Pale Peak Burning

by Paula Harrison

  Laney looked at her friend in horror. “What have you been saying to your mum?”

  “Don’t panic! I haven’t told her anything. I know how to keep a secret. We were talking about Kirkfield because my aunt lives there with millions of my cousins.”

  “So there are Greytails there?”

  “Uh-huh! We get everywhere.” Claudia grinned. “I’d better go actually. I’m meant to be practising defence spells with Tom.” She made a face.

  Laney laughed. Tom was Claudia’s older brother and the two of them always argued. She stayed up on the Edge for a while after Claudia left, looking at Skellmore and thinking about everything. Turning her hands palm up, she wished for fire. Small flames surged from her palms. They were beautiful – reddish-orange around the edge and golden in the centre. She focused her mind, trying to keep the flames small without putting them out. Where did the fire come from? Had her mother ever sat by herself practising this exact same thing?

  She managed to keep the flames burning evenly for a few minutes before one of them leapt into the air and the other one died.

  Then she brushed the dust off her jeans and made her way back down the hill to Skellmore.

  The day before they left, Laney was in the living room packing up the last of their things. She’d filled two boxes with books, leaving the bookcase empty apart from a blue shoebox on the top shelf. Taking the box down, she couldn’t resist taking a look at the papers and old photos inside. Near the top was a picture of Laney’s mum holding Laney when she was a baby.

  Kim came in with more packing crates. “What’s in there? Oh, Laney, you look so cute!”

  “Thanks!” Laney smiled. It was her favourite picture of her mum, taken in the garden at their old house. Her mum was standing in front of a tree with bare branches and there was a grey, wintry sky in the background.

  “Look at you! You’re so tiny.” Kim took the photo for a closer look. “You must have only been a few days old in that picture. Babies don’t stay that small for very long.”

  “I don’t remember our old garden at all so I must have been pretty young when we left.” Laney gazed at the tree in the picture.

  Kim put the photo back in the shoebox. “I’d better carry on. I want to pack a bit more before I start dinner.” She smiled at Laney and went upstairs.

  Laney put the lid on the shoebox and packed it into the crate. She frowned. Something was wrong – something important. What was it?

  She glanced at the shoebox and a strange impulse made her take the lid off and study the photo again. It was the tree that seemed odd, she realised. It had completely bare branches and that meant it must have been winter. The bushes at the edge of the picture were bare too.

  Laney pushed back a wisp of hair and tried to get her thoughts straight. Kim had said she must have been only a few days old in this photo but her birthday was 15th July, so why did it look like winter?

  A worried feeling wriggled inside her. She tipped the things out of the shoebox and looked for other clues. There were more photos of her mum and her as a newborn baby, each one with wintry trees in the background. Then, tucked inside a torn envelope, she found a card decorated with flowers which read Thinking of You. Inside there was a message to Robert and Cordelia, her mum and dad.

  To Cordelia and Robert,

  We’re thinking of you at this difficult time. We hope baby Laney is doing well and congratulations on having a little girl. Hope to see you soon,

  Love from all of us xxx

  Laney read the message again. The card must have been sent after she was born, but why had it been a difficult time? She turned the envelope over to check if there was a postmark. When she saw it she could hardly breathe: Kirkfield 9th February.

  Then maybe she hadn’t been born on the 15th July. All these years she’d been celebrating her birthday on that day. No wonder her dad had always seemed a little strange about it. He would have been the one that changed things, the one that kept the secret about the date of her real birthday. And she could guess exactly why he’d done it.

  When she’d first Awakened as a faerie, the tribe Elders had been suspicious of her. There’d been so many strange things – the way she hadn’t Awakened until twelve years old and the way her Mist powers had never seemed to work. They’d asked her dad whether she was born on the night of a red moon. This was meant to be a bad sign because of an ancient prophecy.

  Checking that Kim wasn’t around, Laney switched on the computer and searched the Internet for dates that red moons had occurred. There was only one in the year she was born: 9th February.

  So this was it – the last secret that her dad had kept from her. She had been born on the night of a red moon after all. The words of the prophecy started running through her head:

  Born under a Wolf Moon

  The Child of Aether joins together powers far apart.

  He binds the opposites

  And drives a splinter through the faerie ring’s heart.

  It couldn’t mean her, could it? She rubbed her aching forehead. Those lines in the middle … joins together powers far apart … binds the opposites. Fire and water were opposites and those were the two types of faerie magic she knew. Fire from her mum and water from her dad.

  What was a Child of Aether anyway? Laney sighed. None of it made any sense. But there was one thing she knew for sure: her dad wouldn’t have hidden her real birthday unless he’d thought he had to. She’d seen enough of the tribes, especially the Mists with Frogley as their leader, to know she shouldn’t tell lots of people what she’d discovered. She wanted to tell Claudia and Fletcher, but there was little time before she left tomorrow.

  She typed Child of Aether into the Internet search but it just came up with lots of scientific words. There was something about chemicals and flammable liquids – but she didn’t understand it.

  Laney bit her lip. It was hard trying to take everything in. She’d been born on the 9th February – that meant she was nearly thirteen already!

  She piled everything back into the shoebox and put on the lid. She would keep this to herself until she’d had time to figure out what it all meant. Her stomach did a somersault as she thought of the move tomorrow. The postmark on the letter had read Kirkfield. That was where her dad’s new hospital was. Maybe the card had come from a Blaze faerie – a friend of her mum’s. Maybe she would meet some other Blaze faeries and discover more about the fire magic inside her.

  Claudia and Fletcher came to see Laney off the next morning. Claudia promised she’d try to visit the next time her family went to visit her aunt in Kirkfield.

  Laney watched the houses flick past the car window as they drove out of Skellmore. Mist houses with their shimmering watery colours, the creature-like Greytail homes and the Thorn houses with their tree-bark walls and leafy roofs. She would miss everything – even the gigantic green cat eyes that stared at her from the wall of the Lionhart Pet Shop. She would miss it all.

  After a few hours, they came off the motorway and took a winding road through the hills. Villages rolled by with houses all made from the same mottled brown stone. Thoughts spun round Laney’s head like crows circling a tree. What would she say if she met another Blaze faerie? Would she know they were the same tribe right away? Would they think it was strange that she didn’t know any Blaze spells? A knot of excitement grew in her stomach. This could be her chance to find out where she really belonged.

  At last, Kim pulled over and stopped the car. She smiled at Laney and Toby. “Here we are!”

  Laney got out and stretched her aching legs. The house was small and made from the same worn brown stone as the other houses she’d seen. A name plaque on the door read Pebblenook Cottage. A magpie watched them intently from the top of the mossy roof. It hopped down to the corner of the house, then stopped and tilted its head sideways.

  Laney stared back. The bird gave a loud “Caw!” and flew off, white flashing against black as it flapped its wings.

  “Caw!” repeated Toby, and
he climbed up on the rickety garden gate and swung back and forth.

  The garden was overgrown and there was a crooked tree that was just coming into blossom.

  “Let’s go inside, shall we?” Kim said. “Where have I put the key?”

  “So you’re the new ’uns!” A round-cheeked woman looked across the fence from next door. “Have you come far? Are you staying long?”

  “I…” Kim fumbled in her handbag.

  “If you can’t find your key, dear, just use the spare one. It’s always kept under the flowerpot on the left,” said the woman. “I’m Mrs McKee, by the way, and you must be Mrs Rivers. We’re neighbours now. I’m looking forward to getting to know you all. Is there a Mr Rivers?”

  Flushing, Kim fished the key out from under the flowerpot. “My husband’s not very well actually. Anyway, it was nice to meet you.” She turned the key in the lock and steered Laney and Toby inside, shutting the door behind them.

  Laney looked round the dark hallway. She flicked a light switch but it didn’t work.

  “It’s probably just a fuse that needs changing,” Kim told her. “I’ll sort it out and then what we need is a nice cup of tea. Laney, could you run down to the shops and get us some milk? Just follow the road down to the village. I’m sure there’ll be somewhere on the main street that you can buy it from.” She handed Laney a five-pound note.

  “OK, I won’t be long.” Laney noticed the dark rings under Kim’s eyes as she hugged her. “Maybe the shop will have cake.”

  “Maybe,” Kim said, laughing. “Any treat would be nice!”

  Leaving the cottage, Laney followed the road downhill. She could already see the village lying in a hollow at the bottom of the valley. A bank of hills circled the village and sheep were scattered across the lower slopes. The tallest hill was crowned with white rock that gleamed in the afternoon sunshine. Rough boulders dotted the hillside below.

  Laney made her way down the road and crossed a humpback bridge with a stream running beneath it. A signpost read Little Shackle in chipped black letters.

  Everyone she passed on the street looked at Laney curiously, as if they knew she was a stranger. But none of them had gold-ringed eyes. There was a church, a pub and a bakery with a delicious baking smell drifting through its open doorway. At the end of the street, there was a corner shop selling milk, tins of soup and a mix of other things. Laney bought milk, ginger cake and a little plastic T-Rex toy for Toby. She was leaving the shop when she caught sight of a strange-looking house further down on the other side of the road. Her stomach flipped over.

  The house glowed like fire. It had a red front door. Orange flames rippled up the brickwork and flickered into yellow at the top. There was no smoke – the house wasn’t actually alight, Laney realised. It was simply decorated with signs of magic.

  It had to be a Blaze house. It just had to be.

  She went closer, the shopping bag banging against her legs. Her hands grew warm and her heart began to race. She’d never met any Blazes. How should she introduce herself? What if they didn’t like her?

  The red door was flung open and a boy with curly black hair and glasses came out. Laney drew back, suddenly panicked. Maybe she should come back when she’d thought about what to say. Her heart skipping, she ran back up the hill to the cottage.

  Kim told Laney she didn’t have to start her new school till the following Monday, which suited Laney fine. Her dad had been transferred to the Head Injury Unit in Kirkfield Hospital. The unit was a small building, separate from the main hospital, with large, comfortable rooms.

  “He doesn’t look so pale any more,” Laney told Kim the first time they went to visit him.

  “I was thinking that too.” Kim sounded teary. She smiled and hugged Laney. “The doctors told me they’re going to begin by adjusting his medication. This place could be just what he needs.”

  The cottage was warm and cosy, and once their boxes were unpacked Laney found she really liked the place. Kim said it would be nice to have a fire in the fireplace and Laney waited till she wasn’t looking before trying to light the coals with her hands. A spear-like flame burst straight up the chimney and Laney had to work hard to get it under control. Once the coals were burning steadily, she sat back and stared into the flickering flames. She would never in a million years have been allowed to do this back in Skellmore. Her dad had banned all matches, candles and anything that burned. She still didn’t know why. There was so much she wanted to ask him.

  On Saturday afternoon, Laney felt restless. The February wind was tearing up the valley and howling round the cottage. “I’m going out for a bit,” she called to Kim.

  Pulling on her coat, she walked down the road to Little Shackle and scanned the ring of hills that surrounded the village. Which way should she go? There were two spots that looked interesting but they were on opposite sides of the valley. On the left was the tallest hill – a pale rocky peak pointing to the sky. On the right, the line of hills was slashed apart by a deep ravine and there was mist rising from the gap.

  Laney decided to climb the tallest peak and took a left turn out of Little Shackle. The path branched away from the road and she followed it. A stile took her over the dry stone wall into a field full of sheep. She weaved past clumps of thick, spear-like grass and climbed rough boulders embedded into the hillside. Her eyes were drawn to the stony peak. She felt almost as if it was pulling her in. The path grew rockier and steeper and she scrambled up the last few metres to a stretch of flat rock just below the summit.

  The wind buffeted round her, rushing in her ears. She gazed at the rumpled spread of fields and farmhouses below. It was amazing to be up here on top of the world – almost as good as flying. She hadn’t dared to go flying at night here yet but she was sure it would be amazing. She imagined switching to faerie form, leaping into the air and swooping down the valley with the breeze streaming over her wings. The worries of Skellmore – the evil Shadow and the hunt for the Myricals – all seemed so far away.

  She clambered on to a boulder and sat down. The rock felt gritty and crumbs of white glinted on the mottled surface. A bird rose shrieking from the undergrowth and flew down the valley. The village of Little Shackle looked tiny but even from here she could see the signs of faerie houses. There were two roads that belonged to the tribes – one was a Blaze street and the other was full of Greytail houses. There were no signs of Mists, Thorns or Kestrels in the village at all. Soon she would go and speak to the other Blazes – once she’d decided what she should say.

  Scrambling up, she took the last few steps to the top of the pale, rocky peak. Strangely, there was a crack in the summit that opened into a deep, dark hole. She peered down and for a second she thought she saw a glimmer of orange at the bottom.

  “What are you doing?” Someone sprang out from behind a boulder. It was the boy with curly black hair that she’d seen the day they arrived, coming out of a Blaze house. Despite the cold, he was only wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. Gold-ringed eyes glinted behind his glasses.

  “I wanted to see the view from the top.” Laney pushed her windswept hair out of her face. “I’ve just moved here.”

  “This is Groaning Tor.” The boy glared. “It’s Blaze territory and you’re trespassing.”

  “Are you serious? It’s a hill with some sheep! Anyway I’m a Blaze too so I can’t be trespassing.”

  “Don’t lie! You’re a Mist,” said the boy.

  Laney noticed he said it the exact same way he might say, “you’re a thief.” She felt her palms start to burn and automatically closed her fingers. How could he have thought she was a Mist? Couldn’t he see the Blaze power in her? Well, at least she didn’t have to hide it here. Holding out one hand, she concentrated on the flame. “If I’m a Mist, how come I can do this?”

  The boy’s eyebrows lifted and for a second he seemed less sure of himself. “Well, you look like a Mist. Or maybe it’s just because you’re from the south.”

  Laney felt a flash of anger and
the flame in her hand burned higher. “So sorry to be standing on your hill,” she snapped. “Do any more of the hills belong to you? If I know which ones, I can keep away from them.”

  The boy frowned, ignoring her comment. “Are you the one who’s moved into Pebblenook Cottage? I saw a lady with a little boy in the shop this morning but she wasn’t a faerie.”

  “That was my stepmum and Toby. Yes, we’ve just moved into the cottage.” Laney took a deep breath. She wished she hadn’t snapped at him. This wasn’t how she’d wanted her first meeting with another Blaze to go. “I’m Laney, by the way. So are there many Blazes living in Little Shackle? My friend, Claudia, said there would be. Have you lived here all your life? Do you train to be a Blaze and practise spells together?”

  The boy’s frown deepened. “Look, I can’t tell you things about my tribe without knowing who you are. If you really belong to the Blaze tribe you need to go to see the Elder straightaway. That’s the rule.”

  Laney could feel her blood thumping in her ears. She tried to keep a grip on her temper. “I’m only asking how many Blazes there are. Why are you being so weird about it?”

  “You’re the one that’s weird!” The boy’s eyes glinted. “You can make fire but you don’t look like a Blaze, not really, and then you ask all these questions. I’m not giving lots of information away. There’s talk of a Shadow down south – that’s what they say!”

  Laney’s skin prickled at the mention of the Shadow. It was obvious this boy wasn’t going to help her. “Fine, don’t tell me anything! I’ll ask someone else.” She marched back down the slope.

  Climbing over a stile at the bottom, she found herself in a different road than before. Glancing back she could see the Blaze boy still watching her so she carried on trying to look like she knew where she was going. Why had she lost her temper like that? Ever since she’d found her Blaze power there’d been this fire burning inside her. Sometimes it was so hard stopping it from bursting out.