by ‘I’m a butterfly,’ I said in wonder.
No, I didn’t. I tried to speak, but seeing as I was lacking the right mouth parts, nothing much emerged.
I was also wrong, as soon became apparent, for no butterfly had gnarly, greeny-browny, webby toes and a fierce hunger for fresh, juicy flies.
‘I’m a toad,’ I said. ‘With wings.’ No words emerged that time either, but my tongue did. It went a long, long way out, and returned with a fly stuck to its tip.
I didn’t want to swallow that fly, but I did.
Yuck.
Pros to the situation: me and my bosom companions (and Miranda) were no longer pinned at the edge of the hilltop of Mount Vale, a steep drop behind us and an angry mob before us. We were airborne; soaring through the dulcet skies; wafted upon wings wrought of Orlando’s weird magick. (Did it have to be a toad, Orlando? Really?)
The cons? Those same dreamy skies happened to be filled with a swarm of griffins, recently released from slavery and absolutely hopping mad.
‘Orlando!’ I screamed (in my head) as I ducked the advances of the nearest griffin, tumbling head-over-wings in my haste to escape its snapping beak. Boy, do those things look big when you’re that small. ‘This is not my idea of good luck!’ I only belatedly recalled that Orlando hadn’t said anything about good luck. The word he had used had been chaos.
To say the least.
I risked a glance around, first chance I got, and was not reassured. A wooden bucket full of soapy water drifted past me; had to be one of us, surely, but who? Jay, Em or Mir? At least they weren’t edible. On my other side, though, was an oversized fairy cake, unusually buoyant, and doubtlessly delicious; and beyond that, a small memorandum book, covers flapping like wings, its pages rapidly turning damp and soggy in the never-ending drizzle.
The bucket up-ended itself, pouring its load of soap and water out onto the ground far below. Then it darted in my direction, and scooped me up.
I fell into the bucket’s depths with a plop.
All right, so I couldn’t see a thing, and had to just trust that the bucket was the current shape of someone I knew and trusted. But! Woodish bucket walls are griffin-proof.
I permitted myself a small sigh of relief — and narrowly avoided a squashing as the fairy cake hurtled down upon me from above, followed by the memorandum book.
Looking at the former, I became painfully aware of gnawing hunger. When was the last time we had remembered to eat? And look at the thing! Fat, curvaceous, positively drowning in icing that smelled of peaches—
‘Ves?’ said the book, somehow, but it was addressing the cake, not the winged toad.
I mean, of course it was. If I’d had a choice, I would have gone for the cake, and never mind the consequences.
Griffins probably don’t even like cake, anyway.
I made some small attempt at a response, but that being as successful as my earlier efforts I gave up, and sat catching my breath while the book did its level best to engage the cake in conversation.
…Did I just say that?
Our adventures don’t get any more sensible, do they?
Some little time later, our courteous bucket-escort made a graceful dive, and carefully emptied us all out onto the ground again. There was grass under me, my exquisitely sensitive toes were quick to discern, but more than that I could not have said. The world was too big to admit of greater detail; everything beyond about three inches distant was a vague, green blur.
We sat there, the bucket, the book, the cake and I, and waited.
It was Jay who regained his usual form first. He’d been the bucket, not much to my surprise. I knew it was Jay, because the grass before my nose was abruptly obscured by a bluish haze I recognised after a moment as denim. Jay’s leg, encased in jeans.
‘Hi,’ I didn’t quite say.
Jay squinted down at us. ‘Ves?’ he said.
He was talking to the cake.
I waved a leg at him, and stuck out my tongue.
In another moment I was Ves-shaped-and-sized again, and having not had the sense to back up before my sudden transformation I found myself practically in Jay’s lap when it happened.
‘Ahem,’ I said, scooting backwards. ‘Welcome back, Mr. Bucket.’
‘At least it was practical,’ he said, frowning at me.
‘I had wings! It could have been worse. I could have been a flying fairy cake.’
Both of us looked at the cake, and then the book, wondering which was which.
I tell you what, if the cake had turned out to be Miranda I might have gutted her on the spot for the pure insult of it all.
Fortunately for her, the cake wriggled and wiggled and exploded into Emellana.
Two minutes later, the memorandum book (having sat impatiently shuffling its pages for some time) became Miranda, and there we were. She still had the pup in her arms, to my relief (what had Goodie been in this scenario, the bookmark…? I abandoned the question as it made my brain hurt).
‘Where’s Addie?’I said, seized by sudden panic.
Everyone looked wildly around, but no one came back with a response.
I remembered Wyr’s final words. How about we take that unicorn as payment? I had last seen her racing in Miranda’s direction, but what if Wyr had somehow intercepted her?
‘Hang on,’ said Jay, looking hard at Miranda (who lay prone, white with exhaustion and virtually insensible. I smothered a faint twinge of pity laced with guilt, for who had given her the task of shepherding all those griffins to freedom? Me, that’s who). Jay reached over and touched the shoulder of Miranda’s jumper. I detected the glint of metal.
It was a pin badge, the kind certain people wear on flat-caps. This one, though, was a tiny, dancing unicorn.
‘That’s not mine,’ said Miranda, frowning in puzzlement.
‘Let me have it,’ I said.
Mir carefully detached the badge, and dropped it into my hand. It lay in my palm, inert.
I put it on the ground, and took out my pipes.
‘Quickly, Ves,’ said Jay. ‘We need to be gone.’
I nodded. He didn’t have to tell me. We may have evaded Wyr and his lynch-mob but it wouldn’t take them long to figure out where we must be. Jay had taken us straight back to the henge-point through which we’d first arrived — courtesy of Wyr.
I played Adeline’s song on my little skysilver pipes — and suffered a severe shock. The music rang out, impossibly loud, amplified in both volume and magick beyond anything reasonable. Magick vibrated in my bones, shimmered behind my eyes, and gave me a blinding headache.
The badge at my feet didn’t so much melt back into Adeline’s warm, live shape as erupt into it. I was lucky I didn’t blow her to bits with my magick.
I stopped playing, and stuffed the pipes back into my bra, trying to look nonchalant.
No such luck. Jay, Emellana and Miranda were staring at me like I’d grown a second head.
Giddy gods, what if I had?
I checked. Just the one head.
All right, then.
‘So are we going?’ I said, and gestured towards the stone circle that stood quietly awaiting our getting our act together. I leaned carefully upon Addie, hoping it would look like affection and not like my knees were trembling so badly I knew I would fall over.
‘That tail you had is gone,’ said Jay, staring still at me. ‘And the flowers in your hair.’
‘And the hay,’ said Emellana.
She and I looked at each other. Emellana, ancient beyond reason and somehow unaffected by the magick of Vale.
And me, a spring chicken by her standards, but so overflowing with magick that Vale could no longer touch me.
‘It’s been an interesting day,’ I said.
Emellana’s smile was wry. ‘Let’s get these two out of here,’ she said.
Great thinking, for Jay’s eyes had turned gold (I hadn’t wanted to mention it), and Miranda, having slowly but steadily shrunk for the past ten minutes, looked likely to turn into a spriggan before my very eyes.
‘Are you okay to drive?’ I asked Jay.
He narrowed his weird, bright golden eyes at me, only now they were smoky-silver and swirling like clouds. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Because you’re… never mind. Let’s just go.’
A short, turbulent while later, we were back in Scarborough, trudging down the hill from the henge-complex. Night had fallen with a crash, and Jay’s eyes really stood out in the darkness, I can tell you. They ceased gleaming after a while, though, and Mir regained her usual size. We were fine.
I, though, was still fizzing with magick. Outside of Vale, I noticed it rather more.
It itched.
‘I wonder,’ said I, halfway down the hill, ‘if Orlando has more of those panic buttons.’
‘I can’t say that the toad shape quite suited you,’ said Jay.
‘I can ask him for an adjustment.’
Miranda said nothing. I looked sideways at her without seeming to, noting the wan look of her, and her stumbling walk. Emellana, unruffled still, was visibly flagging, and Jay had the grim expression and purposeful walk of a man too dog-tired to dare let it show. Even Addie walked with drooping nose, her hoofs clicking softly on the pavement, and the pup had fallen asleep in Miranda’s arms long ago.
I knew how they felt, because I had felt the same an hour or two ago.
But that was before.
Now I felt fine. Now, I felt great. I was overflowing with energy, buzzing with purpose, lively beyond all conceivable reason, and my hunger was gone. I, Cordelia Vesper, hadn’t eaten all day and I didn’t want a thing. Not even a pancake.
Something was deeply wrong.
‘You okay, Ves?’ said Jay after a while.
I curtailed the jauntiness of my walk, and slowed my steps to match his. ‘Fine!’ I carolled.
‘I can see that.’
I felt rather than saw him exchanging a look with Emellana.
‘We’ll need food and sleep,’ I said briskly — remembering to say we instead of you.
‘We need to go home,’ said Jay.
‘What? No! We aren’t finished here. We still haven’t found out what became of Torvaston and Co, and what about the scroll-case?’
‘Later,’ said Jay. ‘We need to go home.’
‘But we’re fine. A solid night’s sleep and a hot meal—’
‘Ves,’ Jay interrupted. ‘You look like you could run a marathon at a sprint, climb Mount Vale, swim the channel and still be ready for more. Forgive me, but that is not like you.’
‘I—’
‘Ves.’
‘Yes?’
Jay stopped walking, and took my arm, forcing me to stop too. ‘You’re not fine.’
I swallowed. ‘I’ll be all right.’
‘Once we get you home. We need to find out just what the lyre did, and… mend the effects.’
‘You know what the lyre did. I told you.’
‘Turned you into some kind of human griffin? That doesn’t even make sense.’
‘Think of me as a power source. Like a battery.’
Jay grimaced. ‘Because that doesn’t sound broken at all.’
‘I’m not broken.’
‘Can we just go home, and sort this out? We can come back, and finish the mission later.’
Jay had stopped us on a street corner. They didn’t have street lamps in this version of Britain; light simply emanated from nowhere in particular, softly illuminating the cobblestones and aged brick around us — and Jay’s worried face, looking down at me. ‘Miranda and Emellana need some proper attention, too,’ he said. ‘And it’s probably not safe for Addie to stay here for much longer, what with everyone after her majestic hide.’
‘All perfectly true,’ I conceded. ‘So then, why don’t you take Addie and the ladies home, and I’ll wait for you here?’
‘How in hell does that make sense? Are you just being difficult, Ves, because I swear I’ll—’
‘I’m not being difficult,’ I said, cutting him off mid-rant. ‘At least, not on purpose. The thing is, I…’ I paused, and waited while a stout lady hastened past, an umbrella contraption floating along over her head. ‘I don’t think I can go home,’ I said in a small voice.
‘You don’t think you can?’
I nodded, my throat dry. ‘It… I felt all right, in Vale. Not… overcharged. The farther we get from Vale, the more overloaded I feel. Jay… our Britain is a magickal backwater compared to here. Remember what the woman in the elixir shop said?’
‘I remember.’ His voice was very grim.
I tried to smile. ‘I’m calibrated for Vale right now, if not more. Until it wears off, I daren’t go home for fear I’ll… explode. Or something.’
‘Or something.’
I shrugged. ‘Explode; warp everything I touch into winged toads or talking cakes or the gods-know-what; spend the rest of my days as a plate of pancakes; I don’t even know what will happen, only I’m pretty sure I don’t get to waltz Home and have a cosy chat with Milady, followed by a nice cup of chocolate. I’m stuck, Jay.’
He looked long at me, and I couldn’t read whatever thoughts were passing behind his (thankfully normal again) eyes. At length, he nodded. ‘I’m staying with you, then. Emellana can—’
‘I stay, too,’ she said, firmly.
Jay nodded again. ‘Very well. Miranda?’
She blinked vaguely at us, and I wondered how much she was even comprehending in her sleep-addled state. ‘Just let me sleep for twelve or fourteen hours, and I’m ready for anything.’
Adeline bumped me from behind, her nose velvet-soft against my neck. I wasn’t sure whether this was intended as a gesture of support or an objection, but I decided to take it as the former.
‘So, we go on,’ I said. ‘We’ve lost the scroll-case, but we have Mauf’s copy of the map.’
‘To the mountains, then?’ said Jay.
I nodded. ‘To Hyndorin — and, it’s to be hoped, Torvaston.’
‘And maybe along the way, we’ll figure out how to fix you.’ Jay gave me the confident, bracing smile of a man with faint hopes.
Later, I sat wide awake in an armchair while three people and a puppy slept deeply around me. We’d had money enough for a single room, and an extra set of blankets. Jay lay wrapped in the latter at my feet; Emellana and Miranda had the twin beds. The place was scant, sparse and comfortless, but it hardly mattered. In the morning we’d be gone, far over the country to the Hyndorin Mountains, and whatever horrors or delights awaited us there.
For me, though, sleep would not come. I sat curled up and shivering, chockful of magick, watching with idle interest as the chair warped and curled around me, and waited for morning.
***
I wouldn’t want to be Ves right now, would you?
We’re going on with episode 8 next week, but first a couple of quick reminders. You can get both The Wonders of Vale and the next adventure, The Heart of Hyndorin, in ebook, if you want to go on with the story right away.
I also like to leave my Patreon link here in case you’re interested in supporting the writer (thank you!). Over there we do previews of upcoming episodes, advance copies of all my books (Modern Magick & more), and exclusive short stories.
Ok anyway, on we go!
