Page 57 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

‘If you get the others now, how many of them will end up in these cages?’

‘Frida Rose is right,’ Moth whispered, the complicated pattern he’d been weaving in the dip of Dian’s collarbone glinting.

Dian’s eyes flared so wide, she would have seen the whites if there’d been any. They looked raw and cornered. A muscle in their jaw ticked, fingers flexing at their sides, indecision written all over the taut lines of their face.

‘I know you think you can’t trust humans,’ Frida rushed on, ‘and I can’t expect you to trust me, but I truly think if we try it my way, we might be able to get inside this cage without anyone else getting hurt. I know that’s the most important thing right now, right?’

‘You know?’ Dian snarled, wind-swept locks trembling with their sudden fury. ‘I don’t know anything! I think humans always think they know everything.’

The violence in it struck her like a storm.

‘Dian,’ Moth soothed, hovering under their left earlobe.

But Dian had screwed up their face, scrunching up their aquiline nose. It was so un-fairy-like, it made Frida feel as if she was slipping, although the ground was solid. For a few heartbeats, Dian stared down at her like they wished to peel off her very skin, to see the contents of her bones. She didn’t know what they saw in her expression. Desperation, probably. But finally, their shoulders sagged and they turned away with a growl. Then they just set off without another word down the grass in the direction Frida had indicated, their curls streaming behind them in a river of emerald-green.

Chapter Thirty-One

It took Frida a moment to mentally catch up. For a few seconds, she just stared after them, the terracotta dragon’s keening creeping into the gaps between her atoms and making a home there. She wondered if she’d ever unhear it.

Moth let out a dramatic sigh.

Frida startled, not having realised the spider had lit upon her collar.

Dian slipped through the darkness.

‘I believe,’ Moth mused, his tiny paws tickling her neck, ‘Dian meant to say: Oh, yes, Frida Rose, I appreciate your suggestion. Thank you for your help. I agree that it might be a good idea to try what you propose. Shall we go, then? After you.’ He paused drily, before finishing with, ‘Alas, the tree-born aren’t really a please-and-thank-you kind of species.’

Frida laughed; a wheezy noise that was half laugh half sob.

‘But I expect you have friends you want to throttle sometimes too.’

Frida fixed on the memory of Antony and Hamish like a lodestone, holding them close as she set off after Dian. ‘I do have friends like that, Moth,’ she said shakily, under her breath.

Moth skittered up a strand of her hair, bouncing merrily. He hummed and after a few beats began to weave a little web. Her hair was just one big knot now; the tie of her braid probably lost in deep time. As he wove, she didn’t know why the oh so delicate strands of silver in her filthy fringe made her feel better. They did though. Until, that is, they caught up with Dian, and the fairy took in what Moth was doing. She watched their dark eyebrows knot, first in confusion, then fury.

Dian baulked, looking from Frida to Moth and back again, and then, without another word, they flared spectacularly into nothing.

Frida gave a cry, spinning on the spot.

Moth sighed, vibrating into the shell of her ear, ‘Pay them no heed. They are still here, whether they wish you to think it or not.’

Frida exhaled sharply. She suddenly realised she’d been expecting them to leave her ever since the stables. But as each second had passed and they’d stayed solid, and real, she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge how relieved she’d been. But now, they’d done it. They’d left.

‘Where are you, Dian?’ she exclaimed.

There was no reply though.

‘Come on,’ Moth urged. ‘We shouldn’t linger.’

With a curse, Frida set off helplessly down the pathway. She tried not to think about where Dian was or wasn’t. As she wove between the yew hedges, she saw no one else – human or fairy. Whether Forge House was open to visitors, she didn’t know, but it was night now anyway. Above her, the sky was all black and she took a moment to marvel over the spilled glitter of the Milky Way. There was no moon, just a billion unblinking stars, and she couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen stars quite so fierce, or so close. For a split second, she wondered what they might look like to Dian in the raindrops, then she pushed that thought away, for she knew Dian would never tell her.

Instead, she concentrated on her inner map. Even though she’d only been here once, she remembered it like it was yesterday: the curve of the drystone walls, the spectacular layout of the rose gardens, the perfectly manicured hedges.

What she didn’t remember were the cages.

She sensed the first from the way her head started to pound even before she’d rounded the corner. When the iron bars appeared, she stopped sharply. This was a zoo, after all, so she shouldn’t have been surprised. This was her zoo. But the sight of the two broonies, their eery moon-like heads bobbing in a pile of golden hay, twisted Frida’s gut. When she’d last been here, she could have sworn this had been a croquet pitch.

‘Are these—’ Her breath caught, and she swung her head around helplessly, looking again for Dian. But they were nowhere to be seen. She almost couldn’t bring herself to voice what she wanted, and dreaded, to know. ‘Are these your friends, Moth? Are these who you came to find?’