Before I could even imagine what to say in response, Aventurine gave a sudden lurch in mid-air. I slid forward and sideways in a horrible, slippery rush.
‘Argh!’ I flung my arms around her neck just in time to save myself from tipping into the air. My heartbeat thundered in my ears as I clung on with both arms and legs, panting hard.
‘Sorry,’ my best friend called back in a low, grumbling roar. ‘My wings aren’t used to flying yet. We’ll have to take a break.’
‘What, here?’ Sofia’s voice sounded froggy with snot and tears, and I felt a damp patch where her face pressed against my back. ‘But we’re still in the middle of the city!’
I looked down over Aventurine’s broad neck and sighed. ‘I know where we can land safely,’ I told them.
But I really wasn’t looking forward to it.
By the time we circled down to the riverbank three minutes later, I’d managed to pull myself back up into a sitting position, I’d brushed the last shards of glass out of my hair, and I’d straightened my nightgown as well as I could. As all of my old neighbours flooded out of their tents, staring and exclaiming and pointing up at us in the dancing light from the communal firepit, I fixed a broad, confident grin on my face. I even waved cheerily at them in greeting as we landed on the snow-dusted ground.
Nothing wrong here! This is a perfectly normal way for me to spend my evening.
But it wasn’t enough.
Of course it wasn’t.
As I met my brother’s gaze through the crowd of onlookers, his eyes widened in shock … but only for a moment.
Then Dieter sighed and shook his head, his shoulders sagging in resignation as he stepped forward.
‘Oh, Silke,’ he said. ‘What have you done this time?’
CHAPTER 21
This wasn’t how I’d imagined returning from my royal adventure.
I had planned to come back for a visit, of course, once the fairies were safely gone, so that I could tell the story of my fabulous victory to everyone who’d listen. Naturally, I’d be wearing my finest court clothes, and I would arrive in a grand carriage with at least four horses. I might be accompanied by a personal maid, and I would definitely be carrying my first month’s salary as the crown princess’s official right-hand girl, the one she could count on to do anything.
Then my older brother would finally, finally have to realise how wrong he had been about me!
Well.
As I looked down at him now, I sat astride a dragon, wearing a floor-length nightgown that had picked up dark smudges and a long, ragged tear along the hem. My face and arms were covered with cuts from flying glass. My fingers and palms were still sore from touching that burning-cold fairy web, and every time I lifted my hands off Aventurine’s hot scales, the cold air made my bruises throb like new all over again.
I slid off Aventurine’s back with a thump and landed barefoot on the snow-dusted riverbank.
Squelch.
My feet sank into cold, wet mud up to my ankles.
Sniffs and murmurs ran through the gathered crowd. I ignored all of them and kept my eyes on my brother.
‘Don’t worry,’ I told him. ‘We won’t be staying long.’
‘You …’ His lips pressed together hard and his face twisted as if he were trying to hold back some strong emotion. Then he gave a quick glance up at Aventurine’s back and his mouth dropped open. ‘Your Highness!’
He dropped to one knee on the muddy ground.
Gasps sounded throughout the onlookers. Moving as one, all of my gossiping, disapproving old neighbours lowered themselves deferentially to the cold, wet mud as Sofia slid down off Aventurine’s back after me, looking every inch the haughty royal that she was.
In the flickering firelight, I couldn’t make out any sign of the tears that I’d heard from her during our flight. Her eyelids might have been a bit puffier than usual, but her chin was jerked up just as arrogantly as ever.
… And she was actually wearing shoes! I could have murdered her for those, as the freezing cold mud between my bare toes sent shivers rippling up and down my body.
‘Quick!’ a voice called urgently from the crowd. It was Frieda, the one who’d always sniffed the loudest whenever she’d seen me leaving the family market stall for new adventures. ‘Someone bring a blanket for Her Highness! She must be cold!’
Seriously? I gritted my teeth together to keep them from chattering too loudly. Had no one even noticed that Sofia had a gorgeous dressing gown wrapped around her nightgown? She was probably the warmest person there!
‘Your Highness.’ Frieda’s husband, Hanno, hurried towards us, carrying a quilt that I recognised immediately.
Frieda had spent over a year haggling scraps for it from everyone who sold clothing on the riverbank, arguing fiercely for all of the clothes that she insisted were too ragged for us to sell. The finished quilt was packed full of deliciously warm duck feathers, and the sight of it bundled up in Hanno’s arms made a whimper of need rise up through my throat.
‘Here.’ Bowing – and keeping his gaze turned away from the massive crimson-and-silver dragon who crouched nearby – Hanno held the quilt out to Sofia. ‘Please. Wrap yourself in this, Your Highness, and come closer to the fire while you tell us all how you came to honour us with your presence. I beg you will accept our most heartfelt apologies for any –’ he sighed as he glanced at me – ‘inconveniences you may have experienced from any of our riverside family along the way.’
‘Thank you,’ Sofia muttered.
She took the quilt from him, but she didn’t follow his beckoning gesture towards the firepit. Instead, she stood with the warm quilt piled in her arms and her head lowered, worrying at her lower lip … until she finally swung around with a gusty sigh and held the quilt out to me.
‘Silke’s the one who should have this,’ the princess said. ‘She saved all of us tonight. Well, Aventurine did, too.’ She waved at my best friend’s looming, reptilian figure. ‘But she’s probably warm enough already – you know, dragon heat.’
‘Aventurine?’ Dieter had met my friend Aventurine-the-girl-from-the-chocolate-house at least a dozen times by now, but I’d never shared her real history with him. He swung towards her now, staring. ‘But … how –?’
‘I’ll explain everything later. I promise.’ I bit back a moan of relief as I swirled the big quilt around my shoulders and its cloak of warmth surrounded me. Just as I was about to wrap the corners tightly around my neck to anchor it, though, my gaze landed back on Princess Sofia.
Her arms were crossed at jagged angles. Her square chin jutted out as she scowled at the ground, ignoring the curious gazes aimed at her from every occupant of the riverbank.
She couldn’t have looked more arrogant or more sulky if she’d tried.
But I remembered words mumbled almost too quietly for me to hear during our flight, and my shoulders rose and fell in a reluctant sigh.
‘Here.’ I held out one arm to her, opening the quilt around me. ‘We’d better share it for warmth, don’t you think?’
She held still for a long moment. I braced myself for the scathing response that was sure to follow.
Then she gave a jerky, one-shoulder shrug. ‘I suppose so,’ she muttered. ‘If we have to.’
A few minutes later, we were settled on wooden chairs side by side in front of the firepit, with Frieda’s quilt stretched around both of our shoulders. It didn’t cover my whole body, of course – it wasn’t that long – but the fire burned steadily, and Aventurine settled her big head on her foreclaws nearby, breathing a constant stream of hot air that swirled around my legs and surrounded me in warmth and safety.
Dieter, Hanno and Frieda sat across the firepit, but the rest of the crowd had finally, reluctantly, withdrawn. They certainly weren’t asleep, though. Most of them seemed to have found one excuse or another to poke around the outsides of their thin tents. Everyone in the camp was listening as hard as they could to every word that we spoke.
This
wasn’t the story I had wanted to tell any of them. But with my older brother and two of our most disapproving neighbours all waiting for an explanation, I didn’t have much choice but to launch into it.
‘… So we crashed through the wall and flew away,’ I finished several minutes later. ‘Now Aventurine and the princess are safe, but –’
‘Goodness, child, what are you thinking? You’re not safe,’ said Frieda. ‘Do you think no one noticed you landing here?’ She shook her head, tsking loudly. ‘We’re still not used to dragons flying overhead in this city, you know!’
‘I know.’ I grimaced.
At least no one here seemed too terrified of Aventurine. Everyone had kept a safe distance from her when we’d first landed, but now that she was lying sprawled across the riverbank, her scaly eyelids drooping and the tip of her snout resting close to the fire, most people barely even bothered to skirt her bulky tail as they moved about their business between the tents.
Of course, we were used to unusual new immigrants on the riverbank.
Also, a thin trickle of drool was oozing out of Aventurine’s big mouth as she half dozed by the fire. It was hard to feel too frightened of anyone who was sleep-drooling, no matter how large or scaly they might be.
‘That’s why we can’t stay long,’ I told Frieda. ‘Well, and we need to go and get help, too, of course.’
‘Against the fairies?’ Dieter hadn’t uttered a word since I’d begun my story. He’d only hunched his shoulders tighter with every passing minute. Now, though, the words burst out of him like an explosion. ‘We barely escaped from them six years ago. Now you’ve walked right back into their midst on purpose?’
‘Dieter –’ I began.
‘Without even telling me?’
‘I tried!’ I gritted my teeth. ‘You wouldn’t listen. You never –’
‘After everything our parents sacrificed to save us from them last time? After –’
‘Wait, what?’ Sofia had been slumped beside me, listening without contributing, but now she jerked upright. ‘You two have met the fairies before? In Elfenwald, you mean?’
Frieda let out a huff of air through her nose and pressed her lips together, looking down at her pale, gnarled hands.
Hanno coughed pointedly.
‘Silke didn’t even tell you?’ Dieter shook his head as he turned back to me, his voice dull with a despair that burned against my bones. ‘You really don’t care about our family any more, do you?’
‘Of course I care!’ I nearly yelled. ‘Why do you think I went to work for the crown princess in the first place?’
‘What?!’ Dieter and Sofia both exclaimed the word at the same time in identical tones of horror.
I was gripping the quilt so tightly now, it was in danger of ripping. But so what if it did? I’d already ruined everything else tonight. Breaking one more cherished, precious thing wouldn’t make a difference.
‘I wanted to save them,’ I snapped, ‘even if no one else in this camp ever bothered to try!’
Frieda sucked in a hissing breath through her teeth. Outrage thickened the air around us.
‘Child –’ Hanno began heavily.
Before he could finish, Dieter jerked his chair back from the fire. Without another word, my brother turned and stalked away from me, out of the firelight and into the darkness.
The quilt shifted around my shoulders as Sofia turned to face me. She didn’t speak.
She didn’t have to. Her expression said it all.
Oh, fine. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to handle her older sibling. But who cared? Who cared what any of them thought?
I jerked my chin higher and tucked my bare feet closer to the heat of my best friend’s massive red-and-silver snout.
‘Well?’ I challenged Hanno. ‘How else would you describe what happened in Elfenwald?’
Wrinkles creased my neighbour’s face as he let out another sigh, suddenly looking years older. ‘It was all a very long time ago,’ he said quietly. His gaze fell to his hands, which were clenched tightly on his knees.
Frieda’s pale, knobbled right hand landed on top of his. ‘It’s old business.’ She scowled at me ferociously. ‘It is done.’
‘But it’s important now,’ said Princess Sofia. All of her sister’s cool authority rang in her voice as she straightened in her seat, tugging the quilt along with her like a royal robe. ‘Tell me,’ she ordered them. ‘What exactly happened to Silke’s parents in Elfenwald?’
CHAPTER 22
‘It all happened more than six years ago,’ Hanno said. Something crackled loudly in the firepit between us, and he leaned forward to stir the logs, looking down at them as he spoke to Sofia. ‘You know about the troubles up north?’
‘Of course.’ The princess sniffed. ‘I learned about them from my tutors ages ago.’
‘Well, then.’ He took a deep breath as he straightened, rolling out his shoulders. ‘You’ll know, then, that your parents issued a proclamation declaring refugees welcome if we could only find our way here to their protection. So we packed what we had left and fled – men, women and children all together in one long wagon train. More and more of us joined along the way.’
‘And you came through Elfenwald?’ Sofia frowned. ‘Why would you take such a stupid risk? It wasn’t even your most direct route. It must have taken ages longer to go that way round.’
‘Hmmph!’ Frieda shook her head, drawing her shawl closer around herself.
Hanno put one big hand on her knee. ‘No one wanted to go that way,’ he said mildly. ‘But not all rulers were as welcoming as your father … and there were those who thought that if they allowed us through their borders, we might never leave again.’
‘They sent their thugs out to turn us back,’ Frieda said sharply. ‘That’s what he’s trying to say. Every bully boy who ever wanted to feel strong came loping out from their village to stop us. They blocked our way, stole all the valuables we had left and threatened to do worse if we didn’t go back to where we’d come from.’
‘But we couldn’t go home. So …’ Hanno’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. ‘We had to take the risk, in the end. We voted on it and agreed.’ For the first time in the story, his weary gaze landed on me. ‘We all agreed,’ he told me. ‘Your parents both voted to take the Elfenwald passage. Your mother argued passionately for it when the rest of us were faltering. She and your father would have risked anything to bring you children to freedom.’
Then why wouldn’t anyone risk anything for them?
I set my jaw and glared into the fire. Flames popped as the logs shifted. Thick smoke streamed through the air to water my eyes. Aventurine’s head tilted on her foreclaws, and she let out a low, rumbling growl in her sleep that made Hanno and Frieda both give a nervous start.
‘Don’t worry about her,’ Sofia said impatiently. ‘She’s not dangerous unless you insult her chocolate.’ She leaned forward, pulling the quilt with her and pulling me with it. ‘Keep going with your story. What happened when you crossed into Elfenwald?’
Hanno and Frieda exchanged a look. As I watched, they inched closer to each other on their seats.
‘Nothing,’ Hanno said, ‘at first. We travelled all that first day without meeting a soul.’
‘They were watching us, though.’ Frieda shivered. ‘I felt it. We all did.’
‘Perhaps.’ Hanno grimaced. ‘But it was deathly quiet. No animals or birds in the woods around us. No people, ever. And we knew better than to camp overnight. But that evening …’
‘Golden lights in the darkness,’ Frieda whispered. ‘And a bargain.’
I couldn’t help it. A convulsive shiver rippled through me, and the faces across from me turned blurry. I was seven years old again in that dark wagon, with dancing golden lights all around us …
No. I wouldn’t be pulled down into panic again. Those lights in the palace hadn’t managed to hurt me, had they? We’d got away from all of the fairies when they’d tried to take us tonig
ht.
And I couldn’t afford to miss any details of this story – especially the parts I’d never heard before.
‘What bargain are you talking about?’ I asked.
And why hadn’t I guessed that one must have been involved? Those fairies had been talking about bargains all day.
I remembered Alfric, the red-capped goblin guard, in the secret corridor that evening. ‘I have made a bargain, so I must serve my masters …’
My fingers dropped away from the quilt as I sucked in a breath, looking from Hanno to Frieda’s pinched face. ‘What bargain did you all make to sacrifice my parents?’ I whispered.
‘It wasn’t us who made the bargain,’ Hanno told me. ‘They did.’
I jerked forward, but Sofia grabbed my arm.
‘Quiet,’ she told me, tugging me back down. ‘I want to hear this.’
Next to me, I felt Aventurine’s big head move. When I glanced down, I saw that her eyelids had flicked open. Her golden eyes were steady and alert.
I wasn’t alone. Not any more.
‘Fine.’ I settled back into my seat, but none of the warmth from the quilt or from Aventurine’s breath could stop the shivers rippling through me. ‘Tell us all the story.’
‘They were everywhere,’ Frieda said. ‘Everywhere!’ She threw her arms out. ‘One moment we were alone in the woods, and then those lights appeared all around us … along with them.’ Her face tightened. ‘They appeared on the path in front of us. Their skin …’ Her hands came back together, fingers clenching in her lap. ‘Even their eyes shone in the dark.’
‘They called us spies,’ Hanno said heavily. ‘It didn’t matter what we told them. They said we must be after their silver, or working for dragons …’ His eyes slid to Aventurine, then shifted quickly away. ‘They said they would lock us all underground, where we couldn’t give away their secrets. When we argued – when your father said he wouldn’t let them take his children anywhere …’
Raised voices – I remembered. And then our mother leaping out of our wagon with a sudden cry, leaving me and my brother behind.
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