He looked so upset and uncertain that Tabitha thought she could confide in him a little. He had shared so much about the fae with her, after all.
“When I was at home,” she said slowly, “I felt like the river could talk to me. It
Lysander looked sceptically at her.
“It was the same for my grandmother,” she continued firmly. “I don't know about her grandmother before her... I never asked. But ever since I was a child, when I listened, I could hear the river speak. I thought that might be why the sprites called me river witch. But it stopped about a year ago now... and it was heartbreaking when it did.”
Lysander stared at her.
“It was the same for me with those tree spirits,” he said slowly. “It was devastating that they went quiet. Actually quite painful.”
“Like suddenly not being able to see, or hear, or touch.”
“Exactly that.” Lysander began to look more like himself again. “I'm sorry that I stormed off... I was just so angry with the sprites for ruining that for me.”
“I don't think they understand. They only understand the river. I don't think they can understand that the trees might be just as important to someone else.”
Lysander shrugged, still looking mutinous.
“But I'm sorry,” Tabitha said hurriedly. “because I
After a pause, Lysander nodded.
“I've never experienced anything like that,” he said. “It was... unsettling.”
The two of them got back to their feet.
“It will be okay,” Tabitha said with a little smile. “The fae just take some getting used to.”
19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It was evening, and the cold was growing fiercer. The skies were clear, and although the stars were brilliant their piercing light against the black of the sky somehow made it feel all the colder. Lysander shivered. Surely it wasn't usually this cold so early in the year?
He looked over to where they had set up camp for the night. He had been horrified to discover that Tabitha had been sleeping under a thin canvas sheet which she said her grandmother had packed for her. It might have provided adequate cover in the summer, enough to shelter her from a little light rain, but as the months grew colder it would be more or less useless. She might as well save herself the weight of carrying it around for all the good it would do her. Lysander had shown her the tent he carried with him, a simple animal-skin sheet which could be rolled up and fasted to a pack, and then propped up using whatever tools were available at night. He had shown her how to dig branches into the soft ground so that they would support the skin, and how to fold the skin underneath to keep the damp out and the warmth in. And Lysander had been impressed with her. Tabitha was a good student and listened carefully to his instructions before trying things out for herself. He would have been delighted to train her for the Iron Court under different circumstances.
He looked over to where she was sat in the little opening to the tent, trying to persuade her faery friends to come inside to sleep. They were refusing, and Lysander could see that she was beginning to shake with cold for her trouble, her breath coming out in pale clouds. He scowled. No matter how hard he tried, he could not find it in himself to trust these strange creatures. Rationally, he knew, this was to be expected; all he had ever been told was that the fae were the enemy, and that if ever they were to return he should attack on sight. But he felt that it was more than this. He hadn't felt that way about the tree spirits. Some old instinct or memory made him feel incredibly uneasy in their presence, making him want to whisk Tabitha as far away from them as possible. Plus, he thought grimly, Tabitha had already revealed herself to be an incredibly poor judge of character by placing her trust in him. Her faith in the fae presumably had no better grounding.
Lysander sighed. Taking pity on her, he wandered over to see what he could do to help, and as he did, a thought struck him. Even if he couldn't help her with the fae, he could certainly help her to stay warm while she bickered with them. And it would be a good way of finding out exactly how much she knew already.
“Cold?” he asked Tabitha casually.
“A little,” she replied. She tried her best to give him a reassuring smile, but Lysander could still see that she was shivering.
“Let's see what we can do.”
Getting stiffly to his feet, he began rummaging around for some wood. The sprites scowled at him as he stamped around the clearing they were camped in.
“It's no good,” Tabitha called after him, “the wood's too damp.”
Lysander tilted his head to one side and looked keenly at her. He wanted to be sure that she wasn't trying to trick him. Making sure that he made enough noise to ensure that Tabitha kept her attention on him, Lysander rustled up a pile of sodden leaves and damp branches and arranged them roughly as if ready to light a fire.
“Look,” Tabitha said impatiently, “everything is damp. You're wasting your time.”
But Lysander sat down by the woodpile and muttered a word softly under his breath, and then the fire crackled to life. It spat angrily at the water it met as it took to the damp timber, but Lysander carried on speaking softly until some of the larger branches had taken. He glanced sideways at Tabitha, keen to see how she reacted. He was sure she must recognise this process from her mother even if she didn't know how to do it herself. But Tabitha's face was pale, and she had gone rigid.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly, and retreated quickly into the tent, leaving both Lysander and the sprites outside.
The sprites grinned nastily at him and slunk off down to the river, leaving Lysander alone and feeling quite baffled. He paced up and down outside the tent. What was the matter with her? Tabitha must have seen Madeleine using her magic at some point during her childhood. Had he alarmed her, by showing his hand? Perhaps now that she knew that he could use magic too, she was worried about how many of the words he knew and whether he posed a threat to her. Lysander ran an agitated hand through his hair. There was only one way to find out. Taking a deep breath, he crouched down before the entrance to the tent.
“Tabitha?”
There was no reply.
He gingerly opened the front of the tent and held up his hands in a peaceful gesture.
“I'm coming inside.”
He crept back into the tent, on his knees, and waited as his eyes slowly adjusted to the reduced light. It was very dark in here without any light from the fire or the stars. He stayed perfectly still, not wanting to alarm Tabitha, until he could make out her dim shape in the dark. She was sat huddled at the other side of the tent with a blanket over her lap, looking at Lysander with an expression that reminded him very much of a cornered animal. She was fiddling with something hanging around her neck – and Lysander felt his mind empty for a moment as he realised what it was. She had the hagstone.
Lysander felt his whole body turn hot and cold as he realised what was just within his grasp. But just above where the stone hung around her neck was the glint of Tabitha's eyes, which seemed to have caught the most of the light in the tent. They were hurt, and suspicious. Lysander felt a stab of guilt in his stomach. He couldn't just take it from her now; not like this, when she was clearly already upset. So Lysander forced himself to wrench his mind back from the stone for the moment. He would worry about that later.
“Are you okay?” he asked finally.
Tabitha looked at him through narrowed eyes.
“Depends,” she said in a quaking voice. “Are you a faery, after all?”
Lysander couldn't contain a short bark of laughter.
“What?”
But Tabitha wasn't laughing.
“The sprites said you used a glamour,” she said nervously. “And you could talk to those tree faeries. And then you just... you just lit a fire by speaking...”
Lysander paused. Was it really possible that Madeleine had never used any kind of magic in front of her daughter? It seemed so incredibly unlikely. And what about the way that Tabi
tha had talked to the river? He had assumed she had been trying to use some kind of magic then, if not the kind you learned in books.
“I'm sorry,” Lysander said softly. “I didn't mean to scare you.”
Tabitha was still tense, as though she was ready to flee at any moment, and Lysander suddenly realised how little space there was inside the tent. Tabitha was really scared, he realised.
“I'm not a faery,” he said, “and I still don't know what a glamour is.”
Tabitha looked disbelieving.
“I promise,” he said again. “Wouldn't your sprite friends have known if I was?”
“Maybe,” Tabitha said uncertainly. “But if you're not a faery, then how did you do that? How could you light the fire? The wood was wet.”
Lysander hesitated. This was going to take some explaining.
“One of the things you learn as a wanderer,” he began slowly, “is how to do things like that. You can learn it from books, which is why I thought you might know already – because you're carrying that great book around with you. It's unusual, for someone to be able to read.”
He watched Tabitha's hand go from the stone around her neck to the pack at her side where, presumably, ACompendium of Faery was.
“My Ma taught me to read,” she said.
“But she never did anything like I just did?”
Tabitha shook her head vehemently.
“Well,” Lysander exhaled, “in that case, I'm sorry I scared you. But I promise it's not anything to be scared of. You could do it too.”
“What do you mean?” Tabitha's eyes widened.
Lysander hesitated again. It still seemed so implausible to him that Madeleine would have forsaken her magic for all those years. But he didn't think that Tabitha was lying to him; she smelled scared to him, and he was rarely wrong about these things. It seemed she really didn't know.
“Do you know about witches, Tabitha?” he tried.
“Witches?” Tabitha was looking more and more confused.
“This is going to sound like nonsense,” Lysander said, “but just remember, you've seen the fae. You know that things aren't quite as you might have thought.”
“Okay.” Tabitha was clutching at her blanket, but her face had resumed the expression she had worn when Lysander had taught her how to put up the tent.
“Magic is old, like the fae,” Lysander said haltingly. Why hadn't he paid better attention to Madeleine's history lectures? He had exhausted much of what he knew when he had told Tabitha about the history of the fae. He tried to think of how Madeleine explained it and tried not to think of how peculiar it was to be echoing an absent mother's words to her daughter. “When the fae disappeared underground, not all of the magic went with it. There were still the witches, whose magic is passed down the female line. Their magic is tied up with the earth, the changing of the seasons. But people don't know very much about it, unless they are involved...”
He trailed off as a funny look flickered over Tabitha's face.
“What is it?”
“I believe you,” she whispered. “Before I left the village – where I'm from – I saw something... some women...”
Lysander stayed quiet and listened curiously.
“They were dancing in the woods, in the middle of the night,” she said, “in the middle of a circle of stones. There was a great bonfire in the middle, and piles of food. They were all wearing cloaks, and feathers, and masks... I didn't know what it was at the time, but...”
“Well, that sounds like witch magic,” Lysander said.
Truthfully, he didn't know what exactly Tabitha had seen. But since it certainly helped his cause right now if Tabitha believed that she had seen a group of witches, then he was willing to tell her it was so. A part of him still wondered whether Tabitha might possess some kind of witch magic herself, having seen how she was with the river. As far as he knew Madeleine was no witch, but then who knew what secrets she had kept? The hagstone; the child; she might very well be a witch for all Lysander knew. And he didn't know very much about witch magic – no one did, really. It had continued to elude the Iron Court, no matter how they strove to track down any individual who they could confirm was a witch.
While he had Tabitha hooked, Lysander hastened to carry on with his explanation.
“Learned magic – what I can do – is something different. Anyone can use learned magic, if they learn the words. It's stayed alive mainly through the wandering folk, who share the words they know. We teach each other.”
“How?” Tabitha asked slowly.
“You just need to learn the words.”
“And you could teach me?” Tabitha's face was serious now.
“I could,” Lysander said, and then a wave of guilt washed over him as he realised what he was saying. Was he really offering to teach her skills that might prevent him from taking the hagstone? Whatever narrow line he was treading at the moment, teaching Tabitha magic seemed very firmly on the wrong side of it.
“Would you?” Tabitha asked, and her eyes were wide again. But she wasn't scared this time; however much Lysander had upset her before, now he could only detect excitement and determination in her.
“Okay,” Lysander found himself agreeing. “Tomorrow.”
“Okay!”
“Get some sleep for now.”
Suddenly very weary himself, Lysander slipped back out of the tent and sank down by the fire. What was he doing? He couldn't teach Tabitha magic – what on earth had possessed him to say that he would? Again, he wondered whether there might be some sort of witch magic about Tabitha that would explain why he felt so compelled to help her. He was sure she wasn't trying to use some kind of magic on him, but perhaps witch magic could be used unknowingly? Lysander wished he knew more about it. No one had had this effect on him before. He considered briefly whether he might be attracted to her but soon dismissed the thought. No, he didn't think that was it.
So what was it?
And now he knew without question that Tabitha did indeed possess the hagstone...
Lysander sat by the fire for a long time, occasionally whispering to it when the embers dimmed so that the flames danced higher, and the camp was kept warm for the night.
20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Although he didn't know it, Lysander wasn't the only one who remained awake for a long time that night. Inside the tent, Tabitha was wide-eyed with excitement.
This was what she had read about in her books, she thought joyfully. This was the kind of adventure that she had expected from her journey. Ancient spellbooks, magical words, a conspiracy of witches... the very thought of these things thrilled her. Tabitha tried very hard to put everything out of mind until morning, but in the end she lay awake for hours, questions that she was dying to ask Lysander dancing tantalisingly before her. Her last thought before her tired body finally won the battle in favour of sleep was that maybe there would even be a word she could learn that would let her talk to the river again.
And then Tabitha knew nothing else until morning, when she was awoken far earlier than she would have preferred to have been given her disturbed start to the night. The sprites had snuck back into her tent, and Ani was pinching the skin on her arm.
“Hey!”
Tabitha jerked upright, snatching her arm away from the sprites. Ani's pinching had left a smattering of tiny bruises.
“What was that for?” Tabitha exclaimed again, wounded.
“Quiet,” Bellat hissed, looking nervously around.
Tabitha lowered her voice. “What is it?”
“We need to talk to you, sister,” Corida said sullenly.
The three of them were solemn, more so than Tabitha had seen before. She yawned and wiped the sleep from her eyes.
“It's very early to talk,” she said. “The sun isn't even up yet.”
“It's important,” Ani keened, “and we must talk to you before the golden one awakens.”
“Lysander?”
“Yes, yes,” Ani
nodded, stroking Tabitha's arm where she had left the bruises.
“Do we have to go through this again?” Tabitha asked, exasperated. “I trust him. I trust you. Can't you all just get along?”
“Well, we don't trust him,” Bellat scowled. “Why does he carry those black knives? Why was he so quick to attack us? Why is he so eager to help you?”
“He feels bad about attacking us,” Tabitha said for what felt like the hundredth time, “so he wants to make up for it. He says that's just how the wandering folk are.”
“You only believe that because of his glamour, sister,” Corida snapped. “The golden one is persuasive, yes – but any faery can be persuasive. Listen to the river, sister, and it will tell you – he means you harm.”
Tabitha went quiet, reluctant to think about how the river had gone silent for her.
“If he's so eager to harm me,” she said, “then why has he offered to teach me some magic?”
The sprites gave a collective hiss.
“What does he know of the old ways?” Corida said, his eyes narrowed and disdainful. “Humans might think they can use magic, but they don't understand it.”
“Better that you don't involve yourself in things you don't understand either, sister,” Ani agreed. “Any magic he can teach you isn't worth half so much as what you could learn from the river.”
“Yes, yes,” Bellat was nodding emphatically. “Let the river teach you instead.”
“Why can't I learn both?” Tabitha said, but this just made the sprites' faces contort with rage.
“You cannot learn both,” Corida said. “Arrogant humans, thinking they can have everything. You will have to choose, sister. Choose the old ways.”
“Look, Lysander can't be both an arrogant human who doesn't understand these old ways you're talking about, and be wearing a faery glamour, can he?”
Tabitha tried to reason with them, but it just made them more furious.
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