First Aid for Fairies and Other Fabled Beasts (14 page)

Lavender stamped her foot on Helen’s palm and glared at Yann.

“Sorry!”

The fairy used her wand to gather the dust again and they all held their breath as it settled into lines and shapes in the air. Helen peered at the shifting, shimmering sculpture in front of her, seeing lots of irregular boxes piled in heaps and rows.

Suddenly, she realized that it was a model of the tunnels around them. The room they were in was at the centre, with rooms and tunnels to either side, two layers of tunnels above them, and one layer, partly filled in, below them.

It was like the most complicated 3D chess board she had ever seen; a secret city of cellars and vaults.

And in a dusty box, one layer above them and further in towards the centre of the hill, was a purple glow.

“That’s him,” pointed Lavender. “That’s where he is. We need to go on to the left and up. And we need to be very, very quiet.”

“We need to get closer, to see if he has his creatures here with him,” whispered Yann.

“Oh, I hope not.” Helen shivered, remembering the writhing snakes and kicking fauns.

“I hope he does,” Yann replied, “because one of them may be able to help us.”

He didn’t explain what he meant as they crept through the left-hand doorway and further into the hill, looking for a way up into the next level.

Two rooms along, there was a collapsed ceiling and the rubble made a ramp to the upper level of the underground city. Climbing the ramp as slowly as possible, trying not to make any noise, they emerged into rooms with slightly higher ceilings and a few shelves hammered onto the walls.

They moved one step at a time, peering round every doorway, not wanting to walk straight into the Master or any of his court.

Suddenly, they heard a booming noise, followed by hoarse shouting.

“Doesn’t
anyone
understand it? Are you
all
fools? Can
no one
unriddle this for me?”

Then the booming started again. Helen wondered if it was a foot kicking a door, or a hand slapping a wall. It was certainly the Master, frustrated and
angry, and that meant they were not too late. But how could they get the clue for themselves?

Yann beckoned them back to the previous room.

“He is here, and so is the clue. I can get it for us. Watch and do not interfere.” He took a small white object from the pouch hung round his waist, and held it in his right hand.

“The tooth,” Helen murmured.

“The tooth of the creature that bit me,” he agreed. “We just have to hope the Master still has the little beggar near him.”

Then Yann spat on the tooth and waved it in small circles in front of him, muttering a harsh monotonous chant.

Nothing happened.

Yann drew larger circles, and chanted faster. There was a scrabbling sound from the room they had just left. Rona jerked forward, but Yann held up his left hand and waved her back.

Then a weasel came into the room. It entered sideways, its feet sliding out from under it, its teeth bared and its eyes wide open in fear.

The weasel was moving in the strangest way, sliding along the flat floor towards Yann as if it were falling down a steep slope.

Helen had to take a step backwards to get out of the weasel’s path, as it seemed not to notice any obstacle in its way. As she moved back, she saw that the animal’s paws were bleeding from being dragged across the stone floor.

The weasel finally shuddered to a halt, crushed against one of Yann’s hooves.

“Get me the clue. Bring it to me now, without being seen.” The weasel whined and wriggled.

“You are in my power and you will do my bidding. Bring me the clue.”

Yann lifted the tooth high into the air and the weasel shot out of the room like an arrow from a bow.

Lavender said grimly, “What magic is this,
centaur
?”

“It is magic that will lead us to the Book.”

“It is magic that we are not permitted. It is possession. Who gave you this power?”

Yann answered, through tight teeth and narrow lips, “I won this power. When you were fighting seagulls, I went into the deep dark trees and found some of the ancients. I fought and won a duel and, as my prize, I requested this spell. You can make powerful magic from a tooth of a creature that bit you.”

Helen tasted blood on her tongue. She had bitten her lip. The weasel pushing and pulling against itself reminded her of films she’d seen of caged animals in laboratories, driven mad by electrodes in their brains. She realized that she knew very little about her new friends, about their rules and their beliefs. Was she right to pick sides in a battle when she didn’t really know what they were fighting for?

She turned to walk away, but Rona put her hand on Helen’s arm. Rona’s face was pale. “Don’t judge us. Please. Don’t judge us yet.”

Before Helen could respond, there was the faint sound of scratching coming down the tunnel. The
weasel slunk into the room, so low to the ground it was like a snake. It had the roll of hide in its mouth, dragging it along like a dead rabbit. It dropped the clue at Yann’s hooves and cowered away.

Catesby flew down awkwardly, picked the leather parchment up and gave it to Yann, who unrolled it slightly and nodded.

They all looked at the weasel. It was writhing in pain, trying to back away from the centaur, but it was pinned to the ground by a power no one could see. Yann lifted his front hoof and Helen stepped forward, thinking he was going to stamp on the animal.

Yann turned to her, his face twisted in disgust, sweat sliding down his cheeks. “Back off, girl,” he ordered.

Helen held his eye, took two more steps over to the shaking weasel and stood astride it, protecting it with her body.

Yann shook his head very slightly. Then he dropped the tooth on the stone floor and ground it into grit with his heavy hoof.

The weasel collapsed in a pile of fur. Helen bent to touch it and felt its narrow ribcage vibrate. “It’s still alive.”

Yann closed his eyes for a moment. “No power is worth that price.”

Catesby cawed sharply and Yann replied, “I will hear you later, friend, but now we have the clue and we must get out of the Master’s maze before he misses it.”

They crept back to the top of the ramp leading to the lower rooms, each of them unwilling to look
the others in the face. Helen was just about to step onto the rubble when the walls reverberated with a roar of anger.

Four feet and four hooves slid down in an avalanche of stone and plaster, with a flurry of wings battering eyes and heads. They landed hard at the bottom of the ramp, and leapt up to run as quickly as possible through the tunnel.

They heard the noise of a chase behind them. Wordless shouts, footsteps and hoofbeats.

“Move,” panted Yann. “Just get out.”

The centaur could have galloped past the others and got out well ahead of any creature behind him, but he stayed at the back and urged the rest on. Helen found herself at the front, running as fast as she ever had, trying to remember the way they had come in, trying to follow confused instructions yelled from behind her.

“Go right,” screamed Lavender.

“No … left then straight on,” shouted Rona.

Catesby squawked instructions too, but no one bothered to explain them to Helen if they didn’t agree with them.

They crashed noisily through dark rooms they had crept carefully through before. They were moving too fast for Lavender’s light balls to keep up, so Helen was running in the dark, bumping into walls and corners.

Suddenly she heard her running footsteps echo all around her. She stopped and Rona banged into her back. Lavender hurled some light balls ahead of them, revealing a large chamber, much bigger
than any room they had passed through on their way in.

Helen started running again, heading for a closed door at the other side of the chamber, barely noticing the faded murals on the walls and the carved ceilings above. This hadn’t been a storage room or a home for poor city dwellers.

She reached the wooden door and pushed it. It moved a few centimetres then stuck. She threw herself against it. It wouldn’t move any further. She looked round. The only other exit was the doorway they had come in. And that doorway was now filled with the stooping form of the Master.

“I can’t open the door,” she said desperately.

“Let me try.” Yann pushed past her.

He shoved with his horse and human shoulder sand the door scraped open a little more. But the Master was striding towards them, laughing. Several panting fauns were trotting behind him.

“I need more time to open this!” Yann called, shoving again.

Helen stepped forward, towards the Master. She had no idea what she was going to do, as she swung the first aid kit off her back.

There was a blur of ungainly feathers past her left ear, and Catesby flew at the Master’s head.

The Master flicked his hand at the bird and tossed him high into the air, but Catesby swooped down again.

This time, as he got near to the bull’s black head, his feathers began to glow, gold and orange and copper. His tail feathers began to spark and he screamed a high-pitched song.

Helen heard Yann shout,
“
No
!”
as he galloped past her to the bird.

In an instant, the phoenix burst into flames, right in the bull’s face.

The Master bellowed, as the bird wove a trail of fire round his head, round his horns, setting his curly hair alight. There was a puff of purple from the bull’s right ear and a small scream from Lavender. Then the shape of the phoenix melted into a ball of heat, which suddenly dropped out of the air; an egg laid by a bird of flame.

Helen was forced back by the heat, but Yann dashed forward and caught the glowing egg before it hit the ground. “Farewell, friend,” he whispered, as he placed the egg gently in his pouch.

Yann cantered back to the door and, with one enraged shove, pushed it half open.

While the fauns panicked round their Master, flapping their arms to put out the flames on his head, the remaining friends slipped through the door.

The door had been blocked by cardboard boxes. Ordinary twenty-first century cardboard boxes.

They were standing in a storeroom, with a set of wooden stairs leading upwards. Rona went first, a pale and shaking Lavender clinging to her hair. Then Yann scrambled up, while Helen closed the storeroom door and pushed the heaviest boxes back against it.

As Yann reached the top with his front hooves, the steps under his back hooves cracked and the staircase collapsed.

Yann leapt to the top and looked down at Helen. She could hear voices on the other side of the door. The staircase was now a pile of broken planks, with dirty clouds of dust rising from it. The centaur looked horrified. “I’m sorry. I should have gone last. Build a pile of boxes and climb up.”

“The boxes are holding the door shut. I can’t move them.” Helen looked round, trying to slow her breathing down and think of a way to get up and out before the door opened.

Yann called to her, “I’ll jump back down, then you can climb on my back and get out.”

“Don’t be daft. Then you’d be trapped.”

Having seen no useful stepladders or grappling hooks in the store room, Helen looked more carefully at the pile of splintered stairs. There was one long narrow piece of unbroken wood … the bannister that had run up the side of the staircase. She hauled it out and pushed one end up to Yann.

“Can you hold that steady on the edge of the floor? I’m going to try and balance on it.”

Yann put his hoof on the end of the rail and nodded to her.

As she wedged her end carefully in the heap of dusty debris, she heard banging at the door behind her. But she couldn’t rush. She put her left foot on the narrow beam and began to lift her right foot. The wood was narrower than the sole of her boot. Would it take her weight? The wood creaked and bent slightly … but it didn’t break.

She looked up at Yann. “Please don’t sneeze!”

“Just come on!”

Holding her arms out for balance, she took small steps. She could hear the barrier of boxes slithering slowly along the stone floor behind her. She took another couple of steps, refusing to look behind her, concentrating her eyes and her mind on her feet.

Yann called out, “Healer’s child.” She glanced up. Yann had bent his forelegs and was reaching both arms down for her. She wobbled as she shifted her balance to twist her arms up, then they grabbed each other’s wrists and Yann swung her up to land in a heap at his hooves. He reached down to pull the bannister off the cellar floor, so no one else could use it.

Helen looked round. She was in a room lit by street lights shining through a big window, surrounded by shelves, stools and mirrors, and row upon row of shoes and boots. She laughed out loud. She’d bought wellies in here once.

Rona was pushing at the door out onto the street. “It’s locked!” Helen went behind the till to look for a key, but then they heard a triumphant yell from below. The Master’s creatures had got through the door. Without hesitating, Yann reared up on his hind legs and smashed his front hooves through the shop window. Glass flew everywhere, sparkling on the leather boots and Christmas trees in the window display.

An alarm went off instantly, drowning out the noise from the storeroom. Yann was already on the pavement, as Rona and Helen clattered out over the glass and shoes into Cockburn Street.

“Which way?” asked Yann.

Helen pointed downhill. “We need to get back to Sapphire.”

The streets were still shiny and wet from the rain, but the clouds had blown over and there were a few stars visible in the sky.

They ran, Yann’s hooves echoing off the buildings as they hurtled down the winding street, slowing at the sharp bends, so they didn’t slip on the wet
cobbles
. Helen slid to a halt at the bottom so she could get her bearings. She felt a tug on her back, screamed and turned round with a kick and an elbow.

Yann leapt sideways. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just putting the clue in your rucksack. You must guard it. Sapphire can’t fly safely and fast with me on her back, so you must go without me and find the Book. I will outpace the Master and his creatures on the ground.”

“How will you get out of the city?” asked Helen.

“I’ll go north first, to stretch my legs and leave those trotting fauns behind me. But then …” he glanced up at the stars clear in the sky, “then I will let the stars guide me south again. I’ll find open ground eventually.”

Rona gave Yann a quick hug, and Lavender blew him a kiss, but Helen stood back and simply said, “Good luck.” He nodded to her and galloped off, heading past Waverley Station.

Helen, Rona and Lavender listened as his hoofbeats got fainter. Then they heard other, smaller, hooves and set off at a run for the gardens.

They shoved each other over the fence and tumbled down the hill to the trees. Sapphire
appeared silently and crouched down for them to climb on. She took off just as a dark crowd swarmed down the hill towards them.