Okay, so no one wanted to tell me about this spear. Gretel held open the door and we filed out. Well, I filed. CJ more stalked. The door was barely shut before she whirled on me.
“How could she do that to me?” she demanded. “The Year 12 formal! I’ve been looking forward to it all year.”
I said nothing. I was crankier about getting kicked out like little kids as soon as things started to get interesting, but CJ had different priorities. The way she was glaring at me, you’d think it was all my fault. I’d been looking forward to the formal too—back when we lived in Townsville. Then it would have meant something, going with our friends. Now I truly wasn’t interested. And if I went and CJ missed out, I’d never hear the end of it.
“I won’t go,” I offered. “I’ll stay home with you.”
“I am not staying home,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Uh … girls?” Poor Gretel looked uncomfortable. “Why don’t we head down to the kitchen and I’ll get you something from the snack machine?”
“No thanks. I think I want to go back to the library.”
The lift pinged as we walked past it, and Simon stepped out.
“Hi, Simon!” Gretel said brightly.
He nodded and strode off. She watched him until he turned the corner. She must have it bad.
“Gee, would it have killed him to say hello?” CJ said.
Gretel flushed a dull crimson. “When you get to know us a bit better you’ll see what a traditional focus this place has. It’s all built on who’s got the most status, and latency is the currency we trade in. It’s not exactly a meritocracy. Seekers don’t tend to have much to do with us lowly technicians.”
Wow. Bitter, much? We both stared at her, and she laughed self-consciously. “Umm … you were saying? The library?”
“I just want to check a few things.”
“Oh? Like what?” She led the way, following in Simon’s footsteps.
“Like what’s this Cottingley affair everyone keeps mentioning?”
“You haven’t heard of it? It’s pretty well known, even in the non-magic world.”
I shook my head.
“It was a big deal, back when photography was first getting started. Two girls in Cottingley, in England, produced some photos of themselves playing with fairies in the garden.”
CJ snorted. “And people believed them?”
“Oh, it was true, all right. A photographic expert examined the photos and declared them genuine. A lot of people were convinced—including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”
I stared. “The guy who wrote Sherlock Holmes?”
“Yep. It caused big problems for us when he went public on it. See, it was only when the Industrial Revolution started that we managed to get the upper hand over the Sidhe. The age of science and machinery—and the huge rush to the cities that went with it—turned people away from them. Things that had seemed real when you lived in a cottage in your little village in the countryside, with nature all around you, started to seem more like dreams, or stories for children, when you worked in a factory and lived surrounded by bricks and steel. That weakened their power.”
“Is that why Mum and Dad are so worried about that stupid video going viral?” I’d felt guilty enough before, but now I felt a hundred times worse. What if the Sidhe got back into the world all because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut?
She nodded. “They feed on people’s belief. It makes them stronger. We were lucky; the Industrial Revolution not only weakened belief in them at a time when some of our greatest mages were alive, it provided the means for us to chase them from the world forever.” She frowned. “Or so we thought. And then to have belief surging again, only a century or so later—it was a great worry. Would the spells hold? Or would the Sidhe break through again?”
“So what happened?” I asked. Gretel seemed perfectly happy to talk about history, so I was going to find out as much as I could. We’d reached the library door, but even CJ looked interested now, though she still had a scowl on her face.
“Our technicians managed to replace the original photographic plates with ones that had been altered ever so slightly to make the fairies look less real. That was huge! They invented three new photographic techniques in the process. These days, with Photoshop, it would have taken someone five minutes, but it was a big deal back then. And then we had to get those photos into circulation, and get rid of the original ones. It was a big operation.”
“Didn’t anyone notice the change in the photos?”
“They were very subtle changes—and reproduction techniques were pretty primitive. Most people had only seen a grainy print in the first place. And of course we had people in the newspapers saying it was all a load of rubbish, but we couldn’t get the girls to budge. It wasn’t until one of them was an old lady that we finally pressured her into saying it was all a fake. Anyway, here’s the library. I’ve got to run.”
Wow. I felt kind of sorry for the old lady. Fancy seeing real fairies, and even getting photographic proof, and then having to tell the world it was all a scam. No wonder she stuck to her guns so long. I wondered how they’d managed to persuade her in the end, but Gretel was already gone, so I couldn’t ask.
We went inside and sat in the same chairs. We had the place to ourselves again; the quiet had a relaxing weight to it. Not just a temporary absence of noise, it was a purposeful silence, a place to get lost in study and contemplation.
Well, at least it was if you weren’t tied to a thoroughly peeved sister.
“They treat us like children,” she complained. “Go here, stay there; Gretel, take them away and wipe their butts for them.”
“They are kind of busy. Crisis, you know?”
“Not too busy to ground me, though. Can you believe that? It looks like Violet will be going to the formal on her own.” She mimicked Mum’s voice, her face twisted into a bitter rage. She was good at accents in general, but her Mum imitation was so perfect it usually reduced me to helpless giggles. Not today, though. “And then she just shoves us out so we don’t interrupt their precious grown-up chats.”
“What do you care? You weren’t listening anyway. Too busy sending texts to your caveman.”
“I heard. All that stuff about Cottingley, and some panic about a cathedral. Nothing about us, though. I thought Dad was going to try and do something to help us. Isn’t that why we came in here? Nobody seems to give a toss any more that we’re walking around tied together so we don’t spew diamonds every time we open our mouths. And frogs,” she added, in what was clearly an afterthought.
“Well, it could be worse. At least we’re not in a coma in a glass coffin like that other poor girl.”
Although … I don’t know, the idea held a certain appeal. I could catch up on some sleep and not have to deal with an irate twin. An irate twin who was tied to me.
“I mean, who cares if some Sidhe is walking around near their precious cathedral. Dad said he couldn’t get in, right? They should be focusing on what he’s already done—to their own children—not where he chooses to go wandering now. He’s probably just enjoying being able to walk around, if they’ve had him locked up in this magic prison thing they keep going on about.”
“Yeah, but it sounds like there’s a spear in the cathedral they don’t want him getting his hands on.”
“Well, don’t bother asking why, because they won’t tell a little kid like you anything.” CJ pulled out her phone, going back to a full-on sulk.
Poor Princess CJ. I bet what was really getting up her nose, more than the diamonds thing, or even being grounded, was the fact that no one was taking any notice of her. Maybe it was easier to keep things in perspective when you weren’t used to star treatment.
I shrugged. Dad had mentioned a spear, though a cathedral seemed a funny place to keep one. What would you do with it? Poke people who fell asleep in the sermon and started snoring?
I slipped my silken leash and wandered the bookshelves again, looking for something tha
t might give me answers. I pulled books at random, sampling their pages: The Encyclopaedia of World Myth, A Dictionary of Mythology, Legends of the Celts, The Book of Magic.
The Book of Magic was full of weird things like “A Potion to Turne a Mayden’s Thoughtes to You” and “Posset for the Relief of the Ague”, with long lists of ingredients, most of which I’d never heard of. What was St John’s Wort? Or feverfew?
I put that one back and took The Dictionary of Mythology back to my chair. There were several pages on the Sidhe. At least it gave me somewhere to start.
The Daoine Sidhe, the people of the fairy hills, are the remnants of the once-great Tuatha de Danaan, the pre-Christian gods of the Celts, supposedly driven into their hills by the arrival of the Milesians in Ireland. They are a capricious and often cruel people, roughly divided into the “trooping fairies”, the beautiful riders who tempt mortals away into Fairyland, and their less attractive kin, who range in temperament from mischievous to deadly.
They were ruled by a king and queen, who seemed to change quite a lot, and a host of unpronounceable names sprawled across the pages. Their great father god—kind of like a Celtic Zeus—was called the Dagda and, just like Zeus, he seemed to marry and/or carry on with most of the others, so they were all interrelated.
I ran my eye down the page. Four great festivals to honour the gods … that one, Samhain, seemed to ring a bell. It was their new year, marking the start of winter, on the first of November. That wasn’t far off, though of course it wasn’t winter in November on this side of the world. It involved various ordeals, often including human sacrifice. I wrinkled my nose. Glad we didn’t do that any more. November the first was also the day the Dagda married the Morrigan, one of his wives. What was it with these people? Why couldn’t they have normal names that didn’t have “the” in front of them?
Four seemed to be a favourite number. The Sidhe also had four great treasures. Oh, hello.
“CJ, listen to this. The Sidhe have four magical treasures: the Dagda’s cauldron, the spear of Lugh, the sword of Nuada, and the stone of destiny.”
“So?”
“The spear of Lugh! Maybe that’s the one Dad was talking about.”
“What does it do?”
“Don’t know.” I scanned the page. “Umm … kills with a single scratch, never misses, battle-type stuff. It doesn’t say much.”
“But if it’s a Sidhe treasure, why would it be in a human cathedral?”
“How should I know? Why don’t you make yourself useful for a change and Google College Street—find out what this cathedral is that they’re talking about.”
“St Mary’s,” she said after a moment. “It’s a Catholic church. You still think they’re going to have a Sidhe spear lying around? It’s more likely to be Roman.”
“A lot of Irish people are Catholics.” I didn’t want to let go of the idea that it might be this spear of Lugh, though I had to admit, it seemed unlikely.
“Besides, why would it be such a big deal if it was this Lugh guy’s spear? It’s hardly going to be the end of the world if the Sidhe take back one of their own treasures, is it? How is that going to help them break out of prison?”
“I don’t know.”
There was too much I didn’t know. There was probably something, somewhere among all these books, that could answer all my questions. The problem would be finding it. I could read for years and never get through all the books in this room—and that wasn’t even counting the restricted section.
And ten to one, whatever I needed was going to be locked away in there.
CJ was right. No one was going to tell us this stuff. Mum and Dad hadn’t even told us we belonged to a magical family, with all this going on under our noses, until Puck had cursed us and forced their hand. And sure, the Sidhe might be going to all this trouble just to regain a lost treasure, but that seemed pretty unlikely.
One thing was for sure: if I wanted to find out, I was going to have to get sneaky.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Okay,” said Dad. “Try that.”
“Blah blah blah.” My voice came out muffled by the contraption strapped to my face. It looked a lot like one of those gas masks they used in World War I. CJ wore one too, and we both looked ridiculous, like two weird mechanical anteaters.
“Hey, no frogs!” Dad clapped his hands like a little kid at a magic show—which was kind of odd, since he was the magic show.
We’d been in his lab since breakfast, after bunking down at Magic HQ for the night. Dad had run some experiments before we went to bed, but their success could be measured in the sheer number of frogs still hopping round the place this morning. Now it looked like he might have succeeded after all.
There was just one problem.
“I hate to burst your bubble there, Dad,” said CJ, “but I am not walking around in public wearing this thing on my head.
“Aw, come on. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
He grinned, but CJ had no sense of humour where her appearance was concerned, and she refused to even crack a smile.
“Not funny, Dad.”
“Okay, okay, take them off.” He still looked pleased with himself. “At least we know it’s do-able. I just have to find a way to get the dampener close enough to the source of the aether so that it’s still effective without offending the fashion police.”
Yeah, whatever. As long as he knew what he was talking about, I didn’t have to understand.
“Dad?”
“Hmmm?”
“How come Simon’s twin doesn’t work here?”
“Didn’t have high enough latency.” He sighed. “There are never enough people who do.”
“You mean he failed that test you told us about?” He was still fiddling with the setting on his gas mask, only half paying attention to the conversation. “But why does it matter? Your powers are latent because there’s no aether in the world, right? So if you can’t do magic anyway what difference does it make if you’ve got magic potential or not?”
“A lot of what we do here requires latency,” he replied absentmindedly. “Seekers need the most, of course, but even technicians need a certain affinity with magic to operate some of the tools we use. And we have enough aether in the vault for those. It’s no kindness to wave the world of magic in the face of people who can never be a part of it.”
It took me a minute to grasp his meaning. “You mean he doesn’t even know about you guys? Aether and the Sidhe and stuff? He doesn’t know what his twin brother does?”
That seemed … hard. No wonder Simon didn’t like talking about his twin.
“The best way of keeping a secret is not to tell anyone. Or at least, no one who doesn’t absolutely need to know.”
I tried to imagine keeping such an enormous secret from CJ. Nup. I couldn’t do it.
“Must get back to work,” Dad said. “I don’t suppose you’d consider something like a surgical face mask?”
CJ gave him The Look. “No. Way.”
“Just asking. No need to get tetchy.”
We left him to it and wandered back to the library via a brief stop in the kitchen for donuts. No one seemed to use the library except us, and CJ was pretty keen to stay out of Mum’s way. Maybe she thought Mum would somehow forget she’d said CJ couldn’t go to the formal if she didn’t see her for a while. If so, she was kidding herself. There wasn’t enough magic in the universe for that.
“How long do you think we’ll have to stay here?” CJ asked, moodily contemplating the silk scarf that still tied us together. “I want to go home. This place is boring.”
I didn’t see how anyone could find this boring—there was a whole new world to discover. That was just the grumpiness talking. But I did miss my laptop—I wished I’d thought to bring it with me. And I wouldn’t have minded catching up with Sona. Plus there’d be schoolwork piling up. Just as well the holidays started the next week. Starting a new school was hard enough without falling behind.
Who do you
think you’re fooling? You don’t care about any of that. You just want to see Zac again.
Okay, so maybe I’d thought of Zac a few times. A few hundred times, tops. I couldn’t get that almost-kiss out of my mind. Those dark eyes of his were haunting me.
“It shouldn’t be too long.” Hopefully that wasn’t just wishful thinking. I had to see him again so I could figure out if it was all my imagination, or if there really was something there. “As soon as the next big news story comes along, the press will forget all about us. Especially if Dad manages to stop us spitting frogs and diamonds. We’ll be old news.”
“Do you think we could go back to school if he does?”
“Why? You pining for Maths and English?”
She snorted. “As if.”
“You want to see the caveman, don’t you?”
“And what if I do?” She curled herself into a tight, defensive ball on her chair, knees pulled up to her chin. “There’s nothing wrong with having a love life. You should try it some time.”
Maybe I would. I sighed and went back to reading Legends of the Celts. There was no point talking to her when she was in this sort of mood.
A couple of hours later I closed the book, my head full of larger-than-life heroes and ridiculous quests and battles. CJ had her eyes shut. Not asleep, but I was happy to ignore her if she was still grumpy.
The door opened with a soft click and I looked up, expecting to see Gretel, come to summon us to lunch or another experiment. She seemed to have become our unofficial minder. But it was Dad, swinging two dog collars in his hand.
“So this is where you’re hiding out.”
As if we had somewhere better to be. He looked mighty pleased with himself. I eyed the things he was holding nervously. Seriously, Dad?
“What are those?”
“Your ticket to freedom, I hope.”
That’s what I was afraid of. Did he really expect us to wear those? He held one out to each of us. Up close, they looked like something a punk rocker might have worn in the eighties, with random bits of metal sticking out at odd angles from a thick base of leather and chain links. All we needed was a safety pin through the eyebrow to complete the look. Oh, and a radical haircut, preferably in hot pink.
The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) Page 11