Emily Feather and the Starlit Staircase

by Holly Webb

  Eva shook her head. “It’s all right. He’s in the garden. When I saw what you were doing, I brought him home, and I waited for you instead. Oh, Emily, I missed you!”

  “I know.” Emily nodded. She was safe, and so was Robin, and she was home. They were in Eva’s workroom now, she realized dazedly. Curled up in the battered old armchair in the corner.

  “You called me, Emily. I felt it. I should have been here before, I’m sorry. I was so caught up with the baby, I thought you were just being grumpy and jealous like Lory. I didn’t realize. That you thought I’d stop loving you. Or how upset you were.”

  “I’m not now. I understand. But I was so selfish about the baby. . .” Emily whispered apologetically. “I felt horrible.”

  Eva sighed. “We didn’t tell you very well. I’m sorry, Emily. I know it’s hard for you.”

  “I don’t feel like that now. . .”

  Eva kissed her cheek, and Emily sighed, feeling her mother’s fairy magic. Instead of settling over her skin, it seemed to rush right through her, filling Emily with a sense of love and belonging that she’d never understood before.

  “Maybe I was right to go away,” she murmured. “If you don’t ever go away, you can’t come home.”

  “That’s beautiful,” Emily murmured, admiring the design in the sketch pad laid out on Eva’s table. Ivy leaves in shades of green and black and silver wound across the page, and as Emily watched, the silvery lines twisted and shimmered, and tiny creatures seemed to peer out from between the winding stems, grinning at her.

  “It’s a design for a silk scarf,” Eva explained, flicking her fingers and sending the little sprites running back into the paint. “Though of course, the scarf won’t have the added extras. . . You really must be getting stronger, Emily, now that you can see the magic in my designs.” She shook up the cushions on the little sofa in the corner of her studio and gently pushed Emily on to it. “You look exhausted,” she told Emily, lowering herself down carefully next to her.

  Eva was looking a lot bigger, Emily suddenly thought, noticing the careful way she moved. She was still graceful, but it was a watchful, considered sort of grace, nothing like her usual dancing movement.

  “Are you all right?” Emily asked anxiously, sitting up again. She had slumped back against the cushions, tired out after her strange day. A dozen different odd things had happened to her since she’d found out the truth about her family. But the journey into another version of her own life had been the strangest of all. At the same time, Emily was happier than she had been for ages. She was sure now that she belonged here – not with Izzy. She felt peaceful, she decided, now that she knew more about her birth mother. Peaceful, but also a bit limp and exhausted. Still, she struggled upright, looking worriedly at her mother.

  “Oh, I’m fine!” Eva smiled at her. “Just so clumsy and big. Sit back, Emily.” Her voice was very soft now, with a low buzz to it like the hum of a bumblebee, and Emily smiled.

  “Did you do this when I was a baby?” she murmured. “Sing spells to me, to send me to sleep?”

  “Sometimes,” her mother said, laughing. “But you were never that much of a problem to get to sleep. I should think you remember me singing to Robin – he didn’t want to sleep at all.”

  Emily nodded. “I wonder what the new baby will be like. . .” she said drowsily, leaning her head against Eva’s shoulder.

  “Me too,” her mother whispered, stroking her fingers gently down Emily’s cheek. The buzzing seemed to fill the room – a soft, sleepy, musical sound. It purred in and out of Emily’s mind, making her think of sunshine, and humming bees, and honey sweetness. And cats, just for a moment, which made her twitch crossly, thinking of Dantis and his smug white-catness. The humming of the spell deepened, and pulled her further into sleep.

  Emily began to dream. She was restless at first, wriggling and tossing her head, and Eva patted her hair, smoothing it down gently and changing the note of the humming magic that was keeping Emily asleep. Emily shifted herself, snuggling more comfortably against Eva’s shoulder, and settled into a deeper, quieter sleep. Her dreams were pleasanter ones now – dreams of fairy babies, smiling and clapping their hands. One of them patted its fat little hand against hers, over and over again, fascinated that Emily’s hands were so much larger than its own. Her own. It was a little girl. Emily didn’t know much about babies, but even she could tell that. The baby’s soft yellow wings fluttered in her excitement, nearly tipping her over. That made her laugh even more. Emily caught her, ready to set her upright, but she giggled and fluttered and stumbled into the air, bumbling around Emily in giddy little swoops. Her dark eyes were fixed on Emily, and she kept darting down and patting at Emily’s hair, stroking the curls, just as Eva had been doing.

  Eva. . . Emily blinked, and stretched herself awake, yawning deliciously and looking up at her mother with sleepy eyes.

  Eva looked as though she might have been asleep too. Her face was pale, and her eyes looked heavy.

  Emily stroked her hand, smiling. “I was dreaming about babies.”

  Eva blinked and tried to smile. “That’s strange, so was I,” she said lightly, but Emily could hear the strained note in her voice.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked anxiously, and then she saw how Eva was pressing her hands against her bump, smoothing the wrinkled fabric of her dress over and over again. “Oh! Is it the baby? Is it coming?” She, something inside her said firmly. You saw her. It was a girl. “Is she coming?” Emily asked again, and Eva nodded.

  “I think so. Come with me, Emily.” She pushed herself up awkwardly from the sofa, and held out one hand.

  “Where are we going?” Emily asked, frowning. “The hospital?” She knew that was where babies were usually born, but somehow she hadn’t thought Eva would want to go there. Wouldn’t a fairy birth be different from a human one? Especially with those pretty little yellow wings. Emily blinked. Had she dreamed about her own new baby sister? Before she was even born? She looked thoughtfully at Eva’s bump. Perhaps fairy babies could do magic even in the womb. Emily was almost sure her little sister had sent the dream. She knows me, Emily thought, a sudden gladness spilling over inside her. And I’ve seen those yellow feathers before, she realized. When I was close to Mum. She was there, the baby! She’s been trying to talk to me all this time!

  “No, not the hospital.” Eva grimaced, her shoulders hunching for a moment, and then beckoned to Emily, more urgently this time. “We’re going back home. The baby needs to be born at home. Through the doors.”

  “Is it safe?” Emily murmured, thinking of Lady Anstis. Then she shook her head. Of course it was, if she went with Eva. Her mother was a lady of the fairy court too, even if she lived in the human world most of the time. The other fairy ladies might sniff around them, jealous of the delicious energy they could sense in Emily, a human child, but Eva would be with her. Eva would never let anyone steal her away.

  “Which door shall we go through?” Emily whispered. “And aren’t we going to fetch any of the others? Dad? Lark and Lory?”

  “Your dad will come, don’t worry. He’ll bring the others. But I need to go now, Emily, and I want you with me. You dreamed about the baby, didn’t you?”

  Emily stared at her. “With the little yellow wings?” she asked at last. “Was that really her?”

  Eva smiled, even though she still looked as though she was hurting. “Your little sister.” She shook her head. “It seems to me she’s going to be even more of a nightmare baby than Robin. At least he wasn’t born flying. Come on, Emily.” She took Emily’s hand. “I have my own door.”

  Eva led Emily to the table, which was scattered with her designs, tiny pieces of fabric, art materials, and the odd mug of cold tea here and there. She flipped open a sketchbook and propped herself against the table with a sigh. Then she snatched up a chalk pastel crayon and began to draw with long, sweeping strokes. S
he sketched in the lines of a doorway, and Emily watched in wonder as it seemed to stand out of the page.

  Coiling up beyond the doorway was a staircase, a spiral one, with deep treads that twirled on upwards. Emily blinked, following the steps with her eyes as they seemed to continue beyond the edge of the paper.

  The magic helped, of course, but most of the life in the drawing came from her mother’s confident lines. After a minute’s sketching, she stood back, smiled a little and blew across the page.

  Emily watched a haze of bluish chalk dust lift and shimmer in the air above the drawing, twinkling like starlight around the stairs. While she was distracted by the dust motes, the door itself lifted out of the page, so that it was suddenly there in front of her.

  It didn’t make sense – the doorway was standing there, clear and solid, with the silvery steps spiralling beyond it. And yet the table was still there too, heavy and wooden, just as it had been before. Emily squinted. They were both there at the same time, which shouldn’t have been possible, but it was.

  Emily sucked in a breath as they took their first step through the doorway and on to the stairs, and the stars glimmered around them. They were painted on to a plastered wall, and yet they seemed real, glowing in some far-away night that stood between the worlds.

  They walked up slowly, hand in hand, until they came to a door of silvery, weathered wood, with a barley sugar twisted ring of dull black metal for a handle. Eva shivered a little as she touched it, and smiled down at Emily. “Cold iron. It’s hard for us to touch. Crossing between our worlds should never be too easy.”

  Emily nodded, but she was finding it hard to concentrate on her mother’s words. It seemed so long since she had been in the fairy world, even though it was only a few weeks. And she had never been there with Eva. This was no panicked, mistaken dash through a door that had been left ajar. She hadn’t forced her way in, breaking all the rules. She was visiting for real. She was allowed.

  Beyond the doorway was a stone-floored passageway, hung with tapestries and rich embroidered hangings that sparkled and moved like Eva’s designs. Butterflies spiralled dizzily across stitched meadows in front of her, and a petal fell from a heavy, sweet-perfumed rose. Emily breathed in the honey sweetness of the flower and reached out to cup its petals, but Eva gently pulled her away.

  “There’s no time, Emily love. If you fall in among those flowers, you won’t want to leave. This way. . .”

  She led Emily up the passageway to another heavy wooden door, so much like the one she had drawn that Emily looked back, only to find that the wall opposite the embroidered roses was bare stone. The door had slipped away as soon as Eva closed it behind them.

  But the handle on this door was a soft, rich gold, and it was warm when Emily reached out to open it for her mother. The room inside seemed familiar, even though Emily was sure she had never been in it before. Eva had decorated it, she realized, and the hangings and paintings made her think of their home in the human world.

  Eva curled up in a strange high-backed chair, which Emily didn’t think looked very comfortable, but she sighed happily as she wriggled her spine against the bumpy wooden carvings. “Better. . .” she murmured, closing her eyes. Then they flickered open again for a moment as she told Emily, “Stay here, in this room. I mean it, Emily. Don’t go out.”

  Emily sniffed. “After last time? I don’t want to be bewitched into staying here for ever.” She gripped the back of her mother’s chair tightly. Would she be able to resist Anstis again? Would she know the deceitful magic for what it was? She hoped so, but she didn’t mean to risk it. “I’m staying with you.” She looked at Eva a little worriedly. “Does anyone here know that we’re here, if you see what I mean? People like Lady Anstis?”

  “Yes. . .” Eva nodded fractionally. She wasn’t really concentrating on what Emily was saying – she was thinking about the baby. Emily wondered how close it was to happening. She wished her dad were here.

  “Anstis will know – she has spies everywhere. And others may have felt the door open, too. . .”

  Emily flinched as the door flew open and banged, echoing against the stone wall. She wasn’t sure who she had been expecting, but she let out a gasp of relief when her father strode into the room and crouched before Eva’s chair.

  “You’re all right?” he asked her anxiously. “And the baby?”

  Eva chuckled. “She spoke to us – to me and Emily. She has yellow wings. Ohhh. . .” She moaned, and grimaced, and Ash gathered her up into his arms and carried her through another door into what Emily assumed was a bedroom. She wondered if they needed a midwife, or someone to help, but her father glanced back over his shoulder and smiled at her. “Just stay there, Emily. And don’t worry.”

  Emily nodded, even though she thought it was a stupid thing to say. How could she not worry? And the way both her parents had been so insistent that she stayed in the room was daunting too. If she’d been Lory, she’d probably have marched straight out into the passage and gone looking for trouble. But Emily wasn’t like that at all. She was desperate to explore, but she’d settle for looking around the family’s rooms.

  There were several other doors, she realized now. Bedrooms for Lark and Lory and Robin, she guessed. She peeped into one of them, but it was very bare – almost empty, with just a bed and a huge mirror on the wall. Her brother and sisters had never lived here. Emily grinned to herself as she saw a piece of Lego sticking out from underneath the bed by the wall, and she darted into the room to pick it up, comforted by this little trace of Robin.

  She knelt down to pull it out, and then scurried back on her knees in panic as a heavy black paw smacked down in front of her, shiny claws dragging back the plastic brick. A low growl echoed out from under the bed, and Emily whimpered. There was a monster under the bed! It was the sort of thing she’d dreamed about when she was smaller, so she’d never wanted to reach her hand out of the covers in case something bit her, and now it was actually happening.

  But then the black dog wriggled himself out from under the bed and stared at her. He looked guilty.

  “Gruff! Oh! You scared me!” Emily gasped. “Did you come with us? Why are you hiding? Aren’t you supposed to be here?”

  She wasn’t expecting him to answer – after all, he never had when she’d spoken to him before. But he lowered his great head in a nod and eyed her sideways. “I came to protect Lady Eva,” he rumbled, and Emily gaped at him.

  “You talk. . .” she faltered.

  “Here I do.”

  Emily bit her lip, thinking of all the times she had curled up next to him and told him how unfair Lark and Lory were, or how much Robin was annoying her with stupid boy tricks. “And, um, do you understand what people are saying when we’re at home?”

  Gruff’s dark, almond-shaped eyes glittered for a moment, and Emily knew that he did.

  “Oh.” She frowned. “That isn’t very fair. That’s the sort of thing you ought to tell people.”

  “A little sign on my collar, perhaps?” He nudged his huge head against hers, and she could feel that he was laughing. He quivered with it.

  Emily sighed. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m sure Mum’s all right, but it’s eerie, that shut door, and just hearing noises every so often. And I keep expecting someone to charge in and tell me I shouldn’t be here.”

  “Two of us, then.” The great dog stood up, and Emily laid her hand on his neck and let him lead her out into the main room. They stood by the windows, looking out at a view of dark, distant mountains, and Emily was glad to have the warmth of his fur under her hand. The mountains made her think of dwarves, or maybe trolls. She dragged her eyes away from their forbidding bulk, and stared down at the pretty pleasure gardens just below the window instead. Several people were strolling there in the sunshine, and Emily watched them curiously.

  The women’s glittering dresses and folded wings reminded her of An
stis and the other Ladies, and her first journey through the doors. She shivered. Gruff shifted, and Emily blinked as he grew taller, and wider at the shoulders. His collar had spikes on it, she noticed. She was sure it hadn’t had them before. He looked like a bear. “No one will harm you,” he told Emily grimly, and she believed him.

  “Why would anyone want to harm her?” a sweet voice asked.

  Emily swallowed painfully and turned, forcing herself to loosen her grip on Gruff’s black fur. She had dug her nails into his back so hard it must have hurt. But he only nudged her affectionately, never taking his eyes from the woman standing in the doorway.

  “How nice to see you again, dear child.” Lady Anstis smiled at Emily charmingly, and Emily fought to keep the charm from seeping through her defences. “And on such a happy occasion.”

  “You know about the baby?” Emily gasped, looking anxiously towards her mother’s door.

  “But of course. Everyone knows. Fairy children are rare, and special.” Anstis was smiling, but her smile looked unpleasantly greedy to Emily. She was wearing green velvet this time, and it looked softer than the dust on her drooping butterfly wings. Emily felt a deep longing inside her to reach out and stroke the dress, perhaps curl up at Anstis’s feet, and lean her head against the pale velvet.

  Don’t! Emily wasn’t sure if that had come from Gruff, or her own sense of self-preservation. But she stepped back sharply and stared at her feet, so as not to see the fairy Lady smile. Emily pressed herself closer to Gruff. “Did you come to see my mother?” she asked, trying not to let her voice shake.

  “Of course.” Anstis was laughing, and her voice was a purr. “Give her my good wishes, Emily, won’t you? Tell her I will visit soon. So I can meet the child.” She stalked out, and Emily stood still for a moment, and then raced across the room to shut the door and lean against it, gasping.