When that same word emerged from the bird, the creature took off from its branch, startled, and flapping into the air. Gypsy ran after it, calling out. Her voice returned from above like a mocking echo, ringing through the woods.
‘What’s happening to me? Why can’t I—’
She broke off as the sound of a flute caught her ears. She turned towards it, catching sight of the bird swooping down from the branches.
‘Help!’ Gypsy had cried. ‘Somebody help me!’ She arrived in a clearing, where Piper stood with his flute at his lips, ashen-faced. He stopped playing when he saw her, dropping the flute and running to her. For the smallest of moments she thought she saw a figure behind him, all frizzled hair and bones, silhouetted in a shaft of sunlight. Gypsy had stared at Piper in fear and confusion, his expression mirroring hers. He turned back and spoke over his shoulder.
‘That’s enough now. Let the bird go—’ He cut off abruptly. ‘Hey!’ he yelled.
He turned back to Gypsy, his eyes wild. ‘Did you see where she went?’
Who? She had tried to say. This time the woods stayed silent. The bird was gone, and so was her voice.
‘Gypsy, I’m s-sorry . . . I never meant to,’ Piper stuttered. His face was pale, waxy with shock. ‘She said it was just a trick . . . to teach you a lesson. So I played the tune to the bird, and . . .’
He couldn’t go on. He didn’t need to, she understood now.
Her voice had been stolen because Piper had allowed it.
He spoke, stirring her from the memory.
‘You don’t believe me, do you? That I came back? I was still looking, you know.’
She shrugged. Six years was a long time. Piper could have changed. Back then she’d been able to tell if he was lying. Now, she had no idea.
He took something out of his coat pocket. She glimpsed a fold of cloth and a flutter of gold through his fingers. Piper took her hand and placed the object in it, then turned away, leaning over the side of the boat.
Gypsy looked down. In her hand was a small figure made of straw. It wore a white cotton dress and had golden embroidery thread sewn to its head for hair, and had two tiny green glass beads for eyes.
It was her.
Unexpectedly, she found a lump in her throat. So Piper had wanted to find her.
The town where they’d found each other, Fiddler’s Hollow, held a custom called The Summoning every year. Likenesses were made – little dolls of straw and cloth – and burned on a bonfire in the town square. It was said that if the magic worked, the person whose Likeness had been created would appear to whoever had made it and answer one question. It was a way of finding the lost, the disappeared, the dead.
‘Told you, didn’t I?’ Piper said quietly. ‘Never thought it’d work, but I was willing to give it a go. Only, I didn’t need to.’ He turned to face her, taking the doll gently from her. ‘I just played that tune . . . and there you were. Like I’d summoned you myself.’
Gypsy watched as Piper slid the Likeness back into his pocket. She remembered hearing that tune, drifting through the streets of that unfamiliar town. She’d followed it, heart racing, fists clenching, knowing she would find him at the end of it.
She gave a wry smile, shaking her head.
‘What?’ he asked. ‘What’s funny?’
She held a finger up, motioning for him to wait where he was. She went down into the cabin and took something from the little cupboard next to her bed, then went out on deck again. She placed the item in Piper’s hand. He turned it over, combing the honey-coloured wool hair with his fingers; smoothing the blue dress. Gypsy had used sequins for the eyes, but they were the same shade of green as the beads Piper had used on the Likeness of her.
‘Your mother,’ he said.
He didn’t ask why she hadn’t gone through with it; why she hadn’t burned the Likeness on the bonfire with the others. All her life she’d wanted to find her mother – or thought she had. But if what everyone said about her mother was true, then perhaps not knowing her was easier. At least that way she could pretend there was some misunderstanding, or that her mother would have had good reason to do what she did.
As if there could be any good reason for a mother wanting to kill her child.
She turned away so that Piper wouldn’t see her eyes glistening.
‘Gyps?’ he said softly. ‘It’s time we went home.’
IV
Winter had arrived in Twisted Wood, and Gypsy and Piper followed it soon after. Gypsy turned her key in the front door, breathing in the scent of home. Woodsmoke, bread and her papa’s tobacco all mingled into one and, after months of living on the water, the air felt so wonderfully dry and warm. She realized now how damp her clothes were, her hair was. Just being here made everything lighter.
She lifted her hand and tapped twice on the little shelf just inside the door. Almost immediately it was answered.
‘Gypsy? Gypsy, is that really you?’
And then Papa was in front of her, sweeping her into his arms, almost crushing the breath out of her in the ferocity of his hug. She laughed and squeezed him back, ready for his usual scoldings that she was too thin, but they never came. The hug froze around her and too soon he pulled away, staring over her shoulder at Piper.
‘You came back, then,’ Papa said.
Gypsy held her breath. Piper said nothing but she knew he was squirming.
Papa hesitated, before pulling Piper to him, into his arms. ‘Welcome home, both of you.’
They talked and talked as Papa made dinner, and Piper lit a fire, and Gypsy brought in armfuls of clothes from the boat, Elsewhere, to be washed. Then they sat and ate and talked some more until their eyes were heavy with sleep and their stomachs with food. Gypsy watched Papa’s face, orange in the firelight. The lines around his mouth and eyes were deeper since she had last seen him, a reminder that he wasn’t a young man any longer. Nor was she a little girl, but even so, she’d been careful to keep the tattoo on her neck hidden. Papa didn’t know about that – yet.
She told him about the places she had seen, the people she had met. How she and Piper had come to find one another again. Papa listened, reading the words off her lips and speaking them aloud for Piper to hear, too. And still . . .
Still . . . none of them mentioned the reason Gypsy had gone off in the first place, the thing she had been searching for. None of them mentioned her voice. They all knew that the fact she had returned without it meant she had failed.
It was late when talk turned to her mother. ‘There’s nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know,’ Papa said, stoking the fire hard. ‘Lydia was a Romany. There was a way about her that drew me in.’ He stared into the flames. ‘I’ve often wondered whether she enchanted me somehow. She was always dabbling, mixing cures and ointments; she’d learned it all from her folk. Old magic. She even bewitched most creatures. Birds would eat from her hand and she’d charm mice out of the kitchen just by singing.’ He paused. ‘Though she never liked cats or had control over them.’
‘Is that why she drowned them?’ Piper asked, with an apologetic glance at Gypsy.
Papa shrugged. ‘The night Lydia was born, her mother’s cat had kittens, but they died as there was no one to tend them. They were all too busy with the baby to notice. Lydia believed that was why she had no way with them, that it had left a mark on her. A curse.’
Do you think she’d have known how to undo my curse? Gypsy wrote.
Papa hesitated. ‘I was hoping to ask her that myself—’ He raised a hand for silence at their indignant interruptions. ‘Yes, I went looking for her. I thought she might have returned to her people.’
And had she? Gypsy asked, wide awake now.
He nodded. ‘She had tried. But they’d heard about what she did . . . to you. They cast her out. And I’ve never heard of her since.’
The night gave way to the early hours. Soon Papa could stay awake no longer.
‘I’m happy you’re home,’ he murmured, rising from his c
hair and kissing Gypsy’s forehead. ‘You, too.’ He patted Piper’s shoulder, pausing. ‘There’s no extra bed made up but the chair’s comfortable enough.’
He left them alone, staring into the fire. She and Piper were sitting on the rug before the hearth. Before, when they were younger, there would have been a scramble for Papa’s chair, but now, neither of them moved. ‘You should go to bed, it’s late,’ Piper whispered.
Gypsy shook her head faintly. She wasn’t sleepy. She stiffened as Piper’s fingers brushed against her neck, pushing aside her hair.
‘When you gonna tell him about that?’ he asked, nodding to the scorpion tattoo.
She shrugged. Her face felt hot, but not from the flames. She hadn’t sat this near to Piper for a long time. He felt familiar and like a stranger all at once. Slowly she turned to look at him, and found his eyes, dark and watchful.
She had loved him before, they both knew that. It wouldn’t have been possible to hate him so deeply if she hadn’t loved him first. Blood rushed through her body and pounded in her ears.
All she could think was, He came back.
He stared at her, almost for a beat too long, almost a hesitation where either one of them could have reconsidered. But then, they kissed. Of course they kissed.
Too soon he broke away. ‘Gyps,’ he whispered, stroking her hair. He leaned forward, touching his forehead to hers. ‘Your papa . . .’ He kissed her again, light and final.
She nodded, unable to look at him. In silence they laid down on the rug, both facing the fire, and he held her still.
Papa wouldn’t be so shocked, surely? He’d seen their bond, growing up, and how devastated Gypsy had been when Piper had left. They weren’t brother and sister, weren’t related by blood.
It was an excuse, a lie. But she would go along with it.
The real reason was unsaid. Unsay-able, by her at least.
Eventually the flames died down. She waited until Piper had drifted to sleep, then eased out of his arms, creeping to her room. It didn’t matter that Piper had come back. What mattered was that he should never have left her in the first place.
V
A week passed. Gypsy settled into life on dry land once more. Papa checked Elsewhere over, noting a few small repairs, but nothing that made the boat unusable. Once she went on to it, lighting the burner and trying to write in the snug, but it was too cold, and she found she wanted to be near Papa. Or at least, not to be alone.
She and Piper had not acknowledged what had happened. They had barely seen each other, for he hadn’t taken up Papa’s offer to stay, instead choosing to pay for a room in a local alehouse called The Mermaid’s Dagger. There, he’d also taken up with a band of musicians to play live music in the evenings. She wondered why he chose to stay in Twisted Wood at all.
Papa noticed, too. ‘You can’t punish him for ever, my girl,’ he’d said. ‘Everyone makes mistakes. Piper wasn’t to know that a childish prank in the woods would cost you so dear.’
Gypsy shook her head; Papa didn’t understand. She had known from the moment she returned home that she wouldn’t go searching for her voice again, nor her mother. It wasn’t about that. So instead, she patted Papa’s hand, and told him, I know I’m not going to get my voice back, Papa. I don’t want to keep searching for something that’s gone. I want to be happy for what I do have. Bad things happen to people all the time, and they learn to live with it. I can live with this. I already am living with it.
Papa kissed her forehead. ‘Wise words,’ he said. And Gypsy took comfort from that, because she knew he meant it. And oddly, she did not feel like she was giving up. She felt like she was letting go. Perhaps Papa was right and she was wise. He’d been wrong about one thing, though. She could punish Piper for as long as she wanted.
However, Gypsy was wrong, too. She was about to discover that lost things often reappear when they’re no longer being looked for . . . and then, much closer than expected.
It was her ninth night back in Twisted Wood when Gypsy unexpectedly needed to buy some milk. There should have been plenty, but the bottle she’d opened was sour. She set out for the shop, shivering in her thick coat and letting her mind conjure stories of cross house fairies making the milk go off. It wasn’t a long journey, but she hurried, not just because of the freezing wind, but because it took her past The Mermaid’s Dagger. She couldn’t help looking in the window as she passed, then wished she hadn’t. Piper was leaning over a table in a corner with the landlord’s daughter, Jess. She felt sick, sure then that something was going on between them. This was the third time she had peered in and seen them sitting so cosily together.
She stomped past, returning minutes later with a refusal to look again and thoughts more sour than the milk she’d replaced. Head down against the bracing wind, she didn’t see the figure rushing out of the alehouse door in time to stop herself colliding with it.
The milk flew out of her hand and smashed, turning to slush as it ran over the icy cobbles. She stared up into the face of the person she’d bumped into, shocked to see it was Piper. She lowered her gaze and went to step round him, but his hand shot out and took her wrist.
‘Just who I was coming to see.’ His voice was low and urgent. ‘Come with me.’
Warm air that smelled of stale beer hit Gypsy’s cheeks. She followed Piper to an alcove next to the fire. They both took a seat at the small table, and Gypsy waited for him to take off his coat or offer her a drink, but he did neither. She stared at him, her heart racing. His dark eyes were moving quickly, studying her face in a way that was excited, yet nervous. Maybe she’d been wrong, the other night. Maybe he did love her enough, after all.
She pressed her hands between her knees: she wouldn’t let him see them trembling.
‘Gyps, something happened today.’ Piper cleared his throat. ‘I would’ve come to get you earlier, but I was working—’
‘Hey, Piper!’ a voice interrupted. Gypsy turned to see a large man drying glasses behind the bar, watching them with a sly smile. ‘Time you stopped charming the ladies and gave us a tune, ’ent it?’
Gypsy’s stare at Piper cooled a couple of degrees.
‘I’m on a break,’ Piper said evenly, without turning round. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. ‘Acts like he’s the one doing me a favour by letting me play here. Only favour he’s doing me is giving me somewhere warm. I’m the one who keeps the money coming in. He used to say I was bad luck. Him and everyone else.’
Gypsy remembered, too. Piper was a foundling, something that always drew suspicion in Twisted Wood. She’d heard it muttered throughout their childhood: If your own parents didn’t want you, then why should anyone else? Similar things had no doubt been said about her, after what her mother had done. But the difference with Gypsy was that she still had Papa.
‘Anyway.’ Piper blew out a long breath. ‘There’s this girl . . .’
Gypsy felt as though the fire had gone out, like a blast of icy air had snaked round her heart.
‘Wait,’ Piper muttered as a slight girl brushed past them carrying a basket of logs. ‘Here she is.’
Gypsy turned to look at the girl who set the logs on the hearth. She was young, with a small, worried-looking face that reminded Gypsy of a scared rabbit.
‘Maggie,’ said Piper. ‘Here a minute.’
The girl came closer, chewing at her thumbnail.
‘Sit down,’ Piper said. ‘Tell her what you told me,’
The girl took a seat, fidgeting. Gypsy sat up straighter, sensing this wasn’t what she had been expecting – dreading – after all.
‘She works here, doing a bit of cleaning and cooking, that sort of thing,’ Piper said. ‘I never really spoke to her before today, but I was here when she came in to get her wages. And while she’s waiting for him to bring them, she starts humming this tune . . .’ He paused, his voice gentler now. ‘Go on. You’re not in no trouble – just sing that tune, the one from earlier.’
Maggie shuffled in her seat, then
quietly, so that Gypsy was straining to hear, she began to sing.
‘I will seek you, I will find you
Wherever you may go . . .’
Cold seeped throughout Gypsy’s body. She raised her hand and the girl halted. She didn’t need to hear any more. Did this girl know the old woman who had taken her voice? Had she been there, that day, watching and listening?
‘I asked her where she’d heard it,’ Piper continued. ‘She said . . . she said she’d only started working here a few weeks before we came back. Before that, she worked at Larkwood Hall.’
A chill ran over Gypsy’s skin. She had never seen the place, but she’d heard of it; a once-beautiful mansion owned by the wealthy Lord Larkwood. The story went that the man had everything, more than his money could ever buy . . . and yet he still hadn’t been content. One night, a fire had burned the grand house to a shell, taking half its occupants with it. Larkwood survived but was half-mad from grief and now a recluse.
Quickly, Gypsy pulled out her little notebook and opened it, reaching for her pen.
Who sang this? she wrote.
‘I – I never saw who it was.’ Maggie’s voice was little more than a whisper. ‘I just heard it sometimes, coming from a room in the North Wing. A female voice.’
Did you ever go into that room? Gypsy scrawled, impatient. How long did you work there for?
‘Five years,’ Maggie replied. ‘During that time I noticed the voice changing.’
‘Changing?’ Piper asked.
Maggie nodded. ‘Growing older. When I first heard it, it sounded like a child. By the time I left it sounded like a young woman. I never went in – the room was always locked. Once or twice I tried speaking to it but it just stopped. I even asked Larkwood for a key once, but he flew into a rage.’
A tremor went through Gypsy’s body. It was her voice; she knew it in her bones. Her voice was in that house.
‘You’re going to go there, aren’t you?’ said Maggie, wide-eyed.
Gypsy nodded, clenching her jaw.
‘You shouldn’t,’ Maggie whispered. ‘It’s a terrible place. Even if you get in the house, he’ll never let you into that room.’
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