by James Fahy
“You brought Peacekeepers onto the mountain,” Jackalope said accusingly. “You forced me from my home. And now you bring me here.”
“To Erlking, yes,” Karya said, again with a reasonable tone. “Best place to heal, safest place to be … arguably. You were injured by our enemy. Badly injured. You should have died.”
Robin was staring at Henry, his best friend's face was a mixture of pure panic and outrage. It made anger bubble up in his stomach.
“I won’t ask again,” he said through his teeth. “Drop Henry, or I will make you.”
Jackalope glared imperiously at him, silver eyes flashing. “Make me?” he spat. “You couldn’t tie your own shoelaces on the Gravis Glaciem. How do you think you can make me do anything?” He sneered at Robin. “Stupid child.”
The rage erupted in Robin, flashing up through his veins like boiled mercury. Enough was enough. He threw out a hand, intending, with cold, detached precision, to cast a hard Galestrike at the other Fae, a javelin of invisible air to knock him off balance and onto his back.
What erupted from his palm, however, was not an invisible jet of air. A fat black whip of churning darkness, like inky smoke, shot across the room, the lashing tentacle of some deep-water beast. It was partly air, shot through with glittering shards of ice, making its sinuous form glitter like the night sky as it flew across the room, a striking cobra of pure mana.
The air in the room crackled and hissed as Jackalope stumbled backwards, Henry twisting out of his grip just in time to duck and throw himself to the floor before the blast caught the side of his face.
The black, whip-like coil roared like a thunderhead as it caught around Jackalope’s throat, lifting him from his feet. It flung him hard across the room, slamming him bodily into the far wall, making the rainy window rattle and plaster dust rain down in chunks from the old ceiling. Robin held the boy there a second, then, too shocked at what he had done to sustain the cantrip, he dropped his hand, flinching back as though he had touched a hot stove.
The mixture of smoke, churning air and water dissipated, and Jackalope was dropped to the floor like a rag doll, hitting the boards with a loud thud.
“Bloody hell, Rob,” Henry gasped, rubbing his throat as he got to his feet shakily.
Jackalope was also standing, one hand propped on the wall and the other massaging his own neck, which looked red and chaffed. His bare shoulders were covered in plaster.
“Scion,” Karya whispered. “What did you do?”
Robin didn’t know. His heart was hammering, and he felt weak and watery. He hadn’t meant to hurt the other boy, just to knock him over. At least, those were the thoughts in his head now. A moment ago, to his shame and horror, he genuinely hadn’t cared if Jackalope got hurt. He hadn’t even cared if Henry had gotten caught in the crossfire. He stared down at his hands, which were shaking. They looked like alien things to him. Treacherous.
“Robin, your eyes are green,” Henry said in wonder.
“What is the meaning of this?” A voice from the doorway made them all look up. Even Jackalope didn’t make a move, but stared at the figure of Aunt Irene, who, having followed Robin and Woad, had just arrived at the room, Mr Ffoulkes in tow.
Her sharp eyes took in the scene. The tumbled bedsheets, the soot-covered floor by the fire, the cracked plaster on the walls and the hunted-looking feral Fae half crouched in the corner.
No one spoke.
“I see,” she said after a moment. She looked to Jackalope. “I am glad you are awake. You are at Erlking Hall. In the mortal world, more or less.” She glanced at the other three. “These here have been your nursemaids. Watching over you and keeping you from harm. You are a guest here, for as long as it suits all parties. Stand down.”
Jackalope glared at her, still looking like a wild animal, although being thrown against the wall appeared to have taken a lot of fight out of him.
“You. You are not Fae,” he spluttered. “If this is Erlking–”
“I am the guardian of Erlking,” Irene cut him off sternly, her voice, though still calm, could have sliced steel. “And all in it. I will not have …” She glanced around at the dust still falling from the ceiling, “… boisterousness of this kind.” Her eyes settled on Robin. “Even from … especially from, you.”
Robin didn’t know what he could possibly say to make the situation better, so he said nothing. He wanted the ground to swallow him up.
“Don’t blame, Robin,” Henry said gruffly. “Blame Snow White here. He’s the one who went all mental and tried to strangle me.”
He stared hotly over at Jackalope, who glared back, uncowed.
“And I want my bloody pyjamas back!” Henry added, a little childishly.
“Only maybe not right this second,” Karya added quickly.
“I do not care who started what,” Irene said, bringing their attention back to her. She fixed Jackalope with a firm look. “I am Panthea, yes. I am Eirene of the Hours. I will have order here. No harm shall come to any at Erlking while I watch over it.” She noticed he was still rubbing his neck. “No serious harm, that is. You are no prisoner here. You are a guest. If you wish it, your things will be returned to you immediately and you are free to leave.” She raised a finger to silence the Fae, who had opened his mouth to speak. “However,” she added. “Before you decide what you want and how you want it, you will do me the courtesy of speaking with me. Alone.”
“You can’t keep me here,” Jackalope said quietly. His eyes flicked over to Robin. There was high colour in his white cheeks. “You shouldn’t have brought me here.”
“They didn’t,” Irene said simply. “You were brought here by the enemy of the Fae. By the enemy of all of us.”
He looked back to her, confused.
“And I do not know why,” Irene said, cutting off his question. “But I believe it may be in your best interests, as well as ours, to find out. Don’t you?”
She waved a hand invitingly at the corridor. Jackalope stood uneasily, and warily hobbled across the room towards her. “We will talk,” he said grimly. “I promise nothing but that.”
“I ask nothing but that,” she said, nodding slightly. She beckoned to Karya. “Karya, please be so good as to take Henry down to Hestia if you will. That bruising around his throat looks sore. Perhaps a poultice? Or at the very least some tea with honey.”
Karya nodded, and she and Henry followed Irene and Jackalope out of the door.
“Robin,” Irene said, turning at the door. She looked at him very thoughtfully and carefully for a moment. She must have been able to see the discomfort on his face. “Please clear up this mess before you join us.” She indicated the room. “And do not look so downcast. If there is one thing I can tell you, it is this. There is no mess made, that cannot be put right, if one is willing.”
Robin nodded. He wanted to apologise to Jackalope and to Henry, but they were already gone, ushered out of the room by the adults. He heard Henry and Karya’s voices as they passed along the corridor.
“I don’t get it. I really don’t get it. Why does he even want him here? He’s a menace. Unstable. After that lovely cuddle from a sweaty psychopath, I trust the paranoid maniac even less.”
“You really don’t see anything do you?” Karya replied wearily to Henry, as their voices faded away. “He’s Robin. Robin without the luck that he had. Robin was lucky. Luckier than most Fae. He could easily have been Jackalope instead.”
Robin stared around at the now empty room, feeling a little empty. Was that true? Did he feel responsible for Jackalope because his life, the death of his brother, all the years in the camps of Dis … It could easily have been his own fate?
Robin was an orphan. He had never known his parents, and his only loved one, Gran, had died, leaving him to figure his way as best he could. He had never thought of himself as lucky before. But now, in comparison, he felt embarrassed that he had ever had a moment to feel sorry for himself. Compared to some in the Netherworlde …
“Well done, Scion,” he muttered to himself as he began to gather bedsheets from the floor. “Way to earn someone’s trust, eh? Throw them against the wall. Nice move. He’s bound to want to join the family now.”
He shook his head, trying not to think about what had happened with his temper and his mana as he cleaned and tidied.
When he had finally got the room in some semblance of order, there was a ‘whoomph’ behind him, making him turn in surprise.
Sitting in the fireplace, in a brand new and quite expansive cloud of soot, was Woad. He was grey and black with grime from the chimney, his yellow eyes staring out of the darkness of his own face as the cloud settled on the floorboards.
“Moth got away,” he shrugged.
*
Robin and the others didn’t find out what was discussed behind the closed doors of Aunt Irene’s study. She and Jackalope were in there for a long time, during which Robin and the others sat together in the hallway, drumming their fingers. They couldn’t even hear muffled voices. The rain was coming down in sheets now, darkening the late afternoon sky into an unnaturally early twilight. Karya had lit some candles to chase away the gloom, their flickering light bouncing off the panels, and Woad sat curled up on the deep windowsill, arms wrapped around his knees and frowning moodily into the weather. He was still sore about his failure to capture the moth.
Henry and Karya had other things on their mind. Robin’s outburst.
“But … that was the Tower of Darkness,” Karya said. “I’d bet Henry’s life on it.”
Henry gave her a sidelong glance. “Why my life?”
“Well, I’m not certain enough to bet my own,” she explained. “But the point is, Scion, you haven’t learned any Darkness magic. How did you even do it?”
Robin had no idea, as he explained for the hundredth time. He hadn’t meant to do it at all. He’d just been so annoyed. And it hadn’t been pure darkness, there had been air and water mixed in there too.
“But you totally pucked out,” Henry pointed out. “I mean like, full puckage almost. I saw your eyes, Rob. They were bright green, and your hair was almost white.” He shrugged a little. “No horns or anything, granted, but still. I’ve only ever seen you like that when you touched one of the Shards of the Arcania. How did you hulk out without one?”
“I don’t know!” Robin insisted, frustrated. “Look, I’m not kidding, I really have no clue. It … it felt like I wasn’t in control. Like the Puck was just … taking over.” It was hard to explain. “It was like I was being pushed aside and out of the way inside myself.”
Karya and Henry both gave him odd looks. Henry looked impressed, but Karya was frowning.
“You do realise, Scion,” she said. “This ‘Puck’. He’s not a real person. It’s just a name you made up, right? When you channel mana like that, you’re still you.”
Robin looked at the flickering candles. “I’m not so sure,” he said. “It doesn’t feel that way. Think about it. I can randomly read ancient languages I’ve never learned. I’ve solved puzzles I had no business knowing the answers to. I knew how to summon you with Eris’ flute. There’s all kind of weird things that have happened since I came here that I just don’t have any answers for.”
“Puck-based phenomena,” Henry nodded. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then grinned. “But it was still wicked how you flung him across the room like that, even if I did nearly lose half my face in the process.”
“It was not wicked,” Karya argued piously. She paused, considering. “Well, maybe it was, but not in the way that you mean,” she allowed. “It was dangerous.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Robin ran his hand through his hair, still agitated. “What if I’d properly hurt him? Or Henry? Or any of you?”
“We’re made of strong stuff, Pinky,” Woad said from the windowsill. “Don’t worry about that. Worry about what the old lady is going to do when she gets you alone. Fighting in Erlking!” He sounded a little gleeful at all the excitement and scandal.
“It’ll be a poker chasing for sure,” Henry nodded, looking sympathetic.
But as things turned out, Robin was not chased with a poker, or any other blunt instrument. Nor was he really reprimanded in any other way.
When Aunt Irene came to find them, she announced that after consideration, Jackalope had decided he would leave Erlking, as soon as his full strength had returned. This may take a week or two, and in the meanwhile, there was to be no fighting, no arguing, and certainly no magic. Mr Drover, she advised them, had headed into the village to pick the boy up some suitable mortal-world clothing, as he was too tall to wear anything of Robin's, or even Henry's. Hestia was preparing a temporary room for the boy, to which he had already retired, and did not, for the present, wish for visitors.
The only mention Irene made at all of Robin's outburst was to speak with his tutor and arrange extra mana-management lessons in the blue parlour, to assist Robin with his control. Robin groaned at this. There was truly nothing more boring that mana-management. But he had the good sense to know he had gotten off lightly, so his groan was very quiet indeed.
Unwelcome guests in the house, a brooding and solitary Fae locked away upstairs, and extra lessons. October was going to be hard work.
FIVE’S A CROWD
September blew and blustered its way wildly into October, and the grounds of Erlking Hall eventually turned to gold. Papery leaves dressing the woods in the old hall like gilded crepe.
For the first few days of the month, no-one saw hide nor hair of Jackalope. He kept almost exclusively to his room and they were all on strict instructions from Aunt Irene to leave him well alone while he adjusted to his new surroundings. He was not used to company, or indeed civilisation, she explained. Henry’s father agreed with this rule. “You can’t bring a wild fox into your house and expect it to be a labrador,” he said sagely one morning at breakfast, pointing a triangle of toast at Robin and the others, a wise, bread-bearing sage. “It’ll tear up the furniture and pee on the floor, and it’ll be your fault, not its.”
Everyone agreed that nobody wanted torn furnishings or damp floors, so to speak.
Robin’s increased mana-management lessons with Calypso were excruciating. The nymph had draped the already stifling Blue Parlour with swathes of relaxing and soft silk, taking away every hard edge and corner, so that entire room seemed more like a diffused cloud than a study room. The air reeked thickly of calming incense and Robin tried his hardest to meditate, or whatever on earth he was expected to do during these sessions. If Calypso herself was concerned with his outburst of uncontrolled mana, she didn’t show it, though that came as no real surprise to the boy. For most of these sessions she sat curled up on a chair behind the sofa on which Robin dutifully lay, usually quietly reading a book to herself while the hour of the lesson ticked away. Robin suspected she enjoyed the peace and quiet, as it was one of the few places in Erlking where she was safe from the unwanted attentions of the ever-insistent Ffoulkes. From time to time, she chuckled to herself at the whale music playing softly in the blue parlour. Robin suspected the whales had said something amusing.
Of Karya and Woad, Robin saw little during the day. Now that he had been sighted, Woad was on even stricter instructions to stay discreetly out of the way, despite Mr Ffoulkes asking after his whereabouts at every possible opportunity. Karya spent much time in Erlking’s library with Wally, the enchanted stag-headed suit of armour who had seemed to have fallen into the unofficial role of librarian. She was busying herself looking up anything she could about the nineteen twenties and the British Library, eager to shed more light on the mystery of the bookplate after Robin had told her the slender facts Ffoulkes had uncovered for them.
As for Henry, as October rolled on, he came up to Erlking only intermittently. Robin found this irritating and quite childish. He was clearly avoiding running into Jackalope, his conspicuous absence an obvious snub to their reticent guest. But Henry was supposed to be his best friend and Robin could
n't help but feel a little abandoned. The dark-haired buy was forever ‘busy’ or ‘taking extra lessons down in the village’. He seemed to have gotten a bee in his bonnet about something or other, although he was cagey enough about what he was filling his time with. Robin wasn’t going to ask if Henry wasn’t going to tell him. It was fine during the week, when Robin was busy with practical wind and water casting in the Atrium, or duelling in the ballroom or the pool. But ever since Robin had arrived at Erlking, Henry had always been there at weekends. Now he seemed engaged elsewhere, or when he did turn up, late more often than not, he seemed tired and distracted.
Robin couldn’t help but worry that their friendship had somehow weakened. Although he didn’t admit it, even to himself, the worry lurked in the back of his mind that maybe Henry had made some better, more normal friends, away from Erlking. Was that what he was spending his time doing? Playing computer games and football and other normal human things with someone else? Avoiding telling Robin to spare his feelings. The idea of that made Robin feel worse, like he was some housebound invalid who needed to be pitied and carefully handled. He wondered if Henry’s visits, when they did come at all, were nothing more than a duty for him.
With the others occupied and a lot of time to himself between lessons, Robin took to walking the grounds alone, kicking through great drifts of crunching brown leaves with his head tucked into a scarf, the cold nipping at the tops of his ears. It was bitterly cold out, but he felt cooped up in the house, despite its size. He had read his books from cover to cover, and there were only so many times he could polish Phorbas. He needed the fresh air to clear his head.
He wondered and worried about many things. If he might dream of Peryl again, or what the moth meant. Why he kept focussing on the sisters' dark prophecy that he would be buried, or when next he might feel himself slipping and losing control of the Puck.
