by Amy Wilson
Teacake bounces up first, her coat streaks of snow and shadow; she is hardly more than a blur of pink nose and green eyes. She pounces on us, her silver claws like needles, and she doesn’t stop until we’ve scrambled up, wincing and complaining.
This is hopeless . . .
Except, when I can see again, I realize perhaps it isn’t.
It is still winter here, and the land is thick with shadow, but the trees are only limed with frost now – they aren’t clogged with it. There are spaces between their trunks. They’ve cleared the way.
I look at Zara. She braces herself, as I do the same, and then we run straight through those gleaming silver trees, and they lift their arms up high so that not a single twig touches us as we go, and the acorn around my neck bursts into golden light, and there is no shadow made in the world that I will not fight to finish this.
The palace has been hidden for a decade, ever since my mother died, and my nan made her spell to keep me safe; ever since anyone saw my father. It rises up before us now, and takes my breath away. It’s a colossal, marble tangle of sweeping outer staircases, roof gardens where ice apple trees grow, and turrets topped with needle-sharp twists of green copper. Gargoyles spout rivulets of ice down over snow-encrusted window ledges, and great sheets of glittering frost cover every doorway.
And in every dark space, between every crenellation, lurking along the very edges of the palace, are yet more shadows. They are snarling foxes, dark-eyed hares, and other spiny creatures I cannot name. They gather, darker and faster, until the air is as thick as it is cold. But they do not strike. They do not move towards us.
‘Do you really think he’s here?’ I whisper, as Teacake bounds before us, half disappearing into the snow with every landing.
W NTE PELL, reads the twisted silver sign over the main gate, its bars jagged with splintered ice.
‘Something’s here,’ Zara replies, making my spine itch.
‘I’m not ready,’ I say, halting in my tracks.
‘Yes you are.’
‘Zara—’
‘Stella!’ she rounds on me, and her face is fierce, her eyes glowing. ‘This is it! And I do love you for all the thinking you do, but this is not the time for thinking – this is the time for acting!’
Nobody’s ever talked to me like that before, not even Nan.
I swallow. She keeps her eyes level on me and folds her arms.
‘I don’t know what he’ll be like,’ I whisper. ‘What if he’s like Nan – just a ghost, all thin and disappearing? What if he doesn’t know me? What if he hates me?’
‘He doesn’t know you,’ she says. ‘But I do, and Yanny does. You can do this. Not because of legends, or Lost Princesses. But because you’re you!’
Her words reach into me, and moments later, nerves steeled, we rush together towards the palace, ignoring the howl of the shadow creatures around us, and when I strike at the ice that screens the vast front door, it’s not that I think I can break it with one small fist – or two . . . or even with four, when Zara’s join mine – but that I know we will. The frozen barrier shatters and crumbles before us, crashing down the steps in a great glacial tide. Sweeping over the icy rubble, I grab the tarnished silver door latch and twist it, desperately muttering the words for the charms that Nan taught me, over and over.
I catch my breath as the door swings open to another wilderness, gleaming ice roping through tarnished silver chandeliers, frozen spider webs clinging to the marble banisters, fine snow carpeting the glass floor.
It used to glow with the amber reflection of candlelight and faelight, and with all the footsteps of all the fae. I lay on it once, to feel the vibrations of all their comings and goings, to feel the bare skin of my arms against its smooth warmth . . .
The memory hits me and slows my footsteps. When I blink it away, the Stag is here, standing before us, his great antlers twisting up and out to fill the vast, bleak hallway. Teacake rushes down the stairs towards us, as the Stag flickers and disappears from view, and the tread of heavy, slow footprints echoes through the palace.
The Shadow King.
‘What did your Nan say about breaking the curse?’ Zara whispers. ‘What do we do now?’
‘We were looking for the palace,’ I reply. ‘And we found it, but there’s something . . .’ My eyes drift to the stairs that Teacake just came down. ‘I think there’s something up there.’
‘KITTEN!’ roars a voice, splitting the air and sending blasts of icy mist through the corridors ahead of us. ‘Where have you gone now? I thought you had returned to me!’
We stare at Teacake, who is perched on the marble sphere at the base of the banister. She lifts one front paw and begins to lick it. And I remember. I remember her sitting exactly there, doing exactly this. Only the sun was streaming through the open doors behind me, and my mother was laughing, because she had surprised me so.
‘This is Thalia,’ she says, lifting me to meet the kitten face to face. ‘I found her in the forest, and she followed me home.’
‘I thought we said no pets,’ rumbles my father, stalking down the steps frowning at the kitten.
‘Not a pet,’ says my mother, raising her eyes to his. ‘Far more than a pet, my dear, which you would know if you’d take the time to look closer. Besides, she chose me. As feline things will. And she will be a perfect playmate for Estelle.’
‘Stella?’ Zara whispers. ‘Shouldn’t we stay down here and face him?’
I swallow the lump in my throat. Memories come easy as clouds here, and every time they do, I lose my focus, and forget about Yanny, and what we are doing here. Is that part of the curse? I clear my mind, and something calls to me. The acorn at my throat is warm, and it’s pulling me onward.
‘Not yet. We need to go up,’ I say. ‘Teacake, will you distract him down here?’
She blinks, and drops to the floor, venturing down the central corridor.
The steps are slippery blocks of ice, and they seem to go on for miles. We stare up at them, clutching at the bitterly cold banister. I mutter a few words of magic, and as I step forward, the ice melts beneath my feet.
‘Step where I’ve stepped,’ I whisper to Zara.
‘Magical footsteps!’
‘Just . . . melting ice. That’s all,’ I say. ‘Actually, it’s making it pretty clear where we’ve been, isn’t it?’
At the top of the steps, we look back to see small footprints leading to where we now stand.
‘Let’s get rid of them.’ I gesture at the staircase, recalling the Latin word for melt. ‘Liquescimus!’
The stairs begin to drip, and the great arches of ice on the chandeliers below us glisten with melting ice. I forge on, Zara by my side, and we tread down the corridor over worn, faded carpet that glitters with frost, and my ears are stretched with listening for him, but there is only silence below.
And then the air is torn by the unmistakeable sound of dawn breaking. I frown.
‘It isn’t dawn. Is it? We can’t have been gone a whole day and night!’
‘No, it’s not dawn,’ Zara says, shifting her feet. ‘I need to go, Stella.’
‘What?’
‘Mrs Mandrake told me it might happen, if things ever went truly badly in Winterspell. I went to see her after I left you yesterday. I still had her number . . . She said Rory would use the horn if she had to – it means there’s trouble. You’ve got this.’ She looks at me. ‘Really. You have.’
‘But shall I come too? What if it’s Yanny?’
‘What if it is?’ she asks. ‘You do your bit; I’ll do mine. And I promise, Stella, I’ll explain later!’
She turns and runs back to the stairs, and I go to shout out after her but a new memory assails me.
‘Estelle.’ My mother’s voice, but pale and worn. Her face, but too thin. Standing by her bed, my hands clutching the cold sheets as someone pulls me away. Screaming. ‘My star!’ She struggles to sit and uses the last of her fire to drown out my wails. ‘Go with your nan. Live your li
fe away from this, and when you are strong and bold, when you are grown, then you will come into your own. Then you will return.’ She reaches for the table by the bed, picks up the links of the copper chain and ties it around my neck with a whisper of words that seals it. A single silver acorn hangs at my throat.
I reach for it now, feel the heat of the golden one that has joined it – that hung at her own neck, so long ago – and I force myself onward, down almost familiar corridors, with the sense of her by my side, searching every inch for what I need.
Now I know – there were three acorns. One silver, one gold, and one of rich, dark amber.
The silver light of my cracked fae lantern casts swinging shadows all around me as I start to search in earnest. Every sound echoes. Giant swathes of cobweb drape from every lintel and hang like silent ghosts from the dull pewter chandelier on the landing, and the dust on the floor has been swept to the sides by giant scuffing footsteps.
In the eerie half-light, the palace feels like a cathedral. Every room a vast, echoing chamber with minimal wood furniture and unravelling tapestries on the walls. I work my way back, and the rooms get smaller. In one, there’s a row of pitted kettles and old pans hanging from hooks, and a fire pit in the centre with a fat copper pot sitting on a metal rack. Another is heaped with old blankets and cushions, stubs of candles set on the mantelpiece amid old wax spills that drip to the hearth.
I head up again and find threadbare rugs on the cold wood floors, and tatters of curtains hanging at the empty window frames. It’s dusty up here, and the air is bitter. Room after room, I catch flashes of the lives that were here before. Rickety old beds, window seats where nobody has sat for years. There’s a piano in one room, surrounded by narrow upholstered benches; and in another, a heavy wood dresser. The drawers squeak as I pull them out to reveal neatly folded moth-eaten linen.
‘I can’t go through everything,’ I whisper to myself despairingly, as the next door opens on to yet another room, this one with vast oak wardrobes and a heavily laden bed. I sigh, abandoning the room and trudging to the next.
It’s a smaller bedroom that connects to the previous one with a little doorway in the corner. And it’s chaos. The room, under all the dust and debris, has been torn apart. A chest of drawers lies on its back, its legs broken; its drawers have been ripped out and lie in a pile of wooden shards beside it. A tiny bed has been snapped clean in half, its boards like jagged teeth.
I swing the lantern about me, catching my breath at the destruction it reveals. Something winks in the fireplace. I hold my breath and move towards it, as my vision flickers with what this room might have been like before it was destroyed. The bed beneath the window, heaped with blankets and pillows; the chest of drawers spilling soft clothes. A thick, intricately patterned rug on the floor, and an iron guard up against a gently flickering fire. My mother’s voice, and the sound of laughter. My father’s broad smile as he reaches down for me, the amber acorn glowing at his neck.
The vision clears as I reach the empty fireplace. Empty, but for a single acorn, almost hidden by a thick pile of ash. I pull it out, and dust drifts through the grate to the floor. A fragment of charred, blackened chain falls from the loop on the top of the acorn to join the ash, and I don’t try to rescue it. The acorn is enough. It is the one he wore, of rich dark amber, still warm between my fingers.
I fold it into my palm, and my throat tightens, a sharp cough exploding from my chest. My eyes are burning; my skin stings all over. I bring the amber acorn to the one at my neck, and I feel again that magnetic pull as it merges with them, threading a fine strand of amber through the heart of the silver and gold.
A bolt of something rushes through me, something wrenches and falls apart, and I stumble, catching myself on the wall. Nan’s glamour, unspooling as my own power takes over. It’s thunder in my veins, but there’s no time – there are footsteps on the stairs, heavy as mountains falling, quick as a river, coming towards me . . . The Shadow King himself stalks into the room. There’s no time to hide or run – I didn’t prepare myself for this. I never even really imagined being in the same room as him. The sheer physical presence of the fae king, so close I could touch him, is a shock that makes the hairs on my arms stand up.
‘What do you here?’ he asks in a cracking voice. The hair that escapes his hood is long and lank; his beard reaches to his waist in scraggly wisps. He wears threadbare grey robes, drawn in over his thin waist by a knotted leather belt. He comes towards me, and the shadow curls at his side as if trying to get away, but my father fights and wins, and finally. Finally. He is there before me.
Ellos. The Stag. My father.
‘Amara?’ he whispers, with a dusty, broken voice.
I cannot speak. I just stare at him.
‘But no,’ he whispers, as if to himself, one claw-like hand on the door, pulling himself upright. ‘No, I watched her die. And the sickness was tight in my belly, and I could not be sure . . . I thought I had imagined my mother there. She took . . . something. I forget. What did she take? What are you?’
‘She took me,’ I say, and I weld my voice with steel so that it does not shake. ‘She took me away from the Plaga – and your shadows. And we tried to come back to you, but you had locked yourself up here . . .’ I gesture around us, while ice drips, and the sun’s pale wintry rays begin to filter through windows. ‘And you had cursed the whole place, sent your shadows so far and wide, given them so much power, there was no way through.’
‘My daughter.’ He nods absently, his eyes still turned inward. ‘I remember we had a daughter. I did not know where she had gone, whether she survived the sickness at all. I sent out my stag to find her, but they said she had gone with her mother.’
‘Who said?’
‘The . . . the shadows . . .’
‘And you listened? You listened to your own shadows? Your own fears?’
He blinks, and it is as though he hasn’t blinked for a thousand years. For a million lifetimes. Brown eyes, crinkled at the corners, desperately confused. He takes a step forward; I take one back. The acorn gleams at my neck, and he sees it.
‘Estelle? You do look like Amara. Except for the horns. Those are mine.’ He reaches thin, brittle fingers up to touch the horns, half hidden in the thatch of his brown-grey hair, and I do the same.
I gasp. . . Horns. Smooth as new conkers, spiralling like shells.
I have horns.
‘What do you want from me?’ the Shadow King asks, furrowing his brow. ‘Why are you here? Why do you interrupt my silence? My peace?’
My stomach twists. I cannot work out whether he is still confused or just angry that I’m here. Has he really searched for me, or does he think I died with my mother? Does he think I’m just a dream?
‘I . . . want you to stop the shadows,’ I manage finally.
‘I cannot stop them!’
‘You made them! So make them go away!’
‘I . . . I made them?’
‘And they are destroying Winterspell. Killing trees. Killing fae.’
‘But no. They do not . . . They are not for the forest! I thought they were mine alone. They were my punishment, for I let my lady die, and I lost our child. I have been haunted by them. First the Stag – I could not control him, once he had grown strong in my sorrow. And from him, so many others came. I could not see past them. Could not leave this place!’
‘It wasn’t just you they affected – it was the whole of Winterspell! You didn’t see how they struggled? How they fought?’
‘Fae always fight.’ He shrugs. ‘That is what they are. It is what they live for.’
‘Not for fighting with shadows,’ I say.
‘I did not see that. I have been locked in this palace, lost in the shadows. But who are you to say such things?’ he demands, and his eyes, when I find the courage to look into them again, barely see me at all. They are dull once more, as if they see nothing. Nothing but the shadows of his despair, of his own personal agony.
That
which has caused the misery of so many.
One person’s fear. One person’s misery.
A whole world near-destroyed.
‘Who are you to come into my palace?’
The shadows swing, and another pane of the glass in my lantern cracks. The light gutters and snuffs out. We are plunged into darkness.
‘Well, child?’ whispers the Shadow King, leaning in, so close I can see his long grey teeth and smell his rotten breath. ‘Brave, or stupid? What do you think?’
‘Neither,’ I snap.
He draws closer still, and the acorn at my throat begins to burn.
‘Get away from me!’
He laughs, a horrible creaking, gasping sound, and rocks back on his heels, thrusting out a bony arm to gesture around the room. My eyes adjust to the gloom. In the corners, and crawling up the old glass window, are his infernal shadows. They twist through the doorway, hang from the picture rails, and their forms are not solid. In here, they are not animals or men, but things that undulate and morph, that speak in slithery, slippery tones of fear and malice.
‘Get away?’ snarls the Shadow King. ‘You are in my domain! You have entered this place of your own free will – for what? For battle?’ He grins. ‘You will not win, small thing. You cannot win, here, for my will is greater than yours, and I have nothing to lose. There is nothing you can do to me, nothing you can offer me. This palace is mine, and if Winterspell is lost, there is nothing I can do about it. Nature will take its course.’
‘Nature?’ I breathe through the creep, swallowing all my fear. ‘You cannot talk of nature when all you’ve done is destroy it. Winterspell is not yours – can’t you feel that? Can’t you sense the trees themselves are against you? The fae, who hide from you? What are you ruling, apart from your own shadows?’
He roars, and I thrust out my hands as if I can push him back. The acorn bursts with a golden light as the thundering feeling of magic explodes in my chest, and it becomes a tiny beacon that spears through the shadows and sends them reeling.