by Lari Don
Yann leapt to the top and looked down at Helen. She could hear voices on the other side of the door. The staircase was now a pile of broken planks, with dirty clouds of dust rising from it. The centaur looked horrified. “I’m sorry. I should have gone last. Build a pile of boxes and climb up.”
“The boxes are holding the door shut. I can’t move them.” Helen looked round, trying to slow her breathing down and think of a way to get up and out before the door opened.
Yann called to her, “I’ll jump back down, then you can climb on my back and get out.”
“Don’t be daft. Then you’d be trapped.”
Having seen no useful stepladders or grappling hooks in the store room, Helen looked more carefully at the pile of splintered stairs. There was one long narrow piece of unbroken wood … the bannister that had run up the side of the staircase. She hauled it out and pushed one end up to Yann.
“Can you hold that steady on the edge of the floor? I’m going to try and balance on it.”
Yann put his hoof on the end of the rail and nodded to her.
As she wedged her end carefully in the heap of dusty debris, she heard banging at the door behind her. But she couldn’t rush. She put her left foot on the narrow beam and began to lift her right foot. The wood was narrower than the sole of her boot. Would it take her weight? The wood creaked and bent slightly … but it didn’t break.
She looked up at Yann. “Please don’t sneeze!”
“Just come on!”
Holding her arms out for balance, she took small steps. She could hear the barrier of boxes slithering slowly along the stone floor behind her. She took another couple of steps, refusing to look behind her, concentrating her eyes and her mind on her feet.
Yann called out, “Healer’s child.” She glanced up. Yann had bent his forelegs and was reaching both arms down for her. She wobbled as she shifted her balance to twist her arms up, then they grabbed each other’s wrists and Yann swung her up to land in a heap at his hooves. He reached down to pull the bannister off the cellar floor, so no one else could use it.
Helen looked round. She was in a room lit by street lights shining through a big window, surrounded by shelves, stools and mirrors, and row upon row of shoes and boots. She laughed out loud. She’d bought wellies in here once.
Rona was pushing at the door out onto the street. “It’s locked!” Helen went behind the till to look for a key, but then they heard a triumphant yell from below. The Master’s creatures had got through the door. Without hesitating, Yann reared up on his hind legs and smashed his front hooves through the shop window. Glass flew everywhere, sparkling on the leather boots and Christmas trees in the window display.
An alarm went off instantly, drowning out the noise from the storeroom. Yann was already on the pavement, as Rona and Helen clattered out over the glass and shoes into Cockburn Street.
“Which way?” asked Yann.
Helen pointed downhill. “We need to get back to Sapphire.”
The streets were still shiny and wet from the rain, but the clouds had blown over and there were a few stars visible in the sky.
They ran, Yann’s hooves echoing off the buildings as they hurtled down the winding street, slowing at the sharp bends, so they didn’t slip on the wet cobbles. Helen slid to a halt at the bottom so she could get her bearings. She felt a tug on her back, screamed and turned round with a kick and an elbow.
Yann leapt sideways. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just putting the clue in your rucksack. You must guard it. Sapphire can’t fly safely and fast with me on her back, so you must go without me and find the Book. I will outpace the Master and his creatures on the ground.”
“How will you get out of the city?” asked Helen.
“I’ll go north first, to stretch my legs and leave those trotting fauns behind me. But then …” he glanced up at the stars clear in the sky, “then I will let the stars guide me south again. I’ll find open ground eventually.”
Rona gave Yann a quick hug, and Lavender blew him a kiss, but Helen stood back and simply said, “Good luck.” He nodded to her and galloped off, heading past Waverley Station.
Helen, Rona and Lavender listened as his hoofbeats got fainter. Then they heard other, smaller, hooves and set off at a run for the gardens.
They shoved each other over the fence and tumbled down the hill to the trees. Sapphire appeared silently and crouched down for them to climb on. She took off just as a dark crowd swarmed down the hill towards them.
Sapphire flew over the city for quarter of an hour searching for Yann, but no one could see him or hear his hooves. Either he had got away very fast, thought Helen, or he was hiding in a dark corner. Or perhaps he hadn’t outpaced the Master after all.
Chapter 19
Sapphire returned to the field south of Edinburgh where they had landed just a couple of hours before. They clambered off and squatted on the dry grass under the trees.
Rona told the dragon the story of how Lavender’s magic found the Master, Yann’s magic forced the weasel, and Catesby’s bravery let them escape. Sapphire sighed small puffs of smoke, scratching the earth with her claws as the story went on.
When Rona described Yann galloping off, carrying Catesby’s egg, perhaps pursued by the Master’s creatures, the story felt unfinished, but they didn’t have any more to tell.
Helen asked, “What did Catesby actually do?”
Lavender explained. “Phoenixes can burn and then rise from the ashes, but they can only hatch seven times. So Catesby has given one of his lives to get us out of the Master’s maze. But he may not hatch again for a long time; not in time to find the Book, not in time to come to the Solstice Gathering … perhaps not while we are still young. He is Yann’s best friend, and now Yann may be a grey mane before he can talk to Catesby about tonight, and ask his forgiveness for the way he twisted magic to get that weasel to bring us the clue.”
Sapphire growled a question and Lavender answered, “I don’t know where the Master is now. I felt my feather burn when Catesby burst into flames. We are no longer connected.”
“Oh no!” exclaimed Helen. “Now we don’t know if he’s nearby. He could ambush us again.”
“Well, I’m delighted I can’t feel him anymore,” said Lavender, “I felt ill all the time that I was part of him.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that when I sewed the feather in.”
“We got the clue back. That’s what matters.”
But they were all thinking about Yann and Catesby. They mattered too.
“Let’s read the clue,” suggested Rona. “Let’s try to finish this now. We must have the Book back by tomorrow evening and if we have to travel far to fetch it, we had better start now.”
Helen opened her green bag and pulled out the battered piece of leather. Two holes in it had been repaired with tiny red stitches.
Lavender cast a clear white light on the words written on the leather in dark brown ink.
I line up with my brothers and sisters,
Watched over by the stone eyes of my father and mother.
Helen sighed. “Another riddle. Why couldn’t the Book just draw us a map? Will we have to go to the library again to work this one out?”
“Perhaps!” exclaimed Lavender. “Perhaps that is the very place.”
The other three looked at her expectantly.
The fairy grinned. “The Book crafted this riddle. What are a book’s mother and father?”
“The people who wrote it?” asked Helen. “Which in this case are the wizard and fairy who loved unanswerable questions. But they’re both dead, aren’t they?”
“Yes, long ago.”
“Long enough ago for them to be fossils and have stone eyes? That seems unlikely.”
“What are a book’s brothers and sisters?” Lavender asked.
Rona shrugged. “Other books?”
Helen said impatiently, “Lavender, what do you know?”
“In your hall of books, in you
r building of learning, I met all those stone heads. One of them, a bearded man in a cloak of stars, had a tiny fairy on his shoulder. I wanted to ask you about him but you found Tam Linn and I forgot. Could he be the wizard who wrote the book?”
“But why would he be in my school? Was he a headmaster or a local poet, like all the other busts?”
“Wizards travel among humans in many guises. Who can say what he was to the people of Clovenshaws?”
“So if he is the father and the fairy is the mother, then the line of brothers and sisters must be the books on the shelves of the school library! We’ve been using the library to follow the Book’s clues, and the Book’s been there all the time.” Helen put her head down on her knees and groaned.
“The Book has been testing us,” said Rona. “How better to do it than to watch us unravel its clues?”
Helen looked up again. “But how could the Book know that Yann would come to me with his cut leg, or that I would use the school library to help you?”
“The Book knows all the answers,” said Rona serenely. Helen groaned again.
“So, how do we get into your school to find the Book?” said Lavender briskly.
“We don’t. Not tonight.” Helen thought of the broken glass and scattered shoes in the shop. “We aren’t going to break in and damage anything. I’m sure the Book wouldn’t appreciate that. We’ll go in tomorrow, nice and quietly, when the school opens, and invite the Book to leave its brothers and sisters and go home with you.”
After retrieving her old fiddle from the hill, Helen put the case and the first aid kit in the garage, and took out the longest ladder she could find. With Rona’s help she manoeuvred it round the house to her bedroom window.
Hugging Rona goodbye, she climbed stiffly up the ladder and shoved at the window. But it was shut fast. Someone had locked it from the inside. Someone had been in her room and discovered that she wasn’t there.
Sighing, she slid down the ladder, and walked reluctantly to the back door. Her Mum was sitting at the long kitchen table, with a book open in front of her and a mug of cold coffee in her hand.
Helen walked in and sat down at the other end of the table. Her Mum pointed to the kitchen clock. It was three in the morning.
She said calmly, “Where have you been? What have you been doing?”
Helen thought of all the lies she could tell. But none of them were convincing.
“I’ve been with some friends. Helping them with a problem.”
“Was that what you were doing last night too?”
Helen nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
“It’s the middle of winter. It’s pitch black out there. It just isn’t safe to be wandering around when I think you’re in your bed. What kind of trouble are your friends in?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Is it illegal?”
“No.”
“Is it to do with …” her Mum’s calm voice wavered. “Oh Helen, is it to do with smoking, or drinking, or drugs, or motorbikes?”
“No, none of those things.”
“Is it to do with boys?”
Helen briefly considered whether Yann was a boy, and decided four legs and a tail meant he wasn’t a boy as her Mum would understand it.
“It isn’t about boys.”
“Is it some spooky nonsense like ouija boards, or that bonfire on the hill this evening?”
Helen thought about the real, physical presence of the Master in the surgery and the teddy in his mouth, and said carefully, “No, Mum, it is not some spooky nonsense like ouija boards.”
“Is it … This is ridiculous! We are not playing twenty questions all night. You will tell me where you have been, who you have been with and what you have been doing. Or you will lose all your privileges and will have to stay in the house and garden just like Nicola.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“I have been so scared. Your Dad’s been sitting with Nicola since she developed a temperature earlier, so I’ve been here all alone since midnight, wondering if you were at the bottom of the Tweed or run over by a car. But I couldn’t call the police or the rescue team again because this time I thought you were lost on purpose. You will tell me what you have been doing. Now!”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you, Mum.”
Helen saw a flicker of movement at the kitchen window, and thought immediately of the final clue, now folded up inside her fleece. Had the Master come back? She had to get her Mum out of danger. “Mum, please can we talk about this in the morning? I’m a bit too tired just now.”
Her Mum stood up and kicked her own chair across the kitchen.
The crash broke the calm and quiet, and now she was shouting. “Don’t you try to dismiss me, young lady. If you are too tired to have a discussion now, then you should have got a good night’s sleep instead of spending the night wandering about the countryside. Tell me what you have been doing. Tell me now.”
Helen tried not to glance at the window again, and kept her voice soft. “I am very sorry that I went out without permission. But I can’t tell you.” Helen stood up.
“Right. That’s it!” her Mum yelled. “You are grounded from now on. You will not be going out with any friends, or to any films or parties over Christmas. Nor well into next year.”
“Can I go to school?”
“Don’t be cheeky! Of course you can go to school. But you won’t be going anywhere else for a while. Now up to bed, and don’t you dare leave your room again.”
“I’ll just get a drink of water. I’ll be up in a minute.”
Her Mum stood watching Helen as she poured a glass of water, then took some very slow sips. Her Mum sighed heavily and strode out of the room without another word.
Helen waited until her Mum was upstairs, then she got the bread knife out of the dishwasher and went quietly to the back door. She jerked the door open and stood there with the knife held out in front of her.
In the doorway was a familiar shape.
“Yann! Are you alright?” she whispered.
“I’m fine. Was that your mother?”
“Yes. She’s a bit annoyed.”
“I’m ashamed to say that I overheard. You did not betray us when she asked you to.”
“No. She just needed to shout at me and I had to let her.”
“I never talk to my father now without him shouting at me. Is it like this for everyone? Catesby’s no help about parents, because his parents are both eggs at the moment, so he gets on fine with them.”
“Parents are harder to deal with than monsters. You have to love them as well as fight with them.”
“Yes,” agreed Yann, “and you can’t just kick them and run away either.”
“Tempting thought,” grinned Helen, “but I have nowhere to run to.”
“Do you still have the clue?”
“Yes,” she wriggled it out from under her fleece and handed it to him, “but we’ve already worked it out. The Book is in my school library. We’ll get it tomorrow morning.”
Helen quickly told Yann the plan she and the others had worked out. Yann grunted. “Why can’t we just push a window in and get the Book right now? Win it with hoof and tooth and claw.”
“Because we need to show a bit of respect for the Book, its family and my school. We’ll get it calmly and quietly in the morning and that’ll be plenty of time for your Solstice celebrations in the evening.”
“But the Master has read the riddle. He could still get there before we do.”
“Then keep watch on the library. You told me that the Book took fright when you borrowed it, so don’t you think that retrieving it calmly would be a better idea than going in kicking and biting? That weasel certainly wishes it hadn’t bitten you.”
Yann shied away from her. “You don’t understand about the weasel.”
“I understand evil more every night I spend with you, Yann. I thought you were on the side of the good guys. But now I’m not so sure.”
“So why didn�
��t you betray us to your mother, if you think we are as bad as the Master?” Yann demanded.
“I don’t know, Yann. Maybe because the Master enjoys power over others … and you didn’t.”
“Don’t try to get inside my head, human child, and don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. I am no one’s pet pony!”
Yann stamped his hoof once and galloped off to leap the fence.
On her way to bed, Helen stood for a while at her parents’ door, wondering if she should go in and talk to her Mum again. Then she shook her head, whispered, “Night night,” and went to bed herself.
Chapter 20
Helen dragged herself awake, stiff, sore and still exhausted. But she had to get up. It was Friday. The Winter Solstice. The quest would end today, in success or failure.
She waited until she heard her Mum go into the shower, then she crept downstairs to make herself breakfast.
Her Dad came in to the bright warm kitchen as she was eating her Gran’s apple jelly on toast.
“Dad, I’m so sorry about last night.”
“Oh Helen,” he sighed and shook his head. “Last night we were so worried about you, and this morning we’re very disappointed. I know your Mum has grounded you, so I don’t want to go through it all again.” He sat down beside her. “But if you need to tell me anything, or ask me anything, then I will always listen, and I will try hard not to judge.”
“Thanks, Dad. I might do that.”
“Do you want a warm drink before going out in the cold air? It’s frosty out there.”
“No thanks. I need to rehearse my piece for the concert, then I’ll head off to school.”
Helen went up to her room, and after a few finger exercises, she played Solstice to herself. It was nearly finished but there was a darker edge in it now that she hoped she could balance with a happy ending.
Her Mum was already in the small animal surgery when Helen left for school, and her Dad and a snotty, sneezy Nicola were making patterns on the kitchen table with toast fingers. As she opened the back door, Helen said, “See you soon, I hope.”