At the sound of Comfrey’s voice and the mention of Maxine, Thornton strode through the crowd with Seb close at his heels. He put his arm round his daughter’s shoulders and kissed the top of her head.
“Humans,” spat Sedge. “You’d choose one woman over the fate of Farallone?”
“Easy, sister,” said Salix, “things do not always have to be so black and white! This is the girl’s mother. And after all, Comfrey has more than earned her way back home over the border. She is free to come and go from here now, like us. There is time.”
“Is there?” Sedge hissed back. “Is there indeed? After the death of the Coyote-folk and the Mountain Lion-woman and the Elk herself? Now that the Brothers know our secret? And you say we have time?”
“For love, yes. Eight years ago I left my wife and my daughter in the name of the fate of Farallone,” interrupted Thornton sharply. “I thought it was my duty to put the survival of this land over the survival of my own heart. But today I have been reunited with my child, and I can tell you that the heart that was half-dead within me is so full and so alive that it will not last another day without my child’s mother to keep it whole. If she can ever forgive me. We will heal nothing without loving, without standing by the ones we love. I do not think we have to choose. I think that this is the only way we can ever truly succeed.”
“These are fine words,” Salix murmured with a little bow of her head.
“I will go look for the spider myself,” interjected the Baba Ithá, “and then come directly to the edge of Olima, on the ridge above Alder, to tell you what it is I have discovered in my firwood, and to help you in any way I can. If I’m lucky, I’ll have the fiddleback spider with me.” Her voice was surprisingly generous now, warm as a hearth. “In two days’ time, at midday, I will meet you there by the oak trees above the serpentine outcrop where Comfrey’s people leave their Offerings.” She addressed the children and the leverets with a solemn bow of her bone-twined white head.
“Let us guide you home through our tunnels,” interjected a dark-furred Mole-man called Rute, patting at his vest with a large, clawed hand. “It will be much faster and safer. And your wheeled – contraption—” He faltered, eyeing the Fiddleback.
“My Fiddleback?” said Tin eagerly. “Will it be helpful do you think?” His heart lifted. “It’s very quick, you know, and quiet.”
“Indeed I do believe it, just by looking at the thing!” replied Rute. “I think it will be very useful in our tunnels; we will positively fly through the twists and turns!” A gleam lit his black eyes.
“Twists and turns?” said Mallow, grimacing. “It’s going to be a long journey…”
“You’ll have to be very quick,” interjected Sedge, still glaring at Comfrey. “Every hour matters. Every minute.” Her voice cracked.
“We will be, Sedge,” said Comfrey in a voice so gentle and so adult that at first Tin thought it was Rush who spoke. “I love Farallone as much as you. We all do.” She glanced at Tin and Seb, at the leverets, at her father. “We won’t fail you, I promise.” She knew as she said these words that she could not truly promise such a thing when what they faced was so dark, so dire, and yet she meant them with all her heart. She reached out slowly and took Sedge’s hand. The Basket-witch flinched, but did not pull away.
“Very well, Country girl,” replied Sedge. “I will do my best to trust you.” And for a single moment, a smile of warm admiration lit her face.
“What are we waiting for then?” interjected Myrtle, leaping impatiently around Comfrey’s ankles. “For starters, I’d like to get this bumpy Fiddleback ride out of the way.”
“You’d better get used to it,” said Tin with a crooked smile. “I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of those in our future, especially if we are going all the way back to the City.”
“Who knows,” teased Salix, touching the leverets’ foreheads gently with her forefinger, “it might be safer for you to travel back to the City carried in the arms of the North Wind, who is an old friend of the Wild Folk.”
“Abominations!” cried Mallow. “Travel by owl was bad enough… But by wind alone? I won’t do it, a hare can only take so much.”
“Oh but I think we will in the end,” said Myrtle, touching her nose to her twin’s. “No hare that I’ve ever heard of has done any of what we have. We never could have imagined it, despite all the Greentwins’ stories! One paw in front of the next and worry about it later. What else can we do till we’ve come to the end?”
“We can hope that it’s no end at all, but a new beginning,” whispered Comfrey, and the words sent their own wind through the gathered crowd, quiet though they had been. A breath of hope, luminous as stargold.
This book has been brewing in me since I was a girl, and so I have many people, landscapes and beings to thank for its creation and its birth. Thank you to all the authors whose books shaped me as a child – you makers of brave heroines, kind heroes, talking trees and wild magics whose words made me the writer, and woman, I am today. Thank you to my parents for always supporting me on this path, and to my mother for reading all my early drafts. Thank you to all the children and adults who subscribed to The Leveret Letters (the very first iteration of The Wild Folk) back in 2014, when it was a stories-by-mail project. Your support and excited letters in reply helped me to first birth the tales of Comfrey, Tin, Myrtle and Mallow. Thank you to my wise, wonderful and tireless agent Jessica Woollard for believing in this book, to my brilliant editor Anne Finnis for bringing it out into the world with such courage and vision, and to the whole team at Usborne for being so creative and full of heart in everything they do. Thank you to the plants, animals, stones, waters and winds of the Point Reyes Peninsula, the landscape that was the inspiration for Farallone and the place I gratefully and lovingly call home. And to Simon, for sharing in the old magic of story with me from the very first, and for reminding me how love sits at the centre of every true tale.
Look out for the second magical adventure in
THE STARGOLD CHRONICLES
Coming in spring 2019
Find out more:
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For more fantasy and adventure visit usborne.com/fiction
First published in the UK in 2018 by Usborne Publishing Ltd., Usborne House, 83-85 Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8RT, England. www.usborne.com
Copyright © Sylvia V. Linsteadt 2018
The right of Sylvia V. Linsteadt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Cover and inside illustrations by Sandra Dieckmann © Usborne Publishing, 2018
Map by Chris Jevons © Usborne Publishing, 2018
The name Usborne and the devices are Trade Marks of Usborne Publishing Ltd.
All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or used in any way except as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or loaned or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
EPUB: 9781474954815
04452/02
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