Page 40 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

She was about to be crushed. Crushed, into a million pieces. This was the last thought she had before the air ran out, darkness swallowed her up and there was nothing but shattering, gasping, drowning, gulping, fighting, crying. It might have been an eternity, and it might have been a flash of candlelight in the darkness. There was earth. Dirt and root and mycelium, stars upon stars upon stars, a roar that went on and on, up and down, outwards, inwards. Agony and breaking, squeezed, fragile and broken, nothing but galaxies.

Then: a pinprick of light far, far above.

It rushed into being, fused amongst mud and mulch, as if it had been grabbed by a swimmer, grasping for a life belt. A song roared, and then swam, dug, flew . . . through colours that didn’t have names, through an infinity of purples. . . Up, up, UP! Then with a cry of release, the darkness burst. The ecstasy was like taking a first breath. Light flooded, slicing, clean and pure, sharp and hot, cerulean and sapphire.

Then, again: nothing.

PART THREE

Chapter Twenty-Four

When Frida woke up, she thought it had all been a dream. But as she lay in something soft, which she soon realised was grass, everything felt tender, from her hair to her bones. Her lungs burned and her throat was sore. Maybe from screaming, or maybe from swallowing more worms, twigs, roots and soil than any human ever should. Slowly returning to consciousness, she managed to roll over with a groan. Was that what it felt like to be buried alive?

She cracked one eye open and winced.

The light was the warm hue of high summer. Strangely reassuring. And there was a sound coming from nearby that couldn’t help but make her smile. It was like a baby canary being tickled. A few yards away, a massive purple dragon was rolling around on his back, giggling, sunlight streaming off his amethyst scales. Around him, huge golden insects the size of bats fluttered in an excited cloud, and she had to blink a few times before she realised they were dragonflies. Though unlike any dragonfly she’d ever seen.

Suddenly, sitting up too fast, she choked out a cry. Lucky immediately swung his massive snout around and gave a howl of delight. ‘LITTLE STINK! YOU’RE ALIVE!’

She clutched her head at the volume as she got up on wobbly legs. ‘Lucky, where are we?’

His belly was exultant. ‘Exactly where we should be!’ His lips widened in a grin, and then he went back to rolling around in the grass. In a daze, Frida lifted her gaze past him. Her nostrils flared as the scent of salt and sea air wrapped around her.

The sea. They were by the sea.

Before her stretched a vast expanse of blue that seemed to go on forever, melting at last into a white misty haze on the horizon. Letting out a whimper, she stumbled across the grassy hillside. She walked over to the edge where she saw undulating white chalk cliffs extending left and right as far as she could see. Below her, a rocky beach was speckled with pebbles. Above a great searing sky, the sun a knife-sharp white hole.

For a long moment, she just stood there.

She’d stood on this exact spot before. Many times, in fact.

To her left, she should have been able to see a long metallic pier jutting into the dark blue water, crowned by the infamous red and white rollercoaster, the Kraken’s Rift. She should have been able to see busy tarmacked roads sandwiched against winding old, cobbled streets. She should have seen the seaside promenade, the jaunty seafront cafes, the striped deckchairs, tourist coaches gridlocked in traffic jams, the Italian restaurant where her mum had worked, the wind farm in the bay . . .

Beyond all that, she should have seen the sprawl of Liberty Park creeping up the hillside, and the massive twinkling golden walls of the LEZ. The ornate gilded entrance, the colourful roofs of the plaza, the network of thoroughfares leading towards the seven sections of the LEZ like a sunburst.

She stood there, not quite able to process what she was seeing.

Or, more accurately, what she wasn’t seeing.

This was Melody-Upon-Sea. Except – it wasn’t.

She didn’t know how long she stood there before Lucky eventually lumbered over, a warm cloud of smoke heating her back as he came to stand next to her.

‘Where’s the LEZ?’ she whispered.

Lucky emitted a self-satisfied chirp from the back of his throat. Around his head, those ethereal dragonflies still hovered. They flittered between sunbeams. Or . . . did they?

‘Big-dragon-big-dragon,’ they purred. Their quivering voices filled her head with sunlight. ‘Fire-light-burn-heat-hot-bright-fly-fly-fly.’

She swayed, disbelieving.

There was a poster on the back of her kitchen door, yellowed and peeling at the edges. It had been there since she’d been a child. She looked at it every time she put on the oven. The Best British Extraordinary Insects Throughout History.

‘Galin’s greater golden dragonfly,’ she murmured.

As big as two handspans. They didn’t move between sunbeams. They were made of sunbeams. Found in two types of habitat: forest meadows, with lots of standing water, and big open cliff faces where they could catch sunlight reflecting off the waves below. She looked around at the cliff, with the water below, and felt her heart flip-flop. It had been almost two centuries since they’d been hunted to extinction, victims of a Regency fad for dragonfly lamps. She watched, captivated, as their wings whirled, dancing across Lucky’s scales as if skimming a giant purple pond. They were sunshine incarnate, splaying shards of diamond light across the backs of her eyelids.

It wasn’t possible.