“Knockers! The knockers are coming!”

The shout rang through the fogou, echoing off the rocky walls of the tunnel and into the chambers beyond. The boy had been drowsing, curled on the earthen floor beside his clan-brothers; now he was shocked awake as his father seized his elbow and wrenched him to his feet.

“Take this and hide it,” he commanded, and the boy staggered beneath the unexpected burden of a sack almost as heavy as he was. As he floundered for a better grip, a coin tumbled out of the bag’s mouth and rolled across the floor. Instinctively the boy stooped to retrieve it.

“Leave it,” his father snapped, spinning him around and giving him a shove. “Get out of here! Quick!”

The boy knew better than to hesitate. He clutched the sack to his thin chest and stumbled for the exit. Around him rose shouts and curses, the rasp of knives and the clatter of spears as the men of the clan raced to arm themselves. And from the hillside above, distant but growing louder, came the jeering war cries of the enemy.

Mother, the boy thought, sick with dismay. She told them where to find us. Father was right.

But he had no time for regrets, even if it was his own foolishness that had brought this disaster upon them. His father had entrusted him with the treasure, and it was his duty to keep it safe. The boy gripped the sack tighter, and ran.

As he burst out of the fogou, scrambling up the steep, overgrown bank that hid the underground passage from view, the first light of dawn was greying the horizon. In the tunnel it had been damp but sheltered; here the cold wind slashed through his ragged tunic and raked at his bare legs. He glanced wildly in all directions, wondering where in this scrub-dotted wilderness he could hide.

The carn! It stood on the ridge to the northwest, a lopsided heap of stones. If he crouched low and moved quickly, he might reach its shelter before daylight robbed him of what little concealment he had. But did he dare to make a run across the open valley? Or would that be his last mistake?

He had only a few heartbeats to decide. A ragged line of knockers were tramping down the hillside—fifteen of them, stocky and muscular, with steely breastplates glinting beneath their cloaks. Some were armed with thunder-axes, the magical hammers they used for deep mining; others wore long knives at their hips, or carried staffs stout enough to crack a man’s skull with one blow. But he saw no bows or slings among them—nothing that could hurt him at this distance. Tightening his grip on the sack, the boy bolted for the carn.

Don’t look back, he told himself, panting as his feet slapped the crumbling earth and the sack bumped against his spine. You can’t help Father and the others now.

He knew what they’d be planning, because it was the only strategy that made sense. They hadn’t a chance of defeating so many knockers in the open: not with only four seasoned fighters, a one-legged cook, an old healer, and a handful of striplings who’d scarcely earned their names. Besides, they wouldn’t risk leaving the women undefended. So they’d lure the knockers into the fogou, where the dark and narrow passages would give them the advantage. They’d use their luck-magic to make their enemies trip and blunder; they’d whistle up a wind through the tunnel and blow dust in their eyes. Then they’d drop low and slash the knockers’ hamstrings, or duck behind them and slit their throats. It was a filthy way to fight, but the boy’s people were outcasts anyway, so they had no honor to lose… and as his father always said, better a live dog than a dead lion.

He’d almost reached the carn now, stones skittering beneath his feet as he fought his way up the hill to its summit. The stone pillar looked crude but was cunningly built, ancient already when his grandsire was born and one of the many secret places where his people had found refuge in the long years of their persecution. To strangers it would appear a solid heap, but the boy knew how to make the carn give up its secrets. He scrambled to the base of the pile, crouched and pressed his small white hand against a certain stone.

With a grating rasp the carn opened, rocks shifting and rearranging to form a low doorway. The boy crawled into the darkness, pulling the sack after him, and nearly fell headlong down the stairs. Catching himself, he conjured a glow-spell and crept downward, the magical light bobbing like a will-o’-the-wisp before him.

At the foot of the staircase a chamber opened, rough and bare. It was even darker than the fogou, and dank-smelling too: a forbidding place, with nothing comfortable about it. But in the middle of the floor, on a rough dais of stone, stood a crock piled to the rim with treasure. Coins and goblets and plates of gold and silver, rings and brooches and jeweled pendants, with weapons and armor piled haphazardly to either side. Ancient riches forgotten by the long-dead men and women who had owned them, they belonged to his people now, as much as they belonged to anyone.

The boy hesitated, awed by the presence of so much wealth. With reverent care he approached the dais, upended his sack and let its contents spill onto the hoard. Then he backed out of the chamber. This place was not for him, not yet.

Hurrying back up the stairs, he extinguished his glow-spell and was turning to shut the carn when the air split with a thunderous crack and the ground beneath him shuddered. The boy staggered, lost his footing and fell. As he picked himself up, wincing at fresh cuts and bruises, shouts of triumph rose from the valley below.

The knockers had discovered the fogou. But instead of plunging inside to do battle, they’d split into two parties and surrounded both ends of the tunnel. And between them a fresh cleft in the earth gaped like a mortal wound, while the knocker who’d made it hefted his thunder-axe and braced his stout legs for another swing.

They were cracking the fogou apart from the outside. Shattering the stone slabs that formed the tunnel’s ceiling, and bringing them down on the men and women trapped within. The boy’s fists clenched, helpless rage storming inside him. If only he were bigger, stronger, more skilled at luck-magic or wind-working…

But along with cunning he had also learned caution, and he knew better than to charge into a fight he could not win. Though his stomach knotted and his eyes burned, he stayed motionless as the thunder-axe smashed down for the second time, and with a roar and a rumble the whole fogou collapsed.

The boy spun away, shoving his bloody knuckles against his mouth to keep from crying out. He did not want to see what the knockers did next, how they searched the rubble for his people’s bodies and finished off any living ones they found. The Grey Man and Helm, Dirk and Ram and their wives, Spit the cook and Needle the healer, Dart and Parry and the other boys—all of them were dead, or soon would be.

And it was his fault.

Ivy bolted upright, gasping into the darkness. Her cheeks felt wet, and her insides roiled with the horror of what she’d just seen. For a few wild seconds she couldn’t tell where she was, or even who she was: part of her was still back on that rugged hillside with the boy, sharing his agony and shame. But then her night-vision focused, revealing the rocky walls around her and the firelight glowing at the mouth of the cave, and she collapsed onto her bed of ferns in relief.

It was a dream, she told herself. Only a dream.

Yet the assurance rang hollow, no matter how many times she repeated it. It hadn’t felt like an ordinary nightmare: it had been too vivid for that, too powerfully real…

“Ivy! What’s wrong?”

In an instant Martin was beside her, helping her sit up and move closer to their small fire. The lithe strength of his arm around her shoulders should have comforted her, but Ivy’s nerves were raw and she couldn’t bear it. She squirmed away.

“I’m fine,” she panted. “Just—”

But words failed her. She needed time to breathe, to think, before she could explain.

Martin sat back on his heels and watched her. The firelight gilded one high cheekbone and made his pale hair shine silver, and for a moment he looked as haughty and remote as a faery prince of legend. Then he turned to toss another stick onto the flames and the spriggan in him leapt out—glittering eyes, sharp features and teeth bared in a mirthless smile. “Fine, you say. And I thought piskeys couldn’t lie.”

Ordinarily Ivy would have been indignant, but she hadn’t the will to argue with him, not now. “I’m not hurt, or sick, or in danger,” she said. “I had a bad dream, that’s all.”

Martin raised his brows at her, and all at once Ivy was conscious of her own tear-streaked face and tangled hair. She shifted back against the rocky wall, hugging her elbows for warmth. “I thought you’d gone hunting,” she said. “I didn’t expect you back until morning.”

“It’s almost that now,” said Martin. He poked the fire until it collapsed into a glowing heap, and a few sparks flitted up to snuff themselves on the ceiling. “But you can lie down again if you like. It’s not as though we’re in a hurry.”

He sounded indifferent, but his back was stiff, and Ivy wondered if she’d hurt him. “Martin…”

He waved her aside. “You don’t need to explain. I understand.”

Ivy was bewildered—how could he, unless he was reading her mind? But then another possibility dawned on her. It would explain why he’d flown off in bird-shape every night they’d been traveling together, and left her to sleep by their campfire alone…

“Oh,” she said softly. “Do you have bad dreams, too?”

“Me? No.” He flicked her an odd look. “I don’t dream at all. I never have, for as long as I can remember.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

Martin sighed and sat down, folding his legs beneath him. “I know you wanted to travel together,” he said, “and in the beginning, it seemed like a good idea. But we’ve been tramping over the countryside for days and we haven’t found a single spriggan, or even a clue to tell us where they might have gone. And you haven’t learned anything that would help you convince your queen—or rather, your Joan—that you’re not a traitor.”

I banish you from the Delve, now and forever. Betony’s cold words echoed in Ivy’s mind. Go where you want and call yourself what you will, but you are no longer a piskey.

Ivy shook off the memory. She might be half faery, but she would always be a piskey at heart, no matter what her aunt said.

“Only because I’m not sure what I’m looking for,” she replied. “It could be… I don’t know, a better place for our people to live. Another mine that’s just as secure as the one we’re in now, but isn’t contaminated with poison. Or maybe all we need is proof that the spriggans and faeries aren’t a threat to us anymore, and it’s safe to live on the surface again. I’ll know when I find it. But I’m not ready to give up yet.”

“You don’t want to give up,” countered Martin. “Because you’re loyal, and stubborn, and you don’t know when to quit. But you’re not made for this life, Ivy. And it’s making you miserable.”

“This life.” She spoke flatly, fighting to control her anger. “What do you mean by that? You think I’m too weak or frightened to keep up with you?”

“Ivy…”

“I was the one who found you chained up at the bottom of the Delve, remember? I climbed down the Great Shaft night after night to bring you food and water and listen to you gabble lines from Shakespeare, when for all I knew you might be planning to eat me alive. I was the one who convinced you to teach me bird-shape, and then I risked my life to set you free—”

Martin cut her off with an impatient gesture. “You’re not listening. I don’t doubt your bravery. Or your strength.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“This.” He drew his thumb down her wet cheek. Ivy’s heart jumped, and she flinched away.

“You’re a piskey,” Martin said. “And I’m a spriggan. I’d never even heard that word until you accused me of being one, but I’ve learned enough now to understand.” He let his hand drop and sat back. “You’re afraid of me, however you try to deny it. And you should be.”

“I’m not.” She tried to sound confident, but her voice came out squeaky, like a little girl’s. Like the child she’d been on the night the spriggans took her mother…

Except they hadn’t taken Marigold, not really. Her mother had been captured by the evil faery Empress instead, and spent the next six years struggling to escape and get a message to her family. Until Martin came to tell her Marigold was alive, Ivy had believed that spriggans were ravening monsters responsible for all the evil in the world. But now she knew that magical folk weren’t so easily divided into tribes of good and bad as that.

“I’m not afraid,” she said, louder this time. “I know you would never hurt me. You saved my life.”

Twice, in fact. And though the healings Martin had performed on Ivy had drawn the two of them together and changed them both in ways she was still struggling to understand, she was almost certain he hadn’t meant that to happen. It wasn’t in Martin’s nature to bind himself willingly to anyone.

“But you are afraid of spriggans,” he said. “Other spriggans, I mean. You’re willing to help me search for them, but you don’t really want to find them. Not after all the terrible things they did to your people.” He picked up a twig and twirled it between his fingers, transforming it to a knife and back again. “No wonder you’re having nightmares.”

Was he trying to frighten her away? If so, he’d be disappointed. Ivy got up restlessly and paced to the mouth of the cave. “It’s not what your people did to mine,” she said, rubbing her arms as the breeze cut through her light sweater. “It’s more what my people did to them.”

“What do you mean?”

The suspicion had been growing in Ivy for days now, as she and Martin hunted through seaside caves, old ruins and rock formations without finding the slightest trace of the spriggans’ existence. The piskeys of the Delve might live quietly these days, but little more than a century ago Ivy’s knocker forebears had roamed the countryside in small armies, killing or enslaving any magical folk who dared to resist them. Ivy’s own mother and grandmother had been captured in a raid on a faery wyld, and Ivy wasn’t the only piskey with faery blood in her, not by a long shaft.

What if the same thing had happened to the spriggans? The women dragged underground to join the piskeys, the men murdered or forced into exile, until none of them remained? She’d tried to push the thought aside—after all, even if it was true, it had happened a long time ago and there was nothing she could do about it. But her dream had dragged all those dark fears and guilty feelings to the surface.

“There were spriggans in my dream,” she said reluctantly, “but they weren’t hurting anyone. The knockers, the piskey miners… they were attacking them.” She went on to describe everything she’d seen, from the time the boy’s father had shaken him awake to the moment the fogou collapsed.

“So when you cried out,” said Martin when she had finished, “it wasn’t for yourself. It was for him. That boy.”

Even now, the memory brought a lump to Ivy’s throat. “It felt so real. Like a vision of something that had really happened…”

“Maybe it was.” Martin moved to join her. “I’ve heard of faeries who can see hidden things, or even look into the future—we call it the Sight. Don’t piskeys have anything like that?”

We, he’d said. So he still thought of himself as a faery, part spriggan or not. “No,” said Ivy. “At least, not any piskey that I’ve ever met. And I’ve never had visions before, have you?”

Martin folded his arms and frowned down at them, his brow creased with thought. Then he said, “What makes you so sure the boy and the others in this tunnel-thing—the fogou—were spriggans? They might have been wandering faeries, or some other tribe of piskey.”

“Piskeys who can bring bad luck and control the winds?” asked Ivy. “I don’t think so. And the boy seemed to think changing shape was normal for his people as well. My brother Mica made it very clear to me that piskeys don’t change shape.”

“You do.”

True, but she’d always been the exception to the rule. Born frail and wingless in a Delve full of sturdy, moth-winged piskey women, Ivy had spent her whole life fighting to prove her worth, often in unorthodox and even dangerous ways. Turning herself into a tiny, quick-darting swift had satisfied Ivy’s lifelong hunger for flight, and given her more freedom than she’d ever dreamed of. But it had also driven a wedge between Ivy and her older brother, who’d been horrified when he realized what she could do.

“Haven’t you heard?” she said. “I’m not a real piskey. Aunt Betony said as much when she banished me from the Delve.” And Mica had stood there and let it happen, without so much as a word in her defense. “Anyway, I’ve never heard of piskeys attacking their own people…”

She trailed off, gazing out the mouth of the crevice to the valley beyond. It was still mostly dark, but she could make out a tall, red-lit metal spire—a radio tower, perhaps?—in the near distance. To the west stood the chimney and bob wall of an old pumping-engine house, one among hundreds of abandoned mine buildings that littered the Cornish landscape. And if she listened closely, she could hear the rumble of early morning traffic along the road a few miles away.

But in the dream, there’d been no signs of human industry or technology. The spriggan clan’s weapons were crude, their clothes rough and old-fashioned. Even the knockers had been oddly dressed—who wore cloaks or boots like that anymore?

“But if it was real,” she said, “it happened a long time ago. Maybe even hundreds of years. And I don’t know why I’d be seeing something like that.”

“Well,” said Martin, “perhaps it was only a dream, then. Something your mind churned up from bits of stories and legends you heard when you were in the Delve.”

Ivy nodded, but her eyes were on the horizon, where a rosy glow was seeping through the clouds. This place was a long way from the old tin mine where she’d grown up, or the flat she’d briefly shared with her mother and sister in the human city of Truro. She’d never seen this wild, rugged valley before she and Martin flew over it last night, and her unfailing instinct for direction, both as a bird and as a piskey, told her she’d never been in this part of Cornwall before.

So why did it feel familiar?

She was still puzzling over the question when dawn broke, lighting up the nearby ridge. There stood the metal tower she’d seen earlier, but a sling’s throw from its base rose a smaller landmark she hadn’t noticed before. A lopsided pile of stones, taller than Ivy at human size and perhaps three times as wide.

Astonished, Ivy stared at the carn, then whirled to look at the crevice where she’d been sleeping. She’d noticed how oddly square the entrance seemed, but she’d assumed it was part of an old mining tramway, or the lintel and doorposts of some long-ruined cattle shed…

“What is it?” asked Martin.

Ivy turned to him, wide-eyed with wonder. “This is the place,” she said. “We’re standing in what’s left of the fogou, and that’s the carn up on the hill. The valley I dreamed about—it’s real.”