Page 81 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

This was what was powering the rest of the cages. Her cage, Sir Joshua had said, was different. But the others – it hadn’t been the objects in the laboratory, it was this – this was what was being used to torture the dragon, the unicorn, the basilisk, the carbuncle.

It was almost poetic, she thought, as she barked out a wild, violent laugh.

Very slowly, she turned back to Georgiana.

Her brain was on fire.

Her lungs burned.

Her magic coiled, the individual threads, one by one, blazing in fury as she took hold of them. She looked at Henry Gladstone, shrinking in his chair. At Edward Caval popping out of his waistcoat, clutching his brandy glass and leering at the sisters. At Laurence Harding, the poet, drinking champagne and laughing with Sir Joshua. At the servants, standing along the walls, their faces schooled to blankness. At Dahlia, at Jane. At Hannah, who painted peonies, and at the other sisters, Charlotte, Arabella, Eleanor, seated stiffly on prim upright seats, fanning themselves and looking tired. Most of all, she looked at Sir Joshua.

She’d forgotten about the pain. She’d forgotten about everything. Her world narrowed to just him. ‘We trusted you,’ she whispered.

He wasn’t listening, he was leaning towards Laurence, a victorious flush on his cheeks.

Without thinking, she suddenly lashed out, screaming and hitting the bars so hard with her fists, pain burgeoned through her until it was all she knew. But her anger was exploding out of her. ‘People think you’re good!’ she bellowed. ‘I thought you were good!’ The shape of the Jewel blazed in her mind. That pink. God, it was pink. The most incredible pink she’d ever seen. Fuchsias and cherry blossoms, rubies and coral reefs. ‘I thought you were risking your life every day to save us. And here you are, eating grootnecks! I don’t understand.’ Her voice cracked. She was weeping now, feeling the tears streaming down her cheeks as her magic whipped around inside her mind, fighting against its bonds. ‘Please, explain this all to me because I don’t understand.’

All the people in the room had gone deadly silent.

‘I’m from the future,’ she gasped. ‘You won’t believe me, I know, you think I’m a demon, but it’s true. You’re a hero in the future. You were my hero.’ She grabbed her shirt and thrust it towards him. On the edge of her vision, something seemed to twinkle over by the mantle, but she shook her head, ignoring it, focusing on Sir Joshua, who was listening now. Whether he believed her or not, he was listening. They all were. Quickly, she scrubbed off as much mud as she could, and as soon as the pink of the Leaping Unicorn showed through, she held it out to them again.

Hannah gasped.

‘That’s our unicorn,’ Jane snapped.

‘See,’ Frida exclaimed. ‘I work at the zoo. At your zoo. This zoo. In two hundred years’ time. I thought . . . we do good work. We don’t love zoos, of course we don’t, not really, but in a world where there’s no other options, I thought we kept hope alive.’ Helplessly, she wiped the snot from her nose. As she looked around at them all, it seemed like the rotten stench of meat filled her nostrils. She slumped down onto the metal ground. Her magic whipped and howled, and she pleaded with it, begged it to listen to her. The floor wasn’t warded, but it was metal, and it sang with a faint reflected hum that made her feel as if she was drowning, that took her soul and twisted it into something steely, something not hers, something sick and cruel. This was why the grootnecks hadn’t spawned. This was why the terracotta dragon wasn’t healing, even though she’d arrived two years ago. Two years! What would it do to someone to be trapped in a place like this for so long? What had it done to the dragon she’d known as Fireheart, to the Nuckelavee, to all of them? Can’t you feel it, zookeeper? Can’t you feel the way your magic shrinks from it, whimpers in pain.

Was this why Dian had made the giant forest then? Why they’d enchanted all her friends? Dian, who thought they were weak and worthless. Something glittered, over by the door this time. She blinked it away, concentrating as if her life depended on it. History had got it so wrong. She’d thought that the LEZ was a decent compromise. For animals that had no homes, what they gave them was good enough. But ‘good enough’ wasn’t enough and it wasn’t what they deserved. Not if some people were on one side of the fence, and the rest were on the other. She saw this now as she pulled her knees tighter into her chest and said, in a shaky voice,

‘You’re going to be remembered as a hero. I don’t know how you pulled it off, how you managed to fool everyone, but when I get home, I’m going to tell everyone the truth.’

Sir Joshua’s expression hardened. He’d been curious before, but now something dangerous surfaced on his face that should have given her pause. But she didn’t care. She turned to look at Laurence, his blue poet’s eyes confused as he looked at Sir Joshua for confirmation of what she was saying. Suddenly she felt so sad. Was it true that Laurence and Joshua were in love? They’d have to hide it from everyone, including Joshua’s wife. Patterns of repression seemed to swell in her mind, building over centuries of violence. ‘It’s so cruel,’ she whispered.

Joshua took his champagne flute and placed it with a menacing click back on the ornate sideboard. ‘This is over now.’ He gestured to the servants. ‘Cover it up.’

She gazed at him. ‘Your wife.’

Joshua’s lips went thin as paper, and she could have sworn she saw Laurence, at his side, flinch ever so slightly.

‘Does your wife know what you’re doing here? Someone has to disagree with all this.’ She gestured around the room, to the cage, the cakes, the Jewel on the mantle, the pathetic figure of Henry in the corner. ‘Is that one of the reasons she was sent away? She’s technically imprisoned too, isn’t she, in her family’s castle? Banished from London.’

The curdled look on Sir Joshua’s face was priceless.

‘That’s it? She couldn’t tolerate the fact that her husband is a bloodthirsty liar?’ Frida closed her eyes briefly, her moment of sympathy for him gone. ‘It’s to your benefit, isn’t it? The benefit of your purses!’ She glared at Edward Caval. ‘You come across as the all-omnipotent saviours, all the while collecting the benefits. That map on your study wall. God! How was I so stupid?’ She turned to the servants, their eyes shifting between each other fearfully, and to the sisters – now repulsive to her in every way. Maybe some of what she’d said here would make a difference to them. Maybe it wouldn’t. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and concentrated on trying to stop her brain from detaching and floating off into the sky. She felt unhinged, like she was coming apart. That’s what happened though, she supposed, in cages like these.

‘Two hundred years from now,’ she whispered, ‘a magnificent fairy is going to destroy everything that you’ve ever built, and you know what? I’m going to do everything in my power to help them.’ Out of the corner of her eye, she saw another faint glimmer stir the air, a hint of silver glitter. She stared at it for a long moment, then smiled. Her magic had gone quiet now, only a few fiery threads left raging untethered through her skull. She thought of her mum, of the terrible grief that she’d thought had made her weak. The way the death of her mum had bored holes into her soul.

She watched, as if from outside herself, as Sir Joshua shouted at the servants. His face was a roiling blotchy mess. Not so composed anymore. ‘I’m going to tell my friends that we would never, ever want to waltz with you,’ she told him softly. ‘I’ll tell Hamish that you’re not a HDILF, and we’re going to burn your portrait. We’ll cover it in Extra Strange Sauce, and then we’ll build a bonfire, and we’ll roast marshmallows and drink hot chocolate and dance while you go up in flames! I’ll make sure no one ever has to look at your faces ever again.’

Sir Joshua wasn’t listening though. He was shoving at the footmen as they hurried to unfurl the cloth, trying at the same time to usher his sisters out of the room, but it didn’t matter. Frida could feel her magic, thin now, almost gone. Just one thread left, a fiery strand that danced just out of her reach. All it needed was another tiny push. Her mind seemed to tremble.

She breathed through her nose.

She clenched her fists.

Then she shoved that last thread of magic inside her rosewood box.

She hadn’t been sure if it would work but bit by bit, as she’d coaxed and cajoled her magic inside, she’d felt the wards beginning to ease. She was good at shoving things away. She was the queen of it, in fact. She’d been doing it for one year, seven months, twenty-something days and two hundred years. The LEZ’s therapist, the Necromancer, had told her that little good would come of her small rosewood box. Such things had power, he’d said, and one day it might burst out and bite her in the proverbial arse.