The Wildwood Arrow

by Paula Harrison

  Ten years before

  The fire burned bright. It reflected in the little girl’s eyes and cast a glow across her face. She crouched on the rug with her thumb in her mouth, watching the flames dance.

  A woman in a red dress hurried over and wrapped a blanket round her, whispering, “Be really quiet for me, baby.”

  Then she snatched up the child and ran out into the darkness. Shadows moved in the air, circling the roof of the house. There was a faint swoosh before the night broke into splinters of lightning and the little girl hid her face.

  The woman kept running until she reached the river. Then she took away the blanket and slid the child gently into the water.

  “I love you, Laney,” she told her daughter. “You’ll be safe here. Daddy will find you.”

  The child smiled and water drops sparkled on her eyelashes. She sank under the surface, still smiling, with her hair and dress floating out around her. She knew her mummy was right. She was safe here.

  The water felt like home.

  A small drop of water hung on the end of the kitchen tap, shimmering like a liquid diamond. Laney reached over the sink and let it trickle on to her finger. It balanced there, perfectly round and cold against her skin. Her heart beat a little faster and she knew right then that she had to try out her faerie power again.

  “Are you daydreaming, Laney?” Kim, her stepmum, bustled over with the breakfast bowls and mugs and stacked them up next to the sink. Laney’s little stepbrother, Toby, galloped in with his arms spread out like an aeroplane and circled round her legs.

  “Slow down, Toby!” said Kim, smiling. “No flying in the kitchen!”

  “Me be Laney!” Toby gabbled.

  “You’re being Laney?” Kim looked puzzled.

  “Woooo!” Toby ran twice round the kitchen table and then back to the sitting room, his arms still out wide.

  Laney hid a smile. Toby had once seen her fly when she’d been in faerie form. Luckily no one was about to believe a two-year-old. She let the water drop fall off her finger. “Maybe he needs a good run around. You could take him to the park right now. I don’t mind staying here and doing the washing up.”

  “Thank you, honey. That’s really kind.” Kim placed a light hand on Laney’s shoulder. “Toby! Where are your shoes?”

  After a few minutes of rushing about and shoe-finding, the front door closed and the house was silent. Laney turned back to the sink. She could have tried this in the bathroom upstairs, but the basin was small and last time there had been a lot of spray. Her dad had guessed what she’d been up to and told her not to try out her powers in the house – though not to try them out at all was what he really meant. He ought to understand. He was a Mist faerie himself, no doubt using his power over water in his job as a plumber. The magic ran in families, so why didn’t he see that she needed to practise her new-found skills, to learn to control them?

  The sun came out from behind a cloud and shone through the window. Laney glanced at the clock. She had fifteen minutes till she had to meet Fletcher and Claudia by the river. Pressing her lips tight, she twisted the tap just enough to let out a thin trickle of water.

  She would start with something small like making the water spurt sideways for a moment. Something easy.

  She stared at the line of water. Go sideways. Just for a second.

  The water carried on falling in a straight line and Laney felt a bubbling frustration. She could do this. She knew she could. All Mist faeries could make water move. She stared harder. Come on – do it now. Go left.

  Still nothing happened. Frowning, Laney put her hand under the cold water, letting it spill through her fingers. The water grew suddenly hot and tumbled faster and faster from the tap. She thought she heard the stairs creak. Wasn’t her dad out? Her eyes flew to the window, looking for her dad’s van, but it wasn’t parked in its usual spot in the lane. She was sure he’d gone to work.

  Steam rose from the falling water and the tap began to judder. Hot water spurted over the worktop and the breakfast bowls, and then right across the window. Laney grabbed for the tap and turned off the flow. Sunlight glittered through the water drops on the window as they made dozens of zigzagging watery paths down the glass. Her T-shirt was splattered with water too. She couldn’t believe it had gone wrong. It was the same every time. First nothing would happen and then the water would go wild. She wiped her forehead, which was damp with spray.

  The kitchen door opened. Laney’s stomach lurched but she met her dad’s look defiantly. There were gold circles around the pupils of his eyes, just like hers. Gold-ringed eyes were the mark of a faerie – a mark that only other faeries could see.

  He surveyed the room, a serious expression on his face, and then he came in and shut the door behind him. “Laney?” he said quietly. “Why is everything wet?”

  Laney blinked, suddenly thinking of faerie folklore. Why couldn’t things be like the old days, before faeries lived with humans? In those days she would have been free to work magic, instead of having to hide her powers and pretend to be human.

  She turned away from her dad’s gaze. “I was just … I told Kim I’d wash up for her.” She seized a tea towel and started mopping the worktop and the window.

  “I’ve told you already – you can’t behave like being a Mist faerie is one big experiment. You’re drenching the place! You’ve got to stop.”

  “Fine.” Laney shoved the plug into the sink and switched on the tap, squirting in too much washing-up liquid and filling the sink with bubbles.

  “Are you actually listening to me? You can’t use your powers just because you feel like it. Life isn’t like that. We live in secret and people mustn’t find out about us. Think of the consequences of your actions.”

  “Fine!” Laney grabbed a mug and washed it fiercely. She glanced at the clock again. Ten minutes till she had to meet Fletcher and Claudia.

  Her dad caught the look. “Are you seeing Fletcher and Claudia again today?”

  Laney put the mug upside down to dry. “Probably. It’s still the summer holiday. My summer holiday.”

  “I know it is.” Her dad stepped closer. “But listen, you’ve got to be more careful about being seen together. Peter Stingwood told me yesterday that he thought you were spending too much time with Fletcher. He said that you’d better not get in the way of the Thorns, whatever that means. Everyone’s been so jumpy since the flood and now the tribes trust each other less than ever.”

  Laney thumped another clean mug on to the side. The tribes. It was always the tribes. Three different faerie tribes lived in the village of Skellmore. The Thorns, Greytails and Mists had very different powers and they didn’t exactly make an effort to get along. Stingwood was a Thorn Elder who had never liked her. The warm water grew hotter beneath her fingers.

  There was no way she was going to stop seeing Fletcher and Claudia, but she couldn’t tell her dad that. They were hunting for the Myricals – five faerie objects of great power, each one sacred to a different tribe. They’d been searching for them ever since the Myrical belonging to the Mist tribe – the Crystal Mirror – had caused a flood that had nearly washed the whole of Skellmore away. But the hunt for the Myricals was a secret and it had to stay that way, because the evil Shadow Faerie was looking for them too…

  The water fizzed around her hands and she jumped.

  “Laney, just look at what you’re doing!” Mr Rivers exclaimed. “It’s as if you don’t even realise you’re using your powers half the time. You have to keep a clear head – don’t lose control.”

  “Let me learn how to use my skills properly then!” Laney burst out. “You promised you’d talk to the Mist Elder about me going to training. I can’t even be a proper member of the tribe unless I’ve done
that.”

  Her dad sighed. “The Mists didn’t even choose their new Elder till last week and things still haven’t settled down properly. I just don’t think it’s a good time for you to get involved.”

  “But when will you ask? It’s bad enough that my powers Awakened so late and everyone treats me like a freak!” Laney’s voice rose. “Just because you don’t want anything to do with the tribes—” She broke off, seeing from his face that she’d gone too far.

  “Don’t talk to me like that.” His face stiffened and he folded his arms. “There’s a lot you don’t understand. You have no idea what the tribes are capable of. That’s why I’m warning you about being seen with Fletcher and Claudia.”

  “We’re just hanging out. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?” Laney washed the last plate and yanked the plug out. It was time to go. Claudia and Fletcher would be waiting.

  “That’s not how some of the faeries will see it.”

  Laney pulled down the handle of the back door. “I’ll be back by teatime.”

  “Laney…”

  “Don’t stress. I’ll be careful.” She swung the door open before her dad could say any more and headed down the side alley into the narrow lane. One side of Oldwing Rise was lined by a quiet row of cottages. A thick wall strewn with ivy ran along the other side and marked the edge of the churchyard. Beyond the wall was the grey stone church of St Dunstan with its pointed steeple soaring into a boundless blue sky.

  Laney crossed the lane and let herself into the churchyard, taking her usual shortcut round the side of the church. She knew a rippling light would be playing across the walls of her house behind her, like sunshine dancing on the sea. It was a sign, visible only to other faeries, that Mist faeries lived there. But she didn’t look back. A simmering feeling built up inside her. Why couldn’t she get the tap water to do what she wanted?

  Her throat tightened. Most faeries Awakened into their powers when they were quite young, but her Awakening had only been six weeks ago, on her twelfth birthday. Since then, she hadn’t managed to prove her powers at all. In fact, everything she did seemed to convince everyone that she was useless. Maybe her dad didn’t believe she could be a proper Mist faerie either and that was why he hadn’t bothered asking Frogley, the new Elder, to train her. Maybe he was just trying to save her from disappointment.

  The only good thing had been finding the Crystal Mirror. She’d held it, feeling it overflow with Mist magic. For weeks she’d thought about that feeling and now she was determined to show everyone that she had a lot more power than they knew.

  Laney’s middle finger prickled and she rubbed it thoughtfully as she walked through the churchyard. She still had a red mark from when she’d burned herself on a candle weeks ago. It tingled sometimes, especially when her hands felt hot.

  Clouds covered the sun, casting the churchyard into gloom. Laney followed the path round the corner past tilted gravestones. She could still see traces of the flood here and there – the dark line near the bottom of the church wall where the water had reached. She shouldn’t be spending so much time on her own worries when there were Myricals to find. She sped up, until she heard voices and saw Craig Mottle and Jack Turney – human boys she knew from school.

  They were coming out of the minimart with plastic bags and sniggering at something. Laney watched them swagger down the High Street. Craig got a fizzy drink out of his bag and took a long swig before giving a huge belch. Both boys sniggered again.

  As they passed the Lionhart Pet Shop a pair of gigantic green cat’s eyes on the wall blinked and a long growl made the ground tremble. Laney smiled to herself. Craig couldn’t hear the growl. He couldn’t see the huge cat’s eyes on the pet-shop wall even though he walked past them every day. He couldn’t see the shimmering white-pink cloud of sprites flying over the park or the mysterious shape of the faerie ring near the old oak tree. The whole village was full of magic signs that humans couldn’t see. Laney remembered the first time she’d walked along the High Street after her eyes had gained their gold-ringed enchantment and she had seen her ordinary-looking village as it really was, with faerie power washing over the streets.

  Laney reached the churchyard gate that led out on to the High Street. She thought she’d managed to slip by unnoticed until she heard Craig’s voice.

  “Ooh, it’s Laney Rivers!” He blocked her path, stopping Laney from getting through the gateway. Jack Turney stood behind him, grinning.

  “Can you move, please?” Laney glared at Craig. Of all the boys from school, Craig topped the list of the most annoying.

  He grinned before taking another swig of his drink. “Make me!”

  “Move, Craig!” Laney felt the frustration build up inside her – about her dad, about her powers that wouldn’t work and the Mist training she wasn’t getting. She glared at Craig’s freckled face and his bottle. The feeling boiled higher, and suddenly a stream of fizzy orange shot right up Craig’s nose.

  “Ugh!” Craig stumbled backwards, orange liquid dribbling over his cheeks and chin on to his clothes.

  “Oh, man! That wasn’t cool,” said Jack Turney. “Look at your T-shirt.”

  Laney dashed past them and took the path that led to the river. She grinned to herself. It wasn’t just that it served Craig right. Finally she’d managed to get some liquid to obey her command. Maybe her powers weren’t totally useless after all!

  By the end of the afternoon, Laney’s arm was aching. She raised the small grey stone to her eye for the thousandth time and looked through the hole in the middle. All she could see was sheep and grass. Keeping the stone to her eye, she slowly checked the rest of the field, looking for any shimmering patches on the grass or in the air. These were spell vibrations and spotting them might lead to the discovery of a Myrical.

  Behind Laney, Fletcher Thornbeam stood waiting, his hands in his jeans pockets and his face as still as rock. Claudia Lionhart was perched on top of the fence with her legs curled beneath her and Dizzy, her thin black cat, by her side. Laney knew her dad was right. There would be trouble if their tribes saw the three of them spending so much time together.

  Claudia yawned. “Are we done yet? Seriously! Myrical hunting is exhausting and we’ve been searching all day.”

  “Nearly done!” Laney cast her eye across the furthest part of the meadow. More sheep grazing on more grass, and a rusty bucket in one corner – that was it. She lowered the stone with the now familiar lurch of disappointment. Six weeks of this. Six weeks of nothing.

  She turned, meeting her friends’ gold-ringed eyes. “There’s nothing here,” she told them.

  Fletcher pulled out a map, unfolded it and scribbled a note on it. “That’s OK. We can tick this place off and move on.”

  Claudia sprang smoothly down from the fence and Dizzy leapt after her. “We should skip these other fields. They’re all the same.”

  “We can’t,” said Fletcher. “We need to check them, just in case.”

  “It would be a lot quicker if we could change to faerie form,” said Laney, thinking of the sudden rush of power that came with the change. “We could do a sort of fly over and check out each field that way.”

  “It might give the humans a bit of a shock,” Fletcher said drily. “And we don’t want people knowing what we’re doing, remember?”

  “I know – I wasn’t really serious.” Laney fidgeted. “It’s just … getting annoying doing it like this.” She didn’t really mean annoying but she didn’t know how to explain it. The simmering feeling had returned. If she didn’t do something to relieve the pressure she felt like she might burst.

  “We should mix things up by searching in town,” said Claudia. “A change would be good.”

  “We can’t just flit from one place to the next.” Fletcher studied the map again, before folding it up. “We have to do this one bit at a time otherwise we’ll miss somewhere out.”

  “Maybe we should split up and I’ll cover town,” said Claudia.

  “I don�
��t think the Myricals would be hidden in Pennington,” said Laney. “It’s not out of the way enough – what if a human found one of them or something?”

  “I know we probably won’t find anything in Pennington but at least we won’t die of boredom. There are shoe shops!” Claudia’s eyes glinted. “We’ll be back at school in three days and I’ve hardly done any shopping this whole summer.”

  Fletcher raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you think finding the Myricals is more important than buying shoes?” He clicked his fingers, making a tree branch swing aside, and then climbed the fence into the next field. Laney followed.

  “Are we seriously expecting to find anything here though?” Claudia vaulted gracefully over the fence to join them. “The olden-day Elders hid the Myricals – the most powerful magical things in existence – and we expect to find them among the sheep dung?”

  “They’re just as likely to be here as anywhere else,” said Fletcher stubbornly.

  Laney’s simmering feeling grew stronger. She wondered if it was the bickering between Fletcher and Claudia getting on her nerves. They fell out at least once a day, but as Fletcher was a Thorn and Claudia was a Greytail that was only to be expected. She pushed a wisp of hair away from her face. “I just wish we had some idea of where to look … a hint or something. I bet the Shadow faerie isn’t searching like this. I bet he’ll go straight to them!”

  The sheep and bird calls sounded loud in the long silence. Claudia looked at Laney and then looked away again.

  The words Shadow faerie hung between them all like a heavy cloud.

  Fletcher broke the silence. “We haven’t seen any sign of the Shadow for weeks and if Gwen doesn’t know any more about where the Myricals are, then he probably doesn’t either. He didn’t know where the Crystal Mirror was, did he?”

  “No, but I can’t help wondering…” Laney tailed off. She felt she shouldn’t mention the Shadow faerie, as if it might bring him here if she talked about him. A picture rose in her mind of that dark hood masking his face and his black wings stretching wide… She gulped. “I just can’t help wondering where the Shadow is, that’s all. He could be anywhere and no one else seems worried. No one saw him except us and Gwen, and the tribes never believed he existed in the first place.”