The Wonders of Vale

by Charlotte E. English

  That hurts, too.

  Vale lay spread before me, but I no longer saw it with my half-blind human eyes. I saw it as a pattern of magick; a map, if you like, of ancient power. I saw its centre: Mount Vale, and its colony of griffins. I saw pockets of intense magick dotted here and there; the unicorn farms, I judged, and the travel points, and other things I could not name. I saw its ebbs and flows, its strengths and its weaknesses.

  Terrifying came the knowledge: I could have stretched out a hand and rearranged it like a chess board, if I had so chosen.

  I didn’t so choose. All I wanted was Adeline. I found her: a mote of bright magick, purer than her peers, and in some odd way familiar. Around her crackled a web of magick: a net to hold her in, and all those like her.

  I plucked her free of it, and then unwound the net. It came free easily enough, though every strand of it burned and blistered and I shuddered with the pain of it. Grimly, I ripped it into tatters and let it stream away, watching with distant satisfaction as the ribbons of magick dissolved back into the flow around Mount Vale.

  Motes of bright magick scattered around me as the mythical beasts of Vale fled the town, free.

  ‘So that’s good, then,’ I said sleepily, looking wide-eyed up at the sky, for my shaking legs had long since found it impossible to hold me. The firmament was a spiral of magick, too, a shimmering, pulsing, coiling, glorious mass; even the clouds were laced through with it, pregnant with possibility.

  I wondered, somewhere in my befuddled brain, whether our Britain looked at all the same.

  I thought not.

  ‘Ves,’ someone said, but whoever it was must have been very far away. The wind took any words that followed, and I barely felt the hands that shook my shoulders.

  I felt the teeth, though, that fastened onto my left wrist.

  ‘Ouch,’ I said, frowning, and looked vaguely about. Something bright and lovely was near me, contours of magick that were familiar and dear, for all their strangeness. I reached out my other hand to touch it, and felt warmth. ‘Addie?’

  ‘Ves,’ said the voice again, and it came from a coil of intense magick near my shoulder. Not bright like Addie, this one, but like banked heat.

  It shook me again.

  ‘Mm,’ I said.

  ‘…the lyre,’ said the voice, distant but urgent. ‘Get the damned lyre off her!’

  Another shifting something registered upon my senses: incandescent, this, in a muted way, like the sun behind a veil, and it glittered with such indescribable beauty that I was moved to tears.

  ‘She’s crying,’ said the urgent voice. Jay’s voice. Sense filtered, dimly, through.

  ‘She will be all right,’ said a dusty, aged, comforting voice, and Emellana’s age-withered fingers gently extracted the lyre from my hands.

  Agony tore through me: first my arms, as though I had plunged them into molten lava. Then the rest of my shrinking body, as though my organs had been torn free of me all in a rush, leaving me naught but a shell.

  ‘What have you done?’ yelled Jay.

  ‘As you instructed,’ said Emellana, and even then, even in the face of my near-total disintegration, she was as cool as a clear lake. ‘She and the lyre are separating.’

  ‘Separating?’

  I winced, for Jay spoke at such volume — and such close proximity, apparently — that the words shot through my seared head like nails. ‘Jay,’ I croaked.

  He stopped shouting abruptly. ‘Ves? Are you all right?’

  The magick was bleeding out of my vision, all the beauteous light and brightness and mystery leaking away, and my eyes filled with tears of mingled agony and loss. Through the watery film, I discerned the blurred figure of Jay bending over me: dark jacket, dark hair. Near him, a large mass of purple: Emellana.

  ‘Addie,’ I croaked. ‘Get your teeth out of my arm.’

  She squeezed a fraction harder for good measure, then let me go. The pain of it had not much registered, compared to the indescribable torment imposed upon me by the lyre. Nonetheless, with the latter ebbing I was grateful to be reprieved of the smaller pain imparted by the diamond-hard teeth of a unicorn. ‘Thanks,’ I sighed, and ran my aching fingers through her mane.

  She bumped me with her nose.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Jay said again, and with the tears in remission I could discern features. Dark eyes, wild with fear, fixed upon me, and a sheen of sweat upon Jay’s brow which told me he’d suffered almost as much as I had.

  I thought about the question for a while.

  ‘No,’ I decided.

  Jay sat back on his heels, and looked up at the sky — normal again, darkened and greyish and drizzly — with an expression of frustrated entreaty. ‘What the hell just happened?’ he said, looking again at me.

  ‘Do you want to tell him?’ I said to Emellana. I made some small effort to sit up, but finding it beyond the wasted strength of my aching muscles I permitted myself to slither back down to the ground.

  ‘She dissolved the net,’ said Emellana.

  ‘I see that,’ Jay said, and waved an arm wildly at the skies. They were, I distantly realised, empty of griffins, unicorns, or any other unusual creature. ‘But that’s not what happened, is it?’

  I wondered how the events of the past… half hour? How long? Had looked to Jay. Not good. Not good at all.

  ‘It is as Milady suspected,’ said Emellana, with a crooked smile for me. ‘When combined, your Cordelia Vesper and the lyre are a formidable team.’

  ‘What?’ said Jay, his brow snapping down.

  ‘We’re a font,’ I said. ‘Like a griffin.’ I remembered the crackle of magick about me, and squinted down at my shirt and trousers. Were they singed?

  They were.

  I sighed.

  ‘I thought the lyre absorbed magick,’ said Jay. ‘Wouldn’t that make you a sponge, not a font?’

  ‘We’re both,’ I said wearily. ‘They’re both. The griffins and such. That’s how it works.’

  ‘Put enough griffins into a place like Vale, already a source of strong magick, and the effects are profound,’ said Emellana. ‘They feed each other, you see.’

  ‘I don’t think I do,’ Jay sighed. ‘What I do see is an exhausted Ves who, as far as I can tell, almost died about ten minutes ago, and who urgently needs to be got out of here.’

  ‘Wasn’t dying,’ I protested.

  ‘Pardon me, but you sure looked like it,’ said Jay. He was still wearing his worried face.

  ‘Wasn’t dying,’ I repeated firmly. ‘I was… changing.’

  ‘Into what?’

  I sighed and sat up again. This time, the world did not revolve around me quite so much, and I was able to maintain the posture. ‘I don’t know.’

  Truth. I could not say what had become of me; only I felt, all the way down to my bones, that I was not quite the same Ves anymore. That will happen to a girl, when you channel half an ocean of magick through her insides.

  ‘Milady,’ I said, as some of Emellana’s words filtered through to my weary brain. ‘Suspected? What?’

  Emellana gave me that crooked smile again. ‘You heard me.’

  ‘How could she suspect?’ I said.

  ‘On what possible evidence?’ Jay added. ‘And why wouldn’t she just tell us.’

  I laid a hand over Jay’s, detecting signs of an imminent melt-down. ‘You’ll get used to Milady.’

  ‘But do I want to?’

  Fair question. I couldn’t answer it.

  ‘She had no evidence,’ said Emellana, getting slowly to her feet. ‘It is more that she has… what might once have been termed “hunches”.’

  ‘And how do you know that?’ I said, eyeing our enigmatic assistant with some suspicion.

  Emellana only shrugged. ‘I am old, and so is she. There has been time enough.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘A great many things.’ She squinted out over the horizon, her back turned to me, and said: ‘I believe we are shortly to encounter trouble
.’

  I swore. Of course we were. If I’d had even half my wits about me I would have anticipated as much, for having just torn their intricate, powerful and surprisingly-not-that-old net of magick to bits, it ought to have occurred to me that someone would swiftly become aware of it. The circling motes of magickal energy that had been the enslaved mythical beasts were gone, and… we were still there.

  ‘Hup,’ I said, hoping that the word might prove a bit magickal in its own way, and help me to find my feet.

  It did not, but Jay did. He grabbed my arms and hauled me, gently but firmly, upright. He then proceeded to prop me up when I threatened to fall over again, though I noticed a pronounced sway in his own stance, and that sign about his eyes that suggested imminent trouble.

  Oh, yes. We were still potion-free and increasingly magick-drunk, too.

  Rarely have I had the privilege to preside over so disastrous a mission, and that’s saying something. I am, after all, Princess Chaos.

  ‘Erm,’ I said intelligently. Was it my imagination or had I grown a tail?

  I checked.

  I had. Fittingly, it was a horse’s tail, or perhaps by preference a unicorn’s.

  ‘Better move along,’ Jay said. ‘Can you walk?’

  ‘Where’s Mir?’ To my shame, our erstwhile beastmistress’s entire existence had slipped my mind during all the excitement. Worse, I had about forgotten pup, too.

  ‘That way,’ said Jay, pointing with a jerk of his chin. ‘She was pretty busy with those escaped griffins.’

  Right. Of course. I had given her rather a lot of work to do.

  I risked a look over my shoulder, and detected a glimpse of a human figure some way off, blonde hair whipping in the wind, a tiny golden ball of fluff dancing along at her heels.

  Before me, the slope of Mount Vale stretched down and down. I did not waste much time watching for the approach of danger; they would use the same “lift” we had, er, “enjoyed”, and come out right behind us.

  ‘Em, can you think of another way off this hill?’ I said.

  ‘Not immediately.’ When even Emellana Rogan showed faint signs of worry, well, that was about time for the rest of us to panic.

  And I hadn’t forgotten how the Court-at-Mandridore’s emissary had appeared while the lyre and I had been making a magickal torch of ourselves.

  ‘By the way,’ I said. ‘Just how old are you?’

  ‘Another time,’ she said curtly.

  Did that mean ask me later or I come from another age?

  Too late to wonder, for a shout went up behind us, and a stream of people poured onto the hilltop, stepping, seemingly, out of thin air. There were at least twenty of them; they were of a mixture of human, troll, and other fae races I could not at that moment name; they were universally angry; and one of them was Wyr.

  ‘I want that case back!’ I yelled, pointing at the latter.

  ‘Well, and the good people of Vale were hoping not to lose their griffin carousel,’ said Wyr. ‘It seems we are all in for a disappointment today.’ No trace of his earlier sardonic humour remained; the look he directed at us was ugly.

  I glanced left. Miranda was circling around to reach us, my pup in her arms.

  ‘How about we take that unicorn as payment?’ said Wyr, advancing upon us, his happy little lynch-mob at his back.

  ‘Ideas?’ I said desperately.

  Emellana shook her head.

  Jay, though, began to rummage furiously in his pockets. ‘The thing,’ he said, helpfully.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Orlando’s thing. You know!’

  Ohhh, the thing. The nameless-but-potent thing Orlando had put into our hands. The untried-and-only-sort-of-tested thing that might award us just the stroke of luck we needed to survive the day.

  Or it might land us at the bottom of the ocean. I mean, if Orlando didn’t know, who did?

  Nonetheless. ‘I’ve got it,’ I said, and stuck my hand in my shoulder bag.

  ‘Oof,’ said Mauf.

  ‘Sorry,’ I gasped. My fingers closed over the smooth, cool disc of something and I drew it out.

  ‘Next problem,’ I said, gazing at it in perfect incomprehension. ‘How does it work?’

  Wyr-and-company were closing on us; Miranda was too far away to reach us in time; and I had no clue how to operate our panic button.

  Did I use the word disaster before? I think I did.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Addie, fetch Mir. Jay, Em, take a deep breath.’

  The next article to exit my trusty shoulder-bag was my Sunstone Wand. I tossed Orlando’s toy into the air, levelled my Wand at it, and shot a blast of pure magick high into the sky.

  It hit the clear disc in a shower of sparks, and the world exploded.

  20

  ‘I’m a butterfly,’ I said in wonder.

  No, I didn’t. I tried to speak, but seeing as I was lacking the right mouth parts, nothing much emerged.

  I was also wrong, as soon became apparent, for no butterfly had gnarly, greeny-browny, webby toes and a fierce hunger for fresh, juicy flies.

  ‘I’m a toad,’ I said. ‘With wings.’ No words emerged that time either, but my tongue did. It went a long, long way out, and returned with a fly stuck to its tip.

  I didn’t want to swallow that fly, but I did.

  Yuck.

  Pros to the situation: me and my bosom companions (and Miranda) were no longer pinned at the edge of the hilltop of Mount Vale, a steep drop behind us and an angry mob before us. We were airborne; soaring through the dulcet skies; wafted upon wings wrought of Orlando’s weird magick. (Did it have to be a toad, Orlando? Really?)

  The cons? Those same dreamy skies happened to be filled with a swarm of griffins, recently released from slavery and absolutely hopping mad.

  ‘Orlando!’ I screamed (in my head) as I ducked the advances of the nearest griffin, tumbling head-over-wings in my haste to escape its snapping beak. Boy, do those things look big when you’re that small. ‘This is not my idea of good luck!’ I only belatedly recalled that Orlando hadn’t said anything about good luck. The word he had used had been chaos.

  To say the least.

  I risked a glance around, first chance I got, and was not reassured. A wooden bucket full of soapy water drifted past me; had to be one of us, surely, but who? Jay, Em or Mir? At least they weren’t edible. On my other side, though, was an oversized fairy cake, unusually buoyant, and doubtlessly delicious; and beyond that, a small memorandum book, covers flapping like wings, its pages rapidly turning damp and soggy in the never-ending drizzle.

  The bucket upended itself, pouring its load of soap and water out onto the ground far below. Then it darted in my direction, and scooped me up.

  I fell into the bucket’s depths with a plop.

  All right, so I couldn’t see a thing, and had to just trust that the bucket was the current shape of someone I knew and trusted. But! Woodish bucket walls are griffin-proof.

  I permitted myself a small sigh of relief — and narrowly avoided a squashing as the fairy cake hurtled down upon me from above, followed by the memorandum book.

  Looking at the former, I became painfully aware of gnawing hunger. When was the last time we had remembered to eat? And look at the thing! Fat, curvaceous, positively drowning in icing that smelled of peaches—

  ‘Ves?’ said the book, somehow, but it was addressing the cake, not the winged toad.

  I mean, of course it was. If I’d had a choice, I would have gone for the cake, and never mind the consequences.

  Griffins probably don’t even like cake, anyway.

  I made some small attempt at a response, but that being as successful as my earlier efforts I gave up, and sat catching my breath while the book did its level best to engage the cake in conversation.

  …Did I just say that?

  Our adventures don’t get any more sensible, do they?

  Some little time later, our courteous bucket-escort made a graceful dive, and carefully emptied us
all out onto the ground again. There was grass under me, my exquisitely sensitive toes were quick to discern, but more than that I could not have said. The world was too big to admit of greater detail; everything beyond about three inches distant was a vague, green blur.

  We sat there, the bucket, the book, the cake and I, and waited.

  It was Jay who regained his usual form first. He’d been the bucket, not much to my surprise. I knew it was Jay, because the grass before my nose was abruptly obscured by a bluish haze I recognised after a moment as denim. Jay’s leg, encased in jeans.

  ‘Hi,’ I didn’t quite say.

  Jay squinted down at us. ‘Ves?’ he said.

  He was talking to the cake.

  I waved a leg at him, and stuck out my tongue.

  In another moment I was Ves-shaped-and-sized again, and having not had the sense to back up before my sudden transformation I found myself practically in Jay’s lap when it happened.

  ‘Ahem,’ I said, scooting backwards. ‘Welcome back, Mr. Bucket.’

  ‘At least it was practical,’ he said, frowning at me.

  ‘I had wings! It could have been worse. I could have been a flying fairy cake.’

  Both of us looked at the cake, and then the book, wondering which was which.

  I tell you what, if the cake had turned out to be Miranda I might have gutted her on the spot for the pure insult of it all.

  Fortunately for her, the cake wriggled and wiggled and exploded into Emellana.

  Two minutes later, the memorandum book (having sat impatiently shuffling its pages for some time) became Miranda, and there we were. She still had the pup in her arms, to my relief (what had Goodie been in this scenario, the bookmark…? I abandoned the question as it made my brain hurt).

  ‘Where’s Addie?’I said, seized by sudden panic.

  Everyone looked wildly around, but no one came back with a response.

  I remembered Wyr’s final words. How about we take that unicorn as payment? I had last seen her racing in Miranda’s direction, but what if Wyr had somehow intercepted her?

  ‘Hang on,’ said Jay, looking hard at Miranda (who lay prone, white with exhaustion and virtually insensible. I smothered a faint twinge of pity laced with guilt, for who had given her the task of shepherding all those griffins to freedom? Me, that’s who). Jay reached over and touched the shoulder of Miranda’s jumper. I detected the glint of metal.