‘It isn’t exciting! It’s silver wire and books and rules and old, musty things that aren’t even alive any more!’
‘Well, I hope that’s not me you’re referring to,’ she mutters after a shocked silence.
Peg is being a small golden lizard. He stares down at us from the wooden beam where copper spoons hang, catching the firelight, and I feel horrible. Like I turned myself inside out, and they can both see all the messy bits that are normally hidden within.
‘What do you mean by the time will come, anyway?’ I ask after a while.
‘The forest grows, and so does your father’s darkness,’ she says. ‘His shadows seek to swallow the world whole. One day, you will be the one who stands in his way.’
‘Me?’
‘Of course you!’
‘We can’t even get into the forest, Nan. We have no idea where his palace is any more, or even if he’s still there!’
‘Legend says you will face him – I’ve told you so before. When you are grown. This house and all the magic we have gathered here is headed for that day.’
‘Well I’m not doing it. I don’t know how to face him. I don’t even know what I’d be facing! Besides, every time we’ve tried to get close, all we’ve done is make it worse. I need to have more than just legends, Nan.’
‘Just legends,’ she splutters. ‘All the world is made of legends!’
‘No! It’s made of people!’ I shout. ‘I need this. I can keep our barriers strong. I can study and make the house safe. I will be here when the time comes. But I need to have this too.’
‘It’s a bad idea,’ she says.
‘Can you stop me?’ I demand.
‘Well. I could lock up the house so you can’t get out . . .’ Her eyes gleam.
‘I could unlock it.’
‘With magic?’
‘I do know a spell or two.’
‘I should think you do! I’ve been teaching you for long enough. And you’ve been reading the books, no?’
‘Of course I’ve been reading the books. The books are all I’ve had for years!’ I fling myself into the old armchair by the fire, and she floats to hers opposite.
‘And your old nan,’ she says with a growl in her throat.
‘And you . . . and Peg. But you’re not . . . You’re not people, Nan!’
‘People.’ She sniffs. ‘I think I’d take a ghost or an imp any day, over people.’
‘I do. I have. But I really want to at least know some people before I decide they’re all rubbish.’
She sighs, and a ravel of her essence puffs out like smoke.
‘Perhaps it will be a relief, not to have you trailing around like a lost cloud,’ she concedes after a moment.
My heart leaps, and I grin, dancing my feet on the floor.
‘A trial period,’ she says, raising a finger. ‘And you must tell me everything.’
So I do. I tell her about the lessons, and how the corridors fill with charging crowds and flapping bags. I don’t tell her about Yanny, or the magic I felt in him, or about the hidden corridors. I don’t really know anything about them, anyway.
‘And there’s a lot of stationery,’ I finish. ‘And . . . good lunches.’
‘I didn’t go to school,’ she says. ‘We had a tutor, my brother and I.’ She folds her arms. ‘What’s this about good lunches? We don’t have good lunches here? Cheese from the cellar and sweet apples? Bread from Mrs Mandrake?’
Mrs Mandrake delivers food every Saturday morning. It’s a standing order Nan has, and she’s paid up to infinity, she always told me. The bread Mrs Mandrake makes herself, and there’s milk and golden butter from her cows. Sometimes, there is elderberry cordial; sometimes, she’ll bring cake. She stays and drinks tea and looks out of the window towards the forest and talks about when she was a girl and she discovered the fae magic in Winterspell, and Nan rescued her from the lake where the mer-fae like to sing. Nan loves to see her; she puts so much energy into being here when she visits that I barely see her on Sundays.
‘They had crisps.’
‘Well, you have brown potatoes and Mrs Mandrake’s salty butter. And you have a whole house of wonder. You don’t need crisps. Or special stationery. What is special stationery?’
‘Bright-coloured rubbers, scented pens, sparkly things . . .’
‘Oh the world does love a sparkly thing,’ she says darkly. ‘Until they see what lies beneath.’
‘What?’
‘We can ask Mrs Mandrake to bring you supplies if you need them,’ she says then. ‘I want happiness for you, Stella. I just didn’t think it would take this route.’ She exchanges a look with Peg and shakes her head. ‘Humans. Let’s hope they’re as good as you think they can be.’
‘Your grandfather was human, and he wasn’t so bad, was he?’
‘Hmph.’ She folds her arms. ‘Make a list of all these stuffins you think you need. And then chores. And an omelette for tea, with some of those lovely brown potatoes . . .’ Her voice drifts as her body pales into nothing. She doesn’t stay as long as she once did, back when I was smaller. She isn’t so solid. She’s wearing out.
One day, maybe she won’t come back at all.
I swallow hard and pull an old notebook towards me and start my list, and I think about tomorrow, and Mrs Mandrake’s visit on Saturday, and I fill my mind, and I pack my heart with all the sparkly things I can imagine, and Peg flutters about me, warm and full of song.
That night, the chores are easier. The chickens – Onion, Basil and Salt – seem pleased to see me; the carrots come out of the loose earth without a fight; and the silver wire that holds the boundary between our garden and the edge of the forest is a bright moonlit line, hung with charms and tatters of spells from generations past. I can touch them when I’m here. My parents, my grandparents, the reality they left behind. Paper they wrote on, folded and tucked into glass baubles, enchanted copper bells and tiny vials of blood and thistle-down, all collected by Nan and used to hide our house from the fae and the shadows that live in Winterspell.
I trail my fingers through it all and let my mind fill with who they were. My mother, the artist; my father, the mechanic. Fleeting images of them appear in my mind as I touch the essence they left behind: moving scenes of laughter and tears and dancing between endlessly tall trees. Splashing through the river, the drift of snowfall. Snatches of their lives before the Plaga, caught in tiny glass jars. My father had a plaited beard with copper strands that fell to his waist. My mother had pale hair that flew out like a starburst around her head.
‘I went to school today,’ I tell the moon, hoping that somehow my mother will know it. I recall my day, as if she can see straight back into me from wherever she is. Yanny, and Zara, and chaos and crisps.
‘You won’t leave for good?’ asks Peg in a tiny voice, fluttering over the wire and making it hum.
‘No, of course not. This is home.’
‘Good.’ He stares at me. ‘Don’t you forget that. I’ll keep it safe while you’re gone – but you must always come back, Stella.’
‘For the day I’m grown?’ I sigh.
‘For me!’
I hold out my hand, and he curls in my palm, a golden lizard once more, and we go back in together. Then he and Nan boss me about the kitchen until I’ve cooked a pretty good omelette and just-soft potatoes, and I light a candle on the table and crank up the radio, and Nan tells one of her old stories about the centaur who fell in love with his reflection and was only saved from drowning by the silver birch who threw her seeds into the water to break the spell. The scrape of cutlery is only mine, and it is only me who can clear up afterwards, but right now, it doesn’t feel so lonely. It feels like home.