Page 73 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

When they furrowed their brow, she clarified, ‘The person who owns this house.’

Dian’s face twisted. ‘The person responsible for that laboratory.’

‘No!’ Frida exclaimed. ‘No. I don’t think – that is . . . That is a different person.’

Dian looked sceptical.

‘Sir Joshua would never . . .’ Then she bit her lip, closing her eyes. ‘At least,’ she said weakly. ‘I don’t think so. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.’

She was certain Dian could hear her heart thundering. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she quickly looked down the length of the hallway. It was quiet, for now. She knew a servant could appear at any moment, but her need to see this door, outside of Dian’s magic, was greater than caution. She wanted to touch it, to feel the sturdy woodgrain under her fingertips.

Trying to keep her voice steady, she said, ‘I think you can let the raindrops go.’

Dian looked aghast. ‘What?’

‘I – yeah. I think it’s ok.’ She shrugged, trying to keep it light. ‘I’m sure you’d like a break, anyway.’ Pointedly, she raised their conjoined hands and gave an embarrassed laugh. She was very aware that her palm was clammy with sweat, and theirs was ice cold. Dian’s gaze jumped between her face, their hands, and back down the way they’d come. They were on their own here, no other rooms on this small stretch of corridor.

Dian still hesitated. Their eyes were clouded when they eventually slipped their hand from hers. Frida braced herself for it, but the loss was even sharper than she’d expected. When the raindrops left her, it was like stepping out of a cool shower, the colours of the real world coming back like a gut punch. Every line was harsher, the corners crueller, the air infinitely thicker and muggier. If she’d felt claustrophobic before, this was a hundred times worse. She stumbled a bit, no longer able to feel Dian’s heartbeat snuggled safely alongside her own. She flexed her hand, feeling the ghost of their palm, the press of their calluses no longer. The carpet beneath her boots, which she’d previously thought had been burgundy like aged wine, was blood red.

But the door.

The door, Frida.

With wide eyes, she gazed before her.

It was the door to the New Library. Exactly as she remembered. She caught her breath to see those familiar dancing unicorns carved into the gleaming ebony. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but somehow, as she pressed a desperate hand to the very real, very solid wood, she felt her own solidity coming back. Within this absolute clusterfuck, here was something she knew, something from her own past, her own home. Here was something her mum had touched. Forgetting Dian was there for a moment, she traced the unicorns with trembling fingertips. In the Forge House of the twenty-first century, this door was a cheap copy, the unicorns’ dance flat. She remembered the plaque next to it, like it was yesterday: The door to the study of Joshua Beaufort, 3rd Earl of Marlow, is one of the most important artifacts from Forge House. In 1924, it was relocated to the new location of the London Extraordinary Zoo, and now adorns the building of the New Library, the renowned home of many of the Beaufort family’s extensive scholarship on extraordinary creatures. The unicorns engraved on this door were the inspiration for the London Extraordinary Zoo’s famous logo, the Leaping Unicorn.

How many times had she pushed open this self-same door, pressed her fingers against these same unicorns, with the sound of the kraken’s whistling in her ears and heady salt spray in her nose? She closed her eyes. Scouring the wood, she reached reflexively for her mum’s favourite unicorn. The one in the bottom right corner who, by a casual flick of the carver’s tool, might have been grimacing or might have been laughing. Finding it with her fingertips, she sucked in a helpless sob. Then her hand moved over her chest, where the Leaping Unicorn was emblazoned, to where – on her forearm – her mum’s unicorn was tattooed.

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, and she was all at once very aware of Dian again, barely a few steps behind her. She pulled away from the door quickly, but perhaps it was too quick, for she didn’t miss the wary expression on their face, the way their jaw had tightened immeasurably. She tried to cover the logo on her chest, to double check that there was still enough dried mud slathered over her that they couldn’t see it, or at least, not enough to make the connection. She was relieved too for her long sleeves, which covered That Tattoo.

She flushed and all of a sudden, couldn’t bring herself to look at Dian.

‘Let’s go inside,’ she said abruptly.

At her tone, they frowned.

They know, she thought as she eased open the study door as quietly as possible. They know. This should have been a pink flamingo moment, going inside Sir Joshua’s actual study, but instead all she could think was: did they know? Had Dian, by miracle of deduction, just figured out that she’d been lying to them? Or at the very least, not telling them the truth. Her boots felt slippery, as if she might lose her footing at any moment and tentacles seemed to crawl up her throat. She flexed her hand, empty, at her side, reaching out helplessly to touch the ornate green and gold panelling on the walls. As much time as she’d spent imagining herself sketching with Hannah, reading books with Jane, and gossiping with Georgiana, she’d spent more time imagining herself here, as Sir Joshua’s trusted confidant, planning rescue missions to Papua New Guinea, Kenya, China, Argentina. The study was just as she’d pictured it, but now a roasting fire crackled in the grate, making her tug nervously at her collar, and there was a fairy in the room with her, rather than the magnetic auburn-haired Sir Joshua.

She watched Dian, turned away from her, staring at the tall rows of bookshelves, the oil paintings in their ornate frames. George Stubbs’ Unicorn in the Woods was particularly famous. Frida knew it was worth a fortune, not that the others would have fetched less. Turner, Holbein, Poussin, Blake, Reynolds, Fuseli . . . most were personally commissioned, and all were of extraordinary creatures of some ilk. Shadows flickered across Dian’s statuesque form, their hoary cobwebs limned with gold from the fire, and their green hair looked almost autumnal. A painting incarnate. For some reason, she stiffened at the thought.

She moved across the room, running her fingers across the ancient leather top of the desk and staring at the windows behind. They looked east, towards the gardens where many of the ECs had been housed, but floor-to-ceiling curtains were pulled against the night, a lush oak-green velvet which matched the livery of the servants, and the colours of the Beaufort coat of arms. Beneath her boots, wooden floorboards were polished within an inch of their lives, covered with thick carpets. She hadn’t been able to stand on them a decade ago, they’d been roped off. She’d thought they were beautiful when she’d been fourteen. Now she didn’t want to tread on them, and she wondered if they’d been shipped here by the East India Company. She wished, in her time, the National Trust would send them back to wherever they’d come from.

She glanced again at Dian, their cobwebs flickering softly, highlighting the dips and curves of their body in the blazing light of the fire. Against their thousand greens, the oak-green of the curtains looked washed out and plain. They were moving along the wall of bookshelves, absently touching the soft, downy hair around their ears where it had been shaved. She wondered how many of these books had ended up in her version of the library. She wondered if Botherington’s awful book with the knight on the cover was here. She prayed it wasn’t. It was all she could do to watch Dian trail their fingers over the books, her heart aching with the sense that, in less than a few minutes, she’d ruined everything. She’d told them to drop their magic, and they’d done it. Now the intimacy between them had evaporated, and she didn’t know how to call it back. She looked down uncomprehendingly at the hand Dian had been holding and wondered if they’d been counting the seconds until they could let her go, after all.

On a side table next to her, there was an open leatherbound book, as if someone had left it there to come back to. She ran her eyes over the other items placed neatly along the mantle. A silver engraved box, a carved jade statue of a voluptuous woman. A mounted stone spearhead, a ceremonial clay pot. On one wall, she stopped short at the sight of a cloak made of bird feathers, scarlet, sky blue and the green of sunlight through trees. Like Dian’s bright hair, the colours looked out of place here. As a child, Sir Joshua had gone to Brazil with his father. She wondered if this cloak was a remembrance of that trip.

When she snuck a look back at Dian, she found them seated on the edge of a velvet armchair. A fairy in Sir Joshua’s armchair. She might have cracked a joke about it, if she’d known how. Dian was staring into the crackling fire, their eyes liquid black. Unreadable. She gazed up at the wall again. Next to the feathered cloak, above the desk, there was an illustrated map. She didn’t look at it though. She was too tired. Hesitating just for a moment, she pulled out the chair behind the desk and sat down with a thud. This, too, had been roped off. Now it wasn’t, and she ran her hands over the carved armrests, the same dark ebony, imagining that Sir Joshua might have sat in this very seat, mere hours ago. She stared at the well-scuffed leather on the desktop. Deep oak-green of course, to match everything else. Sir Joshua had style. A neat stack of papers sat on the left-hand side of the desk.

‘Is there magic in that?’

Frida’s head snapped up as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t, but Dian wasn’t looking at her. Their face was tilted upwards, the graceful line of their throat exposed as they stared at George Stubb’s painting above the fire.

‘Magic?’ Frida asked nervously.

Dian inclined their chin.

She, also, gazed at The Unicorn in the Woods.