Elfland

by Freda Warrington

“Holy fuck!” gasped Sam. “What the hell was that?”

  “You saw her?”

  “Yes, plain as anything.”

  “Oh,” said Rosie, trying to breathe. “It was the Greenlady. The dryad out of the Crone Oak. She’s been after me for years, complaining about blood on her tree . . . as if she knew it was going to happen and was begging me to stop it.” Rosie sat down at the table and put her face in her hands. “Why the hell didn’t I understand what she meant?”

  “How could you?” Sam said, running a hand over her hair. “Even if you had, how could you have prevented it? Our light—d’you think she’s talking about Lucas?”

  “The name Lucas means ‘light,’ ” said Rosie.

  “Your idea about checking the Gates wasn’t so idle, was it?” Sam said gravely. He was leaning on the table beside her and she longed to stroke his beautiful strong hand but she couldn’t look at him without remembering the lust and the guilt and the crash and her parents’ faces and Alastair dead and . . . it all came in a horrible circle back to Lucas dying on a machine.

  “Erm,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat. “I wish Dad was here. He’d know what to do—but I daren’t tell him what I’m thinking, because he’d forbid me to go. I can’t stay around the hospital with everyone staring and blaming us. I need to be doing something. At least, I have to try, Sam. Greenlady’s made the decision for me.”

  Abruptly, he moved away and started opening cupboards. “So, if you were going on a journey, is there anything you’d absolutely have to take?”

  “Bottled water, toothbrush and clean underwear,” said Rosie. “Why aren’t you arguing with me?”

  “It saves time.” He found a canvas backpack, began throwing food items into it. “Grab what you need while I write a note.”

  “Saying what?”

  “‘Gone on wild-goose chase,’” said Sam. “We’ll be back here in twenty minutes’ time, none the wiser, then it won’t matter what I write. C’mon, move yourself!”

  “Wow, you’re bossy,” she said flatly, but hurried anyway. She ran upstairs two at a time to her old room—almost afraid of the house in its capricious state—and seized a sweater and waterproof jacket. Would the deeper realms be icy cold or tropically hot? She had no idea. She borrowed a few of Matt’s belongings for Sam, while she was at it.

  Five minutes later, she and Sam were closing the kitchen door behind them. He hoisted the bag onto his shoulders. Outside, the Dusklands vanished. The surface world was ordinary; damp, chilly, the bare trees black against the greens of wet grass, laurel and holly. “You know, Matt and Faith are probably at a neighbor’s,” said Sam.

  “I’m sure that’s it. I won’t lock the door.”

  “Why have we come out the back? We can drive up to Stonegate.”

  “Oh.” Rosie hesitated. “On foot, though, we can sneak up there without being seen. And it feels right to walk—like treading a magical path. You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  “Goes without saying. Still, you’re right. If we take the car, Lawrence or Her Ladyship are bound to spot us, and that’s the last thing we need.”

  “Right,” she said resolutely. “D’you think we’ll need credit cards?”

  Sam laughed; he looked captivating when he smiled spontaneously like that. They made for the deeper reaches of the garden and the gap in the hedge. Crossing the stream that ran along the boundary of Oakholme and Stonegate, pushing through the foliage of evergreens and winter-bare branches, Rosie felt a sense of freedom. It was almost possible to believe that the nightmare hadn’t happened.

  She wasn’t even nervous as they climbed the rugged slope, since she had no preconceived notions about the Gates. She had to find Lucas, or rather his soul-essence; it was the only way to purge her guilt. Then she remembered Lawrence and a cold pulse went through her. Oh yes, a small matter of some terrible menace that was straining to burst through and devour them all . . .

  Away to her right, she heard a roar.

  She looked up and saw rocks, a lace of birch trees. A shape moved and was gone—only branches swaying. She climbed another two steps and heard it distinctly—a low snarl this time, from somewhere above them.

  “Fuck, what was that?” said Sam. “Sounded like no dog I’ve ever heard.”

  “Dysir?”

  “They don’t make any noise that I know of.” The sound came again. No animal native to the English countryside yowled like that. It had an undertone of human anguish. “Let’s try this way.”

  They veered left, heading around the skirt of the hill, all the while looking warily for the source of the snarl. Then there was a whispered call behind them, “Rosie. Rosie!”

  Freaked, she spun around. The whisper came from the deep banks concealing a curve of the stream. No one there . . . Instinct nudged her and she stepped slantwise into the Dusklands. At once she saw the top of a head below the dip, a glint of waterweed hair and dragonfly scales . . .

  “Sam,” she hissed, but he’d seen too. She ran and jumped down the steep bank, barely catching herself on grass clumps to avoid ending up in the stream. Sam rolled down beside her.

  There was Faith in full Aetherial mode, hiding behind dead, yellow reeds, apparently terrified. Heather was beside her. The child, in pajamas, was human in shape with iridescent hues gleaming in her baby-pink skin. “We’re playing hide-and-seek with Daddy,” Faith whispered, pointing a shining scaled finger at her daughter.

  “What?” said Sam.

  “He pretends to be angry and we pretend to be frightened. Don’t we, Heather?”

  The little girl nodded. She was round-eyed, apparently having bought the story. Rosie was horrified. “What the hell’s going on?” she whispered, pulling Faith round to face her.

  Facing away from Heather, Faith’s undine face collapsed into terror. She spoke quickly and so quietly that Rosie could only just hear. “Matt came home from the hospital last night, furious. He was raging about Sam and Alastair and everything. I tried to comfort him but he threw me off—I’ve never seen him like it. Heather must have heard; she started crying so I brought her downstairs—I thought if she was there, Matt would calm down. He didn’t. I begged him not to shout in front of his daughter, but he got angrier and said it was me making her frightened, not him. So I picked her up—and he came at us. I don’t know what he meant to do.”

  “Oh god, Fai . . .”

  “I don’t think he knew either. I panicked and stepped into the Dusklands—I couldn’t help it—and of course, as soon as I did, he saw me change. Saw Heather as she really is. Oh Rosie, the look on his face . . . If I’d thought he was angry before, that was nothing. It was as if the last person in his life he trusted had betrayed him.”

  “So you ran away?”

  “It’s worse.” Faith rose, anxiously scanning. “He came into the Dusklands with us. He changed too. As long as we stay in the water, he can’t see us.”

  “You’ve been hiding all night?”

  “Most of it . . . oh my god, he’s coming.” Faith slithered into the stream like a fish, taking Heather with her. The water was shallow but they both slid flat on their bellies among the rippling, freezing water and the glossy stones. They were fully submerged. Rosie was paralyzed, thinking Heather must drown—and then they disappeared. Became waterweed.

  Sam gripped Rosie’s arm, as if to stop her leaping up, which she’d no intention of doing. Above them, a creature was breathing. Its breath rumbled through a nonhuman voice box, a cavernous, toothed mouth.

  She peered over the lip and saw him, stalking the hillside above them.

  He was a beast walking on hind legs, predatory and terrible like a lion but stranger than any creature she’d ever seen. A pelt of thick fur covered him, a sandy gold striped with slate blue that darkened to near-black on the limbs. He held his heavy front paws like human hands. The facial bones were long and heavy, leonine but with still-human traits, the hair a long thick mane. The fierce head moved from side to side, scenting the air.
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  Rosie was transfixed. Matthew? She recalled the deformed furry hand she’d glimpsed. The paws were in full glory now, armed with thick black claws like sabers. His eyes were human-shaped but all black like an animal’s, and they burned with predatory hunger. The hair flowing down his back fused with the ridged spine. Matthew was monstrous, horrifying, magnificent.

  He roared again. The roar formed a plain word, “Faith!”

  She saw the shine of curved fangs that would crunch through an undine’s neck as if through a stick of celery. There was nothing in the eyes but psychotic rage. Could he even remember being human? What if he couldn’t turn back?

  The heavy head swiveled. He snuffed the air, then made his way along the stream bank in the direction of Oakholme. He prowled back and forth in the undergrowth there, cutting off their hope of returning Faith and Heather to the safety of the house.

  “You look after Faith,” Sam said urgently. “Go upstream, then head for Stonegate. Go that way,” his finger traced the western rise of the hill, “past Freya’s Crown, so that I can find you somewhere en route.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Lure Matthew away long enough for you to get Faith and kid to safety.”

  “Be careful,” she said, and Sam was away, running low behind rocks and bushes until she couldn’t see him anymore. Rosie scrambled to the water’s edge and touched the waterweed, which resolved into Faith as she slid upwards through the ripples. Heather popped up beside her, to Rosie’s relief, unharmed but tearful. “Sam’s trying to distract him while I get you to Stonegate.”

  “We fooled him again, didn’t we?” Faith said to her daughter. Her voice broke on the false brightness. Heather started to cry. “Hush, hush. Daddy will hear.”

  “Fai, she’s exhausted. So are you. You must be frozen.”

  “Can’t feel it.” Her friend climbed onto the bank, her child in her arms. Water rolled cleanly off them, like silver marbles off duck feathers. “What am I supposed to do?” said Faith. “I knew he’d find out. But I never—Ro, did you know Matthew could transform like that?”

  “No,” said Rosie, shocked. How had he kept it hidden all these years? “I had no idea. Follow me and keep low. If Matt reappears, I’ll stall him while you keep going towards Freya’s Crown, all right?”

  Rosie began to circle the hill to their left, climbing paths through dead bracken, bare oaks and holly. Faith was behind her, carrying Heather, breathing hard with strain and fear.

  Rosie had never been so frightened in her life.

  Once or twice she heard the rumble of Matthew’s voice, downhill to the east; but she kept going, deep into the belt of trees that surrounded the hill. Halfway, Rosie took Heather and discovered just how heavy a small child could be. At last she fought free of rhododendrons and came in sight of the bare peak with its crown of rock rearing against the sky. Her heart was pounding. Then she saw Sam running up from the other direction, wielding the backpack in one hand and looking all around him. No sign of the beast.

  His lean body was all energy, his face contorted with exertion. “Run!” he yelled, beckoning them towards the rocks. “He’s coming!”

  It wasn’t far, but it was steep. The Dusklands, it seemed, reached out to envelop them and Rosie saw the Great Gates in their true, awe-inspiring form—shining, monolithic, like some mysterious ancient burial mound. Rosie saw the crack in the rock face. It was distinct; a narrow but obvious aperture.

  “He’s crazy, I couldn’t hold him back,” Sam gasped. “Get yourselves into that gap in the rock. Quick!”

  She saw beast Matthew burst from cover on the far side of the clearing. Feral, raging, he came on like an unchained, slavering, furious guard dog. All that helped them was his lack of speed, because he ran on hind legs, not on all fours. “Sam!” she cried. Her voice hardly made a sound. She was stumbling under the weight of her niece. Sam was whirling the backpack like a slingshot to keep the beast away but it kept advancing, savage and relentless, forcing Sam back and back towards the Gates.

  Sam sprinted, leaving Matthew behind, and held out his arms in a protective gesture to shepherd them towards the dark gap. It hadn’t been her plan to dive in without caution, but suddenly there was no other escape. She ran straight in and felt the stone-cold alien air envelop her. Faith was on her heels.

  Matthew approached, roaring guttural words that turned her blood to slush. His cries were full of murderous anguish, as if no one in the world had ever suffered like him and all must shed blood to pay for it . . . She turned her head to see the tall wedge of dusk-light behind her and, silhouetted against it, Sam swinging the loaded backpack. She heard the whumph as it connected with the beast’s belly. Matthew fell with a grunt, lurching away and out of sight.

  Then Sam was running after them, gasping, “That’s slowed him up. Keep going, he’s not following.”

  There were rock walls pressing on either side. Raven blackness and a thin breeze carrying waves of fear towards her. Behind was a raging beast roaming the hill . . . but ahead lay moving darkness, all the shadows of Lawrence’s nightmares waiting for them. The breeze was their whispering breath.

  Every fragment of her human skepticism fell away. The Gates to Elfland were real. And Lucas had unlocked them.

  17

  Spiral Fire

  The fissure in the rock was cold and ink-black. Rosie, in the lead, felt her way with her feet and one hand, the other arm holding Heather against her shoulder. The darkness was like a physical force pushing against her.

  “What’s there?” said Sam.

  “I can’t see a thing,” said Rosie. “What if it’s a dead end?”

  “In that case we’ll turn and go back, feeling a right bunch of idiots.”

  “Not with Matthew waiting,” said Faith, her voice shaky.

  “I won’t let him hurt you,” said Sam. “Keep going.”

  How ridiculous to be afraid of my own brother, thought Rosie. The sweat turned cold on her body as she squeezed onwards, driven by panic, slowed by fear and the narrow press of the walls. The passage ran in a curve. She found vertical rims of stone in the walls, smooth hand-sized patterns of inlaid metal. Her hand crept over a clearly defined symbol; a spiral, emblem of the Otherworld.

  Heather reached at thin air and said, “Look at the sky, Mummy.” Rosie saw a brushstroke of navy ahead. She held her breath as if to plunge into deep water. “We’re there,” she said.

  They stepped out of the fissure and into the flowing, indigo twilight of a forest. This was not the world she knew, not even under Dusklands glamour. Tall black trunks reached to the canopy far above and the undergrowth swayed like seaweed under the ocean. The forest was monumental, enveloping. Full of moving shadows. The air smelled delicious, fresh and moist, tangling her fear with wild excitement. Elysion.

  “Get clear of the entrance,” said Sam urgently, pulling her and Faith to one side. Thorns snagged her hair. The portal was silver-grey rock like Freya’s Crown in miniature; the tall thin aperture framed by two fruit trees that leaned towards each other and clasped their branches above it. The flanks of the rock were clouded by bushes and briars. Before them, a green slope fell away, becoming a path that curved onto the forest floor and out of sight. The air rippled with ghostly shapes.

  They waited. No sound disturbed the ocean rush of the forest. No Matthew came leaping enraged after them.

  “Looks like Matt isn’t joining us,” Sam said grimly. “Take a good look around, so we can find the way back.”

  “Gods, we’re really here,” Rosie whispered. Heather was squirming in her arms, so she passed her to Faith, who kissed her and smoothed her hair, telling her, “It’s all right, cross Daddy can’t chase us anymore.” She transformed before Rosie’s eyes; scales fading, hair darkening, angel-fish veils vanishing. Faith was her usual self again, wearing a brown dress patterned with tiny white flowers, barefoot . . . just as she’d run out of the house.

  “Elysion,” said Sam with a half-smile. “You’re
amazing, Rosie.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” she murmured. “So Luc was right, he unlocked the Lychgate . . . but where’s the great peril that Lawrence warned us about?”

  “Don’t know,” said Sam. “Maybe it’s waiting . . . or invisible, or something.”

  A sense of watery movement all around disoriented her. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed semihuman shapes. They seemed to be watching, circling. “Lucas?” she called out, in the wild hope that he might be among them.

  As if in response, a low voice said, “Unbranded.”

  “What the hell was that?” said Sam.

  She caught his arm. “You heard it?”

  “This feels creepy. I’m thinking we should head down the path . . . Looks like no one’s been this way for quite some time.”

  They started downhill at a steady walk, anxiously scanning every direction. A thin silvery trail like a deer track threaded along the center of the broader path between the monolithic trunks. “We should stay on the track,” Rosie said, nervously joking. “It’s when you wander into the forest you get into trouble. My parents will go mad . . . I hope this isn’t a horrible mistake . . .”

  “Hey, you’re with me,” he grinned. “The master of horrible mistakes. It’s too late now.” He gave her a direct, firm look, as if to say, We’re in this together. Her heart twisted hotly inside her. She returned the look, telling him, Yes. I know.

  As they walked, the phantoms moved with them. “They’re following us,” Faith said uneasily.

  Sam turned to her. “Let me carry Heather. We’ll make faster progress that way. Don’t worry, they’re just . . . elementals, maybe.”

  Heather quickly fell asleep on Sam’s shoulder. In pink teddy-bear pajamas she looked tender and vulnerable. “Never guessed you were Aetherial, Faith,” he said. “You kept that one very dark.”

  “Long story,” Rosie said softly. “It was what I couldn’t tell you in the alley, remember?”

  “Ah. No offense, but it wasn’t in the plan to bring a child with us.”

  “What plan? Sam, we couldn’t leave them behind!”