by Holly Race
A freckled boy next to me frowns as Mr Blake returns to his normal height. ‘But what about our Tournaments?’
‘Yes, well done, young man.’ Mr Blake points at the boy. ‘Your Tournaments are the exception. They’re a different beast. There’s Fay magic behind that. But out in the rest of Annwn? No, no, no – that’s much trickier.’
He takes us to a remote part of Tintagel’s gardens and separates us into groups. Ollie is placed with Phoebe and a bunch of the squires whose names I haven’t bothered to learn. Immediately they seem to congregate around him. I’m put with Ramesh, who insists on high-fiving everyone in our group. I move to the edge, directing my focus towards the teacher and trying to zone out everyone else.
‘Now,’ Mr Blake says, lifting a hand to gain our attention, ‘I want you to think of inspyre like the layers of soil.’ He kneels and sifts through the topsoil of a flower bed. ‘This stuff here is light and easy to pick up, isn’t it? But if you go further down you’ll find the soil’s more compact. It’s harder to dig into. You’ll need a spade. Then further down you get to rock that none of us would be able to move without the help of some hefty machinery. You all follow me?’
We nod, wondering where he’s going with this.
‘Inspyre’s like this soil, only it gets harder to move it or change it depending on the number of dreamers imagining it. It’s nigh on impossible for us to do anything with the Thames, say, because it’s built from the imaginations of millions of dreamers who remember it a certain way. Then at the other end of the spectrum you’ve got things that dreamers don’t remember as well. Details like materials and colours. That’s where the inspyre doesn’t hold together so strongly, like topsoil.’
He hands out tattered pieces of fabric to each group. I examine ours – an unremarkable piece of faded, moss-coloured wool from a reeve’s uniform.
‘It’ll be harder for you than it is for dreamers because they’re unconscious and already tapped into their imaginations,’ Mr Blake says, ‘but if you concentrate, and concentrate hard, you stand a chance. Try it, all of you. Take it in turns to see if you can change those pieces of material you’ve got.’
Our group looks at each other uncertainly. The length of wool flops in Ramesh’s grip, looking utterly uninspiring.
‘I guess I’ll go first then?’ Ramesh says, his bravado knocked away. I feel the vulnerability of his situation keenly. Scratch Jenny and Ollie and their fire; this is the true stuff of nightmares.
‘He said to concentrate really hard,’ I remind Ramesh, ‘so pretend like we aren’t here.’
He nods, closing his eyes and gripping the wool tightly. We all stare at the fabric.
‘How’s he getting on?’ the teacher’s voice, close to my ear, makes every one of us jump.
Ramesh exclaims, ‘Christ!’ in alarm and drops the wool.
‘Ah, well done, lad!’ the teacher says. ‘Not bad at all for a first try.’
We stare down at the wool, which is now less mossy green and more … lime. I have to stop myself from saying, ‘Is that it?’ but Ramesh is delighted. And it turns out that changing the fabric’s colour just a little is the most that can be expected from us. Some members of our group can’t change the colour at all. Others manage to turn it lighter or darker by a few shades. With every person who tries, my sense of dread grows. I don’t want to be doing this in front of them. If I can’t do it then it will prove that I don’t belong here. At last the fabric comes round to me, now a jewelled, jungle green. And by now, everyone has advice.
‘Relax into it.’
‘Focus on the colour you want as hard as you can.’
‘Yeah, until you look like you’re constipated.’
I angle myself away from them, staring at the wool in my hands until it takes over my entire vision. Nothing happens. I close my eyes, trying to block out the stifling presence of my teammates. Then I hear it.
‘Hey, guys, watch this. She’s going to totally balls it up.’
It’s Ollie’s voice, quiet enough that he can pass it off as a whisper; loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear. It’s been a year since I had to deal with him at school, and it’s obviously turned me soft because my head immediately saturates with tears. They seem to burst inside my skull. I get a sudden pain in the centre of my forehead, as though someone’s punctured it. My eyes still closed, I sense a stir amongst my companions.
‘Well, you’ve got the hang of that, haven’t you?’ the teacher growls. I open my eyes. The fabric in my hands is still, partly, dark green. But the green is now flushed into a melancholy ombre of teal and royal purple. I stare at it in wonder.
‘How did you do that?’ Ramesh asks, taking the fabric from me and holding it up to the light.
‘I don’t know.’ I am trying hard not to smile. I didn’t disgrace myself. As the rest of the squires gather around me, passing the peacock-coloured wool between them, I sense Ollie slipping to the back. I do not let myself watch him walk away.
14
My talent for changing the colour of random pieces of fabric doesn’t, in the end, buy me much street cred. It doesn’t take too long for the others to master the art of dying fabric with their minds, and it’s only a matter of days before we start to learn far more exciting things. We spend long hours up on the towers with the harkers, watching the knights from afar through special helmets. We watch the different knight patrols – Lancelot, Bedevere, Gawain, Palomides and Dagonet – moving like chess pieces across London. We watch them tackling the nightmares that spring from a single dreamer’s imagination and the ones that are built over many decades of shared memories until they have become part of Annwn’s landscape.
I inhale all of it. Because I don’t care about making friends, I save all my energy for learning. In Annwn I spend my free time curled up in an armchair tucked away next to a bookcase, reading and eavesdropping on the more experienced knights as they talk tactics and compare patrol notes. One night I overhear Rafe, freshly back from his patrol with Bedevere, regaling some of the squires with the story of how the mysteriously absent Knight Captain, Samson, once walked into a house full of vampires on his own and emerged shortly afterwards, scratched and bitten but victorious. Vampires, it turns out, aren’t just the kind of pointy-toothed blood-suckers I’ve been led to believe but come in many forms: vultures, spirits, rats and doppelgangers.
‘How did he do it?’ Ramesh asks.
‘No one knows.’ Rafe shrugs. ‘He’s never shared.’
Back in Ithr, I remember the secret label Mum gave her diary, and start to fill up my own knightbook with everything I’ve learned. The pages are soon covered with diagrams of battle formations. I write about the different types of aventure – people who are able to travel through Annwn consciously: thanes like me, but also scientists and world leaders and, sometimes, criminals. I note how to spot the difference between a portal that will take a dreamer to another part of Annwn, and the type that will throw them back into Ithr. But the most interesting lessons are the ones that cannot be distilled into bullet points. Once a week we get to foray outside Tintagel’s walls to shadow the patrols. These quickly become my favourite lessons, not just because they let me see more of Annwn, but because of my companion.
Not a human companion. A horse.
When we’re sent to the stables for the first time I have some misgivings. The only time I’ve ridden before was on a holiday in Cornwall when I was eight, which ended up with me clinging to my runaway steed’s neck and Dad cantering behind me, stirrups flying, reins flapping, shouting, ‘I’ll save you, Ferny!’ So the thought of spending most of my patrols on horseback concerns me a bit.
I’m not the only one to be nervous.
‘Why can’t we have cars?’ Ramesh moans. ‘This must be the only time I could drive an Aston Martin and instead I get a bloody pony.’
‘I’d have a Ferrari,’ Ollie sighs, ‘or a Lamborghini.’
I snort quietly.
‘Some thaneships do have cars,’ ano
ther knight comments.
‘Oooh, where? Maybe I can persuade my parents to move,’ Ramesh says.
‘America uses cars. If you fancied moving to the Scottish Highlands you get planes and hot air balloons.’
‘So jealous right now.’ Ramesh clenches his hands dramatically.
‘I wonder if they’ll give me a horse at all,’ Phoebe says, ‘or if I can just ride Donald.’
‘Riding a lion would definitely make you stand out,’ Ollie comments.
‘That would be annoying,’ Phoebe says.
‘Why?’ Ramesh asks.
‘Well, I can’t help having Donald, can I? I’d rather stand out because of something I’ve actually done instead of something I can’t control.’
‘Me too,’ I say impulsively, and find myself returning Phoebe’s quiet smile.
The stables sit on the outskirts of the castle grounds, set into the wall. Along one side, big square archways are held aloft by wooden beams. Inside, the stables smell of urine and warm animal, which isn’t as unpleasant as it sounds. Over the top of each stable door peeks a curious head, all hair, ears and enormous eyes.
‘Get in here then, all of you,’ a tall, tanned woman in tweed and jodhpurs calls impatiently from the depths of the building. She introduces herself as Elaine Dacre – ‘But you can call me Miss D’ – and everything she says is a bark. Like the other teachers, Miss D is a retired thane and by all accounts is something of a Tintagel institution.
A dark-haired slip of a knight follows us in and Miss D homes in on her.
‘Natasha, you’re late. Get Domino and get out of my way. You’re setting a bad example for the squires.’
Natasha grins. ‘Right away, Miss D.’ She has a hint of an American accent. Natasha turns her smile on us as she leads a stocky, Dalmatian-coloured horse out of his stable. ‘You’re in for the best time, guys.’
‘Not to look too keen or anything, but which ones are ours?’ Ramesh asks.
‘The first thing you have to get in your heads is that these horses aren’t yours,’ Miss D says disapprovingly. ‘They’re dreams – and someone else’s dreams at that. They’re just letting you borrow them for a while.’
‘But if they’re made of inspyre couldn’t they change or disappear at any moment?’ Phoebe asks. Her lion, Donald, is standing on the side furthest away from the horses, but I can feel him purring. I briefly think about pointing out to Phoebe that she’s brought him to the lion’s equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet.
‘Not these ones,’ Miss D says. ‘They’re held in this shape by the imagination of the dreamers who own them – or used to own them – in Ithr. Take Natasha there. While her friends and teachers in Ithr remember her horse and how much she loved him, her boy Domino will always be here waiting for her, even if he’s gone in Ithr.’
We all turn round and catch Natasha planting a big, squishy kiss on Domino’s muzzle. Eww.
‘Domino was hers in real life too?’ Phoebe says.
‘For fourteen years, I believe. It’s one of the great things about Annwn. If we can remember someone, we never lose them in here, even if they’ve gone in Ithr.’
Ramesh makes fists of his hands and opens them dramatically on either side of his head, as if to say Mind. Blown. But I am thinking of Mum, wondering whether she is still alive, in a way, somewhere in this place. A shiver runs through me; whether of anticipation or excitement or fear, I can’t tell.
A few minutes later we’re lined up outside the stalls. Miss D opens the doors one by one, and the horses inside clop out to examine us. It’s basically the world’s weirdest dating show. It doesn’t take long before a proud creature with freckles covering his white coat shows an interest in Ollie. He explores his chest and arms with his muzzle, then finally lifts his head to touch noses with my brother.
‘Very good,’ Miss D says. ‘Balius, meet Ollie. Off you go, Ollie, take Balius back to his stall.’
‘Just how friendly is she expecting us to get?’ Ramesh murmurs as Ollie awkwardly leads Balius away. Ramesh gets picked by a big, black monster of a horse and declares that he got ‘first prize’. Phoebe’s reddish-brown horse tentatively touches noses with her lion. ‘No eating, Donald,’ she says.
I smile at each horse as it passes, unsure whether I’m supposed to be offering bribes of sugar cubes or carrots. Several magnificent creatures sniff me briefly, then move on to someone who probably doesn’t reek of desperation. ‘Not to worry,’ Miss D says to those of us yet to be chosen, ‘you’ll all find your match. The bond between a horse and its rider is unique. Your personalities need to complement each other.’
Something whickers softly behind me. I spin round. The creature staring at me through beautiful doe-like eyes is smaller than any of the other horses. Her whole coat is chestnut apart from one black front leg that makes it look as though she left a sock on by mistake. Her ears are donkey-sized, and she doesn’t have much control over them.
‘Well, look at that,’ Miss D says. ‘Llamrei has been here for years, but it’s been more than a decade since she had a rider. I was starting to think she was just coming here to get some fresh hay.’ Miss D observes me beadily. ‘I have a soft spot for Llamrei. Fern, is it? You treat her well, understand?’
I look at Llamrei, such a complicated name for such a sweet little horse. Impulsively, I kiss her nose like I saw Natasha do earlier. It’s not disgusting after all. Her muzzle is like a velvet cushion.
‘Hi, Llamrei,’ I say softly, tentatively stroking her neck. Llamrei wiggles her ears at me, and I melt.
We spend time with our horses every night, learning to tack them up and, more importantly, learning how not to fall off. It isn’t long before I give Llamrei a nickname that feels more suited to her thick fur and docile face – Lamb. At the beginning, Ollie liked to poke fun at Lamb’s size. ‘At least you won’t have far to fall.’ I get the last laugh, though, because this is something Ollie’s rubbish at. While he can barely kick Balius into a lazy trot, Lamb and I whizz around the gardens, circling the other horses and leaping over fences with ease. When Miss D tells us to jump over a wall three times as tall as Lamb, we succeed on the second try. ‘Unprecedented,’ Miss D exclaims. ‘Your bond with Lamb is outstanding already, Fern. It takes most knights months to establish the right connection with their horse and develop the strength of imagination to lift them over the wall.’ My satisfaction only intensifies when Ollie and the rest don’t even manage it after multiple tries. The memory of Ollie being so determined to beat me that he threw himself over his horse’s head and crumpled right into the wall will forever hold a special place in my heart.
When I’m riding Lamb I feel as though we’re one being. We rely on each other. I need Lamb to give me speed and height; she needs me for reassurance and direction. But Lamb’s uncomplicated friendship comes with a bittersweet aftertaste – it makes me acutely aware of my loneliness. I watch my brother bonding with the other squires, knotting nets of companionship, and try to take comfort in having Lamb. I have learned that I’m too awkward to knot my own – I would only get tangled in them. It’s safer not to try.
Then, one night in the break between strategy and law, I spot Ollie standing with Ramesh, looking up at the columns where the names of the dead scroll endlessly. I sidle closer. ‘… was a knight way back,’ I hear Ollie saying. ‘I think she died in the line of duty …’
Rage bubbles up. How dare he trade off her death? Of all the despicable things he’s done, this has to be in the top five.
‘You won’t see her name up there,’ I say, making both boys start.
‘Why not?’ Ollie says, taken aback.
‘She died after she retired from the knights. Lord Allenby told me.’
Ollie gapes, the wind taken out of his sails. Ramesh looks back at the columns. ‘Still … it seems a shame that the people who survived, or who just happened to die later, don’t get commemorated anywhere, doesn’t it? I mean, they still risked their lives. Why do we only appreciate stuff when it�
��s gone?’
I look at those names too, thinking over what Ramesh said. I wonder, briefly, whether Dad was as smitten with Mum when she was alive as he is now she’s dead. Then something catches my eye. ‘Oh,’ I breathe.
‘What?’ Ollie says, following my gaze.
‘Look,’ I say, pointing at one section of the names.
‘We are looking, Fern. What is it?’ Ollie snaps.
‘Look at the dates.’
Ollie does so, and suddenly he understands too.
‘Let me in on the secret here, guys?’ Ramesh says.
‘Our mother died in 2005,’ I tell him. We all stare at the years etched next to what seems like hundreds and hundreds of names. Every single one of them died the same year as Una King.
15
The news that hundreds of thanes died in 2005, the same year as my mother, doesn’t spread around Tintagel like I thought it would. I expected Ollie to use it to increase his mystique but he stays quiet, and Ramesh follows suit. His silence is supremely irritating. I don’t understand how he can come across this huge mystery and not do anything about it. He’s already friends with experienced knights like Emory and Rafe; people who must be able to shed some light on what happened fifteen years ago, and if they don’t know he could easily charm someone who does. Sometimes I find myself on the verge of asking Natasha, who seems to like me because my connection with Lamb is almost as strong as hers is with Domino, but the words always die in my throat. Ollie won’t share; I can’t.
So I watch, I listen and I learn. This is easy to do because, as Phoebe predicted, our lessons are so interesting. Once you understand that Annwn is powered by imagination, formed entirely by different types of inspyre, you can grasp the limits – or the lack of limits – to this world. In Ithr, I’ve taken to poring over the notes in my knightbook when I should be focusing on my schoolwork.
Today, as Bosco’s history teacher drones on about the French Revolution, I flick through, looking for any clues that might help me to crack Mum’s coded diary messages. I suddenly become aware of Lottie Medraut and her friends whispering to each other at the desks behind me. It takes me a moment to recognise why their conversation has penetrated. It’s because they mentioned a name I recognise: Helena Corday – the politician who was so kind to me after the fire and who secured my place at Bosco.