s Ned crossed the doorway, Dublin – at least the Dublin that the rest of the world knew – stopped existing. In its place was a wide glade of pure unbridled magic. Ned had crossed the Veil countless times and could never quite get used to it. Colours, sounds, even time were altered by the meeting of magic and non-magic in ways that never made sense and always filled him with awe.
Entering the heart and home of the Fey was another proposition entirely. For one thing, their realm did not need the Veil to stay hidden. The Fey had their own magic, a magic that was older and wilder, more untameable and strange. Silently Ned, Lucy and Mr Fox followed their guide into the glade, a glade that burst with colour and magic. Ned marvelled at buttercups the size of buckets; trees of turquoise, gold, ruby-red and lavender. As they waded through waist-high grass, the smell of roses was mixed with honey then moss, peaches, magnolia and thyme. If smells could deafen! The constant change of scents, like notes of music, was intoxicating. And there was sound too, or at least what Ned thought was sound. Not quite music, but some wordless song, and one that he’d heard somewhere before. It was as though the glade – every part of it, from the plants to the air, even its light – was speaking to him, calling with words that made his heart fill with memories as old as time yet they were not his own.
It took a while to notice but Lemnus had stopped walking because, as it turned out, there simply wasn’t any need. The glade, its trees and flowers, were moving closer and at an alarming speed. From every side great arms of twisting, knotting greenery grew up around them. Branches reached across the sky, and every flower, from foxglove to dandelion, grew and grew till their small party gazed up like ants in a living forest, so different from the taiga yet wilder and more strange. The ground at their feet began to soften, like moss-filled quicksand, and Ned felt himself lowering into it. His mind raced to a half-remembered biology lesson he’d had at school. He’d learnt in detail how the carnivorous Venus flytrap would welcome in a fly with its sticky sap and then violently snap shut round it.
“Lucy, why is the garden getting bigger?”
As the vines shot towards them, Lucy’s hand gripped his own.
“Stay close,” she whispered.
“Unt!” came Gorrn’s muffled groan.
And just as he groaned it, Lemnus turned on them, his face quite changed and as serious as stone. Reaching into his dress coat and pulling out a small silk pouch, he poured a yellow powder into his palm and blew. A great cloud of pollen flew up into the air and smothered them.
And with that, Ned and his allies were swallowed up whole.