the cave. She was dressed in a soft white woollen robe, knotted about the waist with a black cord. She wore the hag-stone on another black cord about her neck. Her grey hair hung loose on her shoulders. It made her look much younger.

She was sitting cross-legged, with two black candles in holders made from the twisted twigs of the blackthorn. A mirror lay between them, with an ornate, gilded frame. In her
hands Morgana held a small, dark wand made of blackthorn and a knife with a silver blade and a white handle.

‘There are five of us,' Morgana said without preamble. ‘That is perfect. Five for the limbs and head of the body; five for the points of the pentagram and the five elements, earth, fire, water, air and spirit; five for the fingers of the hand; and the five senses; and the fivefold kiss of the Wiccan, feet, knees, womb, breasts, lips.'

The children were shaken and afraid. She looked and sounded so different.

‘I have drawn a pentagram here in the ground,' Morgana said. ‘Come and sit on the other four points.'

Looking down, Hannah saw a five-pointed star carved deeply into the hard ground. Feeling very nervous and rather silly, she sat down as instructed. Morgana rose slowly to her feet and began to walk in a circle around the outside of the star, muttering under her breath: ‘I consecrate and conjure thee, circle of power . . .' She walked round again, sprinkling salt, and then a third time, trickling water from a small bottle, muttering all the while.

Then she sat again at the top point of the star, which faced east, directly towards the barred cleft in the hill. She lit the two black candles and put them either side of the mirror, which she propped on a black-draped stone so it stood upright. ‘Hold hands,' she instructed. The children did as they were told, without any silliness, and waited nervously.

‘Hannah, you need to call Irata now. Call her name nine times.'