Pale Peak Burning

by Paula Harrison

  Ten years before

  The little girl floated slowly downstream in the darkness, her hair rippling like water weed. She stared wide-eyed at the river surface swaying above her head. A silver minnow darted up to her. She tried to touch it but it flicked its tail and swam away. She giggled. When the fish didn’t return a frown creased her forehead and she looked round for her mummy.

  Bright threads of lightning zigzagged through the night sky and thunder boomed. The girl watched the shape of the lightning for a while, breathing in the deep earthy scent of the river. The water rocked her from side to side, coaxing her to close her eyes. At last, she gave in and slept.

  She woke up in her father’s arms. They were soaring through the dark sky. Water streamed from her dress and the cold air made her shiver.

  “Daddy, I want to go home.” She started to cry.

  “Shh, Laney.” Her dad hugged her tight. “We’ll stop soon. Don’t worry.” He turned once to look behind. Then he beat his wings harder, his eyes fixed on the horizon.

  Patterns of lights drifted below them. Towns and villages lay undisturbed. Flat fields turned to rolling hills and then to sharp edges of rock that rose up from the ground like giants.

  Laney’s dad hovered for a moment, his forehead creasing. Then he swooped down over a cluster of houses and landed in front of a cottage with a red front door and creeper climbing over its weather-beaten stones. He set Laney down and knocked on the door.

  Laney stared up at the round door knocker. “Daddy?”

  The door opened. A man with a dark-brown beard and serious eyes stood in front of them. The sound of voices and laughter came from inside and the crackle of a fire. Laney looked in eagerly.

  Laney’s dad and the bearded man stared at each other for a long moment.

  “She’s gone, Connor,” her dad croaked. “They attacked us last night. There was no warning and now she’s gone.”

  “I knew this would happen. I told her…” The bearded man’s fingers clenched around the door frame. “How did they find you?”

  “I don’t know. There must be spies everywhere.” Her dad took a leather pouch from his pocket. His hand trembled as he gave it to the other man. “I saved her dust. She should rest here where she came from. Please – you have to do this, Connor. I daren’t stay here and do it myself.”

  The bearded man nodded. He held the pouch awkwardly as if he didn’t want to touch it.

  A chill took hold of Laney’s heart. “Daddy, what’s that?” She tugged his arm. “I want Mummy.”

  The two men glanced down at her for a moment but didn’t answer. “Where will you go?” said Connor.

  “Better if I don’t tell you,” Laney’s dad replied. “Then if they come to you, you’ll have no secrets to hide.”

  “Good luck, Robert.” The bearded man glanced at Laney again, briefly caressing her hair with his rough hand before he closed the door.

  Laney’s dad picked her up again. He looked at her steadily and his mouth twisted as if it hurt him to smile. “Mummy’s gone, Laney, and we’re going to find a new place to live, just you and me. You don’t need to worry – I’ll always look after you.”

  Then he spread his wings again and sped into the sky. The first rays of dawn lit up the marching bank of storm clouds behind them.

  “Dad?” Laney leaned over the hospital bed, staring at her dad’s face. His eyes were shut and his forehead looked crumpled. For three and a half months she’d been watching, waiting, hoping. But he never moved. His eyes never even flickered.

  Laney’s stepmum, Kim, gave a sigh. “I’ll have to shave his chin again. He’s never liked having a beard but the nurses only get round to it once a week.”

  Laney felt frustration bubbling inside her. It rose up, flooding her mind. Her hands grew hotter and she hid them in her lap. “What’s the point in doing that? We don’t even know if he can hear us. I read him a whole book before Christmas and he did nothing.”

  Kim laid a hand on her arm. “The doctors said there’s a chance he might be able to hear, so we have to keep trying. That’s all we can do right now.”

  Laney looked away, her palms filled with burning heat. She knew her stepmum was trying to be nice but that made her feel worse. She couldn’t stand this room – the electric monitor beeping at the end of the bed and the drip going into her dad’s hand. All this was her fault. Her dad had been trying to protect her from the Shadow. He’d been trying to save her. It wasn’t fair that he should be lying here unconscious just because of her.

  She tried to breathe slowly. She couldn’t let Kim see what was happening to her. Secretly, she was afraid that if she let out the fire inside her then she’d lose control of it completely.

  For a second, she wished she could close her eyes, change into her faerie form and fly away. She jumped up and hurried to the door. “I’m just going to the bathroom. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Once Laney was inside the hospital toilets, she went to the basin and let the cold water run down her wrists and over her fingers. If only she’d told her dad what she knew about the Shadow… If only she’d got back home faster that horrible day. Everything had changed so fast and now she felt like she’d lost her dad forever.

  Last summer, on the night of a red full moon, Laney’s magic had Awakened. She’d discovered that she belonged to a community of faeries living secretly in her village. They looked exactly like humans but they could also change into faerie form and fly. In ancient times they were known as the Fair Eyes because of the bright golden circles in their eyes.

  Each faerie was part of a different tribe – Thorn, Mist, Greytail, Kestrel or Blaze – and each one had a very different kind of magic. The Thorns had power over plants and trees. The Mists, the tribe Laney’s dad belonged to, could bend water to their will. The Greytails had a great affinity with animals and could understand their language. The Kestrels worked magic over the air – whipping up high winds and tornadoes. Finally, the Blaze tribe had power over fire.

  Many Mists, Thorns and Greytails lived in the village of Skellmore. Each faerie’s power was passed down from their parents and Laney had believed she was a Mist like her dad but she had struggled to use her magic to control water. At last she’d discovered her dad’s secret. Against all the rules he’d married someone from a different tribe. Laney’s mother, who had died when she was little, had been a Blaze faerie and Laney had fire magic too.

  It had been a shock, but a great relief. All this time, she’d known there was something wrong with her Mist power. Many of the Skellmore faeries had watched her with suspicion for months. Awakening under a red moon – a wolf moon – was a bad sign, they had said. There was a prophecy about someone born under such a moon which spoke of disaster and destruction.

  Laney had only told her closest friends, Claudia and Fletcher, that her mum had been a Blaze. Mixed-tribe marriages were forbidden in the faerie world and there were no other Blaze faeries in the village to help her learn fire magic. It seemed safer to keep it secret for now.

  The cold water began to soothe the heat in Laney’s hands. Even the burn mark on her middle finger – the mark she had received the night she’d Awakened – started to feel cooler. Steam rose gently and clouded the mirror. Laney turned off the tap and wiped the glass with her sleeve, staring at her reflection and the gold rings around her pupils.

  Her stepmum, Kim, was human and knew nothing about the faerie world. She couldn’t even see the rings in Laney’s eyes. All faeries had them but they could only be seen by other faeries. To Kim, Laney was the normal blue-eyed girl she’d always been. Yet Laney knew she had powers that would shock her stepmum. Powers that made her hands grow hot and flames burst from her palms. The fire inside her had lit when she fought the evil Sha
dow last autumn and now there was no going back.

  Laney dried her hands and went back to her dad’s room. Simon, her dad’s work partner, had arrived. His arms were folded over his lanky frame and he was nodding at something Kim was saying. They both looked up as Laney came back in. Simon was leaning against the window, far away from the flowers on the bedside table, which he always said made him sneeze. His own gold-ringed eyes marked him out as another faerie and for a second Laney felt guilty that they were both keeping this secret from Kim.

  “Are you all right?” Kim got up and came over to Laney. “You seem tired today.”

  The door opened and a doctor with silver glasses looked in. “Sorry to interrupt. Can I have a word, Mrs Rivers?”

  “Of course.” Kim squeezed Laney’s arm and followed the doctor out of the door.

  “Are you all right?” asked Simon, once Kim had gone.

  “Fine.” Laney leaned against the wall, hands in her pockets. “I guess I’m just fed up of everyone asking me that question.”

  “Oh, sorry.” Simon looked awkward. “Well, I should … work’s busy and there’s a lot to do.”

  Laney nodded. With her dad in here, Simon was doing the work of two people, trying to keep their plumbing business going.

  Simon made his way out, nearly colliding with the door frame in an effort to avoid a nurse going past with a vase of flowers.

  Once he was gone, Laney checked that no one was looking through the little square window pane in the door. Then she slipped her hand under her dad’s pillow and drew out a small parcel wrapped in green cotton. Inside were dried leaves of comfrey and vervain which Gwen, a faerie Elder in the village, had said would help to bring her dad back to them. She stuffed the parcel in her jeans pocket. She’d lost count of how many parcels of leaves they’d tried now. Nothing seemed to make any difference.

  She leaned over her dad again, scanning his face. Did he even know that his family were here waiting for him?

  Kim came back in, her face pale. “Did Simon leave?”

  Laney nodded, her eyes still fixed on her dad.

  Kim sighed. “I need to get back and collect Toby from Monique Lionhart. I don’t want to leave him there for too long – he’s been a bit of a handful lately.”

  “I know. I heard him screaming last night.” Laney’s little stepbrother, Toby, was only two. He didn’t really understand what was going on.

  “Let’s go then.” Kim kissed Laney’s dad on the cheek.

  Laney followed her stepmum out of the door. Once they’d left the hospital, she breathed more slowly. She felt awful for being glad to leave but she hated everything about that place, from the mint-green walls to the smell of disinfectant and the bottles of antibacterial gel hanging by every door.

  “Laney, the doctors have suggested a plan to help your dad’s recovery.” Kim’s voice wobbled. She fumbled in her handbag for the car keys. “They first mentioned it a couple of weeks ago but I didn’t want to say anything until we knew whether there was a space.”

  “A space for what?” said Laney.

  Kim hesitated. “The thing is, they thought he’d be a much easier case. When he first went in he was more responsive – he seemed to be able to hear people. He just didn’t … improve the way they expected.” She tried to smile. “But the good news is that there’s a special unit for people with head injuries and they’ve found a space for him there. He’ll be seen by doctors who are experts at treating these things.”

  Laney’s mind whirled. “But they should’ve have done that weeks ago!”

  “There just wasn’t a space then. And they didn’t want to move him at first.” Kim unlocked the car and they climbed in. “The Head Injury Unit is quite a way north – in Kirkfield.”

  Laney’s heart jolted. “How far away is that? Won’t it be hard for us to see him?”

  “No, because I want us to move up there too.”

  “What?” Laney stared.

  “I was going to tell you better … somehow.” Kim rubbed her forehead. “I know you have friends here and … school and things. But this unit is your dad’s best hope and I don’t want to be too far away from him. It’d be more than four hours’ drive. This is the best way. We’ll just move up there with him next week. I’ve already found a cottage for us to rent.”

  For a minute, Laney couldn’t speak. Skellmore was her home. Claudia and Fletcher were here. And she had responsibilities too – an unfinished hunt for the Myricals, the objects of power that they needed to keep from the Shadow. But if this new hospital was the best thing for her dad…

  “I’m sorry to tell you so suddenly.” Kim broke into her thoughts. “Let’s talk about it later when Toby’s in bed and I’ll show you the leaflet the doctors gave me.”

  While Kim was cooking tea, Laney shrugged her coat back on. She needed to talk to Gwen about things. Gwen Whitefern was the oldest of the Thorn tribe elders and usually gave good advice.

  As she hurried down the hill into Skellmore, Laney felt her skin prickling. There was definitely tension in the air, just like the moment of stillness before a storm breaks. It probably meant there was an argument brewing between the tribes again. They had always distrusted each other but things had worsened last year when an evil Shadow faerie had begun haunting the village.

  The Shadow had begun using dark spells to search for the Myricals, the sacred objects containing the essence of each tribe’s magic. There were five Myricals. The Crystal Mirror belonged to the Mists. The Wildwood Arrow was owned by the Thorns. The Vial of the Four Winds belonged to the Kestrels. The White Wolf Statue was the Greytails’ and the Sparkstone belonged to the Blaze tribe. The Myricals had been lost many years before during the rise of the Great Shadow.

  Laney had barely found out that she was a faerie before she was flung into a desperate race to find the Myricals. If the Shadow had found them first he would have seized each tribe’s power in turn. With her friends Claudia and Fletcher, she’d saved two of them: the Crystal Mirror, belonging to the Mist tribe, and the Wildwood Arrow belonging to the Thorns. But no one knew who the Shadow was and which tribe he had come from. So now each tribe suspected the others of protecting the Shadow and the atmosphere of suspicion between them had reached breaking point.

  Laney suppressed a shiver. She might have met the Shadow in human form and never realised what he really was. She remembered the last time she’d met the Shadow face to face. He had squeezed her neck with his black-gloved hand and left a thin layer of ice on her skin. Since then, she’d been convinced that the Shadow was actually a Mist – a member of her dad’s tribe. Thinking of the Shadow as someone she actually knew was truly terrifying.

  She passed the entrance to The Cattery – the street where the Greytails lived. Through faerie eyes, she could see their houses had animal features. Some had fur, some dark-brown spines, one even growled. At the bottom of the hill she turned into the High Street. A few people were shopping in the minimart or sitting in the hairdresser’s next door. In the park opposite, the huge oak tree flushed gold with power from the faerie ring nearby. The rings were powerful gateways and were best avoided unless you wanted to be sucked into the Otherworld beyond. Laney wondered if ordinary people ever sensed all this magic that they couldn’t see.

  Gnarlwood Lane was quiet as usual. The Thorns lived here and the whole street was filled with Thorn magic. Old Mr Willowby, an elderly Thorn man, was out in his front garden, raking up fallen leaves. Laney ran up to Gwen’s house with its white flower roof and rapped on the front door.

  Gwen opened the door. A purple hat with sprigs of lavender was perched on her white curls. “Hello, Laney. Come in.” She stepped back to let Laney inside. “How are you? Is there any improvement in your father?”

  “Not really,” Laney sighed. “I’m still trying your herbs.” She took the small parcel of dried leaves wrapped in green cotton out of her jeans pocket and handed it to Gwen.

  “It’s odd – I’ve haven’t seen an injury so hard to treat for a
long time,” Gwen muttered. “There may be something we haven’t tried. I will consult with the other Thorn Elders.”

  Laney knitted her fingers together. “There might not be time for that. My dad’s getting transferred to a special hospital.”

  “Indeed.” Gwen looked thoughtful. “Where’s that?”

  “It’s in Kirkfield. Kim says that’s up north. She told me about it just now. There’s a special place that treats head injuries and that’s where they’re sending him.” Laney twisted her fingers together. The thought of leaving Skellmore was awful, but if that’s what her dad needed…

  “Perhaps it’s not entirely a bad thing for your father to be taken away from Skellmore,” said Gwen. “If the danger from the Shadow grows then he’ll be safer away from it all.”

  Laney sat down on Gwen’s sofa. She remembered the moment her dad had faced the Shadow faerie. Red lightning had blasted from the Shadow’s fingers, striking him in the chest and knocking him to the ground. He had hit his head as he fell. She closed her eyes, trying to banish the picture from her mind, but it wouldn’t go away. She took a deep breath. “The thing is, Kim wants us all to move up there. I can’t help find the next Myrical if I’m so far away. There are still three more of them to find and the Shadow will be looking for them too.”

  Gwen, who had begun watering a plant on the window sill, set down the little watering can and looked at Laney sharply. The curling silver marks of an Elder gleamed on the back of her hands. “We discussed this before. You and Fletcher and Claudia need to leave the Myrical search to the Elders now. Our kin from the Blaze and Kestrel tribes in the north and west know what’s happening and each tribe is making its own arrangements. They’re looking for the Shadow too. These are dangerous times. You are not to get involved.”

  Laney’s hands grew hot and she hid them behind her back. “A few months ago nobody else believed there was a Shadow faerie at all! Claudia, Fletcher and I found the Crystal Mirror and the Wildwood Arrow. I want to help beat the Shadow. I would have spent more time searching but it’s been hard with my dad ill.”