The Wildwood Arrow (2 page)

Laney’s middle finger prickled and she rubbed it thoughtfully as she walked through the churchyard. She still had a red mark from when she’d burned herself on a candle weeks ago. It tingled sometimes, especially when her hands felt hot.

Clouds covered the sun, casting the churchyard into gloom. Laney followed the path round the corner past tilted gravestones. She could still see traces of the flood here and there – the dark line near the bottom of the church wall where the water had reached. She shouldn’t be spending so much time on her own worries when there were Myricals to find. She sped up, until she heard voices and saw Craig Mottle and Jack Turney – human boys she knew from school.

They were coming out of the minimart with plastic bags and sniggering at something. Laney watched them swagger down the High Street. Craig got a fizzy drink out of his bag and took a long swig before giving a huge belch. Both boys sniggered again.

As they passed the Lionhart Pet Shop a pair of gigantic green cat’s eyes on the wall blinked and a long growl made the ground tremble. Laney smiled to herself. Craig couldn’t hear the growl. He couldn’t see the huge cat’s eyes on the pet-shop wall even though he walked past them every day. He couldn’t see the shimmering white-pink cloud of
sprites flying over the park or the mysterious shape of the faerie ring near the old oak tree. The whole village was full of magic signs that humans couldn’t see. Laney remembered the first time she’d walked along the High Street after her eyes had gained their gold-ringed enchantment and she had seen her ordinary-looking village as it really was, with faerie power washing over the streets.

Laney reached the churchyard gate that led out on to the High Street. She thought she’d managed to slip by unnoticed until she heard Craig’s voice.

“Ooh, it’s Laney Rivers!” He blocked her path, stopping Laney from getting through the gateway. Jack Turney stood behind him, grinning.

“Can you move, please?” Laney glared at Craig. Of all the boys from school, Craig topped the list of the most annoying.

He grinned before taking another swig of his drink. “Make me!”

“Move, Craig!” Laney felt the frustration build up inside her – about her dad, about her powers that wouldn’t work and the Mist training she wasn’t getting. She glared at Craig’s freckled face and his bottle. The feeling boiled higher, and suddenly a stream of fizzy orange shot right up Craig’s nose.

“Ugh!” Craig stumbled backwards, orange liquid dribbling over his cheeks and chin on to his clothes.

“Oh, man! That wasn’t cool,” said Jack Turney.
“Look at your T-shirt.”

Laney dashed past them and took the path that led to the river. She grinned to herself. It wasn’t just that it served Craig right. Finally she’d managed to get some liquid to obey her command. Maybe her powers weren’t totally useless after all!

By the end of the afternoon, Laney’s arm was aching. She raised the small grey stone to her eye for the thousandth time and looked through the hole in the middle. All she could see was sheep and grass. Keeping the stone to her eye, she slowly checked the rest of the field, looking for any shimmering patches on the grass or in the air. These were spell vibrations and spotting them might lead to the discovery of a Myrical.

Behind Laney, Fletcher Thornbeam stood waiting, his hands in his jeans pockets and his face as still as rock. Claudia Lionhart was perched on top of the fence with her legs curled beneath her and Dizzy, her thin black cat, by her side. Laney knew her dad was right. There would be trouble if their tribes saw the three of them spending so much time together.

Claudia yawned. “Are we done yet? Seriously! Myrical hunting is exhausting and we’ve been searching all day.”

“Nearly done!” Laney cast her eye across the
furthest part of the meadow. More sheep grazing on more grass, and a rusty bucket in one corner – that was it. She lowered the stone with the now familiar lurch of disappointment. Six weeks of this. Six weeks of nothing.

She turned, meeting her friends’ gold-ringed eyes. “There’s nothing here,” she told them.

Fletcher pulled out a map, unfolded it and scribbled a note on it. “That’s OK. We can tick this place off and move on.”

Claudia sprang smoothly down from the fence and Dizzy leapt after her. “We should skip these other fields. They’re all the same.”

“We can’t,” said Fletcher. “We need to check them, just in case.”

“It would be a lot quicker if we could change to faerie form,” said Laney, thinking of the sudden rush of power that came with the change. “We could do a sort of fly over and check out each field that way.”

“It might give the humans a bit of a shock,” Fletcher said drily. “And we don’t want people knowing what we’re doing, remember?”

“I know – I wasn’t really serious.” Laney fidgeted. “It’s just … getting annoying doing it like this.” She didn’t really mean annoying but she didn’t know how to explain it. The simmering feeling had returned. If she didn’t do something to relieve the
pressure she felt like she might burst.

“We should mix things up by searching in town,” said Claudia. “A change would be good.”

“We can’t just flit from one place to the next.” Fletcher studied the map again, before folding it up. “We have to do this one bit at a time otherwise we’ll miss somewhere out.”

“Maybe we should split up and I’ll cover town,” said Claudia.

“I don’t think the Myricals would be hidden in Pennington,” said Laney. “It’s not out of the way enough – what if a human found one of them or something?”

“I know we probably won’t
find
anything in Pennington but at least we won’t die of boredom. There are shoe shops!” Claudia’s eyes glinted. “We’ll be back at school in three days and I’ve hardly done any shopping this whole summer.”

Fletcher raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you think finding the Myricals is more important than buying shoes?” He clicked his fingers, making a tree branch swing aside, and then climbed the fence into the next field. Laney followed.

“Are we seriously expecting to find anything here though?” Claudia vaulted gracefully over the fence to join them. “The olden-day Elders hid the Myricals – the most powerful magical things in existence – and we expect to find them among the
sheep dung?”

“They’re just as likely to be here as anywhere else,” said Fletcher stubbornly.

Laney’s simmering feeling grew stronger. She wondered if it was the bickering between Fletcher and Claudia getting on her nerves. They fell out at least once a day, but as Fletcher was a Thorn and Claudia was a Greytail that was only to be expected. She pushed a wisp of hair away from her face. “I just wish we had some idea of where to look … a hint or something. I bet the Shadow faerie isn’t searching like this. I bet he’ll go straight to them!”

The sheep and bird calls sounded loud in the long silence. Claudia looked at Laney and then looked away again.

The words
Shadow faerie
hung between them all like a heavy cloud.

Fletcher broke the silence. “We haven’t seen any sign of the Shadow for weeks and if Gwen doesn’t know any more about where the Myricals are, then he probably doesn’t either. He didn’t know where the Crystal Mirror was, did he?”

“No, but I can’t help wondering…” Laney tailed off. She felt she shouldn’t mention the Shadow faerie, as if it might bring him here if she talked about him. A picture rose in her mind of that dark hood masking his face and his black wings stretching wide… She gulped. “I just can’t help
wondering where the Shadow is, that’s all. He could be anywhere and no one else seems worried. No one saw him except us and Gwen, and the tribes never believed he existed in the first place.”

“I know what you mean,” said Claudia. “I keep wanting to warn the other Greytails. But Gwen told us to keep it a secret, especially as we don’t know who the Shadow actually is.”

“It’s probably safer that way,” Fletcher added. “There’d be fighting if people knew. There’s already so much suspicion between the tribes. We just have to keep our mouths shut and carry on looking for the Myricals. It’s the only way we can help.”

“I guess so,” said Laney. “But it feels like we’re waiting for something bad to happen and it’s getting on my nerves. I wish Gwen had some idea of where we should look.”

Gwen Whitefern was the only tribe Elder that Laney trusted and the only one who knew about their search for the Myricals. She had explained how the sacred objects came to be – telling them that years ago each of the tribes had crafted a precious thing and poured the essence of their powers inside it. These were the five Myricals. The Mist tribe with its water magic had made the Crystal Mirror. The Thorns with their power over plants and trees had created the Wildwood Arrow. The Blaze tribe had put their power over fire into the Sparkstone, while
the Kestrels had filled the Vial of the Four Winds with their power over air. Finally, the White Wolf Statue was made by the Greytails and they poured their powerful bond with animals into it.

Gwen had also told them how a great evil force had risen among the faeries, and how the tribes had planned to hide all the Myricals, only retrieving them when the evil was defeated. But by then the Myricals had been lost completely. Now a new evil was searching for the objects. And if the Shadow faerie took possession of one… Laney shivered. You could destroy masses of people and whole stretches of land with power like that. At least they’d made sure that the Crystal Mirror was safe. Passing it through the ancient Mencladden Stone outside the village at sunrise had locked it away inside Time itself.

Fletcher took the adder stone from Laney and used it to check the new field. “I can’t see anything here either.”

“Big surprise!” said Claudia. “It’s just another field.”

Fletcher ignored the comment and checked the field one more time. Laney noticed that Dizzy was standing stock still, her back arched and her black fur bristling. Then she uttered a long string of meows before rushing off into the undergrowth. Claudia, who had bent down to listen, straightened
up and looked at Laney with raised eyebrows.

“What is it?” Laney knew cats were one of the few creatures that could see faerie magic and Dizzy was definitely spooked by something.

“Dizzy’s caught the scent of someone crossing the river – a man from the Mist tribe.”

“Do you think he knows we’re here?” said Laney.

“He probably doesn’t,” Fletcher said quietly. “You go and see what he’s doing, Laney – he’s from your tribe. We’ll stay hidden.”

Laney went down the footpath that led to the riverbank. A tall, thin man with angular shoulders stood on the bridge that spanned the Mistray river. He was leaning on the railing, peering at the water over the top of his half-moon spectacles. Laney recognised him as Lucas Frogley, the new Mist Elder. He came from the neighbouring village of Gillforth, so she didn’t know much about him.

Curious, Laney went closer to the river’s edge, trying to work out why he was staring at the water so hard. A small whirlpool spun in the centre of the river directly below the bridge. Laney’s eyes flicked from the man to the swirling water, sure he was creating it even though he gave no sign he was using his power. A bunch of leaves and sticks floating down the river were sucked into the whirlpool and vanished completely. Laney shivered.

“Ahh!” said Frogley, a smile widening on his pale,
bony face as he saw her. His stare made Laney feel as if she was something slimy he’d found on the riverbank. “Are you Elaine Rivers?”

“Yes, I’m Laney.” She noticed the curling silver marks on the backs of his hands. Those were the marks of an Elder.

“Your father came to speak with me today,” Mr Frogley said grandly. “Is it true that you Awakened quite recently?”

Laney nodded, hoping he wouldn’t ask too much about that.

“Well, young lady!” He peered at her over his half-moon spectacles. “Your dad said you were keen to join us so I came to deliver the good news myself. You’re invited to join our next Mist training session, just as long as you can guarantee one thing.”

Laney smiled nervously. “Yes … sir?”

He leaned a little closer. “I want to be sure that you won’t be spreading any more nonsense about a
Shadow
.” He paused as if waiting for a reaction. “I’m certain it must have been that Whitefern woman filling your head with Thorn ideas and by now you must know that it was no more than a ridiculous lie. Hmm?”

Laney thought fast. “I won’t mention anything about it.” At least she could promise that without being untruthful – after all, they were supposed to be keeping what they knew a secret for now.

“Good.” Frogley’s mouth stretched into a wide smirk. “Because we can’t welcome anyone whose words or actions will make a joke of our tribe, can we? The next training session is today, in fact, at Faymere Lake at seven o’clock. Don’t fly there, don’t be late and make sure that you’re not seen on the way.”

“Thank you. I will. I mean I won’t,” said Laney.

Frogley smiled again and his round eyes examined her closely before he turned in the direction of Skellmore.

Laney gazed at the water rushing under the bridge, her stomach flipping over. She couldn’t believe it – she had thought her dad was never going to talk to the Mist Elder about her training. She had been wishing so hard for this, but what if she went along and did everything wrong?