Page 46 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

Dozy just let out a howl and came to a halt before the oak-supreme. ‘I won’t do it!’ they repeated with a brutal hiss. ‘This was not what we agreed when this meeting was proposed. We haven’t even started the debate yet.’

‘Yet it is a fitting solution,’ the oak-supreme answered, their eyes sliding towards Frida. There was enough frost in their voice to make Frida wonder if they had an ice fairy somewhere in their family tree. ‘The human is here. We adapt, cousin.’ They said the final word, cousin, with enough disdain to make Frida shiver.

Dozy went wan, their jaw clenched tighter than Cliff’s. Their ethereal beauty seemed to fade as they stood there, and Frida could have sworn she heard a tremble in their voice as they said, barely audible, ‘Please?’

The oak-supreme did not even flinch. ‘It is decided.’

For a few seconds, Frida thought Dozy would continue to argue. But then their head dipped, and all the strength seemed to go out of them in a whoosh. The hairs on the back of Frida’s neck lifted. Tentatively, she inched closer.

‘Uh,’ she said a bit too loudly. ‘Hello? Hi?’

The whole unpleasant group turned their faces towards her.

She held her ground. Just. ‘Can I ask what you’re talking about?’ She smiled obligingly, trying to channel Antony’s unfathomable ability to make every person in the room want to be his friend.

It was not successful. No one would look at her apart from the pixie, who was doing some kind of evil pixie-dance on the oak-supreme’s shoulder, single red eye gleaming.

Finally, the oak-supreme stepped out of the crowd with a creaking, suffering sigh, wet crystalline droplets sparkling in their hair. The trees around them seemed to lift in symphony, as if the entire world did nothing without their permission. They uttered, almost as if it pained them, ‘We have decided not to kill you, human-not-a-human.’

‘Oh,’ Frida said, blinking. ‘Right. Well. That’s kind of you.’

The oak-supreme nodded, as if they really believed it was. ‘But we do not trust you.’

She thought to argue, then saw the hatred ingrained on Dozy’s face, directed squarely at her. The way their soft, upturned lips had firmed into a sneer, the twist to their jaw as if they were chewing on something distasteful.

‘I understand,’ she said.

The oak-supreme’s lip curled. ‘Do you? We are looking for our families.’ They spread their arms, indicating the whole incongruent group. ‘And there is a place, near here, where some of them are being held. The house of which you speak. You say you are going there. But why would a human and a dragon be going to such a place?’

Her ears suddenly felt a bit muffled, like she was listening through a long tunnel. One of the wolves tilted his mammoth shaggy head, training his huge yellow eye on her. All she could hear was the determined crunch of Lucky’s oblivious chewing, and the oak fairy’s words echoing. What did they think, that she was taking Lucky to Forge House to be captured? It was just a giant misunderstanding then! She might have laughed, except it wasn’t funny, not in the least. Not if they thought that Forge House had taken their families.

She was already shaking her head to refute it. ‘If your families are in that house, they’re there because they were in danger, and there was nowhere else safe left for them to go. I know the people who live there. I can vouch for their intentions.’

Someone, one of the elves, scoffed.

She swung around. ‘It’s true!’ But a feather of fear ran down her spine. She could see, from their perspective, how it might look. And the oak-fairy’s white eyes seemed to grow frostier with every second.

‘It is a fortunate thing you have such assurance,’ they said, their lips lifting with studied cruelty. ‘Because you and my cousin will be going together to make certain of it.’

Frida stopped dead. ‘What?’

Dozy snapped their teeth at her, their hair rippling like many-coloured leaves, and Frida stumbled backwards with a yelp.

‘If you wish to go in that house,’ the oak-supreme barked, ‘you will not go alone. My cousin will go with you, and you will show us these intentions of which you speak.’

She quailed as she and Dozy stared at each other across the rain-dusted grass, her brain whirring at the strangeness of it. At the impossibility of this coincidence. It had to mean something, and yet – how on earth was she going to find the Jewel, if Dozy was going to be her minder?

Lucky, who must have fallen asleep, suddenly emitted a loud snore.

‘Fine, but he is coming with me,’ she said, crossing her arms furiously over her chest.

The oak-supreme simply looked at her and uttered one irrefutable word. ‘No.’

Frida lurched forwards, but the oak-supreme just raised a gnarled hand. ‘He is one of us, and we will look after him.’

Like hell you will! She was quite ready to see how easily an oak-fairy’s neck might snap, when someone said softly, from near her right leg,

‘Do not worry.’