Grail of the Summer Stars (Aetherial Tales)

by Freda Warrington

  The road narrowed, climbing steadily as the landscape changed to a mix of farmland and rocks thrusting from rugged hills, dead bracken spilling over rough granite walls, gnarled bare oaks. Leicester had been damp and slushy, but here on the high ground of Charnwood Forest, the scenery was white with freezing fog. She couldn’t foresee the next ten minutes, let alone a future.

  “This reminds me of the Scottish Highlands, on a small scale,” said Mist. Neither had spoken for a while. “I can imagine Aetherials living here.”

  “And what are you going to say, assuming we can find them?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure Peta Lyon will help us.” Peta was Vaethyr, he’d told her; an artist colleague of Dame Juliana, who’d helped Mist-as-Adam. “If she’s even home yet.”

  The taxi driver hummed along to jaunty bhangra music on the radio, and showed no sign of interest in their conversation.

  “Might Rufus have come here?” asked Stevie.

  “Anything’s possible. If he sent the shadow elemental to attack us, he must know where I am, so there’s no point in trying to hide.”

  “I keep telling you not to be afraid of him, but after last night, I don’t blame you. What was that thing?”

  “I’m not sure. Strange beings emerge from the Otherworld, and Aelyr themselves go into different forms. It reminded me of a dysir—a sort of elemental guardian—but much nastier.”

  “Why did it steal the UCSO from you, but not from Frances?”

  “It was a disembodied being, sniffing around blindly for Felynx objects. All I can think is that when I touched the object, I made the Elfstone resonate in a way that allowed the creature to locate and physically touch it.”

  “Ugh,” she said. “Like the Nazgul in The Lord of the Rings?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said. She explained, and he pulled a horrified face. “Well, let’s hope it wasn’t a demonic wraith-king,” he said wryly. “I don’t know what level of conscious intelligence it had, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an Aelyr of some kind. If you think about it, what is consciousness anyway? What does it mean to be alive, or to be reborn? When I was elemental, I was conscious, but I had no thoughts or emotions. When I was Adam, I wasn’t myself. I was him, and he’s still part of me, but he’s not me. All that connects us is memory.”

  “It’s memory, then,” said Stevie. “I went to see my Nanny Peg—well, she’s not mine, but she was the only one of my last foster-family who liked me—and she’s got Alzheimer’s and doesn’t know who I am anymore. Is she still herself? Her body’s there, but her mind isn’t. It’s memory. Your personality’s no more than a cobweb without it.”

  Mist tilted his head to look at her. His eyes were shaded by the black fall of his hair. “What does it mean to be conscious at all?” he said. “Events are happening on the other side of the world, or the next street, the next room, and we’ve no idea what they are. People are living lives of which we’re entirely unaware. We’ve no more knowledge of them than we have of daily life before we were born. We might as well not exist as far as those people are concerned. We could be dead, or unborn. And they to us; they’ll never know what we’re going through, or what we’re talking about.”

  “I don’t what you’re talking about, half the time,” Stevie said with a grin.

  “Oh yes, you do. The Aetherial quality of being semi-mortal—I can’t call it immortal, because nothing can last for eternity—and all our phases of living for eons, turning elemental, then returning to life again … Please don’t think that death means nothing to us. Being violently evicted from your body is never fun. Nor is being trapped inside while your wounded flesh heals. Humans find eternal rest, or perhaps a timeless afterlife as some believe. But we never know what’s next, who or what we’ll be, if we’ll forget bliss or remember pain … That’s not easy to bear. If we’re reborn with no memory of our previous existence, what proof is there that we’re the same being? None. And if memory does return, still no proof that we haven’t absorbed energies from some other Aetherial, or even from a human. Adam’s still alive, but only through me. What does it mean?”

  “Aetherials are fluid, not here-and-gone like humans?”

  “Yes, but…” He tipped his head back. “I don’t know. But…”

  “What? You’ve been giving me strange looks ever since we met. Come on, say it.”

  “All right, at the risk of giving offense by stating the obvious … Stevie, I’m certain you’re Aetherial. Are you pretending not to know? I believe that’s why you came out of nowhere with your memory blurred. These things happen to us sometimes. It happened to me. I know how it feels, how frightening it can be.”

  Her breathing grew faster. He’d tried to say this to her before, she knew, and every time she’d pushed the idea away. “It’s no good asking me that. You might as well say, ‘I’m certain you’re really an octopus, or an Egyptian deity.’ I don’t know how I’m meant to feel different. I’m still just me. I know I’m loopy and damaged, but everyone’s damaged in some way. Aren’t they?”

  Mist made no immediate response. Then he said, “I’ve brought nothing but trouble to you.”

  “Can’t argue with that.” Again the thought of her lost career pierced her. “But let’s say you’re right? What makes us forget?”

  “Time. Changing form from physical to spectral and back again. Perhaps it’s a kind of protection, to forget horrors so we can make a new start. Or the unfathomable nature of the Spiral.” He paused. “Regaining the memories can be more frightening than losing them.”

  “So I’m in denial.”

  “Possibly.” He gave a slight smile, a hint of warmth that always disarmed her.

  “But you’re not looking at me and seeing exactly who I am, and why I’m like this?”

  “No. I’m not psychic,” he said. “I can’t hack into you as if you were a computer. You have a certain energy that I associate with Aetherials. And sometimes a small cat shape on your shoulder, which suggests a fylgia, though I’ve never seen one attached before and I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

  “God, you can see that?” She gasped, briefly speechless. “Fin saw it too. I feel like I’m going round with a tattoo saying ‘Weirdo!’ on my forehead. Honestly, Mist, enough. I need a drink.”

  “I can ask the driver to take you back to the station,” he said in a neutral tone.

  He was giving her a genuine choice: to walk away, if she couldn’t take it. That startled her more than anything else he’d said, made her slightly angry too.

  “Right. You can’t seriously think I’d come this far and not carry on?”

  He gave his irresistible smile. “You need a drink. I can see a pub.”

  The driver left them on a snowy village green in front of a pub called the Green Man. The slate roof was white with frost. Buttery light glowed from small leaded windows. Mist and Stevie wove their way between snowmen and giant snowballs, entered a cozy bar with a fire blazing in a grate and low, beamed ceilings. A handful of customers turned to glance at them. People always looked twice at Mist, but she noticed they seemed to be scrutinizing her with equal interest.

  Stevie sat in a booth and let Mist go to the bar, where he ordered two bowls of soup and two brandy-and-gingers. She heard him ask the barmaid, “Do you know Peta Lyon?”

  “Yeah, everyone knows Peta,” the woman replied. “Haven’t seen her around for a couple of years though. Think she went off traveling.”

  “Oh.” He gave a quiet sigh of disappointment. “Would you know where I can find her family?”

  “Put it this way, I know where they live, but I can’t give out people’s addresses to strangers. Sorry, duck.”

  Mist took a piece of paper from his pocket. “Actually, I have her address, but I don’t know my way around.”

  The barmaid glanced at it, nodded. “Woodhouse Lane. When you leave the pub, turn right, go up the street for a couple of hundred yards, turn right again. The village only has about five roads anyway, so you c
an’t get too lost.”

  “Thank you,” said Mist, and came to Stevie with their drinks. She sipped the fiery liquid and looked into the log fire, grateful for this moment of warmth. It was definitely a good idea to eat before they began exploring.

  “What are you going to say to Peta’s family?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure.” He sat back, long legs extended, boots crossed at the ankle. “I don’t know if she told them anything about me—about Adam, rather—or about Rufus. I won’t reveal details about Daniel’s disappearance, or who I am, or the fact that something’s happening but I’ve no idea what it means … What the bloody hell am I going to say, in fact?”

  Stevie grinned. His air of self-containment was usually inviolable. When he had a moment of utter helplessness, she couldn’t help but find it endearing.

  “I’m sure we’ll think of something,” she said. “Improvise. That’s all I’m doing, at the moment.”

  * * *

  The house was nothing special; a plain, brown brick box constructed between the wars, softened by a garden full of shrubs and conifers all grey with frost. A tall, intimidating woman answered the door. She wore her thick coppery hair in a messy updo, and was dressed in overalls covered in paint splotches.

  “Hello?” Her voice was attractively husky. “I’m in the middle of decorating, so if you’re selling something or recruiting for a cult, the answer’s no.”

  “I’m a friend of Peta’s,” said Mist. “You must be her mother, Mrs. Lyon?”

  She’d begun to close the door on them, but stopped, looking intently at Mist. “Yes, I’m Catherine. I’m afraid she’s not here. Gone backpacking with her friend Gill, presently tiger-spotting in Bhutan, I believe.”

  “Is there any way I can get in touch with her?”

  Catherine Lyon paused, weighing him up. “Only if I email and ask her to contact you, but we sometimes wait weeks for a reply or phone call. Anything I can help you with?”

  “I’m Mistangamesh,” he said quietly. “This is Stevie. I don’t know if Peta would have mentioned me, but she knew me as Leith, or Adam?”

  Her eyes opened wide. “Oh, my goodness. Yes, but aren’t you supposed to be…? Oh. Come in.”

  She let them in as far as a carpeted hall. Framed photographs were grouped on the walls: pictures of Catherine with a smiling, academic-looking husband, numerous photographs of five different girls with the same startling red hair—Peta and her sisters, Stevie assumed. Through an open doorway, she glimpsed a large living room covered in white sheets with a stepladder in the center. A miasma of emulsion paint hung in the air. For a Vaethyr family, the household was strikingly normal.

  Then she saw a framed sketch drawn in colored pastel, signed by Peta and dated two years earlier. It was a seascape with a figure rising like Neptune from the waves. Its face was Mist’s face.

  Stevie’s mouth fell open. Oh, gods, not more of this!

  “Forgive the intrusion,” said Mist. “I don’t know what I expected Peta to do, really. It’s only that she knows me … I’m lost. She might have had advice, or an opinion about…”

  “An Aetherial situation?” Catherine kept glancing from him to Stevie and back. Her demeanor was thoughtful and reserved. “Oh, she always has an opinion. Yes, she told me about you, and Boundry, and the trial of Rufus Ephenaestus … I can’t claim she told me everything, but she told me a fair amount. So, you came back after all! She’ll be so happy to hear it.”

  Mist shook his head. “No, don’t tell her. Not yet, anyway—I’d rather explain face-to-face. Anyway, if she’s not here, it doesn’t matter.”

  “What’s wrong?” Catherine pulled a rag from her pocket and began rubbing at the dried paint on her hands.

  Mist gave a wry laugh. “I’m not actually sure.”

  “Clearly something’s very wrong. Two Aetherials turn up…” She looked at Stevie. “… one with her fylgia hanging around her, which is not supposed to happen.”

  Oh no, not another one, Stevie thought. Glancing down, she saw the whitish form of her leopard winding around her feet.

  Mist ignored her comment. “A friend of Stevie’s went missing, and I suspect my brother Rufus has taken him, and he could be in danger. But I’m out of touch with the Aetherial network. I don’t know where to start.”

  “You’ve come to the right place,” said Catherine. “Cloudcroft, I mean. There’s not much I can do personally to help you. I’m working on a long-term project mapping all the little ways in and out of the Spiral around the British Isles, which is fascinating to me but probably not much use to you. I’ve heard nothing of Rufus beyond what Peta told me. So, I’m going to suggest you go straight to the person with his finger on the esoteric pulse, as it were. Go to Stonegate Manor and ask for Lucas Fox.”

  “Who’s Lucas Fox?”

  Catherine blinked. “You really have been away, haven’t you?”

  * * *

  Following Catherine Lyon’s directions, they took long chilly walk, past the Green Man again and towards the far end of the village. It was like walking through a Christmas card, thought Stevie: granite walls, thatched cottages nestled beside stone houses, windows shining yellow against the winter gloom. Passing the last of the houses, a big, friendly looking beamed place named Oakholme, they continued up a winding, unlit lane to the wide gateway that Catherine had described.

  Huge chunks of granite flanked the entrance to a driveway that curved up the side of a hill and passed out of sight. A small sign on the left-hand gatepost read STONEGATE MANOR. The wrought iron gates stood open. There was nothing to say either Welcome or No Entry! The lane and the fields beyond the hedgerows were deserted and desolate. She felt the temperature dropping, even as they hesitated.

  “Come on, then,” she said. “What are you thinking?”

  “That it’s a long, cold walk back into the village if there’s no one in. Did the pub have bed-and-breakfast? You must be cursing me for all this.”

  “Honestly, I’m tougher than I look.” She tugged his arm and they began to walk up the drive. “If there’s no one here, we’ll hurry back to the pub, warm up again, and call a cab. It’s not the end of the world.”

  Mist sighed. He put his arm around her, in his companionable way. “Every time I knock on a door, I have a vision of Rufus answering and standing there laughing at me. Hands covered in blood.” Stevie was about to reply with a witticism when he added, “Her blood.”

  He meant Helena.

  Her words died in her throat. They walked in silence. Presently she said, “Peta’s mother saw my fylgia too. Why?”

  “The fylgia is like a thread or an anchor that connects us to the Otherworld. It’s rare to see it. For some reason, yours has come loose and is following you around.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.” She shuddered. Mist was like a shadow guiding her into the underworld. She’d never felt so physically cold, nor so mentally unsettled in her life, yet she kept walking.

  “The fylgia is meant to be an inner guide, the source of our deepest wisdom.”

  “Mine never says anything. It only looks sideways at me, like it’s waiting for me to understand something I don’t get yet.”

  “That’s what they do. I’ve never seen mine—though I’ve sensed it once or twice—and I think Rufus’s must have slunk off in disgust centuries ago. I’ve no answer for you.”

  He spoke in a distracted tone, his fingers tightening on her shoulder. She assumed he was thinking about Helena and Rufus. As the slope rose, a landscape of wooded hills and dead bracken unfolded around them, shrouded in wintry fog.

  At the top of the hill loomed an impressive manor house with granite walls and a slate roof: almost a fortress. There were lights in the lower windows, an outside lamp illuminating a turning circle of gravel where a couple of cars were parked. Stevie let out a cloud of breath. These signs of modern civilization reassured her slightly, but Mist’s expression was set and his eyes cold.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’
ll knock. If Rufus answers, I’ll knee him in the groin and as he goes down, you get him in an armlock. He won’t stand a chance.”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “I’m not joking,” she replied thinly.

  They reached the portico that framed the front door. Stevie gave three knocks with a brass stag’s head and stood back. It was near dark, the sky thick with snow. One of the double doors opened and a slice of light fell across the step. A young woman peered through the gap. Slim and bright-faced, she had glossy brown hair swinging around her shoulders, silver eyes. She was dressed casually in black jeans and a thick plum-colored sweater.

  “Hello,” she said cheerfully. She opened the door, beckoned them in. “You must be Stevie and Mist? I’m Rosie Fox. Come in, we’ve been waiting for you.”

  * * *

  Entering Stonegate Manor was like stepping back two centuries into a baronial hall, full of ghostly undercurrents. The house had the eeriest atmosphere Stevie had ever experienced. The air was full of crackling energy layers, like her “migraine” moments, but definitely not inside her head this time.

  Rosie led them through the vestibule into a great hall two stories high surrounded by galleries on the upper floor. There was a vast stone fireplace at the far end surmounted by a coat of arms. Although a fire blazed in the grate, most of the heat was swallowed by the cavernous space. Rosie led them briskly across the hall into a cozier living room, full of warm light from a log fire. The far wall had French windows giving a view of a wild-looking rock garden edged with rhododendrons and birch trees. Rosie walked across and drew a pair of old-fashioned, flowery curtains.

  “Sit anywhere,” she said. “You both look frozen. It’s a nightmare trying to keep this place warm in the winter. Can I get you a drink? Hot chocolate?”

  “Thanks, that would be wonderful,” said Stevie. “How did you know we were coming?”

  “Catherine Lyon phoned us.” Rosie grinned, eyes shining. Stevie, despite being chilled to the marrow and as wary as a cat thrown into a haunted house, couldn’t help warming to her. “Nothing supernatural about it. Not yet, anyway.”