Swift by R. J. Anderson
Ivy felt as though an iron band had clamped about her chest. ‘And if I don’t?’ she managed to ask.
‘Then your sister will remain trapped,’ Gillian said. ‘Your mother will sleep herself to death. And you will stay here with them, a helpless prisoner, while I carry out my plan.’ She walked a circle around Ivy, fingers trailing across her wingless shoulders. ‘But you won’t make me do that, will you, Ivy? Your father and brother may believe that their lives are worth more than yours, but surely you know better?’
Revulsion shivered up Ivy’s spine, but she didn’t move. All at once she found herself thinking of Mica – how arrogant and selfish he’d become in the wake of their mother’s disappearance, and how little he seemed to care about anything Ivy did. How she’d been ready to share her deepest secret with him, only to be shamed into silence by his superstition and bigotry. The shattering pain she’d felt when his stone struck her in mid-flight, and nearly killed her.
And her father, too. What had Flint ever done for her, since her mother went away? How many times had she turned to him for comfort, and met nothing but stony indifference? He might as well be a statue already, for all the life that was in him now. Why should she sacrifice her own life, let alone Marigold and Cicely’s, for his sake?
‘Don’t think of it as a betrayal,’ Gillian urged softly. ‘Think of it as justice for all the faeries your piskey ancestors killed – those faeries were your ancestors, too. And think of what you’ll be doing for the women of the Delve. They may not understand at first, but once they learn the truth, they will hail you as their deliverer.’
Ivy gasped out a laugh. ‘After I’ve helped to turn their husbands and sons into statues? I don’t think so.’
‘Of course they will. Don’t you see, Ivy? Once the present Joan is gone and the women of the Delve are free, they’ll need a leader who knows the ways of the upper world. They’ll have no choice but to look to you for guidance, and once they discover how much stronger and healthier and happier they are living on the surface, they’ll realise how foolish they were to trust someone like Betony.’
The moonlight slanted through the open door behind Gillian as she spoke, haloing her auburn hair and limning her body with silver. For a moment she was as beautiful as the faeries of legend, and Ivy could almost see the world she was describing. A world in which the women of the Delve were free to walk in the sunshine or gaze at the stars whenever they pleased. A world where sickness was rare instead of commonplace, and piskeys could live three hundred years without growing wrinkled or feeble, or losing their wits with age. A world where her people could live in peace with faeries as well as humans, and creativity could blossom freely among them.
Yet when she looked into Gillian’s avid, expectant face, the vision died away. She had seen that expression on the faces of her fellow piskeys right before they pulled off a prank, and it reminded her that Gillian cared far less about saving the women of the Delve than about taking revenge on the men she hated. It also reminded her that Molly had to have got her theatrical gift from somewhere, and it might not have been from her father’s side…
For this I declare, whispered Molly in her memory, someone is plotting vengeance.
Ivy raised her head defiantly. ‘No. I’m not helping you. If you want to destroy the Delve, you’re going to have to do it by yourself.’
Fury twisted Gillian’s features, but it only took her an instant to regain composure. ‘So you would rather I left you here with your mother and sister to die?’
‘I’d rather take my chances with them than trust you,’ said Ivy. ‘I don’t know if you can lie or not, but even if you can’t, I know you’re hiding something. I’m not going anywhere.’
There was a long, cold silence. Then Gillian took a little pouch out of her pocket. ‘You are as stubborn as your mother,’ she said. ‘I only hope your sister can forgive you for it.’ And before Ivy could react, she flicked a pinch of sparkling dust on the ground at Ivy’s feet.
Ivy tried to shape-change, but it was already too late. The dirt beneath her had turned to a slimy puddle of clay, gluing her feet to the floor. She threw her weight from one foot to the other, trying to break free – but she was already paralysed to mid-calf, and the muck was spiralling higher up her legs every second.
‘I’m sorry it had to come to this,’ Gillian said, plucking Cicely’s statue from Ivy’s grip. ‘I would have preferred not to use a child – they can be so unreliable. However…’ She took out a pocket knife, flicked it open and pricked Marigold’s finger with it. ‘I’ve waited too many years for this to be patient any longer.’
The clay had crept up past Ivy’s hips now, and her whole lower body was numb. Ivy fought against it, hurling all her magic into the effort, but still the spell kept rising.
Yet surely there must be hope if it hadn’t engulfed her already? Cicely had only screamed once before she was trapped, and the others looked as though they hadn’t had time to cry out at all…
If Gillian noticed the Claybane’s slowness as well, it didn’t appear to trouble her. She held Marigold’s hand over Cicely’s head and squeezed a drop of blood onto the clay; then she pierced her own finger and smeared it across the figure’s feet.
Crackling fissures spread over the statue, thin at first but rapidly growing wider. A second later the clay crumbled into dust and Ivy’s little sister staggered out, tiny but alive.
‘Cicely!’ Ivy shouted, as the Claybane slithered over her waist. ‘Don’t listen to her! Don’t do anything she says!’ But Cicely was still stumbling around in circles, too dazed and disoriented to respond.
Gillian stooped and lifted Cicely from the ground. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, cradling the piskey girl in her hands. ‘I’ll tell her everything she needs to know. Perhaps she’ll prove more reasonable than you and your mother. In fact I would hope so, if I were you.’
Then she walked out, and the door swung shut behind her.
‘Cicely!’ Ivy screamed, but there was no answer. Alone in the growing darkness, she thrashed from side to side, teeth grinding with the effort of trying to break free of the Claybane. She had to save her little sister – had to warn Betony and the other piskeys about Gillian’s plan—
But as the clay inched up over her ribs, Ivy knew it was no use. Her mother was asleep, Richard trapped inside his statue, and no one but Gillian even knew that Ivy was here, let alone had the power to free her.
She had risked everything to save the mother and sister she loved. But she had failed them both…and now Ivy could not even save herself.
sixteen
By the time the clay reached Ivy’s shoulders, she no longer had the strength to fight it any more. Hoarsely she shouted, ‘Mum! Marigold! Wake up!’
But her mother did not stir. The only sound was a scraping of branches against the door, and a distant whinny that must have been Duchess, protesting as Gillian rode her away.
Ivy drew a sobbing breath. ‘No,’ she begged, not even knowing with whom she was pleading. ‘It can’t end like this. It’s not – please. Please, if there’s anyone who can hear…’ Then she threw her head back and screamed with all her might, ‘HELP ME!’
The words dropped like stones into the silence, and for a few heartbeats all was still. Then the door cracked open, and she heard the last voice she had ever expected to hear:
‘Ivy?’
If she hadn’t been encased in stiff clay up to her neck, Ivy would have collapsed with the shock. ‘Molly?’
The girl stooped through the doorway, electric torch in hand. The beam fell on Ivy, and she exclaimed aloud. ‘What happened to you?’
‘No time,’ Ivy wheezed as the Claybane crept along her jaw. In a few seconds, she wouldn’t be able to speak at all. ‘Only blood can break the spell – my mother’s on my head, your mother’s on my feet – has to be a relative—’
She’d barely gasped out the last word when the clay covered Ivy’s mouth, cutting off her breath. Her eyes rolled wildly as the slime cra
No sight, no sound, no feeling. Utter darkness surrounded her, unrelieved by even the tiniest pinprick of light. Her lungs refused to fill, and even her heart had stopped beating. Ivy knew she ought to be dead…and yet in some way that only magic could explain, she wasn’t. She was alive, and worse, she was aware.
And yet there was nothing to do or see, no reason to go on existing. She felt no pain, but as the minutes dragged on her numbness became an agony in itself. She would have welcomed the stinging slash of a knife or an arrow piercing into her side, if only it meant she could feel anything at all.
Now she knew how Richard must have felt when he woke from the beating Mica and Mattock had given him, and found himself chained up in a cavern silent and black as death. No wonder he’d been half-crazed by the time Ivy met him; no wonder he’d taken to reciting Shakespeare to break the intolerable silence. She’d tortured him without even realising it, giving him a taste of the light he longed for and then taking it away. It had scarcely occurred to her to care how he must feel. Why should she? He was only a spriggan…
Just as to Gillian Menadue, Ivy was only a piskey.
Despair rolled over Ivy, crushing her spirit. She was never going to get out of here. Even if Molly begged her mother to show Ivy mercy, even if Cicely betrayed the whole Delve in exchange for her freedom, Gillian would never let her go. She’d spend the rest of her life in this horrible nothingness, knowing all the while that Richard, and Mica, and Mattock, and so many others were suffering the same fate – and that it was her failure that had put them there.
Ivy wanted to scream, to weep, to pound her fists against the darkness until it shattered and let her go. But she couldn’t. She could only stand there helpless for one interminable second after another – and the worst of it all was knowing that she still had a lifetime of imprisonment ahead.
But just as Ivy was certain that she could endure it no longer, that she would go mad with the sheer pointlessness of her existence, something happened. The tiniest feather-touch on her forehead, so light that at first she thought she’d imagined it. But then a tickle ran across her scalp, as though some buzzing insect had landed in her hair – and the itch kept growing, spidering over her forehead and across her brows until she was half-wild with the need to scratch it.
Then suddenly – oh, glory – the shell over her face cracked apart, and she could breathe again. Ivy let out a moan, and opened her eyes.
‘It’s OK, don’t be scared, I’m here,’ blurted Molly, sounding nearly as frantic as Ivy felt. She was scratching at the Claybane that covered Ivy’s neck and shoulders, tearing off fragments as fast as she could go. ‘I couldn’t find my mum so I tried my blood and your mum’s instead, and I didn’t think it was going to work at first but then it did, and I’m going to get you out of there—’
Ivy’s mouth was dry, and her tongue felt thick and heavy. In a slurred whisper she asked, ‘How…find me? Thought…sleeping.’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ said Molly, pulling a chunk of Claybane off Ivy’s upper arm and flinging it away. ‘I was only pretending. I got dressed as soon as you and Mum left the house, and when I saw the two of you ride off on Duchess I followed you. But I didn’t want to get too close in case she spotted me, and then I lost the trail for a bit, so by the time I got here – oh!’
And with that the spell broke, and the last of the clay dissolved into powder. Ivy’s knees buckled, and she almost keeled over before Molly caught her, lowering her to the dusty floor. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked anxiously, dropping down beside her. ‘You look like you’re going to be sick.’
Ivy waved a hand in what she hoped was a reassuring gesture. It was like a gift to feel her chest expand and contract with each breath, and her heartbeat with a steady, reassuring rhythm that she’d never take for granted again. But her wits, like her muscles, were still weak with shock. ‘Molly,’ she said when she could speak, fumbling for the other girl’s blood-smeared hand. ‘You saved me. I owe you my life.’
Molly squeezed back, but Ivy could feel her fingers tremble. ‘My mum…she’s a faery. And that makes me…’
‘Half-faery,’ said Ivy. ‘That’s how you broke her spells.’
‘But I’ve lived with her my whole life. How could I never have noticed – never even guessed…?’
Ivy tried to get up, but her legs were too shaky to hold her. She sighed and leaned against the wall. ‘She fooled a lot of people, Molly. Other faeries, even. Don’t blame yourself.’
‘But why did my mum put you in that clay stuff? What is she trying to do?’
Ivy explained the situation to Molly as briefly as she could. Then she finished, ‘I have to stop her, Molly. She’s got my sister. And if I don’t get to the Delve right away, she’ll turn my father and brother into clay piskeys and sell them in the market, like she did to Richard.’
‘Richard!’ Molly sat up, her eyes wide. ‘You found him? Where is he?’
Ivy pulled her bag across the floor and opened it up to show Molly the statue. ‘He’s trapped in this,’ she said. ‘Your mother turned him small, and sealed him inside.’
Molly picked up the fat, smiling piskey and stared at it, her face wrinkling in revulsion. ‘Can we…is there any way to get him out? Without hurting him?’
‘The outer shell’s hollow,’ said Ivy. ‘We could break off the head, I suppose, but—’
Without waiting for her to finish the sentence, Molly whipped around and slammed its pointed cap against the wall. The head shattered, and as Molly wrenched what was left of the shell apart, a tiny figure dropped out. She caught it with both hands and raised it to the light.
Even in the half-darkness the despair on Richard’s face was clearly visible, and Ivy’s insides twisted with shame. How could she have misjudged him so badly? He hadn’t flown off and abandoned her, as she’d assumed – he’d been trying to help her find Cicely, and this had been his reward.
‘It’s no use,’ she said miserably. ‘Even if your blood does work as a substitute for your mother’s, we can’t free him without finding one of his relatives as well.’
‘I don’t care,’ retorted Molly. ‘I’m going to try it anyway.’ She squeezed her cut thumb until the blood welled up again, and smeared a scarlet line across Richard’s feet before setting him firmly on the ground between them. ‘Your turn.’
‘Molly, there’s no point—’
‘I don’t care!’ Molly was shouting now, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘I thought he flew away because he didn’t care, but he was stuck in that stupid ugly statue all the time, and it wasn’t his fault, and we’re all he’s got!’ She snatched up one of the pottery fragments littered across the floor and thrust it at Ivy. ‘We have to try! We owe him that!’
She was right. Ivy set her teeth, stabbed the shard into her thumb, and wiped a streak of blood across the statue’s brow.
‘Please,’ whispered Molly, clasping her hands together and rocking back and forth. ‘Please let it work.’
But though the two girls watched and waited, not a single crack appeared in the figure’s surface. ‘I’m sorry,’ Ivy said quietly. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’
Molly picked up the statue and bowed over it, her shoulders shaking. Ivy reached to comfort her – and found that she could move easily again. She let her hand rest on Molly’s shoulder a moment, then pushed herself to her feet.
‘Look after him,’ she told Molly softly as she limped towards the door. ‘And my mother, too. I’ll be back soon – I hope.’
Then she flung herself into swift-form, and flashed away.
Ivy had never flown so hard or so fast, not even when the other swifts were chasing her. She didn’t know how far she was from the Delve, but her instincts told her unerringly which direction to go, and she was determined to get there before Gillian could carry out her plan.
She zoomed over hills and valleys, rocky ridges and thin strips of woodland, the open-pit scar of a modern min
Soon she began to spot landmarks she had noticed from previous flights, and knew she must be nearing the Delve. Yet she’d seen no sign of Gillian and Duchess, let alone Cicely, anywhere. Perhaps the faery woman had turned them all invisible, so they could ride right up to the Delve without being noticed?
Or more likely, Ivy realised belatedly, she hadn’t bothered bringing the mare at all, and simply transported herself and Cicely to the Delve by magic instead. In which case, Cicely could be showing Gillian the Delve’s hidden entrances at this very minute, and Ivy might already be too late…
A few seconds later the familiar broken chimney and slanting walls of the Engine House rose up before her, black against the night sky. Ivy circled around the capped entrance to the Great Shaft, then dived straight between the bars, plunging into the darkness below.
But in bird-form her skin didn’t glow, as it did when she was in piskey-shape. The blackness inside the shaft was too dense for even a swift’s night vision to penetrate, and panic leaped up in Ivy as she realised she was flying blind. Fluttering wildly to slow her descent, she scrabbled with her short feet until her claws found an outcropping and then hung there, breathing fast.
Now what? She still had to get down to the adjoining tunnel somehow. But if she changed back to piskey-shape here, she could lose her grip and fall straight to the bottom of the shaft. And if the drop didn’t kill her the landing would, because the flooded part of the shaft went down for fathoms and she had no idea how to swim.
Yet she couldn’t cling here forever, either. Her swift’s heart drumming, Ivy dug her claws deeper into the crack and willed her body to change.
As her form shifted, so did her balance. Her fingers slipped, and for one awful moment she felt herself start to fall – but then her piskey skin leaped into brightness, illuminating every feature of the surrounding rock, and she jammed her hands into a bigger crack just in time. Hanging by her fingertips, she slid her feet from one side to the other until she found a toehold. Then she inched her way over the rock to the tunnel entrance, swung herself past the iron railing, and dropped to the ground below.