Beneath

by Gill Arbuthnott

  When she didn’t answer, he put another branch on the fire.

  Jess sidled towards the flames and sat down, out of reach.

  “I’ve come for my friend. You have to give her back to me,” she said, amazed at her own daring.

  Again his fingers went to his throat, and now she was close enough to see him wince in pain. He went back to feeding the flames. There wasn’t enough light to see the colour of his eyes. Were they the same blue as the horse’s?

  “What’s your name?” Jess asked impulsively.

  “Finn,” said the boy.

  “I’m…”

  “Jess,” he finished for her.

  She caught her breath. “How do you know my name? Did Freya talk about me?”

  Finn shook his head.

  He remembered the first time he’d seen her, when his mother had given in to his nagging at last and taken him to the Upper World to show him his father’s people.

  “Your father used to live in the Upper World,” his mother had said. She had carried on speaking to him, but he’d not heard another word, staring transfixed at the small, brown-haired girl who stood hands on hips in the middle of the farmyard, scolding her tiny, mud-covered brother.

  “Jess?” A woman’s voice had come from the house.

  “Coming.” And Jess had pulled her brother to his feet and marched him off, still scolding.

  “How do you know my name?” she demanded again, but Finn raised a hand to quiet her, looking round, listening now to something she couldn’t hear.

  “What? What is it?”

  He ignored her, getting to his feet in one smooth movement, a burning branch in one hand.

  “Stay close to the fire and keep quiet,” he said softly. As he spoke, he was moving slowly away.

  “What is it? Where are you going?” she hissed. “Stop!”

  To her surprise, Finn stopped abruptly. He looked angrily at Jess.

  “Let me go,” he said in a venomous whisper. “Unless you want to get yourself killed. We’re not the only creatures in this forest.”

  Jess gulped. She didn’t know what to do. He could be trying to trick her, but…

  “All right, you can go. But you have to come back. Alone.”

  He gave her an exasperated look and slid into the darkness between the trees. Jess watched the flame bob up and down, then disappear.

  Silence surrounded her. She shivered, but not with cold this time. She got to her feet. What else was in the forest? If there was danger nearby, she wanted to be ready to run.

  Jess moved slowly round the fire, straining her senses for any hint that someone – or something – was nearby, watching her.

  Trees stretched away beyond the firelight. Here and there between the trunks grew huge briars with dark red flowers. Even in the firelight Jess could see the thorns. As she looked at a bush, she thought she saw a flicker of movement among the twisting branches: an eye, a suggestion of teeth.

  She took a step back towards the fire, peering into the darkness. There! The gleam of long, curved claws made her gasp, before she realised they weren’t claws, but thorns. Fool. She was seeing things that weren’t there at all.

  How long had the Kelpie boy been gone? If this was some sort of trick, it had succeeded. And if it wasn’t… There was no point in running. She had no idea where to run to.

  Come on, Jess, she told herself as she circled the flames warily. This is no time for imagination. Things are strange enough as it is.

  She gave a squeak of terror as a figure appeared, seemingly from nowhere, on the other side of the fire.

  It was Finn, now without the burning branch.

  “Don’t creep up like that,” she said, trying to mask her fear with anger.

  She was still here. He had half-expected her to have disappeared, like one of his mother’s illusions. Only the bite of the metal at his throat convinced him this wasn’t a dream. He’d imagined her in his world so often, but never like this. Not with power over him.

  “I can’t help it if I’m quiet,” he said. “You can sit down again, it’s all right.”

  Jess folded her shaking legs under her.

  “What was it?” she regretted asking as soon as she said the words.

  “A wolf. But it’s all right; it can’t get through to your world and it won’t hurt you with me here, not one on its own.”

  His answer didn’t quite make sense, but she told herself it didn’t matter.

  “I want Freya back. Where is she?” A terrible thought occurred. “Is she all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then take me to her.”

  “It’s not safe to go too far from the fire while it’s dark. There are wolves, remember? And they’re a lot fiercer than the ones in your world. You’ll have to wait until daybreak.” A sudden gust of wind stirred his hair and sent sparks flying as he spoke. Jess reached to push a toppling log back into the fire while she thought about that.

  “All right, we’ll wait until morning,” she agreed.

  There was another gust of wind and, as though a curtain had been pulled, the sky was suddenly burning with stars as the clouds above the forest frayed into rags.

  Jess looked up, open-mouthed. If she had needed any proof that she was no longer in her own world, here it was; stars flared coldly above her in numbers that she had never imagined. She searched in vain for a familiar constellation, but there was none.

  She felt Finn’s eyes on her, and brought her gaze back to his face.

  “It’s not the same sky,” she said.

  “It’s not the same world.” He glanced up. “We have more stars, but you have the moon.”

  “There’s no moon here?”

  Finn shook his head.

  “But how… I don’t understand.” Jess was baffled.

  “You don’t have to,” Finn said, and she turned to look at him properly as she heard the edge to his voice. “Why would you want to know about this world? You’ve come for your friend, that’s all. Isn’t that right? You’re not interested in us.”

  “I’m… You’re right. I’ve come for my friend. That’s all I want,” Jess said, but it wasn’t true any more.

  “Go to sleep,” said Finn, in a voice that was far from friendly. “You’ll get your friend in the morning.” His fingers were at his throat again, trying to ease the thing round his neck.

  Jess didn’t know what else to do, so she curled up in the lee of the fire and pretended to sleep, Finn’s face caught behind her eyelids, half seen and undecipherable.

  Finn watched as she fell properly asleep.

  He felt he knew her, even though he’d never spoken to her. He’d spent so much time watching her that he sometimes felt he knew what she was about to do before she did.

  The snatched glimpses weren’t enough. He’d wanted her here, with him.

  And now she was here, in his world. But she was only here because of her friend. That wasn’t what was meant to happen. And when his family found out she was here… What had he done?

  Jess slept fitfully. Fragments of dreams chased her to morning and she opened her eyes to find that the fire had died to a bed of grey ash, and the Kelpie boy was watching her.

  She blinked several times, for the air between them seemed to shimmer and shift, then she sat up, pushing hair out of her face, aware, to her consternation, that she had flushed to her fingertips. Finn continued to watch her.

  “Did no one ever tell you it’s rude to stare?” she asked.

  He frowned. “Why? How else are you supposed to learn what something really looks like?”

  “It’s… you’re…” Jess was determined not to be lost for words. “You’re not supposed to make it obvious that you’re that interested in anyone. Anything.”

  He mulled it over.

  “That makes no sense.”

  She blinked a few times, trying to force everything to stay still.

  Embarrassingly, she found herself drawn to stare at him in turn. It was the first time she’d had
enough light to see him properly.

  The hair that came almost to his shoulders was black, his face fine-boned and sharply angled. His eyes were the blue of the iris flowers round Roseroot Pool, the blue of the horse’s eyes, extraordinarily vivid. He was, Jess found herself thinking, very good looking.

  “Now you’re staring,” he said, to her horror.

  “I’m not,” she blurted untruthfully. “I mean… Look, you were a horse, now you’re a person. Of course I’m staring.”

  To cover her discomfort, she got to her feet.

  “Take me to Freya. I came here to get her back. “Tell me what I’ll have to do to get her out of here.” Jess felt the colour sliding away from her face as the reality of her situation hit her again.

  “Sit down again, and I’ll tell you.”

  She came round the bed of ashes and sat down, closer to him than she had been before, close enough now to see the thing round his neck. It was no longer the halter she had made. In Finn’s world it had become a torque of coloured metals, twisted together and bristling with tiny spines. Jess could see the red weal it had raised around his neck.

  “Why did you take her?” she asked before he had a chance to speak. “You took the boys as well, didn’t you? Why did you take them?”

  “I took your friend. The boys were taken by other Kelpies.” He gave her a searching look. “Do you care? Does it matter to you so long as you get your friend back?”

  “Of course it matters,” Jess said angrily. “Why do you take them? I’m trying to understand. Tell me.”

  He sighed, running his hands through his hair.

  “You call us Kelpies in the Upper World, but we call ourselves the Nykur. Long ago, this land used to be full of Nykur. The herds were everywhere on the plains. The horses made a sound like thunder as they galloped, there were so many of us. In those days, we hardly ever took human form here, only when we visited your world, so that we could speak to you.

  But now the Nykur are a failing race. We are long lived, but we don’t have many children – fewer still as the years pass. Some of them are sickly, some are taken by wolves when they are foals. There aren’t many of us left now. And so we take children from your world to bolster our numbers, to breed fresh blood into our families. They forget your world, and live among us instead. We spend more time in human shape now that most of us have people from the Upper World in our families. Children of mixed Nykur and human blood survive childhood more often than pure-bloods do. Half-bloods like me are hardier than they are. We are the only ones who risk going between the worlds regularly now.”

  “One of your parents is human?”

  “My father. My mother, Gudrun, is pure blood Nykur.”

  “And your father doesn’t try to stop other human children being taken?”

  “No. He is Nykur now. He has forgotten there was a time when he lived in the Upper World. He understands the need. He knows they will be happy here.”

  Jess was suddenly conscious that she should be concentrating on getting Freya back, not on this. She decided to ignore the other questions crowding into her head.

  “So how do I get Freya back?”

  He looked at her in silence for a few heartbeats. When he spoke, his voice was level, almost expressionless.

  “She is with my family. I’ll take you to where they are. She won’t recognise you; she has already forgotten the Upper World.”

  Jess broke in. “But she will remember once she’s home, won’t she?”

  “Perhaps. She’s not been here long. But I don’t know.”

  “Will I forget where I really belong if I stay here too long?” she asked, fearful.

  “No. That only happens when we take people to keep. It’s part of the spell when we take them between the worlds. It won’t happen to you.

  “I’ll bring Freya to you. You must take her by the hand and walk towards the stream – I’ll show you. You mustn’t stop, and you mustn’t let go, whatever happens. If you can get her away without my mother realising, then all you have to do is pull Freya into the water with you, and you’ll both come out at the pool in your forest.”

  “Don’t I have to get her back here for that?”

  “No. The river that runs past my home is linked to the pool in the forest here.” He paused.

  “If my mother discovers what’s happening, she will try to stop you. She is not bound by this.” He touched the torque around his neck. “She will spin illusions so that you think Freya is something else. You must grasp tight to whatever you find yourself holding, and get her into the water.”

  Jess remembered the words that had made no sense, and their meaning was now suddenly clear.

  Hold fast the briar,

  Hold fast the falcon,

  Hold fast the flame.

  “All right,” she said. “How soon can we go?”

  “Now. It’s light enough to be safe for you. It will take about an hour to get there.” He rose and kicked apart the remains of the fire. “This way.” He set off without looking to see if she was behind him.

  It was just light enough to see where she was going, though they weren’t following any sort of path as far as Jess could tell. The undergrowth made the going difficult, and Finn stopped to wait for her when she fell behind.

  As the light grew, she looked around her at the Kelpie – the Nykur – world. The light itself was disconcerting, making the air and the forest beyond it quiver unless she was looking at it directly; almost as though it wasn’t solid, but a reflection in wind-ruffled water.

  The trees were no sort she had ever seen, their trunks soaring high above her to open in a canopy of green and silver leaves that moved in the wind. The enormous briar bushes that grew among them were barbed with huge curved thorns. No wonder she had mistaken them for claws in the darkness. They were laden with blood-crimson flowers that had a strange musky scent, not like a flower scent at all. When Jess strayed close to one, Finn pulled her quickly away from it.

  “Careful. They bite,” he said, cryptically.

  She found out what he meant a few minutes later, when she drew close to another one without thinking. She gasped in pain as a branch whipped against her, and thorns tore at her like teeth.

  She stepped back quickly, sucking blood from her wrist.

  “It moved. I swear it aimed at me,” she exclaimed.

  “I told you not to get too close,” Finn said.

  There was no sign or sound of birds, but the whine and buzz of insects filled the air and there were tracks through the grass where animals must move among the trees.

  “It doesn’t look like autumn here,” Jess said, catching up with Finn again.

  “It isn’t. Time runs differently for us.”

  She thought a little before she spoke again.

  “What will happen to you once I take Freya back?” she asked, prepared to be rebuffed.

  “This will disappear once you go back to your world.” He gestured at the torque.

  “But will there be trouble for you, because you helped me?”

  “The others will know I had no choice because of this, but they’ll be angry that I was stupid enough to let myself be trapped, especially by you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He looked at her then, to see if she was mocking him, and found that she wasn’t. Was there a chance that she felt something for him? he wondered.

  “What about the boys?” She suddenly remembered. “Where are they? Can I rescue them too?”

  “Other families have them. You can’t take them back: they’ve been here too long and they wouldn’t remember anything about your world. This is their home now. They don’t know any other.”

  They had stopped walking during the last exchange. Now Finn said,

  “Come on, Jess. We need to go.”

  That was it. That was what she had forgotten from last night.

  “Stop!” she commanded.

  He slammed to a halt, glaring at her.

  “My name. How do you know my
name? You didn’t tell me last night.”

  “We need to go,” he said, but he was helpless until her words released him.

  “How do you know my name?” Jess repeated. She relented a little. “You can walk while you tell me.”

  “I watch you. I watch your family,” he said unwillingly. “I’ve watched you for years. I’ve seen you sometimes look round as though you knew I was there.”

  “I did know,” said Jess slowly. “All those times I’ve had the feeling I was being watched it must have been you.” She slapped an insect away. “But why did you watch us?”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted him to answer.

  “At first it was because… we’re kin.”

  “We’re what?”

  “My father is your grandmother’s cousin.”

  She gaped at him in disbelief.

  “What? What’s his name?”

  “Euan.”

  “Your father? But he must be almost the same age as my grandmother.”

  “I told you, time runs differently here. I’ve seen your grandmother. My father is much younger here.” Finn said soberly. “But it’s best you don’t see him. He’ll try to stop you, the same as everyone else.”

  Ten minutes passed in silence, and the trees began to thin. Finn put a hand on Jess’s arm to stop her, the first time he had touched her in human form. He snatched his hand away as though he’d been burned.

  “When we get to the edge of the trees you’ll see my family’s home. Wait in the trees and I’ll bring Freya to you. My mother will sense something happening as soon as you touch her, so be ready.”

  As they walked on, Jess could hear the sound of falling water. She was listening so intently that she walked straight into Finn’s back.

  He took a sharp breath, turned and realised the contact had been accidental. “There it is,” he said after a few seconds, and she looked round his shoulder to see his home.

  Now that it was fully light, she saw the Nykur world properly for the first time, and drew a breath in wonder.

  To right and left, a rippling plain of grasses stretched to the limits of her vision, lush green shading away to blue in the distance. In front of her lay a boggy meadow, covered in tussocky grass and rushes and starred with tall yellow flowers that she didn’t recognise, but whose scent reached her, even here. A river flowed through it, silver water bounding from pool to pool. Behind the meadow was a procession of crags stacked like steps, water launching itself from the topmost one to tumble down to the river in a series of waterfalls, rainbows dancing above them where the air sparkled with water droplets.