She looked up and saw the leafy face of the Greenlady, high in the branches of the Crone Oak. This must be what she’d meant about blood on her tree; a warning that she wouldn’t tolerate violence near her beloved oak. “I’m sorry,” Rosie choked.
“You go on home,” said the dryad, sounding kind, not angry. “Go on. Can’t leave my tree, but I’ll watch you home.”
Rosie told her parents she had fallen in some brambles. They seemed to believe her. The next day, she marched up to Stonegate Manor and presented Sam, who’d opened the door to her, with her black eye and torn hands. He stood openmouthed and incredulous as she brusquely described what had happened.
“You call your bodyguard bitch off,” she finished furiously, and strode off without giving him a chance to respond.
“Rosie!” he called after her, but she kept walking. For once she felt strong and fearless, and it was a good feeling.
That night, she lay in bed and thought about the Greenlady, and Jon, and what it meant to be an Aetherial trapped in the human world. A golden summer moon glowed through her curtains. What if she and her brothers—and Jon and Sam, come to that—were never able to enter the Spiral or partake of the experiences their parents had known?
A memory rose: She was about seven, sitting on Brewster’s broad back as Comyn led him, gentle as a lamb, around a paddock. They’d often visited the farm as children. She remembered her father and brothers watching from beneath sunlit trees. Her uncle was saying as they went, “You’ll notice things about certain people, Rosie. Adults who don’t seem to grow any older. No comfortable grey-haired grannies for us; no, our grandparents look as fresh as our parents until they simply disappear. Mysterious, eh?”
Rosie had been disturbed. Had the half-remembered adults who’d doted upon her as a tiny child been her grandparents? All she’d been told was that they lived far away now. Her uncle continued, “Don’t be afraid of it, girl; it’s what we are, Vaethyr, not human. Your family lives in the human world but you’ll feel the call of the Otherworld, a need to run under the stars like a wild animal. You’ll know what it is to be both huntsman and hound, tearing into the raw flank of your prey . . .”
At that point, her father had appeared beside them, saying, “That’s enough, Comyn.”
He’d sounded angry. Her uncle had grunted, “You’ve no right to shelter your children from the truth of what they are,” and Auberon had retorted, “And you’ve no business telling them anything; that’s left to me and Jess, not you.”
Strange, that the memory surfaced tonight. The news of Brewster’s death in winter two years ago had saddened her. Had her grandparents made it to the Spiral—her mother’s musical parents, Auberon’s farming family—or were they trapped on Earth? Would the Greenlady die too as all links to the Spiral faded? She remembered the terrifying image she’d had of coming home to find Oakholme deserted, her parents gone without a word. At least, if the portal stayed closed, Jessica and Auberon would surely have no reason to vanish.
Lying in her bed, she let her awareness slip into the Dusklands, felt the changed perception swelling like honeyed moonlight into the room. It was easy. Surely nothing could be wrong when the Dusklands still saturated Oakholme so deeply?
Her bedroom was bathed in light, glistening as if coated with golden dew. She rose and went to her wardrobe, finding not clothes inside but a twisty corridor of dark walnut leading to a chamber where a shining tree thrust up through the floorboards and vanished in the vault of the ceiling.
In an enchanted state of consciousness, Rosie circled the tree, climbing over its roots. The leaves were flakes of green light and the trunk was silvery, thick and swollen with rounded excrescences, slippery as silk and warm to the touch. In her strange waking dream she trailed her fingers over the undulations. She rested her face on its silken bark. Her arms went around the trunk and as she pressed the length of her body into it, its hard warmth seemed to swell into her, molding perfectly into the strange urgency that transported her.
Rosie floated, breathing hard as she dissolved into golden fire. The Dusklands softly exploded. She came awake in bed, gasping, hands flung back on the pillows as she convulsed. For once there was no thought of Jon in her mind, only the simple wonder of ecstasy. She slid one hand between her thighs to make the feeling linger.
What lay behind her wardrobe door was not quite Narnia, but it was hers. Her beautiful secret tree of knowledge.
School terms and seasons rolled by. Rosie never saw Sam with the Pit Bull again. The girl was still around the village—keeping a safe distance from Rosie—but Sam had left. Gone, said the rumors, to backpack around Europe. Lawrence apparently was not pleased. Rosie wasn’t sure what she felt; relieved, mostly.
One firm conviction anchored her; her love of trees, earth and living things. She was a true Elysian, a natural gardener. To be affiliated to earth meant going into the natural world, to the greenwood, to silver lakes where willows kissed their reflections; being absorbed into rock and the moist wormy soil . . . and rising out again, remade. She tended Oakholme’s rambling grounds, speaking softly to the shy elementals who peeped down from the branches as she worked. She began to redesign the neglected rose arbor, taken with an idea to create a sacred space. Always when she passed the Crone Oak she bowed and greeted the Greenlady, even though Luc teased her, and the dryad herself was rarely in evidence. It was a matter of respect.
At eighteen, she left school with good grades and a place at horticultural college. Jon was now at art college in Nottingham and rarely seen, yet Rosie’s obsession lingered. She couldn’t bear the thought that she’d never have a renewed chance of what should have been.
One day in August Lucas came running to find her, breathless. “I just met Jon in the village,” he said. “He’s having a birthday party next Saturday. Everyone’s invited—all his mates from college, school and the village. D’you want to go?”
Rosie nearly said no. She was annoyed at herself for the wave of yearning, heart-pounding excitement that swept over her. If Jon wanted her, he knew where she lived and he’d had an open invitation for the last four years. She did not need to humiliate herself at a wretched party. But, she thought helplessly, but . . . what if this time . . . ?
Every time she entered Stonegate, it was different. This time, the house became a dim and smoky morass of adolescents, lit by candles and saturated with the odor of spilled beer. Guests were dancing in the great hall, sitting on the stairs and along the galleries. Factions spilled into bedrooms; there was a ghost-story session in the rooftop conservatory, wreathed in incense. There were a few locked doors, but no sign of Jon’s parents. Mel, Faith and Rosie all had to agree, it was a damned good party.
Apart from the elusiveness of Jon.
Wherever Rosie went in the house, he was elsewhere. She no sooner entered Jon’s presence than he had somewhere more exciting to go. She ended up sitting on a rug in his bedroom, drinking cider from a bottle, her ears full of trance and indie music. She started college soon. This could be her last chance with him. Certainly, at this rate, her only chance to see the inside of his bedroom.
How drunk would Jon have to be to find her suddenly enticing? How drunk must she be to fling away caution and grab him?
Faith was beside her, sipping lemonade and clearly out of her depth; Mel was in a corner kissing a boy she’d known for quite some minutes. Others were sprawled over the floor and bed. It was too noisy to make conversation. The bedroom was dark, but misty light spilled from the corridor and she saw Jon out there, talking intently to someone, half a dozen student friends around him. She felt a bite of envy. What did they do in their secret circle? Smoke pot, talk politics, play truth or dare?
Rosie saw that the person talking to Jon was Lucas. She rose unsteadily to join her brother, but in the four seconds it took her to reach the corridor, they had all vanished.
Lucas saw Rosie in the doorway, her hopeful face appearing from the darkness, and he wanted to wait for her; but it was too late
. Jon and the others, oblivious, were herding him away and the moment when he should have said something was lost.
Outside, the night was summery, with a hint of cool breeze. Jon led them through tangles of rhododendron and birch to a hilltop where a volcanic crag thrust from the heathland grass. Below the rocks lay a shallow, ridged dip in the ground. The night was sourly fragrant with bruised grass and bracken. Oak trees shivered against a midnight sky.
Lucas knew this place. Freya’s Crown. In the dip, Jon threw down a red velvet cloth and sat cross-legged on it, his hair flowing over an Indian patchwork top. He looked like a beautiful shaman seated there, ethereal and self-contained.
The others were four lads and three girls from Jon’s college, all human as far as Luc could tell. Some had musical instruments. Warily Lucas sat in the circle, facing Jon. There was a hush, a sense of ceremony. Jon produced a packet of brownish, leathery disks; mushroom caps. Placing them on a red enameled plate, he took out a penknife and cut each one into thick slices. Then, holding the plate as if it held communion bread, he offered it around. Lucas watched the others taking slices, holding the stuff on their tongues with closed eyes. When the plate reached him, he hesitated.
Jon’s gaze met his. “Go on,” he said.
“What is it?” He immediately felt idiotic, marked as a virgin.
“Dream agaric,” said Jon, his eyes intense and compelling. “It grows in the Dusklands. It opens the corridors of the imagination. It’s strong stuff. Are you scared?”
“No,” Lucas said quickly. He took a thick slice and slipped it into his mouth. It tasted musty and bitter, its texture rubbery with a hint of sliminess. Wincing, he chewed and swallowed quickly. It went down whole and he almost threw it back up again. Only pride and panic kept it down. Everyone sat cross-legged, eyes closed, waiting for it to take effect. Fighting nausea, Lucas waited with them.
A chalice of syrupy wine came around, followed by a foul-smelling joint. Jon began weaving leafy twigs into a crude shape: a spiral threaded through a pentagram. One of the students was playing a flute, while a spiky-haired girl tapped a rhythm on a bodhran.
Nothing happened. Lucas frowned, feeling trapped in this absurd situation and wishing Rosie were there. He didn’t know why Jon had taken to him. They’d met on the stairs and Jon had begun talking to him with a steady gaze—as if he’d suddenly registered Luc’s existence.
Nothing happened, but he noticed how soft the ground felt, friable as if he could feel all the space between the atoms, like soil fragments on a cobweb. He lay down to feel it more fully. The sky was the face of a goddess with blue-black skin and star-streams for hair. Estel, Lady of Stars, staring down at their tiny forms exposed on the hillside like a sacrifice.
Lucas suddenly understood the Dusklands as a state of altered awareness, as opposed to a physical Otherworld. Of course! He couldn’t fathom why he hadn’t got it before. The humans around him became indistinct, but Jon glowed red and gold, like a religious icon.
Freya’s Crown was huge and bright, covered in silver snail trails. The trails were runes glimmering on the surface. Everything around him went shadowy but the rocks grew more solid and he began to hear their insides moving. Huge cogs were grinding like millstones, like Russian dolls, one inside the other.
Lucas felt that grinding inside his body. The whole crag was turning, drilling the earth like machinery chewing through rock. He felt the ground fall away as the churning vortex sucked him in. With a scream he fell right through the Dusklands, down into a chasm of fire and steaming ice . . . down through an endless corridor of arches, until he saw a vast, mausoleum door of granite waiting for him. It was so real he saw the spirals and runes engraved on its surface. He was going to smash into it—and when he did so, he knew he would die.
White light crackled around him. He felt the heavy shudder of the door cracking open—and that was worse. There was something terrible behind it, gigantic and so dazzling that it blinded.
He felt the immense pressure of a flood straining to break through—only the flood was not water but shadow, utter darkness and blinding fire. As he fell towards it, he knew he must will the door closed again, even knowing the impact would kill him. Death was preferable to letting that hideous force burst into the world.
He fought, shadow-boxed, twisted his fingers in magical gestures but nothing helped and he could only fall, helpless. Then out of the whirling chaos a pale and terrible face surfaced. It was far away but huge—glaring at him with blazing, mad eyes, reaching for him—all he knew was that he must slam shut the Gates before this horror burst through—and suddenly it was not far away after all but human-sized and close. “Lucas,” a voice hissed in his ear.
His whole self turned inside out on a scream as he saw that the terrifying face looming over him was that of Lawrence Wilder.
He came to, lying flat on a couch. He was gasping and dizzy, his stomach sore. Sapphire Wilder was bending over him, wiping his mouth with a damp cloth.
“It’s all right, Lucas. Can you hear me? Open your eyes, that’s it.”
Lucas managed to sit up. His limbs were softened wax. The walls around him glowed red and gold. He had no idea where he was, but it didn’t matter. He’d closed the Gates, hit the hard surface, and lived. Sapphire gave him a glass of water and he drank, coughed, and drank again. He was shivering violently.
“Good lad.” Sapphire turned away and said, “Has he taken something?”
Jon was a vague figure near the door. He shrugged. “Only if he took it before he got here.” He looked levelly at Lucas as if daring him to contradict.
“Funny, I didn’t think he was the type to take drugs.”
“Me, neither,” said Jon. “He was drinking cola. Maybe someone spiked it.”
“That would be extremely serious,” she said, turning back to Lucas. Her hands with their long nails were warm on his, and she exuded a fresh, exotic perfume. “How are you feeling, dear?”
“Okay,” said Lucas. He knew it was essential not to admit anything. The world felt as sharp as glass. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wilder.”
“I’m thinking you should see a doctor.”
“No! No, I don’t want my parents to worry. Honestly, it was just cider. I’ll be fine.”
“Cider? Jon, this party was supposed to be soft drinks only. We agreed.”
Jon rolled his eyes. “Some of them smuggled it in. For heaven’s sake, we’re all over eighteen.”
“Lucas isn’t. Anyway, that’s not the point. We had an agreement; I kept out of the way as long as everyone behaved.” She looked at Lucas with her head on one side, her lovely mane hanging over one shoulder. A gem at her throat held a universe of tiny rainbows. “Still, we do these foolish things as teenagers and there’s no need for parents to know every humiliating detail, is there?” She stood up. “Jon, would you watch him while I make tea?”
Jon stood to one side of the door, thumbs hooked in his jeans, until his stepmother had gone. Then he came to the couch and looked down at Lucas with dark, intense eyes. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know.”
“It made me sick the first time I tried it, too,” Jon said with a twisted smile.
“Sorry,” said Lucas, compelled to apologize for acting in an uncool manner. “I feel a right idiot.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He squatted down by the arm of the couch, his voice falling to a whisper. “My father cannot find out about the mushrooms. Promise you won’t tell anyone. He’d go ballistic. Promise?”
“I promise,” said Lucas, startled. “I wouldn’t, anyway.”
“You don’t know him. He’s terrifying when he’s angry. He’s forbidden me to even think about the Gates, let alone try and see what’s on the other side. If he found out what we were doing, he’d kill me.”
Lucas looked at him, startled. At the same time he became mesmerized by the luminosity of Jon’s face and the incredible bronze-copper texture of his hair. “That’s awful.”
Jon shrugged.
“We have to be careful, that’s all.”
“Is that what we were doing?” said Lucas. “Trying to look through the Great Gates?”
“Yes, you know, through visions.”
“You didn’t say.”
Jon grinned. “I know. It’s better that way, then people don’t make things up to impress me. So, what did you see?”
Lucas hesitated. He liked Jon and wanted to please him. “It was a muddle. I was falling. The rocks turned silver and opened up to let me through, but I hit this massive stone door . . .” He didn’t want to describe the nightmare. It made no sense, and the fear was too raw. “It sounds lame.”
“No, that’s really interesting. You saw more than I ever do, even though I’ve tried and tried. There are forces that want to stop us and we must learn to see through their illusions.”
“And your human friends . . . do they see anything?”
Jon shrugged. “Not really. Humans haven’t got the wiring. Y’know, they’ll report seeing all sorts of exotic garbage, but nothing real.”
“Why do you bother with them, then?”
He gave a one-sided smile. “I enjoy being a guru. It makes them feel special. And you never know, one of them might have a genuine revelation. But we’re different, Luc. We’re Aetherial so we’re tuned in; it’s already there inside us, waiting to be channeled. We can try again sometime, if you’re up for it?”
“Here’s tea,” Sapphire interrupted brightly, bearing a tray. Jon rose, putting a fingertip to his lips. “Anything else you want, Lucas?”
He smiled, grateful for her attention. “Just if you could find my sister, please?”
Rosie looked at her watch. Half past midnight. Mel and her latest conquest had vanished, Faith had fallen asleep in a corner and Rosie was frankly bored. There were a few necking couples and semicomatose loners around the room; no one she could actually talk to. Apparently it was expected for guests to stay overnight, but Rosie wished she could go home. How annoyed would Jessica be if she walked down the hill in the middle of the night and left Lucas behind? She sighed. Perhaps she would find Jon’s party crowd in the conservatory, but knowing her luck, this would be the night Sam chose to come home and she’d meet him, or something worse, in a darkened corridor.
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