“What's all this?” asks Honour.
“Research,” I declare. “I want to find a way to open the gateway early. I cannot wait another four months. I need to return to Thorn now.”
Honour's smile radiates. “Because you love him,” she beams.
“Yes,” I admit. I might as well get used to saying it.
Honour claps her hands gleefully. “Oh, hurrah! I'm so pleased.” She pushes the books aside. “You won't need these.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because you have true love on your side!” she says. “That will conquer any spell.”
“It cannot be that easy.”
“True love isn't easy,” she pouts.
“So your advice is to go back to the gate, and ask it to open nicely?”
“Have you tried that?”
“No-”
“Well, then! Off you go!” She half-pushes me towards the door, but then her arms fall away. A hand drops to her middle, and she breathes strangely. Her face goes white.
“Honour?”
“On second thought, could you just wait a while? And... and ask Charles to fetch Nanny. I think the baby is coming.”
I relay Honour's message to Charles and help Honour into bed.
“You can't be having the baby,” I stammer, dumbstruck. It's too soon. It's too soon and I have to go. “It's too early.”
Honour swallows guiltily. “No,” she squeezes. “It isn't.”
“But... but... you've... you've not been married eight months!”
The shame in her face reddens. “Charles and I-”
“Honour,” I say, halfway between appalled and delighted, “You didn't.”
“We did,” she says shamelessly, “That's why we couldn't wait for-” she doubles over in pain. I rub her back gently.
Nanny arrives, a picture of cool, calm and collected. She sends me to boil some water while she unpacks linens. “First babies always take a while,” she tells me matter-of-factly. “I'm sure it's in no rush.”
But I really, really need this baby to rush. The pressing need to return to Thorn is consuming. I can almost see him, sitting in the meadow, each minute seeming an hour, each moment consumed by the fear that I have deserted him.
Never, never, never...
A few more hours tick painfully by. The baby still isn't here. I go outside to catch some air. Charles is pacing the garden, Papa sitting on a bench nearby.
“It's taking a long time.”
“She'll be fine, boy.”
“Is it supposed to take this long?”
“Rose!”
Honour calls me back. Screams for my return. Her voice cuts through me like ice. But for a minute, it is another voice that I imagine, calling out to me in pain.
The clock ticks. The sun shifts. I am still here.
Honour begins to push and strain. I boil endless pots of water, ferry all the towels I can fine upstairs, grab the scissors.
“I might need your help, Rose,” Nanny says. “Stay close to me.”
Nanny hasn't attended a birth since Beau's. No wonder she is worried.
Honour looks terrible. Her face is contorted into a horrible, ghastly shape. She looks like she's breaking apart. She holds my hand with such ferocity that I could not leave if I wanted to. I am a rabbit in a snare.
“If anything happens to me, you'll be there for my baby, right?”
I feel the blood rush from my face, my heart tightens. Not just with the thought of losing my sister, but the thought of making this promise. I cannot stay. Even if something happens. Even to look after this child. I cannot stay. I cannot.
Honour looks panicked. “Rose!”
“You're going to be fine, Honour.”
“But if-”
“Your baby will be loved. Loved by everyone in their life. But most especially by you.”
This seems to give her some ease, and she asks no more from me, whilst I offer silent prayers to anyone who might be listening.
The baby still isn't here yet. It is mid-afternoon. How many hours left till sunset? I shudder to think.
I'm coming, I'm coming, wait for me!
I nip out of the room to tell everyone that she is doing fine, even though I have no idea what that even means. Nanny just told me to say it. Beau and Hope have now arrived. Everyone is white-faced.
They bolt upwards the minute I open the back door.
“Is she-”
“She's all right. No baby just yet. Nanny doesn't think it will be much longer.”
Beau's voice is very quiet. “Is she going to die?”
“No, sweetheart, she's doing splendidly.”
I wonder when Nanny and the midwife knew Mama wasn't going to live through Beau's birth. It was always a risky pregnancy, they said, Mama not being well beforehand. I do not think the birth took long. Mama had been fine all day, laughing and chatting. It was only towards the end she felt the baby coming. By morning, he was here, and she wasn't.
She lived long enough to name him, hold him, kiss his face and hands and feet. Nanny said -because Papa couldn't- that she poured a lot of love into his tiny body in the fraction of moments she had with him.
I seize both of my siblings in my arms and kiss them forcefully. Neither one recoils, struggles, or wipes away my kisses.
“What was that for?” Beau asks.
“Because I love you both very much, and I need to you to know that.”
They stare at me solidly for quite some time. Have I scared them?
“We love you too, Rose,” Hope says. “Please-”
There is a scream so loud from upstairs that it shakes the birds from the trees. I race back into the house, and for a moment, I forget the dying of the sun.
A few hours later, Honour is wrapped up in bed with a little wriggling bundle, better than she has ever been in her life. Her face is glowing, love pours out of her, and she holds her baby with such tenderness and devotion that I realise that she has become exactly who she was always meant to be. She was meant to be a mother.
She looks like ours now, more than ever, which makes it all the harder when I step outside “for some fresh air” knowing that I will not step back inside.
Charles sits stiffly on the step, Beau and Hope beside Papa on the bench. All eyes snap round when the door opens, their faces pale as moonlight. They have not yet heard the crying.
I give them a wide grin. “It's a little boy,” I declare. “She's calling him Edward, after grandpa. He's absolutely perfect. You can go up and see him now.”
Their faces break into the biggest, most relieved smiles that I have ever seen. They immediately barge past me, running up the stairs with such vigour it's a wonder they don't break.
I am an aunt, now. Even if I never see him grow up, I still be his aunt.
I'll come again, I hope, on the next solstice. I shall see him a handful of times. I be the strange, mysterious aunt who appears just a couple of times a year with gifts for all the birthdays and holidays and then vanishes into thin air. His magic aunt Rose.
I am walking before I realise it, picking up the pace. In my heart, I am already home. My arms are around Thorn's and everything is perfect and wonderful and-
A vision as clear and painful as glass hits me. I am back in the rose garden, but the roses have turned to ash. I see Thorn lying on the ground, doubled over in pain. He is screaming, and I can feel his heart shattering like mirror.
Something falls to the ground in front of me. My necklace. The chain has snapped clean in two. Since the day Thorn gave it to me, I have never taken it off.
I fidget about trying to force the chain back together, but it is no good. The stubborn metal refuses to bend. It feels foolish, but I want to cry.
It's just a chain.
It doesn't feel like just a chain. It feels like an ill-omen, a warning.
“Rose!”
Freedom is running towards me, shirt untucked, looking frantic and breathless. I did not even notice him.
He skid
s to a halt in front of me.
“Honour,” he gasps, “Honour, I heard she was... is she all right?”
“Fine,” I say, as lightly as I can manage. “A little boy. Edward. They're both fine.”
“Oh, thank the-” he straightens up, running both hands through his hair. His face breaks into an awkward smile. “Well, I'm an uncle.”
“Congratulations.”
“I suppose I should... I should go and meet him!”
He takes a few steps, looking back only once. “See you at supper!”
No, you won't.
“Goodbye, Freed,” I say, and watch the space where he has been as he vanishes from sight.
Chapter Thirty-Two: Home
I run with a speed I never knew I possessed. My sides tear, my lungs burn, and my heart... there is a pain inside it not caused by exertion. There is sickness, spreading, growing. And I know what it means. I know what it means.
“I'm coming!” I call out. “Hold on, I'm coming!”
There are only a few feeble rays of sunlight left when I burst out of the woods and into the meadow. I am so close, so close-
A grey-green stretch of darkness stares unblinking from behind the stream. No meadow, no castle, only a whisper of fog. No hint of the gateway, but it must open. It must.
Lightning fills me. The pain in my sides dissipates. I cannot, will not, stop. I throw myself down the hill, leap into the stream, scramble up the other side.
The fog gets thicker. I keep running, but I don't seem to reach anywhere.
“Please!” I scream. “Let me in! Let me get to him! Thorn!”
I scramble blindly through the swirling mists, terrified that any second, the mist will clear, and I will be standing by myself, nowhere and alone.
“Please,” I beg. “I have to be with him. I'm here to set him free.”
To set us both free.
The outline of the castle emerges through the grey. I am filled with blissful, wondrous expectation. I am already in Thorn’s arms. I am tucked neatly under his chin. We are in our garden, and I am promising to stay with him for the rest of my life. We are starting our forever.
And then that second is over.
At first, I think I am in the wrong place, that the portal has spat me out elsewhere. This is not my home. This is a barren, desolate place. There is a castle up ahead, but it is not my castle. It looks almost like a ruin.
Except… it is the castle. It has all its turrets, towers, doors and windows. It has the sweeping steps up to the entrance, the fountain in the courtyard, spewing naught but dust and air.
I do not stand long and stare, wondering if I’ve been transported back in time. I start to move, charging up the steps and flinging open the door.
It is cold inside, so cold. I expect to find the floor covered in dust, like when I first arrived, but it is not. Just fragments of dirt from the remnants of the garden.
“Thorn!” I cry.
My words echo, but no returning voice cries out my name.
I charge into the parlour, calling his name, then into the next room. I expect to see him, any second, stretched out in front of the fire, curled up in the window seat. Or he will come running in from the outside, scooping me up in his arms and calling out my name like it’s the sweetest word in the world.
But I do not see him, he does not come.
I run into his room, flinging back the curtains around his bed. It is empty, empty and desperately cold.
My room? If Thorn were the one who had vanished, I would have haunted his room until his return, searching for any trace of him, any scent.
For a moment I am so sure I will find him there, that when I open the room, I think I see him, lying beside the hollow grate. A shape resides there, but it is not him. It is too small, grey in colour, and horribly still.
It is Bramble, and he has been turned to stone.
I crawl to his side, and reach out to touch him. Nothing touches back, nothing breathes. He is rock and nothing more. I kiss his forehead, and run my fingers over his stone skin, searching for fur to wind my fingers through.
“I will fix you,” I promise. “I just need to find Thorn. Then I’ll come back.”
There is more I want to say, but I have to find Thorn. He will not be stone. Not him. No power on Earth will still the life in him, not while my heart beats.
I run through the corridors, flinging open any door I find, screaming any name I can.
“Ariel! Margaret! Ophelia! Where are you?”
Only the walls call back. Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?
Be safe, Thorn. Be alive. I’ve come back for you.
Where would he go? I feel like I have searched every room. I am about to head outside and search the gardens, when I remember.
The roof terrace. The roses. What had Thorn told me once- that they were the last things to die, before? If there was any, any trace of life, that is where it would be.
I stop calling. I stop breathing. There is no room for air with my heart lodged firmly in my throat. I pick up my skirts and flee, along the corridors, right to the door and all the way up the narrow steps. I fall over as I reach the top.
That is where I see him, lying under the rosebush, covered in dried petals. They splatter the stones around him like drops of blood.
“Thorn!”
I am at his side, frantically brushing away the petals. He has a rose clenched in his palm. I tear myself on the thorns pulling it out of his grip. His palm is punctured. I kiss it fervently.
“No, no, no...” Was this the true price of opening the gateway? Was this why he didn't want to let me go? “Wake up, please!”
I throw my head against his chest. A tiny, fragile thump beats beneath my cheek. He is alive. I race to the fountain, scoop up the waters in my hands and sprinkle droplets over his face, into his mouth. “Thorn, please!”
Slowly, miraculously, he begins to stir. His beautiful eyes open.
“Rose,” he says softly. “Am I dreaming still?”
I cry with relief. “You most certainly are not!” I say, curling my hands around his clothes.
“Am I dead then?”
“Dead? No! You're as alive as I am!”
Thorn blinks wretchedly, and I shift backwards as he pushes himself up on his elbows. “You're... you're actually here.”
“Clearly,” I swallow breathlessly, brushing tears from my eyes.
“You came back. But, but the gateway-”
He rises up suddenly, and although the light is nearly all gone, it is still possible to see the mists dissolving. The way is still open.
“It isn't possible,” he mutters. “I didn't open it-”
“You didn't?” I frown. “But then who-”
“What did you do?”
“Me? I just... I just asked it to. Prayed that it would.”
“But... why?”
I open my mouth to tell him exactly why in four simple words, but before I can, Thorn's legs buckle underneath him. I slide my arms under him and we go to the floor together.
“Careful,” I whisper, after a moment of holding him tightly. He is so much thinner than before. “What... happened here? What's wrong with you?”
Thorn sighs, inching out of my arms. “I told you that a sacrifice was required to open the gate-”
“The flowers,” I said.
“It wasn't enough. I wasn't strong enough to open the gate and leave enough magic here to keep her at bay. Within days, almost all the magic was drained from this place.”
“Bramble?”
“The fairies turned him to stone, rather than watch him wither and die like the rest of his place.”
“And... you?”
“I thought you were gone from me forever,” he says. “The fairies tried to convince me otherwise, but they went... When... when I lost all hope that you cared for me, my heart broke. That's a very dangerous thing, for a creature like me.”
I swallow carefully. “That's what Ariel was trying to tell me, w
asn't it?” I ask. “That my leaving, would cost you your life.”
Thorn nods. The words, still unspoken, hang between us. Because I love you.
“You are an idiot, you know that, right?” I hiss, my eyes shut tight against the tears. “I would never, ever have gone if you'd told me that-”
“Precisely,” Thorn interrupts. “You would have stayed out of guilt, wasting away for-”
“Guilt? You think you I've come back out of guilt?”
“Didn't you?”
“No, Thorn! I came back because I-”
There is a rumble deep within the castle. Something shatters. The sound claws its way through the stone, splinters through the air. A triumphant scream sears into the sky and the clouds turn dark and cold.
“Oh, oh no...” Thorn's eyes are wide. He pulls himself up with great difficulty, and I cling to him.
“What is it?”
“Moya,” he whispers. “She's escaped.”
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Dark Fairy
Lightning splits the sky. The mist turns dark and rolls towards us. We both stare, dumbstruck.
“The village,” says Thorn abruptly. “You must escape, warn them-”
“I can't leave you! She doesn't want them-”
“On the contrary, she wants everything. Everything that has been denied to her all these years. Rose, your family-”
What can I do? Leaving Thorn at the mercy of her and whatever shadows have crawled out of the dark will almost certainly result in his death, and will deserting him really help my family? Honour can hardly run; she's just had a baby- and will I reach the village before Moya, if that is her heading? I cannot run as fast as a shadow.
“No,” I say. “My place is with you.”
“You don't know what she can do-”
“I know I'm going to stop her.”
“Rose-”
I fly from his side and bolt down the stairs, slamming the door behind me and turning the lock. How long it will keep him there, I do not know. He is too weak to fight. Hopefully he is too weak to break down the door.
What I am thinking? The truth is that I am not. All I know is that I am not going to sit back and let her come for me, let her take Thorn away. Any thoughts of imminent death are pushed back.
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