by A. W. Exley
Samuel grunted as he handed reins to Lettie. “More likely they do it to annoy me.”
Lettie and Samuel climbed into their saddles and turned the plain and solid horses to the west.
While the far larger Sunderland was two miles south, Whiterock was still a bustling village in stark contrast to life on the secluded Alysblud estate. As Lettie rode next to Samuel, they passed numerous people on the road who called out or waved to the old Warder.
“This area has grown so much since I was last here. I think your house sat alone with only sheep around it.” While she had been trapped in her tower, the world had continued to turn and evolve.
“Shipbuilding has been a boon for this area, and she has grown over the last forty years.” Samuel pointed to the plumes of smoke that rose from the Ocram and Lawson shipyard. Even though they rode in the opposite direction, the shouts of workmen and the rings of hammers on metal were clearly audible. “Back in 1875, the Torrens was built in Sunderland. She’s a clipper that set the fastest route time from London to Australia.”
The half century that had lapsed since Lettie was last in the region had wrought a huge change on the rural town. Sunderland had turned into an industrious port and the largest shipbuilder in England. To her, it seemed to have happened in the blink of an eye. To those scurrying around her, progress took a lifetime.
“What do you know of Ocram and Lawson?” she asked as traffic thinned the farther west they travelled. She wondered what clues they would find to shed light on the fate of Dawn’s parents.
Samuel considered his words before speaking. “Very little, I’m afraid. They are a small family-owned business. Somewhat new to the area, having only arrived forty years ago. They built the shipyard and that monstrosity of a house perched on the hill. I have stayed out of their way, apart from observing. After all, that is what we gargoyles are good at—watching.”
Forty years. Odd how the Soarer family appeared in Whiterock around the same time Julian was murdered. Did they use the opportunity of the Warder family’s fall to stake a claim out here? If Julian had lived, Jasper would have joined Samuel, and the younger man would never have let Soarers build a home under his nose. “How long after Julian died did they appear?”
Samuel scratched his chin as he thought. “A week or two at most, certainly within the same month. Do you think they waited until they knew our clan was damaged and suffering?”
Her hands tightened on the reins as memories resurfaced. She needed to keep a clear mind. She pushed her sorrow back into its quiet room inside her. “Yes. It is too coincidental otherwise.”
“I have done nothing while they grow stronger. I can’t even stem the tide of their seekers that burrow into our walls. The Ocrams have hold of the village now, and they squeeze its throat.” Samuel stared straight ahead and ground his jaw.
Lettie studied his profile. For some gargoyles, the progression of centuries saw the lines between their two forms blur. At close to eight hundred years old, Samuel’s face and form were chiselled and sharp, his skin weathered like a cliff face. He had led a difficult life and lost his mate over a hundred years before. Yet he remained at his post, the lonely sentry serving his Lord Warder until he returned to Gaia and rejoined his mate.
“You are alone out here, Samuel. No one expected you to confront the Soarers single-handed,” Lettie said.
He grunted and she could only imagine how it rankled for the Warder to watch the Soarers gain a foot hold in his territory while he remained powerless to stop them.
“They continue to rise in power with nothing to stand in their way.” His hand turned into a granite fist.
Lettie reached out and touched his arm. “The pendulum has swung too far in their favour. Balance must be maintained, and it will shift to us once again. Our time is coming.”
“I hope so,” he muttered. “Arrogant buggers are long overdue for a fall.”
Lettie echoed his sentiment. The Ocrams would fall, as would the Hamiltons. Life would find a way to redress the balance, and all they had to do was set events in motion.
“How do you intend to try to fossick out the information you need?” Samuel asked. Gargoyles tended to be direct and preferred to use brute force. Jasper’s role as earl had taught him a certain amount of tact and discretion, and he was reserved for an earth Elemental.
Lettie had spent long hours with Jasper, considering how to approach the issue from a multitude of angles. “Dr Day is going to see if he can insert himself in his professional capacity and, I hope, be our eyes and ears at their shipyard. For myself, I intend to use the skills Gaia endowed me with; I shall cast my bait and hook myself either a Lawson or an Ocram.”
Samuel made a noise in his throat that sounded like a chuckle. “You’ll want to try to catch Byron Ocram. His father is their lord, but Byron is the one in charge. He’s a sylph and a damn cunning man. He took over running the shipyard from his father some twenty years ago. He’s unmarried and always has so many women swarming around him, you’d swear he smelt of bacon.”
“Bacon?” Lettie laughed at the comparison.
Samuel shrugged. “Everyone loves bacon, and it’s the only thing that would account for women overlooking all his faults.”
She doubted even bacon would cover his Soarer stench. Lettie imagined being next to the sylph would be like standing beside an open sewer. The air Elementals liked to play games, so she would give him a chase he couldn’t refuse. “Well, forewarned is forearmed. I’ll make sure I’m not hungry when I encounter him. How hard do you think it would be to orchestrate a social meeting?”
Samuel’s mood recovered somewhat and he winked. “I have ravens watching them. It’s not hard at all to find out where he is.” He closed his eyes for a moment, communing with his watchers overhead. Then he opened his eyes as his vision returned to normal. “He’s at the shipyard today, but he seldom does more than two days of business in a row. He’ll be out on display tomorrow like the peacock he is.”
“Perfect. I shall stumble upon him tomorrow. While I am much out of practice, I do remember being told that I was quite the coquette.” Could she flirt with a sylph, the same sort of Elemental who had killed Julian? She took a deep breath and secured the door on the room holding back those memories. Yes, she would do anything to avenge her family. Even flirt with a sylph.
Samuel laughed. “I think many men have fallen to your charm over the decades, Lady Letitia, and I shall enjoy seeing Ocram tumble from his eyrie. I only hope he shatters on the rock below.”
Shatters. Lettie sucked in a gasp and tried not to think of Julian’s last moments. She closed her eyes and replaced the image of Julian’s destroyed body with the happy childhood memory of playing hide and seek in the maze. Jasper and Julian used to drop on her from above, and she thought it unfair that they could fly and she couldn’t.
As they rode, they left the coastal village behind and headed into the surrounding hills. The entrance to the caverns was still isolated, but eventually the village would grow and spread and butt up against it. Even in her time walking the Earth, Lettie had seen mankind creep over once pristine forests and trees felled to be replaced by towns and cities. Progress only ever moved forward, not back. Never again would England be the vast rural expanse her parents knew from a thousand years ago.
How much longer would the cavern remain hidden from humanity? The caverns were ancient and had been known to the Warders since before the Romans landed in Britannia. A deep underground fissure ran straight into the heart of Gaia, where she gathered her tears in a lake.
The existence of the cave was a secret guarded by the local Warder. Close to the entrance, they dismounted and tied the horses’ reins over a nearby tree. Samuel approached a large rock face and placed both his hands on the surface. A partial shift turned his arms to moss-covered stone that merged seamlessly with the cliff wall. With a grunt, he forced his hands apart and created a slender entrance, like a partially opened door.
Lettie unhooked a lantern from
behind her saddle and lit the wick. Then she squeezed into the opening.
“Take as long as you need. I’ll be here sunning my old bones,” Samuel said. Then a thud shook through the ground as he released the stone and the cliff sealed itself. Just a small hole, like a tiny porthole, was left open for Lettie to signal her return.
Lettie raised her lantern and walked down the steep tunnel. Centuries of feet treading the path and hands touching the walls had smoothed the stone. The fissure took many twists and turns as it sought to trick the unwary. The odds of a regular person finding the cave was unlikely unless they used explosives to remove the rock, although there was a tiny chance a natural event like an earthquake could inadvertently reveal its existence.
The underground pathways were a labyrinth designed to confuse anyone not supposed to be there. Lettie touched her undine form and let water seek water. She didn’t really need the light because her body heeded the call to join a much larger body. Her element whispered to her and guided her through the tunnels.
It took nearly an hour of walking to reach her destination. The claustrophobic passageway opened into a wide cavern with a low ceiling. Glow worms clung to the upper rocks and shone like blue stars in an artificial night time sky. An underground lake filled most of the cavern, with only a narrow path around one side. The water was inky black and bottomless. The opaque surface held its secrets tight.
The tiny pinpricks of light above reflected in the still, mirror-like surface. Lettie would swim among the stars and be part of Gaia’s Sorrow.
The only sound was the occasional drip as a bead of moisture formed on a stalactite and fell into the pool below. The air smelt of cool rain, and Lettie drew in a deep breath. Words and thoughts tumbled through her troubled mind. Home. Sanctuary. Comfort.
She walked to a smooth rock that jutted out over the water and set down the lantern. Then she stripped off her clothing and flowed into her undine form. She didn’t step into the lake so much as she became a part of it.
Water caressed her skin. Silk lapped against silk as she waded out until the bottom dropped away from under her feet and she sank beneath the surface. Lettie didn’t panic or struggle. She had no need for air. Water sustained her as she surrendered herself to the lake.
To an undine, the underground lake was like a mother’s embrace. Gaia held Lettie close as the water murmured to her. It told her all that had happened in the fifty years since she last communed with it. At the same time, she spun in a vortex as though nothing surrounded her at all. She was suspended in space as the years unfolded below her.
Minutes, hours, or days could have passed. Time stopped when Lettie entered the lake. The water passed through her, hunting the tiny scraps left behind when Ava’s poisonous vine withered and died inside her head. Piece by piece, it lifted the debris away and left her cleansed.
Only when every last trace of the evil Meidh and her damage had been expunged did the lake slowly release Lettie from its embrace. She emerged from the water. Droplets kissed her skin as they parted company and then ran back to the lake, leaving her warm and dry. She dressed and picked up the lantern to begin the long walk back to the surface.
At the entrance to the suffocating shaft, she paused and glanced back at the silent mirror that echoed the glow worm sky above.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
An hour later back at the entrance, she waved the lantern back and forth across the porthole. The earth rumbled and shifted as Samuel opened the passageway. Outside, the day had passed and the sun moved toward the horizon. It was now late afternoon.
“You’re glowing,” Samuel murmured as he sealed the entrance behind her.
“I am healed,” she replied.
And she was ready to battle for her family.
6
The next day, Grayson took the reins of the gig and Lettie sat beside him. They’d decided over breakfast to find the cottage where Dawn had been born. Like a good chaperone, Marjory was in the back, lurching from side to side with each revolution of the wheel under her hard seat. The doctor guided the little grey cob toward the coast and along a narrow path. The cliff dropped away on one side and tumbled down to the beach below. On the other side, grass mingled with wildflowers.
The Uxbridge family had lived not far from the main village of Whiterock. Cottages were scattered along the coast, each with small wisps of smoke curling from a stone chimney. Paths led down to the beach where small boats were pulled up, awaiting another day of fishing.
Lettie shielded her eyes and scanned the horizon for their guide—one of Samuel’s ravens.
“There,” she said and pointed inland.
“I hope the bird knows where it’s going.” Grayson snapped the reins and the horse trotted on. Up ahead the road split into two. One fork continued to hug the coastline while the other headed west.
The black bird circled overhead and called out before flying off west, and the horse followed the same direction. Not far down the road was a cluster of cottages, and what appeared to be a tavern and a blacksmith’s forge. The offshoot of the main village was an odd assortment of homes in varying sizes and types of construction. There were two-storeyed homes with large windows, and smaller stone cottages that hunkered into the landscape.
With neatly tended gardens and freshly whitewashed walls, it seemed a decidedly middle-class neighbourhood, as though a group had broken free from the working-class cottages closer to the beach. One or two front gardens that faced south were crammed with summer vegetables, instead of flowers, to take advantage of the full sun. Sheep grazed the low hills around the settlement, and only stout railings kept woolly bodies out of yards. The animals shoved their heads in the fences and stretched out pink tongues toward tantalising plants beyond their reach.
There were a few people about, and the sound of hammering came from the forge. Horses were tied to a hitching rail, waiting their turn for new shoes. Most of the menfolk probably worked in the village of Whiterock or the larger town of Sunderland. Women would labour in their homes cooking, cleaning, or sewing.
“Who shall we ask?” Grayson said to Lettie as he halted the gig.
“The children—they are normally more forthcoming than adults.” She nodded to a group of children laughing and hanging from a large tree at the road side.
One boy dangled upside down, his legs hooked over a branch.
“Who are you?” he yelled out.
“Visitors from out of town,” Marjory yelled back. “We’re looking for old friends who used to live here, called the Uxbridges.”
The children exchanged looks, and the boy gave a topsy-turvy shrug. “Never heard of them.”
“They lived here ten years ago, and then moved.” Grayson pulled off his driving gloves and tossed them to the seat of the cart.
“If you know they moved, why are you looking here for them?” a precocious girl with blonde ringlets asked.
Marjory muttered under her breath about how children should be seen and not heard, and then plastered a smile on her face. “We want to find anyone who knew them back then.”
“Charlie might know. He’s old and knows everything.” The girl’s ringlets bounced back and forth as she spoke.
Grayson bowed to her. “We would be most obliged, miss, if you could tell us where might we find old Charlie?”
She pointed to a cottage across the road. “He’ll be out back in his shed.”
They thanked the children and crossed the quiet road. Grayson held the gate open for the ladies and then closed it behind them so no sheep would raid the garden. They followed a crushed shell path down the side of the squat cottage. Their shoes crunched on the path and reminded Lettie of how her father used to grind his teeth when mulling over a problem.
Around back, most of the available lawn was given over to rows of mounded potatoes. Bright green leaves poked out from the earth. There looked enough of the vegetable to feed an entire village.
Standing guard over the potato patch was a tin shed, its
sides red and rusty from the salt-laden air. A chimney the thickness of a man’s arm stuck up from one corner of the roof. A thin spiral of smoke escaped and made a lazy path upward. Scraping and bangs came from within the dim interior.
“Hello?” Grayson stuck his head into the doorway and entered first, in case whatever they found within wasn’t suitable for the women behind him.
Lettie followed. Inside was a work bench strewn with bits of metal, screws, and twisted wire. A pot-bellied stove in a corner kept the shed warm and also heated a kettle on top. A lantern hung from a chain in the middle of the roof. Old Charlie sat on a stool at the bench, directly under the light, making small tin vessels.
Old Charlie was no more than twenty and looked like he still didn’t need to shave. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows on scrawny arms, and shaggy brown hair was pushed back behind his ears.
“Can I help you? Are you here to buy a ship?” He glanced up and gestured to the range of vessels on the workbench.
Lettie had little knowledge of ships and wondered if they resembled the boats being built in Sunderland’s shipyards.
“We’re looking for anyone who knew the Uxbridges, who used to live around here. The children said you might be able to help?” Grayson said.
Charlie set down the hammer he had been using to flatten a sheet of tin. He regarded them with narrowed eyes. “I remember them. I was just a lad when they moved out, but I’m not sure I should be talking about them to strangers.”
Lettie had a hunch what would motivate the young man to be forthcoming with any information. She unbuttoned the top of her jacket as though the room was too warm, and let the fabric drag the sides open to expose her décolleté. She moved past the doctor and stood next to Charlie. Then she peered over his shoulder at his current project. “These are remarkably good. Are you a shipbuilder?”
He flushed. “I hope to be. There’s a new intake soon in Sunderland, and I want to show them my little boats to prove I’m more than capable of making a larger one.”