Page 91 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

Gasping for breath, with her heart in her ears and thunder ricochetting around the valley and the earth breaking into galactic, impossible crevasses, she began to run.

‘I’m coming!’ she shouted. The wind whipped away the words, but she shouted until her voice was hoarse. ‘I’m coming, Lucky!’

The trees swished and whooshed. Another crack of lightning lit up the sky, and she caught sight of him in the midst of the roiling branches. A huge purple mountain, appearing like a miracle. Her heart surged. Lucky, with his forked tail and oversized paws, fire-bright wings and raggedy half-grown beard. Even as new chasms to nothing split open, she realised that he was digging, sending dirt and soil and rock in dramatic rainbows over his massive shoulders. She faltered. No. She wasn’t ready. She had to find Dian and Moth.

‘Lucky,’ she gasped.

‘Hurry!’ He called to her, chest deep in mud, and his eyes were stretched wide like pools of distressed gold. ‘Hurry, little stink. I cannot stop it!’

‘What is happening?’ she cried, racing for him.

‘I don’t know!’ he bellowed, although he didn’t stop digging. ‘Oh dear, oh dear! I do not know what is happening! Only that time has run out.’ She could hear the fear in his voice and that struck fear through her too, greater than any she’d felt before. Was this what happened when a dragon’s heart shattered?

That’s when she remembered.

Dian still had the Jewel.

She hadn’t taken it back.

She couldn’t even return to the terracotta dragon with the broken pieces.

She’d failed, in every possible way.

Suddenly she saw a sparkle at the edge of her vision, and her heart convulsed.

‘Dian!’ she cried.

At the edge of the trees, the unearthly faces of fairies materialised. She spun and leapt towards them, vaulting yawning crevasses as hope made her see stars within the depths.

‘Dian!’ she cried again, scanning their faces: oak-supreme, rowan-berry, ancient-yew, handsome-pine, apple tree, and no . . . Her heart sank. Dian was not amongst them.

‘Do you know where Dian is?’ she called to them. ‘I have to find them!’

The oak-supreme just looked down at her, their face more wan than she remembered. She gasped, shocked by their dishevelled oak leaf hair, the chaotic mist that wafted around them, fast and swirling. Still their eyes were pure white and deathly cold as they peered down their long, immaculate nose.

‘Dian,’ they said their name as if it tasted rotten, ‘is not here.’

Frida’s ire flared. ‘Yes, but do you know where they are?’

‘Little stink . . .’ Lucky cried urgently.

She ignored him, hurrying forward, every inch of her will used to hold the gaze of the oak fairy. She’d faced worse by now. ‘In the house, I have to tell you—’

‘Dian has already told us,’ the rowan-berry fairy snapped, peering over the oak-supreme’s shoulder.

Frida whipped her head around. ‘They’ve been here?’

‘Of course.’ The rowan-berry’s six eyes were masked with boredom, but Frida saw the ashen tinge to their skin, the fear hidden in their clenched teeth.

She sank back, the air leaving her lungs in a whoosh. ‘So, you know. About the wards, about what’s happening in the house? About what’s coming?’

The oak-supreme’s bearing shifted, and it was a shock to see her grief reflected in their own primeval face. Slowly, her gaze travelled across the other fairies. The ancient bitter yew. The one decked in apple blossoms, and the one with pine needles for fingers. Her body slackened as she looked beyond them, into the dark patches between the trees where she found the terrified eyes of the giant wolves. The boar and the wild cats. The elves and brownies, the chimeras with their tawny furred beards, and the many necked grunkles. Gnomes and sprites, a cloud of sapphire friperits. The gleaming white face of the angel stag. The tiny horns of a family of jackalopes. The gigantic hairy eight-eyed spiders, distant relatives of Moth’s perhaps.

They were here. They were all here.

And in each she saw the same grief lining their faces. Ever since Antony had peeled her gently off those bathroom tiles, she’d been acting as if she was the only one ever to experience something so terrible. The only person ever to have lost their grip on the light. She closed her eyes as the company of their grief filled her. This wasn’t her sorrow alone. It belonged to all of them.

‘For what it’s worth,’ she said, her voice rough with emotion. ‘I am sorry.’