“One more thing,” Digby said, pulling something from his pocket: a square of sacking. “Here. Wrap this around your head. Can’t have folks seein’ your hair an’ guessin’ who you is. You never know where spies is lurkin’.”
Jemma took the sacking and tied it on. Her hair marked her, she realized, but even so, the idea of having to hide it annoyed her. Besides, the burlap stank of parsnips—her least favorite food. “Ugh! You might have rinsed it out, Dig. And it’s so scratchy!”
“Sorry, m’lady.” He tucked a stray lock into her makeshift scarf.
“I forgive you, I suppose.” Jemma glowered at him.
“I sup-pose,” he mimicked, making a face. She smiled, despite her momentary irritation.
“All right, all right, you win!”
“Course I do.” Digby gave her a leg up into the broad saddle and sprang up to sit behind her. “Why, Jem—look at that! There’s no Mist around your hands!”
“It’s been that way since Monday,” she said. “My birthday.”
“Really? Well, well. P’raps Flora was right, an’ you is magic.”
“It doesn’t exactly do anything though, does it? I mean, it’s just a clear space.”
“We’ll see,” he said, shortening the reins and kicking Pepper forward. “Time will tell.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Fire-Branded
Saturday morning/afternoon
The world looked different from Pepper’s back: larger, and wider, giving Jemma a sense of invincibility. Digby held his left arm around her as the path meandered between gorse and hawthorn brush, and she soon got the feel of balancing in the saddle. She marveled at the scene unfolding to her: shadow bushes, crouched in the Mist; the odd shack, looming from the white, then being absorbed into it again; the pale orb of sun, low in the sky. In the distance, the Stoat River lapped gently. Digby urged Pepper into a trot, and held Jemma more tightly. She closed her eyes, amazed by how so simple a thing could ease so much of the past few days’ terror. Even the distant clang of the castle bell tolling the noon hour didn’t ruffle her contentment. But it didn’t last long; a few minutes later, she felt Digby tense up.
“Mord’s spit!” he said. “Up ahead …”
Jemma opened her eyes. At the top of an incline, a group of twelve or fifteen people—men, women, and three children—were milling across the path. They looked cowed and nervous, their clothes ragged, and seemed to be haloed by gray, which disappeared when Jemma blinked.
“Who are they?” she asked, her stomach knotting.
“Hazebury folk.”
“But … they can’t be!” This were not at all how she had pictured them.
“ ’Fraid so. Flora must’ve told Tiny and Simon she was goin’ to come an’ see you. They prob’ly want to get a peek at you too, Jem, jus’ like Flora did. Say nothin’ an’ jus’ play along, all right?” Digby pulled Pepper to a halt. “Mornin’, Mrs. Jenkin, Mr. Scragg. Mornin’, all.”
Jemma looked at the eyes staring at her from sallow, drawn faces.
“We come to see the Fire One,” a young boy said. “ ’Tis her, in’t it, Digby? Tiny said—”
“No, Ned. Tiny got it wrong. This is … my cousin. I’m jus’ takin’ her home to Yarville.”
The crowd shuffled from foot to foot, making Jemma nervous. Then one pointed at her. “Look, her hair …”
A long strand of red blew across Jemma’s face. She hastily tucked it back into her scarf.
“It’s her.… It’s her.… The one from the Prophecy.…” Their voices reminded Jemma of a mournful wind blowing around the castle towers. Several hands reached out and clutched at her breeches with desperate fingers. She recoiled inwardly.
“Easy, everyone, easy,” said Digby. “Look, I’m sorry, I din’t want to lie. But them Agromonds will be out huntin’ for her. Them, or their spies. So listen, careful-like. Any strangers come to the village, you mustn’t tell ’em you seen us, all right? ’Specially not any Inquisitors.”
“No worries, lad,” said an elderly man at the back, who had a shred more spark in his voice. “We won’t say nothin’. Will us, eh?” A dreary chorus of “no’s” murmured around him.
“Thanks, Mr. Higgs. Much obliged. Be seein’ you, then.” Digby kicked Pepper onward and the gathering parted to let them through. As they passed, the boy named Ned grasped the cuff of Jemma’s breeches, then held on as he trotted alongside, his brown eyes staring up at her.
“Bring us back the sun, won’t you, Miss? Please …”
Pepper crested the incline, and Ned let go. Jemma peered back at him, silhouetted in the Mist. He looked almost as bedraggled as the phantoms. Yet another, she thought, asking me to help. She turned away, her unease growing.
“Too bad they seen us close up like that,” Digby said as they reached a furrowed track at the bottom of the slope. “Tongues wag, no matter what they promise.”
“Digby, what did Ned mean, ‘Bring back the sun’? And … who’s the Fire One? Flora mentioned that too.”
“Ah. Right.” Digby cleared his throat. “There’s this Prophecy, see, hundreds of years old, sayin’ how someone with hair the color of fire is goin’ to come an’ free Anglavia from the Agromonds’ rule, an’ make the Mist go away. People want to see the sun, like in olden times, only they’re not even sure what it looks like.”
Jemma thought of her own longing. “I know how they feel.”
“This person,” Digby continued, “they call the Fire One. Or sometimes Fire Warrior. Only in your case, I s’pose it’d be Fire Warrioress, eh, Jem?”
Jemma felt as though snakes were curling around her innards. She had never told anyone about her private incantation, not even Marsh. “But why me?” she muttered. “It can’t be me! Dig … you don’t think it’s me, do you?”
“Well, I can’t say as I ever believed in the Prophecy before. Just some musty old story, I thought, never bein’ one for superstition. But now … I mean, your hair … an’ that clear air around your hands … You got to admit, Jem, it’s weird.”
“But … a Prophecy? Freeing Anglavia?” She thought of Nocturna’s words to Nox last Mord-day night, expressing her fears that Jemma might “fulfil the Prophecy,” and about what Shade had said to Feo about the danger to them if Jemma were to be Initiated by her real parents.
“They didn’t just take me to get my Powers,” she murmured, realization dawning on her. “They took me to stop me from making the Prophecy come true.” Freeing Anglavia … bringing back the sun … It weighed in her gut, like entrail stew. Had a part of her always known, somehow? She’d hated the Mist for as long as she could remember, after all, and had made up her Fire Warrioress incantation when she was only six. And just yesterday, finding her parents in time to be Initiated had felt like a mission that wouldn’t wait. But now that others seemed to expect something of her too, it was overwhelming. She looked up at the wan orb of sun, and sighed.
From nowhere, words floated into her head: Leth gith bal celde … The same words she’d heard in Bryn’s cave. Was it some kind of message? An anagram, as she’d thought back then? She tried reordering their letters, but they made no sense. It must be a foreign language.
“Look, Jem,” said Digby, “here’s the moors. Now we can put some distance between us and them Agromonds. Hold on!” He kicked Pepper into a gallop.
Jemma fell back against him with a gasp of surprise. The momentum whisked all apprehension from her, and she let out a whoop, loving the feel of wind buffeting her face, the sound of Pepper’s hooves pounding the ground, and the way the trees appeared out of the Mist, then receded as they sped past. Her heart soared as she leaned into Digby, losing herself in thoughts of daring rescues in vividly colored landscapes until he pulled back in the saddle and slowed Pepper to a brisk walk.
The Mist was slightly thinner now, revealing more of the countryside: rising hillocks, broken fences, barren trees. The Stoat’s babble was gone. Noodle and Pie, having climbed from Jemma’s pockets, were twined in P
epper’s mane on either side of the pommel, noses twitching. Digby eased Pepper off the track and onto a path winding between heather and gorse. He pulled up near a cluster of derelict stone cottages, then slid to the ground.
“Time for a quick leg stretch an’ some lunch,” he said, helping Jemma down and untangling the rats. She was surprised how wobbly she felt after no more than an hour of riding—and how hungry. Soon they were sitting under a tree, tucking into Digby’s mother’s ox-dripping sandwiches, and swigging milk—which Digby’s family evidently preferred fresh—while Noodle and Pie snoozed, their bellies still round as pomegranates from breakfast. Jemma untied her burlap scarf and pulled it off, shaking her hair loose.
“Just while we’re here,” she said, before Digby could protest.
“An’ you think you in’t the Fire One!” He chuckled. “Look jus’ like a fox, you do.”
“Didn’t you tell me once that people hunt foxes, though? I don’t want to be hunted, thank you very much. Unless it’s by you …” She glanced at him, and smiled. “How did you find me, anyway?”
“Oh. Right.” Digby chomped into an apple, talking as he ate. “Well, Pa an’ me went up to the castle as usual las’ Tuesday, an’ you, of course, wasn’t there. Mr. Drudge, he kep’ sayin’ you’d gone, an’ how I had to find you. On no account was I to go far into the forest, he said, but I was to wait for you near the road. I’d find you there sometime after Friday evenin’—by Saturday mornin’ at the latest.”
“Dear old Drudge.” Jemma’s heart warmed, thinking about the old man.
“Dear ol’ Drudge? But you always hated him!”
“I was blind, Dig.” Jemma felt herself blush. “He … he’s amazing. He helped me, gave me food and drink, and this cloak.… But how on earth did you understand him?”
“I always was a tad more patient than you, Jem.” Digby took another bite of apple. “Anyways, at first I thought he was jus’ bein’ his usual weird self, spoutin’ off like that, but I soon realized he was serious, an’ as the hours went by, it ate into me more an’ more. By the end of the day I was that worked up with worry, the thought of waitin’ three whole days till Friday … I jus’ couldn’t. So I decided to start lookin’ for you that night, Tuesday, no matter what Drudge had said. Ma an’ Pa tried to talk me out of it—fretted as cats about to lose a kitten, they was—but I told ’em, I couldn’t let you down, an’ I’d go with or without their blessin’. I was all set to leave—jus’ before midnight, it was—when someone starts bashin’ on our door—”
“Tuesday night! The lady Flora mentioned … was it—”
“Marsh? Yes, Jem, it was.”
“She’s alive!” Jemma threw her arms around him. “Thank goodness!”
“Whoa, Jem!” Digby laughed, and Jemma sat back, listening intently as he continued. “So there she was at our door. Pa an’ me, we barely recognized her, she was so tore up. An’ Jem, I should tell you … she had a bad fight with somethin’, an’ … an’ she lost.…”
“Her hand; I know—but she’s alive! Alive! Is she all right? Where is she?”
“Yes, she’s all right. We bandaged her up, an’ next day she left for Oakstead to find your folks an’ tell ’em what had happened. She’s got a lot of Power, that one, recoverin’ as fast as she did.” He shook his head in admiration. “Told Ma, Pa, an’ me all about it, how she trained for years under your pa’s parents—your grandparents—long before you was born. Could’ve knocked me over with a feather, Jem.… We’d heard of the Prophecy—most folks has—but we had no idea that it was you! She said you had no clue neither, an’ I should break it to you gentle-like, if it came up.”
Digby went on to relate the story Marsh had told that night, adding to the one Jemma herself had so recently learned about her abduction and the Agromonds’ plot to steal her Powers. At first, her parents and Marsh had been afraid that the Agromonds had killed her. But then word came that she was still alive. (“The fella wot used to deliver to the castle before Pa,” Digby said, “he was told by one o’ the servants, an’ told his missus. Word gets about, y’know.”) Still, her parents had been powerless to do anything: not only did the Mist prevent them from rescuing her, but the Agromonds had put a spell on them, weakening them further. They’d no longer had the strength even to leave Oakstead. They’d been desperate. So Marsh insisted she’d go instead.
“She loved you more’n anythin’, see, next to her husband,” Digby said. “So since the Agromonds had killed him, she had nothin’ to stay in Oakstead for—”
“Wait—her husband? They killed him? But … she never said she was married!”
“Course not, Jem. She couldn’t tell you anythin’ that might give away who she really was. Her husband, he was drivin’ your parents’ carriage the night you was taken.”
Jemma’s mind flicked back to the newspaper articles: Felled coachman, grieving widow … “Julius, that was the coachman’s name. Julius Sharm. But that’s awful! Poor Marsh … Oh!”
“What?”
“Sharm … Marsh … They’re anagrams. But go on.” Jemma picked up her fifth sandwich.
“Ana—what? Well, once they’d agreed that she’d go …”
Already expertly trained in Mind Control, Marsh had trained for months more to make sure she could outwit the Mist, then went to watch over Jemma and eventually help her escape. For this, though, the timing had to be exact: just when Jemma’s Powers were stirring strongly enough for her to overcome Nocturna’s hold on her Stone, as well as to survive the forest. But there was another thing: Jemma had to want freedom for herself—really want it, not just dream of it, as she had for so long. Only then would her Stone recognize its true owner.
“But then,” Digby said, “Marsh was found out, as you know. An’ here we are.”
“So my parents knew it would be years before they saw me again … and Marsh waited all that time, just for that one night.…” Jemma felt humbled by the depth of Marsh’s love, and appalled by the danger of her mission and how tiny the window for their escape had been. “I’ve been half-asleep, just grumbling about how I didn’t belong there, but doing nothing about it—and not seeing the truth about the Agromonds until it almost killed me, and Marsh as well!” She tugged at a tuft of grass, ripping it up from the roots. “What an addle-head I’ve been!”
“Jem, you can’t blame yourself! There was nothin’ you or Marsh could’ve done sooner. You had to wait till you was strong enough, remember? Besides, you thought that lot was your family, for goodness’ sake! How was you to know different?”
“I suppose you’re right.”
Family. What would her real parents be like? Did seeing her mother in the crystal mean that they had recovered and were now strong again? The thought of them began to feel more real, and she felt a frisson of excitement. Her family! Then she remembered her missing brother. Had her parents ever found him? Perhaps he’d been in Oakstead all these years … perhaps …
“Dig, did Marsh … did she say anything else? About my real family, I mean …”
Digby shook his head. “No, Jem, I told you everythin’ she told us.”
“Oh. Right.” A shadow moved across Jemma’s heart, and somehow she knew that her brother was still lost. She picked up a pebble and tossed it against one of the cottages. It ricocheted off the stone, landing with a shush in a drift of fallen leaves. Then she heard another sound, a slight rustle, coming from within the cottage.
“What was that?”
Digby stopped chewing, and listened. A small brown creature scuttled out of the door, and away into a pile of rotten logs.
“Just a weasel, Jem. Nowt to worry about.”
Jemma shuddered, thinking of Nocturna’s four pets. “So Marsh has gone to Oakstead, to find my parents.”
Digby nodded. “She was dreadful cut up about leavin’ you at the castle, Jem, but she couldn’t go back. She’d hid her intentions from the Mist all them years ago, but this time it’d be expectin’ her, an’ would attack her, jus’ like it
attacked your folks—’specially since she was still weak from bein’ in the forest. But she refused to give up hope that you’d get out. I told her what Mr. Drudge had told me, an’ that I’d find you, an’ we’d follow her up north.
“So she borrowed a horse—quite the horsewoman she is, even with one hand—an’ off she went. An’ though Drudge had said I wouldn’t find you till Friday, me an’ Pepper started lookin’ for you from then on, whenever Pa could spare us. Like Drudge, Marsh had said to stick near the road, so that’s what I did. Then, come Friday evenin’, me an’ this old nag was pacin’ that road non-stop from dusk till dawn, wasn’t we, Pepper? I was beginnin’ to despair of findin’ you, thinkin’ maybe you hadn’t made it—but finally, there you was. What a relief, I got to say.”
“Oh, Dig …” Jemma felt her cheeks flush. “You spent all that time out there! You … you could’ve been caught.…”
“Rotten bloody Agromonds.” Digby chomped off a piece of crust. “The thought of you bein’ stuck there, after everythin’ Marsh told us … well, I didn’t care about the risk. I was doin’ it for you, Jem. Not for Good against Evil. For you.”
“Thank you. Really. You saved me.” Without thinking, Jemma took his hand.
Digby stopped chewing and grinned. “Maybe it was worth it,” he said. Their eyes locked for a moment, his grin widening. Then he jumped to his feet. “Time to get movin’. Marsh told me ’bout somewhere we can stay the night, but it’s still a good few hours from here.”
Digby shoved the remains of their picnic into his leather bag. Jemma plopped Noodle and Pie into her pockets, where they lay like two leaden balls. Digby was about to help her onto Pepper’s back when something caught her eye: a large bird, landing in the tree under which they’d just been sitting.
“A falcon,” said Digby. “Good hunters. Used for sendin’ messages too, by them that can tame ’em. I hope that don’t mean …” He frowned, looking around. Then he froze.
A shadow pulled back from one of the windows.
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