Page 105 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

Frida started to cry, then. Big ugly tears, tearing through her chest. She hadn’t realised how scared she’d been about coming back. About her friends not believing her, about having to tell them the truth, and just being sent back to the Necromancer or something. As she cried, the greying pieces of the Jewel suddenly lifted off her palm and started swirling half a foot in the air. The hawthorn blossoms started to float, too, along with the combined glittery power of the creatures. Antony and Hamish raced forwards and wrapped her in their arms, wrapping Dian in too, making the fairy squeal in surprise.

‘I love you!’ Antony cried.

‘No, I love you!’ Frida burst out, as Hamish said just as enthusiastically,

‘I love both of you!’

Antony’s hug was bone crushing.

It was precious, that tangle of limbs and unconditional love. But when Frida’s tears started to abate, and Fireheart was starting to inspect her claws impatiently, Cliff gave a low-key boom,

‘Frida?’

He stood at the front of the crowd with one arm slung around Sora and Zuzka, the other around a baffled-looking Gloria, his crystal blue eyes crinkling with pride.

Frida peeked out at him from between her friends’ shoulders.

‘We dreamed,’ Cliff told her gently, ‘but I think we’d like to hear from you too, from you and your friends, about what really happened.’

At these words, Lucky gave a squeal of glee. ‘Oh yes! Oh yes. I love stories. Tell them our story, little stink!’ He was so thrilled, he almost knocked Fireheart around the face with one rogue flapping wing.

Fireheart gave an appalled squawk, but when she’d managed to collect herself, and Lucky had been gently reprimanded, Fireheart bowed her head to Cliff in approval. In her inky eyes, Frida read the same words that Lucky’s dada had said to her, so long ago, and really not that long at all, either. It is their story too.

So, as the magic and the Hawthorn blossoms curled around her, and the Jewel spun and spun in the air, she began.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

The story was what all best stories are, in the end. Funny, heartbreaking, awful and impossible. It was a patchwork of High-Winged Dragon, Raindrops on Hawthorn Boughs, Popcorned Storm Clouds, British Sign Language, plain English . . . like Mush’s weaving, it spun through the air like silver cobwebs, interrupted and enriched by hisses and snarls, howls and peeps, moans, groans, anguished barks, squeaks and curses.

Through it all, magic waited, twirling around them like glittering snakes and golden ribbons. Waiting. Smelling of hope.

Sometimes Frida spoke, sometimes Dian, sometimes an overexcited Lucky, and sometimes Fireheart, accompanied by the pops and crackles of monkey poetry. Whilst everyone had been napping in nests of flowers, Frida had been right – Fireheart had been busy, going cage to cage with the Jellies, breaking the wards one by one. A combination of dragon fire and exuberant monkey storms, it seemed, made a potent combination.

Dian groused about how they wished Frida had brought these monkey storms with her into the past. Frida grinned. She couldn’t have agreed more. She would have loved to see them setting fire to Edward Caval’s beard.

After that, the sleepers took over, one by one describing what they’d dreamed of, Frida and the dragons translating as best they could. Until they were all speaking at once, and the great collective dream spun and spun and spun. With each new dream, it seemed that another thread of magic rose higher, and the Jewel spun a little bit faster. The light intensifying, the power building. Until eventually, every face was tilted upwards, desert dragon and tree dragon and fairy and cat and mouse and bird and child and zookeeper.

‘It’s time,’ Frida whispered, although she didn’t quite know for what.

Dian smiled down at her, touching a wild lock of her hair. ‘It’s time,’ they repeated.

The Jewel gave a sharp howl of release, of declaration. A battle cry for the twenty-first century. Its spinning transforming to a blinding, lightning speed, and a flash of radiance exploded, along with a glittering cry of ecstasy.

When the spots cleared from Frida’s eyes, the Jewel was whole again, and cracks of peachy sunlight had started to pierce the canopy. There were squeals, shouts and yips, from Ocean to Ice to Grass and Desert and Sky and Forest. Finally, it all came together in a mighty, spine-tingling roar, and the canopy tore open in a creaking rush, a zoo’s worth of magic detonating into the world.

Somewhere, people of Melody-Upon-Sea watched a thorny green baked Alaska the size of Heathrow burst open in a shower of multi-coloured glitter. Frida lifted her hands as raindrops and blossoms cascaded around her. Soon a pegasus, a winged ghost-lynx, and a young purple dragon who tilted awkwardly to the left, flew out into the bright sky, and began tracing loop-the-loops against the fluffy clouds. Frida leaned back into Dian’s chest, one hand around their silken wrist, the other looped through Antony and Hamish’s conjoined arms, and together they watched their world crack open. Laughing helplessly, they clung to each other, a fresh summer storm that smelled of growing things whipping their hair from their faces.

In the earth, Frida was certain her mum was laughing too with the silver dragon, as magic unfurled, unstoppable. Somehow, new worlds were beginning. She imagined forests starting to grow in places where forests hadn’t been seen in centuries. Some humans locking themselves in their homes, while others danced in the streets as tears ran down their faces. She saw sprites hiding in pantries again, and krakens nesting in the deep once more.

Ba-dum, ba-dum. Ba-dum, ba-dum.

The Jewel spun, sending pink light in every direction.

Gloria asked in acerbic sign language that could cut through two-metre rock, ‘But what exactly do we do now? What happens to these creatures? Where do they all go?’

Everyone who heard looked to Fireheart for an answer, but it was Dian who said, under their breath so that only Frida could hear, ‘Maybe we should ask the unicorn.’

‘The unicorn?’ Frida asked, startled. ‘What unicorn?’ Immediately, she thought of the male at Forge House, who had disappeared into the ether.