by Nicola Shill
‘You know I want her back. I don’t have to prove myself to you. I’ve done everything I can. The police …’
‘The police have given up. They’ve as good as said so.’
‘What would you have me do?’
‘Have you given up, too? I walk along the beach twice a day. I don’t see you there.’
She was right. Lorcan often saw this old lady, who he now realised was the human girl’s grandmother, wandering along the beach and picking her way through the bushes. Quite a few times, she’d managed to bash her way through the undergrowth to come close to planting a foot in the middle of Gillwillan and he or another watcher had been forced to redirect her. But after the first few days, he rarely saw the girl’s father there. Just once, Lorcan had spotted him sitting on the deck of the boatshed staring mournfully out over the sea with tears sliding down his cheeks.
The younger woman piped up, ‘Elizabeth …’
‘Oh, shut up. This has nothing to do with you. Why are you even here, faking concern? It’s insulting.’
That suggestion provoked the father more than any of the preceding discussion about his missing daughter had. He glared at his mother and shouted, ‘Why would you say that? Sylvia is Cassandra’s mother now; of course she’s concerned.’
‘You’re more stupid than I ever thought,’ the grandmother spat back. She pushed up out of her chair and strode to the front door.
Lorcan wanted to cheer. He understood now that the younger woman, who he had thought was the girl’s mother, was actually her stepmother. It made sense. She was patently unconcerned about the girl’s wellbeing. The only emotion she seemed to be experiencing was annoyance. Lorcan almost felt sorry for the girl at having had this harpy for a stepmother. She was better off where she was. Just as well too, since she was never coming back.
He knew now what report he would be giving to the council. There was no indication that the human girl had planned her visit to Gillwillan. These people were not collectors, and the girl’s room held no evidence of her being a collector on her own. There were no leaded containers or other equipment for incarcerating and devitalising fae, just the usual disgusting human excesses. The grandmother was shocked and distressed by the girl’s disappearance. The evil stepmother couldn’t care less – probably welcomed it – but there was no doubt she hadn’t seen it coming. The father was the only enigma. He was shocked and upset, but something niggled at Lorcan. The grandmother was right: he was giving up too easily. Perhaps he was simply weak. Perhaps the evil hellhag had worked on him. Lorcan shrugged the uneasy feeling off.
Slipping through the corner of flywire he’d pulled free earlier, he heard the hellhag shrieking, ‘How did this bloody cat get herself locked up in the laundry again?’
Lorcan entertained himself with the pleasant idea of the world having one less cat in it. He knew realistically that he would have had to free the cat himself if he thought the humans wouldn’t let it out because he had shut it in the laundry in the first place, but he was glad he didn’t have to. Fae hated cats. They abhorred the way cats killed for fun and played with their victim, maximising pain and terror before killing it. But the antipathy went beyond that, back at least as far as the rift between humans and fae. When sides were chosen, both cats and dogs took the side of humans. Dogs, like humans, were denied fae sight, but cats proved resistant to any control the fae tried to impose on them and were able to retain it. Even now, cats were the only animal that would deliberately harm a fae. If Lorcan had allowed the cat to remain on the loose while he was watching the family, it would have revealed his hiding place. Using reflected light as camouflage was not so foolproof – or rather, human-proof – that it would have stood up to scrutiny if the cat had been meowing and scratching, trying to climb up to the windowsill to get at him. He had enlisted the help of a family of mice to lure the cat in to the laundry, then it had been a simple matter of producing a gust of air to slam the door closed.
The cat was an incredibly slow learner, Lorcan thought, because it had fallen for the same trick three times now.
— CHAPTER 21 —
Sitting Duck
Over the next fortnight, Cassandra settled in as well as could be expected for someone who refused to accept her situation.
The hooligans had discovered her potential as a sitting duck for pranks: her inability to fly and lack of knowledge about the fae made it almost too easy for them. They started simply: sprinkling water on her from above and zipping away whenever she looked up so that after a few days she became convinced that it rained only on her. Gita turned out to be her saviour because she had decided that Cassandra was her favourite person in the whole world and spent a good deal of her time fluttering around Cassandra’s head, talking incessantly. She spotted Treus at it and, as Treus was her brother, she took quite some pride dobbing him in. Treus’s parents were furious with him when Gita told them about it and Cassandra ended up feeling quite sorry for him.
But it didn’t dampen the hooligans’ spirits for long, and the next joke was more clever. It happened the day after Iznaya presented Cassandra with the beautiful dress she had been knitting. Cassandra was delighted beyond words to discover that she was the ‘someone special’ who Iznaya had been making it for and she carried it straight home and carefully hung it up in her wardrobe for special occasions. The following morning, the hooligans gave her a lacy pair of gloves to match the dress – by way of apology for the rain thing, they said. Cassandra wasn’t sure she’d ever want to wear gloves with the dress, but it was a sweet gesture and so she thanked them very much and, at their urging, tried the gloves on. They fit like a second skin. In fact, she realised as she tried to pull them off, they fit exactly like a second skin. They had knitted them with sticky spider’s web, and they were now adhered to Cassandra’s hands. Cassandra experienced a torturous few minutes panicking that she would have to live out the rest of her life wearing lacy gloves, before Rissin and Phee took pity on her. They each sandwiched one of her hands between their own and Cassandra felt the spider’s web losing its stickiness and elasticity until the gloves pulled off easily. Cassandra would have liked to believe that they were being kind, but she suspected it was more likely that they were concerned about getting into trouble and wanted to destroy the evidence before Ith or anyone else saw. Were these hooligans, who she had begun to like, going to turn out to be as bad as Chayton and his friends? She knew the fae didn’t like humans (Tani’s friends had made that abundantly clear with their snide little digs during the revelries) and, okay, maybe some of that hatred was justified, but Cassandra hadn’t singlehandedly caused global warming or the hole in the ozone layer or habitat destruction or species extinctions or whatever else they were so angry about. She was sorry for it, but she hadn’t even been alive for most of it. Were these fae all determined to take it out on her personally?
Phee threw the gloves at Treus. ‘Here, Treus. I think these would suit you better.’
Treus collected the gloves from the ground at his feet and pulled them on. With their elasticity gone, they were loose and floppy. He held his hands above his head and pirouetted until the other hooligans laughed. Then, apparently deciding this wasn’t funny enough, he pulled them off, sat down and put them on his feet instead. He flew into the air with his knees pressed together, flapping his floppy, lacy feet.
‘No, I think they looked better on Cassandra,’ said Pax.
It was all so ridiculous that even Cassandra had to laugh, and although she couldn’t quite identify why, she now felt less victimised. Treus wore the gloves on his feet all day, through the food collecting and the lunch (his parents just rolled their eyes at him and then ignored it) until, by the end of the day, they were ragged and dirty.
Later, when all the children had left and Cassandra had finished helping Iznaya and Ith clean up, Ith said, ‘Would you like to come with us tomorrow, Cassie, when we collect the food?’
Iznaya turned around and stared at Ith as though this was news to her and she w
asn’t sure what she thought about it. Cassandra was less surprised: she had started to suspect that Ith was feeling increasingly bad about leaving her behind when they went food collecting and she’d been hoping he would get around to inviting her.
She loved spending time with Gita, but there was only so much Correa tea you could drink.
— CHAPTER 22 —
Discontent
Cassandra felt absurdly proud to be standing with the rest of the food gathering group, clutching her very own basket that Ith had made for her.
Gita was far less pleased. She reasoned that if Cassandra was allowed to go, she should be, too. Iznaya was holding Gita’s hand to prevent her from trying to follow and whatever she was saying to her was having some limited success because Gita managed a sad smile and a pathetic wave. Cassandra wondered why Iznaya didn’t just hit Gita with happy magic. Nobody ever seemed to hold back when it was her who was upset.
The first indication that this excursion might not have been such a good idea occurred before they had even left Ith and Iznaya’s yard.
Ith had said, ‘Let’s go,’ and as he and Cassandra took their first steps, the children shot into the air and disappeared from view.
‘Oi,’ Ith shouted, though surely no one could have heard him over the shrieks and shouts of excitement that were quickly fading into the distance. Nevertheless, within a few moments they were back, flying in holding patterns above Cassandra and Ith’s heads. Cassandra should have realised then that Ith, in his eagerness to make Cassandra happy, had not thought this through properly, but he had seemed so confident that all would be well that she followed him out into the bush with the children zigging and zagging and trying to slow their flying as much as possible without falling out of the sky. Cassandra didn’t want to slow them down, but whenever she walked faster, she would slam her foot down on to a particularly sharp and unforgiving stone or twig. It was impossible to both protect her feet and walk quickly, so their hike became more of a dawdle and the children became bored and began to fight over airspace.
‘I think it will be better if we all walk,’ Ith said and, again, although Cassandra was certain he had spoken too quietly to be heard, the children sank to the ground like so many deflating balloons. The discontent was palpable.
‘Treus, Phee, you scout ahead,’ said Ith.
‘Why don’t we just go across the river?’ Treus suggested. ‘It’s closer.’
Cassandra realised that she could hear running water nearby. She tried to remember ever having seen a river in this area and realised they must be approaching the creek that cut through the foreshore and emptied out to the bay not far from her boatshed. At hearing Treus’s suggestion, the children began to cheer and veered in a rush to the right, stopping where the ground fell away. When she and Ith caught up, Cassandra found herself peering down from the top of a steep bank into a wide, deep river.
Ith was shaking his head, despite the children’s pleas to cross over. ‘You know I don’t like going over there. It’s not safe with all these children.’
‘We’ll be careful,’ said Zia.
‘We’ll stand guard while the younger children collect,’ said Treus.
‘Look at all those berries,’ said Pax.
Cassandra peered across and, even from this distance, could see that the bushes were laden with berries.
‘It’ll take us all day to get to our usual spot at this rate,’ said Rissin.
Feeling a little self-conscious from this last comment, Cassandra decided to find a place to sit a little bit away from the negotiations until a decision was reached. She turned away and, with one step, her big toe connected with a rock – hard: so hard that she thought she must have broken it. The pain and shock made her want to vomit. It was impossible not to sit down on the ground and cry; in fact, she thought she was being extremely restrained not screaming swear words heavenward.
Ith crouched down and reached for her foot. Cassandra waited for him to take the pain away, but then Phee said, ‘Can I have a go, Ith?’
Ith withdrew his hand a split second before his touch would have given Cassandra relief. Instead, Phee squatted in front of Cassandra, took hold of her foot and closed her eyes in concentration. Cassandra waited impatiently for the pain to ease. She felt a warmth enveloping her entire foot, then her toes grew cold. Her big toe became colder and colder until it became numb. Phee let go and looked into Cassandra’s eyes with such exhausted, hopeful pride that Cassandra smiled and tried to feel happy in case Phee was reading her emotions. ‘That’s much better, Phee. Thank you.’ Phee laughed and sat back on the ground saying, ‘I fixed her foot. I’m a healer. I fixed her foot. Did you see?’
Meanwhile, Cassandra’s toe was thawing and had begun to throb. Ith bent forward as if to push himself up from the ground and, as he did so, his hand brushed over Cassandra’s foot and the pain disappeared. He gave Cassandra a secret smile as he stood.
He sighed, staring into the distance in the direction they had been walking. ‘Maybe I was a bit too ambitious thinking we could walk to our usual spot.’
— CHAPTER 23 —
Strategic Mistake
Ith had just made a strategic mistake.
His moment of uncertainty gave the children an advantage they knew how to press: they began to talk over the top of each other, trying to encourage Ith to let them cross the river. ‘Yeah, let’s cross the river.’ … ‘C’mon, let’s go.’ … ‘Can we go now?’
Ith ignored them as he looked down at Cassandra. ‘How do we get you across?’
‘We can carry her,’ said Treus.
Ith looked at the hooligans thoughtfully. Cassandra looked at them in horror. If they had been human, they would have been only a few years younger than her, just enough for it to be completely humiliating to have them carrying her, particularly the boys. Thankfully, Ith asked Phee and Zia, ‘Do you two girls think you could carry Cassandra between you?’
Phee pushed herself to her feet. She and Zia were game to try anything if it would get them across the river. They stood each side of Cassandra and linked hands to make a seat for her, then encouraged her to sit down. They held her weight without any problems, but when they tried to fly, Cassandra found herself listing dangerously to Phee’s side and the girls could only maintain altitude for a few seconds at a time – certainly not enough to get Cassandra across the river without a cold, wet dip in the middle. As they tried again, Treus humphed impatiently and flew around to slip his arms around Cassandra’s rib cage from behind and added enough lift that the three of them were able to fly her safely across the river with the rest of the children creating a rambunctious armada around them. Cassandra couldn’t have been more glad when the trip was over: her body image had just taken a clobbering and needed time to recover.
As soon as they landed, the children started running and flying in all directions, shouting and whooping, filling their baskets with berries that would have been barely visible to humans and certainly not considered to be a worthwhile source of nutrition. To the fae, they were plump, juicy and irresistible. The children were shoving them into their mouths as fast as they were filling their baskets. As promised, the hooligans were sitting in trees around the edges of the group and were looking out into the bush beyond. Cassandra wondered what they were watching for – snakes, maybe? She imagined a giant snake slithering in and gobbling them all up and hoped that the hooligans were taking their vigilance seriously.
Ith had sat down on a rock in a patch of sunlight with Boggins passed out at his feet. Cassandra sat down on the ground beside him and noticed how tired he was looking. This trip had worn him out. What a liability she was. She felt sorry for Ith and Iznaya having to take her on. They were such nice people; they didn’t deserve to be lumbered with her. She made their lives so much more complicated, yet both of them gave the impression that they were delighted to have her. She very much hoped it was the case. She needed to believe it, so for now she allowed herself that luxury.
She leaned
forward to pat Boggins just as Rissin screamed, ‘Cat!’
That one word caused every single fae child to take to the air. Ith stood up in alarm and began to scan the area. ‘Get up, Cassandra.’
Cassandra stood up and Ith stepped towards her as though he was trying to figure out how he would carry her back across the river. Treus, Rissin, Phee, Zia and Pax all landed around her and began to organise themselves, but their panic was slowing them down as they got in each other’s way. ‘Zia and Rissin, leave it to us, we did it before,’ said Treus.
‘The cat’s right there,’ said Rissin, low and quiet. Everyone turned to see a grey cat crouched close enough that one pounce would bring it down on top of them.
In that moment of frozen terror, a figure swooped down from the sky, shouting, ‘Go!’ He hooked Cassandra around the waist as he skimmed past and she suddenly found herself soaring over the river with Ith and the children flanking her. The moment they passed back over dry land, she was discourteously plunked down on to her bottom. Across the river, the cat was standing in the exact spot that they had just vacated, glaring across at them. Cassandra looked up at her rescuer and was shocked to see an older version of Treus – clearly his brother – scowling down at her with so much anger in his face that she wondered if she wouldn’t have been safer left with the cat. He turned and began to shout at Ith, ‘What were you thinking, Ith? It’s bad enough that you took the children across the river, but you shackled yourself to that,’ he gestured at Cassandra, ‘to make the situation even more difficult, and then,’ his voice was cracking with disbelief now, ‘when you did find yourself in danger, you allowed these children to risk their lives trying to save a human!’
Cassandra expected Ith to fire up and tell this rude brute to back off, but he didn’t. He nodded his head and made no attempt to defend either himself or her.
She knew she would never be invited food collecting again.
And that was perfectly fine by her.
— CHAPTER 24 —
Sleazy Worm
Cassandra was having trouble sleeping.
She often did.