by Lari Don
Now the Queen was as tall as Helen. Taller. As tall as Yann. She stopped, though the billowing waves of her sea-coloured dress kept moving around her. The fabric glowed so brightly that Helen switched her torch off.
“Do you bring me the flag?”
“Do you really want it?”
“Of course I want it! Why else would I agree to swap my darling little human boy, Johnny, or whatever his name is, and my precious midsummer musicians for it?”
“You said one thread of the flag was worth all ten of my fingers. Is that true?”
“Oh yes. Anything of faery making is worth far more than any human skill, or any human life.”
“Then the twenty people at the summer school and the one boy you’ve stolen are worth less than twenty-one threads of that flag?”
The Queen shrugged. “If you want to get arithmetical about it, I suppose so. But I want the whole flag.”
“I’ve brought you more than twenty-one threads. I’ve brought you this.” Helen took out the scrap of flag.
The Queen looked at it in horror. “You tore it?”
“It got ripped. We were attacked.”
“Attacked? By brownies? They don’t attack, they just tidy up.”
“They tidied one of my friends so much she was a different shape afterwards. The flag got ripped, but I’ve brought you this. Worth more than my fingers, more than the summer school, more than the boy. So let him go and free me from my obligation to provide you with music. Then I’ll give you this.”
“Swap the boy and the music for a tiny bit of silk? Never. You have failed. I will keep the boy now until you have played for me.”
“No!”
“Yes. That corner of flag is not worth anything on its own. It’s not the flag we want. It’s the promise. We need to be free of the promise to provide warriors at the whim of a human. You have left the MacLeods with the flag, so they can wave it whenever they choose. That threat still hangs over us. So you still owe me music.”
Helen glanced over her shoulder. She was surrounded by faery warriors, with scowls and spears. She was trapped until she reached an agreement with the Queen.
She sighed and looked back at the Queen. “You want to be freed from the promise?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll give me the boy and I won’t have to provide midsummer music?”
The Queen frowned at Helen, then smiled. “You can’t free us from the promise, you don’t have the flag.”
“Yes, I can,” said Helen triumphantly. “I can free you right now.”
She held the scrap of silk up between her thumb and forefinger. She waved it in the night air. It started to disintegrate, tiny threads floating off to vanish in the dark. She waved it, once, twice, three times, over her head.
The Queen’s perfect oval face turned white.
There was an explosion of noise at the other side of the clearing. Hooves slammed against the earth, hurtling out of the night towards Helen.
The dozen spearmen of the Queen’s guard leapt past Helen and stood in the root cave, their spears pointing up at the attacking cavalry, guarding their Queen, or perhaps the path to her.
Helen stood still. Breath caught in her chest, her hand trembling above her head.
Horses crashed to a halt behind and around her. She could hardly see them, just their shapes in the darkness, barely lit by the Queen’s faded pastel glow. But she could smell them, their salty sweat and their cold breath, and she could hear them, jingling and snorting.
The men on the horses had spears too. Three long blades thrust past Helen to land shivering at the rim of the hollow.
She was surrounded by soldiers. By weapons, fear and anger. She stood very still, wondering what she had summoned with a few fragile threads of silk.
She seemed to have called up a war.
Chapter 14
A voice boomed out of the darkness. “Who has summoned us?”
Helen swallowed her doubts, then said clearly, “I have.”
“Where is your enemy?”
Helen pointed at the Queen.
The Queen took a step backwards, which didn’t take her any further away; she was already on the back wall of the cave. Then she remembered she was somewhere else entirely and stood up straight again.
The deep voice laughed. “What have you done, my Queen? How did you give this much power to so small a child?”
There was a clattering thump, as someone dismounted behind Helen, then strode to the edge of the root cave. He stood between the quivering spears, a tall man in black armour and a radiant golden cloak.
Helen said quickly, “I don’t want you to attack her, I just want to get the boy back.”
“A boy, my Queen?” He sighed. “Not again!”
“It’s a bargain between me and the girl, my King. None of your concern. She has said she does not want you to attack me, so she has released you from your Fairy Flag promise. You may go.”
“I would like to stay and see what bargain you’ve made with this intriguing human child.”
“None that has yet been fulfilled.”
“Yes it has,” Helen insisted. “You wanted the power of the promise broken, so I waved the flag a third time and the MacLeods can never again summon a faery army. Now you must give me back the boy and find your own entertainment for the revels.”
“No, that was not the bargain,” the Queen said. “The boy was to be exchanged for the flag, but you have destroyed the tiny bit of flag you managed to retrieve.”
Helen looked at her fingertips. Just one pale length of thread stuck to her thumb, so she pushed it back in her pocket. “But I used up the promise. That was what you wanted.”
“It may have been what I wanted, but it was not what we agreed. Yesterday we agreed the flag for the boy. Today I told you why I wanted it. You kindly removed the promise for me, but that wasn’t our original agreement. Our original agreement was the flag for the boy. You haven’t brought me a flag, so I keep the boy until you play for me at midsummer.”
“But I said I would release you from the promise in return for the boy!” Helen yelled in frustration.
“So you did. However, I did not agree to that bargain. I just doubted you could do it, then you took up the challenge. But you didn’t get an agreement from me first, did you?”
“That isn’t fair!”
“Yes it is. I intended to display the flag at my party, but now I have nothing to show. Instead I’ll let my guests hear the best young musicians in the land. Then you will get the boy.”
“No. I need the boy now,” Helen appealed to the King, “because soon his family will know he’s gone. Then they’ll come and hunt the forests for him.”
The King looked at her. He had a neat black beard and deep brown eyes. He was as handsome as his Queen was beautiful, and as bright as Lee was glowing, but it wasn’t a layer of shining light. It was a fire inside. This faery wasn’t bending light. He was creating it.
He shook his head. “I cannot interfere in a bargain between a faery and a human.”
He walked back to his horse, leaning forward as he passed Helen and whispering, “Finish this quest, human child, the way you’ve begun it, and all will end happily ever after.”
As the King climbed on his horse, the Queen laughed, her dress bright and swirling again. The spear faeries relaxed as the horses galloped away.
Helen clenched her fists, nails digging into her palms. She had failed. Failed to use the scrap of flag to get an agreement from the Queen, failed to use the army she had called up to save herself or James.
The Queen spoke sharply to Helen. “Off you go then. Go and rehearse, instead of wasting your time on quests you can’t handle. You need to be at your best for midsummer night.”
“At my best, for you? You must be joking. You’re a liar and a cheat!”
The Queen raised her eyebrows in gently offended surprise.
“You sent me on a quest, which I undertook in good faith, but you broke that faith by warning the brown
ies we were coming to steal the flag.”
“Oh no, I …”
“Oh yes, you did. How else did you know what had attacked us, before I told you?”
Helen pointed her finger at the Queen. “You made a bargain to give me James if I brought you a treasure, which you then set a guard over. Then I gave you what you really wanted, released you from that inconvenient promise, but you’re still not giving me anything in return.
“You are a cheat and a trickster and have no honour at all!”
The Queen laughed. “All that may be true. But I still have the boy … and you have nothing to bargain with, except your ability to play music!
“If you and your friends play for my revels, I will let the boy go. If you don’t, I will keep him forever. That was our bargain.”
“No, the bargain was that I would provide music, not that I would play music. There’s a difference. If you give me the boy, I will provide you with music.”
The Queen shook her head in disappointment. “Did you think I hadn’t noticed that little play on words? Did you think you could weasel out that way? You can’t trick the tricksters, girl!
“I don’t want your recordings or downloadings. They aren’t real music. They are just the ghosts of live music. I want living breathing musicians. Only for that will I give you back the boy.”
Helen grew cold in the dark. Her clever wording hadn’t been clever enough.
The Queen smiled at Helen. “I leave it up to your conscience how you get those musicians. If you choose to bring your summer school friends unknowing to my door, then run away and save yourself, I will understand.
“Though I would love,” her voice sank to a purr, “I would love to hear you play. Perhaps the honourable thing would be to take full responsibility yourself alone. Then you would have no guilt, just a warm sense of sacrifice, to keep you company all the years you serve me.
“Your choice. Yourself. Or your friends. But I will have my music. Or the boy stays here.”
Helen took a deep breath. “This living breathing music. Where must I bring it? And when?”
The Queen smiled graciously. “You will be very welcome at the green hill in the west of Dorry Shee forest two nights from now. The revels start at midnight. Please arrive in plenty of time to tune up.”
She swept away, unpinning her long pale hair as she went.
Helen kicked at the edge of the hollow, watching with satisfaction as a lump of earth fell off.
She looked at the line of spear-faeries in the pit below her. “Sorry about summoning an army against you. No hard feelings?”
They stared at her. Still pointing their blades at her. She shrugged, turned her back on them and walked slowly and calmly to the trees, because she couldn’t run faster than a thrown spear anyway.
As she reached the edge of the clearing, Lee appeared, bursting with anxious questions.
“What did you do out there? Did you really summon a faery army? What were you thinking? Was that a fragment of the flag you had? Where did you get it? Was that how you managed to see me earlier?”
Helen answered the simplest question. “I got the fragment of flag from Lavender’s shoe. Her heel ripped it off when we were attacked.”
“But why did you wave it without getting an absolutely solid agreement from the Queen?”
“That was my big mistake. I wasn’t listening hard enough.”
“You have to weigh every word she speaks. She twists words even more easily than light. If you didn’t get a new bargain from her, how will you free the boy?”
Helen sighed. “I have a decision to make. Either I play music for her myself, or I provide her with some other poor fools. Or else James stays there for ever.”
“Helen…”
“It’s my decision. Let me think.”
They walked through the trees, silently. Neither of them saw a tall boy with shaggy black hair leaning casually against an ancient pine. He ran his long-nailed fingers through his hair and slid round the tree to keep them in sight.
Helen struggled to keep up with Lee. Her thoughts kept slowing her down. She’d thought she was so clever, saying she would provide rather than play music. But the Queen had twisted so many bargains and she was impossible to fool.
Helen had no decision to make, not really. She couldn’t leave James with the Faery Queen. And she couldn’t give the Queen anyone else. Not even Zoe. She would have to play herself.
When they arrived at the clearing, Helen sat down and tried to stop her hands trembling by warming them at the campfire. She only half listened to Lee telling Sylvie and Sapphire about the Faery Queen’s demands and Helen’s decision.
Helen noticed that Sylvie and Sapphire were actually listening to the faery, rather than being rude. Helen smiled. Perhaps they could be friends after all. She couldn’t though. She wouldn’t be here.
She had to leave. Now. Before she started to cry.
She stood up. “I have to go. I have to rehearse.”
Sapphire growled. Lee said, “Don’t give up yet. We still have one night. We can do a lot in one night.”
Helen laughed bitterly. “Yes. We have one night. Only one night. Because we’ve spent a couple of nights on this stupid quest. She used the flag quest to distract us, to make us waste time.
“I’m not wasting any more sleeping or rehearsal time on impossible and pointless quests. I’m going back to the lodge.”
Helen looked at Sylvie, sitting sadly by the fire. “Have you called your brothers off, or will I be followed by wolves again tonight?”
Sylvie put her head on her paws and whined a brief answer to Lee.
“She gives you her word there are no wolves watching you tonight.” He smiled. “I think we should walk you home anyway, otherwise you might fall asleep on the path.”
Sylvie and Lee walked beside Helen as she trudged towards the lodge in the headachey light of dawn.
As they neared the back of the lodge, she looked at the faery and the wolf. “I’m sorry I’m letting you both down. I’m sorry I haven’t prevented the Queen’s party. I will try to think of a way out of this for all of us, but I need to sleep first.”
Before they could answer, Helen turned away and plodded towards her bedroom.
Chapter 15
Helen tugged off her filthy boots and looked at the clock. It was nearly 5 am.
Everyone else in the lodge must have been asleep for hours. She shrugged. They’d had enough sleep already.
So she hauled out her fiddle and started to play Professor Greenhill’s masterpiece.
She played wildly, fumbling notes with her numb pinkie. At first she put all her dark forest terrors into the music, then she noticed lighter tones sneak in and recognised the guilty excitement she felt at the idea of performing for the Faery Queen and her court.
Suddenly, she thought of her little sister. If she performed for the Queen, James would play with Emma this weekend, but Helen might never see Nicola again.
She stood at the window, playing more slowly.
She saw a curtain twitch over in the old lodge. Was that the Professor’s window? The curtains opened and Fay Greenhill looked out. She was brushing her silver hair, winding it up into that messy bun. She waved at Helen. Helen played faster again, more cheerfully now. It was always easier with an audience.
Helen played herself calm and lay down on her bed at last. The gaps in her morning timetable meant she could sleep for a few hours.
However, when she woke up, long after breakfast-time, she didn’t feel rested at all.
She could hear pipes and flutes from the barn. She checked the clock. 10 am. Time for a slice of toast before her late morning lesson with the Professor.
She had hoped to find someone in the kitchen after her shower, because a chat about music would have been better than thinking about her failures and her fate.
Zoe was not the person she had been hoping for.
The older violinist was gazing into a steaming mug of coffee and didn’t e
ven notice Helen making sandwiches as well as toast. After five minutes of silence, Zoe blurted out, “Have you heard about the solo yet?”
“No,” answered Helen, tapping her left pinkie against the table to see if it was still numb.
“I can’t stand not knowing. How can you be so calm about it? Are you too young and stupid to understand how important it is?”
Helen winced as her pinkie throbbed. “I do know how important this midsummer music is, but I have other things to worry about.”
She picked up the sandwiches, taking them to her room before going to the old lodge for her last lesson with the Professor. She tried to feel enthusiastic as she walked past the piles of leaflets in the untidy corridor.
She knocked and the Professor’s cheerful voice summoned her into the study. “My early morning muse! You played beautifully this morning. What a lovely way to be woken up. But my dear, you look a little worried.
“Come and play me the music that inspires you. Come and lose yourself in the music.”
That sounded like a very good idea. Helen played the tune she and her friend Rona had written last year. She couldn’t help smiling as her music filled the study, remembering the successful quests it described.
Losing herself in music did work. Perhaps that was how she needed to look at her decision to play for the Faery Queen. She would spend the rest of her life lost in music.
She put the bow and violin down gently and shook her hands out.
The Professor smiled at Helen through her waving silver hair and adjusted her bright scarf. “I’m sorry I’ve kept you all waiting for my decision about the solo. I hope it hasn’t distracted you from your other concerns?”
Helen shook her head politely, if not entirely honestly.
“Well, my dear, you’re the most promising young fiddler I’ve heard in years, so I’ve no hesitation in offering you the violin solo tomorrow night. But …” the Professor’s voice cut sharper than usual, “… but there is a condition.”
Helen, who had made a mess of too many bargains over the last few days, raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“You’re a night owl and an early bird. I keep an eye on my students and I’ve seen you wandering about. This gives us an opportunity.
