R. Anderson - Swift

‘ Left her?’ Mica said. ‘She’s got legs, hasn’t she? If she didn’t have enough wits to follow me up the hill, that’s not my fault.’ He straightened up, gave Ivy a contemptuous glance, and strode inside.

‘I hate him,’ said Ivy flatly.

Mattock put a hand on her shoulder. ‘He’s half-drunk, and angry at Keeve for pranking him. In a few hours he’ll think better of it.’

‘And I’ll still hate him then.’ She shook him off. ‘I’m going to find Cicely.’

Ivy found her little sister sitting by the droll-teller’s feet with the other children, listening raptly as he spun a tale about a tribe of piskeys who could magically leap from one place to another at will. Ivy had heard the story before and dismissed it as wishful thinking, like the legends that claimed her piskey ancestors had power to heal every kind of injury and disease, or that they could transform their bodies into any shape they wished. Surely, if her people had been able to do such wonderful things in the past, they’d still be able to do them now.

But the spriggan had come out of nowhere, and Ivy was beginning to wonder if there might be some truth to the old legends after all. Maybe piskeys couldn’t transport themselves from place to place with a thought, but what if spriggans could? It would explain how Marigold had vanished so quickly, and why they’d never found any trace of her but her shawl…

Suppressing a shudder at how close she’d come to sharing her mother’s fate, Ivy sat down next to Cicely. She couldn’t tell her sister what had happened, not yet: Cicely was in no danger at the moment, and it would be cruel to steal away her joy in her first Lighting. But if Mica didn’t talk to Cicely soon, or if he couldn’t convince her to take the threat of spriggans seriously, then Ivy would have no choice but to tell her. A few nightmares were a small price to pay for Cicely’s safety.

She glanced across the Engine House to where the Joan sat with her consort, Gossan — the Jack O’Lantern by title, though unlike his wife he wasn’t the sort to stand on ceremony. By rights Ivy ought to tell her story to him as well, for he was the leader of the hunters, and it would be his duty to direct the search if they decided to track the spriggan down. But right now he was engrossed in conversation with Keeve’s father Hew, while Betony was hearing a dispute between two of the women who’d done the cooking, and it would be difficult to talk to either of them without being overheard.

Maybe Mattock was right. Maybe Ivy should hold her peace until tomorrow, when she could talk to the Joan in private. After all, the spriggan was gone, and what were the chances of anyone finding him now?

‘Now then,’ said the droll-teller, sitting back with his bony hands on his knees. ‘What would you like to hear about next?’

‘Giants!’ piped up one eager listener, and ‘Gnomes!’ shouted another. Ivy, who was interested in neither, was about to get up and leave when Cicely called out, ‘Faeries!’

‘Ah, I can’t refuse a pretty lass,’ the droll-teller said. ‘Faeries it is.’ Some of the boys groaned, and he gave a chuckle. ‘No worry, lads, there’s something for you in this story as well. Let me tell you of the last great battle between the piskeys and the faery folk, many years ago…’

He went on to tell a story that even Ivy hadn’t heard before, about a time when the piskey clans of Cornwall — or Kernow, in the old speech — had banded together to defend their territory against an invading army of faeries. The fight had been long and bitter, with terrible magics wielded on both sides, but in the end the piskeys had won and the faeries had retreated to their own lands.

‘And after that day,’ he finished, ‘they never dared march upon our borders again. Once or twice a troop of them came sneaking across the Tamar, claiming some patch of woodland as their wyld and pretending they’d always lived there. But they soon thought better of it once a few of our boys paid them a visit, and now there’s hardly a faery to be found from Launceston to Land’s End.’

Which was probably for the best, Ivy thought. Faeries might not be as vicious as spriggans, but they were far too cunning and ruthless to be trusted. Still, she couldn’t blame Cicely for being curious about them, because they were said to be eternally young and beautiful, with graceful bodies and wings clear as crystal, and as a child Ivy had often longed to see a faery herself.

‘Where’s Mica?’ asked Cicely, as the droll-teller wandered off in search of a drink. ‘He said he’d play jump-stones with me — oh, there he is.’ She moved to get up, but Ivy caught her arm.

‘He’s in a foul mood right now,’ she said. ‘I’d leave him alone, if I were you. Why don’t we play a game instead?’

As usual, the Lighting ended with the first rosy glimmer of dawn. The last of the piskey-wine was poured out on the ashes of the wakefire, and the tables and benches whisked into storage. The Joan pronounced her blessing on the company, and with that all the revellers — yawning musicians and sore-footed dancers, pranksters and victims, knockers and hunters, aunties and maidens — headed back into the Delve for some well-earned sleep.

‘I’m telling you, it was a spriggan,’ Ivy said, as Mica laid the slumbering Cicely in her alcove. ‘If Matt hadn’t shown up when he did…’

‘And I’m telling you it was Keeve, hiding in the gorse-bushes with a tablecloth over his head,’ said Mica. He sat down on the edge of his bed and started pulling off his boots. ‘He did the same thing last year, remember? Jumped up behind the droll-teller and made everyone scream.’ He flopped onto the mattress. ‘I should have throttled him then.’

‘It wasn’t Keeve,’ said Ivy. Keeve’s eyes were black and bright with boyish mischief, nothing like the slate-grey stare that had so chilled her. ‘And I know what a tablecloth looks like. Why can’t you believe-’

But Mica’s eyes were closed, and a snore was bubbling up between his lips. He wasn’t pretending, either. Mica could drop off into a deep slumber in an instant, and Ivy, who often struggled to sleep, found it one of the most infuriating things about him.

Meanwhile, the adder’s body still lay in the middle of the cavern, its blood pooling on the granite. And though Ivy realised now that Mica wasn’t to blame, she resented him for not even offering to clean up the mess.

Flint wouldn’t be any help either, even if she’d had the courage to ask him. He’d left the Lighting early and his thunder-axe was gone from its place by the door, which meant he’d already slept as much as he needed to before heading off to the diggings again.

Resigned, Ivy crouched by the snake’s limp body, pulled the sack over its mangled head and started shoving the rest of it back in. She’d stick it in the cold-hole for now, and give it to Keeve once they all woke up — along with a good piece of her mind. Maybe then he’d think better of switching sacks on his fellow hunters, especially without making sure the snake was properly dead first.

The cavern was still quiet when Ivy woke several hours later, the only light her own glow reflected in its copper-tiled walls. It had taken her father years to refine all that metal and hammer it into shape, but he’d worked every spare moment until it was done. He’d also polished the floor to bring out every fleck and ripple in the granite, and as if that weren’t enough, he’d begun inlaying the stone with silver all around the edges.

He’d only finished half the cavern when Marigold disappeared. A few chiselled swirls continued where the silver left off, but they’d never been filled, and in the end Ivy had dragged an old trunk over those forlorn two paces of stone so she wouldn’t have to look at them.