Page 84 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

Anguish ravaged their face. ‘No, they can’t. And I do not wish to know how our worlds will perish.’

Frida raised her hand as if to reach for them, but Moth gave a warning squeak, Dian already taking a shaky step back. Frida froze as they gestured towards the grounds where the caged animals slept, their lower lip trembling. ‘If this is my future, do not tell me about it. I have seen that there is no fighting such a thing.’

Frida was already shaking her head as Moth cried, ‘But we did fight it. We did! You saw how Frida Rose denied their power? We watched, and she was able to—’

‘I’m not her!’ Dian exploded. ‘That was strange magic, dragon and human, and I do not know if anyone in this existence has such powers, other than her. If we’d been inside that cage, I—’ They turned to Frida. ‘I don’t even know how you did it!’

In her mind, Frida traced the sharp edges of her rosewood box and closed her eyes. It took her a while to gather herself, before she managed to say, ‘When my mum died, I did a really good job of hiding everything away inside. Hiding myself away.’ She couldn’t stop the shudder that ran through her. ‘I learnt how to do it. But in that cage? I realised that everything I’d hidden – all the things that make me me – I realised that was what they needed.’ She opened her eyes again and felt the fire inside her blazing. ‘So, I took it from them.’

Something like understanding danced over Dian’s face. ‘That is powerful magic,’ they said, awed and more than a little afraid, and Frida wasn’t sure what to do with that. In the end, all she could do was reach into her pocket to pull out the terracotta dragon’s Jewel.

Silence fell over them.

‘We still have time,’ she whispered to Dian. ‘We can change the future.’

The Jewel balanced on her palm. Whole.

Moth spun in rapid circles from a strand of Dian’s hair. ‘What is that?’

Frida held the Jewel up. The smooth edges shone. Round and smooth as a goose’s egg, the Jewel’s power was vast, at once deafening and utterly silent. Smoke curled beneath the surface like ringlets around a fire, and Frida could feel the desert, the rippling twilit sand that stretched for miles. She could smell the heat of earth, feel the rustle of palm leaves on her cheeks, see the twinkle of an oasis, the whirl of dust storms. The cacophony of thousands of insects and plants and peoples, millennia stretching forwards, backwards, wrapping around her in bright ribbons. And then she heard the passionate beating of the fiery heart, a rasping, smokers cough. A drumbeat in her ears.

Her tattooed fingers curled around the rounded edges of a desert, a whole world.

‘Where I come from,’ she said, her violet eyes alight. ‘This–’ She raised the Jewel before her, ‘is broken. But it doesn’t have to be. That’s why I was brought here, I think. To understand that.’ She looked up into Dian’s face, and their haunted expression made Frida feel as if every one of her limbs were floating away. She’d give anything to ease that expression, to change what would come to pass for them, and now she could. Now she had the power to do so, resting in her palm. ‘I know you think futures can’t change,’ she said, willing them to believe, ‘but I think you’re wrong.’

Was that a flicker of hope flaring in those eternal pools of their eyes? If it was, Dian quenched it quickly, but she could have sworn she’d seen it. Suddenly, her head was fizzing with pink. The little rosewood box in her mind was empty, all her love and light and brightness and power and grief bursting from her in a firework display. And it was ok. It was ok to let Dian see it. She reached between them, taking their hand. Their eyes widened, but she stepped closer, willing them to hear her.

‘I believe,’ she said fiercely. ‘I believe Moth, I believe my mum. She used to say we could do anything. She said even amongst all the shit, we could make our own worlds. And I . . .’ Her throat swelled but she pressed on despite it. ‘I do still believe that.’ Although Dian’s forehead knotted, Frida didn’t stop. ‘In my world, this dragon,’ she raised the Jewel again, pink light flaring across the bottoms of the trees, ‘is called Fireheart, but that isn’t her name. I don’t know what her name is. In the zoo, we call all these creatures by our own names, we take them from their homes, their . . .’ Her voice broke. ‘Their hearts.’ She was begging Dian to understand. ‘This dragon told me to come back here to find her heart. I thought she wanted me to bring it back to her, but maybe she didn’t mean that. Maybe we just need to give this to her now; give it to the version of her that’s here. Maybe that will change everything.

‘They’ve been using this Jewel to power their wards. That’s what Joshua said. So, I’m going to guess that the wards on the cages are broken. What we saw in the laboratory, those awful jars – he said they couldn’t use them anymore. They’ve been depending on this Jewel.’

Suddenly, that thread of hope was back. It rose across the twilit hue of Dian’s cheeks. ‘You think we can free the prisoners?’

Frida nodded. ‘Yes.’ She squeezed Dian’s hand. ‘I do. All of them.’

Moth gave a delighted squeak, racing up and down his webs. She thought she heard the animals on the edge of her hearing quiver too, just a little bit. Maybe the very worlds themselves quivered as she wrapped her fingers around the Jewel and felt the blazing, sulphurous, dry desert heat of it. Beneath the shelter of the yew trees, Frida looked up at Dian, and said tentatively, suddenly unsure if her plan was a terrible one, and Dian would send it crashing down around her with one scathing, fairy remark.

‘What do you think?’

Dian didn’t say anything for a long time. They just gazed down at her, their rosy lips slightly parted, their breath coming in shallow starts, their eyes night-swollen and unreadable. Then, finally, a broad smile began to stretch over their lips.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Suddenly droplets surged into being, lighting the underside of the trees like silver tinsel. Then they just wrapped their arms around her and lifted her off her feet, spinning her round and around in a jubilant circle, smelling of moss and petrichor, and behind that, something that was entirely their own. Almonds, rich and spicy. Frida let out a shocked, breathless laugh, and when they put her down, grinning from ear to ear, she swayed, feeling dizzy.

‘God, Dian,’ she gasped, flushed. ‘What will the other fairies think?’

Dian chuckled and then set off at a run across the grass, tugging her after them. ‘I don’t care!’ they cried, wild, victorious laughter tumbling out of them. Their callouses scraped against hers, and she could still feel the imprint of their arms around her body, delicious blasts of heat that sent rapturous shivers down her spine. Antony may have been awarded best hugger four years in a row, and he was good, but Dian? As Frida ran through the rain all the tension left her, all the fear roiling through her, even the feeling of those steely bars melted into the memory of that hug. She breathed it in, and breathed it out.

All the while, the Jewel pulsed warm in her pocket and Moth did a triumphant spider dance, leaping between Frida and Dian’s shoulders. When they angled for the eastern gardens, Frida didn’t notice at first when a few rats began to keep pace with them. When the rabbits joined in, with a scarred one-eared hare in the lead, Frida gawped. Dian gave her a wondering look, the silvered storm of their magic twinkling like shards of glass. It was the owl above her head, swooping down so close she felt the air tremble, who said,

‘We hear! We hear!’

The rats – a horde of them now, streaming over the grass – squeaked in confirmation.

The owl banked, moonlight rippling over pale wings. ‘Dragon-human, violet as the light-lit stars at dawn! Raindrop wanderer, glitter-caller! We hear the battle-cry of the desert-sky!’

Frida gaped up at the owl. But even as she did so, she too plucked up her ears and listened. And there it was, tasting of a thousand rainbowed dreams. The morse code SOS echoing through the woods, threading through the roots and the boughs. The Jewel pushing out a call on pink flamingo feathers and wings of fire, crying of revolution, of flame, of rebellion. To every furry, slippery, sticky, winged, many-legged creature.