Maze Running and other Magical Missions

by Lari Don

  “You have fifteen minutes before the school bus goes!” her mum yelled after her.

  Helen had a quick shower, wincing as the water hit her bruises, then got dressed without bothering to tie her tie. She pinned her dark curly hair back and grabbed her schoolbag.

  Then, moving so fast she didn’t have time to worry about Yann, she ran out of the house and down the lane to the main road through Clovenshaws, where she skidded to a halt on the grass verge. Two minutes early.

  She had time to get her breath back before the bus drew up. Then she jumped on and sat beside her best human friend, Kirsty.

  Helen knotted her tie and pulled out her French homework. “Can we revise this vocabulary, Kirsty? I didn’t have time last night.”

  “Why not? I did it all before teatime.”

  “I was out on the hills, looking for new birds’ nests.”

  Helen had invented several hobbies recently, including birdwatching and horseriding, to explain why she wanted to be outside in the evenings, early mornings and most weekends. She’d also become expert at doing her homework on the bus, at lunchtime and at the tea table. She was still getting good marks, because she was concentrating on getting it right first time, so her parents didn’t have any excuse to keep her in.

  “Birds’ nests?” said Kirsty. “Really? That’s a bit pathetic. Who is he, Helen?”

  “Who is who?”

  “Who is it you’re seeing?”

  Helen bit her lip. “What are you talking about?”

  “Come on, Helen. I know this ponyriding thing is a lie too.”

  “What ponyriding thing?”

  “Last week, when your mum gave us both a lift and you had to run back for your violin, she asked me whether I was exercising Lavender’s ponies too. She said you were awfully keen, out pretty much every morning. And I covered for you, said you were always chatting about horses at school. But I know you and Lavender hardly ever talk and she’s allergic to animal hair, so what are you doing? Is it a boy? Is it a mystery? Is it your music? What is it?”

  Helen, who’d stopped breathing as she heard Kirsty destroy her carefully built castle of lies, grasped at that last suggestion. “Yes it is! It is my music. You know what my mum’s like. If it’s not got four legs and a fascinating wound, she thinks it’s a waste of time. She disapproves of me spending more time on the violin than my other homework, so she’s trying to cut me down to fifteen minutes practice a day. Just quarter of an hour! That’s ridiculous. I’ll never be a professional violinist at that rate. So I’m sneaking out to someone’s barn and practising every morning. Please don’t give me away. Please!”

  Like most of Helen’s lies, it wasn’t far from the truth. Her mum didn’t want Helen to focus just on her musical talent. She did insist on more maths and less music. And Helen did often take her fiddle with her when she met the fabled beasts, because Rona was a superb singer, and they sometimes composed and performed together.

  But it was still a lie. A lie to her best friend. After the lies to her mum and dad.

  The only people she didn’t lie to were the people she was lying to protect: Rona, Lavender, Catesby, Sapphire and Yann.

  Helen sighed. Yann. She hoped centaur healers could cure spears in the heart.

  But Kirsty heard the sigh differently. “Oh, Helen! It must be so hard. To have a dream and not be able to follow it!” She sighed too. “I’m lucky, my mum drives me to Edinburgh three times a week to play football. She’s so supportive. It must be hard when your mum is so strict…”

  Helen smiled. Her mum wasn’t strict. She had rules, like homework done, room tidy and limits on violin time. But so long as those rules were followed, she let Helen roam the countryside, and didn’t ask too many questions when Helen came back. Unless she was drenched in blood.

  “My mum’s alright. So are you!” She hugged Kirsty, and they raced through a list of French animals until the bus stopped.

  *

  Helen had been at the high school for months now and was used to the timetable, the maze of corridors and the huge sixth years. Today, when her mind kept flitting back to the blood on the leaves and the moment Yann’s heart stopped beating, she was grateful for the regular changes of subject.

  The last period was music, her favourite. But she kept glancing at the windows, hoping, for once, that she wouldn’t see a waving fairy on the windowsill. She didn’t want to get a message from her friends today. She didn’t want to hear that Yann had got worse, because the only way for him to get worse was for him to die.

  But by the time she’d clambered on the bus, listened to Kirsty’s chatter about what she’d burnt in Home Economics, then run home, she was desperate for news.

  She dropped her bags in the hall and stomped upstairs.

  She heard the door of the small animal surgery open. There was a muffled woof, then her mum’s voice. “Homework?”

  “It’s Friday,” Helen yelled. “I don’t have homework for Saturday or Sunday. Give me a break!”

  “Don’t be smart with me, Helen. What homework do you have for Monday?”

  Helen shouted back, as she reached her bedroom, “Not much. I have to plan out a story for English and do some maths.” Then she shut her door. “Also, I have to find out if my grumpiest friend is still alive and I have to keep my other friends safe…

  “Do you think I can do all that before Monday?” she asked the figures sitting on her bed: Rona on the duvet, Lavender on the pillow and Catesby on the headboard. “Do you think we can do all that?”

  None of them spoke.

  “Of course we can,” Helen answered herself. “That’s why even the Master of the Maze wants us to work for him.”

  Then she asked the question she’d been worrying about all day, but now didn’t want to ask. “How is he?”

  Rona stood up and put her arms round Helen. Helen felt the selkie’s tears, damp on her shoulder.

  Chapter 5

  Helen pushed Rona away and stared at her pale face. “How is he?”

  Rona shook her head, then slumped back down on the bed.

  Helen couldn’t ask again. She looked at Catesby, who squawked. Which, as usual, meant nothing to Helen.

  So she looked at Lavender.

  The fairy whispered, “He’s alive, Helen. But only just. The centaurs stopped the bleeding. But his horse heart hasn’t started beating again and he hasn’t woken up. His human heart is too small to keep him alive. It’s not strong enough to pump blood round a body the size of a horse. It’s weakening already. If his horse heart doesn’t restart, he only has a day or two left.”

  Helen said, “Right, let’s go and help.” She grabbed clean jeans and a t-shirt, and gestured at Catesby to fly out of the window while she got changed. “Can Sapphire take us there?”

  “No, Helen,” said Rona. “You can’t go to Cauldhame Moor.”

  “I know it’s not easy to get there, but if you help me, I’m sure…”

  “No, I don’t mean you can’t. I mean you mustn’t. You must not go there, because the centaurs are still angry. They blame you for Yann going on that rescue mission, which is unfair, because we all know the hard thing is stopping Yann going on an adventure. But they think he’d have asked other centaurs to help when that unicorn came crying that she’d lost her sister, if we hadn’t been willing to join him. They’re blaming all of us, but mostly you, because you’re human. So it’s dangerous for you to go to the moor, and you can’t get in anyway, can you?”

  Helen shook her head. She’d never been to Yann’s home. She’d stayed with Rona’s family in Sutherland. She’d had sleepovers at Lavender’s, though she always took her own tent because she couldn’t fit into the flower fairy’s bedroom. They’d all been to parties in Sapphire’s cave. She’d even had a picnic below Catesby’s nest. But she’d never visited Yann’s home. Partly because she knew she wouldn’t be welcome, but also because it was almost impossible for humans to get there.

  There weren’t walls or fences round Cauldhame M
oor. Just what Yann had called an “unwelcome field” or a “general desire to turn around and go another way”. Entire armies had changed their marching plans and at least two road-building schemes had taken a longer route, because human scouts or surveyors who tried to walk across the moor always found a better, easier, more attractive path. “It’s the opposite of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence,” Yann had joked. Helen could hear his voice in her memory.

  She shrugged. “So what if his family shout at me? I can handle that.”

  “Angry centaurs don’t just shout,” said Rona. “They attack.”

  “But surely they know I only want to help.”

  “They don’t want your help, Helen. They don’t want our help. They won’t even let the unicorns help. You know what centaurs are like.”

  “Stiff-necked, arrogant and rude,” Helen said. “Just like Yann. I can cope with him, so I can cope with his family. I just want to see if I can help or if my mum can help. Please show me how to get in.”

  Catesby was back on the window sill, Rona was on the bed, Lavender was fluttering in the air. They were all shaking their heads.

  Helen had lied to almost everyone she cared about today. She might as well lie to them all. She sighed. “I’ll take your advice and stay away from the moor, but if I write a note offering help to Yann’s mum, rather than his dad, will you all take it to her? Right now?”

  Her friends nodded, so Helen scribbled a note. She gave it to Catesby, and watched as he and Lavender swooped out of the window.

  Rona tried to smile at her. “Do you want me to stay here? We could work on our spring dance tunes.”

  Helen smiled back. “No. You’d better all go together, to keep each others’ courage up against the nasty scary centaurs. I’ll distract my mum while you go out the back.”

  She ran downstairs and opened the surgery door. Her mum was inside, with a sleeping spaniel on the black operating table, using tweezers to tug at something in its coat.

  “What’s wrong with the spaniel?” Helen asked.

  “Thorns,” her mum said. “She’s not the brightest dog. She forgot how to reverse and kept running deeper into the bushes. Her owner is coming back soon and there are dozens to take out. Do you want to help?”

  Helen washed her hands, then found the right size of tweezers.

  There were thorns in the dog’s nose. She gripped one and started to ease it out.

  “So, Mum… I did panic this morning, but if I had been right, and that branch had pierced the horse’s heart, what could I have done?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. If the branch had pierced the heart, it would bleed out internally and the horse would die.”

  “Is there any way a horse’s heart can ever be restarted?”

  “A vet could restart a heart with injections of atropine or adrenaline, or even with a few sharp blows with their knee. But that wouldn’t work with a heart which was still bleeding.”

  “So with an injured heart, could you operate to repair it or transplant a new one?”

  “No. Horses’ hearts are too deep inside their chest cavity; vets can’t open them up to operate. If a horse’s heart stops for more than a few minutes, then the horse is dead.”

  “But, just say it isn’t dead after a few minutes, what could you do?”

  Helen’s mum frowned. “That’s impossible.”

  “I’m just asking,” Helen said. “Just for … em … for the story I’m writing for English.” But Helen realised there was no point in arguing about whether a horse could survive with no heartbeat, unless she was going to tell her mum that this horse had two hearts and one of them was in a boy’s chest. She had to find out what else was possible.

  “So what treatments can you give for problems with horses’ hearts? Just so I can think of a realistic heart problem for my story.”

  Helen’s mum smiled. She enjoyed answering this sort of question. “Well, if the horse’s heart is beating irregularly, you can give a drug like quinidine, to get all four chambers beating in time again. But for a real kick-start for a horse with an uneven heartbeat, there are a few new techniques. You can use electric shock pads, or even put tiny electrodes in through the veins, to get the heart back to normal. That’s called transvenous electrical cardioversion, which I can spell for you if you want.

  “But you couldn’t do that in the field, Helen, nor in my large animal surgery. You’d need to be at a specialist equine centre, like the one up at the university. You’d need an anaesthetist on the team…”

  “Even if the horse is unconscious?” Helen asked.

  “Yes. You don’t want the patient feeling any pain. And you don’t want the patient waking up in the middle of an operation either. Not with all those hooves. I even had to knock this wee thing out to remove the thorns without being bitten. So you need an anaesthetist as well as a surgeon, and all the right hygiene and recovery conditions. If you want to save a horse with a serious heart problem, in real life or a story, then you have to take it to a hospital.

  “Anyway, that sort of heart problem doesn’t usually occur in ponies; it’s more likely to happen to racehorses. Horses with big hearts, very fit, under lots of stress.”

  Helen grinned. “A big heart, very fit and under stress. That sounds about right! Thanks, Mum.”

  “I’m just glad you’re writing about real animals, not those imaginary ones you used to believe in. Now, how many thorns have you removed?”

  “One. Sorry. I was thinking about the horse.”

  Her mum shook her head. “Go and write your story. I’ll deal with Rosie here.”

  “Rosie?” Helen laughed. “Rosie and the thorns!”

  Her mum smiled. “That could be the title for your story…”

  Helen ran back upstairs. Her room was empty, so she pulled on hiking boots, and picked up her first aid kit and a warm fleece. It was nearly the end of March, but the weather was as cold as it had been in February.

  She yelled to her mum, “I’m taking the bike out!”

  Her mum replied, “I’m picking Nicola up from her play-date at six, so be home for tea at six thirty.”

  Helen cycled towards the hill where Yann had once pointed out his herd’s lands from a distance, and told her that centuries ago a wise woman had gifted them a barrier to keep humans out. “You can’t see the unwelcome field,” he’d explained, “so people never know why they don’t cross our moor.”

  “How do you get in?” Helen had asked.

  “It doesn’t stop us. It only works on our enemies.”

  Helen had said that not all humans were their enemies, but he’d just laughed and changed the subject.

  When she got to the top of Bleakcairn Law, she saw the moor stretch out ahead of her. Already she could feel a desire to be somewhere else. She had lots of homework for Monday. Perhaps she should head home now…

  Helen shook her head. She wasn’t going home until she saw Yann. She leant the bike against a rock and headed downhill.

  The desire to go back got stronger.

  What if someone steals your bike? a familiar voice murmured in her head.

  “There’s no one else here,” she said loudly.

  What about practising that new violin melody?

  “I know it already.”

  What about popping round to Kirsty’s for a chat?

  “She’s playing football in East Kilbride this evening.”

  But it didn’t matter how many answers Helen had, her head kept filling up with more reasons to go the other way. It was hard to keep her feet moving towards the moor.

  It’s muddy. Those boots will get manky.

  “I can clean them.”

  It’s dangerous. You could fall and hurt yourself.

  “I have a first aid kit.”

  Soon she was at the bottom of the hill, right on the edge of the moor. But she couldn’t walk forward any more. It took all her determination not to turn and run back.

  It wasn’t fear. People would remember b
eing scared on the edge of a moor. You’d talk about running from something scary, but you wouldn’t mention changing your mind about going for a walk and heading home for a cup of tea instead. You probably wouldn’t even remember that.

  Helen’s desire to go home was so strong she was struggling simply to stand still. She was straining against thin air, pushing against her desire to leave and do something, anything, else.

  Then she heard Yann’s voice again, cheerful and confident in her memory. “It only works on our enemies.”

  She had to prove to the unwelcome field that she wasn’t the enemy. So Helen started to talk, to herself, to the field, to the moor.

  “I’ve healed a centaur’s leg. I’ve ridden on a centaur’s back.”

  She raised her right hand and pushed it forward. She felt something shove back, but then her right hand pushed further and slid through.

  “I’ve answered riddles with a centaur. I’ve cheered a centaur in a race.”

  She raised her left hand and it met less resistance.

  “I’ve made salad sandwiches for a centaur. I’ve cooled a centaur’s poisoned hand.”

  She tried to step straight onto the moor with her right foot, but that met too many hidden worries about homework, family and friends. So she twisted and tried to move through sideways.

  “A centaur kicked down my attacker in a cave. A centaur held a beam steady for me to escape our enemies.”

  She pushed again, with her shoulder. Go home! her head shouted. Wrong way, turn back! Go home now!

  But she kept talking calmly and pushing gently.

  “I’ve held a sword to stand with a centaur against a pack of wolves. I’ve fought beside him. I’m a centaur’s friend. He’s my friend.”

  She stepped onto the moor.

  Chapter 6

  Helen wondered how she was going to find the centaurs in such a wide moor.

  Then she heard the heavy beat of hooves, and realised the unwelcome field must be an alarm as well as a barrier. She didn’t have to search for the centaurs; they would hunt for her.

  She almost turned and ran back to her bike. But she tried to reassure herself. She wasn’t their enemy, she was just there to see Yann and to tell the centaurs what her mum had said about treatment.