by Holly Race
He peters off. There it is. That particular type of jealousy that I thought only I really understood.
‘You can be mad with me,’ he says.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, I would have been.
‘No,’ I say. ‘You’ve done a lot of shit, unforgivable things over the last few years. But this isn’t one of them.’
I open the letter when I’m on my own.
Dearest Fern, it reads.
I am dead. I must be, for you to be reading this. To be truthful, I’m lucky to have survived this long.
My darling baby girl, I wanted so much to watch you grow up. But I have dangerous work to do. You will understand by now that sometimes we must put ourselves in harm’s way for the sake of finding the truth.
I don’t know if you know the extent of your abilities yet, but I want you to always, always be searching for ways to be strong. You may need to finish the work that I have begun. I have left a gift for you in Annwn. King Arthur’s sword – Excalibur. I found it and have hidden it for you to use, when the time is right. If you have found this letter, you will have found the first clue and be on the path already.
I love you, my Fern, my beloved. I had always thought that your father was the love of my life, but then you arrived. Be strong, be dangerous, be curious, my daughter. Go after what you believe in with determination and ruthlessness. If you do that, you will always have me with you.
Mummy
I tell Ollie about Excalibur, and we spend many a morning walk talking about where we might find clues, what the sword might do if we find it. Most of all, we ask ourselves whether this is the item that had made Ellen and Medraut so worried; whether if Mum hadn’t been so set on finding Excalibur she would have been allowed to live. That’s something that I worry at, like a mouth ulcer. Was this gift, meant for me, the reason for her death?
I don’t mention the rest of Mum’s message to Ollie. It would only hurt him. I fold it up and keep it in my tunic, close to me whenever I start to think about how Rafe and Ramesh and Phoebe’s deaths are my fault. It is another of my weapons, every bit as powerful as my scimitar or my diamond marbles. Once, a long time ago, I was the most beloved.
As school winds up for the year, I realise that Lottie has been spreading rumours about me. She doesn’t say anything in front of me, but I spot her casting significant glances at her friends when I’m around. I can’t be angry with her. I know it is her father making her do these things, and of course I feel that I deserve it, even though she does not know what I’ve done. Sometimes I think about the way Medraut was willing to hurt his own daughter just to entrap me, and I can’t help but pity her.
‘We’ve got a long battle ahead of us to bring him down,’ Lord Allenby said one night as he addressed the surviving knights. ‘He was caught off guard because he’s never faced anyone with a modicum of his power before. He’d become complacent. But he won’t make the same mistake again. We have to be ready for his next move, whatever it is.’
The thanes of Glastonbury report a sighting of Medraut near the Tor, not long after his treitres were defeated. So he found a new portal sooner than we’d hoped; illegal ones are even harder to come by than legal ones, but his kind of wealth and power can buy almost anything. At least he is keeping away from London for now. Even though we managed to stop the total slaughter that Medraut had planned for that night, the thousand deaths achieves something of the result he was looking for. In the wake of the national outpouring of grief, Sebastien Medraut is constantly there, a reassuring presence, promising answers and subtly laying the blame at the feet of those of us who don’t fit in.
The sense of dread that he has been seeding over the last year is having a catastrophic effect on people’s dreams. As he attacks their ability to imagine any world but the one he paints for them, their inspyre dwindles. Now, instead of walking through blue air wherever I go, inspyre lurks in frightened clumps, desperate for a dreamer who is still able to give it form. Annwn is crumbling. No angels now fly above Tintagel’s towers. No great oak trees dig their roots deep into the castle’s foundations.
Sometimes I spot Medraut picking up Lottie in the car park after school, playing the doting father. One afternoon he catches my eye as I head out, hoodie already on in the blazing heat. I pause, wondering what to do. Ramesh, Phoebe and the others flash through my mind, as they tend to do at least a dozen times every day. So too do the treitres I helped to kill. I cannot quite shake the expression of the man whose little red-haired sister I slaughtered before his eyes. I made his worst nightmare come true in his final moments. Medraut made me do it, I keep telling myself. I had no other choice.
I take my anger and my grief in my hands and change direction to pass him as he opens the driver’s door.
‘Hello, Mr Medraut.’ I smile, imagining how crazy Lottie must think I am as she sits in the passenger seat.
‘Good afternoon – Fern, was it?’ He does a good impression of looking as though he only vaguely recognises me.
‘That’s right. I’m surprised you remember, since you’re so busy reassuring people about these deaths.’
‘I’m surprised you’re not more frightened about it. Isn’t your age group the most at risk?’
‘Oh, I am frightened,’ I tell him, ‘but a bit of fear’s healthy, isn’t it? It warns you not to underestimate people. That was Helena Corday’s problem, I think. It’s a problem you have too, isn’t it?’
I don’t wait to hear his answer. I’ve got somewhere to be.
I meet Dad and Ollie in Victoria Park, where they’re waiting next to an ice-cream van. We wander past Mum’s old flat again, and then Clemmie joins us and we meander slowly through the park and back towards Clemmie’s house in Wanstead. She’s cooking us her famous Moroccan chicken tonight. I’m not sure what makes it famous. Maybe she puts extra olives in it.
As Dad and Clemmie fall behind, Ollie and I walk side by side in silence.
‘I can’t help but feel sorry for Ellen – Helena – whatever her name was,’ Ollie says after a while, with a glance behind us to make sure Dad can’t hear.
‘I don’t. Whatever happened back then, it doesn’t make it okay for her to kill all those people.’
Helena’s breakdown was second-rate news compared to all the deaths. She’s been removed from her position and put in care. The morrigans took everything. All her imagination, her dreams, her ambitions – her ability to come back to Annwn. They took her soul.
‘She wanted to be strong, like Mum,’ Ollie says, ‘but she didn’t understand that having doubts about yourself doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human. It’s a mistake a lot of people make. It doesn’t make what she did right. I’m just saying I can understand how she got that way.’
‘Yeah, but just because she felt like she didn’t belong doesn’t mean it’s okay for her to do what she did.’
We consider each other’s words.
‘Hang on, do you think you’re Ellen in this scenario?’ Ollie says.
‘Well, you’re not Ellen, are you?’ I say.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘No, I am!’
We stop, register that we’re both fighting to be compared to a serial killer, and walk on more companionably. So Ollie thought he was like Ellen too. That’s what’s inside his head: insecurity and inadequacy. All the things I’ve been feeling for years, he’s been feeling too. We just had very different ways of dealing with it.
Wanstead Flats is up ahead. I can sense three pairs of eyes watching me uneasily, gauging whether I’m going to have a meltdown at the prospect of passing the place where I almost died two years ago.
‘I think it’s time for an exorcism, don’t you?’ I say loudly, breaking from the road and striding towards the trees.
‘Fern? Where are you going?’ Dad calls as Ollie tramps after me.
I turn back to him and raise my arms triumphantly. ‘I’m a witch, don’tcha know, Dad! With powers beyond your wildest dreams! Let’s see what I can do with them.’
I run towards the trees, feeling the strength in my legs and the wind in my lungs. The nightmares held within the shadows are still there, but I run towards them anyway, because now I know I’m not facing them alone.
Acknowledgements
The other day I looked back over my computer files and realised that it’s taken nearly a decade for Fern’s story to reach this point. While that says rather a lot about my powers of procrastination, I know that the process would have taken a lot longer without the guidance and support of many kind, clever and generous people.
My first thanks must go to my agent, Anna Dixon at WME, who read the first few pages of an early draft and has been my cheerleader ever since. Thank you, Anna, for dealing with my neuroses with patience and humour, and for always having my back.
Thank you to Georgia Murray, my Head Thane, otherwise known as my editor at Hot Key Books. You have pushed me to explore Annwn and Fern’s journey more thoroughly than I ever thought possible, and the book is so much stronger for it. I knew from our first meeting when you arrived armed with about a million questions that I would be in good hands.
To the rest of the team at Hot Key and Bonnier – Jane Harris, Emma Matthewson and Jenny Jacoby in editorial; Lizz Skelly, Amy Llambias and Molly Holt in marketing and PR – thank you for taking a chance on a new, green writer. And thanks too to Melissa Hyder and Jane Burnard for their copy editing and proofreading brilliance.
To Simon Trewin for seeing the book over the finish line, and to Helen Trewin for being the first person to bring Fern and Annwn to life.
To Gavin Reece, illustrator extraordinaire, and Sophie McDonnell at Bonnier, for creating the cover of my dreams.
To Hilary Zaitz-Michael, Melissa Myers, Janine Kamouh and Laura Bonner at WME for taking the book overseas and answering my endless questions with endless grace.
To Joanna Briscoe, my Faber tutor, who gave me the courage to pursue this beyond the first chapter and to Molly Ker Hawn, who gave me my first invaluable feedback on the book and told me to join a writing group – the best advice I’ve received by far! To Robert Thorogood for taking my shy mention of book writing seriously and introducing me to Molly – thank you.
Speaking of writing groups – there are not enough nice things to be said about my Faber Academy gang. Amberley, Annie, Charlotte, Clio, Chris, David, Ilaria, Jo, Nancy, Sabina, Smita, Tommy, Trayner and Wendy: your unwavering support over these last few years has been so appreciated. See you at the Heights?
To the Savvy Writers’ Snug, thank you for the advice and thank you for the therapy.
To Helen Bartlett, thank you for your Agatha Christie eye and your history books!
To Shefali Malhoutra, the most brilliant boss a woman could wish for, and now a treasured friend.
I have never regretted being an only child, but there were times when I was a little older than Fern that I felt extremely lonely. Then I found a group of friends who have become my brothers and sisters, whose quiet (and at times not so quiet) encouragement I couldn’t do without. So thank you to all of you, lindy hoppers and techies, Cambridge-ites and Orielenses, TV scripties and theatre luvvies – you know who you are.
To the Brie Bunch – Chris, Simon and our ever-missed Ros – thank you for Paris and all the cheese.
To my parents, Louette and Bob: I didn’t realise it growing up, but you gave me gifts that so few children are granted – encouragement to be creative, and unconditional support. Knowing that you’d back me in giving up a ‘proper’ career to write means the world. For that and for so many other things, thank you forever.
And finally to my husband Alex, who is my better half by far. Thank you, darling, for the coffees, the shoulders, the eggs Benedicts, the DIY, the late-night feeds, the lifts, the hugs, the debates, the dancing, the laughter. Thank you for our daughter. Thank you for the adventures. Thank you for your love.
Holly Race
Holly Race worked as a development executive in the film and TV industry until she became a writer, although she still dabbles in script editing. She is a Faber Academy graduate, and Midnight’s Twins is her debut novel and the first in a trilogy. She used to live in Fern’s neck of the woods, but now resides in Cambridge with her husband and daughter.
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First published in Great Britain in 2020 by
HOT KEY BOOKS
80–81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE
www.hotkeybooks.com
Copyright © Holly Race, 2020
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The right of Holly Race to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 9781471409172
This eBook was produced using Atomik ePublisher
Hot Key Books is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
www.bonnierbooks.co.uk
