“I don’t know why Dad couldn’t have told us before,” said Lucas. The Christmas break over, he and Rosie were walking along a lane towards the bus stop, school bags on their shoulders, their breath clouding the air. It was an iron-hard winter day and the hedgerows glittered with frost.
“Well, if there were no adult secrets to discover, we’d have nothing to look forward to, would we?” Rosie answered. “They think they’re protecting us.”
“Like, if they don’t tell us there are scary things out there, we’ll never find out? But we will. There are things in Stonegate you don’t want to meet at night.”
“I know,” Rosie said darkly. “So, we still have the Dusklands, because it’s part of Earth, part of us… but we can’t go into the Otherworld proper. I can’t bear to think we’ll never see Elysion.”
“D’you remember how Matthew would get mad if we entered the Dusklands in front of him?” said Luc. “Maybe it is dangerous, but he can’t protect us forever.”
“Matt says that being Aetherial doesn’t matter in the human world. It holds us back and stops us being part of things.”
“Really?” Lucas kicked a frozen pebble. “Why can’t we be human and Aetherial at the same time?”
Rosie huffed a vapor cloud. “I suspect Dad agrees with him. As if to say, we mustn’t worry our little heads about the Gates being closed, it’s not our concern.”
“But it is,” Luc said, frowning.
They reached a tight bend in the lane, where her favorite tree stood proud on the inside of the curve, a glorious oak of great girth and age called the Crone Oak. She stopped to look up into the frosted limbs. Doubt needled her. She trusted her parents—but what if Matt was right, and they were living in the past, and there was some vital reason for abandoning their origins and embracing the human world, because it was more… real?
“I love this tree,” she said. “It looks like it’s been here a thousand years, and seen everything.”
“Rosie, come on, we’ll miss the bus.”
He walked on but she hesitated. There was a face looking down at her from between the branches. A small heart-shaped face, green as lichen, with straggling leafy hair.
“Come on then, ducky,” said the green woman. “Climb up to me. I’ve got something to tell you.”
Rosie took a step back. “I can’t,” she gasped.
“You’ve climbed up before. I’ve seen you.”
“I know, but it’s slippery… and there isn’t time…”
The dryad slithered headfirst down the trunk and reared out from the branch like a snake to put her face near Rosie’s. She was semitranslucent, sinuous. “I will not have blood on my tree,” she hissed.
Alarmed, Rosie backed away. “I love your tree, Greenlady. I’d never harm it.”
“I know you wouldn’t, but I see blood and broken limbs.” The dryad’s cracked voice was fervent. Rosie had glimpsed elementals before, but this was the first time one had spoken to her. “You make them keep their blood off my tree! I won’t have it!”
Rosie ran. The dryad came after her, snatching at her blazer and hair. Lucas was farther up the lane, almost at the intersection with the main street. She saw her friends at the bus stop, heard the rumble of the Ashvale bus. With cold air searing her throat, she ran until she shook off the clawing mist of the Greenlady’s fingers.
* * *
Later, she sat with Faith and Mel on a wall under the horse chestnut trees at the edge of the school quad. They were wrapped in gloves and scarves, their legs mottled purple. Pearl-grey rime sheathed the twigs; puddles cracked with ice.
“Your explanation for vanishing midparty is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Mel, amused but sceptical.
“Oh, Dad said it was some sort of, er, neighbourhood dispute.” She was uncomfortable. To pacify her abandoned friends, she’d described the clash with Sam and the strange Vaethyr gathering. It was natural to confide in them—especially about Jon—but Rosie knew it sounded fantastical. So now she backtracked, to make herself sound less mad. “He wouldn’t tell us much, really.”
“Sometimes parents keep things to themselves,” said Mel, “and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Oh, I wish mine would keep it to themselves,” Faith said under her breath. “When they fight, the whole street hears. They were awful over Christmas.” Her head drooped. Faith had a difficult home life: squalid house, no money, a mother and father who drank and fought like demons and sometimes even vanished for nights on end, leaving Faith to fend for her two younger sisters. The others gave her pats of fellowship.
“You sure you didn’t have a drop too much punch, Rosie?” Mel teased. “Nothing weird happened to Faith and me at the party.”
“Maybe.” Rosie nodded. “That’s it, I was drunk.”
“Don’t say that,” Faith put in. “I love the idea of people with animal heads and a beautiful boy reciting poetry. It was scary there, but so magical you could taste it. We saw the masks, Mel.”
“Mm. Still sounds crackers.” Mel smiled to herself, gazing across the quad, where dejected groups of teenagers shuffled around, blowing on their hands. “Funny, these peculiar events only seem to happen to you, Rosie.”
Mel was cheerfully dismissive, but Rosie was crushed. “I didn’t make it up, honest,” she said, deciding not to mention the dryad who’d terrified her just this morning.
“The Cloudcroft Mafia,” said Mel. “That’s what my mum calls people like Lawrence Wilder, the Lyons and the Tullivers, all that lot. They swan about as if they own the village. They think they’re special, but all they are is far too rich. Nothing against your folks, Ro, they’re great—but some of the others…” She shook her head.
“It’s not like that. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s only trying to keep old traditions alive, like… speaking Cornish,” she finished lamely.
Mel raised her eyebrows. “So now you’re Cornish?”
“Er. No. For example.”
“I see how it is,” said Faith. “Rosie has to keep it secret, but there are people in the village who are different, a mysterious older race who look human but can change shape and walk in other worlds. They’re called Aerials.”
“Aetherials,” Rosie said automatically. Then she paused, certain she’d never spelled it out that plainly. “Where did you hear that?”
“I don’t know.” Faith reddened. “Sorry, I’ll shut up. I’d really like it to be true, though.”
“So Rosie’s a fucking Cornish elf,” exclaimed Mel. “Yippee. I love you two, but you’re the bloody limit. Can we talk about something normal, please?”
“Fine by me,” said Rosie.
“I mean, your parents look as human as anyone. Okay, Lawrence Wilder is rather gorgeous in a scary way, but still human. Looked like he’d got everything in the right place, if you know what I mean.” That set them laughing.
“You think everyone’s gorgeous,” said Faith. Mel didn’t respond. She was suddenly wired, sitting forward with her hands braced on the edge of the wall. “Oh, my god!” she whispered, her attention on the school gates.
Then Rosie saw. Her jaw dropped. Utter disbelief, excitement and panic surged through her.
Jonathan and Samuel Wilder were prowling across the quad, wary and predatory like two dark panthers unleashed from a cage. They were wearing the school uniform; black trousers and jacket, white shirt, black and silver striped tie. “I don’t believe it,” she said.
Mel laughed. “Close your mouth, Ro, you’re drooling icicles.”
Rosie’s teeth began to hurt with the cold. She snapped her mouth shut and accidentally bit her tongue, causing her eyes to fill with water. “Fuck,” she said, remembering to breathe. “Fuck.”
The bell sounded and chilled students began to stream towards the school building. Jon and Sam, moving with the flow, would have to come past the wall where Rosie was. They vanished behind other students for a moment. When they reappeared, Sam had moved off with a group of sixth-form boys and Jon was on his own, walking straight towards her.
Her pulse quickened. Their eyes met, disengaged, met again. He paused as if not sure what to do. Mel poked her in the hip and the next thing she knew, she was on her feet in front of him.
His long hair was tied back and he looked more beautiful than she remembered; perfect face, dark long-lashed eyes, sensual mouth. Her heartbeat shook her whole body as he approached. She’d thought falling in love would be wonderful; no one had warned her it could be painfully mortifying. Her watering eyes made her nose run, while her mouth was glued shut.
Jon wore a slightly startled, do-I-know-you expression, which she hadn’t expected. This seemed a good moment for a chasm to open beneath her.
“Hi, I’m Rosie.”
He gave a small frown. “Rosie…?”
“We live down the hill from you.” Her tongue felt clumsy. “We met at the party, do you remember?”
“Er… yes, you’re really familiar,” he said, still looking blank.
How could he not remember, when she’d obsessed about him ever since? Her fingers described a muzzle in front of her face. “In the fox mask.”
“Oh yes, yes.” Light dawned at last. “Rosie Fox. Course.”
“That’s it,” she laughed in relief. “My father knows yours… anyway… I really liked your poem.”
“I didn’t write it. It was ‘The Song of Amergin’.”
“Er, I know, I meant the way you performed it.”
“Thanks.” His gaze drifted away from her—scanning for Sam, she assumed. He wasn’t making this easy at all.
“I thought you were at boarding school,” she struggled on. “What are you doing here?”
“Uh,” Jon said, and looked at his feet. “We were. Dad decided to take us out and send us here instead.”
“Oh,” she said, and thought it extraordinary that Lawrence actually might have listened to her father’s throwaway advice. “Do you mind?”
“I don’t know yet.” The sweetness of his face and the fall of his hair was playing havoc with her insides. He caught her gaze with those melting brown eyes as if he wanted to confide something vital, and would if she could only win his trust.
“What subjects do you like best?”
“Um… English is okay, and biology… I’d better go.” He started to turn from her, hands in pockets, head down. A sudden small flame of courage lit inside her and, on an impulse, she stepped after him.
“Jon, could I ask you a favor?” He stopped, met her eyes again with a wary frown. “I suppose so.”
“Your brother Sam has something of mine.”
“What?”
“Ask him,” she said more confidently. “He’ll know what it is. It’s not much, but it’s important to me. Could you get it from him, and bring it round to my house? Please? When you’ve got time.”
He looked perplexed, then gave a quick smile that lit up his face. Her heart sprang like an elated lamb. “Yes, okay. No problem. See you later.”
* * *
“I’ve found out everything, got all the gossip.”
Mel’s words circled around Rosie’s head as she trudged home with Lucas, damp grass squelching beneath their feet. Ghostly clouds turned the twilight luminous. She could smell snow. She glanced anxiously at the Crone Oak as they passed it, but nothing moved.
“So, you think any of it’s true, then?” asked Lucas.
“What have you heard?”
“All sorts. The kids in my class have talked about nothing else all day. Sam was expelled from his posh school for fighting,” said Lucas. “There are so many rumors flying around, I don’t know what to believe.”
“Sam took on three boys and put them in hospital,” Rosie said flatly. “That’s the truth.”
“How d’you find that out?”
“Mel, of course. Her mother has sources. Sam was already on umpteen warnings.”
“Wow.”
“I hope that’s not admiration I can hear in your voice.”
“No, no,” Luc said quickly. “Why did our school let him in, then?”
“Why d’you think?” said Rosie. “Lawrence is loaded. That’s why his school took so long to expel him, and why ours was so eager to take him on. Money.”
Lucas gave her an eloquent sideways look of disgust. “I know one thing. No one dares say anything to Sam’s face. Everyone’s scared witless of him.”
It had been a strange day, with Sam’s incongruous presence and tantalizing glimpses of Jon. It was as if they’d already webbed the school with the tangled atmosphere of Stonegate Manor. “I’m not afraid of him,” she said.
“Brave Rosie. I’m not scared either, then.”
“Good,” she said, “because if he lays a finger on you, I’ll kill him.” The comforting bulk of Oakholme shone behind webs of winter trees. After a moment, she asked, “Lucas, do you like Jon?”
“Seems all right,” he said, offhand. “I don’t know him yet. Bit quiet. If we were in the same year, we’d probably dodge sports classes together.”
An hour later, when Rosie came down from her room, she heard her mother talking to someone in the kitchen. Her heart skipped. She’d changed into jeans and a soft wine velvet top, brushed her hair to a deep shine… just in case Jon came.
She walked steadily down the hall towards the glow of the kitchen, saw her mother leaning against the warm bulk of the Aga cooker with her hair in a loose ponytail over her shoulder. She was smiling and chatting to someone concealed by the door. Rosie bit her lower lip to redden it, swallowed hard, and strode casually in.
The young man sitting at the farmhouse table was not Jon, but Sam. He was out of school uniform and in jeans with a grey cable sweater, looking older than seventeen and perfectly angelic. The world juddered under Rosie’s feet.
“Hello, sweetheart,” said Jessica. “You’ve got a visitor. Can I leave you to it while I do things upstairs? Kettle’s boiled.” She was gone, not waiting for Rosie to answer, let alone ask her to stay. Sam stood up, edged to the kitchen door and casually pushed it shut.
“Hi,” he said.
“Would you please leave?” Rosie stood stiff and hostile in the center of the room. “In a minute. Jon said you—” Sam’s shoulders were drawn up in contrition and his eyes were somber, not mocking. He held out a closed hand. When she didn’t respond, he placed an object on the table. There was a waterfall of hard little clicks and her crystal pendant lay there, glittering on its chain. “You asked for this, so…”
“I thought he was going to bring it himself.” The dismayed words were out before she could stop them. She groaned inwardly. Damn, damn.
Sam’s eyebrows flickered. “I see.” He sighed and fidgeted, looking uncomfortable. “Sorry to disappoint, but he didn’t seem that bothered when I offered to come instead. I mended the chain, by the way. Look, Rosie…”
She stood with her arms folded against him, furious and helpless. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Really, truly sorry. We got off on completely the wrong foot.”
“I don’t think we did,” she said. “It looked to me like you started exactly as you meant to go on.”
“No, no, I didn’t. I’m an idiot. I want to make it up to you.”
Her kind nature wanted to believe his apology, but her memory called up the bruise he’d left on her arm at the party, his sadistic plea sure in taunting her. “You could try explaining why you changed schools,” she said crisply. “I heard bullying with violence and grievous bodily harm.”
“Who told you that?”
“Who didn’t?” she retorted.
He looked away from her, his voice low and flat. “Yeah, I got expelled for fighting. So? They had it coming.”
The easy way he admitted it shocked her. “And that made you feel big and tough, did it?”
“Not really, no.”
“What about Jon?”
“He didn’t want to stay on his own, so Father took us both out.”
“And are you planning to start roughing up everyone at our school instead?”
“No,” he said, with the trace of a laugh. “Only if they piss me off.”
“You’re really charming, aren’t you?”
“Just honest.” Rosie didn’t know what else to say. He made her jumpy and angry and she desperately wished he would leave. Perhaps she could perform some cleansing rite on the pendant, so she could wear it again. “Anyway, thanks for bringing back my property finally, although I don’t know why I’m thanking you.”
“I understand.” He moved towards the back door, stopped. “Rosie, would you, er… How about going for a coffee with me sometime?”
She stared at him in complete shock. “Are you asking me out?”
“No!” Sam said quickly. “Well, yes. Only for a coffee.”
“What for?” He appeared tongue-tied for a moment. “So I can say sorry properly. And, you know, you’re not completely repulsive.” He smiled.
The suggestion floored her. She turned hot with panic. She was ready to fantasize about a gentle boy with the eyes of a poet—but not ready to put herself at the mercy of a rogue with a reputation and fresh blood on his hands. He’d already tried to kiss her—what else would he do?
No—god, no. The potential for fresh humiliation was boundless.
“You must be joking.” All the rejection in the world blazed in her voice. He actually flinched.
“Right.” The cruel, intimidating glitter reappeared in his eyes. He gave a twisted grin, angry or embarrassed at her refusal. She’d sounded harsher than she’d intended—but she was thinking of schoolboys bleeding on hospital trolleys, the raw sting of the chain breaking across her throat, Matthew crouching bloodied and wretched behind a hedge, saying, He’s crazy, keep away from him.
“It was worth a try,” he added. “Plenty more girls at school. In fact, your mother’s pretty fit.”
“Get out,” she said, panic turning to outrage.
“What happened to my cup of tea?”
“You’re asking for boiling water over your head. Could you be any more obnoxious?”
“Haven’t even started yet.” He crossed to the outside door, paused with his hand on the doorknob and said, “You like Jon a lot, don’t you?”
“He’s okay,” she said defiantly. “I can’t believe you’re related. He’s nothing like you.”
“No kidding.” Sam opened the door onto darkness and she tasted needles of ice on the air. Slipping away into wintry gloom he glanced back at her, his face pale in the closing gap. “You do know he’s gay, don’t you?”
* * *
Auberon was walking along a footpath towards Comyn’s farm. Around him the afternoon was chill and wrapped in all-day winter twilight; but he loved Charnwood in all its masks. The trees were clawed ghosts in the mist. As he walked, he remembered…
Lawrence at Freya’s Crown; hair jet black against his robes, the great stone mound looming behind him. He held the applewood staff and a bronze dish of hazelnuts. The sky above the Dusklands was black glass scattered with snowdrifts of stars. A throng of Vaethyr waited, their Otherworld forms already emerging; hair growing longer and brighter, eyes becoming feline, human bodies elongating. On some shoulders, ghost wings rustled.
Candle smoke curled into the air like soft breath. When Lawrence lifted his staff and struck the stone, the ground trembled; one Gate turning inside another until they all came into alignment and there was the portal, stretching like an infinity of mirrors; the Way to the Inner Realms, the Gate of Gates.
Then Lawrence offered each Vaethyr in turn a hazelnut, and they ate, and passed through.
It had been a beautiful night, that last Night of the Summer Stars twelve years ago; crisp and glowing. It was shortly after Lucas’s birth, a time of renewed happiness… Auberon and Jessica had felt the cool grass of Elysion beneath their bare feet as they danced… but, later, they’d sat out of the Great Dance itself, content to watch, sipping honey wine.
A perfect, peaceful night. Auberon wondered if he’d missed some hint of the coming darkness. Lawrence’s high-handed abrasiveness had given no clue, since it was his usual manner… or was it?
Wilder came from Sibeyla, realm of air, and of course the Spiral-born often found it hard to adjust to Earth. In his twenty years as Gatekeeper he’d proved capricious about the lesser festivals, sometimes not turning up. He’d become feared and disliked. Auberon had reason to hate him; but at a younger age, he and Lawrence had been friends. He had seen Lawrence in moments of weakness that made hatred impossible.
Lawrence had twice opened the Great Gates for the Summer Stars rite. The first time, nineteen years ago, Liliana had been there to support him. Second time, twelve years ago… yes, he had looked uneasy. If you ruled out personal matters or stage fright and attributed it to foreboding instead, his grim demeanor took on new meaning.
Third time—Gates locked in their faces, dysir set upon them, Lawrence intransigent.
Auberon felt a dark wave shudder up through the roots of the earth, and through his body. He opened his eyes, tasting soil like death in his mouth. In that moment, he knew that Lawrence was telling the truth. The very rocks, connected to the Gates, pushed the knowledge into him. An amorphous peril slumbering within the Spiral, some formless terror that he couldn’t grasp… the image was gone, leaving a dark trail of fear behind it.
Sighing, Auberon continued his walk. The grass squelched under his boots as he followed the lane towards Comyn’s farm. He wondered about other Vaethyr communities around the Earth, their network a delicate spider’s web with nodes concentrated around portals, and all those portals controlled by the Great Gates of Cloudcroft. Really, the Aetherial population of Earth was tiny, and mostly too distant to give Lawrence any trouble. The majority, although they might be uneasy about their Gatekeeper’s actions, still trusted him.
After all, it was Lawrence’s role to be vigilant, to sense threats that no other Vaethyr perceived. It was his gift and his duty. If he’d sensed this gathering shadow from the beginning… well, it did not excuse his behavior, but might explain a lot.
Auberon climbed a five-bar gate into a pasture, checking for the massive bull, Brewster. The pasture was empty. The bulk of farm buildings appeared on top of the hill. As he drew closer, Comyn came to meet him, fitting the role of gentleman farmer in a green waxed coat and cap; a natural denizen of the landscape. His rubberized boots left deep imprints in the mud.
“Found a moment out of your busy schedule?”
Auberon had learned not to take offense at his brother-in-law’s bluntness. “You said come up for a chat. Here I am. Is this a friendly cup of tea, or something more serious?”
“It’s serious,” replied Comyn.
He led Auberon across the farmyard to a barn. Inside, the air was wreathed with the steamy stench of cattle. Railed in a pen stood Brewster, Comyn’s pride and joy, the magnificent brown bull that had triumphed in the show ring and earned him a fortune at stud. The concrete stall was swept clean, the straw fresh and golden. Brewster, however, stood with his head lowered, no fire in his eyes. His coat was dull, muscles wasted. Auberon was shocked to see him.
“He’s dying,” said Comyn. “We’ve kept him going but the last couple of days—” His hand sliced the air to indicate sudden decline.
“What does the vet say?”
“Hopeless. We’ve tried everything.” His voice was gruff. “End of the line.”
“He’s quite an old man now,” Auberon said gently.
Comyn let himself into the pen and stood stroking Brewster’s once-hefty neck. The bull huffed, swiveling cloudy eyes towards him. “He’s not a mortal bull, Bron. He came with me from the inner realms. A wedding gift from my clan.”
Auberon had always lived in the surface world. His family had owned this farm for generations. Comyn, however, had been Aelyr, Spiral-born. He came of an Elysian clan called the Fheylim, a tough, fierce, dark-haired people from which Auberon’s family had also branched. That made him and Comyn distant cousins.
Long ago, during a solstice rite in Elysion, Phyllida had met Comyn and brought him to the surface world. Since Auberon had his own business and no desire to be a farmer, he’d asked his parents to leave the farm to Comyn instead. Despite the gift—or because of it—Comyn had an edge of disdain towards him, an Elysian who’d rejected his farming heritage to build houses for humans. Auberon tried to ignore the needling.
“I know,” Auberon said, leaning on the top rail of the pen. “There’s such vigor about Brewster, as if he’s the very archetype of a bull.”
“That’s precisely what he is.” Comyn stroked the bellowing flank. “Human myths overflow with bulls. He is the sun, the fire of life. Can you guess when he began to lose his health?”
Auberon exhaled. “When Lawrence first closed the Gates?”
“Exactly then. Brewster hasn’t eaten the grass of Elysion for five years and this is the result. How long before we fade, too?”
Phyllida appeared from the gloom of the farmyard. Her hair, falling over the collar of her waxed jacket, blazed under the barn’s fluorescent lights.
“It’s the way things are, Bron,” she said. “My skill to diagnose and heal is no longer as instinctive as it used to be. I feel I’m only half a doctor. We take for granted those Spiral-connected energies that give us an edge over humans, until they fade.”
“Everything is affected,” Comyn said fiercely. “Everything.”
“I know,” said Auberon, “but we’re strong. We still have the Dusklands. Even if Lawrence keeps the portal shut for fifty years, we’ll survive.”
“As what?” Comyn turned to face him. “Mortals with our memories gone? No chance of rebirth, just plain old death? Is that what he wants? Is that what you want for your children?”
“No, but there are worse things than living in this world—”
Comyn cut him off with a growl. “It’s our birthright, as Aetherials, to have free access in and out of all realms—regardless of the rules the self-appointed jobsworths of the Spiral Court try to impose upon us. Bron, if he doesn’t get those Gates open, what ever these supposed dangers, he’ll have no choice. We’ll force him.”
“No.” Auberon made a placatory gesture. “I understand, but forcing him would be wrong. Whate ver we think of Lawrence, he’s acting to protect us. He may open the Gates tomorrow.”
“That will be a day too late for Brewster,” Comyn murmured. “Why do you, of all people, defend him? Are you afraid of him? Happy, are you, for your children to be denied their birthright and turn into human drones?”
“Of course not!” Despite himself, Auberon was angered. “But what possible reason could Lawrence have for lying?”
“Who knows?” Comyn flared, striking the rail with the flat of his palm. Brewster snorted, showing a flicker of fire as he swung his great horned head. “Conflicts like this led to our fall, our influence fading from human history. Now we live in secret, like fugitives! Left to me, there’d be no Gatekeeper and no Gates, either. D’you think I can watch my bull dying and not think the unthinkable? If we have to depose the almighty Lawrence Wilder, so be it!”
Auberon waited for the outburst to end. “No,” he said firmly. “If we do that, we might unleash the very peril that Lawrence fears. We could lose the Spiral for all time.”
“That’s a lot of mights and mays to be afraid of,” Comyn growled.
“Comyn, he’s telling the truth. The danger’s real. We must trust him.”
“Well, I say to hell with the danger,” Comyn spat back. “Bring it on.”
“And I would agree with you, but I have children to think of.”
“And how is this slow, fading death better than a quick, violent one?” Comyn breathed out through his teeth, rage subsiding. “Vaethyr trust you, Bron. If you don’t help us, who will?”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Auberon replied. “To avert conflict, and stay in friendly communication with Lawrence. If we’re too quick to declare him the enemy, where’s the ruddy sense in that? We’ll only resolve this by negotiation, not war.”
Phyllida said gently, “He is right, Com.”
“I know.” Comyn turned to Brewster and slid gentle hands over the sunken rib cage. Phyll watched him, her face somber and haunted. “Don’t worry, Bron, I have the patience of mountains.” His voice tightened with pain. “I won’t do anything rash. But I’ll never forgive him for this.”
“I’m sorry about Brewster. I truly am.”
No one spoke for a minute or two. When Comyn turned again, there were tears in his eyes. Never in his life had Auberon seen him in tears.
“We’re waiting for the slaughterman,” he said. “Will you wait with us?”
* * *
After Sam had gone, Rosie lifted the crystal heart and held it up to the light. She’d been certain it would be a disappointment, a glass trinket. Instead, its sparkling fire enchanted her all over again.
Could she wear it again, and pretend to her dear father that she’d had it all the time? Strange, that Sam had kept it safe all these years. Perhaps it was a magpie mask he needed, not a hawk.
She pocketed the heart as Jessica came back in and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Am I right in suspecting that the infamous Sam has a crush on you?”
Her mother’s body felt warm and safe and her hair smelled beautiful. “And on you, apparently,” said Rosie. “Probably on any female who can’t sprint away fast enough. Did you hear why he was expelled?”
Jessica nodded. “It’s a shame, the way he’s turned out. Such a good-looking boy, and as charming as anything to me. I don’t want to judge him on hearsay, but you’re wise to keep your distance.”
Rosie bit her lip. She’d never admitted her previous encounters with Sam. Her mother might have been less relaxed if she had. “I’m not afraid of him.”
“Nor should you be. Never forget, we’re Aetherial,” Jessica went on firmly. “However human you look or feel, your core is Aetheric. When you feel ready for a lover—”
“Oh, Mum.” She tried to squirm away, mortified, but Jessica held her shoulders and looked straight into her eyes, deadly serious, equals.
“When you’re ready, Rosie, remember what you are. Nothing can take that strength away from you. Unlike humans, we have conscious control over certain of our physical pro cesses. It’s our power.”
Embarrassment fell away as Rosie remembered the talks—more from Aunt Phyll than from her own mother—about sealing her own inner chambers, controlling pleasure, secreting protective juices that would repel microscopic invasion of any kind. Learning awareness of her body, until it was as instinctive as breathing. “I know. I was taught well.”
“So you can choose whoever pleases you—but no one can invade you, infect you, or impregnate you against your will. The power is yours.”
The kitchen faded and they were two warrior queens in an older, more vivid world. Rosie felt a shining fire inside herself, as if her spine were made of gold. A handful of eccentric memories—her mother taking her out at dawn to bathe in dew, or to lie laughing and ecstatic under a full moon—now fell into place. It was about maintaining their Aetheric nature, regardless of the masculine barrier of Gates. She sensed green leaves all around them, flowers and ivy twined in her mother’s hair. She felt truly other.
“Aetherials are layered beings,” Jessica went on. “There’s our human shape in the surface world, and the changed forms we may assume in the Dusklands or Spiral. There’s our core or essence, which equates to the human heart, soul and mind, but includes instinct, our sense of the flow of right or wrong. And then there’s the fylgia—the shadow soul, which dwells in the Spiral and always connects us there. It may take a smoky animal form, if you ever glimpse it at all.”
“Mine would be a fox, then.” Rosie smiled.
“Not necessarily. You know, your blood realm doesn’t always define your elemental leanings or character. I’m Elysian like your father, but I feel Sibeylan, drawn to air, birds, music…”
“So yours is a bird?”
“Oh.” Jessica looked startled. “Well, they’re hard to see clearly and the fylgia is very personal. You can think of it as a guide, the part of you that knows best… usually.” Her gaze lost focus. “It is hard, being unable to visit the inner realms to replenish those energies. So we have to make more effort to nourish our Aetherial side here on Earth. Nurture the animal, divine and elemental as well as the human. There’s no division in us.”
“I feel I know this,” said Rosie. “It’s like a dream that I’d forgotten until you reminded me.”
“Yes,” Jessica said sadly, “that’s how it is.”
“So we’ve done sex, can we do death?” Rosie said, wry but serious. “I don’t see any white-haired bent Aetherials around. What about your parents?”
Her mother’s shoulders drooped, expressing sadness. “Some Aetherials raise their children like birds; fling them out of the nest early and fly away. The moment Phyll and I were old enough they were away, touring with their orchestra. Cello and first violin. The house was always full of music… but they were gone too soon. Maybe that’s why I’m too possessive of my children, and Phyll has none. They aren’t that old, but… Didn’t your father talk about this?”
“No, he didn’t. I don’t believe we’re immortal.”
“Nothing’s immortal, sweetheart. Call us semimortal. We don’t age so much as fade, and then we’re drawn towards the Spiral. We need to go there. That’s why the older ones vanish. If my mother and father decided to go, I doubt they’d even tell us. They lose themselves deep in the heart of the Spiral and they’re transformed. They may come out again in their original shape, or they may rest in elemental form for a century or two, or be reborn entirely.”
Rosie took this in, thinking that it sounded desolate, not comforting. She had a sudden, chilly vision of arriving home one day and finding Oakholme deserted, her parents simply gone… “And what if a mad axman bursts in and chops my head off?”
Jessica pulled a face at her. “Then you die, and leave a mess on my floor, but your essence travels to the center of the Spiral and may, sooner or later, be reborn in a new form. You wouldn’t necessarily remember who you were. That depends on the individual’s strength of will.”
“It sounds frightening. A kind of open-ended journey without a proper shape.”
“But it’s exhilarating, too. I used to sing a song about it, ‘Kiss the Mirror’.”
“I sometimes hear you singing, Mum, in my head. Maybe I’m nuts, but it’s kind of comforting. I wish you’d still sing. In reality, I mean.”
Jessica gazed narrowly at her. “I can’t. My voice went. And you’re lovely but weird; a true Aetherial. Anything else you want to ask, love?”
“Yes. Initiation?”
“No. Not today. Not for two years.”
“And will the Gates be open again by then?”
“Who knows?” Her mother’s eyes darkened, as her father’s had. “I don’t know.”
“Mum, everything you’ve told me has been about the Otherworld, about going in and out of the Spiral,” said Rosie. “But we can’t anymore. So what happens instead? We just die, end of story? Matthew might think he wants that, but I don’t. I want the journey.”
* * *
As Sam trudged up the hill in the dark, he looked back and saw lights shining in the windows of Oakholme. Ice sifted around him and he was wet, freezing, but he didn’t care. All he could think about was Rosie, Rosie, Rosie and it made no sense.
He wasn’t sure when it had happened. He’d noticed what a nice shape she was as she entered the great hall, of course. Then finding her in his room—that was it. One moment she was just a spoiled Fox to mock and torment. The next, her plum-red mouth and sultry eyes and glorious burgundy hair and fearless spirit had plunged inside him and exploded every shred of common sense into a torrent of molten desire.
Oh, yeah. That was purple but absolutely true. Hopeless. Every word he said only made her hate him more. Never mind putting his foot in it, he was chest-deep in crap every time he opened his mouth. He didn’t even know why he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
Close to the manor, he heard something in the bushes to the left of the house. He stopped and watched, owl-silent, until he saw the moving shadow. He stalked at a distance, all the way up the hill, creeping closer until he was at the summit, an arm’s reach away. The figure was sitting cross-legged with its back against the bulk of Freya’s Crown, eyes closed. Sam bit his lower lip. Then he reached out and clutched the figure’s shoulder.
Jon gave a strangled yell, jumped so violently he almost launched himself off the earth. “Jesus, Sam!” His hair was stringy with sleet, his skin stone-cold.
“What the hell are you doing, you prat?” said Sam.
“What do you think?” Jon said angrily. “Leave me alone.”
“A couple of points,” said Sam. “One, how the hell are you going to see into the Otherworld, when you didn’t even sense me two inches away?”
“Fuck off.”
“Two, if Father catches you here, he’ll kill you.”
At that, Jon turned even paler in the darkness. “You won’t tell him, Sam.”
“No, but one day he’s going to catch you. If he thinks you’re trying to open the Gates, oh my god, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
“I wasn’t trying to open the Gates,” Jon said. He jumped nimbly to his feet and stood there, a skinny bedraggled angel. Sam rose with him, saw scratches on his hands and face. On the ground lay a wreath of thorny twigs, intertwined in a rune.
“No? Don’t leave the evidence lying around.”
He kicked the object so it flew into the bracken and disintegrated. “Hey!” Jon exclaimed, trying to pull him back. Sam held him off easily with one hand.
“Now get inside before you freeze to death.”
“You don’t understand,” Jon said angrily. “I wasn’t trying to break through. I just wanted…”
“What?”
“To see Mother. To see where she is.”
At that, Sam put one hand round Jon’s throat and pressed him back against the rocks. “You fucking idiot. You think she went through there? How and why? I suppose it’s as likely a place as any!” He let go, shoving Jon away. The touch was only to shake Jon up, not to hurt him. Sam took a few paces away, calming himself; then came back and said, “So… you actually have any success?”
“No.”
“No,” echoed Sam. “Because she’s dead.”
“She is not dead!” Jon cried. “How can you say that?”
“She must be dead,” Sam said quietly. “She would never have left us without a word for all these years, unless she’d died in the meantime. Even if she was in the Spiral, she wouldn’t have just forgotten us. You simply can’t face up to it.”
“Oh, yes she would,” Jon answered with venom. “She just doesn’t care, that’s all.”
He flinched as his brother turned on him again; but Sam let his hand drop, let the anger bleed into nothingness like the sleet. He walked away with Jon’s wounded voice following him. “You’re the one who can’t face it: She never cared about us.”