The Watching Wood (15 page)

The ground, that at first had been a gentle incline, became steeper and steeper, until Grace and Delilah had to lean back with hands on the wall to keep their purchase on the damp floor. The corridor had grown like the dungeon walls, slippery with green mould.

‘We’ll fall,’ Delilah said, her little hunchback squirming with nerves, ‘if this gets any steeper.’

‘You’ll have to fly,’ said Grace, ‘and guide me down. Can you do that?’

‘I’ll try.’

Delilah closed her eyes in concentration, then hovered off the floor. Gripping hands, the girls travelled deeper into the murk, Grace putting more and more weight on Delilah as her feet slid in front of her. The floor dipped further.

‘I can’t get a grip,’ Grace gasped, her legs bicycling. ‘I’m going to fall!’

‘Just don’t let go!’ Delilah yelled as Grace hit the ground and skated downwards, dragging the small girl with her.

They shot down the passageway, picking up speed until the ground disappeared and they were in free-fall. Grace screamed as she waited for the ground to come up and smash her, but Delilah dug her fingers into Grace’s hand, slowing their dive before they finally hit rock with a thump. Grace landed first on one knee and her chin, an awkward angle that sent a spike of pain down her back.

‘Delilah,’ she groaned, her eyes adjusting to the gloom, ‘you okay?’

‘Yeah,’ a voice replied with the shuffling of someone trying to get to their feet. ‘I’m alright.’

‘And your little friend?’

‘He’s okay too.’

‘Thanks for slowing the fall, I think you saved my face there.’

‘No worries.’

Grace squinted as she looked up but couldn’t see the entrance to the passage.

‘We’re gonna have a rough time getting out of here,’ she sighed.

15

A Gathering

It was cold underground. Ahead of her Delilah shivered, and Grace squeezed her fingertips in her hands trying to drive out the freezing numbness, but the damp drove the cold into her bones. She grimaced. The little wood nymph didn’t seem bothered by the frigid air. He scuttled in and out of Delilah’s collar, backcombing her long, black hair, and took regular perches on top of her head.

‘Bllliiingg-lo!’ he’d exclaim, pointing ahead, then scurry back under her collar, only to pop out again.

They had followed the only source of light but, reaching a junction of corridors, realised the green glow was actually bioluminescent algae spreading over the mouldy walls in patches. There were three possible routes and, at the end of at least two, Grace could see even more passages.

‘It’s a maze,’ she said despondently. ‘How are we ever going to find her?’

‘One passage at a time,’ Delilah said firmly. ‘I can leave charm stars so we can find our way out of each one, but they won’t last. We’ll have to hurry.’

‘Hold on,’ Grace said, pulling her woollen jumper over her head and moaning as the cold cut through her thin t-shirt. ‘Let’s go for something more permanent. Ever hear that story about the Minotaur and the Labyrinth?’

Delilah scrunched up her face, thinking, then smiled as Grace tore at the knitted fabric with her teeth. After pulling a few loose strands from the hem, she finally managed to drag out a long thread, and began to unravel as much of the jumper as she could. Delilah took hold of the wool as she worked, and tied it tightly around the pointed ends of a fractured stone in the wall.

‘
Couno
,’ she whispered, running her fingertip over the loop of thread. The cream thread melded into the stone as if it had grown there. ‘So it doesn’t move,’ she said.

‘Excellent.’ Grace grinned. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Should we go left, right or straight ahead?’

‘You choose.’

Delilah took a deep breath and walked straight ahead, until the little nymph zipped to the top of her head, stretching up as tall as he could go and grasping tiny handfuls of her hair.

‘
Blllinnng
!’ he squealed.

‘Ow!’ Delilah rubbed her head. ‘That hurts.’

‘What’s up with him?’ said Grace.

‘I’m not sure. Wait a minute.’

The two girls stood silent, waiting as the nymph jammed his nose in the air and sniffed and sniffed. Finally, with one long last
ssssnifff
, he pulled the handfuls of hair taut again and yipped,

‘
Blllinnng-lo
Yo
!’

‘Ow,’ Delilah moaned, jerking her head to the right. ‘I think he wants us to go that way.’

‘Do you think he can smell Jenny?’

‘He can smell something.’

‘Well, right is as good a direction as any. Let’s go.’

With the wood nymph steering with Delilah’s hair like reins, they went deeper into the dungeons, leaving a line of cream wool in the green light of the glowing algae.

Rachel sat quivering under her glamour. The murmuring and shuffling of so many bodies covered the occasional whimper that escaped her lips. The blue sprite sat next to her like a child, bored with waiting. Her legs were pulled up to her chin and her azure arms rested on her knees. She huffed now and then, peering down the sloping woodland to the centre of the commotion, then dropping her cheek impatiently onto her arms again when there was still nothing to see.

The crowd of curious creatures had gathered around an enormous mushroom with a cap that might once have been red. Its huge head leaned to one side, straining the groaning grey stalk that supported it, nearly touching the ground. It was pitted and scarred and darkened by age, and shiny streaks of liquid ran from the newest of its wounds. It was obviously important to the faeries, sacred even. Rachel could tell because no matter how raucous or swollen the crowd became, the creatures never spilled into the grassy area surrounding the mushroom. They all kept a reverent distance.

There were faeries as far as she could see, packed around a clearing in the trees shaped like an amphitheatre. More water sprites, their skin in varying shades of blue and green, hopped delicately in and out of the stream that cut across one end of the slope, grasping at the tentacles of ferocious-looking merrows that had dragged their muscular bodies upstream from the river. Rachel shuddered as one looked her way, bearing the razor-sharp teeth that lined the mouth of his elongated snout, but he turned to snap at a bright green water sprite, shaking his mane of tentacles in fury as the snickering sprite leapt out of his reach. Pixies, wood nymphs and brownies flitted among the feet of larger faeries, and there were numerous other breeds that she didn’t recognise. To her alarm, another asrai caught her eye from across the clearing, smiling warmly. Rachel returned the
smile but quickly looked away. She had to keep clear of her and any other asrai, just in case.

‘It’s too close to home,’ she heard Aruj’s warning words in her head. ‘A faery will usually recognise its own breed. And will easily reject that which is not.’

There was a loud
ffft ffft
sound and the crowd was silent. The huge mushroom groaned as something inside it moved and the large cap swung slowly from one side to the other. One of the old wounds was splitting apart and long fingers, like the legs of some giant cellar spider, pushed through, tearing at the fungi flesh. Both hands came free, then clamped either side of the split as a long head squeezed out of the narrow hole. Rachel was reminded of the time she was allowed to watch lambs being born in the field next to her house. She tried not to gag.

In the art room, back at school, there was a print of a famous painting called
The Scream
. A long, oval face, screaming in the picture, was surrounded by wavy lines of orange and blue that made Rachel feel nauseated whenever she looked at it. She didn’t like the painting. The screamer’s face was distorted and the eyes stared. It made her feel uneasy. But she remembered it clearly now because the fungi faery’s face was just like that.

The creature sat on his hunkers atop the giant cap now, like a cat about to pounce. His legs and arms were long and skinny, like his fingers, and his torso resembled a crooked
toadstool stalk, pitted and grey like the mushroom he emerged from. He opened his mouth to speak, stretching the jaw first and slapping his tongue noisily off his palate, as if it hadn’t been used in years.

‘Centuries in exile from our own lands.’ The words sloshed out of his mouth like water from a bucket. ‘Forced to cower in the depths of the forest for humble relief.’ There was dead silence as he spoke. ‘But no more. At dawn we take to the castle, and take back the home.’

There was an eruption of cheers and clapping. The fungi-like creature waited patiently for the crowd to settle. When it finally did he stared for several moments at the ground, his shoulders sloped and his pale face the picture of sadness.

‘This was our home once, for so long. And we lived full lives, for so long.’

He went quiet again and Rachel was sure someone would hear her heart thumping in the stillness. When the fungi creature lifted his face, there were dark grey streaks running down his face.

‘So many of you are too young to remember. But some of us remember. The balance of this island was broken, and my heart broke with it. But today I will mend my broken heart, as we will mend our broken home. There will be lives lost, but those ghosts will fortify the good spirits of the island and restore harmony. Either way,’ he raised his voice and one hand in the air, ‘you will go
home
.’

Another explosion of cheers and wild clapping. Rachel joined in, feigning enthusiasm, while the blue-skinned sprite nudged her arm with excitement.

‘Follow the stream to the river by the east end of the forest and wait,’ the fungi faery shrieked over the commotion. ‘We attack at dawn!’

‘What can you see?’ Delilah said, wincing as the nymph pulled her head back to face front. ‘Is she okay?’

Grace balanced the prope plate uneasily on the base of her thumb, the fingers underneath working the thread free from the jumper in her other hand. With so little light she could barely make anything out.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She hasn’t moved her eyes from that spot.’

The scene on the slate was exactly what she had seen in the library. Jenny was staring into the dark at the back of the cell.

‘Ssh, stop for a sec!’ Grace said suddenly, freezing. ‘Do you hear that?’

That rasping, low laugh was growing again. Jenny’s view snapped up and down as she looked for the source of the sound, but the bare stone made for endless echoes.

‘Have they left you down here?’

The voice was coarse, with a mocking falsetto that made
Grace break out in a sweat despite the terrible cold.

‘Have they left you down here,’ the two yellow flecks appeared, ‘for
me
?’

‘Wh– who’s there?’ Jenny’s voice trembled. ‘Who are you?’

‘You know who I am.’

Grace could hear the smile in his voice. The prope plate wobbled on the edge of her hand; she spread her fingers beneath it to keep it steady.

‘I don’t know who you are,’ Jenny whispered. ‘I don’t know who you are, and I’m not here for you.’

‘Hmm,’ the voice groaned, ‘are you chained to the wall?’

Grace suddenly realised she was; why else wouldn’t Jenny have run?

‘They left you down here,’ the voice went on. ‘And now you’re all alone. With
me
.’

The face that shot out of the dark made Grace’s throat tighten in panic and, before she could stop it, the black slate toppled from her hand and smashed on the stone floor. She stared at the broken shards, tears streaming down her face.

‘No!’

‘What was it?’ Delilah hissed. ‘What did you see?’

It was an animal’s face, not a human’s. The head of a goat, a hood of dark brown, shaggy hair covering a bony face and spreading over broad shoulders. Two thickly ridged horns twisted from the top of his skull, and his yellow eyes were without pupils, staring and hideous.

‘I can’t … it was …’ Grace shook her head and appealed to the wood nymph. ‘We have to find her. Little man? We have to find her. Look at me!’

The little nymph paid her no attention, but Delilah reached up and tapped him swiftly on the back until he resumed his rein-pulling.

Grace tugged at the sorry remains of her jumper. There was still some wool to go, but the unravelling thread was caught. She tugged again, roughly, and the thread snapped.

‘Fudge!’

She tore feverishly at the jumper with her teeth, ripping out more thread, but the remaining material bunched as she pulled and the threads snapped.

‘It keeps getting caught in itself,’ she said, her hands shaking. ‘I don’t think we’ll get any more out of it.’

‘We’ll have to leave it here,’ Delilah replied, ‘and hope that we see it on the way back. I think we’re close. He’s getting all worked up.’

If she hadn’t been terrified out of her wits, Grace might have laughed. The nymph was practically dancing on top of Delilah’s hair, which was now backcombed into a halo around her head.

A few more turns and the little nymph was near hysterics. He hissed through his teeth, yanking on Delilah’s hair until
she threatened to put him in her pocket.

‘Shh!’ Grace said suddenly, ducking down and dragging the other girl with her. ‘
Listen
.’

There was that voice in the dark, just around the next corner. It was still mocking, threatening in tone. But at least he was still talking.

‘Of course you do. Children-shaped and filled from the bowels of the island. Frauds and fakery keep the masses subdued and all the while … all the while…’

In the following silence, Grace and Delilah edged closer and closer to the turn in the passageway. Then the voice sounded again.

‘My heart is black and burnt. These rings have cut my wrists a thousand times, and they will a thousand more. Tell me … do you feel safe? Do you think you’re safe?’

Suddenly the nymph leapt from Delilah’s head and scurried around the corner. Delilah reached for him but missed and, as she turned to give Grace a questioning look, there was a cry.

Jenny
.

The two girls scrambled around the corner and faced an open cell. To their right Jenny kneeled, her wrists fixed to the wall with rusted iron rings, her head slumped forward as she cried. In the back of the cell, straight ahead, stood something tall and broad. He took one step forward, gently moonlit by a skylight far above, and Grace recoiled in horror.

The creature stood upright, his goat’s head perched on a seven-foot frame, his dark mane matted and straggled with dirt and damp around his twisted horns. He was also fixed to the wall, but by two lengths of chain. He had room to move – and just enough chain to reach Jenny.

‘You were watching.’ The yellow eyes swivelled and fixed on the two girls. ‘But what did you see?’

He moved one cloven hoof and Delilah fired a burst of silver stars as Grace grabbed a loose hunk of stone and fired it at his head. Stooped and snorting, he didn’t see the rock that struck him and knocked him back into the dark.