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Nell put her hand up again. ‘What now, Nell?’ said Emma Day, losing patience. ‘Please Miss, the Vikings didn’t think the Elven were myths. They knew they were real.’ Nell was usually one of the good students, but today she was driving her history teacher crazy. ‘I don’t think so,’ said Miss Day. ‘Elves are fairytale and that’s that.’ Nell still had her hand up. ‘It’s Elven actually, Miss. And one of their queens had an Elven lover and her child Hogni was half Elven. And King Helgi married an Elven woman and their children became heroes -’ Miss Day sighed. ‘Nell, this is a history lesson. We are not looking at the mythology. We’re looking at the history of the Norse people.’ ‘But which bits are which, Miss? If they say their King married an Elven then why don’t we believe them -’ ‘It’s a myth, like there are myths everywhere.’ ‘Yes. But the myths might be hiding the truth,’ said Nell. ‘Like the girls who’re supposed to disappear from the woods near here, kidnapped by fairy folk. I looked the girls up in the reference library in town. It’s true they did disappear and -’ ‘Nell. Stop.’ Emma Day walked over, her face changing from impatient to sympathetic. ‘Of course. I forgot. Poor you.’ She patted Nell’s shoulder, kindly. ‘You’re still upset after your sister got lost in the woods. What a terrible experience.’ She whirled round. ‘Can everyone shut up! Paige and Bria, if I hear any more of that stupid sniggering…’ She turned back to Nell. ‘Why don’t you go and talk to Mrs McDowall, the counsellor, hmm?’
Emma was glad when the bell went for the end of the day. As the class rushed out she began collecting up the exercise books. Something about Nell’s continual interruptions was really bugging her. And when she came to Nell’s book, the feeling got worse. She stared at it. Scribbled on the front was a pencil sketch of a face. The eyes, that’s what she noticed. They’d been coloured in until they were black. Something clicked in her mind. She left the rest of the books in a pile in the staffroom, but she put Nell’s in her bag.
It was already dark when as she walked to her car. The dreary November drizzle spattered the windscreen, and the street lights shone yellow in the greasy puddles. She didn’t drive straight home. She called in at the Grange old people’s home. Inside it was warm and light, the care assistants bustling round, and the residents snoozing in chairs in front of the TV. ‘Hello great-nan.’ The tiny woman gazed at her blankly. She hadn’t recognised any of the family for years. ‘How is she?’ Emma asked one of the assistants. ‘In her own little world, as usual. I suppose you’ve earned it when you get to 90.’ Emma sat down beside the tiny old lady, who continued to stare into space as if she wasn’t there. ‘Tell me again about the time the Germans bombed the town during the war, great-nan.’ That got the old lady’s attention. She only reacted to the past now. Present day life meant nothing to her. She turned pale blue dreamy eyes to Emma. ‘It was terrible!’ she said, sounding quite excited rather than petrified. ‘We all had to run for shelters when we heard the sirens, but I was too far away. So I ran into the woods. But I could hear the planes droning in the sky, and I could tell they were heading my way. I could hear the crump of the bombs falling.’ She gave a sudden delighted laugh. ‘He pulled me into the mist, you know. We went somewhere else completely. He saved my life.’ ‘Who did?’ She grasped Emma’s hand, strongly. ‘Him. You know! The young man who lived in the mist. Handsome he was.’ ‘And you never told anyone about it, until last year?’ ‘No. He made me forget. He buzzed like a bee and took it out of my mind. Said it was for the best.’ The old lady gave a giggle. Emma had never heard her giggle like that before. She sounded like a teenager again. ‘But now its come back again – and I remember that night! It was quite a night.’ A care assistant who was handing out the hot chocolate overheard and raised her eyebrows as if to say to Emma, ‘poor dear, she’s completely losing the plot.’ That’s what the rest of the family thought, too, after great-nan started to go on about the mysterious man who’d saved her life in the war. The man with eyes so dark they were as black as coal. Who’d hidden her in another world away from the bombs. ‘Would you recognise him again’ said Emma. She took the book from her bag. ‘Oh yes.’ Emma held the book out to the old lady. ‘That’s like him!’ she said, delighted. ‘But my young man was a little older.’ She grasped the book and hugged it to her chest. Emma took a deep breath. ‘What world did he take you to, nan?’ It was a question none of them had ever asked her. The old lady blinked at her. ‘The Elven world of course!’ She smiled, fondly. ‘Lovely hair he had too,’ she continued. She looked straight at Emma. ‘White blonde. White as white. Just like yours.’ |
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Mrs McDowall, the school counsellor was on the phone. Whilst Nell waited she got out her own phone and clicked on to Twittascope to get her daily horoscope.
Nell pictured Evan’s face. He was many miles away - on his way through the
She flicked down the horoscope to read more.
Her shoulder blades drew together as though there was an enemy behind her in Mrs McDowell’s room. ***
He and Falcon were running along a path high on the side of a steep, rocky hill. They could see nothing ahead, nothing to either side, but they knew what was behind them. Evan glanced back. The wolves were tracking them, flickering dark shadows getting closer, waiting for their chance. Faolan and Shan, their own wolves, were out hunting rabbits for supper. They wouldn’t be back for hours. If they didn’t find shelter soon, they were dead. ‘This is the human girl’s fault,’ Falcon shouted over the howling wind. ‘How?’ ‘She gave us the directions. We haven’t found the camp yet.’ ‘So? It’s not her fault.’ Another quick glance behind. He could see the glint of a narrow calculating eye, hear their panting breath. ‘Now shut up about Nell and run.’ ‘Don’t know why you care so much. She’s only a human.’ But Falcon upped his speed, keeping up with Evan, his boots slipping and sliding on the ice-covered path. To one side a steep slope led down into the darkness. Suddenly he skidded on ice and fell. The wolves seeing a chance closed in. Evan picked up a stone and hurled it at them. They scattered back down the path, but they’d be back. He grabbed Falcon’s sleeve. ‘Get up and run!’ *** Mrs McDowall finished her call. She plastered on a friendly smile. ‘Nell! How’s it going, hmmm? Some of the teachers say you’re not yourself these days.’ ‘I’m OK,’ said Nell. Except for the feeling that something might spring at her from the other side of the counselling room. ‘Gwen’s been in a couple of times to see me,’ said Mrs McDowell. ‘Wanting to talk about it. Get it off her chest. How about you?’ ‘Um. Not really, Miss.’ The counsellor frowned at her. ‘You’re holding something in, aren’t you? Something you haven’t told people.’ If only she knew! The feeling between Nell’s shoulder blades got worse. ‘Nell, are you even listening to me?’ Nell managed to focus on Mrs McDowell again. ‘Sorry. I was thinking positive thoughts. That’s a good thing, yeah?’
Falcon was scared and furious. A bad combination. ‘Get off me!’ he shouted as Evan tried to drag him along. ‘You don’t want to face the truth,’ he shouted. ‘She’s a human. She’s probably told us lies.’ His lip curled. ‘Fen says human girls are good for only one thing.’ Evan gave a roar and threw himself at Falcon, who began to fight back. ‘Get off me!’ ‘Wolf,’ hissed Evan, as they skidded off the ice-covered path and over the edge. A lean mean, grey smudge of fur hurtled after them but stopped on the edge, snarling and showing its fangs, as they slid away, letting go of each other as they lost their footing and went headlong down the hillside, faster and faster, rolling and tripping. Evan was the first to crash to the bottom, sliding and bouncing off huge boulders until he hit against something flat and solid. A rock face? He fumbled in his pocket and found his torch. The beam showed a stone wall. He followed it round. Why would there be a small building out here in the middle of this freezing wilderness? ‘A hunter’s lodge?’ said Falcon, limping up behind him. They turned a corner and there was the wooden door. They started to laugh. Between them they kicked the door open. A flurry of snow flew in with them. They shone their torches. There was a stove, firewood and a cupboard that might contain food. A howl went up outside. And best of all a door to keep the wolves out. They were safe. ‘If we hadn’t stopped to argue we wouldn’t have found this place.’ Evan grinned at Falcon. ‘See. Nell’s lucky for us.’
Nell hurried along the corridor. Her counselling session was over, and her shoulder blades had gone back to their normal state. She went back onto Twittascope. She knew Evan’s naming day, which the Elven had instead of birthdays. That would have to do. A tricky day today. There will be those who wish you harm, but your guardian angel will be looking after you. Things will turn out fine…
‘Scuse. Can I get by?’ That started them all off. Tutting and sighing like she’d asked them to make some huge sacrifice. ‘Go round us, duh,’ said Bria. OK. Nell knew Bria’s bag. She kicked it and sent it flying down the steps. She did the same to Paige’s. As she strolled through the gap and down the steps the whispering began. She carried on smiling. She didn’t care. It didn’t bother her any more.
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‘ Ow, ow, ow, we itch all over! And we’re freezing!’
‘We’re dying, Star. We had a dream. Waaaaah!’
Star carried on stirring her potion.
‘Dreams aren’t real,’ she told them. ‘You’ve got chicken pox. That’s why you feel so ill. But my medicine will make you better.’
Pixie and Fay were in the sick room in the palace. When all the adults had been taken to the iron camps, Star had become the doctor to all the young ones. She’d studied the herb lore books, she’d made tinctures, she’d decocted roots and berries from the forest. Lettie said chicken pox wasn’t dangerous for human children, but it was for Elven ones. Pixie and Fay were covered in spots. They itched, they cried, they worried. Now they’d dreamed they were going to die.
‘We want Evan back! Fetch him!’
‘I can’t. He’s on a mission. He’s gone to try and open the iron camps and get our mamas back,’ said Star.
She added a few more pinches of powder to her pestle and mortar. ‘By the cauldron, the spear, the stone and the sword,’ she chanted. Then she tipped the whole lot into a small cauldron on the fire.
A pile of logs had been burning in the big fireplace since the little girls got sick. Their beds were close to the fire, but they both shivered and fretted that they were going to freeze to death. She glanced to the window. Outside was the Lilac tree. It was losing its leaves quickly now, and the branches were blowing about in the icy wind. Winter came early to the Elven forest.
‘We dreamed that when it snows the Ice Elven will come and freeze us to death!’ cried Pixie.
‘And it’s going to snow soon!’ said Fay, staring fearfully at the window.
All Elven can smell snow. And they can recognise the snow wind, the one that always brings snow. It was blowing now.
‘It’s going to snow, Star, and we’ll die,’ they kept crying.
‘You won’t!’
‘We saw an Ice Elven out there!’
‘It was a dream.’
‘No! It was real. When it snows the Ice Elven will come and freeze us,’ said Fay.
Nothing Star or any of the others could say would make them change their minds. They wouldn’t take their medicine. They said it wouldn’t work and spat it out.
Star went to find old Lettie in the great hall.
The old lady shook her head. ‘They’re in a bad way, but your medicine will make them better.’
‘It’s not working. I’ve picked the herbs at the right time, I’ve triple distilled the tinctures. But they won’t take it, they spit it out!’ said Star.
Lettie sighed. ‘They’ve stopped believing they’ll get better. That’s more dangerous than their spots.’
‘Maybe I should take them to a human doctor.’
‘It wouldn’t work,’ said Lettie. ‘Humans can’t fade or flit or charm. Elven are made differently.’
‘They’ve had a nightmare. They say that when it snows, the Ice Elven will come and freeze them to death.’
Lettie looked out of the window at the sky above the pine forest. The clouds hanging low above them were full of snow. All of them knew it would start to fall before night.
‘Let’s hope they forget their dream,’ said Lettie. ‘And start believing in your medicine again.’
Hope wasn’t good enough. Star sat and thought for a moment, then got up and began collecting all the blankets she could find. She gave the blankets to Lily and Crystal.
‘Sew them all together, quickly.’
She rounded up Rex and Bran. ‘Go into the forest and find four long poles, taller than a tree.’
Star went and sat with Pixie and Fay. They lay huddled in one bed, boiling hot but saying they were freezing. They needed to sleep but neither would shut their eyes. They watched the window, holding hands, eyes terrified, waiting for the first flake of snow to fall on the lilac tree. If Star tried to draw the curtains they screamed and made her open them again.
‘The snow’s going to come.’
‘It’ll cover the lilac tree!’
‘And the Ice Elven will come and freeze us to death.’
Star looked them in the eye. ‘It is not going to snow. You’ll see. You don’t know this but I’m a weathermancer. I can control the weather, and I’ve told it not to snow.’
Pixie and Fay stared unbelievingly at her.
‘’So here’s the deal,’ said Star. ‘If I’m right and it doesn’t snow by nightfall - then you take my medicine and get better.’
The afternoon wore on, and the light began to fade, and a wicked snow wind began to blow down the chimney and make the fire smoke. The girls cried in fear – but not one flake of snow fell.
The light faded more and more until it was dark. And there was still no snow on the lilac tree.
‘See. Told you,’ said Star. ‘I was right. No snow. And I’m right about my medicine. Drink it and you’ll get better.’
They drank it, and amazingly, they stopped moaning about their spots itching, they stopped saying they were going to die, and at last they fell into a healing sleep.
Star slipped away and ran outside to the lilac tree.
‘We’re freezing, Star,’ whispered Bran. ‘Can we stop yet?’
The snow was falling thickly covering the forest in white. The only place it hadn’t fallen was on the Lilac tree. It was stopped by the canopy of sewn-together blankets above it. These were being held up by four tall poles at each corner. And the four poles were being held up by Bran, Rex, Crystal and Lily, now half covered in snow.
‘Yes. It worked. They believe again. They’ll be much better by morning.’
They ran inside, out of the cold, but Star lagged behind and took one last look at the white forest. It looked like it was going to be the worst winter ever. As she turned to go back inside something caught her eye. When she looked, there was nothing there.
But for a moment she’d thought she’d seen an Ice Elven watching them.
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‘Please, Mr Jones,’ said Hathaway. ‘It won’t take a moment, honest. But you’ve got to see this.’
Benedict Jones was busy. He was the PR guy for Cern, the huge underground laboratory at the cutting edge of science. Cern’s biggest experiment – the Large Hadron Collider was something the public were always interested in, so he really hadn’t got time for young, gangly, weirdo Hathaway, with his spiky hair and dangling jeans. The boy should get out more, enjoy himself, not stay in this tiny monitoring room in Cern’s underground labyrinth day after day. It’d drive anyone crazy.
‘Later. I’m busy.’
But Hathaway wouldn’t step aside. He waved him into the small monitoring room. ‘Please!’
Benedict sighed and walked in. It was as he remembered, a tip. Empty pizza boxes lay around. ‘What’s this about?’
Hathaway gave a nervy grin. ‘The Rips of course.’
Benedict looked at the boy. Hathaway had come here as a student a couple of years ago, some genius kid who’d sat all his exams too early and got a physics degree by the time he was fifteen. He’d become fascinated by the Rips – totally fascinated. He’d gone on and on about them until someone had taken pity on him and allowed him to do a research paper on it, and given him this dingy little room with its wall full of monitor screens.
‘Nothing’s happened to the Rips. I think I’d have heard if anything had changed,’ said Benedict. ‘They’ve been the same ever since they appeared. If they were anything more than an anomaly we’d know it by now.’
When they’d first switched the Large Hadron Collider on, the newspaper had been full of reports about it blowing up the world. Of course it didn’t. But the Rips had started appearing around the site a few hours later. That’s what everyone called them, although they weren’t exactly rips. They were like tinsel hanging in the air, sparkling zigzags. Not everyone could see them, but those that could described them as being like the warnings you see before a bad Migraine attack.
The rips had caused great concern to begin with, but in the months that followed, when they did nothing, grew no bigger or smaller, the interest in them died. They were just one of those things that you didn’t mention to the press.
‘Just watch, please,’ said Hathaway, sliding one of the swivel chairs to him, and taking the other himself. ‘I’ve got the monitors set up and properly tuned in at last.’
One of his eyes was twitching. He looked like he’d been up for days without sleep. He looked half terrified, half fascinated by something.
Benedict slumped down in the free chair. ‘OK. Show me.’
Usually all the screens were on, monitoring the Rips around the site. Now they were all off - except for one.
‘Look,’ said Hathaway. ’
Benedict stared at the screen. ‘What am I looking at? I thought your CCTV cameras were aimed only at the Rips?’
This was definitely not a shot of the Rip in the second Tech Team staffroom. Nor the store cupboard on the sub basement level where there was another. Nor any of the twelve Rips scattered around the sprawling site. Nowhere on the Cern premises was there a huge forest, with the most gigantic trees he’d ever seen.
Because that’s what Benedict found himself staring at - a huge forest of pine trees, deep in snow. Hathaway pressed a couple of buttons and the camera angle swung up and showed the skyline. Far off he could see the most amazing tower, like a needle soaring up above the trees as though it was trying to pierce the snow clouds above. It was anchored by huge cables. Where on earth was there a structure like that?
‘Is this a freeze-frame from a computer game?’ he said, frowning.
‘No.’ Hathaway adjusted the camera angle again and the view lowered and dropped between the massive trees. Benedict thought he saw something move in the darkness between the trunks.
‘This monitor used to show the rip outside the staffroom,’ said Hathaway. ‘Until a few days ago. I finally tweaked the cameras to just the right degree – and I got this!’
‘What is it?’
Hathaway could hardly speak for excitement. ‘It’s beyond the Rip!’
‘I think you’re jumping to conclusions -’ Benedict stopped as he caught a movement again between the trees again.
‘Keep watching,’ said Hathaway.
Benedict leaned forward. What was he seeing? Kids? Yeah, a group of kids. In the lead a girl, maybe twelve? Long plaits. Hair as white as the snow. And two boys, white haired also. And a bunch of smaller kids. All white haired. Were they Finnish, Lapps, Swedish?
They came closer, as though approaching the camera.
‘Are they seeing the Rip?’ said Benedict.
‘Maybe. Or us, sitting here looking at them,’ said Hathaway.
The girl came closer. Benedict got a good look at her. She was very pretty with a pointy face and slanting, almond-shaped black eyes. What people had black eyes and white hair?
‘Watch,’ whispered Hathaway.
He leaned forward ‘Um. Hello?’ he said in a friendly tone.
The girl shot back with a cry, her plaits flying. The little kids screamed. ‘Quick – flit!’ the girl shouted.
She grabbed the littlest ones hands and within the blink of an eye, the whole tribe of them vanished, leaving a swirl of blown powder snow.
Benedict jumped back in alarm, his chair skidding back until it hit a pile of pizza boxes. ‘Whoa! What’s going on? Is this your idea of a joke?’
Hathaway was still staring at the screen. ‘No,’ he said, quietly. ‘It’s another world. A bubble world attached to ours.’ He turned to Benedict, his eyes gleaming. ‘And those kids - they’re Elven. I’ve looked up the old sagas and myths. The description matches.’
Benedict shook his head. ‘No. This is unbelievable.’
Hathaway grabbed the remote. ‘You think Elven are unbelievable? Then watch this. There’s not just one world, there’s twelve. There’s not just Elven. Everything we ever wrote about in fairy or horror stories is true!’
He aimed the remote and clicked the button. The rest of the monitors flickered into life. Twelve images appeared on the screens.
Benedict’s chair shot back and he screamed at what he saw.
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