Teasel didn’t wait for her to finish. She gave a tightlipped nod, and shut the door.
‘He’s still not back,’ said Mica several hours later, as he returned to the cavern. ‘And they didn’t want the adder.’
By then it was night-time, and Ivy was brushing out Cicely’s hair before they went to bed. Not that any of them would be likely to sleep well, knowing Keeve was still missing.
‘So Hew couldn’t find him?’ Ivy asked as she gave Cicely’s hair a final stroke and started to braid it again. ‘Are they going to send out a search party?’
‘Two of them,’ Mica said shortly, heaving the adder back into the cold-hole. ‘Gem and Feldspar are leading the first, and Matt and I’ll be on the second. But I doubt it’ll be worth the trouble. He’s probably just gone off to town for a pint.’
‘You mean with the humans?’ asked Cicely, twisting around so eagerly that Ivy lost hold of her braid. ‘Do you really think so?’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ Mica said. But Ivy could see the crease between his brows, and knew that he was more worried than he let on. And rightly so — Keeve might be reckless at times, but he’d never stayed away from the Delve this long before.
‘They’ve checked the milking barn, I suppose?’ Ivy asked. The piskeys kept no cattle, but one of the nearby human farmers did, and Keeve was an expert at coaxing the cows to give up a few extra pints for the piskeys. ‘The cows are bound to miss him, if nobody else does.’
She’d tried to make light of the situation for Cicely’s sake, but her little sister wasn’t fooled. ‘Do you think the spriggan took him?’ she asked in a small voice.
Mica’s eyes flicked to Ivy’s and then away. ‘What would a spriggan want with Keeve?’ he said. ‘He wasn’t carrying any treasure, and he’s far too tough to be good eating. Now off to bed with you, skillywidden.’ He tweaked Cicely’s nose and went out.
That was all the reassurance Cicely needed, and she went to sleep without so much as a whimper. Even Ivy managed to argue herself into a few hours’ rest, telling herself there’d surely be good news in the morning.
But the search parties found no sign of Keeve, and by the time another day had passed, even Mica stopped acting casual. The atmosphere in the Delve grew tense and the piskeys spoke in whispers, as though at a funeral. Gifts began to pile up in front of Hew and Teasel’s cavern.
And before long, Ivy’s story about the spriggan wasn’t a story any more. Mattock came to the door and apologised, his square face sober beneath his mop of rusty hair. Betony called Ivy back to the Joan’s chambers and questioned her again, this time without condescension. Cicely woke sobbing that a spriggan had come to get her, and when she found Mica pulling on his boots for the evening hunt, she clung to him and begged him not to go.
‘Don’t be such a pebble-head,’ he said in a gruff tone, prising her off. ‘I’ll be safe enough with Mattock at my back, and we can always jump down a hole at the first sign of trouble. Or run like rabbits, if it comes to that.’
It was the right thing to say to Cicely, who managed a wavering smile. But Ivy wasn’t so reassured. Mica might be lazy and given to boasting, but he was no coward; what he could do if a spriggan came after him and what he would do were two different matters. ‘Be careful,’ she said, as Mica headed for the door.
Two days ago, her brother would have rolled his eyes and told her not to be such an old auntie. Now he gave a sober nod, and left without another word.
‘Ivy! Wake up!’
What time was it? It surely couldn’t be morning. Ivy raised her head blearily from the pillow to find Mica stooping over her. ‘Ugh,’ she said, ‘you stink. What have you been doing?’
‘Guess,’ said Mica, wiping sweat off his brow and baring his teeth in a grin.
Ivy sat up, abruptly wide awake. ‘You found him?’ Alive, it would seem, or Mica wouldn’t look so pleased with himself. ‘Is he all right? Can he talk?’
Mica gave her an odd look. ‘After Mattock and I jumped on him and beat him senseless, I should say not. Why, did you want to question him? I’d leave that to the Joan, if I were you.’
‘ Beat him-’ For a moment Ivy was too shocked to speak. Then her sleep-addled brain caught up with her, and she understood. ‘You don’t mean Keeve.’
Mica gave a snort. ‘I wish,’ he said. ‘No, we didn’t find him, or at least not yet. We caught the spriggan.’ three
‘Won’t speak a word, I’m told. Just sits there with his ugly mouth shut, and stares.’ Keeve’s mother tugged a fresh coil of roving onto her shoulder, her drop spindle whirling as she spun the soft mass into yarn. Only someone who knew her well would have noticed the tremor in her hands.
‘Maybe he doesn’t know how to speak,’ piped up one of the younger girls from her seat on the rug. Teasel’s cavern was as cosy and well-furnished as any in the Delve, but not even she had enough chairs for twenty. ‘Has anyone ever heard a spriggan talk?’
I have, thought Ivy. But the memory of that soft, insinuating voice made her feel slimy all over, and it wasn’t as though he’d said anything useful. Teasel needed answers, not mockery.
‘Tch! You’d get more sense out of an animal,’ said another woman. ‘It’s useless, if you ask me — meaning no offence to you, Teasel,’ she added as Keeve’s mother bristled. ‘Of course we all want to see your lad safe home again. Only that I can’t see how that nasty creature down below is going to help us find him.’
‘Well,’ said Teasel, pinching the yarn tight between finger and thumb, ‘if the creature won’t give me back my son, then at least we can make him pay for it. That’s what I say, and Hew’s of the same mind. My man killed a spriggan all by himself once, you know. Stove its head in with his thunder-axe, and kicked its carcass into the sea.’
The other women exclaimed and sat up, eager for details, but Cicely edged closer to Ivy. ‘I don’t like it when people talk about killing,’ she whispered.
‘It’s a spriggan,’ Ivy replied, not looking up from the wool she was carding. ‘And if he won’t tell what he did with Keeve, then he deserves it.’
Yet later that evening, after she’d tucked Cicely into bed, Ivy found herself wondering why the spriggan wasn’t talking. Perhaps he was afraid of being executed for his crimes, but he must realise that he was never going to get out of the Delve anyway…
Make him pay for it, murmured Teasel in her memory, and then with grim relish, My man killed a spriggan all by himself once.
But that had been thirty years ago, according to Nettle. If the spriggans had managed to elude the hunters of the Delve for so long, how had her brother and Mattock caught this one so easily? Especially if he’d killed Keeve and eaten him right down to the bones, as no one was saying but everybody feared. Surely after committing such a horrible murder, he’d want to put as much distance between himself and the Delve as he could?
‘How am I supposed to know what goes on in a spriggan’s head?’ asked Mica irritably, when Ivy asked him. By that time Cicely was sound asleep, so they could talk freely. ‘Ask the Joan, if she can get him talking before he starves to death.’ He poured himself a tankard of small beer and sat down at the table. ‘Anyway, why should you care? I thought you’d be happy to see him caught. Revenge for our mother, and all that.’
‘And all that?’ Ivy repeated in disbelief. ‘You caught a spriggan with your own hands! How can you talk as though-’ She dropped onto the bench across from Mica. ‘You can’t still think our mother left us on purpose.’
‘Why not?’ he snapped, then flinched as Cicely mumbled and turned over. ‘All I’m saying,’ he went on more quietly, ‘is that nobody knows what happened that night. And I don’t see how you can keep on about spriggans, when you of all people should know-’ He broke off and pushed back from the table, his lip curling. ‘Oh, what’s the point? You never listen to me anyway.’
‘I’m listening now,’ said Ivy, making an effort at patience. Maybe Mica had forgotten the tenderness in Marigold’s face as she kissed her children good night, or her radiant smile as she danced to the music of Flint’s fiddle. Maybe he truly thought there was some reason their mother would have wanted to leave. ‘Go on. What is it I’m supposed to know?’