by Amy Wilson
The Shadow King stumbles back.
‘Estelle,’ he whispers, raising one hand to shield his eyes.
‘Stop them!’ I shout.
‘I don’t know how.’
I stare at him with hollow, dry eyes, and something deep inside me breaks. The part of me that carried just a little hope for all these years; that I would find him, and that he would welcome me.
That I would have a father.
My body is trembling – with rage or fear, I cannot tell.
‘Fine. Then I’ll do it myself.’
I stalk past him, down the stairs and out of the melting palace. The shadows pursue me as I go; surrounding me, looming dark over my head. But they cannot stop me now.
They cannot get close enough to try.
The clearing where I left Yanny alone is a now a calamitous battle scene. Rory is there, sending arrows of pure light into the shadows that smother the trees, and a dozen more centaurs cluster around her, doing the same. The shadows have completely surrounded the clearing.
I venture closer, looking for Yanny and Zara, but there’s too much going on. Sprites up in the trees, battling with spells and flashing eyes; fairies on light feet, fighting great shadow monsters with enchanted swords and knives; Mr Flint is standing close by a group of young fae, roaring as he flourishes a long, grey staff, crashing into a pack of shadow wolves, which snap at their heels. As I watch, one of the creatures gathers itself and launches at him; he parries with a swish of his staff, and the wolf is torn into ragged patches of shadow that drift upward to rejoin the dark mass gathered over the trees.
It’s impossible, I realize. All they’re doing is driving the shadows back into the woods, where they’ll infect the trees. And I told my father I would stop them, but I still haven’t worked that bit out. I wanted to reach him. I wanted him to see me and be fixed.
‘Stupid,’ I mutter to myself, treading out into the clearing, catching sight of Peg in the distance, clinging to a tree and sending bolts of fire down through the dark clouds of shadow. It’s dusk already, somehow a whole winter’s day has passed, and the dangers of night can’t be far off. ‘Stupid. Just made it worse. Now what, oh Lost Prince?’
‘Lost Prince?’ says a small voice, deep inside my head. ‘Is that what you’ll call yourself, even now that you are found?’
I look around. Nobody has noticed me yet, this whole part of the clearing is completely empty, apart from the shadows that crouch just outside of my reach. Something furry lands on my shoulder, making me jump.
‘Teacake?’ I twist my head.
I found you, she purrs.
She speaks. She speaks, and I understand her. My jaw slackens as I gaze into her bright green eyes.
And you found your father. Teacake rubs against my cheek. So you are not lost. Your body knows it before your mind does.
She whisks at me with her tail, and I’m reminded of my new horns. My hair, I notice, is also different. I pull a strand outward to inspect it. It curls, flecked with streaks of copper.
The question is . . . Teacake purrs. What will you do now that you are found?
I stare at her for a long moment, and then I remember the voice I heard the first time I fought the shadow, in the garden. Was it hers?
‘I wanted to get rid of the shadows,’ I say, still marvelling at her.
That is a good idea, she continues. I am tired of them. So is your father – though he doesn’t know it yet.
‘He didn’t know me.’
He has been a long time in shadows.
‘He made the shadows!’
Do you think he made them of his own volition? Did he choose this life? No. It came upon him, and he was lost. It happens. What you will do with your life, Stella. That is the interesting bit.
‘Is it?’
Somewhat – she licks a paw – I cannot quite read it. Some things are not clear until they are upon us. Ooh! A lovely little mouse, hiding in the snow . . .
She bounds off into the trees, and I watch her go before turning back to the clearing, where fae face shadows. Neither side appears to be winning. Now I understand those flashes of light and colour that I used to see from our house. Now I am close to the roars, and the screams of the centaurs as they charge, and the sparks that fly off their weapons, bursting into the air as the fairies use their magic.
There are goblins fighting tooth and nail with spiny shadow creatures, and sprites who lean out from every tree, using their magic and their swords to fend off the shadow birds, which try to land on the outstretched frost-glinting branches. And there is Yanny, back to back with Zara, fighting a group of shadow foxes. Yanny is quick with his fire whip, it sparks as it snaps the ground, and Zara is wielding what looks like a long glass rod, glowing blue from within.
Is that what she went to see Mrs Mandrake about? To get herself a weapon? While I’ve been faffing about, she’s already begun the fight. There is no time to lose; I have wasted enough already. I run over to them.
‘Stella!’ Zara grins. ‘Are you ready?’ Her breath is short. ‘You look . . . ready.’
Her gaze settles on my newly revealed horns, and then travels down over my bright hair.
‘And you’ve brought company,’ says Yanny, with a flourish of his whip that parts the shadows at my back. ‘I’m not sure we needed more of them!’
‘He wouldn’t send them away,’ I say. ‘So I told him I’d do it instead.’
‘Best get started then,’ he grunts, as one of the foxes gets too close and rakes its claws at his shoulder.
I clatter at it with Nan’s old lantern, and the fox fragments into a dozen pieces, which begin to crawl and slither as soon as they hit the ground.
‘OK?’ I manage, as the next thing is upon us.
Yanny winces. ‘I’ll be fine . . . I’m not sure about your fighting methods though.’ He watches as I swing the lantern again, this time into a swooping shadow owl.
‘I didn’t bring any other weapons!’
‘Some Lost Prince you are.’
‘Not a Lost Prince!’ I huff, swirling the lantern through the shadow snakes that now gather by our ankles. ‘Just me. Stella Brigg.’
I flail and batter with my lantern, aware of its absurdity. It does seem to be working, though. The air around us starts to clear, and the shadows that get hit by the lantern are slow to re-form; some of them disappear entirely.
‘You’re pretty handy with that!’ yells Zara, swiping up with her spear to catch a small spine-covered shadow that has launched itself from the nearest tree.
I grin. ‘Could say the same for you!’
‘Mrs Mandrake gave it to me,’ she says, wielding the spear with a flourish and accidentally catching a shadow bat that was coming close in behind her. ‘She said if I heard the horn, it would be time. I don’t think she thought it would happen so soon . . .’
Her voice drifts off, and she looks with horror over my shoulder into the distance.
I turn slowly, and my stomach fills with icy dread.
He is here, approaching slowly through the frigid reaches of the forest where the palace hides. The Stag. And behind him, a horde of terrible shadows I’ve not seen before, all of them gruesome monsters nearly ten feet tall.
‘You must’ve made him angry,’ Yanny says. His whip is smouldering, his eyes no longer ablaze.
I gasp. ‘It wasn’t just a scratch!’ I pull him away from the shadows to take a closer look at his shoulder. The cloth of his shirt is torn, and beneath is what looks like an ugly burn. ‘Yanny, you need to get this seen to!’
‘Get your father seen to first!’
‘This is more important right now, Yanny! Where are your parents? Who’s the healer around here? Quickly!’
‘Hang on!’ says Zara, dipping into the pocket of her yellow mac. Camouflaged, she is not. ‘Don’t panic, Mrs Mandrake gave me this . . .’
She brings out a small glass jar, the label of which reads Mrs M’s Best Blackcurrant Jam.
‘What is that?’ Y
anny scowls, wrinkling his nose as she unscrews the lid. ‘I don’t think this is the time for Mrs M’s Best Blackcurrant Jam!’
‘It’s not jam.’ Zara rolls her eyes. ‘It’s mer-fae nest, mixed with some other bits and bobs. Have you ever seen Mrs Mandrake’s house? It’s amazing – shelf after shelf of jars and rocks and potions. This is a new thing – she made it up after she fixed you that day . . . Anyway, she said it might help if anyone was injured.’ Zara dips a finger into the jar, and leans over Yanny, smearing it on his shoulder before he has a chance to move away.
‘There,’ she says.
‘It stings!’
‘Good medicine always stings,’ she says, tucking the jar back into her pocket. ‘Or tastes vile. At least I didn’t make you eat it!’
I turn back to the Stag, who is coming over the icy ground, taking his majestic time as the shadows grow longer with nightfall. ‘Is it helping, Yanny?’ I ask urgently.
‘Probably,’ he says, shifting his shoulder.
‘You can thank me later,’ Zara says. ‘Once we’ve sorted this guy out.’
She bares her teeth in a growl, standing up and glaring at the Stag.
‘Zara!’
‘He’s making me cross,’ she says. ‘Look at him, prancing along as if he owns the place, after everything he’s done.’ She turns to me. ‘Aren’t you angry, Stella?’
‘Sad.’
‘Be sad later,’ she says. ‘Angry now.’
Yanny and I stare at her, but all she does is shrug.
‘Isn’t it time?’ she says.
‘I’d say so,’ says Yanny, looking over at the place where his parents stand shoulder to shoulder, battling shadow men with bolts and chains of fire.
Rory turns from the melee and sees us. She charges over, the shadows thick in her wake. They cling tight to her night-dark flanks, and they spool from her hooves as she thunders towards us. And then Peg is here, rushing up to my shoulder, a tiny glowing lizard.
‘Oh, Peg,’ I whisper, as Rory halts, sending up a flurry of ice crystals.
‘You know how to do it! We practised in the garden,’ Peg says. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘That was practice? I thought it was an emergency!’
‘It was both,’ he says, somehow managing to sound smug even in the midst of all this chaos. ‘And now that you are come into your power, you will be magnificent!’
‘She is a child, foolish imp,’ snaps Rory, leaning towards us. ‘What do you propose she do? I never bought into that ridiculous legend – it means nothing on the battlefield. She is a child, barely versed in our world.’
‘I have been to the palace,’ I say. ‘I fought through the shadows and the deepest part of the forest, and I faced my father, and he didn’t know me, or if he did, it was only for a moment. He is lost, but I am not.’ I remember Teacake’s words and let them ring true. ‘I’m right here. And I want to help.’
‘She can do it,’ says Yanny, and his voice sends a rush of hope through me as he stands by my side. And then Zara is here too. And if Yanny is tired and fading, then she has only just begun. Her eyes spark; she looks ready to take on the whole of Winterspell by herself.
Rory snorts. ‘Go on, then. Show me what magic you have.’
‘I don’t think this lantern is going to do much against him,’ I whisper to Yanny, as the Stag raises his head and bellows through the clearing.
‘It’s not the flipping lantern,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘It’s never the stuff that matters, Stella. It’s what you put into it! The lantern is just an extension of your hand – of your power. The lantern isn’t sending shadows away – you are! Just . . . do it bigger!’
‘Send him away, Stella,’ Zara says, tucking her arm through mine.
Yanny links my arm on the other side, a look of determination on his face. And something clicks, deep inside me. Something that was so lonely, and even today, standing before my father, felt so out of place.
I’m not out of place.
I’m not alone.
I am fae. I am all that he is, and more, because I have friends, and he stands alone in a flurry of nothing but his own fear.
I breathe long and slow, and let it gather, noticing that the clearing has become still. Every fae creature is staring from me to the Stag. Fierce Elowen is shouting something, but I cannot hear the words through the snarling chaos. The Stag stands before me, his breath steaming, antlers held high, and he roars, and I take a step towards him, and my bare feet don’t make a sound on the ground, and I clench my fists, and I roar right back at him, and it reverberates, a boom of sound that never came from a human mouth. I pour all of my hurt in there, and all of my fear, until my chest burns, until my back aches. The acorn at my neck flashes hot, and then there is a sharp twist of pain, and a lift beneath my ribs. My heart is thudding like a thunderstorm. I look at the shadow of my father, who does not acknowledge me, even now.
‘Get away from here,’ I say in a small voice that somehow rings through the clearing, as the moon comes into view, crescent-thin and dazzling bright.
He lowers his head as if preparing to charge, and I step towards him again, and I start to run, but the ground falls away beneath my feet as wings – my wings, that Nan’s glamour hid for all these years – spread and catch the air, and Winterspell lights up around me.
Every tree and leaf, every bright face and every single fae form is caught in a silver burst of light, until the clearing is a dazzle of outstretched, beating wings. They sweep out from the backs of all the cursed young fairies and sprites in a rainbow torch of magic, and the shadows cannot stand beneath such light. They don’t just rush to shelter. They don’t yammer or growl or fight. They simply stretch to tatters and disappear.
The willow trees lower their heads, the rowan spread their limbs, the fae stamp their feet, and the shadow of the Stag is massive. He is all of them in one place, just one creature with no more or less power than any other.
‘Go back to him!’ I shout.
The clearing rings with it, and my heart thunders as I stare at him. He looks at me then, right in the eye, and finally he nods. He turns, making his way back to the palace that is no longer hidden.
‘You did it!’ crows Yanny.
‘My,’ whispers Rory. ‘Look at that.’
Zara slips her hand into mine. ‘You cleared the shadows.’
‘I sent the Stag away. I sent him,’ I shiver, the cold finding its way to my bones. The air is crisp, everything more stark than it was a moment ago, before the shadows fled. ‘Will it kill him, Zara?’
‘No,’ says Peg, the familiar curve of his bird claws digging into my shoulder. ‘You used the power of your family, and your own, more importantly, and you sent his shadow back to him.’ His face looms before mine, his amber eyes glowing, a massive grin on his imp face. ‘You sent the shadows away – you broke the curse, Stella!’
‘What?’
I look up. Rory and her centaurs are staring at me, the fairies and the sprites too.
‘The Stag was the source of it all, and you sent it back to where it belonged,’ Rory says. ‘To your father.’
‘And you have wings!’ Yanny rushes at me, and he isn’t tired any more – he is flying, his own wings no longer tattered shadows but huge great sweeps of fire at his back. He curls up into the air, and then he swoops back down and flings me up with him, and I’m tumbling, diving, catching myself at the last minute, soaring in a flurry of fae wings, so many of them all whooping and hollering beneath the moon.
They are so sure of it. So full of joy. I twist and dive with them, and it should feel like a dream. Like magic. But I cannot see my own wings, and I don’t trust them fully. I don’t know what I’ve done. I don’t know who I am, and there’s a weight in my throat that doesn’t shift, no matter how their joy rings. I stumble to the ground, where Zara is grinning, leaning against her staff.
‘Look at you,’ I say, climbing to my feet. ‘All fae and magical.’
‘Says she with the wi
ngs.’ She grins.
‘He didn’t want me there, Zara,’ I say, watching the fairies and the sprites flit through the night sky.
It’s clear now. No clouds, no shadows.
She huffs. ‘Well, more fool him.’
I snort back a weird laughing crying cough.
‘Really though,’ she says. ‘This is your life. You’re living it the best you can.’ She shrugs. ‘Your best is pretty spectacular. But even if it wasn’t, it would be fine, Stella. It’d be good enough for us. Even if it isn’t for him.’
We link arms and look up together as Yanny curls through the air. He hollers, waving down at us, and does a pirouette in the air, falling and landing clumsily. Elowen darts forward and takes his face in her hands, and she is laughing, her wings unfolding as he pulls her off her feet and back up into the sky with him.
‘I think,’ Rory says, ‘that it’s time for us to go and see your grandmother.’
I nod, with a sidelong look at Zara, and then we make our way through Winterspell, Peg on my shoulder.
The stars are clear now, sparkling brightly between the branches, and as we go, I can hear the trees whispering. I trail my fingers along their trunks, and they speak to me of long summer days to come, and bright, moonlit nights, and the play of fae children in their arms. The air is singing with it, and even Rory seems somewhat mollified by the time we come out the other side with Zara and Mrs Mandrake.
‘We’ll let you chat to your nan,’ Mrs Mandrake says as we near the house. ‘I’ll see Zara home.’
‘Is that OK?’ I ask Zara, as Mrs Mandrake skirts the house to her truck. ‘You can come in . . .’
‘I think I’ll leave that pleasure to you,’ she says, her eyes sparkling. ‘I want to talk to Mrs Mandrake anyway.’
‘I’m so glad you were there,’ I say, drawing her in for a hug.
Zara smiles. ‘We did a pretty good job in there, didn’t we? And Mrs Mandrake says that now I’ve seen so much, I’ll have to sign the secret contract thing and have lessons with you upstairs!’