First Aid for Fairies and Other Fabled Beasts (11 page)

“And the best bit is …” Helen flicked a few pages back in the book, “The best bit is that this isn’t some fairy tale like Cinderella that could come from any country. This one’s set in Scotland, in the Borders. The song and the stories mention the wood by name. Carterhaugh Woods by Ettrick Water, near Selkirk. That’s just a few miles from here.”

She turned to Lavender, “Do your family live near there? Are the fairies in this story your people?”

“Oh no. If Tam Linn’s fairy folk were forest dwellers and took human children, then they weren’t flower fairies like me. Fairy stories are very imprecise. You call my people fairies, and you have fairy godmothers and fairy folk in the
forest
. But we are all different. The forest folk would eat flower fairies like me in one mouthful, if they could catch us, which isn’t easy as they don’t have wings. But there aren’t any of them in these parts now, as far as I know. There is hardly enough true forest left for them.”

Lavender sniffed. “There’s that smell again. Do books smell bad in big groups?”

“Not usually. Never mind. We can go now, we’ve got the answer. Do you want to go in my bag again?”

“Not really. It has lots of pointy things in it. I must get home now. My Aunt Lily needs me to make long-lasting lights for the Gathering.”

“Can you let Rona and the rest know the answer to the riddle right now?”

Lavender shook her head. “I don’t think so. We don’t all live in the same place, so we had planned to meet tonight in the wood. If you can come, we can all go to Carterhaugh. If not, I’ll tell them the answer and we will go without you.”

“I’ll try to be there, if I can stop my parents fussing over me.”

Lavender hugged Helen and flew through a broken pane of glass in a window that overlooked the overgrown school garden.

Helen left the library and went to eat her packed lunch very quickly in the canteen, where fortunately no one seemed to be eating weird, pongy food.

Mr Crombie raised his eyebrows hopefully at Helen as she walked into the chilly hall for the concert rehearsal that afternoon.

She grinned at him. “When would you like me to play the solo I’ve been working on? Before the Christmas music or after?”

“We’ll warm up with the carols first, then hear what you’ve come up with,” he replied smiling.

So the band scraped and clattered their way through O’ Little Town of Bethlehem and the other carols they were starting to get bored with, before — finally — it was Helen’s turn.

She took a few steps in front of the rest of the children and played directly to Mr Crombie.

She played the tune that Rona had sung off the stone beach on Orkney the night before, which she and Rona had developed and strengthened together. The music that told of the loss of the Book, the quest to find it, as well as the fears and frustrations of their failures.

She played it twice, once in a major key and once in a minor key. Then she lifted her chin from the fiddle and waited, wondering how the quest song had sounded to an audience who weren’t searching for answers or fearful of monsters. Would it mean
anything to them?

Everyone was silent for a moment.

“Where did you find that?” Mr Crombie asked.

“A friend and I wrote it.”

“You wrote it?”

“Parts of it. It’s not completely finished, but I’ll know how it ends long before Monday.”

“It is very, very good, Helen,” Mr Crombie beamed at her. “A strong and mature piece of music. It will definitely be worth the director’s time coming to hear you play that. You have
produced
something totally original and extremely beautiful. Does it have a title?”

“I thought maybe I’d call it
Solstice
.”

“Lovely. Well, you obviously don’t need to rehearse it any more with us. I’m sure I can rely on you to find an ending by Monday, and as we’d all love to hear that ending please try not to lose yourself on our hillsides again between now and Christmas Eve.”

Kirsty grabbed Helen’s arm as she was carefully packing her fiddle away.

“So, who’s the friend that wrote the music with you, then?”

“I can’t … I can’t really say.”

“Why not? I know I’m not as good a violinist as you, but we did used to play together when we were first learning. Have you found some fancier friends now? Some other musical geniuses? Is that why you want to go to this summer school?”

“No! This friend is different.”

“Different how, exactly?”

Helen considered her answer. “It’s just someone I’ve been chatting with recently at nights. You know, a bit like an online chat room.”

“About music?”

“Music and books and stuff.”

“Not someone at a different school? Not someone that you’ll be pally with once we go to the High School?”

Helen laughed. “Definitely not someone I’ll be pally with at the High School. You’re still my best friend, Kirsty. But just like you don’t bother to talk to me about football, I’m allowed to have friends to talk to about music and … you know … other stuff.”

“I suppose so. Can you come to mine for tea then? Rather than chat to your cyber mates.”

“Sorry. Mum wants me home and in bed like a good little invalid. Soon though. Very soon. After the solstice I’m bound to have more time.”

“After the solstice? After the concert you mean.”

“Yeah. That’s what I meant.”

Helen walked slowly out of the school hall and stood for a while in the shadow of the buildings. She should have been delighted; Mr Crombie was impressed with her solo, and she was confident that if she could come up with an ending, then the summer school director would be impressed too.

But she had lied to Kirsty again, and was about to lie to her Mum once more, which didn’t seem right when she was searching for a Book about questions, answers and truth. Also her life
seemed to be split down the middle into day and night, and she wasn’t getting enough sleep in either half.

It was nearly dark already, as the weak winter sun was covered by thick grey clouds. She wouldn’t even have time for a nap before night fell. She started to walk slowly towards the school gates, when she realized that her Mum’s Landrover was waiting in the car park.

“I thought you would like a lift home. Rest your bruised legs.”

“Thanks, but don’t you have surgery just now?”

“No, I cancelled it. I wanted to be sure you were okay.”

“I’d like a nice big tea and an early night actually.”

That definitely wasn’t a lie. She wasn’t going to get to sleep, but she did desperately want to.

“I’ve made lentil soup and fresh bread. We’ll eat that, then you can have a bath and get to bed. How was the rehearsal?”

“Great. Mr Crombie likes my solo.”

“Really? Super. I can’t wait to hear it. When’s the concert?”

“Monday. Dad’s written it on the kitchen calendar.”

“We’ll definitely be there then!”

Helen ate like a soldier about to march to war, then just as the sun was sliding from behind the clouds to behind the hills, she clambered into bed, watched carefully by her Mum.

As soon as her Mum was out of the room, Helen got up and dressed as warmly as possible. Then she opened her bedroom window and looked down.

This was the only way out of the house without being heard. Her Dad was reading Nicola a bedtime story in the living room, while her Mum was hanging washing on the pulley in the kitchen. There was no way out downstairs. She would
have
to leave by the window. And she didn’t have time to make a rope out of sheets, or a parachute from a duvet cover.

Helen’s bedroom was above the front door, which was protected from the Scottish weather by a little stone porch.

Whenever Helen had daydreamed about leaving the house unseen on a secret mission, she had always thought this porch would be a handy way out.

Now, she squeezed out of her open window, sat on the sill and pulled the window almost shut behind her. She turned round and lowered herself slowly backwards until she was holding onto the sill by her fingers. Her toes just reached the sloping stone below her. She let go and dropped to a crouch on the porch roof.

Now she was no higher off the ground than Nicola at the top of the climbing frame. She grasped the edge of the porch and swung herself down.

The drop was a little further than it looked. Helen didn’t breathe for a minute after landing on the hard path, partly because she couldn’t and partly because she was listening for any reaction indoors. But no one came rushing out, so she hoped no one had heard her thump down.

She stood up and waggled her legs. Everything still seemed to work, and she didn’t have any more
bruises than when she had got out of bed. So she jogged up the hill, feeling underdressed without her green rucksack.

It was fully dark by the time she reached the woods, but she followed a glow of fairy light. The friends were just settling down, Sapphire heating the air with her glowing open mouth and Rona handing round some small brown cakes.

Helen took one, and nibbled it. It was a bit like a salty scone.

“Seaweed cakes,” Rona said, “to give us all strength.”

Then Yann announced, “I have solved the riddle.”

“So have I,” responded Helen.

There was a moment of silence. Then Helen smiled, “You first. Lavender knows what I found, so I’m not going to copy you if your answer is better.”

“There can be only one answer, human child.”

“True. I know what it is. And it’s not far from here. On you go.”

Yann humphed, and put on his best declaiming voice.

“The riddle refers to an old tale about a human who was privileged to join the fairy queen’s band, but was forced to return to human life by a local girl. The man was called Tam Linn, and the story ends in a battle at Tam Linn’s Well in Carterhaugh Woods, where he tried to escape the human girl’s clutches by turning into various loathly animals and a hot bar of iron. But the girl held fast and he could not escape and he lost the fairy queen for ever.

“So we must go to Carterhaugh. Do you agree, healer’s child?”

“I agree that we must go to Carterhaugh, but you’ve told the story all wrong,” Helen said indignantly. “Janet saved Tam Linn. He asked her to show courage and hold fast however the fairy queen changed him. He wanted to become human again and escape from the fairy queen.”

“Why would anyone wish to be human — boringly, prosaically human — when they could live a life of stories, songs and magic with the forest folk? Janet was jealous of him and the fairy queen, and couldn’t let go of him, even though Tam Linn wanted her to.”

“Nonsense! He was stolen away by the fairies, as children have always been, and was very lucky to meet a woman strong and brave enough to save him.”

Rona broke in, “Hold on! You may not agree on the story, but you do agree on the answer to the riddle! You have both heard different versions of the story, of course you have. Helen has heard the one Tam Linn and Janet told their children, and Yann has heard the version the fairy folk told. And they are both true to themselves.”

“If mine is the version Tam Linn told, it must be the truth,” Helen muttered.

“Helen!” scolded Rona. “You two can argue about this anytime you like once we have the Book.”

“Once we have the Book, we’ll not need her anymore,” snorted Yann.

“We all need friends, Yann,” said Rona. “Now how do we get to Carterhaugh and can we get going right now?”

Sapphire and Catesby suddenly got quite animated. Rona explained that both flying beasts used the various rivers running into the River Tweed —like the Ettrick Water, Gala Water, Jed Water and the Teviot — to navigate around the nearby hills. They could easily find Carterhaugh by using the rivers, even with clouds covering the stars and moon.

Catesby immediately started drawing an incredibly detailed map on the ground that showed the sources and courses of all the rivers in the Borders. Sapphire watched for a moment, then snorted and wiped the bird’s thin scratched lines away with one sweep of her claws. Drawing a deep line in the ground, she showed the way from Helen’s village of Clovenshaws to Ettrick Water near Selkirk, then a simple map showing Tam Linn’s Well in a small patch of grass between a strip of woods and a narrow track, just one field’s length from the river. Catesby shrugged his wings.

It was decided that Catesby would guide Yann, and Sapphire would carry the rest. The dragon’s party would get there a little faster and could lie low near the river to check that no one else was there, so they could go straight to the well when Yann and the phoenix arrived.

Yann left immediately, but Helen delayed before getting on the dragon’s back. “Did I leave the first aid kit here last night, when I rushed out to stop the search?”

Lavender threw out a few brighter light balls and they all had a quick look. Helen found the battered green bag by the tree stump she usually sat on.

She waved it at the others. “Found it. Let’s hope we don’t need it!”

Rona said, “Yann was wrong. We don’t
just
need you to help us find the Book. We do need you now because you have a knowledge of books that we can’t match but, when we find the Book, we
will
still want to meet up with you to chat, play music and take you on adventures.”

“Yann won’t,” Helen sighed.

“Yann has spent all day with his father, and that makes him very grumpy.”

Helen humphed, making Lavender laugh. “You sound just like Yann! He always makes horsey, snorting noises when he’s grumpy!”

“I’m not grumpy. I think I might be scared. Do you think the Master is there waiting for us?”

Rona reassured her. “He didn’t get the stone circle clue before us, did he? So they don’t know where we are going. Even if they have followed us here, they won’t get to Carterhaugh before we do. None of his creatures can move as fast as a healthy dragon can fly. I think this time we are ahead of him.”

And so the friends flew off in a wide curve, to confuse any watchers on the ground, and headed for Tam Linn’s Well.

The dragon, the fairy, the selkie and the fiddler stared at the stone wall and strip of woods round Tam Linn’s Well. They had been watching from a distance for fifteen minutes, and Helen had seen no movement: magical, human or animal. As they waited, drizzle started to leak from the clouds. Suddenly, a large shape loomed over them and Lavender gave a tiny squeak.

“Shhh. It’s just us,” said Yann, his voice unusually soft. “Are we alone?” Sapphire answered with a rumble. “Then let’s not delay.” Yann’s eyes were bright. “Let’s go and get our Book.”

Yann led the way over the bare field, through a small gap in the hedge and across the narrow track towards a semicircle of grass above the verge.

Lavender created a couple of very dim glowing balls, giving little light and throwing lots of complicated shadows.

Helen could see a rectangular stone trough against a curved wall. Water dripped into it from a stone spout above. All the stonework was covered with damp dark moss. She looked above and around her, constantly checking for movement. There was a hill rising beyond the wall, covered in old trees and bushes; all that was left of the fairy
queen’s forest. One huge tree overhung the well; although bare of leaves for winter, its trunk was shiny with ivy.

Everything was still.

They were too far now from Ettrick Water to hear its splash and flow. There were no cars, no birds. Only the light tapping of the drizzle on grass and trees.

Rona strode straight to the well and stuck her hand in. She methodically searched the bottom of the trough. “Nothing here.”

“Try the spout.” Helen and Yann spoke at exactly the same time. Helen turned to Yann and smiled nervously. He grinned back.

Rona’s slim fingers investigated the ridge in the stone spout sticking out from the wall.

“Yes!”

She pulled out a small, dripping package and carried it over to the others. As they stood in the centre of the grassy space, under the branches of the tree, her shining wet fingers unfolded a large, irregularly-shaped piece of leather. They all reached out to touch it, then Yann said, “We must hold it fast, like Janet.”

So they grasped the ragged edges of the leather with their right hands or claws. Helen had just opened her mouth to say, “Now let’s read it,” when there was a sudden sound from above them. A hiss.

They looked up at the silhouettes of branches and twigs against the dark grey sky. The branches were moving; not blowing in the wind, but shifting and slithering.

“Hold on!” yelled Yann as shapes and hisses dropped heavily from the tree onto them and the leather they all held.

At first, Helen thought the tree had fallen on them, but the branches were coiling and writhing tightly round her forehead and wrists. She realized with horror that she was covered in snakes.

They all cried out at once, screams and moans and shouts of fear. But only Yann used words.

“Hold fast!” he yelled again.

Helen felt a snake creep right round her neck, hissing into her ear, and she used her left hand to haul the snake off and throw it into the well. Her throat was free again but she was having difficulty breathing, as the feeling of snakes slithering round her body had brought her to the edge of panic.

“Don’t let go!” ordered Yann. “The Book says we have to hold fast.”

“We should run fast, not hold fast,” gasped Helen. She knocked a snake off Rona’s head and kicked away another that was trying to climb up her own leg.

They were all trying to escape the snakes without letting go of the clue. They were standing on each other’s feet, tripping over snakes and slipping on the wet grass. Then Helen smelt a smell; a farmy smell, a goaty smell. She suddenly realized it was the smell that she had dismissed at lunchtime when Lavender had kept nagging her about it.

“Oh no! They were with us in the library! They heard us when we found the clue!”

“Yes, you were very helpful, human girl. You
know our silly little stories better than we know them ourselves.”

She twisted round, to see where the sniggering voice was coming from.

“Now, children. Give me the clue.”

They were surrounded by dark shapes, almost as tall as men but with flicking tails behind them, and what seemed to be great hairy trousers.

“Fauns!” snorted Yann. “Always the Master’s little helpers. I’m not afraid of you, you stinking two-legged creatures.”

“You should be, colt. You should be terrified of us,” growled the largest of the fauns. “Now give me the clue.”

Yann said simply, “No.”

“Give me the clue, or you will regret it.”

Yann repeated quietly, “No.”

Then Helen whispered, “No,” and the others said it too. “No. No. No.” None of them would be the first to let go.

“One last chance, children. Give me that clue!”

This time they all answered in one strong voice. “NO!”

The fauns leapt on them. Using their strong men’s arms, and their powerful goat legs, they tried to pull the children away and grasp the leather themselves. But the circle of friends stayed close and held on tight.

Helen gritted her teeth against the smell, the whipping of tails, the grabbing of hands and the snakes still coiling round her.

The circle round the clue didn’t let go. They couldn’t really fight, as they had their backs to
their attackers, or at best could only turn side on, but they could use their free arms, claws or wings to defend the friend standing at their side, and they could all stamp on snakes and kick goaty legs.

For a moment or two, in a strangely quiet battle, the friends held firm. There was hissing, breathing and grunting. But no more words.

When Helen felt her grip on the wet leather
slipping
, she dug her nails in, made a fist and crumpled up her edge of the clue as tight as she could. She had tears running down her face and hardly knew what she was doing, but any time she saw a snake on Rona to her left she threw it off, and knew that Yann was doing the same for her to her right. Whenever she felt a faun behind her, she kicked back into its legs or thrust an elbow into its belly.

But how long could they hold on? What use was holding fast when they needed to escape?

Then she felt movement under her feet. Thinking it was another snake, she stamped her heel down, but her heel sank into crumbling soil. The ground was shifting; rising in a dome shape under their feet.

There was a sudden explosion of earth and turf. A massive black shape rose out of the ground, bellowing and shaking a great heavy head free of earth. As the creature reared up, two huge curved horns pierced the leather and pulled the clue up and away from the circle of friends. They held fast for as long as they could, but as they were lifted off the ground, their own weight ripped the clue from their grasp.

Then the snakes and fauns fell on them from all sides.

Helen still had her hand in a fist but the leather had slipped away. She used the fist to hit the nearest faun, then looked around her.

Lavender had held on longest to the leather, fluttering on the edge, but she was thrown off as the huge monster shook his head and the leather flapped violently. Helen caught Lavender as the fairy fell backwards through the air, then she tried to run for the river but tripped over a snake at her feet. She fell onto the wet grass and curled up round Lavender, surrounded by a chaos of stamping and trampling.

Helen raised herself onto her hands and knees and tried to crawl away but, as soon as she moved, sharp hooves kicked into her ribs and legs. She sank down again, and the kicking stopped. All she could do was make her body into a barrier between those hooves and her smallest and most fragile friend.

Even with her eyes closed, Helen could still see the monster. A huge hairy black head with twisted silver horns, resting on massive shoulders. An animal’s head and a man’s shoulders. The Master of the Maze; a Minotaur with a bull’s head and a man’s body.

But his head was not like the bulls her mother treated. It was not the head of a farm animal, but of an ancient creature; a huge, violent, prehistoric steer or aurochs.

Helen became aware of fewer thuds on the grass round her head. Perhaps the fauns had moved
away? Perhaps she could escape now? She lifted her head slowly to find a snake’s beady eyes only a tongue flick from her face.

She shivered and slid one hand out from under her to grab the snake. An air-crushing roar erupted from the well. The snake lowered its head and slithered off. Helen twisted round to see what was happening behind her.

Sapphire was crouched on the ground, hissing and rumbling, but not attacking the fauns. The largest faun stood in front of the dragon,
holding
Rona and taunting, “If you light a fire, lizard breath, I will grill seal meat on it.”

Catesby flew at a faun’s face, but the faun ducked, grabbed the phoenix’s left wing, swung him round and let go. The bird crashed into the tree trunk and fell in a heap at the base of the wall.

Yann was struggling with two fauns, who were clinging to his horse’s back and grabbing him round the neck. He reared up, threw them off, then pivoted round and kicked at the huge shape of the Minotaur.

The clue was no longer on the creature’s horns but held in his human hands, rolled up like an old parchment.

The Master held the roll high in triumph and laughed at Yann. Then he shouted in a hoarse strangled voice, “The clue is mine! The Book is mine! The answers will all be mine!”

“Never!” screamed Yann, and lashed out again, catching the Master on the side of the head with one of his heavy front hooves.

The Minotaur stepped beneath the flying front hooves, hooked one massive foot round Yann’s back hooves while the centaur was still off balance, and lifted the horse’s belly on to his man’s shoulder. Using Yann’s own weight and momentum to flip him into the air like a toy, the Master sent him crashing to the ground.

Yann looked small and crumpled on the grass as the Master towered over him.

There was silence. Every one of the friends was unmoving on the ground or held in the strong arms of a faun.

“What shall we do with them, my victorious Master?” asked the largest faun.

“Leave them to lick their wounds and savour their failure, Frass,” the Master’s voice grated. “When I have the power of the Book, these children will be the first to bow down before me, in front of their proud parents.”

The Master turned and stepped off the grass. His bare feet booming on the road, he walked away from Tam Linn’s well. The snakes vanished into the trees and the fauns trotted after their master.

Lavender was crying in Helen’s quivering arms. Catesby was squawking feebly at the base of the stone wall. Rona and Sapphire were hugging, both sobbing. And Yann was lying, motionless, on the ground.