Page 64 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

She stared, wide-eyed and hollow chested, as he stepped back, and she was able to see that he’d put something down on the far table. She had a sudden, awful thought that he might have just added the Jewel to the collection of treasures. However, although it was a new jar, the inhabitant was not a dragon’s heart. Instead, it was a slippery kind of fern, pea-green frilly creepers licking the sides of the glass. Some kind of oceanic mandrake root, she guessed, or perhaps the fabled ruffle of a lake-dwelling pondfrussle. Was this man Henry Gladstone’s accomplice? She tensed as he turned to survey the room. His eyes were still narrowed, calculating as he took in the open window and the breeze blowing in.

Quickly, she pulled herself back as his gaze roamed in their direction.

‘Shit,’ she breathed reflexively.

Dian’s eyes flew open and she shook her head, mouthing an apology. Dian’s fear wafted off them, an almost tangible thing. She could no longer hear the fairy’s breath, as if they’d stopped entirely, and their lips were so tightly pressed together, she wondered if they could breathe. They were still holding her hand, but so hard now, she could feel her small bones creaking. Even Moth had stopped, frozen mid-web.

They listened to his soft boots pad over the flagstones, coming closer.

There’s no one here, Frida screamed in her head. If Dian couldn’t dissolve them both into the raindrops, then by sheer force of will, she would do it herself. Go away, she yelled silently. There’s no one here! GO AWAY!

What this man would do if he found them, she had no idea. Judging from the jars it wasn’t pretty. He hovered above them, and she could see the polished leather of his boots, the thick trunks of his calves wrapped in dark breeches. She could smell the tangy stench of his sweat, his breathing, slow and calm. Neither Frida nor Dian moved an inch. They’d missed the chance to introduce themselves politely. She didn’t imagine people in the nineteenth century reacted to intruders any better than in the twenty-first, and hiding under a table was a clear expression of guilt in any time period. Menace seemed to waft off the man, freezing the breath in Frida’s lungs. This is not what she thought a visit to Forge House would feel like.

No one’s here. She vibed the words into the universe. NO ONE’S HERE.

And then, out of nowhere, the man just moved on, muttering angrily to himself, his voice harsh, like sandpaper. She hadn’t conjured a raindrop like Dian, but her muscles were trembling just the same. It wasn’t until she was sure the man had headed down the corridor, and she heard the heavy creak of the door’s hinges, the thud of it closing behind him, that she let herself suck in a massive, life-giving breath. A few seconds later, the unmistakable click of a large metal key turning in the lock.

Dian let out a frantic moan. When they turned to her, their eyes were bloodshot – dark pools, shot through with veins of molten metal, clammy heat radiating off them.

‘Oh, great skies above,’ Moth murmured, looking as if he was about to wilt out of existence.

Frida was already hauling herself out of the shadows, Dian scrambling after her.

‘Let’s go, let’s go!’ Moth squeaked.

Although Frida wholeheartedly agreed, her hand clenched around her tattoo of the terracotta dragon’s tail. ‘I have to look around first.’ She couldn’t leave without looking for clues. For all she knew, Henry Gladstone had stolen the Jewel.

Dian nodded. They didn’t ask her any questions, seeming instead just to sense her urgency. She was grateful for that. For the fact that she and Dian might be . . . maybe not understanding each other but perhaps understanding-adjacent. She set off at a run, rummaging through drawers, hunting through stacks of instruments, scanning reams of paper. There was a back room, with sharp metal hooks hanging from the ceiling and knives with such keen edges she could have wept. If she found the Jewel, she didn’t know what she’d do. The very thought that it could be amongst this catalogue of horrors was world-ending.

It wasn’t, though. And although she tried to read Henry Gladstone’s notes, they were all written in a dense, unintelligible shorthand. The most useful thing she found was a crate of bruised apples, next to a huge cast iron sink in the back. She used the sink to wash some of the dirt from her face. Then finding a ceramic mug on the side, she drunk deeply, before offering it to Dian. She wasn’t sure if they’d touch it, but after a moment’s pause, they took it gratefully. And when she handed them half the apples, they didn’t hesitate.

For a few minutes, the two of them just stood next to each other, the sounds of munching echoing through the humming silence. The apples were a crisp shock of sweetness. Frida had to admit they were delicious. Afterwards, she felt a thousand times better and Dian had regained a measure of colour to their cheeks. Whether it had to do with the apples, or the brand-new cobwebs Moth had been diligently weaving across Dian’s heart, Frida didn’t know. But she smiled, remembering Antony’s old collie-cross who’d preceded Peter the Poodle. Marvin had always needed to wear a soft, tight jacket they’d called his ‘support sweater’, a kind of full-body hug. Frida had often wished they made them for humans. Looking at Moth’s delicate woven threads, she wondered if they had a similar vibe. Whatever the case, seeing Dian start to recover eased a tight private knot deep within her.

As if they’d heard her, Dian cocked their head at her, asking a silent question. Frida shook her head, sinking back against the nearest table.

‘What I’m looking for isn’t here,’ she whispered, finding that if she kept her eyes on the new layers of silver in Dian’s clothes, it gave her a measure of balance. Moth’s webs were like starlight woven into filament, stitched with care, a dappled leaf threaded in here or there, a particularly handsome twig, a tuft of hay from the stables. But as she looked at these things fondly, her vision seemed to twist and blur, and suddenly the silver of the LEZ’s spotlights flashed before her eyes. The sharp silver of the unicorn’s horn. The terrible pale silver that pulsed off the jars, like steel turning inside out.

Suddenly, she grabbed the nearest thing, a heavy glass paperweight, and threw it with all her might at the jar containing the horn. Within an instant, blinding agony sent her to her knees, but she forced her head up, biting back a scream as the paperweight veered off course, landing harmlessly with a shattering crash in a far corner. Frida had impeccable aim. She hadn’t missed, she knew she hadn’t. And yet, the jar was still intact.

Breathing through the pain, she got back shakily to her feet. Her next attempt to get inside the jar, to open it by hand, was thwarted just as seamlessly – the pain flooring her before she got within a foot of the jar.

‘Fuck!’ she shouted, kicking one of the tables. And then she put her head in her hands, and confessed, ‘I don’t know what to do.’

For a long moment, Dian – who hadn’t moved an inch through all this – just stared at her. She almost wished Dian would ask her those questions now, about what she was doing here, what she’d been looking for, who the hell she was. Because if they’d asked, she would have told them. The truth bubbled up on her tongue, desperate to get out. But after a few moments, Dian’s gaze just slipped away. As if they couldn’t bear to bring themselves to ask anything, terrified of what horrors she might admit to.

Frida’s shoulders slumped.

‘We came here to help the desert-sky dragon,’ Dian said, straightening one of the frayed edges of their sleeve with deliberate grace. ‘Can we still do that?’

‘I don’t know!’ Frida rubbed her stinging eyes until it felt as if they’d come clean out of their sockets. It was clear that there were no user-friendly switches on the walls, no simple modern solutions. Gladstone’s accomplice would be back soon no doubt, maybe with Gladstone himself. Her eyes landed, for the hundredth time, on the sharp edge of the unicorn’s horn. ‘A few days ago,’ she admitted, ‘I could have reached into that jar and taken that horn out no problem. Now I can’t get within a foot of it without feeling like the horn is stabbing me through my cerebral cortex.’

Dian’s eyebrows shot up.

Moth scuttled closer. ‘A few days ago, you were different?’

‘Yeah,’ she muttered, fiddling with a piece of dirt on her shirt, embarrassed. ‘A few days ago, I was just human, I guess.’

Dian wrinkled their nose so abruptly Frida was reminded of Zuzka when she ate anchovies. A sigh ached out of her, exhaustion rolling from her toes right up to her aching heart. She moved dumbly towards the open window. Dian watched her uncertainly. Frida climbed up onto the table to assess the window. It was small, but with a squeeze, they might fit.