The Wonders of Vale, Page 5

  Adeline nibbled upon my sleeve.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘We could just fly over, and skip the whole cast-helpless-upon-the-breeze-as-a-bubble-of-air bit altogether. But. He called me a chicken.’

  And he wasn’t actually wrong.

  Furthermore, there was the matter of Emellana. One did not wish to be humbled before one’s heroes.

  ‘Meet me on the other side, Addie,’ I sighed, and before I could talk myself out of it, I touched the blue stone — cool under my fingers, and curiously watery — and that was that.

  ‘That,’ I said, a short time later, ‘was awesome beyond all reason.’

  Jay stared at me. ‘No. No, you were right before. That was awful.’

  ‘What? No! I’ve never felt so carefree in my life.’ That was the literal truth. How exactly my doubts had so entirely vanished I couldn’t say, but the moment I’d transformed I’d felt like a wholly different person. I’d sailed over the blue-grey waters like a leaf on the wind, singing in my mind the whole way.

  Jay looked as though he’d been dragged backwards through a hurricane. It didn’t seem fair.

  I couldn’t tell how Emellana felt about the process. She was, as ever, serene.

  ‘Incoming unicorn,’ said Jay, and we waited while Adeline came soaring over the waves and landed with a thump.

  I patted her nose. ‘Excellent creature.’

  We had ended up on another beach; Scarborough’s, I hoped. Unlike Whitmore, no cliffs stood between us and the settlement. The buildings started where the beach ended, and rose in a majestic gaggle up a gentle slope. At the top, surrounded by deep green oak trees, was a castle — looking, as far as I could judge from this vantage, more intact than most such examples in our Britain.

  I was beginning to sense a pattern, there.

  ‘Time to—’ I began, but Emellana was already off, striding purposefully up the beach. You’d think she was twenty-five, not one hundred and…whatever.

  ‘It’s all kinds of humbling, being around her,’ I muttered.

  Jay grinned. ‘Call it inspiring, and let’s go.’

  7

  It turns out that the ancient isle of Whitmore is no real guide for the rest of the fifth Britain.

  Whitmore has an old-fashioned air about it, to say the least. Most of its buildings are a few hundred years old, by the looks of them, and there isn’t much there to remind a person that the 21st century has indeed dawned. I suppose it’s because it’s still very much dominated by the Redclover brothers, who collectively haven’t quite left a seventeenth century that wasn’t so different from our world.

  The Britain beyond the shores of Whitmore is something else.

  Wandering through the winding streets of Scarborough, I saw little to remind me of my own Britain save for some elements of a shared history. Here was the same, general progression from timber-framed and white-washed houses into brickwork and sash windows; here were lordly stone-built properties in granite or lime; and here and there, a move into glass and something resembling concrete was also discernible, rather to my regret.

  Of cars, though, there was no sign. No buses, no train stations, no phone boxes. I searched in vain for any trace of vehicles whatsoever; there were none.

  But the streets were unusually full of bubbles and floating lights.

  ‘Ah,’ said Emellana, looking keenly at a stream of them sailing in orderly fashion along the high street, a couple of feet over our heads (mine and Jay’s, anyway). ‘In the early nineteen-hundreds, an essay was published entitled On Harnessing the Magickal Properties of Light and Air, by Adelaide Amber. She was ridiculed, which now seems a shame, considering that the paper proposed just such a potential form of transport as we see here in common use.’

  ‘Pity, too,’ I said, following the passage of a passing orb of light with wistful eyes. ‘How neat and clean they are.’

  ‘And environmentally friendly,’ said Jay, with a quirk of a smile.

  Strange it was, to see magick in all its forms on such prominent display. Strange, and wondrous. We passed beauty parlours and pet shops, cafeterias and banks; but interspersed with these recognisable establishments were shops selling magickal curios and treasures, a patisserie advertising “Floataway Fancies” and “Never-ending Chocolate Pots”, and a bookshop, its window filled with a display of spell-tomes and grimoires.

  ‘Nope,’ said Jay, literally hooking me by the collar as I attempted to swerve into the aforementioned patisserie.

  ‘Jay. I need a never-ending chocolate pot.’

  ‘No. You need air, water and food, and that’s it.’

  ‘Chocolate is food! Jay!’

  Jay hung grimly on.

  Emellana watched us with an unreadable expression, her large arms folded over her purple cotton shirt. Then, as I writhed impotently in Jay’s infuriatingly secure grip, she silently entered the shop.

  Three minutes later she emerged with a gilded pot the approximate size of my closed fist, an ornate lid hiding its contents. This she presented to me without a word, then strolled away up the street. ‘Henge complex,’ she called, pointing to a large sign adorning a nearby crossroads.

  I lifted the lid of my shiny new pot, and got a strong whiff of chocolate.

  ‘I love her,’ I said.

  Jay rolled his eyes. ‘You’ll regret it.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When you’ve imbibed ten kilos of chocolate in two hours and start throwing up liquid cocoa.’

  ‘But it would be the best two hours of my entire life.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Okay, not. But close…’ I put the pot into my satchel. ‘Guard that with your life, Mauf. If Jay tries to swipe it, bite his fingers off.’

  ‘I regret, madam, that I am not in possession of any teeth,’ said Mauf.

  ‘I don’t take issue with how you choose to ruin his day, provided that you do.’

  ‘Understood, madam.’ Mauf’s tone had developed a flinty quality.

  ‘Henge complex,’ said Jay, ignoring me with perfect grace. He stood directly under the sign, which pointed to the right. ‘Complex?’

  ‘Must be the development Melmidoc mentioned?’ I said.

  ‘How do you develop a heng— never mind. We’ll find out.’ Jay went right.

  I looked at Emellana. ‘Thank you, for the pot.’

  She inclined her head. ‘Mr. Patel is… forgive me, but I had understood you to be his mentor?’

  ‘Not the other way around? Well, yes, but to be honest he’s got a much more developed sense of responsibility than I do.’

  ‘A very controlled man.’

  ‘Not controlling,’ I said. ‘He discourages, but I don’t think he’d ever try to dictate.’

  She smiled faintly. ‘I said controlled, not controlling.’

  Oh. Yes, Jay did have the air of a man exerting a rigid control over himself at all times. ‘Makes him sensible,’ I offered. ‘And hard-working. And he rarely makes mistakes.’

  Emellana accepted this without comment, only a flicker of her eyebrow suggesting she might find fault with some part of my argument. But she walked on without further conversation, and I fell in beside her.

  ‘Wait,’ I said, and came to a stop. ‘How did you pay for the pot? We have no money.’

  ‘No, but your nose-for-gold has been collecting quite the hoard. I’ve been watching her.’

  I hadn’t, or at least, only closely enough to make sure she didn’t wander too far. In my defence, I had to watch Adeline and Jay, too; who knew what kinds of mischief those two might get up to if I didn’t keep an eye on them.

  ‘I was… distracted,’ I admitted, with a sheepish grin, and gestured around at all the magickal wonder on display. ‘This is the stuff of dreams.’

  Emellana didn’t smile. ‘So it is. But dreams can all too easily turn to nightmares.’

  I blinked. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean… keep a watch on your unicorn.’

  Upon this point she would not
elaborate, however much I pressed, so I abandoned the attempt — and looked around for Addie.

  There she was — drifting after a man holding a wrapped parcel which, I strongly suspected, held a portion of fried potato.

  I hastily retrieved her. ‘Adeline, darling—’ I began, when, to my surprise, the chip-bearer caught sight of his pursuer and cheerfully offered her a handful of potato wedges. Then he proceeded to stroke her nose, smiling.

  ‘Yours?’ he asked of me as I came up. He was barely taller than me, with pale, curling hair and a wide smile. Something about him suggested he might not be human.

  ‘Something like that,’ I said, taking hold of Adeline’s silvery rope harness. He seemed wholly unsurprised to find a unicorn lusting after his lunch, like it was as common as being trailed by somebody’s pet dog.

  ‘What a beaut,’ he said, eyeing Adeline appreciatively.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No, I mean, really. You must’ve paid a fortune for her. She looks like royal lines.’

  Royal lines? ‘She isn’t really mine in that sense,’ I said. ‘She just… goes where I go.’

  ‘Wild?’ For some reason, that startled him as nothing else had. ‘I didn’t think there were still any wild ones left. I mean, not around here.’

  With which statement he offered Addie one last chip, gave a careless wave, and ambled away up the street.

  I looked at Emellana, who had quietly joined us about halfway through this peculiar conversation. ‘What do you make of that?’

  ‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘If unicorns are as common in this Britain as horses are on our own?’

  ‘Got it.’ No more letting Addie wander off; not if she was “royal lines”. ‘Where’s Jay?’

  ‘He went after the henges.’ Emellana gestured, and we set off in that general direction, me leading Addie carefully through the clusters of shoppers. None of them seemed much surprised to see her, either, or no more so than you might be at seeing someone leading a race-horse down the high street.

  ‘Wait,’ I said abruptly, and stopped. ‘Is that—?’ A familiar messy blonde ponytail had caught my eye. ‘Hold Addie for me,’ I said, and took off after the figure. Unless I was mistaken, there’d been a glimpse of a shabby maroon-coloured jumper too…

  I caught up to where I’d seen the ponytail and found no one nearby who resembled Miranda at all. Had I imagined it? Probably.

  But perhaps not.

  ‘Listen,’ I said as I rejoined Emellana and Adeline. ‘If you see a woman maybe a few inches taller than me, messy dark blonde ponytail, chunky knitted jumper, late thirties or so in age, let me know?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Emellana.

  ‘Might conceivably be found skulking along behind us.’

  Emellana’s brows went up. ‘Dangerous?’

  ‘No. Or at least, not to us. She might be inclined to wander off with Addie, though.’ Was I doing Miranda an injustice in saying as much? She might be a betrayer, but that didn’t necessarily make her a thief.

  Nonetheless.

  ‘Human?’ asked Emellana.

  ‘As it gets.’

  She nodded. ‘Right.’

  The “henge complex” turned out to be at the city’s highest point, not far from the castle I had admired from the shore.

  Jay had found a seat upon a chunk of limestone on the edges of the grassy glade which hosted both structures, and sat watching the henges intently.

  It really was a henge complex. The centrepiece was a stone circle to rival Stonehenge; in fact, it surpassed it. Tall slabs of limestone stabbed at the sky, arranged in a perfect circle. Each one had to be at least thirty feet tall.

  Arrayed around this stupendous array was a series of lesser circles, all constructed from differing types of stone. The one nearest us looked like chunks of clear quartz, except I’d never previously been outdone in height by a slab of rock crystal.

  ‘This,’ said Jay without looking at us, ‘is amazing.’

  ‘Oh?’ I sat down beside him. ‘Tell me why.’

  ‘For a start, I’ve never seen more than one henge in the same place, let alone… what, ten? Twelve?’ He indicated the entire, majestic panorama with a sweep of his arm. ‘Just look at that.’

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ I agreed. And they really were. Clear quartz, deep grey granite laced with something green, amethyst, beryl, something sunset-coloured—

  ‘They’re more than just pretty.’ Jay might have rolled his eyes, though I couldn’t be sure. ‘The currents here are… I’ve never felt anything so powerful in my life.’

  8

  ‘I can’t feel any of that,’ I reminded him, not being a Waymaster and all.

  ‘Right.’ Jay looked at Emellana.

  She shook her head. ‘I have no Waymaster’s arts either.’

  ‘One of the very few things you lack, from what I hear,’ he said.

  She grinned at that, seemingly a rare expression with her. ‘Believe me, I would have rectified that lack if I could.’

  ‘Wouldn’t we all,’ I muttered.

  ‘All right,’ said Jay. ‘So this is all Waymastery, all the time. I’ve been here for twenty minutes or so and eight people have come through in that time. Three arrived here by bubble-express; of those, one disappeared through the main henge, and two through the jade one there.’ He pointed. ‘Two came down on some kind of flying carpet, I’m not even kidding, and took the one with the milky crystal stones. And the other three were coming through the other way. They all appeared together at that one that looks like lapis lazuli, and walked out of here on foot.’ He paused. ‘Six looked human. The other two were, I think, a spriggan and a… I don’t know, but he looked a fair bit like the Yllanfalen.’

  ‘I know!’ I enthused. ‘They’re just openly walking about among humankind. No glamours. We passed all kinds back in the streets — trolls, brownies, even a giant. And there was this woman who — I can’t be sure, but I’d almost swear she was a selkie.’

  ‘I’m unused to walking openly through the streets of human towns,’ said Emellana, with a faint smile. ‘At least, not without a fair amount of pointing and shrieking.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jay. ‘There’s no segregation here at all.’

  ‘No hiding,’ said Emellana. ‘It’s refreshing.’

  ‘I think it’s wonderful,’ I said fervently. ‘And unicorns aren’t rare at all, Jay!’ I told him about our encounter with the chip-chomping gent back in town.

  He nodded. ‘Royal lines?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I figure they’re being bred. The way horses are back home, you know.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I… don’t know. Are there unicorn races?’ I shrugged.

  Jay pointed towards one of the henges with a jerk of his chin. ‘There, look. Someone just came through.’

  The someone in question could only be a giant. She came striding through a set of ethereally-pale stones, the henge looking dangerously delicate next to her towering bulk and height. It’s something to see an entire giant appear out of thin air, I tell you. It’s something else to watch that same giant amble through two or three of the henges, her steps shaking the earth, and then transform into a butterfly and sail airily away.

  ‘Where the hell are we,’ I said in awe.

  ‘Ain’t seen nothing yet,’ said Jay with a grin. ‘We haven’t even got to the Vales of Wonder.’

  Lawks. If these weren’t wonders enough to deserve the name, what could we expect to find at the Vales?

  ‘I’m never leaving,’ I decided.

  ‘Have to,’ said Jay laconically, standing up from his rock of a seat. ‘Work to do back home.’

  ‘It cost you a lot to say that, didn’t it?’

  ‘My heart, and about half my soul.’ He set off towards the rock crystal henge, and I followed with Addie. Emellana was already twenty feet away, inspecting a large, pinkish stone. Rose quartz? Morganite?

  ‘What I can’t figure out about all this is… well, everyth
ing,’ he said. ‘Why so many henges? What’s the difference between them, other than the materials they’re made from? Do they go to different places? If so, why? How does that work?’

  ‘Do they feel different?’ I took off a shoe and set my bare foot to the earth, in hopes that might help. It didn’t. I felt nothing.

  Jay shook his head. ‘Not significantly. Maybe as to degree, though it’s not as simple as the larger ones being the more powerful. The most potent one so far is actually that little spiral with the agates.’

  ‘Potent?’

  ‘Yeah. As in, I feel like I could take us to the moon out of that one.’

  ‘Hold that thought for my next birthday.’

  ‘There’s nothing up there, Ves.’

  ‘On the moon? How do you know?’

  ‘I have it on good authority that it’s a unicorn-free zone.’

  Came then a flicker of maroon, out of the corner of my eye. I whirled.

  Someone was disappearing behind a huge pillar of purple iolite.

  ‘Miranda!’ I shouted. ‘I see you.’

  Nothing moved, and there came no reply.

  I took off at a run. ‘I saw you back in town,’ I yelled. ‘Your stealth is about as good as your loyalty— there. See, I knew it was you.’

  Miranda stood with studied nonchalance in the shadow of the huge, gloriously purple crystal; light shone through it, casting purplish shadows across her face. She looked exactly as I remembered: messy, disorganised, intense. Same old Miranda. Only she’d grown haggard over the weeks of her absence, and while she met my gaze with a show of bravado, she couldn’t hide the guilt behind her eyes. ‘Hi, Ves.’

  ‘Hi?’ I sputtered. ‘Hi? What are you doing following us around?’

  ‘Well—’ she said, and stopped.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Ves, you do know you can’t just walk off with unicorns around here?’

  ‘I didn’t walk off with a unicorn.’

  She looked over at Adeline, who was hot on Jay’s heels as he came after us.

  ‘Not a native. We brought her with us.’