The Emerald Forge (Pilgrennon's Children) (14 page)

“You did say it was a secret MoD site. Perhaps they’re not allowed to show it on a map.”

“Perhaps that’s it. Anyway, that wasn’t what I wanted to look for. I was thinking about where the wyvern came from.”

“How can you work that out from a map?”

Dana was already thinking. The wyvern had conveyed to her the movement of the sun, which rose in behind it and moved to its right to set in front of it. That meant the wyvern had been travelling west, but it was no good telling Eric that as he wouldn’t believe her. But then she remembered how she’d looked up as the wyvern had flown towards the school, and seen metal glint in the glare, and the yard cool and flooded with the shadow of the school building behind her.

“It came from the east.” She knew this wasn’t entirely logical, since the wyvern could’ve made a pass over the school and come back from a different angle, but she hoped Eric wouldn’t think to question it. “And I think it came quite a long way.”

“Perhaps it came from France.”

Dana frowned. “Why would it come from France?”

Eric shrugged. “Because Mum says they smell of garlic and they won’t buy our meat or our vegetables.”

Dana was sure the wyvern hadn’t come from France because it hadn’t recalled flying over ocean. She struggled to think of something else that would justify it to Eric. “Osric looked at some of the components inside it,” she said at length. “The writing on them was in English. If it’d come from France, it would’ve been written in French.”

“Perhaps it came from Russia.”

“Russia’s too far away. It wouldn’t be able to fly that far.”

“Why not? It’s a machine, sort of. It’s not limited by normal, well,
limits
.”

“It has to have come from somewhere over here.” Dana covered the other parts of the country with her hands to leave the bulging part of Great Britain’s east coast exposed.

Eric leaned back on the sofa and shovelled noodles into his mouth. “If you say so.”

She still didn’t know how much it was safe to involve Eric, but the idea of going off on her own was daunting. She’d done it before, but that time Jananin had been with her part of the way and given her instructions for much of the rest, and although it was easy to be blasé about it in retrospect, she could still recall how alarming it had been trying to get through the night on Gallan Head, and when she’d managed to strand herself on Roareim. It
had
worked out, but it could have gone horribly wrong.

Dana took a deep breath. “If I skive off to look there, would you come with me?”

Eric paused to consider this. “You do know it’s a lot bigger than it looks on a map?”

“Of course I know that!”

He shrugged his eyebrows apologetically. “It’s just you don’t always appreciate it, not until you learn to drive and get a feel for the roads and the layout of stuff.”

Dana felt like shouting at him that she had a perfectly good feel for road layouts, due to her having a military-precision GPS system hardwired into her brain and installed in her imagination.

“We can go on my bike, and I’ve got a tent we could take, so we could stay there overnight to look. We could do letters to our parents saying we were going on a school trip, so that would be okay, but I don’t think we would find anything there.”

Dana was sure as soon as she got there, there would be a sign of some sort. She would recognise something from the wyvern’s memory, or things would otherwise be made clear, if only she could get closer to the source of the wyvern. And if Ivor was still alive, he’d have a signal to enable her to find him, just like the beacon he’d built to guide her to the Flannan Isles before.

She stared at the keyboard on the floor, thinking about what Pauline and Graeme would say if they knew she was forging a letter so she could lie to them and avoid going to school, in order to travel miles away on a motorbike, with someone who was legally too young to drive, to investigate something that might be dangerous and potentially meet with someone who was an Information Terrorist and who had put her life at risk when she had last seen him.

And who was also the closest thing she had to a father.

“Let’s do it. Show me how you write the letters.”

-5-

D
ANA
had re-read her forged letter so many times at school the next day it had become grubby at the edges and worn around the creases. Today, the trials and tribulations of school and its unsympathetic wardens and vicious inmates did not seem so significant compared to what might happen at Pauline and Graeme’s house if they could tell from the letter or Dana’s manner that it was a trick.

She had already handed in the fake letter with Pauline’s forged signature claiming that she would be unable to come in the next day because she had a dentist’s appointment. Eric had written a different letter claiming he had to go to a great aunt’s funeral, because he said the form tutors might speak to each other and suspect something if they both needed to go to the dentist on the same day. She was less concerned about this, as Eric reckoned a lot of parents couldn’t write well and did unprofessional sick notes, but what did worry her was that the letter supposedly from the school, a professional organisation, wouldn’t be convincing enough.

She and Eric had started off fooling around and writing silly letters:
Dear Mr and Mrs Rose, Dana has been permanently excluded from school on charges of High Treason and plotting to blow up the Houses of Parliament
, and
Dear Miss Carter, Eric has been found guilty of breaking wind without due care and attention and attempting to Pervert the Course of Justice, and will be duly executed by firing squad at dawn round the back of the PE building
.

After this, Eric had come up with the idea of a school Biology trip, because they were both good at science, and Dana had suggested that the form should have a tear-off strip for a parent or guardian to sign giving them permission to go. They had set it out with the tear-off part at the bottom and the school’s letterhead copied off a detention form at the top. After some discussion, they had come up with the following letter:

Dear Parent or Guardian,

...................................... has been selected as a student of particular merit
(Dana suggested ‘merit’, because it was meritocratic)
for a place in the end-of-year Biology field trip to New Forest
(they settled on New Forest by hanging a map of England on Eric’s dart board and throwing a dart at it, and finding the nearest appropriate place to where the dart landed).
The coach will depart from the school gates at 9:30 am on Friday 21
^st
and the excursion will involve two nights’ stay in a campsite before return at 5:30 pm on Sunday. Please indicate consent by signing and returning the attached slip via your child’s registration tutor.

Eric had forged the headmaster’s signature underneath.

Dana lay on her bed, holding the letter over her head and staring at the text as she waited for Pauline and Graeme to return from work. Cale’s clanking music drifted in from the next room, and the summer heat beat down on the street outside.

At the sound of the front door opening, she slid off and went downstairs. “Graeme?”

“Hello Dana, did you have an okay day at school?”

When Dana had first come to live with Pauline and Graeme, Graeme had started off asking her if she had a
nice
day at school. But Dana had told him it was impossible for school ever to be nice, so ever since he’d instead asked if she’d had an
okay
day, as that was the best she could hope for.

“I’ve got invited to a field trip.” Dana handed the letter to him, trying to sound as sincere as possible and hoping there was nothing in her demeanour or this mysterious ‘body language’ thing that neurotypical people are supposed to use to send each other secret messages that would give her away.

She watched Graeme’s face with bated breath as he read the letter. When he’d finished, he looked at her and grinned. “Not like you to get all excited about something like a school trip, when you don’t like school.”

“I know, but I like science!” Immediately after she’d said it, she wondered if she’d been too quick with the answer.

“That’s all very well, but you do understand there will be other people going on this field trip as well, and you might have to share tents with them?”

“Only nice people, like Mr Kell and Eric!”

Graeme burst out laughing. “I hope the school doesn’t expect you to share a tent with Mr Kell and Eric.”

Pauline had come in through the front door, behind Graeme. She nudged him. “Graeme, stop winding her up. I expect there’s a woman teacher as well, and she’ll be in the tent with the girls.”

“Yes, Miss McCafferty.” Dana picked the name of a female teacher she knew was well respected at the school. Even if this did work, what would happen if next parents’ evening, Pauline and Graeme went up to Kell, or McCafferty, and asked them about the trip? Hopefully they would have forgotten about it by then.

“Hmm, I don’t know,” Graeme said. “I was planning on trailing around a boring old DIY shop this weekend and buying a new shed, and I need you to hold the nails and spare tools for me...”

Pauline interrupted him with a strident exclamation. “Graeme! Stop being so bloody silly!”

And then Pauline had signed the fake letter so Dana could pretend to take it back to school, and the ruse had so far worked in that Pauline and Graeme wouldn’t expect her back until after the weekend.

The following morning, Pauline left to take Cale to school. Dana mumbled a farewell to her in between mouthfuls of her breakfast, and Pauline told her she hoped she would enjoy her trip.

Graeme picked up Dana’s bag. He made a noise like he was overexerting himself and dumped it back on the chair. “It weighs a ton! You can’t carry that.”

“It normally weighs that much,” Dana protested. “You try feeling it when I’ve got PE and Physics and Maths!”

Graeme waved a hand dismissively. “Gimme five minutes and I’ll give you a lift in to school and see you off.”

Dana stared in horror at his back as he headed out into the hall. If he gave her a lift, to the school, there wouldn’t be a coach for him to see off, and he would realise, and the school probably would as well. Whatever happened, Graeme would be angry and she’d have to spend today in school, exactly as she’d planned not to do. She forced down the rest of her breakfast cereal without chewing and followed him upstairs. “It doesn’t matter, I can manage.”

Graeme let off a sardonic laugh. “You don’t want me to embarrass you at school?” He rinsed a plastic comb under the bathroom tap and ran it through his hair and sideburns.

Perhaps she should run with that. “Well, nobody else’s dad comes with them at the start of a school trip.”

“I bet they do
really
.”

Dana was starting to feel the idea was done for and she was going to get caught, but then Graeme’s mobile rang from inside his jacket pocket, and he went into his bedroom to answer it.

From what Dana could hear, the conversation he had was brief, and when he came back out he looked flustered, and walked straight past her to the stairs. “There’s a problem at work and I’m going to have to go straight there. Sorry, Dana. You’ll have to manage without me to embarrass you!”

The door slammed shut behind him, and now Dana was alone, standing still on the landing in the silent house.

Cale would know she was going away. Cale could hear Dana’s thoughts, but he kept it to himself. He didn’t really see any relevance in confiding in other people. He had his own thoughts, and that was enough for him. It was just the way he was, and the way it had always been since farther back than memory could reach, and it had never occurred to Dana to try to shield what she was thinking from him.

The last time she’d gone away like this, it had been when she’d met Jananin outside the hospital, but that had been very different. Leaving things as they were had not really been an option, at least not one that would have been any easier to deal with than the alternative. This time, there was nothing making her take this risk, other than the urge to find something, somewhere that would give her an answer. If she didn’t do it, she’d be safe, and nothing would happen.

If she wanted to, she could send a text to Eric’s phone telling him she couldn’t come, and that would be the end of the matter.

But then she would never know.

Perhaps they would go there and not find anything, but if they
did
find something, what if it meant something bad? What if the thing she wanted most and the thing she was most afraid of were exactly the same? What
if
...

If Ivor had sent the wyvern after her
...

It must have been a mistake. If it was Ivor behind this, she would be able to find him and stop him, she knew it, and everything would be all right.

She went back downstairs and struggled into her heavy backpack. Pauline had kept Duncan’s post for him, and it was sitting on the placemat where he usually sat at the dining table, waiting for him to open it. Dana had forgotten her adoptive brother was coming home tonight. She wouldn’t see him until after the weekend.

On the way to Eric’s house, she tried to stick to back alleys and little-used routes away from main roads, in case anyone from school saw her. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock, and already the sun beat down hot on the tile roofs, and not a cloud was to be seen in the sky. Her shoulders sweltered under Duncan’s heavy metal jacket and the chafing straps of the rucksack.

She couldn’t see Eric at the window this time, but when she approached the back of the house through the alley, the gate was ajar and the door was unlocked.

“Eric?” She poked her head into the catfood-smelling utility room. The internal door to the garage was open, and he appeared in the doorway.

“Come in, quickly.”

Dana shut the door behind her.

Eric stared at the floor where she stood. “What you wearing wellies for?”