He draws closer still, and the acorn at my throat begins to burn.
‘Get away from me!’
He laughs, a horrible creaking, gasping sound, and rocks back on his heels, thrusting out a bony arm to gesture around the room. My eyes adjust to the gloom. In the corners, and crawling up the old glass window, are his infernal shadows. They twist through the doorway, hang from the picture rails, and their forms are not solid. In here, they are not animals or men, but things that undulate and morph, that speak in slithery, slippery tones of fear and malice.
‘Get away?’ snarls the Shadow King. ‘You are in my domain! You have entered this place of your own free will – for what? For battle?’ He grins. ‘You will not win, small thing. You cannot win, here, for my will is greater than yours, and I have nothing to lose. There is nothing you can do to me, nothing you can offer me. This palace is mine, and if Winterspell is lost, there is nothing I can do about it. Nature will take its course.’
‘Nature?’ I breathe through the creep, swallowing all my fear. ‘You cannot talk of nature when all you’ve done is destroy it. Winterspell is not yours – can’t you feel that? Can’t you sense the trees themselves are against you? The fae, who hide from you? What are you ruling, apart from your own shadows?’
He roars, and I thrust out my hands as if I can push him back. The acorn bursts with a golden light as the thundering feeling of magic explodes in my chest, and it becomes a tiny beacon that spears through the shadows and sends them reeling.
The Shadow King stumbles back.
‘Estelle,’ he whispers, raising one hand to shield his eyes.
‘Stop them!’ I shout.
‘I don’t know how.’
I stare at him with hollow, dry eyes, and something deep inside me breaks. The part of me that carried just a little hope for all these years; that I would find him, and that he would welcome me.
That I would have a father.
My body is trembling – with rage or fear, I cannot tell.
‘Fine. Then I’ll do it myself.’
I stalk past him, down the stairs and out of the melting palace. The shadows pursue me as I go; surrounding me, looming dark over my head. But they cannot stop me now.
They cannot get close enough to try.
28
The clearing where I left Yanny alone is a now a calamitous battle scene. Rory is there, sending arrows of pure light into the shadows that smother the trees, and a dozen more centaurs cluster around her, doing the same. The shadows have completely surrounded the clearing.
I venture closer, looking for Yanny and Zara, but there’s too much going on. Sprites up in the trees, battling with spells and flashing eyes; fairies on light feet, fighting great shadow monsters with enchanted swords and knives; Mr Flint is standing close by a group of young fae, roaring as he flourishes a long, grey staff, crashing into a pack of shadow wolves, which snap at their heels. As I watch, one of the creatures gathers itself and launches at him; he parries with a swish of his staff, and the wolf is torn into ragged patches of shadow that drift upward to rejoin the dark mass gathered over the trees.
It’s impossible, I realize. All they’re doing is driving the shadows back into the woods, where they’ll infect the trees. And I told my father I would stop them, but I still haven’t worked that bit out. I wanted to reach him. I wanted him to see me and be fixed.
‘Stupid,’ I mutter to myself, treading out into the clearing, catching sight of Peg in the distance, clinging to a tree and sending bolts of fire down through the dark clouds of shadow. It’s dusk already, somehow a whole winter’s day has passed, and the dangers of night can’t be far off. ‘Stupid. Just made it worse. Now what, oh Lost Prince?’
‘Lost Prince?’ says a small voice, deep inside my head. ‘Is that what you’ll call yourself, even now that you are found?’
I look around. Nobody has noticed me yet, this whole part of the clearing is completely empty, apart from the shadows that crouch just outside of my reach. Something furry lands on my shoulder, making me jump.
‘Teacake?’ I twist my head.
I found you, she purrs.
She speaks. She speaks, and I understand her. My jaw slackens as I gaze into her bright green eyes.
And you found your father. Teacake rubs against my cheek. So you are not lost. Your body knows it before your mind does.
She whisks at me with her tail, and I’m reminded of my new horns. My hair, I notice, is also different. I pull a strand outward to inspect it. It curls, flecked with streaks of copper.
The question is . . . Teacake purrs. What will you do now that you are found?
I stare at her for a long moment, and then I remember the voice I heard the first time I fought the shadow, in the garden. Was it hers?
‘I wanted to get rid of the shadows,’ I say, still marvelling at her.
That is a good idea, she continues. I am tired of them. So is your father – though he doesn’t know it yet.
‘He didn’t know me.’
He has been a long time in shadows.
‘He made the shadows!’
Do you think he made them of his own volition? Did he choose this life? No. It came upon him, and he was lost. It happens. What you will do with your life, Stella. That is the interesting bit.
‘Is it?’
Somewhat – she licks a paw – I cannot quite read it. Some things are not clear until they are upon us. Ooh! A lovely little mouse, hiding in the snow . . .
She bounds off into the trees, and I watch her go before turning back to the clearing, where fae face shadows. Neither side appears to be winning. Now I understand those flashes of light and colour that I used to see from our house. Now I am close to the roars, and the screams of the centaurs as they charge, and the sparks that fly off their weapons, bursting into the air as the fairies use their magic.
There are goblins fighting tooth and nail with spiny shadow creatures, and sprites who lean out from every tree, using their magic and their swords to fend off the shadow birds, which try to land on the outstretched frost-glinting branches. And there is Yanny, back to back with Zara, fighting a group of shadow foxes. Yanny is quick with his fire whip, it sparks as it snaps the ground, and Zara is wielding what looks like a long glass rod, glowing blue from within.
Is that what she went to see Mrs Mandrake about? To get herself a weapon? While I’ve been faffing about, she’s already begun the fight. There is no time to lose; I have wasted enough already. I run over to them.
‘Stella!’ Zara grins. ‘Are you ready?’ Her breath is short. ‘You look . . . ready.’
Her gaze settles on my newly revealed horns, and then travels down over my bright hair.
‘And you’ve brought company,’ says Yanny, with a flourish of his whip that parts the shadows at my back. ‘I’m not sure we needed more of them!’
‘He wouldn’t send them away,’ I say. ‘So I told him I’d do it instead.’
‘Best get started then,’ he grunts, as one of the foxes gets too close and rakes its claws at his shoulder.
I clatter at it with Nan’s old lantern, and the fox fragments into a dozen pieces, which begin to crawl and slither as soon as they hit the ground.