The Enchanted Quest

by Frewin Jones

  The curtains were closed, but yellowy street light seeped through the cracks. The room smelled odd: the air was warm and stuffy and sweet, but sweet in the wrong way—sickly sweet. A single figure lay under the bedcovers, the face lost in shadows.

  A sense of unease made Tania’s heart beat a little faster. Tension was growing in her stomach.

  A racking cough broke the stillness of the room. The figure moved restlessly under the covers. Breath rattled in a throat.

  “Dad?”

  Tania stepped forward, her feet coming up against the end of the bed. She moved to the side and padded softly along toward the head.

  There was another cough—unpleasant and painful sounding.

  “Dad?”

  The figure jolted and an arm reached out. A moment later the bedside light snapped on. Tania winced, narrowing her eyes against the sudden light. Her father lay staring up at her.

  “Oh, Daddy!” she whispered, kneeling at the bedside. “What’s wrong with you?” His face was gray and sweaty, his jowls unshaved, his hair disordered from the pillow. She took his hand. It was hot and damp.

  “Anita?” he breathed.

  She didn’t correct him. For sixteen years she had been his daughter Anita—Tania had only existed for him for a few short weeks.

  “Yes,” she said gently, pressing the back of his hand to her cheek. “What’s all this, now?” She forced a lightness into her voice that she didn’t feel. “And I thought you were getting better, you silly man.”

  He smiled—but it was such a strange smile that it frightened her.

  “I’m better now,” he said, his fingers tightening on her hand. He lifted his head but let it fall back again with a sigh. “It’s so real,” he said, gazing at the ceiling for a moment then looking yearningly into her face. “So real. Almost like you’re really here.”

  She didn’t know what to say. The smells of the room, the feel of his hand in hers, the sound of his voice: all these were proof to her that she was not dreaming—but how had she come here? How could she possibly be here?

  Last memory. Getting into a cool bed in an upstairs room in The Blessèd Queen. A room warmed by mellow firelight that flickered in a small stone hearth. Blowing the candle out. Pulling the covers over her ears. Hearing the creak of Connor’s bed from the next room. The snap and crack of the burning logs. Elias Fulk’s feet on the stairs going down. Then the deep silence of a Faerie night.

  And then . . . ?

  A high, dulcet voice singing. Opening her eyes to find herself standing upright in a well of pitch darkness.

  He thinks he’s dreaming me. Is he? I can’t really be here—the ways between Faerie and the Mortal Realm have been closed down. I can’t be here. And yet . . .

  And yet . . . The Dream Weaver had brought her to her sick father’s bedside.

  Her father coughed again. He reached for a box of tissues on the bedside table. Wadded-up, used tissues were scattered around on the bed, on the table, and on the carpet.

  Tania pulled out a tissue and gave it to him. He coughed and wiped his mouth, balling the tissue in his fist.

  “I was told you were getting better,” Tania said coaxingly. “What are you playing at, Dad, getting worse? That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

  “The doctor has seen me,” he replied breathlessly. “I’m on about twenty different kinds of antibiotics, and your mother is watching me like a hawk.”

  “I should hope she is!” Tania glanced at the bedside clock. The red digital display showed 1:35. “Where is Mum?”

  “She’s sleeping in your room,” her father replied, trying to rise on his elbows. “That way I don’t keep her awake all night with my coughing and spluttering— which means she’s much better able to fuss over me all day the way she likes to!”

  “She needs to,” said Tania, pressing him gently back. “You’d never look after yourself if it was left up to you. Honestly, Dad, you must be the world’s worst patient. If it was up to me, I’d whisk you off to hospital and get you properly sorted.”

  “Don’t worry, she’s already threatened me with that. If I’m not better in a day or two, she’s getting the doctor back in.” He paused, his breathing loud and ragged in his throat.

  Tania was about to say something when he looked at her. “I wish you were really here, Anita,” he said.

  She felt tears welling. Oh god, Daddy—so do I! You’ve no idea!

  “Let’s pretend I really am,” she said with a smile. “I’ve got some good news. And you really, really have to believe this, Dad!”

  “Go on,” he said. “I’ll give it a try.”

  “The illness in Faerie—it has absolutely nothing to do with you.”

  He gazed blankly at her.

  “Dad? Did you get that? You had nothing to do with the baby dying.”

  He let out a long breath. “Are you certain of that?”

  “Yes.”

  A single tear slid from the corner of his eye. “Are other people sick?” he asked.

  She bit her lip, fighting back her own tears. How much could she tell him? What should she tell him? “Yes, they are, Dad—but we think we’ve found a way to cure the disease. We’re working on it right now.”

  His hand squeezed hers. “And then you can come home. . . .”

  No, Daddy. I can’t ever come home. The ways between the worlds have been closed down forever. Oh god, it hurts so much.

  “We’ll see,” Tania murmured, her throat constricted with the agony of deceiving her father. “Maybe the King will find a way. . . .”

  “Your name is Tania!” her father said suddenly, his eyes widening. “You’re not my Anita—you’re called Tania!” He pulled his hand away, his face full of fear and alarm. “What are you doing here? You can’t be here.”

  “No, Dad—it’s me,” Tania said urgently. “It’s really me.”

  But a new coughing fit took him. He sat up, pressing tissues to his mouth as he coughed, his shoulders heaving and shaking, the whole bed trembling with the violence of the attack.

  Tania got up, trying to put her arms around him, trying to find a way to help, to comfort him. But when she reached for him, her arms went right through him.

  “No!” She leaned over him, her hands passing through his body, passing through the pillows and the bedclothes. “No!”

  She felt dizzy. Disoriented. The bedroom waltzed around her. She heard the door fly open. Her mother stood there, her back to the hall light—a silhouette in a blue dressing gown.

  “Clive?” She ran across the room.

  “Mum!”

  Tania felt a coldness in her heart as her mother moved through her.

  “Mum! I’m here!” Tania shouted in desperation. “Please! You have to see me! You have to be able to hear me! Mum! I’m right here!”

  Her mother was leaning over her father, rubbing his back as the coughing subsided. Then he drew the tissues away from his mouth, and Tania saw there was blood on them, ugly and black in the dim light.

  “Okay, Clive.” Her mother’s voice was steady and soothing, but it was the voice of panic kept under tight control. “We’re done with this now. Try to keep calm and quiet if you can. I’m going to call for an ambulance. We’ll soon have you feeling better. Just lie back if it’s more comfortable. I won’t be a moment.”

  She rearranged his pillows and helped him to lie back on them. His face was ashen, running with sweat. There was blood on his lips and fear in his eyes as he looked for a moment into Tania’s face.

  Her mother turned and walked quickly back to the door. Tania followed her, snatching at empty air. “Mum!” Her voice rang in her ears. “Mum!”

  Tania lunged forward, desperate to make some kind of contact with her mother. But the floor seemed to turn to smoke under her feet, and she fell forward into a vault of blackness.

  She heard a sweet voice singing far, far away. . .

  “You rise at the opening of our eyes

  We dance at your first earthward glance


  Friends convene; none of them will ever leave

  We will be young forever and a day

  “Morning Star, we touch hands in the pale mist

  Morning Star, the night is done . . .”

  Chapter Six

  Tania awoke with the lurching sensation of falling. She gasped, fighting the bedcovers. She threw them aside and sat bolt upright.

  She was so disoriented that she thought she was in her own bed in Camden. She scrambled out and felt cold wooden boards under her bare feet. Reality swamped her like floodwater.

  She was in Weir.

  Her Mortal parents were lost to her again—and after so short a glimpse. Grief weighed down on her.

  She could still hear the echo of the Dream Weaver’s song in her head.

  It had not been an idle dream. It may not have been real in the way that the wooden boards under her feet were real—but it had been true! She was certain of that.

  Anger was building in her. She had been given so little time in the Mortal World when she went to fetch Connor. She had to get to Beachy Head and step with him and Rathina into Faerie before the barriers came down between the realms. There had been no time to visit her parents, and for them to know she was in London but that they could not meet would have been too cruel for everyone. But she needed to find out how her dad was. So she had asked Connor to call. A casual catch-up call from a family friend. Hi, how are things with you guys?

  That was all he had to do. And he had told her everything was fine.

  He had lied to her.

  She dragged a blanket from the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. The fire had contracted to a haze of burning embers licked by tiny white flames. She took a candle to the fire and lit it.

  She left her room and walked the narrow corridor to Connor’s room. She lifted the latch and stepped inside.

  It was a room similar to her own, small and dark and lit by the subdued flames of burning logs in the fireplace. She walked across the cool floor, holding the candle low over the bed.

  Connor was on his side asleep. She almost wanted to hit him. She almost wanted to beat him with her fists as he lay there oblivious to her pain and rage.

  She gripped his shoulder and shook him.

  “You liar!” she spat, bringing the candle light close to his face. “Why did you lie to me?”

  He awoke with a shudder, blinking dazedly into the candle flame. “What . . . ?”

  “My dad isn’t better at all,” Tania snarled. “He’s worse. He’s really sick. You must have known that. Mum must have told you.”

  Connor sat up, pushing the candle away from his face. Hot wax splashed on his wrist and he grimaced in pain, rubbing at it with his other hand.

  “Get a grip, Tania.” His voice was irritated. “What are you talking about?”

  She stood up, keeping her voice level. “The Dream Weaver sent me another dream,” she said. “I was back home in Camden. Dad was really sick—coughing up blood.”

  He looked incredulously at her. “You had a nightmare and it’s my fault?” he said. “How does that work?”

  “Don’t mess with me,” snapped Tania. “Tell me the truth. What did my mum say when you phoned her?”

  Connor let out a sigh. “She told me your dad was no better. He’d been to the doctor and he was on antibiotics—but so far they hadn’t kicked in and he was getting worse.” He held up his hands. “I just assumed they were still figuring out the best drugs to try him on. That’s how it works. You prescribe the obvious antibiotics first then try others if they don’t do the trick.”

  “He was coughing up blood, Connor!”

  He paused, his brows knitting. “They should get him to hospital. It sounds like full-blown pneumonia.”

  “Mum was calling for an ambulance when . . . when the dream—the whatever it was—ended. You should have told me he was no better! I trusted you to tell me!”

  “Oh, really, is that what happened?” Connor asked sharply. “Because the way I remember it, you were desperate to be told your dad was all right so you could skip meeting up with your folks without feeling bad about it.”

  Tania stared at him. “That is so not true!”

  “Then I’m sorry,” he said, his voice conciliatory now. “I did it for the best, Tania. I wanted to save you agonizing about what to do. You’d already told me you didn’t have time to visit them—I figured it would be easier for you if you thought your dad was okay.” He raised his eyebrows. “I thought he would be okay.” He lifted his hand and took hers. “I did it for you, Tania.”

  She swallowed, her anger draining. “It wasn’t up to you to decide whether I could handle it or not,” she said quietly, aware of the heat of his hand holding hers. “You should have told me the truth.”

  “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” His thumb stroked the back of her hand. “Always the truth from now on between us, okay?” He held the finger and thumb of his free hand a fraction apart. “Except for little white lies now and then,” he said with a crooked smile. “Just to keep things interesting.”

  She looked at him. “You think this is funny?” she asked. “My dad’s on his way to hospital and you’re making jokes?” She pulled free of him and walked to the window. The night was like a black sheet pressed to the outside of the glass, showing the reflection of her face and the room behind her. She pulled the blanket close around her shoulders, wishing she had given herself time to get dressed.

  “He’ll be fine,” Connor insisted, getting off the bed and twining a blanket around his waist. “Trust me— I’m a doctor. Almost a doctor, anyhow. But I know what I’m talking about, Tania. I really do. He’ll be just fine.” He frowned. “Now don’t get mad—but are you absolutely sure the dream was . . . you know . . . real?”

  “I heard the Dream Weaver’s voice,” Tania said, staring at his bare-chested reflection in the glass. “She was singing. It was almost . . .” She shook her head. There was something about the song that had been maddeningly familiar . . . as though she had heard it before, a long time ago.

  “And you . . . you trust her, yeah?”

  “Why should she send me dreams that aren’t true?”

  “Maybe she’s working with that Nargo guy,” Connor suggested. “We have only her word for what’s really going on here.”

  That was a nasty thought. Tania could feel the ground slipping away under her feet as she considered the possibility of the Dream Weaver being false.

  “I do trust her,” she said after a pause. “There’s something about her that . . . oh, I don’t know . . . something.” There! It was gone again. That sensation of familiarity—of instinctive confidence in the woman’s ethereal presence.

  “Fair enough,” Connor said, coming beside her at the window. “If you’re sure, then I’ve got no problems with her, either.” He looked into her face. “So? What’s the plan?”

  “Same as before,” Tania replied. “This doesn’t make any difference to what we have to do.” Her spirits lifted. “Over the sea to Alba and Erin and Tirnanog and fingers crossed we can actually do what’s needed.”

  His eyes were piercing. “You’re totally amazing, Tania, do you know that?” he said.

  “Am I?” she returned his gaze, glad that all the recent aggression seemed to have faded, but suspicious of his glib words.

  He nodded. “It can’t be easy being you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re sixteen, Tania. You should be goofing off with your pals in Camden Market,” he said. “You should be out buying shoes and racking up the bill on your cell. You shouldn’t have to be doing all this crazy stuff.” His fingertips brushed the hair from her cheek. “It’s not fair.”

  “Fair?” she murmured. “What’s fair got to do with it? And you’re no better off than me. Stuck in a world that drives you nuts.”

  “Yeah, but at least I know who I am,” he said, moving closer. “You’ve got two different people inside of you. A goofy, gangly kid called Anita, and”
—his voice lowered—“and a beautiful fairy-tale princess called Tania.”

  “Some people might think that’s a dream come true. . . .”

  “Some people might wonder which fairy tale we’re in,” he whispered. “I’m hoping for Sleeping Beauty.”

  He leaned in, his mouth moving toward hers.

  He’s going to kiss me.

  She was startled by this, but for some reason she did not immediately move away.

  It’s only a kiss. . . . Why not . . . ?

  A fist hammered on the door, and it was flung open in a wash of yellow lantern light. Elias Fulk stood in the doorway, his face urgent in the sudden brightness.

  Tania pulled away from Connor, relieved by the interruption. She had nearly made a bad choice there.

  “Rise now and make haste!” called the innkeeper. “Horsemen have arrived in Hymnal by black of night— horsemen from Caer Liel. Word has it that they come on Lord Aldritch’s command and they seek three strangers traveling in outlandish garb—a man and two women. They mean to seize you and take you to the earl. Come quickly or all will be lost!”

  Chapter Seven

  Tania left Connor to scramble into his Mortal clothes. She followed Elias down to the room where they had first met. Clothes and provisions were waiting for them by the glowing fire; clearly the landlord had had the foresight to gather them before going to his bed. As Tania came running in, Rathina was already there, pulling on a dark green gown.

  “Thus ends a peaceful night’s slumber!” growled Rathina, her eyes shining in the firelight. “I would we had the time to teach these night owls a lesson in courtesy, sister!”