Page 29 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

She sighed again, closing the book. The coil of panic inside her tightened with each resonant tick of the clock. If Rule Number One of zookeeping was DO NOT RUN, and DO NOT STEAL THE CHOCOLATE CROISSANTS was Rule Number Two, then DO NOT PANIC was a firm Number Three. She took off her misshapen cap and placed it carefully on the table. She stared for a while at the weather-beaten khaki and the faded pink logo she’d been so proud to receive. Her heart ached as she drew the cap back towards her and held it tightly against her chest. The front cover of Mr Bother’s book was red leather, with an embossed illustration of a knight riding fearlessly through a dark wood. A hero, obviously. In his hands he held a long sword which may as well, let’s be honest, have been a penis. The metal glimmered by the light of a sickle moon, its edge a clarion call against heathen beasts.

If she closed her eyes, she could make out the silhouette of her mum sitting at the corner desk by the window, her dark hair curtaining her face, poring over some random book about centipedes or tidal anomalies caused by merpeople. Your fairy isn’t a beast, Friduska, and you don’t need a knight to save you. The only heathen in this place is Mr Bother.

Frida attempted a smile. She knew her mum was right, but right now, she’d be ecstatic if some knight with a pointy sword strode through that door. In a burst of rage, she picked up the book and flung it across the room. It landed with a crash, and she dragged her hands through her hair, ripping tendrils out of her braid.

‘What am I meant to do, Mum?’ A desperate cry lodged in her throat as total silence filled the vaulted room. Her voice broke. ‘Somehow, this is my fault. I know it is.’ Although she didn’t know how it could be, something in her heart told her it unequivocally was. She stared at the empty table where her mum had always sat. There were no books on it now and the chair was neatly tucked in. She tried, desperately, to come up with some pearl of wisdom, some Ada Rose silver lining, but there was nothing. She glared at Mr Bother’s book, lying splayed and bent in the corner, with the knight on the cover staring up at the ceiling. Her head fell onto her arms. There had been no hero to save her when her mum had died, and there was no hero to save her now. She looked at her tattooed arms, pinching the curve of Fireheart’s tail, the edges of the yellow rose on her wrist. ‘I’m totally alone,’ she whispered.

The only answer was the infernal ticking of the grandfather clock.

It was six o’clock. Past closing time. How many hours had her friends been asleep? Four hours, five? Too many. A sleep of a hundred years stretched before her as she shoved her cap back on, everything swirling in her pounding head. The pain when the lightning had struck. The glow when her body had been violet. The sickly grey of Raz’s fear. The sweet, childish sound of Lucky’s chirps. The glittery escaped tidal wave. The churn of the forest, the rumble of the earth. The anguish in Dozy’s eyes. How they’d looked at her, really looked at her, like they’d known her.

A trick, it had been nothing but a trick.

Frida rammed back her chair. Her heart felt as if it was going to burst. Desperately, she stared through the windows, silvery spotlights seeming to move over the inky waves. The LEZ was her sanctuary. She loved watching the gentle-hearted water horse, Helion, causing accidental tidal waves with a flick of his seafoam tail. Seeing guests turn red-faced as the Lagarfljót Worm licked their own penis. Appreciating the zebra stripes of the inkanyamba flowing like black and white ribbons, or sitting in Grass as the hoop snakes spiralled, eating their own tails and being chased by Millie von Sunshine the jackalope.

These creatures had all lost their families. They’d lost their homes. None of them had anywhere else to go apart from here.

Did Dozy even know that Higgleton Common had been destroyed?

She left the books in a pile and headed for the door, her thoughts in a whirl, but there was one thing that shone clearer and brighter than the rest. If no knight was coming, then she would have to be the knight. She may not have a sword but she sure as hell could find a machete. If this was like the wood from Sleeping Beauty, then she would cut a way out of it if it was the last thing she did, and she’d get the help she needed, the help her friends needed. She pushed open the doors and felt the bite of sea air on her cheeks, her headache spiking yet again, but she was too focused to care – already taking the steps at a run. Firearms training had been next year’s plan, but she sure as hell could wield a blade. And if she had to turn what was left of the Hawthorn into sawdust to fix this, she’d do it. It would break her heart, but she’d do it.

‘Come on Jellies,’ she exclaimed when she reached the bottom of the steps, the monkeys napping in a sticky heap in one of the larger pots Fritz used to make the sauce. A chocolate-covered moustached monster of yellow eyes and coloured sprinkles. It should have made her laugh. Instead, it just made her more determined.

This was their home too.

‘Let’s go,’ she said briskly, already getting behind Grace’s wheel and starting the engine. With a bit of grumbling, the chocolate monster split into sixteen pieces and flooded back onto Grace. As before, Jellybean took pride of place on the front seat, aggressively licking the remnants of Fritz’s wares off his furry tail. The others spread themselves over the roof and in the back amongst Hamish’s books. The thought of Antony’s and Hamish’s meltdowns when they saw those tedious books covered in chocolate only gave her an extra boost, for her two friends’ faces, leached of life and entombed for a hundred years in ivy haunted her.

Unacceptable.

She put her foot down and sped down the causeway, focused so much on getting back as quickly as she could to Ground Control where there was a supply of weapons in a locked box in the Head Keepers’ office, that she didn’t notice when outside the steady beam of Grace’s headlights, the silvery spotlights started to flicker off slowly, one by one, like falling stars.

Chapter Eighteen

Frida had been driving for about five minutes, and was about halfway back down the causeway, when she pulled Grace to a stop, not quite knowing at first what she was doing. Jellybean trilled anxiously at her, but she waved him off, squinting at the road in front of her. The windshield was covered with ocean spray, and it was hard to see much outside the sharp beam of Grace’s headlamps. Was it her imagination or was the white concrete shimmering in a strange way? Jellybean tried to grab her sleeve with his tiny fingers, but she brushed him off gently.

‘It’s ok. I just want to see what that is.’

Jellybean cheeped wildly in the back of his throats, but Frida ignored him. A thin band of puddles stretched from one side of the five-metre-wide causeway to the other, just in front of Grace’s wheels. As she walked over, Grace’s headlights bled a pool of yellow into the standing water, making the surface look almost mother-of-pearl. She tilted her head this way and that, watching the colours swirl.

‘Beautiful,’ she said softly. ‘Look at this, Jelly.’

Jelly glared wide-eyed through the windshield, shaking both his heads emphatically.

‘Suit yourself.’ Kneeling down, she examined the glistening water. She initially thought it could be the splash from one of Karen’s tentacles, but the way the colours seemed to move was too strange, churning and splitting like spilled petrol. A faint scent of spaces between the stars fluttered around her, and her brain was suddenly swimming. She leaned closer as the colours melded together, black and indigo, cerulean blue and moonrise grey, mixing before her eyes into the scuttling shapes of crabs and molluscs, tidal sprays and jagged caves.

Somewhere, Jellybean and the other monkeys were trilling in alarm.

‘Ree.Ree.Ree.Ree!’

She tilted closer, her nose inches from the water. She heard the rush of waves hitting a beach, the sting of sea air on her cheeks. In her cupped hands was the feeling of sand pouring through her fingers, thick and golden.

She was jolted by a sharp pinch on her neck and snapped her head up, tumbling away from the puddle and falling on the concrete with a painful thud.

‘Jelly!’ she exclaimed, rubbing her neck. Jellybean had bitten her!

The little monkey leapt up and down and his white fur bristled. Sparks of electricity flared from his ears. His four pupils were night-swollen, his two heads twisting in agitation. ‘Rida!’ His other head chirped in agreement. ‘Ree!’

Her mind cleared, all in a rush. She peered in sudden dread towards the shrimps’ territory, realising this might be some new trick of Dame Judi Drench’s. She could see all eleven of them shining at the edges of Grace’s headlights now, swimming in lazy circles, their hungry eyes on stalks bobbing in the waves.