Aurora (20 page)

‘
I
’
m just a girl,
’
she replies, trying to step through the snakiness that has coiled around her legs.
‘
I
’
ll move on and get out of your way.
’

Lily reminds herself that all she has to do is yank off the halo to get out of this weird world, so what is there to fear? She is desperate to explore the vast forest of towers that buzz and spark as if there’s a small lightning storm in each one.

She ventures a question before she goes.

‘
You, um, haven
’
t seen a fox?
’

The green snake grows intensely still.

‘
Fox?
’

The word is a venomous hiss.

Lily tenses, scared. But what can a wispy green snake do to her in a place that
’
s not real? She spies the scuttling creature emerge from the sizzling junk heap and hurry towards them on its jumble of legs, reels of broken numbers frothing from its mouth. With a flick of her tail the snake zaps the creature, which flies apart. A smouldering stump of leg lands with a clang nearby but immediately the limb scuttles back towards the junk heap in search, Lily supposes, of its other missing parts.

So that
’
s what a wispy green snake can do.

‘
What,
’
demands the snake presence,
‘
do you want with Fox?
’

‘
It
’
s private,
’
Lily retorts. She
’
s not going to confide her deepest secrets to a bossy snake-stranger. Except she
’
s desperate, and there
’
s no one else to help.
‘
I
’
m looking for my father,
’
she confesses.
‘
His name is Fox. He met my mother here, years ago.
’

The snake rears up, dangerously. Lily jumps back as a forked tongue lashes towards her face.

It can
’
t hurt you, she tells herself, closing her eyes. It
’
s not real.

‘
Who are you? Where are you from?
’
hisses the snake.

Lily opens her eyes. The snake stares back.

‘
I
’
m Lily from C-Candlewood,
’
Lily stutters.
‘
Who are you?
’

The snake draws so heart-stoppingly close that the ether flickers and for a moment Lily seems to glimpse a girl within the wispy presence. The snake-girl glances across to a flickering wasteland. Lily follows the glance and sees the broken arm of a bridge jutting out into nowhere.

‘
I am Pandora. Stay out of my world.
’
The luminous eyes are lethal.
‘
If you ever come here again I
’
ll blast you into a million pieces. Go! And stay clear of my bridge. Do you hear? My bridge guard
eats
strangers and I
’
ll tell him to look out for a girl with hair like a – a . . .
’
The green eyes flare as if the snake-girl finds something offensive in Lily
’
s fox-flame of hair.
‘
Just go and don
’
t ever come back here!
’

The snake
’
s tail shoots a spray of venom-fire. Lily takes the hit on the side of the head. Her hair sizzles. The snake-girl laughs as Lily screams . . .

‘Shh! You’ll have the guards in!’

The green snake, the ruined boulevards and towerstacks and the darkly sparking wasteland have all vanished. Lily is sprawled on a fur rug on a floor. Candle’s face stares down at her crossly.

‘What’s happened? Who were you talking to? Let me see!’

Candle grabs the globe and the wand from her. She already has the halo.

Lily shakes out her hair but it’s all there, not even singed.

She looks around the lamplit room. ‘Was I here all the time? Did I disappear?’

‘You were here all right. Why did you scream? What did you
see
? You were supposed to show me!’

Lily stares at Candle, trying to readjust to dim, ordinary reality. ‘I saw a green snake and a – a scuttling thing, all legs. Ruins and towers full of lightning. A broken bridge and . . . ’

Candle looks nonplussed as Lily stops, lost for words.

‘I saw a snake,’ Lily repeats softly, ‘who knows a fox.’

And not just any fox, Lily realizes.
What do you want with Fox?
That’s what the snake-girl said. Fox. As if he belonged to her.

‘I need to go back,’ Lily tells Candle.

‘Not now. You can’t. Look.’ Candle points to the drizzle of light spreading across the mottled glass of a wall. ‘We need to get the globe and halo back because if Tuck finds them missing—’

‘Too late,’ says a voice behind them.

Lily and Candle gasp and spin round.

There, in the doorway, stands Tuck.

THE LETHAL NEED

Cold sea air clings to his windwrap. Starlight is caught in his light blond hair, or so Lily thinks as the tall man steps into the room; but it’s only sand and salt grains, glistening in the lambent light.

‘I rise with the birds,’ Tuck says in a light voice, as if beginning a humorous tale, but his eyes are like cracked glass. ‘I come from my night ship and find my globe and halo gone, one of my cutlasses too, and my guards dozing. They’ll sleep forever now.’

Panic flashes between the two girls.

Candle’s eyes spark with fright as Tuck holds out his hand. She surrenders the parts of the wizz.

‘She knows the spell for it,’ Candle bursts out. ‘She knows how it works.’

Lily shakes her head at the other girl, then sees Candle is not betraying her; she’s playing for time.

Tuck’s eyes crinkle as he peers at Lily. ‘Is this your slave? I know you lied. A woman called Broom
did
come with you. Never try to fool me. My eyes may be weak but my hearing is sharp. I can always hear a lie.’

‘This is Lily,’ Candle says, cursing herself for her earlier witlessness. Why did she ever mention Mara and name Broom? ‘She’s just a kitchen girl.’

Lily is thinking fast. She must not lose the wizz, not now.

‘I do know the spell,’ she says to Tuck. ‘I can show you.’

‘How could a
slave
,’ demands Tuck, ‘know the magic of the wizz?’

If she tells him she is Mara’s daughter, Lily panics, would that save her or not?

‘My grandmother knew it,’ Lily replies. ‘She had a wizz when she was young and I learned all about it from her.’

‘That’s the only reason we took it,’ says Candle nervously. ‘So we could show you – as a surprise.’

Tuck sighs and beckons to the guards by the door.

‘I said no one would harm you here unless you deserved it,’ he reminds Candle. ‘But you have lied and stolen. That must stop.’

He mutters something to the guards and turns away. One guard pulls Candle over to the glass wall and places her hand flat upon it.

Lily can’t believe what she is seeing. The second guard draws his cutlass and brings it down on the hand. The tips of Candle’s plump fingers scatter like pebbles. She makes no sound, just stares at her hand then droops like a wilted flower on to the ground.

‘Never take what belongs to me,’ Tuck says quietly.

It doesn’t belong to you
, Lily wants to scream, but fear chokes her and she backs away from this dangerous man. The glass wall is behind her, the guards are at the door and Tuck is in front. There is no escape.

Lily stares at her own hands. Should she tell him who she is now? Or would she lose her life instead of her fingers because Tuck will guess that she must be here to steal back the wizz?

‘Come with me.’

Lily looks up, terrified. Is it her turn now?

‘You will show me the spell,’ says Tuck, ‘and all that the wizz can do.’

‘What about Candle?’ Lily bursts out. ‘She needs help.’

Candle is slumped on the floor, staring at her maimed hand, too shocked to cry.

‘Bring her woman to see to the wounds,’ Tuck orders one of the guards. ‘Take this girl to my ship,’ he tells the other.

And he is gone.

‘Let me bind her hand, please.’ Lily looks into the eyes of the young guard and sees a fleck of sympathy there.

Lily looks around and finds Candle’s nightshirt on the bed. As gently as she can, she binds the bleeding fingers with the soft cloth. The white cloth turns dark with blood. Lily pulls Candle over to the bed and lies the trembling girl down.

‘Broom is coming,’ she tells her. ‘She’ll know what to do.’

Lily goes with the guard. She’ll do whatever Tuck Culpy wants. She’ll show him everything she knows about the wizz. There’s a chance for her now, if she’s clever. He has said his eyes are weak, so if she can be Tuck’s eyes for the wizz yet keep him blind to what she’s really up to . . .

Because she
must
find her Fox father. She will find her way back into the Weave and search for him, if it kills her – and there’s every chance that it will.

INSIDE EARTH AND OUT

This is the place of my nightmares, thinks Mara. She leans against the wall of the mountain and stares into the dark.

How many nights has she dreamed of this mountain collapsing on her, like it did on Tuck? Or woken in cold sweat having dreamed she’d lost one of the children in this deadly maze?

And now she has walked right into her nightmare, having run out on Rowan to search for Lily after days and nights of unbearable worry ending in a final, furious row.

Mara was a jumble of emotions as she retraced the desperate journey she once made into the mountains, past the very spot where Lily was born, back along the precarious gorge. When she reached the blockage of the landslide, she turned back, scared and at a loss – only to trip over a leather wine flask made by her own hands that told her Lily had indeed been this way. She searched and searched until she found the gap in the rubble: a doorway into the mountain. And at once Mara knew, with a sinking heart, that this was where Lily must have gone.

These mountains have been like the walls of a great fortress, secluding Mara and her people from the dangers of the world beyond. It’s hard to believe that the same sun, moon and stars that wheel above Lake Longhope still shine down upon her drowned island in the Atlantic, on the ruins of the flooded cities, on the boat camps and pirate fleets and the sky towers; all that Mara once fled but cannot ever forget.

A world so vast and perilous that Lily might never make it home.

Mara lifts her torch flame. The firestone trailblazers were easy to find at first but now she sees only rock and darkness. Where is the moon cave with the hot springs and the story of the drowned world carved into the rock? She should have reached it a while ago. Mara swings her torch this way and that in a rising panic. As her thoughts wandered, so did her feet. She tries to retrack and find the previous firestone – but which way was that? Now she doesn’t even know in which direction she is walking. Forward or back?