by Amy Wilson
‘How did you do that?’ Dylan asks the magician, once the commotion has died away a little and we’re sitting on the edge of the jetty, Helios lying between us. ‘Who are you?’
‘Fabia,’ she says, tucking her hands beneath her legs, her feet swishing in the water. ‘Should you need a label. I don’t wear them well. It wasn’t so hard to reunite you; he’s been searching for you.’ She smiles. ‘He doesn’t like the one he came in with; he’s not the kindest. It was the least I could do . . . the rest is up to you. You are on the right track,’ she assures us, her dark eyes sober. ‘And your ring will be a guide, my dear. But there is far to go, through the forest and the fortress itself. Io keeps her deepest secrets in there; I am sure you will find what you need once you get inside. Use your magic – you will need it – and remember that, while there are tricksters in here, there are many of us who are with you, in spirit if not body.’
‘Why are there so many who are happy to stay? They seem to love Io!’ I say.
‘Some of us had a difficult time in that real world of yours,’ she says. ‘For some, it was easier to be in here, easier to hide, to play with magic unencumbered by rules or consequences. Io is very good at that! For others, it was lonely. All of this –’ she spreads her arms – ‘it is beautiful, yes? And my mind believes in it, ninety-nine per cent. But that one per cent . . .’ She sighs. ‘That one per cent is lonely here, with only illusion for company. And I never did get the smell of the cherry blossoms quite right. I will be glad to be back in my rightful place, my dear, and even those who have become spoilt here will be fine once they are home again. They will learn to be, and that is right. We who have magic must also have some control of it! So, my dears, have faith. Bring the whole house down!’ Her voice rumbles slightly as she says it – as if she speaks for many – and the blossoms whirl faster, wilder, until she jumps up with alarm.
‘But quick!’ she says. ‘Io is on the prowl. She has left the way clear! Flee, my warriors, into the lair, through the black ice that her magic has become, and the mists of her illusions, and into the heart of the sun!’
She stamps her foot, the world shudders, and we’re already running to the glass wall, to the place where it swims. Helios jumps around us, and her words echo in my ears as we push ourselves through.
Three moons glow in a twilight sky, making an arc over the tangled forest that fills this new world. The largest is all swirls of silver and grey; the middle one darker, shot with bursts of amber light; and the smallest is yellow-gold, pitted and streaked with shadows.
‘Stick to the glass,’ Dylan hisses behind me. ‘If we just follow it round . . .’
But something is calling to me, with a song that catches me inside and makes the red stone in my ring gleam bright. My feet move of their own accord to the edge of the trees, and Dylan is saying something, his voice rising in protest, but I don’t stop. I keep going, though my skin is all static and goosebumps.
The branches writhe, and shadows creep. The whole place twists and tangles, and the pale wood is weeping. I try not to touch anything. It feels like a trap, like a spider’s web.
‘Clem!’ Dylan’s voice is thin. It comes from a million miles away.
I force myself to turn away from the song’s call and back to him. He’s forcing his way through a snarl of dense undergrowth, Helios stepping gingerly behind him. I don’t remember coming through it and, as I watch, it thickens between us, trees leaning in, creaking as their branches spread above his head.
‘What’s going on?’ he shouts, wincing as spools of thorn-covered vines whip over the hard, moss-covered ground.
It’s my mother’s song and it pulls at me, but we’re being separated, and I can’t let that happen. The brambles settle as I get closer, and I stretch out to help him over the twining branches. A howl shudders through the woods as the thorns lose their grip on him, and Helios ruffs as he scrambles over to join us, pricking his ears. Shadows twist through the branches, and creatures scuttle, their glowing eyes blinking at us from high overhead and in the deep, dark undergrowth.
‘What was that?’ Dylan asks, his breath steaming.
‘A wolf?’ I shudder. ‘I don’t know. We should keep going.’
We stand back to back, turning, searching for a clear path. I twist the ring on my finger absently as the lilt of the song flutters at me, drawing me in, and the stone lights up with a glow that makes my whole hand a torch.
‘Where do we go?’ Dylan asks, staring at the light.
I point to the middle of the forest, where the trees get darker, and the strange shifting light of the moons cuts through the scattering clouds. Just visible over the treetops is a slice of darkness – a black tower that rings with a song only I can hear.
‘There,’ I say. ‘That’s Io’s lair. That’s where my mother is.’
He looks from me to the tower, his fingers deep in Helios’s curling golden coat. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I can hear her,’ I say. ‘Her song.’
‘It could be Io,’ he says. ‘Calling you, trying to trick you and trap you.’
‘It’s a risk.’ I bite my lip. ‘You don’t have to come, but this is the right way, Dylan. Fabia said something about Io’s lair being the black ice of her magic, and there we’d find the heart . . .’ I try to remember the order, through the constant pull of the song. ‘I’m sure Ganymede called my mother her “dearest heart”.’
He nods, and I can see that he’s not convinced, but he doesn’t back away. He stands by my side, looking at the tower.
‘I can feel her, Dylan.’
‘OK,’ he says. ‘Let’s do it. We’re not defenceless.’
‘No, we have our guard dog.’ I smile, as Helios tucks himself behind Dylan.
‘And we have magic,’ Dylan says. His eyes shine in the flicker of the ring’s light.
I feed the ring with everything I have inside me until it’s a small sun, and we stagger along, half dazzled by its light, through the trees that snarl and wither away from us. They thin gradually until we’re out on a broad plain where a black river rushes and strange night-glowing flowers fill the air with a heavy scent. From here the tower is a glittering black house, a twisted gothic palace with balconies, tiny bridges, gargoyles and grotesques climbing every wall, and great sweeping steps that lead up to a huge porch with carved pillars. Spires stretch to the sky, sharpening to needle-points. It is a negative image of Ganymede’s house: the absolute inverse of that gleaming white shard. Io has made her own, with all her magic, and it is so dark it’s hard even to look at it for long.
Overhead, the three moons are bright and full as lanterns. My ring’s bright glow softens as I tread forward, but as I get closer I can feel something else. Something dark and powerful that reaches out and searches the night, hungry for blood. Something that twists through my mother’s song and makes my head swim.
I brace myself to face whatever might be in there, but Dylan shouts behind me, and I spin round just as a lone wolf breaks free of the forest, silver fur standing up on edge along its spine, teeth bared, launching itself straight at Helios, who has rushed forward with a frenzied bark.
‘No!’ Dylan shouts as the two skirt each other.
The wolf is just as enormous as Helios, but there’s a ferocity in its mirror eyes that I’ve never seen in our dog. It darts and snaps at Helios, who growls, lowering himself, preparing to leap at the wolf.
Dylan spreads his arms wide and looks up to the sky, and the strands of cloud that spool around the moons begin to gather, getting thicker, swelling with rain. With the flick of a hand, he bursts the clouds, and rain pours down around us, fat drops that splash against the hard ground, turning it into a shallow pool beneath our feet. The wolf backs away from Helios, staring up at Dylan with a deep, throaty growl, and launches itself at him.
‘STOP!’ I shout.
The stone in the ring dazzles, and everything stops: the wolf in mid-air, Helios rushing up towards it, and Dylan leaning away. The trees, the song, the
rain – everything stops. I take a breath, standing beneath three strange moons in a frozen world, and the effort of the magic swells inside my head until I can’t stand it any more. I shove Dylan, as hard as I can, just to buy us a moment. He crashes to the ground and slides through wet mud, away from the wolf, and then I let the pressure go. The song rushes back in, the dark strand still running through it, and the wolf falls slavering to the ground, its target now metres away.
Dylan scrambles up, shivering and covered in mud, Helios rushing to him, and I stand over the wolf, steeling myself, just hoping I’ve worked it out right. When it rises to its full height, I look it square in the eye.
‘Go home,’ I say, and the ring glows, my magic a new song that washes through the world. The sky prickles with stars, the moons pulse and the trees draw back. The wolf stares at me for a long moment, and then turns tail, heading into the forest.
‘How did you do that?’ Dylan demands, slithering over the mud to me.
‘Magic.’ I smile, my heart thudding in my ears, fingertips numb from the shock of it all.
‘But how did you know it would work?’
‘It’s Io’s wolf,’ I say. ‘I saw how it reacted to your magic, and I’m Io’s family, so I figured it would recognize me if I used my magic. At least, that it would follow an order . . .’
‘That was a big risk,’ he says, frowning and looking from me to the black house that looms over us. ‘What if it hadn’t?’
‘Then I’d be wolf pie, and you’d be here alone with Helios. So it’s a good job I was right.’
He stares at me. ‘You are not who I thought you were.’
‘Neither are you.’
‘I mean, when we were at school, before all this . . . sometimes it was like you weren’t there at all. Like you were sleepwalking. And now we’re here, where I feel like I’m dreaming most of the time, and you’re stomping through it all like you’re a queen!’
I frown at him. I never thought of it as sleepwalking, but it’s true that I wasn’t always in the real world. All the missed rounders balls, all the times I was glared at for staring, that’s what was happening: thinking, watching, imagining.
‘I’m not saying it’s a bad thing,’ he says.
‘It’s easier here,’ I say, turning to look back at the house. ‘Easy to see where there’s danger, or to tell if someone is on your side. At school, people are more complicated.’
There’s a war going on in my blood. My mother’s song is calling so sweetly, filling me up and making my footsteps sure as we head towards the tower. But winding round it like the brambles in my mother’s garden is that other tune, a thread of fear, with everything we’ve already seen, and what we might still face. My own doubt, snaring me.
‘OK?’ asks Dylan as I hesitate.
The dark tower looms over us, and the whole place seems to reverberate with power.
‘Yes.’ I clench my fists at my sides and put my foot on the first step. Ice flashes through me and I bite my lip, whispering a warning to Dylan, who flinches and turns pale as he joins me. ‘Are you sure you want to come with me?’
‘Want isn’t quite the word,’ he whispers. ‘But yes. I’m coming.’
Helios, however, isn’t budging. He sits on the scrubby ground just in front of the steps and won’t move, no matter how hard we cajole.
‘We can’t leave him again,’ Dylan says. ‘What do we do?’
‘We’re not leaving him,’ I say. ‘We’re trusting him to watch our backs. ’
Dylan gives me a withering look, and I shrug.
‘What can we do? Stay with him, Dylan, if that feels right. I’ll be fine.’
I turn my back on both of them before I can change my mind and make my way further up the staircase. Every footstep is like the strike of a bell, and every step takes at least three paces. Three strikes, three flashes of ice threading through me. I keep my eyes on the massive porch at the top. One step away, and there’s a trap. I remember Ganymede talking about traps and wards when I first went into her house. It didn’t feel those, though. These traps, they’re like teeth.
Lightning strikes, spidering in veins down the entire building, bursting into fire all around me. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, forcing it away as my mother’s song swells, and when I look up the last flickers of the lightning are spiriting away across the black stone. My skin is warm, and Dylan is by my side, breathless, his hair standing on end.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
‘You lit up!’ he says. ‘I ran to pull you out of the way. You were just standing there with your eyes closed, and you just –’ he spreads his hands – ‘lit up like a torch!’
‘It was her,’ I say, my eyes filling up. ‘My mother’s song, Dylan. I could feel it inside me.’
‘It was you,’ he says.
‘What about Helios?’
‘I trust him,’ he says. His voice is a bit wobbly, but there’s grit in it that was never there before, and we open the huge front door together.
She is here. She has to be here.
The floor inside is an ice rink. I try to keep my footsteps soft and small as we dart through the vast, echoing hallway, because Io will be on her way. She will have felt the strike of lightning, she will be here any moment, and the knowledge is like wire in my chest.
‘This place is a nightmare,’ whispers Dylan, his eyes wide as we head up the stairs, our hands on the shining banister.
There are paintings everywhere of night skies and rose-gold dawns breaking over wild seas. Of wild horses, and tumbledown castles. Mist starts to gather around our feet.
‘Are you sure your mother is here, Clem?’
I swallow hard and nod, hoping, willing it to be true.
Up on the next floor, there’s a full-blown fog, clinging to the walls and whispering along the ceiling. The pictures light up as we pass, like windows into strange, alien worlds of shadowy landscapes and blue moons, and tiny figures in the distance, beckoning us in.
‘This is not good,’ Dylan says with a shudder. ‘She can see us, Clem. All these paintings are like eyes – she knows exactly where we are!’
His eyes are wild, and I remember when I first found him, how terrified he was of her. How cruel she could be.
‘She won’t win. Not now. Not between your magic and mine.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘I’m not saying it’s going to be easy,’ I say. ‘But don’t you feel it, Dylan? There’s so much power here, and it’s not all on her side. Three moons in the sky, three sisters, and now you and me. She’s only one person, Dylan, no matter how magical.’
Clementine. The song is stronger, wilder, now. She’s here; I’m so sure of it. I stalk onward, through winding corridors where the paintings show scenes of three young sisters, weaving on looms, reading by candlelight.
‘Clementine,’ Dylan whispers, his brown eyes flashing. A blast of light behind us bleaches out everything, just for an instant. ‘She’s here!’
‘Clever things, aren’t you?’ Io says, butterflies spinning up into the air as we turn to see her come. Her voice is a heavy gold bell ringing out against the fog, cutting through everything.
‘What did you do?’ I whisper.
‘What do you mean, my dear? Why are you here? It’s brave, I’ll grant you, but perhaps a little foolish, to venture straight into the heart of it all.’
‘Where is she?’ I ask. ‘What have you done with her, Io? Why have you kept her here so long?’
It bursts out in a torrent that rolls through the corridor, sending sparks flying, cracks running up the walls.
Dylan stares at me, but I can see the blue spark of magic in his eyes, and I know he is fighting hard just not to get caught in her web. I’m on my own here. I should have kept running. I should have kept my mouth shut.
‘Clementine,’ she says, a smile on her mouth. ‘So it is true. You are kin!’ She clasps her hands together. Her hazel eyes are warm and full of joy. ‘Our dearest really had a daughter, an
d now you are here! You are come!’
‘I am come to get her,’ I hiss. ‘And take her away from you!’
‘Oh, you are like her,’ she says, smiling wider. ‘I knew it! I wondered the first time I saw you, and then Ganymede was fluttering about in a panic talking of babies long-grown, and now you are here, and just as heartful as your mother, and your rage is like fire!’ She pauses. ‘But I cannot let you go, my dearest. Nor your mother. You are both too bright. Ganymede may not have you. You belong here with me!’
She reaches out, the butterflies beating in the air around us, and I thrust out my hand too hard, too sure.
‘Stop!’
And everything does. Io is a statue, her hazel eyes watching intently even as the rest of her can do nothing. Dylan is frozen, caught by her side. Particles that shone in the bright of a thousand golden candles are static in the air, the flames unflickering.
I stopped it all.
‘Good,’ I say, and before the spell is broken I run up the narrow staircase to the tower room that I know will be there, round and round, all the time caught in the singing web of my mother’s voice, until it opens up before me. The moons shine through a glass domed ceiling, and in the centre, surrounded by pictures of forests and bright, sparkling cities, is a single gleaming brass pedestal, a single snowglobe, glowing like a small sun.
Within the globe is another house, this one built of old stone, ramshackle and dilapidated, but vibrant with colour. Every window is alight; every balcony a riot of flowers. The gardens teem with life, small birds spiral from place to place, and on the top step, between two blooming trees, sits a woman. She is smiling as she sings her sad song. She doesn’t look up. She doesn’t notice me at all.
Now she’s in front of me, and I can see her breath on the glass. After a lifetime of imagining, I could almost reach out and touch her, but she’s more lost to me than ever. Why did I imagine she’d been stolen from me in some fairytale disaster? She isn’t missing me. She’s a dream caught in glass. My dream.
