Page 90 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

But Frida stared at the little spider, curled at Dian’s throat. ‘Your name? Dian?’

Moth was silent, a creature of woven threads.

Dian’s voice was like a dead leaf, covered in frost, when they finally answered, ‘He means my real name.’

Frida didn’t hear the warning in their tone. ‘Your real name! Oh god. Of course. Ok. Tell me your name! Tell me what it is.’ She was so excited, so dazzled by the prospect of salvation, she didn’t see their expression had shuttered, slamming like a vault door. Slowly, they untangled their sleeve from her grasp, the sound of cobwebs tearing.

‘My name is mine. It belongs to the hawthorn, and the groves which we guard.’

Frida gaped at them, hurt. ‘But you can trust me! In the future you do trust me.’

They shook their head vehemently. ‘No. It is too much to ask.’

‘But I have to save you!’

They stared at her, incredulous. ‘You have to save me?’ They scoffed harshly, all the tenderness between them dissolving. And then they repeated that single word. ‘No.’

It wrecked her. No to their name, no to trusting her, no to her saving them. Just no. Somewhere, a resounding crack reverberated through the earth, and she heard a howl that she recognised, far off in the distance. Lucky. That sounded like Lucky. Fear shot through her, but she couldn’t look away from Dian.

‘No Frida,’ they said again, and perhaps seeing her devastation, their tone softened a touch, although the answer was the same. ‘No. I can’t tell you my name, just as much as I can’t make an entire wood swallow a world. I’m sorry, but I do not believe you. I cannot put hundreds of people to sleep. What you say isn’t true. Have you not been listening to me at all?’ Their voice seemed to crack apart, anguish and self-loathing settling over them. ‘I am the weakest of the fairies of this island. I cannot do what you say. Those wards will kill me.’

Another howl lit the sky from the far-off tree line.

Helplessly, Frida pressed a shaking hand to her heart. ‘Please. I’ve only just found you. I – I can’t lose you. Help me.’

A fresh wave of pain filled them. ‘Maybe it is for the best,’ they said, with a croak.

Moth let out a squeak of dismay, and Frida gave a strangled sob. The dreadful, unstoppable coils of time wrapped around her throat, choking her.

Dian just looked towards the trees. ‘Our kind is dying.’ They glanced down into their palm at the broken shards of the Jewel, the dragon’s grieving heart. ‘You tried,’ they whispered. ‘We tried.’ For a moment, it seemed they were drowning. Frida ached to reach for them, to drown with them, but as if they sensed this, they took a pained step back, their bare feet leaving no mark on the grass, fingers curling over the useless, shattered fragments. They looked once back over their shoulder at Forge House. It was blood-red, the creamy stone deadly in the light of the dying moon. Behind it, the sky was turning sapphire. Dawn was coming.

‘I think I must go home, Frida Rose. Moth and I. We will go back to the groves, and our beloved hawthorn, and we will enjoy what time we have left together. Maybe you should do the same.’

And then, just like that, they were gone.

Frida stared at the empty space where they’d been.

She couldn’t believe they’d gone.

An empty space yawned open in her chest, bigger than she’d imagined possible. And as silent tears spilled over her cheeks, the pops and cracks grew to a deafening height. She watched as fault lines started to appear beneath her feet and pieces of the ground began to crumble. Falling into some invisible pit. It made no sense and yet, it made perfect sense.

Dian had left her.

Moth hadn’t even said goodbye.

The earth itself should shatter.

Her eyes burned from staring at the space Dian had occupied, but she knew they weren’t coming back. They were stubborn, just like she was. She started moving as if on autopilot up towards the distant woods. She didn’t think about where she was going. It was like an invisible thread was tightening around her waist, pulling her towards the purple dragon, who’d by some impossible grace made her part of him, him part of her, who had turned her eyes violet. ‘I’m coming, Lucky,’ she whispered.

The earth moved under her. The emptiness grew with every step. She could no longer smell the growing things or the rain. She didn’t know it was possible to miss someone as much as she missed her mother, but as the ground cracked, she understood that she missed Dian, just like that. The same, and not. Less, and more. Occasionally she saw a creature scurrying for safety. A raven barrelling through the last pale stars. A fox fleeing to their den. For a little while, a young brown hare with amber eyes loped beside her, and when they went their separate ways, Frida somehow felt even worse. Around her, cracks became fissures, faults became crevasses. A darkness that seemed to swallow light opened within, and she paled to look, as if reality itself was pulling apart. There was a far-off crack of thunder and not too long after that, a thwack of lightning. Frida whimpered and covered her head with her hands.

Then she heard someone howl her name.

‘LITTLE STINK!’

Slowly, unbelievably, she lifted her head.

‘LITTLE STINK!’ She heard Lucky cry.