I swam slowly up towards wakefulness, feeling as though I fought my way through a mass of fluffy clouds. Eventually, my father’s face wavered into view.
“Serapia?” He spoke urgently, his voice hoarse. “Serapia?”
“Umm…” I managed, focusing on him with rapidly increasing anxiety. He looked terrible. The skin was drawn over the bones of his face, cheeks and eyes sunken, fingers skeletal. He looked desperately ill. I could scarce believe that such a change could have been wrought in so short a time. “Are you alright?”
He looked startled. “As well as can be expected,” he said with an extremely dismissive gesture. “Are you alright? What happened?”
“What…happened?” I echoed. What had happened to me? I looked around at the familiar curtains and walls of my bedchamber and tried to think. “I must have fallen from Hellion,” I groaned in frustration rather than any discomfort. “And just after setting off!”
My father was giving me a very odd look indeed. “Just after setting off?” he echoed. “Whatever do you mean? If you just set off to Elfindale yesterday where in perdition have you been for the last six weeks?” His fury spoke of deep and long held concern.
I stared at him, a cold prickle running down my spine. Raven nuzzled my cheek lovingly but I scarcely noticed. “What…what do you mean, the last six weeks?” I asked haltingly, bewildered by his words. “I…I set off yesterday, didn’t I?”
My father’s rising eyebrow was all the answer I needed. That and the appalling change in his condition. The more I looked at his gaunt body, the more I realized that the change could not have been wrought overnight.
“What happened?” I demanded.
“Well, a gentleman carried you to the house unconscious a few hours ago. He brought Hellion as well. He said he’d found you on the verge nearby.”
Raven pushed her face against my cheek and trilled excitedly, as though the stranger fascinated her.
I frowned. “Who was he?”
Alban shrugged with scant apology. “A nobleman. Foreign, I think. I only saw him from the window. By the time I’d got to the hall he’d gone on his way.”
I bit my lip. “I’ve really been gone for over a month?”
My father nodded. Raven nodded too, blinking her eyes solemnly at me.
“I don’t remember any of it,” I whispered, and it was true. After my vague recollection of leading Hellion through the gate, mounting and riding away, my mind was totally blank, as from a rather long and deep night’s sleep.
My father reached out and touched my cheek gently, then brushed a strand of hair from my eyes as Raven stroked my other cheek with a little paw. “Child,” he said tenderly. “I think you have the Elfin’s answer.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“Missing memories are a sure sign of human contact with the Elfin. They protect themselves well.”
“You think I found them!”
“Well, I don’t think you knocked yourself senseless half a mile from Albany House and lay there like that for over a month undiscovered, let’s put it that way.”
I chewed my lip in rapidly increasing agitation. “But…but if I found them…I must go back, I must go back at once, see if they will help…!”
Raven gave me a disbelieving look and shook her little head at me, as my father’s expression became grave and his hand crept towards me in unconscious, heart-felt appeal. “Child, I would ask you not to try and leave for the next week or so… I would…very much like to have you near me.”
I stared at him. Clearly he did not intend to let me leave, but, what did he mean? And then it hit me. Six weeks. Over a month gone. March was nearly upon us. I was almost out of time. My father was almost out of time. It was now no longer physically possible to ride to Elfindale and fetch help, even on post horses—and even assuming help agreed to come straight back.
I swallowed, dry-mouthed, feeling sick with fear. “Pa,” I whispered, reaching out to grip his bony hands. “Pa, I won’t leave you, I promise.”
He leant in to place a kiss on my forehead, then sank back into his armchair. He moved like an old man, and the effort of even that slight exertion was clearly enormous. It was like what had happened to my mother, all over again.
I moistened my lips and frowned in thought as Raven cocked her head at me and cheeped…encouragement? Our direct elfin relatives would not help us. But Siridean had surely helped me on the grounds of my elfin blood alone. There must be a few elfin around, even in London. I’d just have to find one of them.
~+~
My father clearly trusted my promise not to leave, for when I ordered the grooms to tack up Hellion the following morning, they did so without demur.
“My lady?” Susie came scurrying up just as I was about to ride away, looking very anxious. “I’m so sorry, but you know that odd...uh, I mean, that new dress that had to be washed? Well, it’s shrunk so very badly, I don’t see how you could possibly wear it now. It wouldn’t even reach your ankles! Should I send it down to the home with those other old things that are going this morning? I’m so very sorry, I simply don’t know how it could have happened...”
I wasn’t sure which garment she meant, but right now I was far too worried about my father to concern myself over a shrunken dress, new or not. “Don’t fret about it, Susie. Just send it to the home if it’s still useable.”
“Thank you, my lady.” Looking relieved, she hurried off to finish getting the latest clothes’ parcel ready.
I turned my attention to the grooms, still hovering respectfully to see me out of the stable yard. “I’ll be back by noon,” I told them, just in case my father did ask where I’d gone.
I knew I ought to have someone with me, really, when riding outside the grounds, but Susie was no horsewoman and I didn’t want the grooms to spread it over the entire of London that Lady Ravena was showing an uncommon interest in all things elfin. I’d dressed in my plainest and simplest riding habit and pulled a very drab cloak around me. Most people would take me for a minor noblewoman or even a farmer’s daughter. Anyway, I had my young age to excuse me.
I rode a little way into London, then turned off onto a major road that ran out into the countryside, past Fynesburie Field. I had a very clear memory of a childhood picnic at a barrow that lay uncommonly close to this main road. So certain was I that I could locate it easily, it seemed the logical place to start my search.
There were slightly more small lanes to be negotiated than I expected, but in a short time and with only one bestowment of a coin in return for directions, I found myself outside a field gate. In the centre of the field rose the barrow, or what was surely an elfin fort. I studied it for a moment. Long and oval-shaped, covered seamlessly by the grass of the pasture. No entrance was visible on the side that faced me, but Raven popped her head out of my bodice and stared avidly.
I dismounted to unfasten the gate and led Hellion through, gripping the bridle firmly when he seemed to decide that a nip would best show his affection for me. Closing the gate again, I had just remounted when I felt Raven pop back down out of sight—a moment later, a red-faced farmer came puffing up the lane.
“No, no, no!” he gasped, in a tone of some exasperation. “It’s private property, miss, now come out of there at once!”
I was briefly perplexed. We’d picnicked in this very field when I was a child. He must have made an exception then. Ah. I’d warrant I knew why. I slipped off my cloak, which I didn’t really need, leaving the superior cut of my riding habit and the richness of the fabric bare to the early morning sun. And reached into my purse. “It must be a trouble to you, I’m sure,” I said, “people traipsing over your field and leaving gates open. I would not wish my visit to leave you out of pocket.”
I held out a silver piece. To my surprise he shook his head and made no move to take it, though his tone was now considerably more respectful. “Sorry, my lady. But I really can’t make exceptions. The…er…the animals, my lady. They don’t like to be disturbed.”
I eyed the only visible occupants of the field, four dairy cows that looked laid back enough to chew their cud throughout a bombardment of cannon, and reflected for a moment. The creatures in this field that didn’t like to be disturbed must be the sort of creatures that prevented your offspring from dying, your cows from going dry, and your crops from failing. Clearly the farmer could be persuaded to make an exception now and then, but it cost more than a silver piece. Fair enough, really.
I reached into my purse again for a fat gold coin. “I have ridden all the way out from London, and my friends said the place was fascinating. Could I not take a quick look? I will not disturb the animals.”
A gold piece was more than a farmer could refuse. With a rather guilty glance towards the barrow, he accepted it. “A quick look, my lady,” he said reluctantly. “And if it would please you not to…poke around. It disturbs the animals.”
“Of course,” I said, and touched my heels to Hellion’s sides before he could change his mind.
The cows greeted my approach with absolute bovine apathy. One of them actually raised its head to look at me, blinked its large, liquid eyes, licked its nose and went right on chewing.
I rode slowly around to the back of the fort, eyeing it closely. But it looked like nothing so much as a grass-covered mound. I slid from Hellion’s back once out of sight of the farmer and crouched down to run my hands over the grassy sides. Raven was out of my dress in an instant, leaping straight onto the mound and sniffing intently, her tiny head moving from side to side as she inspected everything. Something about the whole place made the back of my neck prickle with slightly heightened awareness, but nothing more.
Raven soon gave up her survey and merely gamboled around on the mound, rolling in the grass with evident enjoyment. She returned often to one central point on the mound’s side, sniffing and nosing around it with more serious interest, but though I kept a hopeful eye on her, she never found anything.
Could it be an abandoned fort, I wondered, when I’d reached the other end without having felt anything other than grass and slope. But the farmer’s anxiety suggested otherwise. Was the entrance on the side facing the gate? No, that was foolishness. The farmer couldn’t guard the place night and day, and I’d run all over the entire mound during that childhood visit. An entrance there must be, but it could not be accessible to humans, otherwise half the people who came to this place would stumble into it by accident and leave with gaps in their memories. Which would become more than a little obvious.
I stood for a moment, but I could think of nothing else to do, so slightly discouraged, I persuaded Raven to abandon her thrilling play site, wishing she could tell me what it was that attracted her so much. Seeing her safely hidden again down the front of my dress, I got back up on Hellion. I’d make sure to be home in good time, so my father need not worry.
Perhaps I needed to come back and hide behind a hedge or something. Wait for an elfin to come out… But I had a sneaking suspicion the Elfin would not be as easy to surprise as all that.
Reaching the main road, I would’ve pressed Hellion to a trot but found myself behind a rumbling ox-drawn wagon. Another rider was approaching in the other direction, so I checked Hellion to an amble and waited for him to pass. He was a tall slender youth on a tall slender horse, with gold-blonde hair and a thin face. Small stud earrings graced his ears, his hair was held back in a clip and he wore spectacles. He stared at me rather harder than was polite.
It would have been logical to assume that his attention was caught by my growing female attributes, since that was where his gaze was fixed. But I felt a strange certainty that he was looking at Raven, curled between them, asleep after her exertions. Which was ridiculous because my dress was in the way. There was something slightly familiar about his face, though.
Hellion frisked a few more impatient steps after the wagon, then my iron grip on the reins drew him to an abrupt halt. I’d just remembered who the man’s face reminded me of. I paused in another split-second of indecision. If wrong, I was about to make a complete fool of myself. But my father did not have enough time left for me to worry about my pride.
I swung Hellion around, my mouth opening to speak.
The other rider was gone. The road behind was empty. I drove my heels into Hellion’s sides, sending him plunging back the few feet to the lane I’d come from. That also stretched away into the distance, deserted. Heedless, now, of what anyone might think, I climbed carefully up to stand on top of the saddle. Raven popped her head out with a sleepy peep of inquiry as Hellion turned his head around to eye me disapprovingly and sidestepped shiftily, but I kept my balance and ignored him, ignored them both, scanning the surrounding area in all directions. No golden-haired, lanky rider who could have been Siridean’s younger cousin was to be seen.
Swearing quite vilely, I slithered back down into a sitting position and kicked Hellion to a gallop down the lane. I did not draw rein until I reached the field, and then I jumped from Hellion’s back and led him into the shelter of the hedge, peeping through it, only then murmuring an apology and an explanation to a now thoroughly disgruntled little dragonet. But though I waited until the sun was high in the sky, I saw nothing.
Dejectedly, I remounted. I should have been home by now. My father would be worried. But as I cantered along the main road, my spirits began to lift. All right, so I’d let an elfin ride right past me without realizing it. But I had found an elfin. And on my very first search. Things were surely looking up.
~+~