‘Is this what he usually looks like?’ Zara whispers.
‘Yes, when he’s not using a glamour to disguise himself.’
‘What about you?’ she asks, staring me up and down. ‘Are you like Mrs Mandrake?’
Yanny laughs harder, and the wisps of his wings glow orange. I glower at him.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m . . . a bit more like Yanny.’
‘But it doesn’t show?’
‘It’s a long story.’ I try a smile at her, though it feels wobbly – everything feels very precarious right now. Will she mind that I haven’t already told her? ‘Can we talk about it later, once we’re out of here?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘And you don’t need to look so panicked about it. I knew there was something different about both of you. Now, how are we going to get him out of here without anyone noticing?’
‘We wait until the last bell goes. And then we’ll just have to go for it.’
‘Stella can glamour for me,’ Yanny says, stumbling to his feet. ‘Come on. I need to get out of here now.’ He looks at Zara. ‘You found your way up, then.’ He gives a broad smile. ‘Knew you would, one day.’
‘You could’ve told me,’ she says.
‘No.’ He shakes his head sadly. ‘Not allowed. Nor was Stella.’
‘It was Tash who let her in,’ I say. ‘But that’s beside the point. Principal Ashworth said there were life-and-death exceptions – and you did look pretty deathly – and Mrs Mandrake said she’d sort it. For now, we need to work out what we’re going to do with you – I can’t glamour!’
‘Oh you can,’ he says tiredly. ‘Just try, please? I need to get home.’
‘I’ve never done it before though – I’ve never needed to!’
‘Lucky you,’ he says. He picks up his bag with a grunt and stands in front of us, pale and swaying on his feet, his expression utterly determined. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’
He tears through the corridor, bangs out through the double doors, and careers down the stairs. Fortunately most of the kids are in lessons, only a couple rushing late, so we charge out with him, through reception, past a startled Mrs Edge, and into the clear, cool air of the mid-afternoon. Yanny sags a little as we reach the school gate, but his pace doesn’t falter, and so we head off towards town.
‘Just cover me,’ he says as we start off down the street. His would-be wings are like dark smoke, the whole sense of him is fierce, fragile, and unmistakeably one hundred per cent fae.
‘I don’t know how to glamour!’ I howl.
‘Wait a minute,’ says Zara, stopping him with her hand. ‘Yanny. Stop.’
‘Zara—’
‘Don’t Zara me. You kept huge secrets, even though I told you all my stuff. I trusted you, Yanny. You were the only person I told about my . . . the separation, when I moved here. And you hid all this! So I am being understanding, I am being a virtual SAINT about it all, but that’s enough. You can’t just command someone else to do something they’re uncomfortable with and expect me to go along with it.’
‘She can do it!’
‘That isn’t the point!’
‘What – she won’t? Fine, then. I’ll just go on my own. Hardly anyone about anyway. Who cares?’
‘I care,’ I say. ‘And I’ll do it, if I can, but I never have before, and I don’t know how, so you’ll have to teach me!’
‘Your words. Your spells. You’ve used them before, in class . . . You use them more than you think. And you tell yourself they’re just words, but they’re not. They’re the language of magic, and they’re powered by the magic in you. That’s what you need to use.’
‘I don’t know the words for glamouring . . .’
‘There aren’t any,’ he says. ‘You just need to feel it. Imagine a barrier between us and the world, see the picture you want everybody else to see, and live in it.’
Zara frowns. ‘What? How’s she supposed to live in it?’
But I get it. I know the feeling he’s talking about. I know about barriers. All the things in our own barrier around our house, they’re just moments of thought, symbols of power. Perhaps I can make my own, without the silver.
‘You’ll have to judge it,’ I say to Zara. ‘Stand clear . . . and let me know if anything changes.’
I stare at Yanny and see him as he is, but also as he makes himself. A little shorter; a little more stout. No wings. Skin and hair, warmer; eyes, less bright; teeth, less sharp. It occurs to me as I’m doing it that I’m diluting the best bits of him, but I push the thought away. It’s distracting.
‘Well?’ I ask Zara, my mind fragmented.
She stares at us.
‘Zara!’
The work I’ve done on Yanny evaporates.
‘Yes!’ she says. ‘Sorry. I was pinching myself. You did it. I mean it was a bit wobbly, and you made him a bit short, but to a casual passer-by . . .’ She shrugs. ‘He’d pass.’
I pull all my thoughts together again, and something Yanny said earlier, about the stitches coming undone, suddenly makes sense. It is like stitching something; a new reality. One piece of deception leads to another, and if you lose yourself halfway, the whole thing sort of collapses. Yanny is uncharacteristically patient while I work; he looks utterly spent.
‘There,’ I whisper. ‘Got it?’
‘You’ve got it,’ Zara says, leaning in and taking hold of Yanny’s hand. ‘Come on. March.’
We wrangle ourselves through the town centre, huddling up tight to each other, avoiding the gaze of anyone we meet. A couple of dogs definitely notice there’s something unusual going on and give us a wide berth, but the people we pass don’t seem to see anything out of place.
We trail around the edge of town, and make our way out on the river path, towards my house and the forest, but as we go, it starts to get harder to see the glamour on him, and he is mostly sleepwalking, leaning into Zara while I focus my energy on seeing him the right way.
‘OK?’ Zara asks after a while, as we head further out of town.
‘Mm,’ I manage. ‘Nearly there . . .’ But as I say it, I realize I can’t get us into the forest past the shadows with him like this, even if his faelight works. My mind is buzzing with the effort of hiding him already. We can’t leave him there to find his way through by himself. There’s only one place we can safely go now.
Home.
I look at Zara. It’s probably time for an explanation.
Moon-worshippers, water-breathers. Silver-skinned, and teeth sharp as the finest tailor’s needle. The mer-fae are fierce, and wild, and better avoided. Legend of them is thin, tattered like old lace, for they keep to the deep, dark waters of the lakes that lap at the ancient yew, and they rise only in a blood moon.
Their song is sorrowful, for they do not recognize the passing of time, and every time they walk the solid earth that man has claimed, it is diminished. Flee, man-child, from the mer-fae. Its mirror eyes will make all the world a shimmering dream from which you’ll never wake.
18
‘We’ll go to mine,’ I say, as we get to the top of the hill, and the house comes into view down below, just before the forest and the slow swell of the mountain. ‘Nan will know what to do.’
‘Ghost Nan?’ asks Yanny.
‘Stella?’ Zara stares at us both. ‘What now?’