The Unmaking (24 page)

“We can help you!” cried Nell. “There’s a dragon in the marsh that’s nay dead yet, only injured. But it cannay fly. If we can heal it somehow, I’m sure it could lead us to Swarn, aye. Wherever she is.”

Jalo hesitated. “I was commanded to return instantly when I found the Oracle,” he said, “and I have found her.”

“But the other Faeries willnay know where to find Swarn if she’s hiding somewhere,” said Nell, “and there’s nay time to run back and forth getting word to whomever. Do you know any Magic for healing? The dragon is hurt very badly.”

The Faery considered this a moment. “There is a witch in the mountains who is said to be a great healer. We could go to her. My myrkestra is outside but cannot carry so many.”

“Dinnay worry,” said Nell. “We have a helicopter.”

~~~

Jalo’s myrkestra was a grey and white bird half the size of a gryphon. He instructed it in his own tongue to wait for them in the Dead Marsh. Then he circled the helicopter with interest.

“It is not beautiful,” he decided.

“I’ve got to say no to this,” Ander said to Nell, glancing a bit anxiously at the Faery. “I’m glad to see your friend is better, aye, and that’s what we came here for. But your parents are going to be worried sick, and my poor ma...”

“Mr. Brady, this is very, very important!” sputtered Nell. She couldn’t bear to turn back now that they might actually be able to save the poor suffering dragon and perhaps even help in the great battle to come. “My parents are fine, they’re taking care of your mother, she’s fine, everybody’s fine! But dinnay you see, we can really do something good if we help this Faery find Swarn!”

“I just dinnay see how he needs our help,” said Ander. “He can do this on his own.”

“You will guide me to this dragon once we have found the means to heal it,” said the Faery impatiently. “Now, please – my Myrkestra is on its way to the Dead Marsh already. I wish to see how your Flying Machine works.”

Something about the Faery’s manner made it impossible to refuse, although later Ander could not have said why this was so. And so he found himself piloting the helicopter north towards the Irahok mountains with a shape-shifter, a Faery and the stubbornest girl he’d ever met, in the back.

“It is a very noisy Magic!” Jalo shouted to Nell as they lifted off. “And I do not understand it! I had been told Di Shang worlders possessed no Magic at all!”

“It’s nay Magic,” Nell shouted back. She had become fascinated by engines recently and so was quite content to bellow a very detailed explanation to the Faery as they flew north. The Faery was astounded and full of questions. Every now and then he leaned forward to give directions to Ander but for the most part he focused on Nell and her descriptions of the various flying machines in Di Shang. Charlie looked out the window, bored and wishing he’d opted to fly himself.

“It has been said that the Ancients gifted humans with ingenuity instead of Magic,” commented Jalo. “It would seem that the end result is almost the same! You have learned to make
nature
do the work of Magic!”

They left the ruined temples and the lake of the Crossing behind them and flew over rolling green plains in which the ugly stone fortresses of the Giants towered. From the air they could see for miles, the great jagged mountains cutting across the horizon to the north and the Ravening Forest a fringe of green in the east.

“Are you really Immortal?” Nell asked Jalo.

“We are,” he said. “There are two realms inhabited by Faeries – the Kingdom in Tian Xia and another that we call the Far Realm. A Faery can go there only when he or she has fulfilled the allotted time in this realm, however long that may be. They say the Faery knows when the time has come to go. I often wonder what I will find in this Far Realm but none return and so we do not know.”

“So Faeries cannay die from illnesses or injuries?” Nell asked.

“Great Magic is required to kill a Faery. There are stories from long ago but it is difficult to say if they are true. I have heard it said that humans live only a hundred years or so. Is this true?”

Nell laughed and said, “A hundred years is a very long time for a human! Most dinnay live to be quite so old as that.”

The Faery regarded her with stupefaction. “Such a brief time!” was all he said for a while. “And then?”

“Some humans believe in an afterlife. Some believe there’s nothing at all.”

“What do you believe?”

Nell shook her head. “I dinnay know. Nobody
knows.
”

“How long will
you
live?”

Nell laughed again. “Humans dinnay know when they’re going to die,” she said. “It just happens, sometimes very suddenly. If I’m lucky, aye, I’ll live to be an old woman of a hundred. But I could die this afternoon.”

Jalo looked horrified at this. “Is it so easy to die?”

“I hadnay thought of it as
easy,
but I spose it is,” said Nell. “Compared to other beings, we do die very easily.”

“Are you not afraid?”

“I spec we learn not to dwell on it too much,” said Nell thoughtfully. “Or praps we get used to the idea. It’s just how it is. I hate to think that I’ll disappear from the worlds, not be Nell anymore, praps not be anything at all. But then, we wouldnay cherish our lives so much if we didnay know how short a time we have.”

“How fragile and noble humans are!” said the Faery, deeply moved. He looked at her tenderly. “I cannot imagine it. While you are with me, I will do my utmost not to let you die.”

Nell laughed but she was rather touched, too. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s comforting.”

They were passing over the land of the giants. One of the unwieldy fortresses was under siege, smoke and fire pouring out of it. Brutish giants surrounded it, swinging great blades and hurling boulders at each other.

“Look!” Nell cried, waking Charlie, who had gone to sleep.

“Giants are always at war,” Charlie said, unimpressed.

“True enough,” Jalo concurred, but Nell watched the battle until they had left it behind them.

“There is a rarer sight,” Jalo said suddenly, softly, touching her arm and pointing out the window. She had to crane her neck to look up where he was pointing and saw only a streak of deep crimson flashing by them.

Charlie looked pleased. “They say a sighting is good luck,” he said.

Jalo nodded and smiled.

“What was it?” asked Nell.

“The Vermilion Bird of the Sparkling Deluder,” said Jalo. “It flies over all of Tian Xia. Nobody knows why. Keeping watch, perhaps.”

The foothills rose up gradually into the ferocious mountain range that ran as far as the eye could see from east to west, ice-bound peaks lost in swirls of cloud. The Faery leaned forward and told Ander where to set down in a clearing on a snowy mountain.

“There is a cave somewhere here!” Jalo shouted as they bundled out of the chopper. The wind was fierce and the ground slippery. “Wait for me by your helicopter and I will find it. Please be careful not to die.” With that, he disappeared among the thick pines.

Ander wrapped himself in blankets and took a nap in the helicopter, while Charlie and Nell wandered about the clearing a bit to stretch their legs. They had been flying all day and the light was beginning to fade from the sky.

“I dinnay know why you jumped on Jalo that way,” Nell told him. “It made for an awkward beginning.”

“I saw him pointing a sword at you,” protested Charlie. “It looked to me like you were in danger and I was helping.”

“I wasnay in danger. He was just a bit nervous at first,” said Nell. “You should check before you go leaping on someone, aye. He might have cut you into bits with that sword if I hadnay stopped him.”

“Lah, that’s twice you’ve saved my life then,” said Charlie. He glanced at her from the corners of his eyes. “I’d resigned myself, you know. I couldnay have made the Crossing without you. I was just hanging onto your voice.”

Nell shushed him. She had just become aware of a pair of bright eyes watching them from a dark hump she had, until then, assumed was the stump of a tree.

“What?” asked Charlie, aggravated. “I’m trying to say thank you, lah.”

“That tree stump has
eyes
,” Nell hissed at him. “Over there.
Look
.”

Charlie gave the stump a long look. Then, before Nell could stop him, he scooped a handful of snow, packed it into a tight ball in his fist, and pegged it straight at the stump. The stump leaped aside with an angry cry and at the same moment reared up to its full, stringy height. It had brown crinkled flesh rather like a toad’s, but it moved so quickly, bounding towards them, that it was hard to make out much else except that it was bigger than them and had bright staring eyes. Nell turned with a shriek and ran among the trees. For several minutes she could hear the thing, whatever it was, galumphing after her, letting loose odd war-like shouts and yelps as it went. Then Nell realized she could only hear her own screams and footsteps crashing through the snow. She stopped running.

“Why did you run off like that?” Charlie was at her side, having flown after her as a bird.

“Why did
you?”
demanded Nell. “You could have turned into something scary and made it go away.”

“I didnay want to lose you,” he said, laughing. “You took off at such a clip! Come on, we should get back to the helicopter.”

But neither of them moved. They could see their breath pluming out into the cold, dark air as the last of the daylight faded from the sky and night fell and the trees soared up all around them, black and ominous. The silence and the falling darkness made Nell think back on her conversation with the Faery about how easily humans can die. A twig cracked somewhere nearby and she tensed.

“Did you hear that?”

“Look!” Charlie pointed, and Nell saw that a wavering light was moving among the trees, coming towards them.

“No, no, no,” she hissed at Charlie, who had started to go towards it. “Lights in forests are
bad
, nay? You always hear stories about travellers lured deeper into the woods by mysterious lights and so on.”

“I’ve nary heard any stories like that,” said Charlie as the light came closer. A tall dark shape was following the light, keeping close to the trees so it was difficult to see what it was.

“This time, dinnay go running off,” said Charlie. “Stay close to me.”

“Why dinnay you change?” said Nell. “Become a dragon or something!”

“Lah, I want to see what it
is
first,” he replied. The light emerged from between the trees, a glowing sphere, and circled them slowly as if it was having a good look at them. The dark shape following it hid behind a tree.

Charlie called out something in the common language of Tian Xia. The light darted close to their faces and then retreated. A being stepped from behind the tree. It was the stump-thing, stretched out and gangly, with a black cloak pulled around it. It had a bit of colourless hair sticking out of its scalp in wisps but otherwise its face was like a long, shriveled bean with brilliant eyes. Mouth and nose appeared to be mere gaps in the face, darker than the darkness. It spoke in a rattling voice like autumn leaves underfoot and Charlie replied. Then the thing turned, its ball of light zipping on ahead.

“Come on,” said Charlie. “She’s a witch. Prolly the one we’re looking for.”

“She?” muttered Nell, but she followed them. Gradually the trees grew thinner and they came to a rocky outcrop with branches piled before an opening. The witch removed the branches and the light bobbed inside, then whizzed back out and circled the witch’s head in a panic. The witch began to gibber angrily. Jalo stepped out of the cave.

~~~

The stump-like creature Charlie had thrown a snowball at was in fact the very being they had come in search of – a witch named Heilwig. The witch had heard the helicopter long before it landed and had been watching to see what would emerge. She was not at all pleased that
Jalo had found her cave and made himself at home there without an invitation, but after many soothing apologies the witch calmed down. They all entered the cave after being formally and pointedly invited and Heilwig set about building a fire. The cave was a large, cool dome, insulated with woven rugs and straw mats. A sleek, bright-eyed mink bared its teeth at the visitors and then leaped to Heilwig’s shoulders, draping itself around her neck like a living fur scarf.

“Get the other human from the helicopter,” Jalo told Charlie, keeping his eyes on the witch.

Nell glanced at Charlie a bit nervously, for Jalo had said this in a very kingly way and, although he was accommodating, Charlie didn’t like to be bossed around. Charlie looked for a moment like he was going to refuse.

“I’ll go,” Nell offered, although she didn’t want to miss a moment of what was going to happen in the cave.

“No, it’s fine, I’ll go,” Charlie grumbled, and he disappeared out the entrance. Heilwig and the Faery conversed in low voices, not bothering to include Nell.

Ander and Charlie returned with provisions from the helicopter, the last of the food that Nell had packed. Nell made sandwiches, which delighted Heilwig. She ate three in a row with great gusto, not saying thank you or even looking at Nell when she handed them over. The Faery declined politely, but Nell caught him giving the bread a look of quiet distaste.