‘Stella?’
‘It’s different,’ I say. ‘I wanted it so much. I still do. But it isn’t what I thought it would be.’
He doesn’t say anything, and it takes me a long time to look up from the desk. When I do, he’s staring at me.
‘Sorry . . .’ I start, but he shakes his head.
‘I was trying to imagine how it feels. You really never . . . You never went to school before?’
‘No.’
‘So what did you do?’ his curiosity is suddenly needle-sharp.
I shrug. ‘It’s just me and Nan at home, and Peg, my . . . my pet. There’s lots to do, but . . . it was lonely.’
‘You’ll like it here,’ he says. ‘You’ll fit right in. I can feel it.’
He smiles. There’s that flicker of magic, only this time it doesn’t tug at me. It soothes, like the flame of a candle. I remember when Nan used to glow like that, before she faded.
Our last visit to Winterspell was the winter I turned ten. That was when I knew for sure what Nan was. She’d talked to me for years about the legends of the fae, and the Plaga that strikes every few generations, and that this time took only my mother. About how the grief of my father, a fae king in his prime, had become a visceral thing that birthed the shadows that have blighted Winterspell ever since.
How she’d hidden me so that his shadows, grown into their own power over all this time, would not be able to reach Winterspell’s last future hope: me.
She never told me what she was.
I thought she was flesh and blood, a sprite just like me. Like my father, the tree sprite who I barely remembered, just a blur at the edge of my mind – stern one minute, laughing the next. Like a storm in spring. I wanted to know him, even as the very idea of being close to him now terrified me.
That night, we stole between the glowing stalks of winter trees at sunset, and she held me close as ever and used her magic to shield us, and we watched as tiny, bright figures leaped between branches. Spiderwebs gleamed like copper wire, and the trees flexed their roots beneath the hard earth with deep sighs, and there was singing in the distance. We skirted around them, watching, listening, and we trod on our familiar path, searching once more for the cursed palace.
But as we went, the way grew colder. Frost gathered in every nook. Trees hung with bright daggers of ice. And between their stark branches, the shadows came. They were wolves, and men eight feet tall, showing their teeth and claws, howling into the grey winter air. We pushed on, for only if we reached the palace could the king be raised – maybe even brought back to himself. Back to me. But the shadows were bolder. They were snakes upon our path, and bats in our hair, they were great monsters, and when they touched me, it hurt. With every breath, they took something from me – and as they took, they grew.
The terror overtook curiosity.
‘Nan,’ I managed, when I could barely move. She turned back, and horror whickered across her face. She rushed back to me, howling, cutting a swathe through the shadows.
And then the thundering hooves of the centaurs approached, and the shadows turned at the noise, and we scrambled back, hidden from the fae beneath Nan’s glamour. Our breath steamed as we tripped on tangled roots, and the barren sticks of willow reached for our clothes, as roiling dark clouds withered through the trees. A great stag bellowed, rushing through the forest by our side, and when I looked at Nan, she was barely there at all.
‘Nan,’ I hissed, pulling at her hand, but my own went through hers. ‘Nan!’
‘Hush,’ she whispered, and her eyes were dark hollows. ‘Don’t let him hear you now, Stella. Come after me. Come, come, Stella – as fast as you can.’
She was like bright smoke herself though, her form twisted as we flew back through the forest, and while I got scraped and tripped, the branches snapping with every pace, nothing touched her at all.
‘Stop,’ I whimpered, stumbling as we got out on to the moorland that ran up to the orchard at the back of our house. ‘I don’t know . . . Who are you? What’s happening?’
‘Keep coming, Stella!’ she wailed, turning and clutching at me. Her fingers gripped my wrist, and they were cold and hard. ‘I’ll tell you – I’ll explain – but we must run. We must keep going until we get home!’
Home.
The word flashed through me. What was home, on the edge of this wilderness? What was home, with this Nan who grew thin as cloud, until I could see the stars through the outline of her body, as her hand gripped mine, and we flew over uneven ground to the silver wire of home, as we ran from my father’s hordes of fear and malice?
That was the night I discovered Nan was a ghost. I knew, after that, there was nothing for me there, in that forest. My father was only a memory, impossible to reach, and Nan had used everything she could to hide us from his shadows. That was why she’d got so thin, and she never really recovered from it. That was how the magic of that other world soured. It’s a terrifying, wild place where nothing is as it seems. Where I am not welcome. And it’s the real world – the warmth of the humanity I read about in my favourite books – that I need.
That was the night I started to dream of school.
8
Mrs Mandrake is late, and I cannot help but flit, watching for her. First from the windows, and then in the orchard, where I decide it’s finally time to pick up the fallen apples. Nan laughs at me when I collect the basket from the top of the washing machine, and Peg hops in, a tiny brown mouse huddling into the twist of willow. I grab a carrot and chop it small, and when Onion bustles up to me, I scatter the pieces across the grass.
‘You spoil them,’ Peg says, winking up over the side of the basket as Basil and Salt rush up to grab their share. ‘They’re not even laying at the moment!’
‘They will,’ I say. ‘In spring.’
‘Not much use until then.’ He sighs. He does love a good egg. ‘We could always have chicken for dinner . . .’
‘Peg!’
I turn to the orchard, a dozen stocky apple and pear trees, their leaves golden brown now and starting to drift to the ground. In the summer, I climb up and read in the branches of my favourite tree – the one closest to the boundary, where the fork between two branches is wide and smooth.
The apples are small and sweet, their skin a dusky pink that bleeds into pale yellow. I leave the ones that have already been half eaten by insects and gather the rest, carefully dropping them into the basket. Peg organizes them as I go, so that by the time we’ve finished, they look like a rolling sunrise.
‘Very pretty,’ I say, carting them into the kitchen, just as the front gate squeaks, setting off a row of tiny bells over the fireplace. ‘Mrs Mandrake!’
‘She’ll be happy you’re going to school,’ says Nan, settling into the armchair and stoking the flames with a wave of her hand. ‘Always on about it, she was.’
‘I didn’t realize,’ I say, picking up my list, unfolding it, and folding it again.
‘Oh, she did it on the quiet. Little hints – worried you’d be lonely.’
‘Imagine that,’ I say, watching through the window as Mrs Mandrake bobs around the side of the house before knocking on the kitchen door. She pulls a trailer with her, loaded with food, and I rush to help unpack it as Nan gathers all her strength to look like a real, flesh-and-blood person. There’s bacon, and chestnuts, a jar of cocoa, a fruit loaf and orange juice, a bag of oats, dried pasta, and a basket of tomatoes and shiny bell peppers.