Page 51 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

She shoved a bit harder, dirt and sand raining down on her. ‘Not all humans are the same,’ she said, beating her elbow in frustration against the ceiling and yelping when she hit her funny bone. ‘You’ve met humans before, right?’

‘Of course,’ they spat.

She turned, rubbing her elbow. It didn’t sound like it. ‘Really?’

The darkness of their eyes flashed.

‘Liar,’ Moth muttered.

Colour stained Dian’s cheekbones. ‘Ok, well, I’ve seen them. And I know what they do. That’s enough.’ The hatred in their expression was enough to send all the breath rushing out of Frida in a great whoosh. She ran her sleeve over her face and, in an attempt to steady herself, placed her palms flat against the bottom of the hatch.

‘You don’t have to trust me,’ she said finally, her shaky voice barely audible. ‘And I’m sorry you were lumbered with me.’

Dian’s nostrils flared.

She gave a throaty, restrained laugh. ‘I don’t really trust you either! Fairies haven’t exactly done much to inspire my trust.’ She couldn’t quite look at them as she said this, although she snuck a glance at where Moth was spinning below Dian’s delicately pointed left ear and the corners of her lips twitched. ‘Still, knowing a jumping spider is your very best friend in the world, I like you a little more than I did, I guess.’

Dian choked out a surprised sound – a rough rusty thing that might have been the long distant cousin of a laugh. It gave Frida the distinct unexpected feeling of tumbling into a pile of summer leaves.

Moth bayed gleefully.

Frida resumed her fight with the hatch but could feel Dian watching her, making the skin between her shoulder blades itch. When she risked another glance at them, her mouth went dry. If she was in any way poetic, she would have said their eyes, round and uncertain now, were like twin midnight pools reflecting a sky of swaying hawthorn blossoms. She shivered and cleared her throat. It was a good thing she didn’t have a poetic bone in her body.

‘You know, I’m not trying to trick you, I just want to find what I need to find, and if I can help you and your friends too, then that would make me really happy. But we can’t do that looking like this.’ She looked in despair down at her filthy uniform, and at Dian, their cobwebs clinging to their voracious curves in a way that was mouth-wateringly inappropriate for Victorian audiences. ‘We’ll need dresses, bonnets, petticoats . . . I don’t know!’

Dian made a disgusted face. ‘I will not wear human clothes.’

‘Well,’ she sighed. Thud, thud, thud. Her fist on the hatch. ‘Unless you can turn us invisible,’ she said between thumps, ‘we’re going to have a problem.’ She stopped to catch her breath, and because she was trying her very best not to look at Dian, she was acutely aware of everything they did. Therefore, she did not miss the way their lips curled into the beginnings of a self-satisfied grin. The next second, they’d disappeared.

The scent of rain washed over her. Frida gave a cry and without thinking, she leapt off the crate, but when she stumbled into silky, warm skin and heard a dangerous growl, she lurched back, her ears pink. Moth’s laughter pealed around the cellar.

Dian reappeared, that self-satisfied curl to their lips crinkling the edges of their eyes.

Frida stumbled backwards. ‘What the hell?’ she spluttered.

Dian crossed their softly rounded arms over their chest and flicked a leafy wave of emerald curls over one shoulder. ‘I do not need a disguise.’

Frida was gawping. ‘You can turn invisible.’

Moth sighed from somewhere on the other side of the room. ‘Don’t tell them it’s impressive. They’ll grow unbearable.’

But Dian was looking tart. ‘I cannot turn invisible. I can simply melt into the fabric of the worlds for a time.’

Frida’s mouth was still agape. ‘But if you can do that, why can’t you get us out of here?’

Dian looked nonplussed. ‘It is different.’

‘Melting away for a time is easy. It is harder to move through places,’ Moth explained in a sage tone. ‘Particularly if those places do not have magic in their bones to begin with.’ He jumped around a bit, indicating the muffling very non-magic walls of the cellar.

Dian pinched their nose, and she could have sworn they were trying not to laugh, although when they spoke, there was a dangerous thread to the leafy undertone. ‘Moth,’ they murmured. ‘Please. The human does not need to know—’

‘I’m helping,’ Moth shouted excitedly, his webs twinkling. ‘And it is harder still to change the fabric of the very worlds, although it can be done. It is terribly unpleasant though.’

Frida stared at Moth, before slowly shifting her attention to Dian. ‘You can do that.’

Dian shrugged noncommittally.

Frida was remembering though. Was it just two nights ago that she’d woken after a storm and seen a towering glass dome, the unbroken, un-lightning-struck Hawthorn. Things that couldn’t have been true. She hadn’t let herself think of it but finally, it felt as if something that had been niggling at her eased. Dian had changed the fabric of the world. And that wasn’t to mention the bloody huge wood that had followed. She let out a heavy breath. ‘Fuck,’ she murmured. Then, shooting a look of awe towards Dian, ‘Can you make me invisible as well?’