Chapter 38

Cassie dashed between crying Helynt, floating parents, the overspill of the Tanglement as children tossed objects aside looking for their own gifts. Where was Gwen and where was Byron?

‘Twm!’ Siân called. ‘Where did Gwenhidw go?’

But he didn’t even look her way. He gazed at the ghostly blue shape of his mother, seemingly spellbound. She and his father gazed back, unable to touch his face, his hands, unable to hold him tight.

‘Cassie, wait for me,’ Siân shouted.

‘Where would she go?’ Cassie asked Siân.

They scanned the wide corridor. Would she head back to Fiedown and the glimmer she’d created there? Or down one of the side tunnels into the warren of the earth? Or even out to Penyfro?

Then they heard a shout coming from the Thorn Hall. It was a shout that was full of misery and heartache.

‘That way!’ Cassie said.

She and Siân both raced away from the Tanglement, across the wide corridor and under the huge arch into the Thorn Hall.

Before them was a painful sight. Gwenhidw, Byron, a few forlorn-looking derew and the blackthorn tree.

The tree was unquestionably dead.

It had shed all its leaves and the bare branches were grey and dry. It looked like a tree cast in concrete, not something that had grown from a sapling to the enormous size it was now. Even its thorns looked brittle.

Gwenhidw stood, with both palms resting on its trunk, Byron lay still, propped up between its thick roots. It was Gwen’s keening they could hear, her grief for the tree.

The half dozen derew blinked their dark eyes, pressed their bodies together for comfort as the person who was supposed to care for them sobbed.

Cassie edged into the space. Was Byron alive? Was he still Byron or had they already lost him? She was relieved to see that his wrists were still bare.

‘Byron!’ Cassie whispered.

At the base of the tree, Gwen whirled around to face them. ‘Stop! Not one step closer. You think you can come to my home and destroy everything? I won’t have it, do you hear? I won’t.’

Cassie realised with a start that Gwen’s face was wet with tears. She hadn’t expected crying, despite the noise Gwen was making. Real tears seemed too human, somehow.

‘If I am to fail...’ Gwen paused. Her eyes lifted to the dead branches above her. ‘If I am...’ She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve. The dress, which had looked so beautiful earlier, was a dull grey. Gwen’s tears stained the fabric. ‘If I am to lose everything, then so will you.’ Her voice rose, ‘None of you will ever leave here. I will tear down every entrance and seal every tunnel before I let a single one of you go.’

Cassie glanced behind her. There were more children in the room now: beside her and Siân, the Helynt had crept in, silently, their faces filled with anger at their captor. The ghostly parents accompanied them, unwilling to be parted for even a second, though they were not reunited, not really.

Cassie’s heart, already wrung out and sore from seeing the lost children be so near and yet so far from the people they loved, found one more place to crack. ‘What’s wrong with Byron? What have you done to him?’

‘Stay back!’ Gwen shouted, and, unable not to obey her, it seemed, the Helynt stopped their advance. But Cassie and Siân hadn’t spent years and centuries doing whatever Gwenhidw told them to do, and they weren’t about to start now. Cassie moved closer.

Gwen raised a wooden bracelet, neatly decorated with flashes of iridescent green, in her right hand. She stood over Byron the way a victor might stand over the body of an enemy. ‘Stop!’ she said.

Cassie faltered. ‘What are you doing? Get away from him!’

Gwen crouched and started stroking Byron’s hair. He flinched in his sleep and tried to move away, but it was just a reflex. He wasn’t able to fight back.

‘One moment wearing this,’ Gwen said, ‘is enough to tear all the years of your life away, turn them into the magic that runs through the walls of this place. Your brother is so full of life. He has so much to live for. His years might revive the blackthorn, might strengthen the derew, for a while at least.’

Cassie couldn’t move. Couldn’t understand what was happening. Gwen had no pity, no mercy in her. ‘But there’s no need,’ she whispered. Then, louder. ‘There’s no need! The blackthorn isn’t dead. It’s growing above ground. Please! You just need to see it, and you’ll know. You don’t have to do this!’

Siân reached over to Cassie, fumbled for her hand, held on tight. Both of them willing Gwen to put down the bracelet, to leave Byron be.

‘I do have to!’ Gwen said, angry. ‘For nearly two thousand years I’ve protected the derew. I kept them safe. I waited.’

‘Waited for what?’ Cassie asked.

Gwen stifled a sob. One of the small group of derew stepped away from its small pack and nuzzled its head against Gwen. She dropped a hand to its head and closed her eyes for a moment.

‘Waited for who, Gwen?’ It was Twm who spoke. Cassie looked to her right. Twm, with his parents at his shoulder, had moved closer, despite Gwen’s instruction. Cassie was surprised to hear tenderness in his voice, even care for Gwen. Had his anger passed?

‘The Druids,’ Gwen whispered. ‘The Druids scattered to the four winds when the Romans came. Their sacred groves were burned. Their temples torn down. They had to hide the derew down under the mountain, where the Romans couldn’t reach them. They chose someone to protect them that the Romans would never suspect – a girl.’

‘You?’ Siân asked. ‘You were that girl?’

Gwen wasn’t listening. She was lost, it seemed, in her own story. ‘They took a gift from the girl, and gave her a bracelet made from the wood of the blackthorn tree that guarded the gate between the two worlds. And the girl waited.’

Gwen was a human, Cassie realised, dumbstruck. Not the queen of the tylwyth teg at all, but just another village girl stolen away from her family. Gwen leaned away from Byron and pressed herself against the dead bark. More derew moved towards Gwen, chittering and bobbing their heads, trying to offer sympathy, Cassie thought.

‘The girl waited for the Druids to return,’ Gwen whispered. ‘Over time the girl forgot the colour of the sky, she forgot the sound of birds and the taste of the wind in summer. She forgot she had ever been a girl. And the blackthorn tree grew bigger than any tree should – well beyond its natural years. And still the Druids didn’t come. Then the derew began to grow weak. And the Druids didn’t come.

‘And then, one day, there was Twm. He crawled down into the earth, curious to see what was there. He was so alive. He smelled of the wind and the heather on the mountain. His years could keep the derew strong for a while longer, until the Druids returned for us all. So, I used some of the blackthorn’s magic.’

‘The way the Druids had trapped you,’ Siân suggested.

All the Helynt, their ghostly parents, and the derew were still, listening to the story of how they came to be.

‘But it didn’t last,’ Cassie offered. ‘Twm’s strength didn’t last, so you took another child, and another, and another.’

Gwen nodded slowly. ‘I kept the derew safe. And I will keep them safe until the Druids come back for us.’ Gwen’s hand dropped from the derew closest to her. She reached to the ground, to Byron’s arm. Her fingers circled his wrist. She lifted the dead weight of it and, with her free hand slipped the wooden bracelet over the very tips of his fingers.

‘No!’ Cassie shouted.

‘Don’t! Please,’ Siân yelled.

But before Gwen or any of them could move, they heard a terrible sound. A deep crack like the bones of the earth breaking. Cassie felt a shower of grit and small stones bounce around her like rain; she heard the moan of rock moving against rock, smelled a sudden bloom of damp earth.

She looked up and saw a gash spreading across the roof of the Thorn Hall. The ceiling was breaking above them all.