Isle of Winds (The Changeling Series Book 1)

by Fahy, James

  “Ohh,” Woad whispered after a moment. “This is bad.”

  Robin could not believe his eyes. Tables were overturned, ornaments smashed, and a large tapestry now dangled in shreds from its moorings. The Christmas tree was on its side in a sea of pine needles and shattered baubles.

  In the middle of the room were two statues. Robin had paid them little heed when he’d run into one. Now, in the bright light, he couldn’t tear his eyes from them.

  Aunt Irene and Mr Drover stood before them, carved from dark stone. Both wore looks of frozen shock upon their faces. Mr Drover’s arms were thrown up before him as though to ward off a blow. Aunt Irene’s stone hands were by her sides, the creases in her long dress carved ripples, as though she had been half-turning.

  “Aunt … Irene?” Robin’s voice was a shaky whisper.

  Woad approached the statues cautiously, walking around them in a slow circle, sniffing.

  “They’ve been calcified,” he said in a low voice. Robin looked at him blankly. “Turned to stone,” Woad explained. “Magic from the Tower of Earth – very powerful, very difficult. Strong mana.”

  Robin stared up into his aunt’s frozen face, with its blank unseeing eyes. The statue looked lifelike but … was this really his aunt?

  A muffled banging came from deeper in the house, making both boys jump.

  They managed to tear their eyes from the horrifying statues and together, cautiously, they went in further.

  They found the source of the noise coming from the larder in the large kitchen. It was locked from the outside.

  “Someone’s in there,” Robin whispered. There was another muffled thump and what sounded like sniffling. He turned the key and forced the stiff door open, bracing himself for another lunging skriker.

  Instead, the door swung inward, revealing a near-hysterical Hestia, sitting alone in tears amongst the sacks of potatoes.

  * * *

  For several minutes, the housekeeper cried too hard to make any sense at all. Robin and Woad managed to confirm that she was alone, and to coax her into coming out of the safety of the larder. She allowed herself to be led back through the house to the statue-filled hall, clutching at Robin’s arm the entire way as she sniffled and sobbed. When they reached the entrance and she caught sight of the calcified figures of Mr Drover and Aunt Irene, she dissolved into hysterics again.

  They helped her into a chair at the foot of the stairs. She was so distraught she didn’t even seem to mind Woad’s presence.

  “Hestia, can you tell us what happened?” Robin asked, as patiently as he could. “Where is everyone else?”

  She looked at him with red-rimmed eyes and he couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. For some reason, worrying about Hestia was helping him to feel a bit calmer.

  “I … it … it was all so confusing,” she sobbed eventually. “… So horrible!”

  “Just … try to calm down,” Robin said soothingly. “Tell us what happened.”

  Hestia nodded bravely, her hand fluttering on her chest.

  She explained how she had been in the kitchen, watching Mr Drover and Henry trying to clear up the flooding water when they had all heard the howling.

  Mr Drover had left, telling her and Henry to stay put, but Henry wouldn’t have it. “He is always such a disobedient boy,” she sobbed. “Never doing as he is told. He does not listen to me and leaves me alone! Then the kitchen door, it bursts open.” She sniffed breathlessly, hiccupping. “Mr Phorbas is there and he has blood down one side of his face. He is always kind to me, always a gentleman, and so he hides me.” Her lip quivered uncontrollably “And then … and then I hear terrible fighting and horrible noises.”

  She looked up at Robin, who was staring down at her with wide eyes. “Then all is quiet … for such a long time.” She wiped at her eyes. Her watery eyes wandered over to the statues and her lip began to tremble again at the sight. “And now all is stone and sorrow, and what has happened … what are we to do?”

  Robin, patting her shoulder awkwardly, looked over at the horrible statues too, and felt his own heart sink again. “But what about Henry and Phorbas?” he asked.

  “Pinky, I have found something,” Woad announced from the front door.

  “I do not know where they are,” Hestia said pitifully.

  “Robin,” Woad said again, more sharply this time. “You need to see this.”

  The faun had closed the broken doors against the night and the cold, and Robin now saw, pinned to one of them was a yellowish sheet of parchment.

  “They’ve been taken,” Woad said. “Both of them.”

  Abandoning Hestia, Robin ran across the hallway, broken decorations from the tree crunching underfoot.

  The parchment had been pinned to the door with Phorbas’ silver knife, the satyr’s prized possession, with its garnet mana-stone in the hilt.

  “There are traces of blood on the knife,” Woad said grimly, keeping his voice low so as not to set Hestia off again.

  With trembling hands, Robin reached up and ripped the parchment from the door.

  He read it aloud:

  To the Scion of the Arcania,

  I have taken the human child and the traitor.

  This is the price for rebellion and resistance.

  The glorious rule of Lady Eris WILL NOT BE CHALLENGED.

  Yours in service,

  Mr Strife

  “What does it say?” Hestia asked, peering at the two boys from across the hall.

  “It’s Mr Strife,” he said hoarsely. “He’s … kidnapped them. He’s taken them both into the Netherworlde.”

  Hestia crumbled in sobs. Woad looked at Robin with wide, horrified eyes. Robin merely stood with the parchment in his hand, feeling numb. Cold air whistled in through the broken doors.

  His eyes wandered across the floor to a chip of stone. Only he saw it wasn’t a stone at all. It was one of Phorbas’ acorn-nubbin horns, and it had been snapped off at the root.

  Chapter Fifteen –

  Advoco Cantus

  Robin’s first instinct was to call the police. Woad scoffed at the idea. Robin had never actually heard anyone scoff before, and was quietly impressed at the accompanying toss-of-the-head. It was still irritating however.

  “What?” Robin barked. “They’ve been kidnapped! We’ve got to do something! We’ve got to tell someone!”

  Woad stood with his small arms folded. “And what would your city men do exactly, brontosaur brain? Think about it. This is no time or place for the people of the human world. What would we tell them?”

  Robin started to stutter a reply, but faltered. What would he possibly tell the police?

  “Okay,” he reasoned, pacing back and forth, running his fingers through his hair. “No human police. Okay. What about in the Netherworlde? Surely they have police there, or something like them?”

  Woad sneered and spat on the floor. Even Hestia took a break from sobbing to look up and stare at Robin as though he had just swore.

  “’Course they do, dimwit,” Woad said. “They’re called peacekeepers … and they work for Eris.” His face darkened, as serious as Robin had ever seen it. “You don’t want their attention on you.” He shivered his narrow shoulders. “You forget, Pinky, the panthea here at Erlking, we’re all outlaws. None of us are very popular in the Netherworlde. The peacekeepers would love you going to them for help. Oh yeah, I reckon they’d had a great old laugh about that. Right before they served you up to Eris with an apple in your mouth and a sprig of parsley up your—”

  “Enough talk about the peacekeepers if you please!” Hestia quivered. “I don’t think I can take any more horror!”

  Robin sat on the steps, looking from the statues to the crumpled parchment. He could almost hear Mr Strife’s cold voice rising from the scrawled words.

  He balled the note tightly in his fist. “How could this happen?” he asked. “I thought no harm could come to anyone at Erlking?”

  “As long as Mistress watched over,” Hestia
affirmed gloomily.

  “She’s not watching much of anything at the moment,” Woad observed.

  This is all because of me, Robin thought bleakly. I’m the one they’re after. If I hadn’t come here, Henry and Mr Drover would be fine. Phorbas and Irene—

  “I have to go after them,” he said out loud, surprising himself. “It’s because of me they’ve been taken.” He took a shuddering breath. “It’s my fault.”

  To his surprise, no one argued. He had expected there to be an uproar, even if only from Hestia. Cries of “don’t be ridiculous” and “you’re not going anywhere!” but she only stared at him, her expression unreadable.

  “Very noble,” Woad said, flatly. “Only … how? How are you going to get there? Strife has taken them to the Netherworlde, remember? Not down the road.”

  “The locked room upstairs,” Robin answered. “Phorbas took me through it when I first got here, back in September.” He looked over to Hestia. “It’s a station, a pathway between the worlds. You’ve got the key right?”

  The housekeeper stared at him. “I have no such key,” she stammered, confused. “I … I am just a housekeeper. I polish the floors, I count the silver. I’ve no business with the station!”

  Robin gaped at her helplessly. All Henry’s plans. Every plot and scheme. And Hestia didn’t even have the key?

  “It won’t work anyway, brainiac. The door won’t be there. She controls it,” Woad said, nodding at the statue of Aunt Irene. “It only opens when she says.”

  “So we’re stuck here then?” Robin said. “I have no idea how to get to the Netherworlde apart from through this door.”

  Woad looked at him. “There is another way,” he said.

  Robin stared at the faun.

  “Well, how do you think I got here from the Netherworlde?” Woad continued. “I certainly didn’t come through a station.”

  “How did you get here then?”

  “She brought me, didn’t she,” the faun said. “I told you before. She’s good at tearing through. She doesn’t need Janus.”

  “‘She’ who?” Robin asked, confused. The mysterious letter writer?

  Woad nodded, bobbing his spiky head. “She can help us. She’s good at finding people. She found you before Mr Strife knew who you were.”

  “Who is ‘she’ though?” Robin asked. “Is she one of the fae? Panthea?”

  Woad raised an eyebrow “Neither. There are lots of types in the Netherworlde. More than you could count on your little pink fingers.”

  “Can you get in touch with her?”

  The faun shook his head. “Not being found is another thing she’s good at,” he said. “Strife and Moros and the rest of Eris’ brood have been after her for a long time. She’s on the run. She’s always the one to find me when she needs me to do something for her.”

  Robin’s heart sank. What good was she then? “So we have no way of contacting this fabulously useful person of yours then?” He threw his hands up in exasperation.

  “Honestly…” Woad scratched at the back of his neck absently. “You really are a diplodocus sometimes. Are you sure you’re the Scion?”

  Robin looked at him blankly. Mentally, he was counting to ten.

  “I can’t contact her,” the small boy said slowly, as though speaking to an idiot. “But you can.”

  Robin wouldn’t have considered it possible but his confusion actually deepened.

  “I … don’t … even … know … who … she … is!” he grated. “I’ve never even met her!”

  “Count to five and twenty, Robbiecorum,” Woad said reproachfully. “You have met her, she told me. She found you on that long noisy thing that brought you here, and she gave you her calling card.”

  Long noisy thing? Robin thought for a moment. The grandfather clock ticked patiently in the background. The train? Surely not that odd little waif? He had forgotten all about her. What had she said her name was? Carla? Cora…? No, Karya. With a K.

  The letter writer of foreboding doom, the employer of Woad, this mysterious and enigmatic figure … was a small girl?

  “You must be joking,” Robin said. “She’s the one who can get us to the Netherworlde?”

  Woad nodded grinning. “Yep.”

  “But … but, she’s just a little girl!”

  “So?” Woad frowned. “You’re just a little boy.”

  “I’m taller than you!” Robin said hotly. He shook his head in disbelief. Well, why not? It was no stranger than anything else around here. But she hadn’t given him a calling card…

  ‘If you need to contact me…’ The memory of her sharp voice echoed in his mind. Of course! Not a card, but she had given him something.

  Minutes later, Robin and Woad were up in the tower, the faun watching with interest as Robin rummaged through the large trunk at the bottom of his bed. His fingers closed at last around a long slim wooden box.

  He pulled it out, slid back the lid, and emptied the contents into his hands.

  “Ooh, a Summoning Beacon. Nice,” Woad said appreciatively, looking over Robin’s shoulder.

  “I thought it was a flute,” Robin said, peering at it.

  “Well yes … that too,” Woad conceded. “Come on, let’s take it outside.”

  “Outside?” Robin asked, getting to his feet.

  “Well, there are no living trees inside are there, brain-freeze,” Woad said, dragging him hurriedly down the spiral staircase by the front of his sweater.

  Robin felt very foolish. He was standing outside on the dark snowy lawn with Woad by his side and a flute in his hands. Hestia stood shivering in the doorway, holding a tea-tray covered with far too many cups, looking worried and confused.

  “So … what now?” Robin asked Woad.

  “Play it. It should call to her. If she’s got her ears open, that is.”

  “But I can’t play the flute,” Robin said, his teeth chattering in the cold.

  “You can play this one,” Woad assured him. He had changed back into his old brown trousers, his freed tail swishing behind him with impatience. Snow was settling on his blue shoulders, but if he felt the cold at all he didn’t show it.

  Reluctantly, Robin raised the flute to his lips in the darkness. Then an odd thing happened. As the flute touched his lips, a strange feeling flowed through him, that he knew how to do this. It felt like remembering.

  His eyes closed and he blew, his fingers moving over the holes of their own accord. A simple, haunting tune rose up through the dark air, spiralling over and around them. Robin no longer felt cold. The music sounded somehow ancient. It made him think of forests, deep and old, where no one had ever walked, of rustling leaves in the wind, hidden birds.

  Almost as suddenly as it had begun, the feeling passed. The music ended and Robin opened his eyes, lowering the flute from his lips and staring at his hands as though he had never seen them before.

  “Not bad,” Woad said with reluctant admiration.

  For a moment, there was silence and stillness. The wind whispered softly across the snow and the snowflakes seemed to hang motionless in the air. Then there was a loud CRACK! and against all sense and reason, a small girl in a large ragged fur coat appeared out of thin air in the branches of a nearby tree. She stood for a moment, silhouetted dramatically against the snow clouds, her tangled hair whipping about her shoulders. And then she slipped on the wet branch and with an ‘oof’ fell out of the tree to land with a muffled thud in the deep snowdrift at its base.

  “Boss!” Woad cried in alarm, running over the lawn to help her, but the girl was already getting unsteadily to her feet, shaking snow out of her hair.

  “Yes, not my most graceful entrance, that,” she muttered. She took Woad’s hand and heaved herself free of the snow, blinking her golden eyes and looking over at Robin.

  “Hello, Scion,” she said. “It’s colder on this side, isn’t it?” She looked past the dumbfounded boy at Hestia, and the statues of Irene and Mr Drover beyond her, taking the scene in quickly and q
uietly.

  “Strife?” she asked Woad succinctly.

  “With skrikers, yeah, boss,” Woad nodded.

  “Right then.” She made her way across the lawn towards the house. “Looks like the fat’s well and truly in the fire now then. Good job you called me.” The girl clapped her hands together decisively. She nodded to Hestia. “Is that tea?” she asked. “Good. I could murder a cuppa. Then you three had better tell me what’s going on.”

  * * *

  Hestia made a fire in the parlour, and Robin and Woad sat with the strange girl, drinking tea while they explained their plan to go after them.

  “You do realise, don’t you,” she said darkly, “… this is a clearly a trap? Strife wants you in the Netherworlde where you won’t be protected. Little horseshoes don’t cut the mustard over there, Scion.”

  “I don’t care!” Robin said hotly, irritated by this strange girl’s bluntness. “I can’t just leave them! Woad says you can get me to the Netherworlde. Just get me there. I’ll figure out the rest.”

  “What? All on your own, eh?” Karya scoffed. “You wouldn’t last two minutes.”

  “I’m going!” Robin said determinedly. He was finding this girl quite annoying.

  “Fair enough.” She shrugged. “If you’re that hard-headed … I can get you there, but I mean what I said. You wouldn’t last a day alone.” She narrowed her golden eyes at him. “There’s only one option. I’ll come with you.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter,” Robin frowned.

  “You need a tracker,” she argued. “I’m the best you’ve got. We’ll go together.”

  “And me,” Woad piped up. Robin and Karya both peered at the faun.

  “Henryboy is my friend too,” he said defiantly.

  Karya nodded. “That’s settled then.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Honestly, I try my best to keep the Scion of the Arcania out of the Netherworlde and here I am now, giving him a guided tour. Maybe the prophecies cannot be denied after all.”

  She left the room to go and speak with Hestia, mumbling about supplies. Robin went back to his room to pack a few things. He had no idea what he would need. He threw some socks and a sweater into his bag, and defiantly picked up the horseshoe pendant. As an afterthought, he grabbed a couple of books from his shelf: ‘Hammerhand’s Netherworlde Compendium’, as well as the book of fae lineology.