by Vance Huxley
Abel couldn’t skip school to attend court as the case dragged on, though it wouldn’t be much longer, according to Kelis. After that the divorce proceedings would be tied up within weeks. She sounded a lot more worried about moving house than if her dad ended up convicted. According to Kelis, if the slimeball got off he’d better move a long way away and never walk down dark alleys. Ferryl offered to come along to watch her back and hold her cloak, or help bury the body.
While Kelis was still giving evidence, the meeting with Mz Green finally bore fruit, though the news didn’t come through Abel’s post-box. A fortnight after Abel signed the papers, Frederick called to tell him they’d just had an anonymous charitable donation of three thousand pounds. The bank insisted a stranger walked in and paid it into the right account. There wasn’t a mistake, he’d had the account name and number dead right. Abel let Frederick wind down, smiling happily as the older man tried to figure out who would do a thing like that. Hopefully his blood pressure could survive the rest as it arrived.
Abel passed the news on, hoping it helped cheer Kelis up as the lawyers fought it out and tried to rip verbal strips off her mum. A couple of smaller donations kept the good news coming, but it wasn’t enough to stop Kelis brooding. Abel, Rob, Ferryl and Jenny thought of one way to snap her out of it, for one night at least, a dance. Luckily, a very good excuse wasn’t hard to find.
∼∼
As Kelis’s dad tried to weasel out of the consequences of his drinking and violence, February crept towards Valentine’s Day. Kelis, wrapped up in the court case, never realised her friends were making plans to take her to her very first proper Valentine’s Lurve Dance, in Stourton. The dance would also be a first for Abel, Rob, Jenny and Ferryl. Last year, Valentine’s had been a damp squib for Abel, because he’d just broken the magic link with Kelis and didn’t want a kiss, let alone a girlfriend. This year even Jenny’s dad agreed she could go into Stourton, though he’d be providing her taxi both ways. To Abel’s surprise, his mum offered to ferry the four from Brinsford there and back in the BMW. According to her it was because she’d never get to drive one again, but Abel wondered if it might be thanks for the earrings.
Ferryl broke the news four days before the dance, and it took Kelis’s mind off the court case but for the wrong reasons. When the pair of them came into Castle House, Abel could hear Kelis arguing. “I can’t. I won’t. Not again. I didn’t realise the first time, but now I know.”
Abel stood up and moved to the library doorway so he could see them come in from the entrance. “Know what?”
To his surprise Kelis looked at him, opened her mouth to answer, then blushed bright red! Kelis hadn’t blushed for ages, not since she’d first started going out with Laurence. Ferryl turned with a big smile. “Kelis doesn’t want to wear that leather catsuit and the red cloak, even though she looked fantastic dressed like that. Tell her, Abel, it suited her.”
From the look she gave him, that wasn’t what Kelis wanted to hear. “It suited a tall, slim someone who wanted to stun at forty paces. Maybe Kelis doesn’t want that?” He frowned a little, because that made no sense. “So why did you wear it, Kelis?”
“Because somebody,” the glare at Ferryl told Abel who, “produced it at the last minute and told me it would be more practical for fighting. Then kept me in front of the vanity mirror helping to fix my hair and makeup until Laurence arrived. I never actually saw the full effect until I came home. I went to the wardrobe for a dressing gown before I got ready for bed, and got a good look in the mirror.” Kelis turned her full glare on Ferryl. “Why did you do that? I looked like, like, like….”
“A new character, according to quite a lot of the lads. They’re waiting for K’ress Bloodclaw to appear in the game. That’s the most popular of the names we can use in a game for children.” Jenny might have a laugh in her voice, but Kelis looked utterly horrified. “Emst seemed impressed to the point of speechless.”
“What’s the problem? You seemed happy enough stood in the doorway swirling that cloak. You did a lot more swirling once we got there, and chased all over the place after the fursomnium in just the leather. I’m surprised a couple of lads didn’t cut off their legs by mistake when you came bounding past.” Rob nodded towards Ferryl. “I reckon Ferryl was just as startling in her own way, and certainly had a bigger effect on Abel.” He chuckled, coming through the door from the kitchen and offering Kelis a can of cola. “Though I’m well known for liking fur, not leather. Here, this is chilled and you need to cool down.”
“You don’t understand!” Kelis turned and now she looked even more horrified, if possible. “People were looking? When we were supposed to be fighting? Why didn’t somebody say?”
“I can’t believe you didn’t notice the looks from the lads? At least four of the girls want to know where you got it, and how you squeezed into it, but couldn’t really ask while fighting.” Jenny kept trying to kill her giggles, and almost succeeding. “If you were so worried, why didn’t you put the cloak back on afterwards?”
“Because Emst wanted to wear it, as a costume. Oh, flobberclomps.” Looking shocked rather than horrified didn’t stop Kelis’s blush. “Then he wouldn’t give me it back until we got home. He didn’t do that on purpose, did he? So that…?”
“So you didn’t cover up all that tight leather and those high boots? Probably. Haven’t you noticed how many boys have asked what you’re doing at Valentine’s? They’ll be disappointed if you go back to that K’liss Windcatcher outfit.” Ferryl smiled happily, completely oblivious to the sheer horror on Kelis’s face. “I’m looking forward to the dance. This version of Saint Valentine’s Day is a new thing entirely and not even a little bit religious.”
“I liked the Windcatcher outfit. It suited the Kelis I know much better than the leather, though which one she wears is up to Kelis.” Inspiration suddenly struck Abel. “This isn’t a Tavern dance so why go in a costume at all? How about one of the frocks from upstairs? Some of those Victorian ones must be all flouncy and romantic.”
“Says a boy, a creature well known for having no idea what is or isn’t romantic.” Jenny stopped and frowned, then turned to Kelis. “Though since I’m wearing that blue dress again, and that definitely isn’t a game costume, you might have a point. Come on Kelis, we’ll go and look while Ferryl explains romantic to dumbo here.” She pulled a grateful-looking Kelis towards the stairs.
“How do I do that?” Ferryl looked from Rob to Abel, completely baffled. “The whole idea is I’m supposed to be learning, and I thought the leather was a great success.”
Rob held up both hands as he backed away, finally getting words through his laughter. “You’re Abel’s girl, not mine, and apparently one of us is dumbo, so luck with explaining anything.” He shut the door into the sitting room, leaving Abel and Ferryl.
“Maybe we can go into the library? Then I can try to explain the difference between Kelis in leather and Kelis in her robes. Or in a Victorian frock.” Abel rolled his eyes. “If I can. You must have some idea?”
“I lived for hundreds of years in places where people didn’t wear any clothes at all, or a few beads and scraps, and nobody cared.” Ferryl had lost her smile, starting to look worried. “Did I do the wrong thing? I knew Kelis wouldn’t wear that leather if she saw what she looked like, but it really suits her. She definitely attracted the boys, which I thought was the idea.” With a sigh she put her arms round Abel and rested her head on his shoulder. “This is a new sensation. Maybe another emotion. Am I feeling guilty?” Abel had no idea, and still wasn’t sure after they’d sat in the library for half an hour discussing romantic. Ferryl seemed happy with whatever she’d come up with, and returned to inspecting the aquarium.
This time Abel joined her, bringing another chair over. “If you ever work out what it is in there, what will you do?”
“It’s a wit, or something that acts very much like one. To have all those instructions and control all those glyphs it has to be inscribed the same way.
I want whatever is on there, so somehow I have to get it out. If you’ll let me.” She hesitated, definitely uncertain. “In the past I would have bound a shade to carry out each individual task, copied the glyphs and taken the wit out. Those glyphs can’t be anything I’ve seen before, because I never had anything to do with fish. I really want to see how they work.”
Abel avoided the bit about binding anything, because he wasn’t agreeing to that. “You can’t resist them, can you? Glyphs I mean. I saw how you looked at the one in Creepio’s hospital van.” He chuckled as Zephyr flowed out of his tattoo to join them watching the fish. “So did Zephyr, but she couldn’t memorise it all.”
“I did.” Ferryl smirked, forgetting about the aquarium for now. “I copied it straight onto a wit, or rather I put half onto each of two wits. Unfortunately I daren’t test it because I am in a human, so if I made a mistake I’d kill myself.” She put a hand on Abel’s arm as she saw the alarm on his face. “Just the host, but I’m enjoying this one so it wouldn’t be fair.”
“So you’ll just keep it tucked away. Why bother?” That sounded like a really tempting mistake waiting to happen, Pandora’s Box style.
Ferryl sighed, her eyes looking over Abel’s shoulder and her mind far away in the past. “I can’t resist a new glyph. My life has depended on knowing the right one, time after time, and now I’ve lost most of them. I feel helpless, because I can remember being able to do much more but haven’t any idea how. Worse, if anything happens to my friends, and especially you, I will always believe I could have stopped it if I’d had the right glyph.” She turned back to the aquarium, her hand almost stroking the glass. “Having a wit in here, probably full of glyphs and almost in reach, is really frustrating. I can feed magic into the glyphs that will be scribed into the bottom of the aquarium to keep it working, then take the wit, but without shades to control them the glyphs will just keep working.”
“Surely that’s the idea.” Abel tried to think why working glyphs were a problem.
“The salination one will keep adding salt, the feeding ones will keep producing food, the heat glyph will keep pushing out heat. Within hours everything in there will start to die. The shades are needed to moderate what the glyphs do.” Ferryl suddenly stood up and turned away from the glass. “Talking about it is really annoying and frustrating. How about some dance practice?” Even as he practiced dancing, Abel tried to work out a way round Ferryl’s problem with the aquarium before it became too much of an obsession. After stepping on Ferryl’s toes twice, or the wind glyphs protecting them, he gave up on that and concentrated on his feet.
Eventually Kelis and Jenny came down carrying three dresses that might be wearable after some work. Abel wasn’t sure if Ferryl offered to help as an olive branch, but Kelis took it as one. Kelis cheered up even more when the sorceress pointed out that she’d been in the minds of people who made their own clothes. Maybe her happier mood came from watching Abel’s dancing practice, or the fiasco as they all joined in. Rob danced with all three girls, but as usual Abel and Kelis kept strictly apart. This time he didn’t feel quite so bad about it, maybe because Kelis didn’t make any comments about stupid sorcerers.
In a way Abel, and Rob when he mentioned it, thought the dress and leather fiasco had to have been a good thing. Kelis had been getting more and more pre-occupied with the court case and what would happen after the divorce. The bank would take away her home, and she didn’t want to leave Brinsford. The impending dance might not have been enough, but with the new dress seemed to have temporarily driven all that into the background, exactly as they’d intended.
∼∼
On the night before the dance Abel realised why Rob, Jenny, and Ferryl had been whispering, then obviously changing the subject or stopping as he came near. Kelis had been the same lately, but since they all kept smiling at him for no apparent reason he assumed it was to do with the finance for the game. Now Kelis, Rob, Jenny and Ferryl triumphantly produced a frock coat and waistcoat, resized for him, and a cloak with a new, electric blue lining. Abel had mentioned liking the getup but being too small for any of Celtchar’s clothes. Before Abel could speak, Kelis told him that if Abel could give people whatever he liked, those same people could do the same so he should shut up and smile. Abel shut up and smiled, not difficult because he really did like the outfit.
Kelis, Rob and Jenny also wore Victorian clothing for the dance, though Kelis’s dress had been altered to brighten it up. Rob found a top hat that fitted and snaffled a cane with a silver top, but Abel refused because he’d have all on controlling his feet while dancing. Ferryl’s outfit, when she came out to join Kelis, wasn’t Victorian. She’d gone for something slimmer, right down to her ankles but slit to her knees, made of riotously coloured silky cloth that looked just a bit oriental to Abel. According to her, nobody who’d actually had to wear the old styles every day would ever turn down modern fabrics.
On the way to town, Abel let the others answer his mum’s questions about the clothes. They’d been rented, allegedly, compliments of Fay Shayde’s allowance, her thank you for everyone welcoming her into their homes. Abel started to get tense about all the strangers but he soon found out he’d know more people than expected. Kathy stood outside waiting for Rob, and Kelis had a date. Tobias’s comments about fresh air and fresh veg attracting pretty girls had been aimed at one in particular. Kelis must have finally realised, because as she got out of the car she accepted his arm. When Jenny arrived in her blue gown she’d also arranged for a partner, Laurence. He wore a jacket with gold braid across the front he swore had once been military, with a frilled shirt. Abel relaxed because compared to the others, he wouldn’t look too conspicuous.
By the end of the evening Kelis seemed to have shed all her worries about where she’d live and Abel no longer cared what he looked like. No magic, no sorcerers, no leeches, no Creepio, no charity and no Tavern business; he wasn’t even in a Tavern costume. Ferryl insisted on him trying every dance including the Conga, and nobody made fun of either his clothes or dancing. As far as Abel was concerned, the evening turned out to be an entirely different sort of magical.
∼∼
The lack of magical problems didn’t mean there were no other distractions. Plenty of things were happening in the non-magical part of their world, enough to keep all five of them occupied. A few days later, as they walked past on the way home from school, Kelis didn’t notice the ‘SOLD’ sign on the village shop. Abel did, and the ‘Flat for Rent’ sign in an upstairs window, but he kept quiet. He’d rather someone else brought it up just in case Kelis was suspicious.
When he arrived home, Abel thought he knew why he had a text asking him contact Woods and Green. Instead, a bland voice asked him if he wanted to sell six trees. They had been dug up from one of his properties to facilitate the transport of magical entities, as agreed, and would have been replanted. Now, someone local was in the market for trees and the sale would help defray the expenses. Abel agreed. He’d never even thought about where the trees to shift the dryad seedlings would come from, or how big they had to be.
Jenny didn’t come over that Saturday, unusual because she liked to top up her diamond at weekends. On Sunday the others found out why, once Jenny recovered from her giggling fit. She’d had to refill both her gold belts and her diamond, a huge fix of tree magic because they were all empty. Jenny had spent Saturday with her dad, and put a protective hex on almost every vehicle and machine in her dad’s construction business, and all his workmen’s huts and sheds. Mr. Forester had been really chuffed she’d spent the day with him while he checked on progress at all his contracts, and hadn’t minded her wandering around while he dealt with his site workers.
That led to a bit of a discussion, because everything but the buildings should be Pendragon’s business. Eventually the Taverneers decided that since Mr Forester didn’t know about magic, it wasn’t stealing business, and most of the equipment had been outside town when Jenny protected it. Since Jenny wasn’t fit to r
ide her moped straight after such a big tree-magic fix, Kelis and Rob offered to help her perfect her combined shield and veil. Ferryl asked Abel to keep her company while she checked the barrier around Castle House gardens. She talked about this and that, but even Abel could see she had something on her mind.
After a long period of silence, Abel pulled on her hand to turn her towards him. “Come on, give. You don’t usually have any trouble telling me what I’ve done wrong.”
Ferryl looked startled, then embarrassed. “I don’t tell you off very often.” She put her arms round him and rested her head on his shoulder. “This is asking, and it might mean people starting to wonder about me, exactly who or what I am. It could make trouble for you if they do.” She hugged a little tighter. “It’s just a bit selfish as well.”
Abel waited, but the silence stretched on until he’d had enough. “Am I supposed to guess?”
At least the little chuckle sounded happier than she had a few minutes ago. “No, silly. I want my name, all of it. Ferryl Shayde.”
“You’ve got it. Woods and Green put your name on all those bits of paper they created to give your body an identity.” Ferryl obviously didn’t agree so Abel thought harder. “Ah, right, it’s Fay Shayde on your passport but everyone calls you Ferryl unless…. Oh. Unless Zephyr is there. Then they call her Ferryl because they think she is the sorceress from the pit.”
“I answer to Ferryl but my name is really Zephyr, a puff of wind. Or Ffod, the Flying Fist of Doom, if it’s time to bop. I have to try and remember that I am Ferryl, but only sometimes.”
Zephyr must have connected to Ferryl as well, because she chuckled again. “Exactly. You told everyone the sorceress in your arm is called Ferryl Shayde. Then when I needed a name for Jane Doe, and used Fay Shayde, you told them I had inspired the name for the game character. The smart ones must have already figured whoever lives in your arm adopted the name from the game and isn’t really called Ferryl Shayde. Can you or Zephyr confess that’s true, and ask them to call her a different name because now the real Ferryl Shayde is here?” Her grip suddenly tightened and she tensed. “Not Braeth Huntian, or one of my old names, or the church will look closer and might take Zephyr.”
