Elfland

by Freda Warrington

  She remembered once seeing a book in her father’s study, with a design embossed in silver on the cover; a five-pointed star with a spiral behind it, like a star caught on a cobweb. There had been a strange word at each point of the star. She hadn’t seen the book since, but recalled the arcane image with a delicious shiver.

  She heard the phone ring in the hall, her mother’s voice murmuring for a few minutes.

  “Bron?” said Jessica in the doorway. Her golden hair was pinned up in a messy halo, her clothes gracefully bohemian. “That was Phyllida. Incredible piece of gossip going around the village.”

  “Oh yes?” As her parents looked at each other, Rosie watched them closely. Her mother’s grey eyes were concerned, her father’s brown ones patient but guarded. It was one of those meaningful secret looks they were always exchanging.

  Her mother spoke in soft disbelief. “Apparently Ginny Wilder walked out on Lawrence this morning. She went while he was taking the boys back to school. So . . . she’s finally done it.”

  Auberon knew something was wrong, even before the ceremony began.

  There were nearly two hundred Vaethyr gathered in the warm summer night. Cloaked and hooded in the subtle colors of dusk, masked with stylized animal faces, they waited near the top of a hill in a dip that formed a natural amphitheater. Firefly lights glimmered around them. Aetherials had gathered like this, on sacred nights, for centuries.

  Auberon waited with one arm around Jessica’s waist. They wore fox masks; his was embellished with swirls of garnet and jet, hers surmounted by crescent moons. Her sister Phyllida stood close by with her husband, Comyn, both wearing the gold-and-onyx faces of bulls. Amid a sea of jeweled heraldic masks—all focused on Freya’s Crown, the rocky outcrop of the summit—they awaited the Gatekeeper.

  The Dusklands gave the landscape an inky cast and turned the stars to veils of frost. The beauty felt fragile with tension. Living like humans for so much of the time, it was easy to forget they were anything more; but on nights like this, Auberon felt the shimmer of power all around him. He sensed Vaethyr forms trembling to change shape, perhaps to stretch great wings or simply to glow with supernatural light; Vaethyr perceptions expanding to see through multiple layers of reality. His own body ached to unfold into a more imposing shape, that of a forest deity, stronger and wiser than his human form . . . They needed this ceremony, in order to reconnect with their true, ancient selves. After dancing in the beauty of Elysion, they would bring back its healing energies to Earth, as if trailing cloaks of green and golden light in their wake.

  If Lawrence ever came.

  This was the Night of the Summer Stars, the great ritual that fell every seven years, when the Great Gates to the inner realms would be thrown open. Many times in the past, Auberon had witnessed the heel of the Gatekeeper’s staff striking the stone, the rocks of Freya’s Crown shining and shifting as the Great Gates opened. He’d relished the crunch of a hazelnut on his tongue as he stepped through the infinite archway to the Otherworld. There were only adults here. When his children reached sixteen they, too, would be initiated.

  Auberon frowned. Rosie and Lucas seemed happy to accept their Aetherial blood. Matthew did not. No one had pinned him down to a reason. Perhaps it was teenage rebellion that made him roll his eyes and turn away if Aetherial matters were mentioned. Perhaps, thought Auberon, it’s my fault. Have I told him too much, or too little? How is a parent to judge?

  Freya’s Crown remained a dark, volcanic bulk against the stars. The Gatekeeper did not come. The crowd began to grow restless.

  “Something’s definitely wrong,” said Auberon. “Lawrence hasn’t been right since Ginny left.”

  “She left him because he’s never been right,” said Jessica.

  “And should never have taken up the staff,” said Comyn, his voice muffled by the bull mask. “I suppose you know the Lychgate has been closed against us for three weeks?”

  Lychgate was their name for the small portal that was always open, a tiny doorway within the Great Gates. “I didn’t know,” said Auberon.

  “No, because you’re too busy with earthly business as usual,” Comyn said gruffly. “What the devil is Lawrence playing at? Right, that’s it, I’m going to find him.”

  “No,” Auberon said firmly. He knew Comyn’s temper. “Let me.”

  “There’s no need.” A figure rose up beside the rocks. The voice came from behind the haughty beak of a hawk. “I’m here.”

  The Gatekeeper stood before them in full majesty, cloaked in black, blue and white, the applewood staff shining in his left hand, his hawk face that of a glaring deity. Four wolfish silhouettes padded after him. Silence lay on the Vaethyr, a collective held breath. Lawrence raised gloved hands and spoke. “My friends, the rite of the Summer Stars cannot take place. The Great Gates cannot be opened tonight. Go home.”

  There was a ripple of dismay. It grew louder as Lawrence began to turn away. Comyn’s angry tones carried over the rest, “What’s going on?” No answer. “Gatekeeper! Don’t you dare walk away! You’ve no right to deny us access! Hoi!” Comyn’s voice rose. “Who d’you think you are? You’re a doorkeeper, Lawrence. Do your job!”

  Jessica made a noise of agonized embarrassment in her throat. Lawrence stopped. Auberon saw the vulturine shoulders rising. He turned to face them again. “A doorkeeper? Let’s say a concierge, then. My job is to protect you.” The voice behind the mask was hollow.

  “From what?”

  “The inner realms are not always safe. You know that.” He seemed to falter. “At this time there are disturbances of energy . . . Storms.”

  “We’ll be the judges of the danger,” Comyn retorted. “Let us in.”

  The four shadows arranged themselves around Lawrence, becoming four corners of a square that contained him.

  “I’m not your servant.” Lawrence Wilder’s voice grew hoarse. “I was appointed Gatekeeper by the ancients of the Spiral Court. I am answerable only to them. I decide when it’s safe to open the portals; that is my duty. It’s in my gift to judge, not yours.”

  “What storms?” called Auberon.

  His reasonable question only seemed to make Lawrence angrier. “I have no choice but to seal the Gates for your own safety. Disperse.”

  The crowd swayed, defiant. Comyn squared up aggressively even though Lawrence, on higher ground, towered over him. Auberon stepped forward, hoping to calm things before a riot ensued. “Lawrence, please. This is a sacred night. To deny us is a devastating breach of tradition. It’s not just for our own benefit—the Earth needs the flow of Elysian energy as much as we do.”

  The impassive raptor face turned on Auberon. Lawrence seemed to stare down from a great height. “What, you think this will starve the Earth of magical blessings? Coming from you, intent as you are upon covering the landscape with brick and concrete, that is absolutely priceless.”

  Auberon drew back, stung. “At the very least, please explain.”

  “I owe you no explanation.” His voice rose, fierce and rasping. “Have you all grown so arrogant that you cannot trust the authority placed here to protect you?”

  “You’ve no authority!” Comyn tore off his mask and yelled, “How long have we known you’d pull a stunt like this? Open and stand aside!”

  There was a pause. To Auberon’s eyes, Lawrence seemed to waver as if in a moment of panic or doubt. Others began to shout too, only to fall silent as the Gatekeeper drew himself straight again. Then he held the white staff aloft and his voice cracked out, “As you wish it!”

  Lawrence extended the staff and touched it to the flank of Freya’s Crown. Lightning tongued the rock. A thin black split appeared.

  “There,” said the hawk mask. “The Lychgate is open. Those who want to pass through, go now, quickly. Be warned, however, that I will shut and bar it behind you, and the way shall not be opened again until I deem it safe—which may be a month, a decade, or a century. Your choice.”

  No one moved. Not even Comyn, who stood t
rembling. Auberon’s and Jessica’s arms tightened around each other. The collective aura of Vaethyr power seemed to shrink back, leaving them all diminished.

  “I can only assume,” Lawrence said thinly, “that, from your silence, you have decided to put your faith in me after all.” With that, he broke the applewood staff across his knee. The snap was like a detonation. The portal slammed shut at the same instant.

  “Now you will leave,” he said.

  Around him, the shapes of his four guardian dysir were swelling in size, becoming monstrous. Auberon had never seen such a sight before. If the change was illusory, it was still unutterably menacing. They became hellhounds, with glowing eyes and jaws dripping fire. The gathered Vaethyr began to retreat in shock. It appeared their Gatekeeper had declared war. Unthinkable.

  The soft blues of the night turned to harsh, red-rimmed black. Lawrence was drawing down the nightmare realm of Dumannios around them, filling the air with fire and demons.

  “Go.” His cloak became a flapping wing as he raised his arms. “I offered you a choice and you have chosen. Now go!”

  Comyn stood his ground for a few moments, until a dysir swung its great head at him, drooling flame. Even he could not withstand the illusion. With a curse he caught Phyllida’s hand, and they fled. As they went, Phyll looked back over her shoulder at Jessica, the frozen face of her bull mask perfectly conveying blank bewilderment. Auberon reached for Jessica’s hand, began to draw her away.

  The flight seemed to take place in slow motion. Turning in to the flow of Vaethyr streaming away down the hill, they ran in horrified panic and disbelief; and whenever they glanced back, the four huge hounds loomed like glowing coals, filling the sky, watching over their frantic flight.

  2

  Rosie in Wonderland

  For years afterwards, Rosie had recurring dreams about Stonegate Manor. Sometimes it loomed above her, a glacial castle without doors or even the smallest window to let her in. In other dreams, she would be inside, lost and frightened. Corridors changed, rooms moved. She searched, always with dread that a faceless presence lay in wait for her. When she tried to escape, in an ecstasy of panic, doors opened onto walls or staircases collapsed. Never once in her dreams did she escape the house.

  Five years had passed since the failed invasion of Stonegate. Since then, Rosie had glimpsed the house and its inhabitants only from afar. During school holidays, the boys were abroad with their father, or sent away somewhere, or unseen behind the walls of the manor. A few times, she’d been startled by a black limousine sweeping past, and realized with a shiver of fascination that the strangers behind the tinted windows must be Lawrence, Jonathan and Samuel.

  One encounter had been enough to leave her with a scar, as if someone had tried to cut her throat.

  There had been a horrible day in the winter following her ninth birthday. Matthew had come home bruised and bloody, his face swollen and knuckles raw. He’d fallen off his bike; that was the story he mumbled to his parents. Later, Rosie had found him in a corner of the rose garden, huddling behind the frosted skeleton of a hedge. “Did Sam do this?” she asked warily.

  His face was stone, his eyes red with angry tears. “Leave me alone, Rose.”

  “Oh, Matt, I asked you not to!”

  “Sod off!” he growled. “I met him in the lane. I demanded your necklace back. He laughed. We fought. End of story.”

  She knew that if Matthew had won, he would have been strutting despite his injuries. Anything she said—angry or sympathetic—would only compound his misery. It was all there in his posture: utter, anguished humiliation. “Come in, it’s freezing,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I’ll get him back for this,” he snarled, wincing with pain. With an ocean of suppressed rage, he added, “You keep away from him, Ro. He’s crazy.”

  Five years carried those events away from them. Rosie was fourteen now, Matthew nineteen. Looking back, it seemed that something had changed around that time; she remembered her parents being gloomy and preoccupied, serious-looking groups of Aetherials coming and going from the house and Uncle Comyn arguing with her father . . . They’d never told her what it was about. It had passed, but she couldn’t help associating the memory with spectral, impenetrable Stonegate.

  And then came the invitation.

  Rosie was in the sitting room in her party finery. She held the oblong of creamy card between her fingertips and read, for the tenth time, the curling italics.

  To Auberon and Jessica, Rosie, Matthew and Lucas.

  Lawrence and Sapphire Wilder request the pleasure of your company

  at Stonegate Manor for a Yuletide Masquerade.

  Date: Saturday 17th December

  Time: 8pm.

  Dress: Festive. Masks desirable but not compulsory.

  Bring your friends, all welcome!

  On the back, a handwritten note had been added. “Please do come! L. tells me it’s been too long and I’m dying to meet you all. It will be very informal and lots of fun. Let’s start a festive tradition! Love, Sapphire.”

  “I still think it’s weird,” said Rosie. “You don’t speak to them for years and then they invite us to a party?”

  “What’s weird is the words fun and Stonegate Manor anywhere near each other.” Matthew leaned in the doorway, blond hair flopping over his forehead. “They’d better have lager. I’m not drinking anything with fruit floating on top.”

  “God forbid any fruit should pass your lips, Matt,” said Jessica. She stood at the mantelpiece mirror as she tried to pin up her unruly hair, sliding hairpins in, impatiently pulling them out again. “I’d hate a vitamin to sneak inside you in the Trojan horse of alcohol. Ouch! Oh, bugger.”

  “Mum, stop messing,” said Rosie. “Why don’t you leave it loose?”

  “Because I don’t want the new lady of the manor thinking I’m a hippie chick.”

  “But you are a hippie chick,” Rosie said, giggling.

  “Rosie, you are terrible.” A smile hovered on her mouth but she gave Rosie the comb. “Matthew, make sure this child drinks nothing stronger than gin tonight, won’t you?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Oh, I’ll watch her,” he said ominously. It was rare to see him out of a rugby shirt, but his suit gave him the look of an elegant, spoiled undergraduate. “We driving up?”

  “Well, I’m not walking up that hill in these heels. Will your friends be there, Rosie?”

  “Mel and Faith, I hope. There,” said Rosie, happy at last with the gilded flow of her mother’s hair. “You look amazing.”

  Jessica was splendid in a white medieval-style dress with embroidered gold panels and fishtail sleeves. Rosie’s dress was of similar style, in burgundy velvet that echoed the red-wine glow of her hair. “So do you, dear.”

  “Apart from the makeup she’s troweled on,” said Matt, “for that fourteen-going-on-twenty look.”

  “It’s a tiny bit of lip gloss and eyeliner!” Rosie retorted. “No more than you’re wearing.”

  “Ha ha.” Matthew grinned. “Yes, I’ll bet the Wilders would love the pleasure of our company, all right—if the company in question was Fox Homes. I don’t trust ’em further than our cat can spit.”

  “Go upstairs and see if your dad and Lucas are ready, would you?” said Jessica.

  Matt obeyed, hands in pockets. Jessica turned to Rosie and spoke quietly. “It’s not true that we haven’t spoken for years. Your father and Lawrence are perfectly civil. Just not close, that’s all. Lawrence is . . .” She frowned and trailed off.

  “Have you met Sapphire?” Rosie asked.

  “Not yet. He was away for ages, then turned up a few weeks ago with a new wife. It’s strange. After Virginia left, I never thought he’d marry again. Never.”

  “Why not?”

  Jessica’s full lips thinned. “Lawrence is a recluse. If this woman’s persuaded him to throw parties and start festive traditions, she must have worked some kind of miracle upon him.”

  In Cloudcroft
, Aetherial festivals were often held alongside human ones; a natural merging, since Vaethyr liked to celebrate the changing seasons as humans did. The death-and-resurrection cycle of the year, the sacred dance into the heart of the Spiral and out again, the sun’s rebirth in December, the arrival of spring or the riches of harvest—Earth and Aetherial realms, although separate, still lay closely interwoven.

  Auberon swung the car between two sentinels of rough-hewn granite and onto a driveway that swept uphill between rhododendrons. Cars lined the sides, so they had to park some way down and walk the rest. The air was chill and sharp with drizzle. Other guests were converging on the house. Rosie could smell rain on their coats.

  She looked up at the house and shivered. Seen from this new angle, the manor was no less imposing. It reared into the night, but the leaded windows were aglow. Anxiety coiled in her heart.

  “Hey, Rosie,” whispered Lucas, pulling her arm so they dropped behind their parents and brother. “Remember that time we broke in?”

  “Yes, I still have nightmares about it.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  “Don’t say anything, will you?”

  “Course I won’t.” He looked solemnly up at the house. “What’s with our parents and the Wilders? They go all thin-lipped and huffy when Lawrence Wilder is mentioned.”

  Rosie spoke close to his ear. “I don’t know. All I can make out is that they think they’re too superior to associate with anyone, human or Aetherial. Dad hates that.”

  “It must be more, though, don’t you reckon?” said Luc. “There’s an ocean of things we’re not allowed to ask about until we’re, like, fifty years old.”

  “You noticed that?” Rosie laughed. She was constantly startled by Lucas’s perceptiveness. Intuition shone in his eyes. He was growing into a beautiful youth, with porcelain skin and black-brown hair. He had a quality of inner stillness and innocence, and not a cruel bone in his body. Rosie was proud of him. Everyone loved Lucas.