Clare frowned. It seemed the child was beginning to discover how the Unworld worked.
By the time she had walked down to the shore, they were already across, the King like a somber shadow in a new mask of dark holly.
Chloe was grinning; in the gloom she almost walked straight into Clare. “Oh, it’s you,” she said.
“What have you done?” Clare looked curiously up at the caer; already its whiteness was greening over. Trees were thrusting through its sides. “Where are they?”
“Inside.”
“But your brother—”
“Don’t talk to me about my brother!” Chloe snapped. “That’s my business. He and your druid want me to go back with them but I won’t.”
“Won’t?”
“I’ve told them.” She looked flushed, triumphant. Then demanded, “Haven’t I?”
The King nodded. He stood under the trees nervously, biting his nails. He glanced at Clare and then down. “It was her own idea,” he muttered.
Clare nodded, uneasy. “I see. So you’re going farther in?”
The girl shrugged. “Why not?” She jerked her head at the King. “He says there are seven caers, each stronger, and if I can reach the seventh, not even Vetch can force me to go back. No one can.”
“That’s the heart of the Unworld,” the King said earnestly. “The Chair itself.”
Clare nodded. “You don’t need to tell me. But Vetch will try everything to stop you.”
“Not if you deal with him.” The girl came up to her eagerly. “I thought that was what you wanted to do.”
“I thought so too.”
The girl’s eyes were bright; starlight glittered in their darkness. “So what went wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
Chloe looked at her scornfully. “Adults,” she said, “are pathetic.” She marched away through the marshy hollow of silver birch. The King scrambled behind and Clare followed, noticing how the earth rose up to meet the girl’s feet, keeping her dry.
“You say Vetch stole everything from you.” Chloe turned abruptly. “Well, that makes him just like Rob. He’s stolen from me, though he’s too wrapped up in himself even to notice. He stole time, and people’s attention from me, and respect, and maybe even love. Just by being bloody Rob. So now I’m stealing all the same things from him. You could do that with Vetch. Couldn’t you?”
Clare tucked the ends of hair behind her ears. There was dirt under her nails; the peat of Darkhenge. She cleaned it out thoughtfully.
“I could.”
“And that would stop him catching me.” Chloe came up to her. Her eyes were bright; leaves drifted into her hair. She smiled a sly smile. “Will you do that, Goddess? That’s what he calls you, isn’t it? Can I trust you to do better this time?”
Clare didn’t answer. Finally she said quietly, “I used to think I was Queen of the Unworld. Now I’m not so sure.” She stepped back, chilled at the girl’s cool composure.
Chloe narrowed her eyes. Then, deliberately, she touched a twig. A leaf uncurled from it, opened, spread, crinkled, and died, all in seconds. “Decide,” she whispered.
Clare stared at the withered fragment. When she spoke again her voice was icy.
“Find the next caer. Leave Vetch to me.”
“Oh, that’s good.” Chloe half turned. “Because if it came to a struggle, I might have to do something bad like that to him. And I wouldn’t want to.”
She strode away, ducking under branches. The King hurried after her. As he slipped between the trees, he gave one glance back at Clare.
Even with the mask on, the look seemed strangely helpless.
They sat in silence. The shell room was a ruin, the shadows of the trees immense over them.
“I just don’t understand it,” Rob whispered.
He had said it before. He couldn’t stop saying it. His dismay was as difficult to grasp as a slippery snake.
Vetch took a candle stub from the bag and lit it. He dripped wax on a thick root and jammed the candle in. As the yellow light steadied and grew, he said gravely, “You must have known.”
“I swear I had no idea!”
“Come on, Rob. Not even from the diary?”
Rob held his breath. Then he put his hand in his pocket and tugged it out. The pages were bent now, the purple felt pen smeared from the forest damp.
He stared at the clotted pages. “I haven’t … didn’t want to read anymore.”
“Then you should.”
He didn’t move, so Vetch reached out gently and took the book from him; opening the cover, he separated the damp pages, peeling them apart.
Rob felt he should take it back, that he was betraying Chloe, but then amazement came again in a flood, because who was Chloe? This spiteful creature? The girl in the bed? The toddler on the swing? He was beginning to think he had never known her at all.
Vetch gave him a sideways look. “I think you should hear some of this.”
“No,” he said, sullen. But Vetch’s calm voice was already reading.
“‘August thirtieth: Rob’s exam results. All As, except Art which was A star. Mum and he are dancing around the kitchen. I want to be SICK—’”
“She’s just a jealous kid.... Just a kid…”
“‘April tenth: She’s taking him into Swindon tomorrow to buy him a new laptop. They asked me to go but I’m sure they were relieved when I said I was going out on Callie. They didn’t really want me around. I had the story all typed up but I didn’t want to show it to her while Rob was there. It’s worse when he doesn’t make fun, when he’s earnest and says things like, “Oh that’s lovely, Chloe,” and then winks at her over my head and when I turn around she’s smiling. I hate that. Can’t they see? Do they even know I exist?’”
Vetch’s dark eyes looked at him over the book.
Rob turned away. His mind was blank; he had no thoughts. There was only a cold dread that had started to creep in, like the tendrils of fog that were rising in the chamber of trees, the damp clouds of his own breath.
Finally he whispered, “What story?”
“It seems she was writing a lot of them.” Vetch turned the pages. “Poems too, I’m glad to see, and very good for her age. Imaginative. Spirited. She seems to have been collecting them together.” He paused, reluctant. “Then there’s this—no date:
‘I will never, never forgive him.
‘It was lying on the kitchen table, all ready. Mac had said he wanted to read some—I’d told him part of the plot, and I’d put it there ready. When I heard them all come in I ran down. He’d propped a painting on top of it. They were all standing around admiring it.
‘I stood at the back and didn’t say anything, and then when they’d gone I pulled out my notebook and there was paint on it. Dark green paint. On the cover and soaked into the first three pages, so that you couldn’t read them.’”
Helpless, Rob rubbed his hands through his hair.
“‘All the words were lost.’” Vetch’s voice sounded quietly appalled. Through his misery, Rob shivered. “‘All the sounds and meanings, all the words, so carefully chosen. Words that could never fit together again just like that, ever, ever again. And when he came in and saw me crying he said, “Oh, sorry, Chloe. Did your notebook get messed up? I’ll get you another one, don’t worry.” Another notebook. Another girly, pink, fluffy notebook with giggly girly guff inside. That’s what he meant. That’s what he thought—’”
“All right. All right!—” Rob jumped up and slammed his palm against the bole of an oak. “But I didn’t know! How could I know? She never said. She never told me she was writing anything important, anything that meant something!”