About the Author

Laura is a writer and an artist who lived for many years in the Bolivian Amazon, working with rescued wild animals. They write and make art about queer love, other worlds, and kinship with other species. Laura’s first book was a bestselling memoir called THE PUMA YEARS, set on the frontlines of environmental destruction, where amongst fires, deforestation and the strength of a tiny Bolivian community, Laura met a puma called Wayra, and they changed each other’s lives. You can still find Laura in the jungle, or if not, by the sea on a small island in the Inner Hebrides.

Also by the Author

The Puma Years

The Heart and the Hawthorn

Laura Coleman

www.hodderscape.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2026 by Hodderscape

An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton Limited

An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Laura Coleman  2026

The right of Laura Coleman to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Map illustration © Laura Coleman 2026

Part illustrations © Laura Coleman 2026

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ebook ISBN 978 1 399 75023 3

Hardback ISBN 978 1 399 75021 9

Trade Paperback ISBN 978 1 399 75022 6

Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.hodderscape.co.uk

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For extraordinary creatures, everywhere.

For anyone in a cage, anywhere.

And for Nelo.

Author’s Note

Since my early twenties, I’ve worked with rescued wild animals, with the Bolivian NGO Comunidad Inti Wara Yassi. In 1996, CIWY created the first sanctuary for rescued wildlife in Bolivia, helping the victims of illegal poaching, animal trafficking and the pet trade, habitat loss, deforestation and climate change. Nena Baltazar, one of the founders of CIWY, has always made it clear that she dreams of a world where sanctuaries like hers don’t have to exist, a world without zoos or prisons – no cages at all. I remember thinking how sci-fi this was. How fantastical. Was it really possible to write such a world into being, through the power of our imaginations and collective dreaming? It was Nena, along with Black, queer, feminist sci-fi writers and social justice organisers adrienne maree brown, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Octavia Butler, Tricia Hersey, Walidah Imarisha and Ursula K. Le Guin, amongst many others, who taught me to imagine what those worlds could look like.

I wrote the first draft of this book during lockdown as Nelo, my canine friend and rescued companion, watched from the sofa, sleeping and dreaming next to me. The London Extraordinary Zoo is not based on any one zoo, and whilst this book is about our world as well as Frida’s, it is a work of fiction.

But in fiction lies the possibilities of many futures.

‘A Robin Red breast in a Cage / Puts all Heaven in a Rage.’

William Blake

‘To realise our dreams we must decide to wake up.’

Josephine Baker

‘The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.’

Joanna Macy

PART ONE

Chapter One

The day it all went to shit, Frida Rose was knee-deep in unicorn dung. Not that this was unusual. She was, after all, a zookeeper and dung came with the territory. But contrary to popular belief, unicorns did not smell like freshly baked cinnamon buns. They smelled like . . . well, shit.

She was on the early shift and outside the London Extraordinary Zoo, visitors were clamouring to be let in. The zoo’s high golden walls sparkled under a turquoise sky, and the words ‘Extraordinary Creatures Liveth Here’ flashed across the cast iron entrance gates. Fire-breathing dragons and snarling basilisks adorned the red-and-white striped ticket booths. The morning was a chorus of restless creatures: Karen the kraken roaring for her breakfast, the manticore growling. The great white wolves yipping and, from the pools, the watery akhuluts flipping off their keepers with spiked, glistening black tails.

Backstage, the familiar rituals were underway: pancakes being mixed, popcorn popped, and coffee, the primal life force, brewed.

Frida took a moment to wipe the sweat from her brow and watched as Princess Isis, the world’s last living unicorn, rolled end over end through her own primal life force: stinking, malodourous mud. Frida leaned on her shovel and sighed. She’d spent half the morning trying to get that very mud out of the unicorn’s ears. But as Issy kicked up her hooves and raced in uncoordinated circles, nickering in that tinkly, bell-like way of hers, Frida couldn’t help but smile. A smile that lasted precisely until the moment the unicorn skidded to a stop. Her big cerulean eyes tilting impishly between Frida and the mud. The realization hit Frida a half-second before the mud would. She dropped her shovel and took a step back, holding out her hands.

‘No. Not today, Is. Seriously.’

But Issy was already mid-leap, soaring majestically.

*

Frida had seen her first dragon when she’d been six years old. She’d been so excited, she’d vomited in one of the London Extraordinary Zoo’s unicorn-shaped novelty recycling bins. Fireheart, the UK’s only dragon, had unfurled her leathery tail and breathed a plume of fire that twisted twelve feet in the air. From that moment on, Frida’s destiny in zoo-standard steel-toe-capped boots and unflattering cargo trousers had been a done deal.

She’d dreamed of the zoo’s hallowed sections: Sky, Ocean, Lake, Grass, Ice, Desert and Forest. In her sleep, she learned how to give Princess Issy the unicorn belly rubs. She understood which fairy mushrooms would bite your fingers off, which would make you blind, and that when the two-headed storm monkey Jellybean ‘Chaos’ Capone escaped, you’d most likely find him buried in a box of pastries in the zookeepers’ kitchen.

The LEZ was a world away from real life. It was where dragons and unicorns – actual dragons and actual unicorns – existed. Not just the sad-eyed ones she saw on documentaries about climate change. They’d been hunted to near extinction, poached, decimated by disease and habitat loss. A slow heartbreaking silencing. Once upon a time, werewolves and sprites, fairies and elves had danced on the hills and sung on the cliffs. Witches had stirred cauldrons and shape-shifting vampires had walked amongst humans. But under the weight of ‘progress’, that was all gone. Most people she knew seemed to have forgotten that millennia ago, something that had once been called magic might have run in their veins, too.

Frida had been nineteen when her acceptance letter came through the post. Standing on the front step with her mum gripping her hand, the phrases ‘Zookeeper Training Programme’ and ‘Accepted’ had leapt out, along with the single word ‘Forest’. Their triumphant shouts had rung down the street. A few months later – it all happened so fast – they’d moved to Melody-Upon-Sea, the quaint seaside town where the London Extraordinary Zoo, by historical happenstance (and a touch of etymological humour), was actually located. They left behind their London council flat, and found a tiny, dilapidated rental less than half a mile from the LEZ’s entrance gates. Her mum got a new job waiting tables at one of the seaside cafes. She’d always said it was possible that Frida might one day live alongside extraordinary creatures, and Frida had believed her. Now here she was, wiping unicorn shit off her face and smelling of entrails.

And she loved every second of it.

Chapter Two

Frida was heading back to Ground Control where zookeepers did unmentionable things like spreadsheets, mainlining sugar and visiting the toilets aka the Dung Heap, when a familiar shout stopped her in her tracks. A bucket-load of coffee awaited her, but she grinned as she turned back to see Antony and Hamish, her two best friends, trotting towards her down the still-empty yellow-brick roads.

“Morning, Fri,” Antony whispered, wrapping her in a bone-shattering hug. Over six feet tall and muscular with it, Antony had been awarded Most Likely to Break Your Ribs in a Hug at the staff Christmas party four years in a row. Frida inhaled his scent of laundry powder and mint as he squished her to him, feeling the customary tickle of his perfectly groomed beard against her cheek.

‘Ant, you fool. Look at her, she’s filthy!’ Hamish exclaimed at a safe distance in their Glaswegian drawl, scooting handily out of the way as Antony attempted to gather them up as well. ‘Not a fucking chance.’

‘Oh shit, sorry.’ Frida guiltily pulled away and looked ruefully at the patch of dung that she had, unwittingly, imprinted like a Rorschach test onto Antony’s Forest-green shirt. Darting a look at herself in one of the Ground Control windows, she winced. Hamish was right: her pale face was streaked with faeces, so much so that she could barely see her freckles, and her mousy braid was barely hanging on by its hinges.

Hamish gingerly plucked at a particularly pungent piece of shit caked in her braid-not-a-braid, and quirked a deadpan, dusty blond eyebrow at her. Rosy-skinned and willowy, Hamish was a fabulous violet-wigged drag artist in the back alleys of Melody at night, very handy with a shovel by day, and they never got dung on their uniform if they could help it. ‘My love, did you really get into a fight with the grootnecks again?’ they asked dryly. ‘We haven’t even had our coffee yet. Although . . .’ They dramatically wrinkled their nose, sniffing her. ‘Smells more like eau de unicorn, don’t you think Ant?’

Antony looked as though he thought they’d both lost their minds. ‘Are we really talking about dung right now?’ he exclaimed, his face breaking into a dimpled grin so wide, it reached his adorable bucket ears. ‘Today of all days?’

Frida was furiously attempting to rub at his shirt, only succeeding in smearing an even greater circumference of dung. Antony was a soft-spoken, humble, too-kind-for-his-own-good Black Jamaican-Londoner who loved two things with absolute fervour: his friends, and anything containing chlorophyll. Like Frida, he’d moved with his family to Melody to become a zookeeper. Five years ago, on the first day of their Training Programme, she’d been sat at a table on her own, and he’d come up and quietly offered her his blueberry muffin. In week two, Antony had saved Hamish from being attacked by an angry hangfern, and the rest was history.

Frida rolled her tattooed shoulders, hearing the satisfying crack. Fireheart’s wrinkled terracotta tail curled down her right arm, a salubrious pink ghost-lynx on her left. On her knees, grunkles danced, storm monkeys struck lightning down her ribs, and Issy the baby unicorn cavorted over her hands. Gorgonzola, Gouda and Gruyere, the LEZ’s trio of grey-horned grootnecks, were on her neck and the deliciously ghastly visage of the Nuckelavee, the thousand-year-old Orcadian seahorse demon from hell, was on her left shin. Michael the phoenix lit the other leg, snuggling up to his beloved thunderbird Fran.

She grinned up at Antony. ‘The dragon’s coming today.’

Antony’s answering chuckle was a low rumble. ‘Your dragon’s finally coming.’

Even Hamish, leaning laconically against the wall, couldn’t help their lips from quirking.

It wasn’t really Frida’s dragon, of course. But Frida had been waiting for this moment since she’d been six years old. No new dragon had come to the LEZ for a long time. The last had been in the 1930s, when a string of acquisitions had ended in a very public tragedy, and three sea dragons had died within a month of each other. Everyone knew there were only eighty-six documented dragons left in the wild, and only fifteen in captivity in the network of Extraordinary Zoos around the world. Frida had simply assumed that Fireheart, who lived in Sky, was destined to be the only dragon in Melody forever.

Until – everything changed.

Three months ago, Cliff Anderson, the Head Keeper of Forest, had told them the news: a young tree-dwelling dragon had been rescued in Bolivia, and, with much public fanfare, the LEZ had acquired him. Today was the day Frida had been waiting for since she’d been given her LEZ baseball cap and green Forest uniform, since her mum pointed at the TV and said, Look Friduska, D-R-A-G-O-N. They’re real you know, wings, fire-breath and all.

Her mum.

The word landed in her chest.

Instinctively, her hand went to her wrist where there was a tattoo of a yellow rose. She’d done it herself a year ago, with a needle in the bathroom one especially awful night.

Antony’s brow clouded. ‘Fri?’ His gentle eyes read her like a book. She felt sick as the cheerful scent of sugar and manure turned stale.

‘Can you believe it?’ she said, trying to force a smile. ‘It’s Dragon Day!’

But as Antony’s bronze-brown skin caught the gleam of the sun, she couldn’t bear to see the worry on his face. Her gaze dropped to his strong, knuckled hands covered in a familiar pattern of fence scratches, animal bites, and mud-shovelling callouses. Just like hers. Except he had flawlessly manicured nails which Hamish had painted dragon’s blood red last night. The sight was so perfectly him – so quietly rugged and unassumingly fabulous – that a knot of emotion roared through her.

She thought she could smell roses.

Hamish shot Antony some warning side-eye.

‘Fri,’ Antony said under his breath, ignoring Hamish’s warning. ‘You know she would have been so proud of you today.’

Antony was right. Her mum would have been proud. But Frida shoved the smell of roses away, pushed it into a locked box in the dark, cobwebbed depths of her mind. An ancient, oiled chest made of rosewood, with a large silver padlock. She metaphorically kicked the thing with a growl.

’I’m fine,’ she answered roughly to Antony’s unasked question. ‘And I don’t want to think about it, thank you. Not today.’ Not ever.

All Frida had ever talked about was dragons, dragons, dragons, and Ada Rose, for better or worse, wasn’t the kind of parent to just say, ‘Well, we’ll just watch them on TV, Friduska love, now let’s go do some of that algebra homework.’ Her mum had worked three jobs so they could travel to the seaside once a month and queue up outside these hallowed walls. To be in a place where extraordinary lived. But her mum was dead. She’d died of stage four ovarian cancer one year, seven months, and twenty-six days ago. They hadn’t even had a month to prepare before she was just gone. The house wasn’t full of her mum’s favourite yellow roses anymore. Her laugh, low-pitched as honey, didn’t sound through the kitchen. No more messy stacks of books about gnomes and dire-cats and naiads on every surface, no more eating ice-cream until they lay on the floor in foetal positions.

When she’d been alive, the world had felt like a place for dreaming. Now the world felt small and heavy. The only thing that felt possible was putting one foot in front of the other and the only solace was making sure Issy and all the others got fed. Frida’s eyes started to well.

‘We love you, Fri,’ Antony murmured, squeezing her hand.

Suddenly, it felt as if her chest was caving in. She jerked away and started to walk towards the small, gated staff door into Ground Control, hidden by a few hundred layers of ivy. Hamish said something inaudible, and she heard a thud – presumably Hamish’s fist against Antony’s arm, judging by Antony’s pained yelp.

‘What?’ Antony exclaimed, sounding wounded. Then, calling after Frida, ‘I didn’t mean to make it worse, it’s just—’ He shifted. She could hear his boots creaking on the cobbles. ‘We miss her too.’ He hurried after her. Reluctantly, she turned to look up into his pained face. ‘We know you barely sleep, and it’s been months since you’ve wanted to talk about her, about anything even. I know now’s not the time, but . . .’

As Antony trailed off, Hamish pinched the short, flattened, broken-a-few-times bridge of their nose, and gave Frida an apologetic shrug.

‘Sorry Fri,’ they said with uncharacteristic softness. ‘But you have taken so many extra shifts this month. We’ve been worried, that’s all.’ She could see the concern writ in the line of Hamish’s slender shoulders. Hamish’s heart was just as big as Antony’s, albeit hidden behind a prickly temper and carefully jaded aura. The reams of romantic trash on Hamish’s bookshelves could attest to that, and truly – although Hamish would rarely admit it – they got excited by anything from a new brand of toilet paper in the Dung Heap to the birth of a new friperit. So, when Hamish wouldn’t meet her eyes, she knew it was bad. And when she looked at Antony, the genuine heartbreak on his open face was enough to floor her. Antony and Hamish were her family. They were all she had now, apart from Issy and the others. And they both had enough to deal with. The last thing they needed was to worry about her.

‘I’m fine, truly,’ she said, under her breath.

They both looked sceptical.

‘I am,’ she managed with a laugh, although she could hear her voice breaking. ‘And I’m grateful, to both of you,’ she said, elbowing Hamish when they made to slide Antony some more dour side-eye. ‘I just. . . you know. I miss her.’ With an effort, she gave them both a shrug, toeing her muddy boots against a loose bit of brick. ‘Come on, did I hear you say something about coffee earlier?’

A beat passed and then Hamish let out an ear-splitting squeal, almost knocking them both aside in their spectacular attempt to get through the Ground Control door first. Antony shot her a lopsided grin. Only one dimple, but it was enough. She grinned back as he took her arm.

‘Today is going to be the perfect day,’ he said firmly.

She leaned into him, grateful for his steadiness. They proceeded into the stuffy bowels of the building, and the typical zookeeper perfume of sweat and old meat wafted around them. Radios at their belts buzzed with low-level chatter and Antony’s dimples returned in full force. The corridors thronged with keepers in all the colours of the LEZ: coral pink, grey, ice blue, cerulean, ochre, grassy emerald and the classic Forest green. Every now and then someone stopped to high-five Antony, which he returned affably, causing Frida and Hamish to exchange wry eyerolls. The idea of high fiving anyone they hadn’t already exchanged some form of bodily fluids with was, quite frankly, outrageous.

Anticipation crawled up Frida’s neck, tingling her scalp.

Everywhere they went, the word dragon hung in the air.

Chapter Three

As they approached the kitchen, they could hear Cliff’s booming voice vibrating through the thin walls. Inside, they found their battering-ram of a boss yelling cheerfully into his radio, whilst stress-eating his way through a gargantuan box of pastries. Cliff was white and in his mid-fifties. French-Canadian with tanned, weather-beaten skin. He had a bulbous nose, crystal blue eyes that crinkled, and a voice that could shake the rafters. If Antony was tall, Cliff was taller, and he sang baritone in a West End cover band called Joseph and The Dreamboats.

Behind his head was the famous portrait of Joshua Beaufort, 3rd Earl of Marlow, the founder of the LEZ. Sitting behind an ancient wooden desk, Sir Joshua’s handsome, square-jawed chin was propped on his fist and, as he stared out at them, the mysterious smile on his sensual, upturned lips lit up the kitchen.

‘Ah, my Swans!’ Cliff bellowed, eyes brightening as he slammed the radio back into his belt and offered up the pastry box with a smile. Swans mated for life, and in Cliff’s mind, Frida, Antony and Hamish should just set the date already. Frida didn’t mind; in fact, she loved their callsign. Antony and Hamish did not love it, but that was only because they were secretly in love with each other. It was a whole thing, and it was annoying, because it was the only thing the three of them were Not Allowed To Talk About.

When Antony nabbed the last chocolate croissant, Hamish’s death stare might have turned a pixie to stone. Antony just gave Hamish a cheerful pastry-dusted middle finger. Frida tried to hide behind them both, not wanting Cliff to mistake her for a mud golem. But Cliff was busy booming out a winding tale of how Management had come to do their thousandth check on the new enclosure, Dragon’s Deep, when one of the be-suited, bearded nerds with a clipboard had fallen into the dragon’s new swimming pool. He’d just got to the punchline when they all heard the unmistakable sound of clipped footsteps from down the hall.

Cliff stopped mid-sentence, apple Danish hovering midair, as Gloria, Head Keeper of Sky, strode into the room.

‘Ah, Clifford, just the person I was looking for,’ Gloria signed dryly, her face entirely deadpan. She was Deaf. Anyone who worked at the LEZ had to have BSL Level 2. Frida and Antony were Level 5s, Hamish was fluent (their foster-sister was Deaf). So, they were all able to follow as Gloria’s hand movements sliced through the air like the deadliest samurai blade. No one quite knew why Cliff and Gloria hated each other, only that they did, almost as much as a griffin might hate, say, a two-tailed whip-tongued gazulla. Which is to say, a lot.

Cliff carefully put down his pastry, arranging his face into a vacant smile and signing, ‘What a treat to see you too, Gee Gee.’

The Head of Sky’s lips thinned. She had the bearing of a basilisk, and her temper was more dreaded than the dreaded Nuckelavee. Antony, Hamish and Frida found themselves wedged against the microwave, realising too late they were trapped.

‘I just wanted to check in with you, Clifford.’ Gloria used Cliff’s sign name, a gigantic tree, with as much sarcasm as she could muster. Under the fluorescent lighting, her skin looked ice white. She tossed her ivory hair, which didn’t move much since it was cropped army short, and her gun-metal grey eyes, a match to her uniform, flashed. ‘We all know it’s a big day for you and Forest and I wanted to wish you well.’

Frida gazed up at the painting of Sir Joshua in despair. Last month, Gloria had called Cliff every name under the sun, including but not limited to an ‘incompetent oversized emotional buffoon incapable of handling a sick puppy’. Cliff had retaliated, and they’d both received a warning from HR.

Gloria had one perfect eyebrow raised in subtle warfare. ‘I couldn’t help but notice however that you still have rather a lot to do.’

Cliff’s smile didn’t slip, but he picked his apple Danish back up with such force, it crumbled in his fist. ‘We’re perfectly capable, Gloria.’ He’d forgotten to sign, but Gloria was an expert lip-reader.

‘Yes . . . well, I’ve spoken with Management.’ Her elation at this gleamed on her face. ‘And they agreed it would be prudent if I sent over some of my spare keepers. Sky keepers do have more experience of dealing with dragons, as you are aware.’

Cliff’s smile curdled like week-old cream. ‘That really won’t be necessary,’ he ground out between gritted teeth.

She nodded dismissively, tapping her fingers against the counter and eyeing his demolished Danish. Her body was a mobile epithet of distaste. ‘Well, it’s already been arranged, so I’ll be sending my keepers over.’ She eyed Frida and the others pointedly, eyebrows lowered. Frida was so deeply wedged between the coffee machine and the microwave that she might as well have been a kitchen appliance. ‘You don’t have to worry,’ Gloria finished, ever so deliberately. ‘They are extremely well trained.’

Frida suspected Cliff was going to need dental work after this. He just about managed to loosen his teeth and said, in a high-pitched squeak that Frida was sure he regretted, ‘I’m sure they are. And how lovely to involve Management. I do so enjoy it when Sky wishes to collaborate, Gloria.’

Gloria waved a hand and stepped gracefully around Cliff to pull a chipped mug down from the shelf. It was the one with a picture of a poisonous seven-tongued shrimp on it, wearing sunglasses and saying You’re Shrimply Delicious. Cliff just stood there, his cheeks turning more lurid as Gloria slowly filled the mug with coffee.

When she was done, she put it down, her grey eyes snake-like with sly amusement, and signed, ‘Consider it a gift.’ Then, she picked up her mug, turned on her steel toe-capped boots and breezed out of the door, leaving an acid chill in her wake.

Cliff stared at the ruined pastry in his hand, then defiantly shoved it in his mouth.

Countdown to aneurism: 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

‘THIS IS PAPA BEAR!’ Cliff roared into his radio, the vein on his forehead virulent as he barrelled for the door. ‘WHERE IS EVERYONE?’

Frida winced in sympathy. ‘Poor Cliff.’

Antony nodded, glancing up at the portrait of Sir Joshua above the coffee machine. ‘Sweet lord, give us strength today.’

Hamish patted Antony on the back, grinning. ‘Oh, fear not, Sir Josh is watching over us.’ Indeed, their gilt-framed-auburn-haired-nineteenth-century HDILF (historical daddy I’d like to fuck, thanks Hamish) did seem to be oozing reassurance from where he sat behind his big oil-painted antique desk.

Frida sighed dreamily. ‘Do you think he knows a dragon’s coming?’

‘Oh, definitely.’ Antony beamed, reaching for the pastry box. ‘I bet he’s doing a celebratory waltz across the yellow brick roads of heaven at this very moment.’

Hamish rolled their eyes.

‘I’d like to waltz with Sir Josh,’ Frida said with a little swoon.

Hamish snorted, batting Antony’s hand away and seizing the croissant he’d dropped with a yelp. ‘Frida darling, you couldn’t handle Sir Josh.’

‘And you could?!’ She was incensed.

‘Well, at least I wouldn’t break his toes. I’ve seen you dance, babe.’

‘Ghosts don’t have toes,’ Antony contributed, scowling as Hamish stuffed the croissant in their mouth.

Hamish gave Antony a sultry wink. ‘How do you know what appendages ghosts–’

‘SWANS!’ Cliff’s voice boomed.

Chapter Four

Forest was seventy-two acres all told, with a hundred and fifty-six extraordinary creatures in eighteen different habitats. It was the second biggest section in the LEZ, only smaller than Lake, which had over two hundred ECs, skyrocketing to more than three hundred during the thundertoad mating season (the Saturnalia festival of the amphibian world).

Frida spent the day finishing the landscaping of Dragon’s Deep, an impressive enclosure by anyone’s standards: twenty acres of steaming rainforest complete with waterfalls, lakes, palm trees and the merry twittering of tropical birds. At a toasty forty degrees, Frida, Hamish, and Antony sweated through their uniforms. Frida could kill a spider plant just by looking at it, and Hamish wasn’t much better, but they both loved to watch Antony’s cheeks glow as he feverishly directed them to ‘plant this’, ‘prune that’, and ‘for the love of great Boinayel and Márohu, do not touch those!’

By the time they were done, the enclosure was finished, the lights of the LEZ were starting to dim, and the entrance gates had closed on the last of the guests. Hamish and Antony had gone home but she was on a roll, well into her second shift, fuelled by twelve – or was it thirteen? – cups of Watering Hole coffee. The sky was a gorgeous twilit hue, clear as bells. The evening spotlights had come on, lighting the world with silver, a colour designed to look exactly like moonlight, the very essence of extraordinary. The zoo shifted to the night-time rustlings, muted howls and the occasional loud fart of a manticore digesting her dinner. A deep peace came over Frida, reminiscent of the calm she felt when an EC’s warm breath brushed her neck, when the earthy scent of manure and hay settled in her nose, or when she ran her fingers through someone’s silken fur. The zoo was the only thing that kept her going when her mum had died, but she especially loved these nights when she drove around in her buggy and could convince herself that this was all the world was or needed to be.

Frida was just gearing up to give Issy her final feed of the day. The willow woods were wafting around them, and Frida was dreaming of the baby dragon, racing towards them through the emerging stars. Earlier, she’d made the unicorn a gigantic football of griffin feathers, with the aroma of old fish, and Issy was still sheep-dogging it, dodging and swan-diving in an uncoordinated gleeful tumble. When she inevitably impaled it, she spent a few seconds trying to shake it off her horn before it burst in a spray of gold. The unicorn stood for a few seconds, gazing down at the mess, heartbroken, before turning her liquid turquoise eyes to Frida.

Frida snorted. ‘What do you think I am? Someone who makes balls for a living?’

Issy gave an optimistic neigh, then started herding Frida towards the feeding station. A few moments later she was eating with gusto, pausing between bites to gaze up at Frida adoringly, her long muzzle pale in the twilight, her breath smelling of hay and, somehow, moonlight. Twelve years ago, Issy had been found on the banks of the Thames. A foal half drowned, with both her back legs broken. No one had seen another living unicorn for over fifty years. Nobody could figure out where she’d come from, all they knew was that she was truly an endling, the last of her kind.

Issy was only a Level 2, and that was largely because she often stuck her sharp horn where it wasn’t wanted. Some of the other ECs were much too dangerous to go inside with. Level 1 meant: gentle enough to crawl in your shirt and take a nap. The highest level, Level 8, meant: will rip your head off and eat it. The new dragon would be a Level 8, the first Level 8 to grace Forest since Frida had been a zookeeper.

The radio at her belt crackled. Frida was trained to listen in for Cliff’s specific boom, and she turned the volume up, raising the radio to her ear.

‘This is Papa Bear. Giving you all an update on the dragon’s ETA. He’s just crossed the Atlantic. I repeat, his plane has just CROSSED THE ATLANTIC!’

Frida squealed. This was really happening.

‘He should be here in two hours!’

Two hours was less time than it took to clean out the manticore’s meat freezer! The sky was truly black now. A scattering of clouds floated behind the treetops, a few clusters here and there of dark shapes amongst the deeper darkness. Nothing to worry about. It was peaceful, a few birds in the trees singing their nighttime chorus, and Frida imagined she could hear the stars pinwheeling. She would make it so that the dragon loved this place just as much as she did. She imagined her mum laughing softly. A deep, honey-like, full-bellied laugh.

That’s my Friduska, she would have said. Destined to be a dragon’s butler.

She wanted to laugh, and she wanted to cry. In the end, she did a bit of both, trying to contain the ice-chip in her heart. Grief was like that, she’d learnt. As the months had passed, there were times when she was fine. Then there were times like now, when she thought her legs would give out from under her. Panting hard, she managed to force it all back inside. Then, balancing the empty feeding bucket and manure shovel across her shoulders, Frida headed for the exit. Behind her, Issy was already asleep, the telltale bright-moon glow of her horn indicating that she was dreaming.

As Frida passed through the gate, she touched the fence reverently, feeling the familiar electric hum of the wards. The soft feather touch against her skin, the safety net that was on every cage, every fence, every door – keeping them all protected: animal and human alike. These wards were powerful enough to stop a basilisk turning a tourist to stone, or a kraken’s song from making you want to slit the throats of all your nearest and dearest. They could stop a manticore from flying out into the clear skies of Melody, or a vengeful poisonous shrimp from willing a hapless keeper to walk into oncoming traffic. Without the wards, the LEZ wouldn’t be here. Without the wards, none of them would be here.

The hairs on her arms rose as a chill wind blew through the nearby boughs. Sea breezes were common in Melody though and, shaking off a sense of unease, she tossed the empty feeding bucket into the back of her zoo buggy, Jennifer – a vibrant green golf cart with an engine like a hummingbird’s wings – and drove with agonising care down the cobbled streets towards her final stop for the night – the Hawthorn of Higgleton Common. All she had to do was feed the tree, and then she’d be zipping back across the LEZ, ready to join the others at Dragon’s Deep.

Six months ago, Crumble the stone giant had gone into labour, and Frida had been so excited, she’d crashed her old zoo buggy, Beatriz, into a tree. She’d missed the birth of the first ever stone giant baby in a UK zoo because she hadn’t checked her blind spot. She was determined nothing like that was going to happen tonight. She was so focused on keeping her buggy on the road however that she didn’t notice when a few of those misty clouds from earlier began to grow, slowing creeping across the sky, and beginning to eat the stars, one by one.

Chapter Five

The Hawthorn of Higgleton Common stood at the very top of a wooded hill at the far eastern corner of the LEZ. The path that led up to it was at the end of a long cul-de-sac of oak trees, between the vampire bats and the manticore. As Frida pulled Jennifer to a stop, lofty branches clattered together, and for the first time, she looked back up at the sky. A sudden deep rumble of thunder boomed.

‘Oh . . . fuck,’ she breathed.

She sat there gawping. The entire western edge of the sky was bruised, violent clouds heavy with rain crackling above the horizon, sucking up the night and turning it purple. She lifted her radio with shaking hands.

‘This is Swan2 for Papa Bear. Come in please.’

The silence that followed was broken only by the branches of the oaks rattling, and a cold, crotchety wind lifting her hair. Her stomach was in knots before Cliff crackled into being.

He sounded harried. ‘Swan2, go ahead.’

For days, they’d been checking their weather apps. Not a single one had said anything about a storm. ‘Ah,’ she murmured uncertainly, suddenly realising that Cliff was probably mid-aneurism right now. ‘Can you see these clouds?’

‘We can!’ Cliff shouted in reply. ‘They look like proper bastards, don’t they?’

She couldn’t have agreed more. They seemed to swell above the canopy even as she sat there. What were they going to do? What would happen if the dragon’s plane couldn’t land? Suddenly, she didn’t want to be alone. ‘I was just going to feed the Hawthorn, but maybe I should come straight to you!’ She knew what he’d say, even before the words left her mouth. A tree is just as important as a T. rex, Frida. A dragon wasn’t a T. rex, but Cliff did enjoy alliteration. ‘I mean—’ she stammered, trying to recover herself. ‘I don’t— Sorry Cliff, I guess I’m just nervous.’

‘It’s ok.’ His soothing voice boomed through the radio. ‘Me too. I know the anticipation is torment, but we’ll be fine even if it does end up raining a bit. Stick to the schedule, keep busy, and make sure you’re here within the hour. He’s crossing the Channel now.’

Routine had always settled her nerves, and Cliff knew it. The daily rota that he created every morning was her anchor.

She nodded bravely. ‘Copy that, Papa Bear.’

To her left, the huge wood crept over the hill in tangled, sweet-smelling thickets, the epitome of ye olde English woodland. She set out up the winding yellow-brick path, wide and accommodating between the trees for the all-terrain wheelchairs the LEZ supplied, just as fat, cold drops started to fall, hitting her face. Naturally she’d left her waterproofs in her locker, because why would she need them when the internet had practically sworn on the life of the dark web that there was zero per cent chance of rain? She picked up the pace, following the whimsically carved signposts directing her up the hill. Hoary spotlights led the way, casting shadows across the cobbles with the regularity of a marching beat. She could feel the pressure of the coming storm, but Cliff was right. It would be fine. They’d planned for everything: Plan A, Plan B, Plan C . . . all the way to Plan Z. The steady wet greenery was soothing, too. It held memories of long-ago Extraordinary Waffle picnics with her mum, a moment of calm after the thrill of seeing Fireheart or one of the other creatures. Nothing had felt better than laying down in the perfectly mown grass of the meadow at the top of the hill and watching clouds scudding behind the massive branches of the great and legendary Hawthorn.

When the first streak of lightning arced across the sky though, she jumped like a startled rabbit and began to run. Soon the rain was pounding down, the trees clattering around her ears. By the time she reached the top and the meadow loomed before her, the storm had reached cataclysmic proportions. Her torch was useless, the beam bouncing pathetically back into her eyes, as rain pelted down at her in horizontal sheets.

This was definitely not fine!

She skidded across the circular meadow towards the huge glass dome at its centre where, within, the Hawthorn waited for her, untouched by the lashing rain. There was a feeling in the air, an electric charge that made her neck prickle. Thunder rumbled and lightning cracked, making the Hawthorn look as if it was on fire. She could barely hear the wards humming, rain hitting the dome like pellets as she reached for the security panel. It felt like an age before the doors finally beeped their acceptance.

Yanking them open, she stumbled inside. The hammering wind against the roof was deafening. Panicked voices burst from her radio, and when she shouted into the mouthpiece asking Cliff what she should do, his voice came back agitated and urgent:

‘Feed the Hawthorn and get over here! And be careful!’

‘Ok, ok,’ she said to herself, trying to breathe, taking comfort in the fact that the tree, at least, seemed unbothered, a cool lodestone in the dark. The leafless canopy towered over her. Closing her eyes, she tried to calm herself by remembering her mother’s melodic voice, and the scent of roses that had been her perfume.

‘This tree is over eight hundred years old, Friduska.’ Her mum had told her the story, probably fifty times, maybe more. ‘It used to live far, far away, in a place called Higgleton Common, in the middle of one of the oldest, most special woods in England.’

Frida carefully stepped over the map of the roots, her boots squelching.

‘But one day, the government decided they wanted to build a super-fast railway between London and Scotland, and the wood was in the way. They didn’t think the wood was important. Other people did though, and they organised one of the biggest protests in this country’s history. For months, people slept in hammocks in the trees. But in the end, the government won.’

‘The wood was cut down?’ Little Frida had asked in a horrified whisper.

Her mum had nodded, pale white face solemn in the frame of her dark fringe. ‘Yes, Friduska. But the Hawthorn contained so much power, not even the government could destroy it. People brought it here to protect it, and here it has stood, ever since.’

Frida, at that point no taller than one of the mountainous roots snaking out of the ground, remembered looking up at the tree in awe. ‘And it survived.’

But her mum had looked so sad, the branches of the Hawthorn casting heavy shadows over her tired face. ‘Yes, it was a miracle. The tree survived, but it never recovered. It hasn’t grown a single leaf, berry or blossom since. It’s like it’s asleep, don’t you think?’

‘Like Sleeping Beauty,” Little Frida had said, excited, because her mum had just read her the tale. Her mum had nodded, and Frida hadn’t understood the grief written on her face, not then. It wasn’t until later, after her mum had died, that Frida had wondered if her mum hadn’t seen something of herself in the tree, as someone who’d also been uprooted, forcibly transplanted elsewhere. The thought had made Frida uneasy, for she’d thought her mum had been happy with their life in England, so she’d packed it away, like a lot of things, in her rosewood box, because she had no way of knowing the answer. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the Forest keepers called the glass dome that surrounded the tree ‘the Coffin’.

Shuddering, pushing away this train of thought, Frida gave the gnarled ancient bark a friendly pat. The Hawthorn, over the years, had lost so much power that it had been recategorized from a Level 8 to a Level 1 – the extraordinary equivalent of a toaster. Frida opened a packet of Cliff’s special tree nutrient mix and tipped the sour-smelling granules around the roots. They did this every shift, not that it made a difference. The thorny mass of the tree loomed skyward, making no comment, the dull bark a lifeless grey.

Quickly, she took out her phone to edit the spreadsheet shared online amongst keepers, noting the humidity, temperature, air pressure. Under weather conditions, she typed, ‘Completely Apocalyptic’, and was just about to make her retreat when a new message popped up on their Swans group chat. Hamish had sent a photo of the dragon; one they’d all been given from the Bolivian rescue centre months ago. Violet from head to toe, and monumentally big, the dragon had a tail like a forked mace, teeth like knives, and a sad, boxy face.

Tonight, Hamish had superimposed Issy into the photo, and the violet dragon was holding what looked like a gigantic broom between his teeth, using it to give Issy a belly rub. Clearly designed to take her mind off the storm, the photo did the job. Frida burst out laughing, followed by a nasal, unstoppable snort: trademark Frida.

After a rapid-fire exchange, confirming that both her friends were already at Dragon’s Deep – What the hell is this weather; Terrifying; Don’t crash into any trees, Fri! – she glanced up through the roof of the Coffin and wished she hadn’t. The clouds were the oddest colour, like bruised plums. Another bolt of lightning split the sky, making her jump. It seemed to go on forever, the whole world flashing white, the thunder so loud it sent a shockwave through her body. Patterns of light snaked across the backs of her eyelids.

‘Come on,’ she schooled herself. She thought she caught the bitter tang of sulphur and maybe something metallic too. She’d never been afraid of storms, but she’d never seen one quite like this. Her uniform felt like it was crackling. Clutching the empty packet of tree food, she tried to step away from the trunk, but something snagged on her shirt – a branch, a thorny finger perhaps. Just as she reached back to untangle herself, another tremendous fork of lightning tore through the blood-stained sky. A colossal streak of purple light, like a burning spear aiming straight for her heart.

Frida screamed as the lightning struck, slamming into the glass like a meteorite as the night exploded with a flash of blinding pink. The Coffin, the Hawthorn, her. She threw her arms up, the impact pitching her off her feet and sending her skidding across the wet grass. A thousand crystal shards rained down. Somewhere she heard an earth-shattering crack, a sound so huge it was like the world being torn in two. She knew it was the Hawthorn as an electrified keening filled the air, a terrified howl that seemed to rend flesh and bone. Through swimming vision, she saw the ruins of her mother’s favourite tree, purple smoke and fire roiling around its charred trunk. Jagged glass teeth illuminated against the night. The earth littered with broken shards, ash, dust, ruined spotlights and chunks of wood, shining an eerie violet. She saw herself with that same ethereal brightness, as if she was on fire too. But she didn’t have time to process this as a few yards away, she saw them.

A person.

They were pooled in fierce shadows. Crumpled on the burnt earth, their features were in darkness, but she could just make out a long, angular body, curled around themselves. As the fire gradually cleared from her eyes, she saw that they were heaving as if in terrible pain. Their hair – as green and dark as the leaves of trees at midnight – was flung out around them, spilling across the ashen ground. Frida’s heartbeat was faster, louder, wilder than it had ever been. Fear propelled her to try to stand, too fast, but she just made it onto her knees, her mouth opening to cry out, to ask them if they were ok, to do something, anything to help them. No sound came out. Desperately, she lifted her violet-glowing hands towards them before her vision blurred again. Darts of pain shot through her, making her see meteors, making her feel as if she was the meteor, the stars, the entire galaxy.

Everything bright, like scalding fire.

Everything pink, like flamingo feathers and rose petals.

And in the next heartbeat: total darkness. She knew no more after that.

Chapter Six

‘Fri!’

Frida moaned. Someone was shaking her. Pain – everywhere. Lightning and thunder and a memory of violet fire in her bones. Shattering stars. She was a thousand disparate pieces. And a person trembling with anguish in the grass.

Her eyes flew open. Her body screaming in protest as she looked around in a frenzy. She had no idea where she was. She gripped someone’s arm. Someone who smelled of laundry powder and mint. Antony. She tried to breathe, clawing her mind back into place. The Hawthorn. The Coffin. That’s where she was. There’d been a storm. Far above her, thorny branches swayed across the stars.

The person.

They’d been curled up, their hair spread around them like an emerald-black sea.

‘Frida, are you ok?’ Antony cried.

She cast around. ‘Y-yes, I’m fine.’ Her throat was bone dry as if she’d been screaming. ‘There was someone here. Are they ok? Are they alive?’ She managed to focus on Antony.

‘There’s no one else here. It’s just us. You hit your head, I think.’ His deep voice was a balm to the pain ricocheting through her. Darkness leaked in around his edges, along with the very real scent of wet and heavy woods. But . . .

‘No. They were right there!’ She gestured wildly, but she moved too fast and had to close her eyes, the world spinning. ‘The Hawthorn is broken,’ she whimpered, leaning into his steady chest, no idea why or how he was there, but very grateful. ‘It’s broken, all broken. We were hit by lightning! And there was a person. They looked hurt, I don’t know, I can’t, I’m not—’

‘Fri, it’s ok. No one’s hurt, no one’s here. The Hawthorn’s fine.’

Frida heard what he said, but she didn’t believe him. ‘It can’t be,’ she cried. ‘Everything was purple, there was a fire, there was a person on the ground that needed help! The Coffin’s totally shattered, a million pieces . . .’ She’d opened her eyes again and was looking all around her in disbelief. ‘The storm . . .’ she trailed off. ‘I swear . . .’

Antony held her as if she might break. His dimples were nowhere to be seen, his forehead a knot of worry – the kind of face he wore after she’d been made into a pincushion by the fairy hedgehogs.

‘I—’ She looked around again. It wasn’t possible. It was like the storm had never happened. The Hawthorn loomed above them, the same sleepy hardwood, not a whiff of smoke. The Coffin surrounded them, glass reflecting the silvery shadows that danced off the spotlights. Beyond, the familiar wood smelled of damp loam and moss. But she still felt as if she’d been blasted in two. She lifted a hand to her head. ‘Shit,’ she murmured. There was a bump the size of a tomato up there. She stared up at Antony, wavering on her feet. It wasn’t possible.

‘I’m not hallucinating. I didn’t eat any of Hamish’s mushroom stash. I saw it.’

Keeping a soft hold of her, he held out one hand, indicating that he wanted to feel her head. Reluctantly, she let him.

‘Lord, Fri,’ he muttered. He pressed his calloused fingers to the bridge of his nose. ‘It feels like you’ve got a grootneck on your skull!’

She groaned. The glass Coffin twinkled behind him, sparkling with the light of a thousand crystals. She was starting to feel silly. She had to try one more time though. ‘I swear I saw someone. They had green hair.’

He grinned slightly, one dimple emerging. ‘Cool. Like Kermit-green?’

‘No,’ she bit out. ‘It was more Emerald City-green!’

‘Right, the best kind of green, of course.’

Distracted, she looked around again. ‘I don’t know,’ she finally wailed. ‘Maybe . . . Maybe they were a guest who got lost.’

‘You think?’ Antony’s worry lines immediately increased. He tugged on one of his ears, something he did when he was nervous. Any mention of injured guests was something they all took seriously.

Frida pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes though, her heart sinking. ‘No,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t know. It couldn’t have been a guest.’ They’d know if someone had got lost – everyone who came to the zoo had to swipe in with their QR code, swipe out when they left. For what felt like the hundredth time, she scanned the interior of the enclosure, her eyes moving over the disorientating shadows. The trunk’s ridges of greying bark fluctuated uncanny colours in her hazy vision. Silver and gold, rose and sapphire. ‘Who did I see then? And why was everything purple?’

Antony just stared at her, helpless.

She groaned again. Her headache seemed to have hitched up a notch. She ground her teeth. ‘You think I’ve lost it. You think I’ve finally lost it.’

The second that it took for him to answer was more than enough. If only it had been Hamish who’d found her. Hamish would have said something funny, and then – just as repressed as she was – they would have kindly moved on. Antony, by contrast, was much more well-rounded and looked far too worried. To do anything but look at him, she gazed down at her filthy hands. She’d never looked less purple in her life.

He touched her sleeve and spoke with care, as if nervous of upsetting her. This in itself was upsetting. ‘You might be concussed, love.’

She miserably prodded the tomato on the back of her head. The glass Coffin had never looked glassier, the tree never more tree-like. But her brain had never felt so un-brain-like in her life. She felt as if she’d been trampled by Matilda, the largest of the stone giants.

‘Why does this stuff never happen to you?’ she wailed. ‘Why is it always me?’

He chuckled. ‘Oh, come on. There’s only enough room for one drama queen in this threesome. Don’t you start.’

It was enough to make a smile pull at her lips. That crown went unequivocably to Hamish, and she had no desire to usurp them. With an effort, she reigned in her melodrama and reminded herself that she hadn’t been trampled by Matilda or hit by lightning. She’d just tripped over a root. Big whoop, Fri. A wave of tiredness hit her, and she leaned her head against Antony’s shoulder. Christ, she hurt. ‘I want to go to bed.’

He looped his arm through hers and squeezed. The look on his face though wasn’t so sanguine. ‘You’re not really serious, are you?’

She blinked up at him, confused. ‘What?’

‘Babe,’ he hesitated. ‘You just missed the most important event in Forest’s history. Cliff’s worried out of his mind. We thought you’d finally been eaten by Gorgonzola.’

Her brain was moving much too slowly, like molasses were dripping through her cerebral cortex. Once, Gorgonzola the grootneck had almost succeeded in consuming her left earlobe. Grootnecks were the size of hamsters, but their capacity for violence was remarkable. But she hadn’t been anywhere near the grootnecks tonight.

‘Most important event . . .’ she began, her eyebrows furrowing as she tried to piece it together. ‘What . . .’

Antony’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. Then it hit her. All the blood drained from her face, and she wanted to howl.

‘The dragon! Oh no.’ How could she have missed the dragon? ‘Is he here? Is he alright? Oh, Antony. No!’ She tried to stem the panic that was rising in her, but it was no use. Antony held her upper arms, his grip just firm enough to keep her from sprinting headlong towards Dragon’s Deep.

‘He’s fine, Fri,’ he was saying. ‘Lucky’s fine. He’s here, he’s safe, he’s still sedated but it all went off without a hitch. The storm passed just in time.’

Frida swayed. It took her a moment for the name to sink in. ‘Lucky?’

It was zoo superstition never to name an acquisition before they’d arrived safely. In a few months, Management would auction naming rights to a billionaire who’d probably name him after their favourite football player, but for now, she tried it out in her mouth. L-u-c-k-y.

Antony’s smile was a brilliant thing. Two dimples. ‘Good name, huh? Hamish was campaigning for Mr Darcy, the others for Barney – you know the purple dinosaur thing. But once Cliff gets an idea in his head . . .’ He trailed off, the sympathy on his face making her heart break.

‘It’s perfect,’ she managed, before her legs gave way. Antony lunged but wasn’t quick enough to catch her before she collapsed butt-first in a puddle of mud. There was a new dragon in the LEZ and his name was Lucky. Somewhere, she heard Antony speaking into his radio.

‘This is Swan1. Papa Bear, just letting you know that Swan2 has been located. She had a fall but she’s fine. Just going to take her home.’

There were a few moments of static before Cliff’s voice came through. ‘Oh, thank god!’ There was the sound of a scuffle, more static, then Cliff distracted, swearing, ‘Christ, no! Not that shovel, get me the longer one . . .’ Another pause. Finally, he came back, his voice clipped, in the throes of whatever shovel emergency was happening right now. ‘How fine is she? What happened?’

‘Uh . . .’ Antony began, his voice faltering as Frida’s hands flew up in a frantic, silent plea: Not. A. Word, she signed. He took his finger off the button of the walkie-talkie and hissed, ‘What do I say?’

‘Nothing!’ she exclaimed.

Antony looked pained. But she had no desire to tell Cliff what had happened. Her track record of incidents was getting longer and longer. Only three months ago, barely a few months after the stone-giant-buggy-crashing event, she’d tripped over a loose brick outside Ground Control. Any normal person would have sprained an ankle. She’d knocked herself unconscious and dreamed Brian and Stewie, the zoo’s griffins, had escaped to take up residence in the attic of their local, the Crown and Anchor, drinking all the best whiskey. She’d been so certain of it, Hamish had practically had to tackle her to the ground to stop her from announcing it over the radio. Ridiculous. If Brian and Stewie had escaped, they wouldn’t be caught dead in a dive like the Crown. However, Cliff had made her take two weeks off work. It had been torture.

‘Uh, she lost her torch,’ Antony stumbled as he read her panicked expression. ‘Then she took shelter in the Coffin . . . and then . . .’ He trailed off, shrugging helplessly as she waved her arms in emphatic warning, ‘. . . then she slipped. But I’ve checked – there’s nothing broken.’

Cliff’s voice crackled back, impatient. ‘So, is she coming?’

‘I’m taking her home,’ he squeaked.

‘She wants to go home? Antony – tell me straight. Is. Frida. Dead?’

‘Actually . . .’ Antony sighed, defeated, ‘something reminded her of her mother, and well, it’s just . . . It made her really sad.’

‘What?’ Frida signed urgently, eyes wide. Antony winced, raising his arms in despair.

Cliff’s tone softened. ‘Oh. Phew. Well, not phew, but . . . you know what I mean. Give her my love and tell her that tomorrow will be her Lucky day.’ Chuckling at his own joke he signed off.

Antony sagged, wrung out. ‘That was exhausting!’

Frida scowled at him. ‘You didn’t have to take it that far,’ she muttered. But when he shot her a look, she capitulated. ‘I mean, thank you.’

He tugged anxiously on both his ears. ‘Just never make me lie to Cliff again. Ok?’

She patted his arm, the corner of her lips twitching. ‘Until Hamish eats all the chocolate croissants, and Cliff goes on another rampage?’

‘Yeah, well. Until then, I suppose.’ He gave her a fierce, bone-breaking hug. ‘I was so worried about you. You’re ok? Really? I’m not going to regret this?’

She gingerly touched her head-tomato again. ‘You’re not,’ she said firmly. ‘Besides, you’d regret it more if I didn’t get to see Lucky tomorrow.’

With a long-suffering sigh, he rolled his eyes to the stars.

Frida grinned, and together they headed for the distant treeline. Dappled shadows arched across the sodden grass and the moon silvered the path. It was beautiful, but behind them the Hawthorn spread gnarled, ominous branches towards the sky and, however much she tried to ignore it, Frida couldn’t shake the feeling that as they walked away, someone, somewhere, was watching them.

Chapter Seven

Frida did not sleep easily that night. Antony insisted on staying over, waking her every hour to check that her brain hadn’t jellified. Drifting in and out, her dreams were full of fire and keening cries. Anguished hands clawing at heavy walls and a green-haired punk superstar blowing raindrops in her face. There was the smell of growing things and rich, earthy petrichor, and the silver gleam of cobwebs under the moonlight. Someone screamed her name, over and over.

She woke finally to daylight in a spike of cortisol panic. Antony was nowhere to be seen, and her stomach was clenching so badly, she had to race for the toilet before she vomited up the last thing she’d eaten, a mediocre sandwich she’d wolfed down around midday yesterday. When she was done, she sank back on her heels. Her head was pounding. She couldn’t explain why, only she knew something terrible had happened. Wrenching herself back off the mat, she ran for the window. But when she pulled open the curtains, she stared speechless at the glimmer of the golden walls in the distance, hazy against the green spawl of Liberty Park, dotted with the typical dog walkers. So normal, so familiar, so fine.

The LEZ was fine.

She gave a moan, taking a moment for her body to settle back into calm. The sky was the summer blue of cornflowers, and the soft morning breeze smelled of the sea. She was still a unicorn butler. Nobody had been struck by lightning. With a sigh of relief, she pushed her tangled thatch of mousy brown hair off her forehead and made a promise to herself to start eating dinners again. Since her mum had become ill, she’d sort of been forgetting and her face was gaunter than she cared to admit. Her skin, previously olive with a soft freckled tan that came out in the sun, had become extra pale. And her eyes, which she’d always loved – a kind of dark brown with flecks of blue and copper – now looked sunken. Her mum used to joke that Frida had inherited some far-flung strain of extraordinary creature DNA, making her eyes almost luminescent in some lights. Purple, she’d joked. Like Frida had swallowed some amethyst by mistake.

A shudder ran through her. Last night, in her dreams, she’d been purple. She ran her hands reflexively over her arms. It had been bad. With a capital B. The shame of it made her put her head in her hands. Had she really worked all day, on bad coffee and barely any food, only to knock herself out on a tree root? Her gaze drifted to the photo that hung by the window of her and her mum, huddled in the rain in front of Fireheart’s signpost, water dripping down their noses. Her mum was mid-laugh, head thrown back, black fringe plastered to her face. It had been Frida’s ninth birthday. The rain had ruined their picnic, and Fireheart hadn’t come out of her cave once. Still, her mum had pitched off her raincoat and jumped through the puddles, declaring that it was great weather for krakens.

Frida touched the cracked picture frame. This was their apartment. She maxed out her monthly salary, just so she could afford to keep it. Her mum’s room was untouched. She couldn’t bear to change it, even when Antony and Hamish gently suggested that they move in to keep her company. The best she could do was drag herself out of bed to go to work, because some days, it was just the thought of Issy and the others that stopped her from curling up, turning off all the lights and never getting up again. She shuddered as fragments of her dream came back to her. Lightning cracking, glass shattering, the Hawthorn burning.

It was all so fragile.

She lingered for a moment longer, trying to relish the iridescent sunlight that streamed through the window. Next to the photo of her mum, she’d pinned an old, wrinkled postcard of Forge House, the original location of the LEZ and home to Sir Joshua Beaufort – her auburn-haired hero – and his seven sisters. When she’d been fourteen, Frida had visited the house on a school trip. Sir Joshua had rescued his first extraordinary creature in 1802 at Forge House. In 1822, the LEZ had been officially founded. It hadn’t been until 1837 that they’d had to move outside of London because a basilisk escaped, slithering all the way to Buckingham Palace and scaring the bejesus out of Queen Victoria during a court dinner. Frida had still loved the romance of the old manor house though, the sparkling serpentine lake, the perfectly manicured flower gardens. The founders of the LEZ – Sir Joshua, his sisters, and their board of scientists, poets and revolutionaries that Hamish called the LEZites – had changed the world. In a time where people coveted swords inlaid with dragon scales, wore hats made of griffin feathers, and ate grootneck eggs like they were sweets, they’d dared to think differently.

She was already starting to feel better. The LEZ was fine. The morning was warm, the mustard yellow carpet of her bedroom golden. Even her little jungle of monstera plants by the window, tended by Antony whenever he came over, seemed to be humming.

Her phone buzzed. It was Hamish, on their group chat, sending a meme of a poor, hapless person tripping over a tree. She groaned and went to have a shower.

When she emerged, ten minutes later, she heard hushed voices coming from the kitchen. Peeking her head out, she was not surprised to see the both of them, bickering in low voices about the best way to cook beans. They both had keys, which they rapaciously overused, but just the sight of her friends made her feel a thousand times better. She slipped back into the bedroom to dress in a clean uniform and force her hair into her typical, shoulder-length braid. By the time she came out for the second time, baked beans had been cooked, bread had been toasted, and there was the wonderful life-giving aroma of coffee wafting through the house.

Her heart too full for words, she slipped soundlessly into her seat at the old, beaten-up kitchen table and inhaled gratefully as Hamish put a gigantic mug of black coffee in front of her, sprinkled with just a little bit of cinnamon. Antony, smiling broadly, clearly happy to see her alive, folded his long limbs into his usual seat under the small, poky window. Seeing the lines of exhaustion around his dark brown eyes, she felt a stab of guilt. In a past life, she must have done something truly incredible to deserve friends like these.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered, leaning over to clasp Antony’s warm, scarred hand.

He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow at her, waiting for it.

She grinned. ‘For being the biggest pain in my arse.’

He chuckled and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. ‘It’s my pleasure.’

Hamish snorted and slid a plate of beans in front of her, à la Mish, cooked with enough fat and salt to give anyone a heart attack. She sighed with pleasure. She hadn’t realised quite how hungry she was. ‘Thank you, Mish.’

Hamish grinned as they plopped gracefully into the seat next to her. ‘Eat.’

Antony, taking a pointed sip of his protein shake, looked in sorrow at Frida’s plate. ‘You know that should come with a health warning.’

Frida didn’t care. She loved Hamish’s beans. For a while, there was only the sound of chewing as they all ate their respective breakfasts. She could hear it though, her friends’ trepidation, positively dripping amongst the coffee fumes as they exchanged unsubtle glances over her head.

‘Right,’ she said finally, not able to stand it anymore. She put down her fork and placed her hands flat on either side of her plate. ‘Go on. Tell me about how last night was the best night of both your lives. I can take it, I promise.’

Antony didn’t miss a beat. ‘Fri, seriously. I’ve seen more exciting button mushrooms.’

Hamish agreed, putting down their toast. ‘The best part was seeing Cliff and Gloria almost disembowel each other over the positioning of Lucky’s snout, but you can see that any day in the Watering Hole if you go down at coffee time.’

She let out a desperate laugh, covering her face with her hands. Antony reached over to pat her sleeve, just as her phone buzzed. She grabbed it.

Good morning, Swan2. It was a message from Cliff. How are you feeling? I was thinking that you might want to take a few personal days after what happened yesterday. I would completely understand. We can cover for you.

She gave a shriek, leaping to her feet.

‘What is it?’ Antony exclaimed, startled. ‘Did Fitzy die?’

‘No!’ Frida waved him off. Her favourite influencer was an ancient chocolate labrador who wore a rainbow onesie, had a snaggle tooth, played piano with his paws and visited retirement homes. Fitzy definitely wasn’t dead. ‘Cliff wants me to take the day off!’

Hamish drew in a gasp.

Antony’s face relaxed. ‘Oh, well . . .’

She was already decanting her coffee into her special Kiss the Keeper travel mug. ‘Don’t finish that sentence, Antony.’

His mouth snapped shut.

She was furiously typing her reply to Cliff, and although it was only 7:30, and they still had half an hour before their shifts would start, the idea of taking a personal day, and enforced alone-time with her thoughts, was just too awful. Not when Lucky was waiting for her.

A few minutes later her plate was washed, and her coat was over one shoulder. She jiggled from foot to foot, looking despairingly between Hamish and Antony’s unfinished breakfasts and the door. Hamish rolled their eyes.

‘Go, love. We’ll lock up.’

Frida gave a squeal. Racing back to kiss them both on the cheeks, she almost tripped over the carpet in her hurry. ‘Thanks for the beans!’

She just heard Antony’s heavy sigh as the door slammed, and she was down the front steps and hurrying across Liberty Park before anyone could stop her.

Jeff and Maisy, the elderly hippy couple who held vigil daily on the pavement, waved at her as she passed. They were two of the most regular protestors who haunted the LEZ, sitting in strategically positioned deckchairs with placards, tins of homemade scones, and knitted unicorn-horn hats. They were just settling down to chant some liberation-themed limericks.

‘Scone, dear?’ Maisy offered, holding out the tin.

Frida, still in a panic, took one out of reflex, thanking her politely. Usually, she’d happily engage in one of their furious debates. Her soul might have agreed with their placards – Put the Wild Back in the Wild! Extraordinary Creatures Don’t Belong in Cages! – but it wasn’t the LEZ’s fault. Go campaign outside the headquarters of an oil company, or the gas company currently threatening to destroy the last habitat of the yellow-footed squirrel. Today, she didn’t even have the energy for their latest conspiracy theory about a high-profile centaur conservation scheme being a front for neoliberal neo-Nazi cultists. They seemed disappointed.

Nibbling on what was – she had to admit – a top-notch scone, she headed for Ground Control. Cliff had told her to find him in his office. When she arrived, he was snoring over a stack of papers. He startled awake as she entered, staring at her blearily.

‘I’m really fine, Cliff,’ she insisted before he could object. ‘I want to work.’

He rubbed his face tiredly. ‘Are you sure? A day in bed sounds pretty good to me.’

She tried to look composed, but she could feel the threads of herself unravelling, a fresh headache pounding behind her eyes. All she wanted was to de-scale the manticore’s tail, give Raziel the technicolour ghost-lynx an anti-worming treatment, or polish the limestone in the stone giants’ enclosure. Was that too much to ask?

‘I’m so sorry about last night.’

‘You know,’ he said gently. ‘If you ever want to talk, you know where I am. And if you don’t want to talk to me, I can always make you an appointment with—’

‘No, no, that’s ok!’ Frida exclaimed, turning puce. She was going to kill Antony. ‘I’m fine.’ What the fuck was wrong with everyone? A while ago, Management had forced her to go and see the LEZ therapist. The Necromancer, Hamish dubbed him. But no kind-eyed man with a sweater vest was going to make her feel ok that she’d never get to hug her mum again, thanks very much. God, she couldn’t get out of Cliff’s office fast enough. Her eyes stung as she gritted her teeth, and repeated firmly, ‘I just want to get back to work.’

He gazed at her for a few seconds more, before he sighed. ‘Of course.’ Then, his eyes crinkled like tissue paper. ‘Raziel’s purr is the best therapy really, isn’t it?’

Relief flooded her. ‘It really is,’ she whispered. The idea that Cliff didn’t get it was almost too much to bear.

‘Plus, we are short-staffed today,’ he admitted. ‘It was a real head scratcher to find cover for you. The root lizards are overdue their sunburn treatment, I’ve got no one to feed Raz, the slippery-nosed hangferns need their daily braiding at 11:00 . . .’

She almost jumped for joy. ‘Cliff, honestly. Thank you. I can help with anything. But the idea of not seeing Lucky today truly . . .’ She trailed off however the moment she saw his guilty expression. Her heart sunk. ‘I’m not seeing him today, am I?’

He rubbed at his two-day stubble. ‘Look, I’ll do my best, but everyone who wasn’t there last night has been clamouring to get on the list. I – I’m really sorry.’

Frida nodded. She tried, but it was hard to keep the devastation off her face.

‘But honestly,’ he burst out. ‘It won’t matter if it’s today, tomorrow, or next week. The feeling of seeing him for the first time will be a memory you’ll treasure forever. I wish I could get to see him for the first time all over again!’

She gave a soft laugh. Even if she didn’t really believe him, she appreciated the effort. ‘I understand,’ she said, straightening her shoulders. ‘I’ll head over and feed Raziel now.’

He beamed sleepily at her, putting his head back down on the table and adjusting the papers to make them more comfortable. His fulsome snores already reverberating as she slipped out of the door, trying to swallow the heavy stone of disappointment in her heart.

Chapter Eight

Frida set off at a trot through the Saturday morning crowds, thinking to cheer herself up with some brisk exercise and fresh air. Cliff was right. The first time she saw Lucky would be earth shattering. It didn’t matter when it happened. She was just telling herself this for the hundredth time when she was waylaid by Sora, Cliff’s no. 2. The older, brown-skinned, hawk-eyed keeper from Camden was rushing in the opposite direction with a giant feedbag over one shoulder. Her greying hair was uncharacteristically dishevelled.

‘Oh great!’ Her eyes lit up when she saw Frida. ‘Cliff said you’re going to Raziel. Would you mind feeding the Bugul Noz on your way?’

Frida didn’t hesitate before taking the heavy feedbag. She always loved visiting the Noz. ‘Sure.’

‘Thank you!’ Sora cried. ‘You’re a lifesaver.’

Frida grinned. ‘No problem.’ She opened her mouth to ask if Sora had any news about Lucky, but the woman had already disappeared into the busy crowds. Frida felt a moment’s pang, but she was keeping half an ear to the radio anyway. She knew Lucky was still asleep. Her headache from earlier was still simmering, but the periwinkle blue sky and the delighted laughter of the guests was the equivalent of a double dose of paracetamol.

When she reached the Noz’s vast grove of beech trees however, she was surprised by a sudden recurrence of dizziness. Just as she reached for the door, she winced at the spike of pain, stumbling inside and collapsing on a nearby log. If she passed out, Cliff would filet her. So, she sat there for a while, just holding her head, trying to breathe through her nose and appreciate the dappled shadows, drenched in apricot hues with leaves that whished and swished in the summer breeze.

There was no sign of the Noz, but he was a shy creature made up of the spaces between things: mist and gloaming and falling leaves. He was gentle, and it wasn’t unusual to hear him softly tapping against the beech trees, warning people of his presence, a rap-rap-tapping of branch against bone. The Night Shepherd, some people called him. Legend had it that he was so ugly, you’d die if you saw him, but whenever Frida caught a rare glimpse, his face was made up of white flowers, with nooks for eyes where the owls nested, and his enclosure was always, without fail, full of tiny creatures, basking peaceably in patches of sunlight. He’d been caught by poachers fifty years ago in Brittany and had been a resident of the LEZ ever since. Another of the LEZ’s endlings.

With an almighty heave, she stood up and got to work, heaping little piles of pansies and wood anemones into the bowls of mossy tree stumps. The scent of something primeval wafted over her. Somewhere, there was the flurry of brown birds taking flight and the patches between the trees seemed to shift, dark like raven’s wings. For a moment she leaned back, and just listened, the bag of flowers at her side going limp in her hand.

Rap-tapity-tap.

She heard the faint, distant laughter of a group of guests walking past the fence. A flash of violet flared over her vision, but she blinked it away, rubbing her eyes again.

‘Hello?’ someone whispered, just by her right ear.

Frida jerked up and hit her head on an overhanging branch.

‘Shit!’ she exclaimed, spinning as she blinked away sudden tears. ‘Is someone there?’ The voice had been old and craggy, like nothing she’d ever heard before. She tried to peer through the boughs, but other than a brace of blackbirds lurching out of the tree next to her, there was no one. She could smell something though, something wafting between the dark spaces around her.

When she was a child, she’d watched a David Attenborough documentary about selkies. He’d said that when he was in the vicinity of extraordinary creatures, it felt as if he was sinking in wet sand. She’d just assumed that this was the case for everyone, but a few years later, her mum had told her a story of how a river sprite had once come up onto a beach where she’d been swimming, in southern Russia where she was born, and the frosty air had felt like tongues of fire, licking her throat. When Frida had first met Antony, he’d told her that for him, the feeling was like a warm blue ocean, the colour of Issy’s eyes. For Cliff, it was the ripe scent of forest loam, and for Hamish, it tasted of salty popcorn.

The first time Frida had felt it, she’d stepped inside the cave of the fairy glow-worms. She’d been twelve years old, and her mum had paid extra for them to go on a night tour. That was the moment Frida had realised that, for her, it felt like stepping between the stars. Gigantic, smouldering, and metallic. And as she stood there in the Noz’s enclosure, she caught a whiff of it. The scent burrowed into her, hiding behind damp moss and the chalky odour of clay. It wasn’t unusual to smell such things in the enclosures. The wards only prevented an extraordinary creature’s power from leaving, not existing. She’d felt it countless times before but for some reason, this time, it made her uneasy.

Something in her body, deep in her bones, seemed to stir.

The next second, it was gone. Her nostrils flared, disappointed. She tried to find it again, but all she could smell was moss and the sweet scent of the pansies in her hands. Chalking it up to exhaustion, she got back to work.

‘Enjoy your flowers, handsome!’ she called as she headed out the door. Someone had abandoned one of the LEZ’s pink electric bicycles and she gave a little skip, slinging her backpack over her shoulders and setting off on a wobbly course towards Raziel, almost knocking over two guests arguing about whether to try the Peculiar Pancakes or the Fearsome Fajitas. Frida started to recommend the Peculiar Pancakes with a double helping of the Extra Strange Sauce, but their death stares had her peddling away with a hurried, ‘So sorry,’ tossed over her shoulder.

By the time she reached Raz’s enclosure, she was shuddering from the exertion – an embarrassingly short distance, no farther than from her flat to the Crown and Anchor. She needed another coffee, stat.

‘Hey Raz,’ she called out, carefully propping the bike against the nearest wall. The ghost-lynx was already there, waiting. Hidden from guests, Raz was pacing back and forth, her fur a raging scarlet from the tips of her feathered ears to the fluffy end of her tail. Frida crouched by the fence in concern, stubbornly ignoring the spike in her headache. ‘You ok, baby?’

The ghost-lynx snarled.

Though barely the size of a large handbag, her fluff made her look triple the size. She had enough rolls of fat that when she lay down, she melted into a technicolour puddle.

‘What’s spooked you?’ Frida crooned.

‘WE WANT TO SEE THE LYNX!’

‘THE LYNX, THE LYNX!’

Her heart sank when the distant shouts reached her. Of course Raz was upset.

Raz ducked her head, skirting away from the fence. Eventually, the guests grew bored of waiting and the shouts drifted away. But Raz stayed a furious scarlet, pacing relentlessly and slamming her paws on the ground. Usually, if Frida waited long enough, Raz would calm down. Her fur would melt from that stark, fearful red into the soft pink of a sunrise, and when she finally started to purr, Frida would smile, relieved.

This morning, however, there was no sunrise. Raz’s ears stayed pinned back, her tail jerking in unhappy flicks. ‘Not to worry, sweetheart.’ Frida pushed herself up, forcing a cheerful tone. ‘It’s lunchtime! I know you’ll love that.’

In response, Raz emitted a low, spine-tingling growl and with a running leap, spread her wings and launched into the sky, her fur shifting to the colour of rain-laden clouds, as she banked in laps around the corners of her boreal forest.

Frida headed for the freezer to prepare Raz’s lunch.

It wasn’t unusual for Raziel to act like this. Who could blame her? Raziel had once lived in a palace in Russia, a pampered pet of royalty and fed a diet of veal carpaccio, sweetmeats, and sugar cubes. It was even rumoured that she’d had her own pastry chef. With only three hundred or so ghost-lynx left in the wild, she was the equivalent of owning a Van Gogh. Of course she was a gloriously self-satisfied, deeply spoiled feline prone to fits of theatrical fury, and she made no secret of her disdain for most people. However, she was also scared of everything, from falling leaves to a loud sneeze. Creatures of myth, it was said that ghost-lynxes could see through solid objects, slide through walls, rouse someone from the deepest dream and make wishes come true. But here in the LEZ behind the safety of the wards, Raziel was restricted to neck rubs, turning her nose up at breakfast, snarling at tourists, and shifting through every colour of the rainbow.

The first time Raziel had purred in Frida’s presence had been one of the greatest moments of her life. But even better had been when Cliff first let Frida go inside with the ghost-lynx. As soon as she’d stepped through the doors, Raz had wrapped her tail around Frida’s legs, her fur deepening to the exact shade of brown as Frida’s eyes, flecked with ripples of blues and coppers. Cliff had said he’d never seen Raz turn quite that colour before. Frida had never felt so deeply and wondrously seen. Raz had licked her arms lovingly until they’d bruised and later, the team had presented her with a cake that said RAZ♥SWAN2 in frosted icing. That evening, she, her mum, Antony and Hamish had celebrated with Frida’s favourite takeaway from the China Garden. That’s when her mum had given her the Kiss the Keeper travel mug. It had made her laugh so hard she’d snorted fried rice out of her nose.

Frida swallowed the dry lump in her throat. She used that mug every day. It was already starting to leak. She didn’t think she had the capacity to consider what she was going to do when it broke. This morning, of all mornings, she’d really been hoping that Raz would be in a good mood. Sometimes, when she was around other humans – even Antony and Hamish, occasionally – it felt as if she was disappearing. Like she was just surviving. But with Raz, with Issy and the others, it was different. It was like their hearts met, somehow, wordless.

It was not to be though, not today.

Frida slid open the gate and entered, shuddering as she passed through. This headache was turning into a full-blown migraine. ‘Coffee,’ she whispered to herself. ‘I just need coffee.’

She waited until Raz came back down to land. ‘Hello gorgeous.’

Raz flicked her tail with disdain, prowling crossly towards Frida across the carpet of pine needles, the scent of snow and sap curling around her. She stared up with narrowed eyes; her pupils shrunk to pinpricks. Her fur was stark white.

Uh oh, Frida thought. She did not have the wherewithal to deal with a Level 5 hissy fit right now. ‘Hey love,’ she said, trying to stay calm. ‘What’s wrong? Are you hungry?’

Raz flashed. Not just a shift, but a blaze. Her fur, her tail, her eyes – all the sudden royal blue of an arctic lagoon. The colour landed inside Frida’s mind like a demand: blue, blue, BLUE. She shook her head to get rid of it, only causing a shockwave of pain to skitter down her spine. Raz snarled and, moving quicker than light, slammed against Frida’s leg. Frida stumbled, catching herself as Raz transitioned urgently to a different shade – not lagoon now but the steely, angry blue of the beginning of a storm. Then a flash of brilliant white. The accompanying rush of emotion, all snapping winds and icy teeth, made Frida cry out. Then Raz became the hot purple of fire, and the colour slapped into Frida, clagging her nostrils with fear.

Purple . . .

She remembered last night how she had been lit up with purple.

Before she could do anything, the ghost-lynx had bounded away in a dizzying horizontal lunge. Frida watched, bewildered, as Raz became a literal rainbow, turning colour after colour. Frida had never seen her this het up before. When Raz finally came to a stop, the lynx froze in the centre of the enclosure, surrounded by craggy rocks and cascades of honeysuckle. The cat was trembling. The sharpness of orange blazed through Frida’s mind. Attached to it, like a note tied to a balloon, were words, along with the pungent, unmistakably metallic scent of the spaces between the stars. ‘You are different.’

Frida blinked. ‘What?’ she whispered.

‘You are different.’

Colours burst behind her eyelids, as if they were waves, trying to crash over a breakwater. The vivid iridescent green of a hummingbird’s wing. A blast of night black. Rust red. Toffee gold. The underside of a beetle’s shell. The warm yellow of an afternoon. Lavender. Amber. Holly-berry red. And more. As the spaces between the stars blazed behind her temples, colour after colour burned through her. They were all trying to say something, landing in her mind like letters of an alphabet she couldn’t decipher. What. Was. Happening.

She just stood there, gaping like a fish. Raz pushed against her, flicked her tail.

‘I don’t understand!’ Frida exclaimed.

Raz’s stare was slitted and feline, before she dropped her head in disappointment. All at once Raz dimmed to grey. Drab, ash, slate. The vibrant energy drained from her, and like a strobe that’s run out of battery, the colours wilted.

Frida felt her failure. ‘I’m so sorry Raz, I’m trying to understand.’

The ghost-lynx butted her hand gently as if in forgiveness. Then Frida had a sudden vision of a long icy lake surrounded by pine needles and sap, a flash of hot pink, the pink of a flamingo’s wing, pure happiness, home, and then grey again. And that was it. Raziel changed back into the cold white crust of snow. Her markings stood out like splatters of pale cream as she looked at Frida in that devastating way only a cat is capable of.

Suddenly, Frida’s radio buzzed. ‘Hawk for Swan2, do you copy?’

Frida jolted.

Raz was already turning away, spreading her wings.

‘Raz!’ Frida cried. ‘Wait.’

‘Swan2, do you copy?’ It was Sora.

Frida gave a moan, grabbing her radio. ‘Copy. What’s up?’ Her heart pounded as Raz took off, disappearing into the emerald darkness of the treetops. Sora was speaking, and Frida had to shake herself to listen. Her nostrils flared, but all she could smell was honeysuckle.

‘. . . Urgent, we really need some help over here. Cliff said you’d be delighted.’

Frida blinked. ‘What?’

‘Frida, we need you at Dragon’s Deep. Do you copy?’

It took her a moment. ‘What?’ she repeated stupidly. ‘Why?’

‘Sorry, can you hear me? One of the vet students spilled his tea over the last batch of bloods we took from Lucky. Irma’s hopping.’

Frida felt dizzy, barking out a wild laugh. Irma, the LEZ’s head vet, would be furious. Tea spilled over samples was the kind of thing to send her into a bloodthirsty rampage.

‘We have to take more bloods before he wakes up. Can you be over here in ten minutes?’

Frida was already racing for the gate. ‘Yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m coming right now. Don’t do it without me. I’m coming!’

Sora laughed. ‘Copy that, Swan2.’

Frida had to run back, having forgotten to leave Raz’s food for her, wrapped up in little packages in the management area. She paused on her way out, her hand on the lock.

‘Bye Raz,’ she whispered, the pain in her head suddenly spectacular. There was no reply. Of course there wasn’t. Raz was a cat.

This job was going to be the death of her. She really needed to sleep through the night at some point. Frida left feeling more bewildered than ever, but she couldn’t dwell on it.

She had a dragon to meet.

Chapter Nine

Frida jumped back on her bike and headed for Dragon’s Deep. A number of times, she felt her hand drifting towards her phone, aching to talk to Antony and Hamish about what had just happened. But she’d left their chat on mute, not able to face another conversation about her needing a day in bed. Instead, she pushed the strange encounter out of her mind and, trying to breathe through another bout of dizziness, propped her bike against the wall of the unassuming cobbled courtyard where a grey door led to the heart of Dragon’s Deep. It was meant to be a secret, but secrets lasted as long as an unattended chocolate croissant in this place. The courtyard was packed with Extraordinaires, LEZ nerds dressed in sparkly merch, trying to peer through whatever notches in the soundproofed fencing they could find.

In her Forest uniform, she was spotted within seconds.

‘Has the dragon woken up yet?’ an eager enthusiast, wearing fake wings and a jaunty witch’s hat, demanded.

‘When can we see him?’ called another in full wizard’s robe and Gandalf beard.

‘What’s his name?’ a third coaxed, sporting a Lagarfljót Worm beanie.

Frida shook her head with regret. Basking in their attention, she felt like a minor celebrity. ‘I’m sorry,’ she exclaimed. ‘I’d lose my job if I told you!’ The word Lucky blazed through her, and she had to bite down on it with a grin. She was lucky. If she wasn’t wearing khaki, she’d be right there with them in a purple dragon onesie.

Sighs of disappointment followed her as she placed her thumb on the door’s security panel. She had to take a moment on the other side, steadying herself against the wall, her head spinning again. She wondered if she was about to faint. As long as you didn’t count last night, she’d never fainted in her life. She had the constitution of an ox. Once she’d eaten twelve tofu-dogs, washed them down with a chocolate cake and two bottles of wine, and run a marathon the next morning to raise money for the conservation of endangered green-tongued frootelies. She’d been fine.

But the scent that hit her as she moved through the labyrinth of corridors was enough to clear her dizziness. It registered in the deepest part of her memory, the smell of her childhood. It was countless hours, days, months, years, hanging outside Fireheart’s enclosure with her mum, just watching that terracotta miracle basking in the sand and sending smoke rings up into the skies. It was heat and sulphur and all her dreams wrapped into one scaly package.

When she pushed open the final door though, she blinked, momentarily blinded by something vivid and green, fluttering through her with the ephemerality of a hummingbird. Raz? She rubbed her eyes. No. Taking a few slow breaths, she grounded herself. Just the green of the jungle, locked behind a thick layer of heat- and power-resistant glass. Nothing cryptic about it, just the maze of palms and ferns, vines and banana leaves that she’d helped to plant.

‘Swan2!’

She grinned. Cliff looked incandescent. She stumbled towards him across the long, tarmacked avenue. This was the ‘behind the scenes’ of Dragon’s Deep, where they kept the bits no one was meant to see: the vet materials, the foods stores, the tool supplies. The air around her was thick – a heady, meaty conflagration of sweat, humidity and noxious sulphurous fumes.

‘All ok with Raz?’ Cliff asked as he towered over her.

On a normal day, she would have told him everything, spilling like an overturned teacup. But this wasn’t a normal day. She was just staring past him, unable to say much of anything past, ‘Gaaaahh.’

Cliff chuckled. ‘What did I tell you?’

Her mouth opened and closed. Purple.

He was so purple. Amidst the shifting, sun-blanched forest, she took in the purple of his forked tail. The four purple splayed-out legs, the two mammoth purple wings. A tapestry of every shade of purple ever imagined; aubergine, plum, violet, amethyst, mauve, lilac, wine, maroon. . . She was sure, in that moment, that even a lifetime of studying the colour purple could not prepare someone for its meaning – not until they saw him.

‘Oh. My. God,’ she whispered.

Cliff bobbed his head. ‘Isn’t he magnificent?’

Frida felt as if she might take off. Suddenly everything else was wiped away and all that mattered was this. ‘He’s resplendent! He’s dazzling. He’s beatific.’ She bit back tears. ‘Thank you.’ She didn’t think she’d ever meant two words as much.

Cliff’s beam grew. Then another zookeeper named Zuzka beckoned to Frida, and Cliff waved her away, returning to his personal reverie. Frida drifted over, unable to look anywhere but through the glass. Even sleeping, the dragon looked menacing. His tail, which twitched like a dog’s, was lined with razor-sharp spikes and was as long as a bus. His intricate scales gleamed, mother-of-pearl. His coal-black claws glinted in the sunlight, sharp enough to make her catch her breath. She couldn’t believe he was just a baby. Barely a hundred years old. Most dragons stayed with their fathers for the first two hundred years of their lives. Nobody had been able to find out what had happened to this dragon’s father.

Not for the first time, something cracked inside Frida at the thought.

For all his majestic power, he looked like he hadn’t quite grown into his front paws yet. As he slept, his massive eyelids flickered. His long neck was twisted, his big boxy head tilted clumsily to one side, half-formed beard a tangle of pale gold wool. A puddle of drool spread outwards from his half open mouth. Frida didn’t dare blink for fear that if she did, she’d wake up to find Antony poking her again, telling her this too was a dream.

‘Look at his wings!’ Zuzka signed, her eyes wide as saucers. Zuzka was, after Antony and Hamish, Frida’s closest friend. Her bright pink hair always made Frida smile. She was Czech, her creamy-pale face wrinkled as an old book, an aged punk rocker who’d taken more than a few drugs in her time. One of many Deaf keepers who flocked to the LEZ, inspired by Gloria and the LEZ’s policy on sign language, she was also Frida’s tattoo partner in crime. Frida couldn’t count the number of LEZ-themed tattoos they’d got together.

Frida nodded emphatically. ‘I see them!’ she signed back.

His wings had completely flattened the flowers they’d planted only yesterday. She didn’t care. This dragon could flatten whatever he wanted. Each wing glinted with talons so dark, they seemed to eat the sunlight. Frida had spent every second of her free time these last months reading up about this type of dragon, so she’d known what to expect, but to see him, right there in front of her . . . Long-tailed tree-crawlers were so rare.

Zuzka made a sign of her mind blowing up, and Frida giggled helplessly.

His right wing was a perfect dragon’s wing. Massive, bat-like – the picture of grace and majesty. His other wing though, the one closest to them, was different. Just like all the pictures of male Long-tailed tree-crawlers that she’d seen, this left wing was segmented. Split into three, like interconnected flapping sails. As if once, before the dawn of time, something had happened to slice one of the male’s left wings into thirds, and then they all just decided that this was a better way of doing things. The best evolutionary reason that biologists could come up with was that, since the males were the ones who cared for the babies, it was a way to keep them on the ground whilst the females did the hunting. Although the males could fly, in the AI videos Frida had found (no real video footage existed), they always looked slightly lopsided.

The upper section of Lucky’s left wing was a bit furled, tucked under the rest of his wing, like folded velvet.

‘Sora says he’s snoring.’

Frida nodded at Zuzka through her teary smile. ‘Louder than Antony after a night out,’ she signed back.

Zuzka chuckled.

‘Louder than Cliff on the staff sofa,’ Sora, from Zuzka’s other side, contributed with a wry smile. Together, they fell back into awed silence, watching as Lucky flickered with some unfathomable internal fire. Rings of smoke tinged with gold drifted through the overhanging canopy. His belly looked like a banked inferno.

Suddenly, a flurry of activity emerged through the door that Frida had come through, just moments before.

‘You arrived just in time, Frida,’ Zuzka motioned, using Frida’s unique sign name: the wings of a dragon taking flight.

Frida nodded, breathless. She watched as Irma, vet in charge, led a troop of pink-scrubbed nurses, fluttering around her like terrified butterflies. Irma was a broad shouldered, muscle-ripped force of nature, raised on New Zealand sheep farms and current world record holder for the number of sheep sheered in one day (768).

Irma turned to Cliff and rubbed her hands together. ‘Ready to rock and roll, Papa Bear?’

Cliff drew himself away from the glass, his grin splitting his face. ‘Ready like a hippogriff at sunset, my dear.’

For an instant, Frida felt a stab of guilt. She’d lied to him – or more accurately, made Antony lie – and if she hadn’t, someone else would be standing here in her place. But then she joined the others waiting by the gate and Irma was peering at the screen on her tablet, carefully monitoring the rhythm of Lucky’s heartbeat, transmitted from the chip they’d inserted in his foreleg last night. Cliff, beside her, was all focus and gravitas.

When Irma started to hustle them inside the tunnel, Frida barely registered her headache spiking. The first time she’d had gone inside an enclosure for a vet check, it had with Moira the manticore during her third week on the job. Frida had thought she was just observing, but within seconds Cliff was barking at her to, ‘Get down here and help me hold her paws.’ Moira’s feet were the size of dinner plates. Since then, Frida had participated in so many sedations she’d lost count. The fear faded, but she never lost the feeling of astonishment at being close to an extraordinary creature, no matter who they were.

But this was a whole other level. Quite literally.

Frida didn’t believe in heaven. Her mum had been a lapsed, runaway Jew, and the only thing she’d taught Frida to believe in had been dragons. Hamish was of the same mind. It was only Antony who subscribed to a panoply of actual gods, despite being a die-hard empiricist at heart. His dad was Taíno, and his mum Christian, and the afterlife played a big role in his house. Frida didn’t believe, but at this moment, she would have liked to think that Antony was right. Because she longed to think that her mum was watching her right now, dancing the samba on the kitchen table of heaven, maybe with Sir Joshua waltzing at her side.

They were through the wards and inside the enclosure before she knew it, the phenomenally awful stench of sulphur filling her every pore. Vets were pulling out their equipment, Zuzka was helping Cliff monitor Lucky’s breathing. Ten yards away, Lucky’s gigantic, forked tongue lolled between teeth made for shredding. Was this the most incredible, surreal thing that had ever happened to her? She’d seen Hamish get up on stage and proclaim an ode to Crumble the stone giant at the staff Christmas party. She’d seen the pregnant Icelandic Lagarfljót Worm strike a guest around the face with their eight-foot-long worm penis. She’d seen Cliff dress up as Gloria after drinking too much fizzy wine at Halloween, prancing around Ground Control shaking a broomstick, threatening death and dismemberment to anyone stupid enough to steal the chocolate croissants.

Something was chirping, but she shook her head, ignoring it.

‘Come closer, Frida,’ Sora whispered.

Frida approached with caution. Sora was lifting Lucky’s massive, rumpled eyelids, touching the edges of his snout, avoiding the threads of smoke that puffed from the cavernous pits of his nostrils. The two of them watched, barely breathing, for a reaction – a twitch, a rumble, a blink. Any sign that he might be waking up. Frida was so close, the urge to touch him was magnetic. She knew it might be one of her only chances. Lucky looked so peaceful, a giant baby curled up, his formidable power banished momentarily to the edges. She tentatively reached out a hand. Most dragons, especially forest-dwelling ones, were endothermic. They could regulate their own body temperature, banking the fire inside them against an icy exterior, handy if you lived in places with a lot of kindling.

Academically, she knew this, and yet still she flinched as her fingers brushed his neck. Ice. Like the crystal smoothness of a ripple-free lake. He felt untouched by time, unlike Fireheart whose two thousand years showed in every wrinkled crag and pitted scar. But Frida knew better. He wouldn’t be here if he were untouched.

‘You watch his eyelids,’ Sora instructed quietly, brushing a wisp of greying hair behind one ear. Tiny beads of sweat glimmered on her temple. ‘I want to check his mouth again.’

With alacrity, Frida took Sora’s place. The dragon before her was so big, she could have crawled inside his eyelid and wrapped herself up like a blanket. The sun slanted through his golden eyelashes, casting long shadows across her chest. She cautiously inched to one side, avoiding a growing puddle of drool. The vets were working at top speed. They’d be done in minutes. She wanted to stretch these last moments forever – to curl up in Lucky’s claw and make a fort. When would she get to be this close to him again? Next month? Next year? Never? She hadn’t known, all those years spent gawping at Fireheart through the fence, that she would get even this. It felt as if her head was going to pop off, fireworks shooting out of her craniovertebral junction. She—

‘HELLO LITTLE STINK!’

Chapter Ten

All of a sudden, Frida was flat on her arse in the mud, and a massive golden eye was peering down at her. The huge dragon cocked his head in her direction. Then he spoke. Again. Quite cheerfully, and extremely loudly. ‘GOOD MORNING!’

She clapped her hands over her ears. His long, slit-like pupil was a yawning crack, the colour such a deep, velvet black, it could swallow her whole. She opened her mouth to scream, something along the lines of: Get back, save yourselves, oh god he’s awake, we’re all going to die! But when she looked around for backup, she let out a mangled squeal. There was no one. Not like there was no one – they’d just disappeared behind the trees or something. This was – there was actually no one. The ground, the trees, Cliff and Zuzka, Sora and Irma, all those fluttering butterfly nurses . . . all gone. There was just a soup of misty violet smoke, her and . . . Lucky.

Oh fuck.

Lucky was examining her. ‘ARE YOU OK, LITTLE STINK?’

‘I’m fine!’ It was an instinctive reply, and yet completely incorrect. ‘But, um . . . maybe . . .’ She winced, tentatively taking her hands off her ears. ‘Could you stop shouting?’

Lucky blinked at her in surprise.

She batted at the mist curling around her ankles and scrambled to her feet. On her wrist were the tattooed words DO NOT RUN, the three-word foundation of her zookeeper training. Do. Not. Run. She and Zuzka had decided to get the tattoos when Frida had officially become a zookeeper and was awarded her baseball cap. She’d needed it multiple times since then, but never quite as much as now. Maybe the motto needed a tweak: Do not run, unless a dragon is shouting at you, and you appear to be floating in mid-air. In which case feel free to run as fast and as far as you can.

‘You don’t look fine,’ the dragon chirped in such a careful stage whisper, she might have laughed if she hadn’t been so terrified. She’d always imagined a dragon would sound deep and booming like a mountain on legs. But his words seemed to fall into her skull, echoing with the exultant chirps of an enthusiastic baby bird.

‘Uh,’ she said tentatively, figuring if she was going to tell the truth to anyone, it might as well be a baby dragon. ‘I guess you’re right. I’m not fine, am I?’ Although strangely, for the first time since last night, it felt as if her head had cleared.

He giggled – a sound like a canary being tickled. Then he crossed his huge, muscular paws and clumsily craned his thick neck to scrutinize her, as if measuring how exactly not fine she was. His pale golden beard trembled, and threads of drool dribbled into the mist. His face was a bit like a rectangular box, it was so flat and stumpy, but the ribbons of minute scales across his forehead were like diamonds. And his long blue tongue lolled between his teeth in his excitement. He felt so real, but he couldn’t be. There was no way. She remembered that the lightning last night had felt real, too. As if to affirm this fact to the universe, she whispered,

‘You’re not real.’

He snapped his mouth shut and looked affronted. ‘Of course I’m real! Aren’t you?’

‘Right now, truthfully?’ she exclaimed, watching as his scaled eyelids lowered in confusion. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

He seemed to accept this in a philosophical fashion, albeit reluctantly. ‘Well, it’s hard to tell sometimes, I suppose.’

She nodded rapidly. But looking up into his painfully hopeful face, she amended, ‘I guess we could assume we’re both real, for now.’

Instantly, his eyes lit up. ‘Oh yes, that is a good idea!’

She beamed at him; she couldn’t help it. His eyelashes glimmered a thousand golds. Then she furrowed her brow. ‘But, if we are real, do you know how we’re talking to each other?’ Dragons didn’t really have proper vocal cords.

‘OH YES! Dragons don’t often speak to humans; you are right little stink.’ He drew closer, the smoky haze tufting out of his nostrils making her eyes water. ‘But you’re special. My dada said I had to speak to you.’

‘To me?’ she squeaked, looking helplessly at him through the mist. ‘Your dada?’

His head bobbed earnestly. ‘Yes. He promised you’d find me. I had to make the lightning storm first, and then he said you’d come. And here you are! So I did a good job, I think. It’s all working out exactly as it’s supposed to.’ He beamed proudly, his scraggly, drool-covered whiskers trembling.

It was hard to think. ‘The lightning?’ she stammered, inching back a touch.

‘Yes! It hit you, I know it did. I felt it.’

‘You . . . made that lightning? It was real?’

‘Yes, yes!’ He looked delighted. When she didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything, just stood there in total shock, his face fell. ‘It wasn’t beautiful?’

Her throat was dry at the memory of a purple fork of fire streaking across the sky. It took every ounce of courage not to flee. ‘It was very beautiful,’ she squeaked, but beneath her breastbone a knot of terror swirled. ‘Why?’ she gasped, the only question she could think to ask.

He sank back on his haunches, his boxy snout furrowed. ‘Well, because Dada told me to. I did worry your head would explode.’ He started sniffing her dramatically, his cracked nostrils almost knocking her over. ‘How does it feel? It’s so exciting.’

Her fear melted then, all at once, as she reached up in wonder to touch one of the wisps of his beard. It felt like sticky sheep’s wool.

He purred, rubbing against her hand. ‘Dada said I needed to make you into a very special little stink, with my special dragon fire. Dragons are linguists, you know.’ He puffed out his chest proudly. ‘And now you are too. You’re a tiny little bit dragon. Isn’t that lovely? I’d turn everyone into dragons if I could, but Dada said I’m not allowed. Only you. It took ever so much magic.’

Frida knew she was staring, her fingers frozen in the knots of his beard, the word he’d just said reverberating through her. Magic. Nobody used that word anymore. It was – it just wasn’t said. It sent a thrill down her spine, like hearing something ancient and forbidden spoken aloud. Somewhere, she sensed her brain unfurling like a flower, and tiny shivers spiderwalked down her arms.

Suddenly, Lucky pulled away from her, and his face crumpled. ‘But he was so sad when he told me what I had to do.’

She blinked up at him. ‘Your dada?’

‘Yes, it was right before he . . .’ Lucky trailed off, and the golden light in his eyes dimmed in a way that felt like the sun had just gone out. ‘Before the other awful little stinks came and took him. Then they took me. But,’ he continued in a rush, hiccupping, ‘it will be ok now. Dada said once I was with you, everything would be ok. And now here you are, so he was right. He’s always right. He said not to be afraid, to be a brave and good dragon, and that we’re going to go on great, important adventures together, you and I!’

Frida touched a shaking hand to the side of her head. Her hair was barely still in its braid, as if the very tendrils were sensing the world unravelling. ‘We are?’

Lucky cocked his head, a gesture akin to watching a boat tilt. ‘Yes! Because you can talk properly now. You’re a linguist, just like me.’

Deep in her bones, spaces between the stars yawned.

He gnawed on his lips, a little snaggle tooth popping out. ‘Are you ok, little linguist?’

‘It wasn’t a dream?’ she whispered.

Lucky roared. A burst of heat shot from his cavernous nostrils and Frida fell backwards just in time, narrowly missing being barbecued. ‘Don’t you believe me?’ he wailed.

Frida scrambled back to her feet. The devastation on his face was frankly petrifying. ‘Yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘Yes, I believe you!’

He burrowed under his paws. ‘I’m scared. Do you know where we are? Dada said it would be ok, but there was so much to remember.’

‘Oh honey.’ Suddenly, she plopped down next to him and touched the edge of one oversized forepaw gently. Forgetting that this was a dragon who had teeth sharp enough to punch granite, who could burn her alive with a sneeze. ‘You needn’t be scared. Not anymore.’

Lucky peeked out at her. His eyes a sad pure amber. ‘Are you sure?’

She nodded vehemently. ‘I am. I don’t know all the things that happened to you, but you’re safe here. The LEZ is going to take such good care of you. I promise.’

The dragon blinked slowly, his paws and wings sagging. Then Frida felt something hit her, a vast and endless hurricane of pain. ‘I think my dada is dead.’

For a split second, Frida just froze.

Lucky snuggled down in the smoke and wrapped it around himself. Frida couldn’t speak. But the longer she didn’t say anything, the more she felt as if she was going to vomit everywhere. Finally, he put his snout on his clumsy paws and squeezed his eyes shut. ‘It hurts.’

‘I – I’m sorry,’ she gasped. ‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart.’

‘It all hurts.’

‘I know. I know it does.’ She inched forwards, her heart breaking. ‘I understand.’

He peered up at her through his eyelashes. ‘You do?’

Tentatively, she lifted a hand again and placed it on one of the plate-sized scales near his cheek. ‘Yeah. My mum—’ She had to stop, waiting for the bitter bile to go back down. Saying it out loud was hard. ‘My mum died, over a year ago.’

Lucky stared at her. Whimpering, he leaned into her touch. ‘When does it feel better?’

She gulped. ‘I—’

He blinked, hopeful.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know when it does,’ she admitted with an exhale.

Lucky sighed sadly. She could see the soft grades of gold across his eyelashes, darker at the base, lighter at the tip. His liquid eyes were huge and cavernous.

‘I want to go home.’

Frida’s chest seemed to split in two. ‘I know you do.’

They sat there for a while, Frida stroking his scales, mesmerised by the thousands of purples that shimmered under the surface. He played absently with a trail of smoke with one of his coal-black talons. He was so cold, his proximity made her muscles tremble, but she didn’t move away. ‘Well, at least you’re here, little stink,’ he chirped finally, looking down at her fondly. The streaks in his left eye turned warm and fiery like a hot clay pot. ‘Dada said you would be lovely. I think the fairy will be just as lovely as you are. I can’t wait to meet them as well.’ He waggled his tail with an excited chirp, the venomous fork glinting in the mist.

Frida’s hand froze. ‘The fairy?’

Lucky nodded proudly. ‘The fairy.’

Frida stood up very slowly, her legs like jelly. ‘What fairy?’

Lucky looked confused. ‘The one in the tree. You were right next to them.’ Lucky started flapping his wings in his excitement. ‘Poor fairy. They were so deep inside the tree, it was really hard to get them out. I could hear them crying. Trapped in the roots like that. Hiding and stuck. It’s not nice, even if it was a clever hiding place. I was so sad for them.’

Frida felt like someone had tipped a bucket of ice water over her. Fairies had been extinct for centuries. Was Lucky saying one had been hiding in the Hawthorn?

Was Lucky saying one had been hiding in the Hawthorn? That was impossible! When she said as much though, Lucky looked surprised and hurt. He shifted nervously, making the mist creak.

‘It not impossible. It’s true. Dada said to free the fairy, and I did.’

It came rushing back then. All of it. The shattered Coffin, the fallen Hawthorn. The figure curled up on the burning earth, their hair as green as an emerald city. Frida dragged her hands over her clammy face. Fairies had been nightmares incarnate, intrinsically violent, capricious and cruel. People said they used to steal babies in the night, dance with ghouls, drink blood in their halls carved of the bones of their slaves! Before they’d disappeared, they’d sometimes cropped up in backwater unregulated zoos. She’d heard tales of a Hungarian meadow fairy who could blow fire out of their fifteen eyeholes, a Chinese ice fairy who’d cracked generations of hearts clean out of their chests, a Columbian tree fairy who’d killed half a town with deadly flying thorns.

She worried at her cap, taking it off then putting it back on again as if her cap was the only thing keeping her tethered to reality. If what Lucky said was true, then this was a Code Red: the LEZ equivalent of Freddie Kruger meets Frankenstein meets the Walking Dead. She could only imagine the panic. Melody evacuated. Forest condemned. The LEZ shut down.

This sent the sharpest bullet of fear through her.

The LEZ. Her LEZ. She instinctively gasped.

Lucky’s eyes had started to well. ‘Was I bad? I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I did exactly what Dada said. I want to be a good dragon.’

‘You are a good dragon!’ she exclaimed. Although it was hard to keep the tremor out of her voice as she added, ‘It’s just I’m a bit worried about this fairy.’ Even saying it out loud was unreal. She softened her tone to reassure him, but the words tumbled out of her in her panic. ‘You know how you feel scared? Well, maybe this fairy is scared too. I think I just need to go and check up on them, just to make sure they’re ok.’ And make sure everyone else isn’t in danger of being thorned through the heart! ‘Do you understand?’

Lucky deliberated, agonisingly slowly, looking down at his paws and scrunching up his snout. ‘I think so.’

She quickly scanned the smoky incorporeal nothingness for an exit. ‘I promise I’ll come back as soon as I can! You’ll meet Cliff and Antony, Hamish and Sora and Zuzka and have so many friends. But right now, I just really need to get back to where we were. Can you help me?’

Lucky perked up. ‘Oh, that’s easy, I can do that. But,’ he hesitated, nervous again, ‘Dada made me promise to ask you something before you go.’

She nodded, still scanning the mist for an exit sign. ‘Anything, honey.’

‘Well,’ he said shyly, ‘you have to promise to keep me safe. Because if you don’t, my dada will come back from the fiery pits of molten eternity and roast you up, until you have no brains left, no bones, no eyes, no feet, no little stink hands. You’ll be a pile of dust, which will blow away in the wind, destined to be tormented for the rest of times.’ Then he grinned at her, delighted.

‘I see,’ she croaked.

‘You have to promise!’

She tilted a bit. She was quite sure promises made to baby dragons in misty nothing-realms were binding. But in the end, it probably didn’t matter. She knew she’d do whatever she could to keep him safe. She was a dragon keeper, wasn’t she? Solemnly, she took off her cap and gave him a deep bow. He let out a high-pitched giggle-chirp.

‘I promise,’ she whispered.

With a relieved exclamation of smoke, he thrust his snout into her chest, almost knocking her over. Thankfully, he’d turned the heat down, otherwise she’d already be that pile of dust, blowing to the four winds. Gently, she touched the edges of his trembling head, right where his leathery frill began, stroking the smooth ridges between his scales.

He nuzzled her. ‘Frida Rose, Dada said you’d be nice. The little stink who came to dinner.’ His belly radiated, like shining amethyst. Frida furrowed her brow, a tingle of foreboding running up her spine.

‘What did you–’ But she didn’t get a chance to ask what he meant, or how he knew her name. The next heartbeat, her arms had dissolved into the mist. When she blinked, she was standing again in a dense green jungle. All in a rush, the harsh noises of the world flooded back. The clatter of vets packing up their supplies. The buzz of insects. The whispered conversations of the keepers. Lucky’s snores. Suddenly she was a zookeeper again, and everything was normal.

No talking dragons, no fairies.

‘What the actual fuck?’ she rasped.

Then Zuzka was in front of her, signing urgently. ‘Fri, it’s time to go.’

Frida’s throat was dry. She tried to speak, but she couldn’t form words. Finally, she was able to lift her hands and sign weakly, ‘It’s over?’

Zuzka looked at her like she’d grown two heads. ‘Yes, it’s over.’ She gently took Frida’s arm and started to guide her out of the enclosure. They passed through the doors, and Frida had a lurch of sickness, a familiar jolt between her temples, but it was gone the moment they stepped outside. Everyone was talking and signing, bustling about, patting each other on the back for a job well done. She looked at Lucky, prone through the glass, and tried to get her thoughts together. He’d spoken to her.

He’d said he’d done something to her, made her a little bit dragon.

Raz had affirmed it. You are different. Frida was halfway across the tarmac, tripping over her feet, halfway to Cliff with the impossible words bursting off her tongue, when she stopped dead. Lucky had said he’d woken up a fairy. A heart-cracking, blood-sucking, baby-stealing fairy. Her blood seemed to thicken, congealing like glue around her bones. Her feet, suddenly, wouldn’t move as another terrible truth slid into place inside her. Not of the fairy, but of the look of disbelief on Cliff’s face. For months, it’d felt as if she was just another insomnia-induced fuck-up away from falling off a cliff, the bottom littered with the bones of ex-keepers.

The idea of Raz speaking in technicolour, the Noz pounding his stick and greeting her as if he came from the craggy depths of the trees themselves, Lucky taking her to a land of mist and releasing an extinct fairy from the Hawthorn of fucking Higgleton? She could only imagine what Cliff would think. She broke into a cold sweat at the very thought. But would he have to shut down Forest anyway? Probably. And what if she was wrong? She thought about Cliff asking Antony what had really happened last night, and her poor hapless friend, incapable of lying, caving quicker than a sand worm. Telling their boss, who cared so much about his keepers’ mental health, about her most recent fall, her fresh head tomato, the fact that she’d thought she’d been purple . . .

Her heart thundering in her ears, she started to inch towards the door. And then she began to run, typing into her phone as she fled.

Chapter Eleven

As the long cul-de-sac of oak trees at the base of the hill loomed before her, she was already having second thoughts. But when she saw Antony and Hamish leaning against Antony’s sturdy zoo buggy, bickering in that easy companionably way of theirs, they looked so reassuringly real, she almost wilted with relief. All she needed was for them to tell her categorically that there could be no fairy hiding in the Hawthorn.

She propped her bicycle against the broad trunk of an oak and steadied herself as Antony and Hamish pushed themselves off the buggy, a beast of a thing Antony had nicknamed Grace. Hamish looked at her empty hands in dismay.

‘Where’s our waffles?’ They had a single line of bronze eyeshadow across their upper lids, and it twinkled in the midday sun. ‘You said you’d bring waffles!’

Frida might have – possibly – said something of that ilk, but she was so relieved for this semblance of normality that she launched herself at Hamish, wrapping them in her arms.

Hamish, looking bemused over her shoulder at Antony, sighed deeply. ‘I told you that she’d forget, Ant. We should definitely have brought our own waffles.’

Antony chuckled. ‘Fri, what are we doing here?’

She let go of Hamish, and winced. Both their hands were stained a deep sapphire blue, and that could only mean one thing. They’d been re-planting a rare genus of lepidoris fungi. Hamish, as inept with plants as Frida, had taken a particularly vivid interest in fairy mushrooms recently, but she suspected this had less to do with the mushrooms and more to do with Antony’s extensive library of mushroom-lore, which Hamish just had to visit Antony’s bedroom to read.

‘I’m sorry, you were busy,’ Frida said guiltily. ‘And I didn’t even bring lunch.’

‘There are more important things than lunch sometimes,’ Antony said sagely.

‘Blasphemer!’ Hamish cried.

Elbowing Hamish in the ribs, Antony looked at Frida with concern. Her message had been a tad overdramatic, she supposed, full of URGENT CAPITALS. She glanced at the trail into the wood. It shone Oz-yellow, the trees swishing in the peachy sunshine. In the branches, a robin sang a cheerful tune. Everything seemed peaceful, at least. But . . . was it too peaceful? Everything had felt peaceful last night, too. And besides, it shouldn’t be peaceful, because it was Saturday afternoon in the summer holidays! Sure, it was Moira the manticore’s feeding time and a lot of guests were probably watching her roll around in a bloody puddle of sheep’s livers. But still. There was usually someone who wanted to see the Hawthorn. The words on the elaborately carved sign nailed beneath the last oak caught her eye. Welcome and beware. All who enter this wood, prepare to be enchanted. She gulped.

‘I have to tell you something,’ she said, turning back to her friends. ‘And I need you to tell me that it is categorically not possible.’

Hamish quirked an eyebrow, patting Antony on the back. ‘Antony James Ruiz, ride or die cynic at your service.’

Antony glared. But Frida’s attention had just snagged on one of the gnarled oaks. An unfamiliar vine of velvety roses had curled around and around its branches like a snake. ‘Hey,’ she murmured. ‘Have there always been roses growing there?’

Hamish cocked their head. ‘You called us here to talk about gardening–’

Just as Antony said, ‘What’s wrong with your eyes?’

Frida startled. ‘What?’

Antony was suddenly looking at her so strangely, she turned pink. Quickly, she peered in one of Grace’s wing mirrors, but her eyes looked normal to her. A bit weird, but they were always a bit weird. Her mum’s eyes had been brown, but the splashes of blue and copper had come from somewhere else. Her dad perhaps, but her mum had never talked about him, and she’d never asked, beyond knowing that it had been a one-night stand.

‘They look fine,’ she said nervously.

Antony shook himself. He peered closer at her, then shrugged. ‘Yeah, I guess they are. I just – they looked different for a moment.’

‘Anyway,’ Frida said, exchanging a baffled look with Hamish. ‘I . . . um . . . something happened today. It’s a bit weird. And I’m not sure if . . . ’ As she trailed off helplessly, Antony slipped his warm, calloused hand through hers and squeezed.

After her mum had died, it had been Antony’s family she’d gone to stay with. It was his mum who’d tucked her wordlessly into the spare bed at night, surrounded by the spicy, rich scent of her cooking. Fried plantain, jerk chicken, sweet potato pudding . . . without Frida knowing it, the warm spices had seeped into her bones. She’d spent days, weeks – she didn’t know – watching Premier League football games with his dad. She hated football, but their sofa was old and soft and scratchy, and it was the only place she’d managed to sleep, lulled by the drone of the commentator and his dad’s occasional shouted curses at the TV.

‘Fri, it’s ok,’ Antony said confidently, dark curls framing his face. ‘Whatever’s happened, you can tell us.’

‘Yeah,’ Hamish echoed. ‘If you’ve released a grootneck into the Extraordinary Café, mistakenly let one of the root lizards drink your coffee, or braided one of the hangferns into a V formation rather than a dreaded W – we’re here for you, babe.’

Frida drew in a shaky breath. ‘Right.’ For the thousandth millionth time, she realised just how much she did not deserve her friends. ‘I spoke to Lucky.’

It wasn’t the best start, but it was all she had.

Antony dropped her hand.

Hamish gave a weak laugh. ‘Ok. Well. That’s new.’

Then it all tumbled out. All of it, in all its ridiculousness. The fact that she might not have been concussed. The strange tappity-tap-tap of the Noz. Raz’s rainbow. Lucky. Oh, Lucky. The mist, the proximity of his fangs, the way she’d stroked his cheeks. Chirping about his dad, about losing him . . . finally . . . oh god. The fairy. The maybe real, un-hallucinated, non-extinct Level 8 potentially homicidal fairy.

For an awkward moment, her two friends just stared at her.

‘You’re saying there’s a fairy up there in those woods, right now?’ Hamish slumped against Grace’s bonnet with an audible thump.

Antony dragged his hands down his face as if he was going to short-circuit. ‘Well, you’re in luck, Fri. I can tell you categorically that that is totally not possible.’

She didn’t know why she felt so completely disappointed by this. It was the answer she wanted, after all. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Cool. That’s good then! Mystery solved. Did you say something about waffles, Mish?’

But Hamish didn’t move. ‘What did you think was up with Frida’s eyes, just now?’

Antony startled. ‘I dunno. Just . . . ’ He made an odd face. ‘Like, a bit purple, I guess. But I imagined it. Fri’s eyes are always a bit purple, right?’ He made a little laugh. ‘That’s what your mum used to say. Amethyst. But it was just the light.’

Hamish however launched for Frida, grabbing her face to examine her. ‘Lucky is purple, guys!’

Frida’s heart lurched. ‘Can you see anything?’ she gasped.

But Hamish dropped her face, looking disappointed. ‘Nah, sorry.’

Antony seemed bemused. ‘Come on, a dragon did not change Frida’s eye colour!’ However, he was looking a bit uncertain now.

And Hamish’s eyes had gone round as saucers. ‘We’re in an Extraordinary Zoo. Anything’s possible, Ant.’

As one, they all turned to look at the sleepy wood.

Together, they took a single step backwards.

‘Huh,’ Hamish murmured. ‘Where are all the guests again?’

Frida looked again at the still empty road. There was definitely an odd feeling in the air now, like things were a bit too tight. ‘Can you smell popcorn?’ she whispered to Hamish. ‘And the ocean, Ant?’ She wasn’t sure if she could smell starlight.

Antony suddenly looking stricken. She wondered if he’d just seen a roiling blue sea, streaking across the backs of his eyelids. He cleared his throat. ‘Maybe we should call Cliff. Just in case.’

‘Yeah, good idea,’ Hamish agreed rapidly. ‘Remind us why he isn’t already here, Fri?’

Frida gazed at them both, guilt making her throat close up. Fuck, was this real? ‘Because I thought he wouldn’t believe me,’ she moaned. Suddenly, she felt as if she was falling down that very steep abyss again. It made her feel like her chest was constricting and she couldn’t breathe. ‘I didn’t think you’d believe me!’ Then, she wailed, ‘Am I going to get fired?’

‘That’s not exactly the most important thing right now!’ Hamish exclaimed.

But when she looked at Antony, pity and dread were infused on his face.

‘Look,’ Hamish said quickly. ‘It’s fine. I’m sure its fine. I’m sure there’s absolutely nothing wrong that a few days in bed won’t fix. And if we’re wrong, well – maybe this will be a nice fairy. They didn’t kill you last night, right?’ Hamish perked up, at that. ‘Maybe they’re already bored of the zoo, and they’ve headed down to Melody’s strip for some donuts and a ride on the rollercoaster. Although,’ they winced. ‘That might be worse, I suppose.’

Antony closed his eyes, and Frida didn’t think she’d ever seen him look quite so unstable, not even when she’d almost lost her ear to a rabid grootneck. ‘But Mish, no fairy has ever been nice,’ he whispered. ‘Not in any history book ever.’

There was a moment of quiet.

‘This isn’t real,’ Antony reaffirmed, opening his eyes. ‘It can’t be.’

Nobody moved.

‘But what if it is?’ Hamish’s Glaswegian drawl trailed off into the supernatural silence. Suddenly, Hamish turned to Frida, inspiration lighting their face. ‘If it is real, you could talk to them! To the fairy!’

Frida gaped at them. She hadn’t even considered that.

‘I mean, that’s what Lucky said to you, right? That you’re a linguist! And it clearly worked with Raz and the Noz. Maybe you’re like an extraordinary translation app.’

Frida sucked in her breath. ‘I am?’

‘Guys, come on,’ Antony shook his head. ‘This really isn’t possible.’

‘But what if it is, Ant?’ Hamish repeated. ‘Frida could talk to that invasive bulk-headed fecundi in the lizards’ habitat that you’ve been so obsessed with.’

Antony’s eyes widened. He stumbled a bit, in what she thought was his shock.

‘Babe,’ Hamish went on, spinning back to Frida, ‘I know exactly what you should say. Hey Dozy. Please try not to kill anyone, ok. We know fairies are meant to be mean, awful creatures, but I’m sure you’re just misunderstood, Dozy, happy non-decapitating fairy.’

‘Dozy?’ Frida queried.

Hamish pfffed, as if it was obvious. ‘Dozy – what else would you call a fairy who’s been asleep in a tree for years?’ Then they giggled, eyes going a bit blurry. ‘Dozy. It’s cute!’

Frida almost put her head in her hands. ‘Cute?’

But Antony was laughing too. The sound was so unexpected, so dream-like and un-Antony, that she spun on him, and her jaw dropped. She hadn’t realised that whilst Hamish had been talking, he’d gravitated towards the wood.

‘Ant, come back from there!’

But he was peering down at one of the extravagant rose bushes that had started to grow. He gave another laugh, low and wondering. ‘Fri, have you seen these roses?’

Before she could do anything, Hamish had hurried over to join Antony, letting out a pealing, hiccupping giggle that was so loud, it made Frida jump.

‘Roses, just like Frida Rose!’

At that, Antony really started to giggle. ‘That’s perfect!’

It wasn’t perfect at all. Neither was it remotely funny. A cold knot tightened in Frida’s belly as Hamish began to sing, twirling in circles.

‘Ring-a-ring o’ roses, a pocket full of posies!’ They tried to take Antony’s hand, but Antony was nose deep in the flowers, his expression reverential. He’d looked like that when they’d taken him on a birthday trip to the Chelsea Flower Show.

‘These are beautiful,’ he gasped, running his fingers over the petals.

Frida begged to differ. The roses were blood red as a wound. She tried to pull them both away, but they were having none of it.

Hamish gave a wild shriek. ‘The wood’s had a glow-up.’

Her friends were enchanted! They were fucking enchanted. She pulled out her walkie-talkie; every sound dulled in her ears. All she could hear was the growing dread. All thoughts of being fired and talking baby dragons dissolving in her terror.

‘Papa Bear!’ she shouted, trying to stay calm and failing miserably. ‘This is Swan2.’ At first, she didn’t know what to say. Then, looking at the dizzy looks on her friends faces, she steeled herself, bracing for the uproar that would follow. ‘Cliff, there is a Code Red at the Hawthorn’s wood! I repeat. A CODE RED.’ She’d never said those words out loud before, not over the radio. She’d never heard anyone else say it either.

However, there was only silence in reply.

‘Cliff,’ she said again, shaking her radio, not quite computing. ‘Cliff?’

Antony looked like he wanted to dissolve into the carpet of flowers that were now curling around his boots. Lilacs and foxgloves, daisies and snowdrops. That was too many seasons! She was certain she could smell the hint of metallic starlight now, wafting down the hillside. Gripping her radio in one hand, with the other she tried to grab her friends again to drag them away. But as dreamy shafts of sunlight spilled through the canopy, dandelion seeds floating on the gentle breeze, her friends were drifting inexorably into the wood.

Suddenly, Hamish squealed. ‘Come on. Let’s go find Dozy.’ And set off at a run.

‘Mish, no!’ she cried. ‘We have to go back and find Cliff—’

Antony turned his incandescent double-dimpled smile on Frida. ‘Hurry, Fri.’ And then he, too, slipped under the emerald boughs.

Oh god. They were all going to die.

‘Ant,’ she sobbed. ‘Hamish!’

With one final desperate look over her shoulder, she sprinted after her friends.

She could hear them, giggling through the trees.

‘Come on, Fri,’ Antony called. ‘You’re missing it!’

‘Last one to the top buys the next round at the Crown!’

Frida burst through the thickets, her breath ragged. Still trying the ineffectual radio, fumbling too with her phone with her other hand, but for the first time in her life at the zoo, she had no signal. With a wail of despair, she cried out after her friends. ‘Please! Come back!’

There were so many berries and flowers, it was as if someone had scattered gems across the forest floor. All the perfect yellow cobbles had been swallowed, turned into a jungle. Impossibly tall ferns bit her cheeks; brambles whipped past her. Frida heard more robins warbling, she heard the rush of tiny birds’ wings, the scuffling of small creatures. A fluffy white rabbit hopped happily along beside her.

‘It smells of spring!’ Hamish crowed.

‘And winter and summer and autumn, all at once!’ Antony called back, distant and dreamlike.

‘Please wait!’ Frida shouted. But their voices had faded, leaving a profound and chilling silence. The sense of the spaces between the stars bourgeoned, galactic. Her mind raced with horrific visions: Antony and Hamish with a thousand bloody thorns through their chests, strung up from the Hawthorn with their veins slit, blood dripping into a cup as a fairy danced, singing, around their corpses. She’d forgotten she held her phone in her hand, forgotten everything apart from this, apart from the knowledge that this was all her fault.

Please. Please no.

She pounded over the mossy ground, pushing the creepers and ivy out of the way, the brambles and thorns until finally, oh god finally, she felt the ground start to level out, and she burst out of the trees at the top of the hill with nothing but a sense of doom lodged in her throat and an ice-cold fear in her heart.

Chapter Twelve

When she found the two of them sitting side by side in the meadow making daisy-chains, all the swearwords Hamish had ever taught her exploded from her lips.

They only giggled, and Antony tried to hand her a lapful of daisies.

‘Come on, do you want to help?’

‘No,’ she moaned, grabbing their arms to pull them up. ‘We’re leaving, right now.’

‘Killjoy,’ Hamish muttered out of the side of their mouth, although they patted her hand fondly. ‘Just like when she tries to stop us going on the rollercoaster.’

She was going to kill them. Literally kill them if the fairy didn’t get there first. ‘That rollercoaster will be the death of you,’ she said through gritted teeth. The Kraken’s Rift was on Melody’s pier, and it consistently failed its safety checks.

But then her eyes lifted, and she drew in a sharp breath.

‘Oh my god,’ she whispered, as all other thoughts whooshed out of her. Everything Lucky said was true. The Coffin was shattered. The Hawthorn, her mum’s beloved Hawthorn, looked dead! The tree’s burnt canopy lay in ragged pieces as if it had been attacked with an axe and set on fire. A chill seized her spine, and suddenly she couldn’t stop shaking. Unconsciously she raised a hand to her head. For the first time, she really understood that she’d been hit by lightning too. As she stared at the brutal crack down the centre of the Hawthorn’s trunk, she felt like she was right back in the raging storm, thunder and lightning shattering her all over again. She couldn’t see any green-haired fairies, but the smoky stench of scorched firewood was overwhelming. The air felt as if it was sizzling, tight with the uncanny scent of spaces between the stars. An odd, silvery sort of glitter that left pink shadows on the backs of Frida’s eyelids danced just outside of her vision. She blinked a few times. The tree was hard to look at for too long. It was like looking at someone’s innards. And yet, she couldn’t look away.

‘Are you seeing this?’ she said under her breath.

But when she turned, her friends were singing a little song together, laughing as if someone was about to whip out a picnic basket filled with waffles. She was in a nightmare.

She turned back to the tree, unaware that she’d been moving towards it.

As if in a dream, she tried the radio, but once more all that came back was static.

She raised her hands, and that strange glitter streamed through her fingers. It twinkled in the air, sparkled in the leaves of the trees, and danced along her palms.

Magic.

In her mind’s eye, she saw Lucky say the word, his sweet high-pitched chirp, and suddenly it felt as if she was back in the mist, golden smoke rippling around her, a chasm threating to open beneath her feet. Magic. Nobody spoke of magic anymore. It had gone out of fashion as the most magical creatures faded out of the world.

‘Frida?’

Frida jumped, giving a little shriek as her hand flew to her mouth.

She hadn’t realised she was almost at the centre of the meadow.

Someone was propped against the ravaged stump of the Hawthorn, nestled amongst the listing, lightning-scorched canopy.

‘Frida Rose?’ they whispered. ‘Is it you?’

Frida couldn’t move. She wanted to turn and run as fast as she could, but she clamped her hand down firmly on her DO NOT RUN mantra. The person seemed twisted at a painful angle, a faint silverish liquid seeping from the unnatural position of their left elbow. The rise and fall of their chest was shallow, a faint raspy sound emerging from their lips.

She fell to her knees beside them, not thinking about anything other than the fact that they were hurt. Not monstrous or menacing. Just – hurt. ‘Are you ok?’ she gasped, trying to look for something she could do to help.

They let out a hoarse laugh, as if that was the strangest thing they’d ever heard. But the way they were looking up at her, as if she was a pool of fresh water and they hadn’t drunk in half a lifetime, sent an unexpected jolt of heat through her.

‘Not really, Frida,’ they rasped. ‘No, I don’t think I am ok.’

She caught her breath. ‘You know my name.’

Ribbons of glitter moved around them like water. Even curled up as they were, she could tell they were tall. Probably taller than Cliff, and Cliff was the tallest person she knew. Not male, not female, somewhere that was both and in between. Fairies, according to the history books, had been gender-shifters. But they’d also had horns and dripping fangs, and occasionally sculpted six-packs, which this fairy had none of. They looked . . . kind of normal. Which was strange. Or, as normal as someone struck by lightning, surrounded by glitter, with matted green hair, six-fingered hands and skin like marbled forest silk could be.

Normal in the way that it felt like she recognised them.

Was this really the kind of creature who would eviscerate her? Use her friends’ bones as sparring knives. Take out their eyeballs and snack on them.

The sound of Hamish’s singing drifted over the meadow.

‘You enchanted my friends!’ she reminded herself as she reeled away.

They gave a weak laugh, trying to prop themselves up and wincing when they caught their wounded arm. They were too thin around their bones, their entire body sharp, all angles, like a broken tree. God, she needed to wrap that wound, or something.

‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. I wanted to see you.’ Their voice was like the rustle of old leaves, a reedy whisper crackling through her skull. Suddenly, they descended into a painful fit of coughing.

Frida didn’t understand. Instinctively she wanted to help them, but she was too afraid to get any closer. She studied them as they cradled their arm, trying to get control of their breathing. They had an oval face with a strong jaw, an aquiline nose, and deep furrows of pain between their dark brows. An unruly crown of hawthorn leaves was woven through their hair, listing awkwardly to one side. Their lips, which might once have been full and dappled, were cracked and dry. A small pale thorn of wood pierced their lower lip, an unexpected detail which surprised her for some reason. Their delicately pointed ears poked out from beneath their hair. And their eyes . . .

Damn.

Their eyes were the strangest things. Hooded and dark, it looked as if they were all pupil. Except, when she looked closer, she saw they were the deepest shade of bistre, and held a depth that made her dizzy, framed by the lustrous curve of emerald lashes. Trying to focus on something else, she tried to guess their age, but it was impossible. They could have been her age, or a thousand years old. Weathered lines carved from what seemed like centuries of pain fanned out from the incongruously upturned corners of their lips. Shadows hung under their eyes, and a sick pallor clung to their skin, which beneath the colours of a dappled wood, were betrayed by bruised and sallow cheeks. Their hair, green as a deep forest night, hung in clumps, and she noticed strands of silver woven through the green. They really didn’t look like they were going to eviscerate anyone.

They looked ruined.

They looked, in that moment, just like the shattered Hawthorn. A sheer spider-silk body suit, that might once have dazzled on a fairy runway, hung ragged and loose over their body. When their coughing eventually subsided, they peered back up at her through lowered lashes. She watched their right-hand twitch – as if trying to reach for the tree – but then their fingers fell back, listless, and devastation made their black eyes sparkle with tears.

Finally, they whispered, ‘Your eyes are different.’

Frida blinked. What was the deal with people and her eyes today?

The fairy was struggling to sit up again, and a wry twist of pain touched their mouth. ‘But it’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Seas and skies. You don’t even know me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered, utterly lost. ‘I don’t think I’m who you think I am.’

They looked at her for a long moment. Then they shook their head slowly, their expression clouded. ‘I suppose that’s what we’re going to find out, isn’t it?’

Frida’s lips parted, but no sound came out.

‘Please, listen to me,’ they breathed suddenly. The drifting flecks of glitter reflected in their dark pupils. ‘It’s going to start soon. I’ll be gone I think, with everyone else, we can’t stay to see it, but I – don’t be scared, ok? This was the only way.’ Lifting a shaking hand, they touched her cheek ever so gently. Frida jerked. She hadn’t realised she’d moved so close. ‘I trust you.’

‘You trust me?’ Frida repeated stupidly. The touch of their fingers burned right through to her bones. She didn’t know how long passed in that moment – a minute? A second? An age? – before they lowered their hand.

‘I’m so tired,’ they whispered, gazing up at her with regret. ‘So very tired. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s ok,’ Frida reassured, her voice steadier than she felt. She knew she needed to find some way to call for help, but something in their shattered expression held her there – a pull she couldn’t explain. Quickly, she started patting down the grass around them, ridiculous as it was, to try to make them comfortable. ‘It’s safe here. You can sleep.’

But their face remained etched with anguish. Her heart ached for them. ‘It’s ok,’ she repeated. Bright impossible silver hung through the fallen boughs of the Hawthorn, like strands of tinsel, occasional flashes of pink dancing before her eyes. Far, far away it seemed, she could just see Antony and Hamish’s heads, bowed towards each other through the grass.

‘Is it?’ they murmured. ‘Is it ok?’

She jerked her head back.

Their eyes sparkled with unshed tears. ‘You’re going to be really angry with me, I think.’ Her heart flipped over as they ran their unfathomable gaze over her face, over her tattoos where her sleeves had been rolled up, over her braid, wrestled as always into submission. Then down, across the chest of her uniform where the LEZ’s Leaping Unicorn logo was embroidered. She thought she saw a flicker of distaste. When they sank back into the ashen grass, their cheeks had flushed a faint plum colour, almost as if they were annoyed. At her. ‘Even though this was your idea,’ they grumbled.

The glitter seemed to be growing, buzzing in her ears. ‘I don’t understand!’ she exclaimed again.

‘You don’t, do you?’ They gave a low, gut-wrenching laugh. ‘How strange.’

She scanned their face in desperation, trying to find any clue as to what on earth they meant. ‘What is this?’ she begged. ‘What’s going on?’

But they just shook their head tiredly and sagged deeper. Was she imagining it, or was the grass around them growing? They gazed up at her with those deep, dark eyes that she imagined she might fall into. They were like forest pools, twinkling with bright stars. ‘Will you trust me?’

‘Trust you?’ she whispered.

‘I trust you.’ They laughed again, and this time it was like a thousand leaves swishing in the face of a coming storm. ‘Despite everything. Time’s funny like that, it seems. But you truly haven’t the faintest idea, do you?’ With one final anguished sigh, their head fell back against the shattered tree stump, and their eyelids fluttered closed.

Just as something unearthly started to rumble, deep below Frida’s feet.

Chapter Thirteen

‘Shit,’ Frida cried. ‘Shit, shit.’ She shook the fairy desperately, but they didn’t stir. Unconscious, or asleep. Or dying, she didn’t know. With a groan of despair, she lurched to her feet. ‘Hamish, Antony!’ She started running back towards them, leaving the fairy slumped against the tree stump. What else could she do? ‘It’s time to go!’

Antony and Hamish were splayed out on the grass pointing out cloud shapes in the sky, their bright polished nails glinting in the sun, senseless it seemed to the rumbling below their feet. The air felt tight, overstuffed, as if something was about to explode. The grass now whispered above her ankles, getting taller by the second.

‘Cliff, this is Frida!’ She tried the radio again and again. ‘Cliff, there’s a Code Red. I repeat, a Code Red at the bloody Hawthorn! Can you hear me?’

Suddenly, out of the static came a voice that made her heart flipflop, like she’d just been thrown a lifeline: ‘Can you repeat, Swan2? I didn’t quite hear.’

She let out a whoop. ‘Cliff! Oh my god, Cliff. You can hear me?’

‘. . . Yes . . . Not . . . Can you repeat?’

‘THERE’S A CODE. RED. AT. THE. TREE!’ she wailed.

Antony and Hamish were still cloud-spotting.

‘That one’s definitely more of a ten-trunked elephant, Ant . . .’ Hamish murmured, to Ant’s giggle, as if they couldn’t hear the approaching earth-deep thunder. ‘No, it’s a giant drinking coffee, can’t you see?’ Tears of frustration fell down her cheeks as she tried to drag them up, straining against their dead weight. It was as if she wasn’t even there.

The radio went in and out of static.

‘Swan2, can you . . . the situation . . . precisely where you are . . .’

She tried not to howl. ‘Cliff, there’s a fairy at the Hawthorn. The wards are gone. I repeat. There are no wards, and the Coffin is in pieces. The fairy has done something – I don’t know what. It feels. . .’ She drew in a gasp, her voice dipping with fear. The idea of saying the word magic out loud. . . she had to stay professional, but all she could do was gaze at the glittery power moving faster and faster, unspooling like watery ribbons. She had to blink because it was the most beautiful and terrifying thing she’d ever seen. Her hand shook on the radio.

‘Cliff, Antony and Hamish have been bewitched. I can’t move them. I don’t know what to do. Please, help me.’

‘Swan2 . . . don’t panic. . . bringing wards . . . on the way . . . retreat to a safe position. . .’

‘Cliff,’ she let out a gasp.

The radio went dead.

‘It’s magic,” Antony whispered.

She whipped her head around, but the word was out there. Antony had said it. Antony, a scientist who couldn’t even decide on an ice-cream flavour without making a spreadsheet. He was gazing in awe, double dimpled smile on full display, as he watched the glitter coiling ever higher. New shoots bursting out of the earth. Everywhere was the smell of heated metal. The bees were going bananas. Birds did loop-the-loops. Butterflies flocked in their thousands. Hamish’s eyes dilated as they pointed towards where she’d left the fairy, although there was no sign of them now amongst the tall grasses.

‘Your fairy did this,’ Hamish sighed dreamily, leaning their head against Antony’s shoulder and lightly touching the dark curls of his beard. ‘I love your soft beard, Ant. It’s so tidy. How do you do that?’ They looked up at him, as if he was the only person in the world, and there wasn’t glitter exploding out of every orifice of this clearing. ‘Do you comb it?’

Antony giggled. ‘Of course I do.’ He’d been making angel shapes out of the grass, but now he snuggled up against Hamish and his white teeth gleamed as he beamed. ‘Oh Mish, you make me giddy. Do you know that? Sometimes I just want to swoon.’

Frida gaped at them both. Only when they were blackout drunk did they speak to each other like this. Awkwardly, she reached for their arms again.

‘Ah, Fri,’ Antony turned his hazy gaze on her, seizing her hand in an adoring grip. ‘Beautiful Fri. We love you so much, do you know that?’

‘Yes,’ Frida exclaimed. ‘I know! But if you really love me, you’ll move.’ She gave another desperate tug, but Antony just flopped back down, dropping her hand. She could have sworn the rumbling was getting louder, as if the roots of the very hill were waking up.

Hamish reached up to touch her cheek. ‘You’re so kind Fri, I don’t tell you that enough. You always look after everyone else, and you never give up. Not on a grunkle, not on me, not even on little spiders in the shower.’

Antony nodded sagely, his eyes meeting hers again, this time much too discerning for someone high on fairy glitter. ‘That’s why we won’t let you give up on yourself.’

She went utterly still, a high-pitched whirring in her ears.

And then Antony gave another giggle and wrapped his arms around Hamish, his eyes going blurry again. The lush grasses settled around them like a blanket. ‘Shall we take a nap, honey?’

‘Oh yes, I’m awfully tired,’ Hamish murmured. They gave Antony a sleepy smile, before closing their eyes and muttering into his shoulder, ‘We can help Fri de-worm the hedgehogs later.’

The glitter was tumbling like embers from a mounting wildfire. Her hands shook so much as she reached for the radio again, but there was only the crackle and hiss of static. Cliff had promised he was coming. She fought to steady her breath.

It’s going to start soon, the fairy had said – Dozy, Hamish had called them.

Helplessly, she watched as the grasses and flowers kept growing. Where had Dozy come from? Higgleton Common, all those years ago? Frida had been four years old, but she did vaguely remember the day it had been cut down. Her mum had been watching it on TV. She’d really wanted to join the protests, but in the end with too many shifts at the restaurant, and looking after young Frida, she hadn’t been able to. When the bulldozers had gone in, they’d been at home making an ice-cream cake.

Are you ok? she’d asked Dozy. Not really, Frida, they’d rasped. No, I don’t think I am.

Antony and Hamish lay before her in the carpet of flowers, snoring blissfully.

She’d just sunk down onto her heels, considering whether she could bodily drag them out of the clearing when the most colossal rumble yet tore through the earth, so violent that it tossed her sideways. She threw out her arms instinctively, throwing herself over the sleeping bodies of Antony and Hamish, craning her neck to look behind her.

She wished she hadn’t.

Magic.

It burst out of the Hawthorn, a tidal wave of silver and pink, so gargantuan that it made anything that had come before seem trivial. With a scream, she ducked as the wave of spine-tingling glitter passed over them. The explosive rush of freed galaxies: summer’s fire and winter’s frost, autumn’s decay and spring’s new buds. She was choking on the sulphuric smell of volcanoes, the heady rush of petrichor. And something else, too. Something sweet and spicy, like almonds.

She didn’t know how long it lasted. But when the rumbling finally subsided, a strange silence seemed to surround her, pounding in her ears.

There was the pulse of a heartbeat. Ba-dum, ba-dum. Hers, yes, deafening in her head. But something else too, someone else’s. Huge, and all around. Ba-dum, ba-dum. The earth pounded. Ba-dum, ba-dum. The wood. Ba-dum, ba-dum. She had one hand clutching her cap, the other clutching Antony’s shirt, Hamish’s collar. The ba-dum, ba-dum grew louder. In stunned horror, she watched as the Hawthorn’s enchanted wood began to awaken. Before her eyes, the trunks stirred. The earth below them cracked. Whilst her friends slept in the shadows of the trees, the wood woke up.

It began to inflate like a thorny balloon.

‘Oh . . . shit!’

Nobody heard her though. Antony and Hamish were dreaming, unaware that with that blast of oceanic magic, Dozy had unleashed something. Slowly, with trembling legs, she lifted herself onto her knees. She could hear the branches battling for space, the roots digging deeper, roaring like a tiger released.

‘We really should have gone to get waffles,’ she said as she clung onto her cap and scrambled to her feet. Even as she tried to reassure herself that Cliff would be here soon, she watched the wood lift towards the sky, as if it had been given some magical Miracle-Gro. Nothing about this would look good on Management’s annual report. Habitats didn’t just decide to grow on their own!

Her heart in her throat, she raced back to Dozy, searching for the fairy’s broken form amongst the wild grasses. When she found them, right where she’d left them, curled up at the base of the Hawthorn’s burnt heart, she fell to her knees. Suddenly, the lines of the fairytale, Sleeping Beauty, came back to her, the ones her mum had read to her, so long ago.

‘It shall not be death, but a sleep of a hundred years, into which the princess shall fall.’

She gazed down at Dozy’s wilted crown, the spider-silk suit hanging in fraying shreds, the pale gleam of the thorn that pierced their lip. She could hear their shallow breathing, see the soft fluttering of their eyelids. In the version of Sleeping Beauty her mum had told her, the princess is woken by the prince’s kiss. She chewed on her thumbnail until it bled as she remembered the exhausted way Dozy had formed her name, not just Frida but Frida Rose, the way it pierced her, as intimately as the thorn in their lip.

When she touched the ragged webs of their spider-silk, it came apart in her hands. Their skin was ice cold, sending a shock through her own body in sympathy. Tiny tendrils of new growth had started to loop around their ankles, threading through the matted snarls of their hair and curling around their fingers; their hawthorn leaf crown slipped over one eye.

‘Please!’ she pleaded. ‘We didn’t know you were in here, I swear. If you’re angry, we were just trying to care for your tree as best as we could. Whatever you’ve done, if you just wake up, I’m sure we can fix this.’

But when Dozy didn’t stir, she felt a rush of fury, hot and blinding. They’d told her to trust them. Look what they’d done though! She wanted to scream in their green fairy face, to force them to fix this, but however much she shook them, they didn’t wake up. And by now, the wood had grown so tall, it looked as if dusk had fallen, even though it wasn’t even mid-afternoon and she should, by rights, have finished her shift and already be at home eating a family-sized bucket of pasta in front of the TV.

Cliff should have been here by now. She felt the layers of the wood smothering her, closing overhead like a living ceiling. She wondered if it was creeping off the hill too, swallowing the vampire bats, the neighbouring manticore enclosure. Would it consume all of Forest? Overrun Melody-Upon-Sea? She forced herself to breathe, telling herself that the wards would stop it. But then she remembered – they had failed. Last night. Lucky had managed to blast through the wards on the Coffin. But the Coffin’s wards had been Level 1. Lucky was a Level 8. It would have been easy for him.

What Level was Dozy, she wondered.

She needed to find Cliff. NOW.

With a final blistering curse at the fairy, she hurried back to her friends. They were buried in a thicket of forget-me-nots, tiny flowers caught in their hair and in Antony’s beard. Some foolish part of her thought that if she could just tidy them up, everything would be ok. She straightened Antony’s collar, placed Hamish’s fallen cap back on their head, brushed off a bit of mud from Hamish’s shirt. But as her hand lingered on their chests, feeling the slow rise and fall, she knew they weren’t going to wake up.

Like the fairy, they were asleep.

The canopy had shut out the sun completely.

She let herself drink in the sight of her friends one last time. Antony’s dark lashes, the faint furrow between his perfect brows, the single dimple that suggested he was smiling, even as he slept. Mish’s cheekbones were flushed, the bronze line of eyeshadow set off against a blue stain of mushroom feed on their neck. They were curled together with a tenderness they’d never usually allow unless off their faces on whiskey or, it seemed, fairy magic.

She raised her face to the Hawthorn’s broken canopy, which looked luminous around its charred edges, a terrifying beacon in the dark.

Then she started to run.

PART TWO

Chapter Fourteen

When Frida reached the dark, churning border of brambles that marked the treeline, she had to steel herself against a rush of vertigo. There was just a sheer wall of foliage before her, and it gave her the distinct feeling she’d been trapped inside a gigantic green and thorny baked Alaska. But on the other side, she was certain that Cliff and the others would be waiting for her. Maybe Gloria would be there too. Cliff on his own could fix anything, but the two of them together? If they stopped arguing for a hot minute, they’d be unstoppable.

She plunged into the wood.

Antony and Hamish were depending on her.

The viscous shadows thronged with uncanny power.

Down she went, down, down, down. No path, no comforting lights to mark her way. Jagged thorns ripped her sleeves, tangled undergrowth caught on her hair, chillingly animate branches ripped at her cap. Sometimes she walked, sometimes she crawled, sometimes she slithered, cursing furiously. This wasn’t the wood of the Hawthorn. This wasn’t Forest’s wood. This was a fairy’s wood. and it felt like an age before the ground finally began to level out and she saw the gleam of warm lamplight peeking through the pitch-dark twisted tree trunks.

With a burst of speed, she forced her way between the final thickets. The release made her cartwheel her arms. She’d just managed to steady herself, hope rippling through her, already hearing Cliff’s exultant boom, her fellow keepers’ shouts, Management and a full SWAT team armed with portable wards, machetes, axes, firearms . . .

A cry of joy and relief hovered on her lips.

Then her eyes lifted.

Hope died bitterly, instantly. There was no Cliff, no Management, no acerbic Gloria. No one was there at all to gather her into their arms.

Only bodies.

She looked around, aghast.

There were bodies everywhere. Along the road, in the grass, on the verges, under the oaks. So many multicoloured uniforms, and yet they all looked sickeningly monochromatic in the glutinous, oozing shadows. She understood the scope of it, all in a split second, the thunderous boom making her head ring.

It was a fairytale.

‘And this sleep fell upon the whole castle,’ she quoted, her blood ice-cold. ‘The king and queen fell fast asleep, and with them the whole court.’

She didn’t need to feel their pulses. Together with Antony and Hamish – her king and queen – this court was fast asleep.

Gone, Dozy had said. Is this what they’d meant? Everyone gone to sleep, everyone apart from her. Worse, far worse was what she saw when she raised her head.

‘A forest of thorns, like to be her tomb,’ she murmured numbly.

She let out a half-gasp, half-sob. The irony was that Antony, who loved anything that grew, anything green and rooty and alive, would have loved this. She couldn’t see the sky. She was entombed. She should have been able to see the golden wall of the LEZ, topped with warded barbed wire and a constant patrol of brown-uniformed guards. She should have heard those guards’ footsteps, their voices as they chatted about what they were having for dinner, what was the new hot gossip on the block. But the wood had engulfed them too, interring them in holly and ivy. Her eyes trailed upwards, struggling to make sense of the height. So many trees, like giants rising. They climbed, branch over branch, bough over bough, until they met in the middle far above her, the scale of it making a screeching thunderous howl in her head.

‘Dozy.’ She caught her breath. ‘What have you done?’

This fairy wasn’t a Level 8; they were a Level 8000. Even wounded, they’d broken the wards – maybe all the wards! She imagined the LEZ being taken apart bit by bit. She could feel the branches tightening around her. By rights, the air should have been full of panicked bellows – the shrieks of the leshies, the howls of the slippery-nosed hangferns, the manticore’s roars. But the only sounds were the churning earth, the screaming boughs, the hissing of more leaves than the universe held stars, and the awful multidimensional snores of her friends.

She stumbled forwards when she saw a flash of pink hair.

‘Zuzka,’ she cried.

Zuzka was spooning one of the benches, her tattooed wrinkled face soft as she wrapped herself around it like a cat. The DO NOT RUN tattoo on her forearm glinting in the streetlamp. Next to Zuzka, Sora was snoring like a steam engine. Shaking them made no difference. She scanned the road, praying that Cliff wouldn’t be here, that she wouldn’t find his two gigantic black boots poking out from behind a rubbish bin.

But there he was. Her heart sank as she sprinted over, crouching next to her boss and gazing at his tanned face. He smiled woozily, cuddling the bin.

‘Papa Bear, wake up,’ she begged. ‘We need you.’ Her voice broke. ‘I need you.’

Her boss moaned, ‘No, Gloria, Management picked me!’

She sank back on her heels, putting her hands over her ears. She saw Gloria, sleeping a few feet away. The Head of Sky should have been too canny to be affected by such supernatural magic, but here she was, an angular lump, limbs flung out as if trying to beat Cliff over the head even mid-coma. Frida wrapped her arms around her knees as fake night-time fell over them all. All who enter this wood, prepare to be enchanted. That’s what the sign still said, hanging wryly beneath the oak tree. She laughed bitterly, pulling off her cap and gripping it in her lap. The dark liquid of Dozy’s eyes drifted through her mind as she swallowed a choke.

I trust you.

To do what though? Her whole being sagged like a suitcase that’s been sat on. Dizzily, she watched Gloria’s feet twitching like a dog’s. Cliff’s gargantuan nasal wheezing suggesting he might need a breathing apparatus. She had to be dreaming, but the longer she sat there listening to them, the more terribly real it seemed. She tried pinching herself, but that didn’t help at all and soon, great swollen tears were falling down her cheeks. She hadn’t felt this alone since the morning her mum had died. That day, she’d curled up on the floor of the cold, tiled hospital bathroom and cried herself empty. If Antony and his family hadn’t come to peel her off the ground, she might have stayed on those cold tiles forever.

There was no Antony to peel her off the floor this time though. She didn’t know how long passed but finally, the truth settled over her: she was not going to be granted the oblivion of sleep. So she set her jaw and wiped her tear-stained cheeks. She couldn’t stay here like a discarded crisp packet. She was Frida Rose. Dragon keeper and unicorn butler. Shakily, she lifted herself off the ground, and put her hat back on her head, each determined footstep echoing in her ears as she walked over to Grace, Antony’s zoo buggy. Getting behind the wheel, the smell of Antony settled around her, clearing her head. Mint and freshly laundered uniforms. A stack of Hamish’s new mushroom books in the tray on the back brought a smile to her lips.

With steadier hands than she’d thought possible, Frida turned on Grace’s ignition and set out to save the LEZ.

Chapter Fifteen

Sometimes when Frida, Antony and Hamish had been tasked with dreary jobs like cataloguing the manticore’s stool samples, they’d played a game called Zoo Apocalypse, trying to one-up each other with fantastic scenarios. There’s a mass electricity failure causing the fences to lose their power. The wards all die and the animals escape à la Jurassic Park. Cliff gets impaled on Issy’s horn and Gloria finishes him off with a machete. Fireheart grants you three wishes, a flying turtle bites your arm off, Hamish blows up Ground Control. That kind of thing. By the time she’d pulled up in front of the unassuming grey door of Dragon’s Deep, she’d come up with at least fifty new gruesome possibilities: basilisks in the shadows, hangferns in the branches, homicidal box trees hiding in the yew hedges. If they ever played the game again, she consoled herself with the thought that she’d have a lot to contribute.

From the leshies to the grootnecks to Issy, she’d slalomed through corpses, listening in disbelief as the snores echoed from the rafters, not just humans, but animals too. Dozy’s sleep spell had overtaken the world, insidious and inexorable. And yet. Impossible as it was, there were still wards. Humming on every door, fence and enclosure that she passed.  

There was still electricity.

There were still roads and oxygen and streetlamps.  

But for how long?

Feeling as if she was traversing a rope bridge that might give way at any second, she walked purposefully towards where she knew Lucky would be waiting for her. Lucky, a baby dragon of infinite power. Lucky, who’d started this. Lucky, who would fix this. Quickly, she hurried down the rabbit warren of soundproofed corridors. When she stepped onto Lucky’s sulphur-blasted avenue though, and moved up to the glass, the headache that had fallen to a background hum blazed, making her grab her temples with a scream. She’d never thought the sight of a sleeping dragon would be so devastating. Lucky lay there, behind his humming wards, purple and gigantic and snoring.

She stood there for a moment, frozen to the spot. Then she turned and fled, her head on fire, thinking nothing but the fact that she had to get out of there.

She stood there for a moment, frozen to the spot. Then she turned and fled, her head pounding, thinking nothing but the fact that she had to get out of there.

Blindly, she drove, pinching herself again and again, praying that she’d just wake up. But there was no salvation, and when a jam of bodies in Forest blocked her way, she had to detour again through Lake where the Welsh afanc, half crocodile, half beaver, glided lazily on his back through his muddy river. At least the climate controls were still working, she told herself giddily as she tested the chilled cerulean waters of the Lagarfljót Worm with one hand. Three years pregnant and counting, if the Worm died from exposure . . .

She couldn’t finish that sentence.

At the Extraordinary Plaza, the carnage took her breath away. Knocked-over popcorn booths, spilled purple Elf Juice, trampled pumpkin pie stalls. The plaza had been turned into a giant sleepover, a Glastonbury Festival of deafening snores. Encircled by a giant thorn hedge where the gates had once been. Blackthorns, those most tenacious of trees, had broken through the cobbles, along with an army of roses, exquisite enough to have given Antony flower-orgasms.

Of all the foliage the fairy could have chosen, Frida thought as she let her eyes drift over the cascades of sunshine yellow petals. Yellow had been her mum’s favourite colour, of course. As if this whole nightmare wasn’t bad enough, it was like Dozy had seen inside her brain and crafted it especially for her.

Management never liked to use the word ‘cage’. Enclosure was better, habitat or exhibit. But this was a cage. Muffling all scraps of data, WIFI, phone service. She may as well have been at the bottom of the ocean. Slowly, she drew closer, stepping over the bodies of guests and keepers alike. When she finally reached the place where the gates should have been, she started tearing at the vines, not caring that the thorns ripped her skin to shreds.

‘We’re in here!’ she cried. Her hands were bloody. Petals carpeted the ground. ‘We’re not dead,’ she sobbed. ‘We’re here! I’m here! Get us out!’ Did the familiar streets of Melody still exist? The grassy sprawl of Liberty Park? Her flat? Were there people out there, wondering why the UK’s only Extraordinary Zoo had just turned into a green and thorny baked Alaska bigger than Heathrow Airport?! She screamed until her voice was raw, but it felt like she was at the bottom of an ocean. Or on the moon, hoping someone on Earth might hear. There was just the roaring in her head, the thunder of the still growing wood as if it would keep going forever, and the echo of her own words bouncing back at her.

‘What do you want from me?’ she shouted.

Neither Dozy, nor the roses, answered.

She didn’t know if anything like this had ever happened before. Maybe not since that basilisk had escaped Forge House and accosted Queen Victoria at dinner time. Before that, she supposed it might have been the kraken massacre of 1786, when a band of the tentacular monsters had swum down the Thames and attacked London. That single event had been so devastating it had caused a national crackdown on anything extraordinary. So many extinctions had happened in the following decades, it was called the Great Disappearing. Many creatures had been killed and many, some conspiracy theorists believed, had purposefully disappeared, seeing the writing on Earth’s wall. Where they had gone though, nobody knew.

The LEZ had been founded to help the victims left behind. Joshua Beaufort, his sisters and the other LEZites had created countless conservation charities, and it was under their patronage that Sir Henry Gladstone, the famous Enlightenment scientist, had started to research the technology that would eventually become the wards. The wards that allowed humans to co-exist alongside extraordinary creatures, rather than massacre them.

Everything Dozy had done threatened this. Maybe the fairy didn’t realise it, but by attacking the LEZ, they’d endangered the tenuous safety of all extraordinary creatures! Frida could picture Jeff and Maisy on the other side of those thorns in their deckchairs, eating scones and saying triumphantly, ‘Well, it’s about time something like this happened, isn’t it? Good on that fairy, I say.’

She wanted to rip their scones out of their hands and set their deckchairs on fire.

With no idea what to do next, she slipped through a side door into Ground Control, shoving a sleeping corpse out of the way, and grabbed her Kiss the Keeper travel mug from her locker. She wrapped her hands around the familiar feel of the handle, before filling it with cold coffee from the Watering Hole. It tasted like shit, but at least it tasted normal. Back outside, perched on Grace’s bonnet, she sipped the most depressing drink on the planet and ate three dry-as-dust energy bars she’d found in Antony’s glove compartment. The LEZ was all she’d ever wanted since she’d been a tiny thing, no bigger than a grunkle. It was her home. It had been her mum’s home, and now Dozy was killing it with yellow roses, of all things.

A furious sob escaped her, followed by a sharp kick to Grace’s wheel. Then she kicked again, harder. As pain shot up her ankle, she hopped around, swearing and clutching her boot, just as a noise exploded from one of the little box trees planted along the road. Frida cried out, lurching backwards in alarm. Homicidal box trees!

‘Don’t hurt me!’ she squealed.

When the tree made no reply, she felt embarrassed. Well, that tops it, she thought, now I’m speaking to box trees. She gave herself a stern talking to. She was a zookeeper, current holder of over thirty tattoos and proud owner of three trophies that said she could beat a stone giant in a staring match. She was also the daughter of Ada Rose – waitress, single mother, friend-to-all-creatures (including box trees), and firm believer that anything was possible.

When the box tree rustled again, with a bit more determination this time, she studied the dense leaves seriously. She heard a pop, an animated crackle, a sharp sizzle – then out from the tree exploded a swarm of two-headed storm monkeys.

She almost dropped her coffee mug.

‘Rida, Rida!’

‘Jellybean?’ she cried.

Suddenly, the little layby was full of electricity. Monkeys swung around her, a squall of heads and tails and tiny paws, fizzling and crackling, shouting over and over,

‘Rida, Rida!’

‘Rida, Rida, Reeeee!’

‘Rida Reeeee!’

Was that her name they were saying?

She laughed and then snorted in unequivocable relief as the largest storm monkey (the approximate size of a fluffy cricket ball), plopped with a satisfied sigh onto her shoulder and stuck both his tongues in her ear. His twin heads were haloed in miniature clouds, two marble-sized lightning storms crackling into being between his bat-like ears.

‘Ree! Snap! Big fires,’ he peeped as he nuzzled her neck warmly. ‘Awake! Yes, awake!’

She gathered him into her arms, blinking back tears of rapture and confusion as his electricity skittered through her. Jellybean ‘Chaos’ Capone was a ghost-white furball with two perfect mohawks, matching moustaches and moon-yellow eyes. His pupils were pinpricks as his two heads swivelled, the friction between them creating the tiny storms between his ears.

The other monkeys – Jellybean’s troop, aptly named the Jellies – flipped and catapulted, a dizzying blur as they swung from the hedge to Grace’s bonnet and back again, bursting with words and sounds and lightning. Baked Potato, Cream Pie, Hamlet, Jan, Jonesy, Keanu, K-Pop, Marta, Mojito, Ned, Oops, Peanut, Shirley Temple, Twiglet and Wednesday. A whirlwind of white, grey, black, copper and scarlet.

She craned her neck back to Jellybean in wonder, and gasped, ‘How? How are we awake when no one else is?’

‘Ree!’ he trilled, storms popping in delight.

The sound of her name mended something that, a few seconds ago, had been in danger of breaking. But then he went on, his voice sizzling with unalloyed glee. ‘No sleeps! Lots of sleeps. Tree. World. Break. EXPLODE!’ One head crackled. ‘No sleeps. Big crash. Flee, flee! Big change! No sleeps!’ The other head fizzed.

His voice was storm-tossed poetry.

Lucky had spoken in full dragonish sentences. Raz in colour. The Noz’s single hello had been a soft and shy staccato, brushing her frontal lobe. Dozy, different again, had voiced things that blew through her mind like crackling leaves. Each unique voice seemed to be a doorway to a world she’d never known existed.

But Jellybean? He flung his words electrically from one head to the other, as if every thought had to happen at once, the elated friction between his brains sparking lightning. Too fast, too raw, too everything. She could barely follow what he was saying, what any of the monkeys were saying.

‘Jelly,’ she asked, laughing. ‘Slow down! Do you know what’s going on?’

‘Fizz and pop,’ one head trilled as he shoved his long, fluffy tail into both his mouths. ‘Big sleeps. Big trees. Big dragon fire. Ree go into the dirt, down and down,’ chirped the other head through a mouthful of fur. ‘Pink crackles, pink crackles!’

And then Cream Pie – her fur entirely white except for her fuzzy brown ears – shrieked as she unearthed a discarded popcorn bag. It was pandemonium after that. The monkeys descended in a whirlwind of teeth and thunder. A stray spark set the bag on fire, and Frida found herself hopping around in quick frantic leaps to stamp out the flames whilst avoiding being bitten by food-rabid storm monkeys.

A wild bubble of joy welled up in her chest. It felt so good to deal with a problem she could actually solve. To have a tiny chaotic order of the LEZ back. She tried a few more times to ask Jellybean what was going on, but he didn’t give her any more information than he had already – it was all just wild crackles and jubilant thunder. For a moment, she wondered if she should try and herd them back to their habitat but by then Jellybean had flopped onto Grace’s front dash as if he wasn’t going anywhere, and Shirley Temple had done a massive Number Two on Grace’s passenger seat.

Truly, how could she argue with that?

Slowly, she cleaned up the sloppy mess, apologising to Grace, and to Hamish as she tore a page from one of their mushroom books for the task. Then she slid back behind Grace’s wheel and turned on the ignition. Although being surrounded by the lights of the monkeys made her feel infinitely better, the wood’s deafening growth seemed to have quietened, and the stillness made her more afraid, as if the new growth was settling in for the long haul. Around her, she could hear the groan of a fence straining under the weight of a fallen branch, the grumble of a wall being upturned by a new root system.

Maybe Dozy wanted to bury them all. But as she looked at Jellybean, his tiny paws picking pieces of popcorn out of his fluffy moustaches, there was a miniscule, shielded place inside her heart that remembered, too, the warmth in Dozy’s dark eyes when they’d looked at her, like forest pools that reflected the stars, and the gentle touch of their hand on her cheek.

I trust you.

The words were a ghost in the dark. For a second, it had seemed as if they’d wanted her help. Or had she imagined it?

She swallowed the lump in her throat and started easing Grace back onto the road.

‘C’mon Jellybean. I have an idea!’

Chapter Sixteen

Magician’s Island (or as Antony liked to call it, Old White Man’s Island) was in the middle of Ocean, and on it stood the New Library, a tower constructed of pale limestone, complete with tall black spires and hulking stone gargoyles. As well as looking like an arch villain’s holiday retreat, it contained the greatest collection of extraordinary literature in all of Britain. If Lucky couldn’t tell her how to wake up a sleeping fairy and get rid of a thorny wood bent on destruction, then maybe the library could help.

She didn’t love research, but Cliff had drummed it into all of them during their training. It was all very well being able to haul feedbags with one hand, but you had to know your charges first. Before you could even think about giving Issy a belly rub.

The same, Frida assumed, applied to monsters and fairies.

As they passed under the coral encrusted arches of Ocean though, even the monkeys fell silent, no longer tag-teaming passing rubbish bins. They huddled in Grace’s back tray, gazing out over the pounding waves, their storms fizzing nervously. She’d omitted to tell them that Ocean contained more Level 8s than any other section combined.

‘Don’t worry,’ Frida said with feigned confidence. ‘All the monsters are asleep.’

In the distance, the white stone library loomed, and she fixed her sights on it, determined not to let Ocean faze her. Usually, she loved the pounding waves, and found a jaunt across one of the twelve elevated stone causeways that intersecting the habitats like a clock’s face quite pleasant. But today, it could easily have been LEZ Apocalypse Scenario No. 127, in which Frida and half the keepers get devoured by a rabid kraken in league with Dame Judi Drench, the most salacious of all the seven-tongued poisonous shrimps.

Over the water, Dozy’s canopy felt heavy and as she drove, the unceasing groans and rustles from the heavy branches far above bounced off the dark waves, amplifying the ominous thundering to something truly immense. Her hands were vice-tight around the steering wheel when Jellybean, trembling, crawled inside her shirt with a squeak of fear. She could feel his tiny heart pit-pattering against her chest, his electricity simmering at a low-level crackle. Below them, the underwater tunnels gleamed like luminous sea snakes. She wondered with a shudder if there were any guests trapped down there. Sent into oblivion whilst watching the kraken’s aquatic ballet or taking selfies with the yuanapel, floating lazily in their handmade coves of coral and gold. So beautiful they could make a person weep – before ripping your eyeballs out and using your tears as a lubricant on the way down their throats.

She stroked Jellybean’s fur beneath her shirt for reassurance. At least the wards still hummed within the glass barriers, a soothing lullaby that said all was safe for now.

Just as Grace gave a distressed stutter and Baked Potato, in the back tray, squealed a cracklingly ominous question, ‘Who’s that?’

Cream Pie cheeped, with dour certainty, ‘Bad water.’

And Jellybean poked his heads out of her shirt and pointed with morbid fascination.

Frida watched, horrified, as the languorous shape of a shrimp surged up out of the dark waves to their right. What was it Antony used to tell them, as they’d taken breaks sitting on the steps of Magician’s Island? That some sea creatures slept with only half their brains! Suddenly, she could have kicked herself. Unihemispheric, he’d called it.

Oh god. Could a shrimp kill you with only half their brains?

‘We are not going to get killed by shrimps,’ she proclaimed to Jellybean firmly.

‘No!’ he chirped in cheerful confirmation. ‘Bad shrimps.’

Henry Gladstone, the inventor of the wards, was surely in heaven right now. She accelerated hard and the shrimp – probably Dame Judi Drench, knowing her luck – flicked her venomous ten-metre-long tongue, eye-sockets bulging as pitch-dark as the Mariana trench. Those tongues could cause full body boils, shrivelling a person’s skin off in ten minutes flat. Jellybean pressed his faces against the windshield, his lamp-like eyes wide. Frida had to resist the urge to grab him and shove him back inside her shirt as a few flying turtles burst out of the water alongside the shrimp, their shells electric blue. Grace’s wheels squealed as Frida swerved in surprise, and a trayful of storm monkeys shrieked in terror.

Righting the buggy with alacrity, Frida wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of one sleeve as the teacup-sized carnivorous turtles plunged through the waves, half-dreaming perhaps of hapless keepers and their salty, delicious blood.

Frida didn’t think she’d ever been more relieved to reach Magician’s Island. Shaking all over, she parked Grace alongside Fritz’s Extraordinary Pancake booth, which was at the bottom of the hundred white marble steps that led up to the New Library. There was no sign of Fritz, and Frida prayed he’d taken the day off, safe at home with his cat Dandelion, whose picture was pinned above the chocolate sauce. As Ocean spread around them in all directions, full of flying turtles, deadly sea snakes, leviathans, a dreaded Nuckelavee and ballet-dancing kraken – the storm monkeys made a beeline for the pancake mix.

Frida left them to it, taking the steps to the library two at a time.

‘Don’t move!’ she shouted to Jellybean over her shoulder. ‘I won’t be long.’

He gave her a little wave, chocolate sprinkles twinkling rapaciously in his electrified mohawks. He stuck out both his tongues in the direction of the library, before shoving Oops and Twiglet out of the way in a mad dive to get to the sugar-dusted countertops. She had to pray it was enough, and that no flying turtle would be feasting on monkey when she got back.

On the drive here, she’d suppressed the fact that she hadn’t been back to this spot since her mum had died. But now as she raced up the steps, the knowledge hit her, along with the familiar scent of sea salt and cold limestone. Finally, when she reached the top, she faced the large ebony door and all thoughts of death by flying turtle left her. She knew she had to hurry for the longer she waited, the more of the LEZ would crumble, the deeper into sleep her friends would fall, and the higher the chance of the habitats failing, bit by bit. But she and her mum had spent so many hours right here, their backs against the library tower, waiting for the Japanese ‘sea monk’ Umi the umibōzu to make an appearance out of the writhing waves.

With a shaking hand, she touched the door, tracing the familiar shapes of the carved unicorns that embossed the dark ebony. Fighting back the sting of tears, she searched for her mum’s favourite unicorn – the one who seemed to be caught eternally in time between a wild grimace and a laugh.

There she was, as always, in the bottom right corner.

Frida let herself look at that unicorn for one long moment.

Then she blew out her breath and counted to ten, forcing the painful memories back inside. With a practiced flick, she locked her rosewood box and sent it spiralling into some dark corner of her mind. She pressed one hand to the ancient door, feeling the hum of the wards lick down her arm. At the same time, a sudden vice grip clamped around her skull. She whimpered at the pain but, putting it down to the cruelty of grief, she set her mouth in a stubborn line and forced herself to step inside the New Library.

Just as her left boot came down on something soft and crunchy.

Forgetting about the pain, she leapt back, realising she’d stepped on someone’s hand.

‘Ah shit!’ she cried. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Lana.’

Lana the librarian lay beneath her, wearing her familiar pinstriped suit, unstirring on the plush Persian carpet. Frida and Lana had dated briefly, but Frida had ended it. Hamish had been furious, claiming she’d ‘sabotaged her first romantic possibility in years’, and Antony upset because it meant he couldn’t go to the library anymore without being interrogated: Was Frida seeing anyone? No. Did she like anyone? Not unless you counted a ghost-lynx with rainbow fur or a unicorn with a penchant for ball games. Do you think Frida would want to go on another date? Sure, but only if you think you’re a better conversationalist than a grootneck.

Steeling herself, she stepped around Lana, flinching as her muddy boots made footprints across the carpet, the aroma of books and dust settling over her. She had to admit that she’d missed this place. She’d spent so much time here as a child, napping in the overstuffed leather armchairs as her mum read at her favourite corner desk. The LEZ often gave away low-cost tickets to people who couldn’t afford the exorbitant prices, and as a result, this library had basically become her mother’s university. Time away from the daily drudge of being a waitress, receptionist, bartender and cleaner. Ada Rose had emigrated from Russia as a pregnant twenty-one-year-old, estranged from her orthodox parents, desperate to give her child a different kind of life. Maybe it had been that hope she’d found in this library, in books that spoke about a time when real magic had lived in the world, and nobody had been embarrassed to call it that.

Frida ran her fingers over the floor to ceiling bookshelves. She breathed in the thick scent of the dusty carpets, the ancient magicians’ reading desks, the steady ticking of the ornate grandfather clock. When she came to the portraits of the seven Beaufort sisters, which lined the eastern wall, she stopped to gaze up at them. Her mum had always said that Joshua’s sisters had been the true heroes. While their brother had campaigned in parliament and travelled the world rescuing creatures, these women had been the lynchpins of the early conservation movement, working behind the scenes to raise money. All the while tending to the wounded animals Sir Joshua brought home to Forge House in the early days.

As an only child with no friends other than her mother and a toothless one-eared feral cat named Bonkers, Frida had always daydreamed about being part of the Beaufort family.

‘Help me,’ she whispered. Hannah, the eldest, looked down at her benevolently. Renowned for her flower paintings, Hannah held a pink peony in her lap, the Beaufort family’s famous auburn locks curling around her slender white shoulders. Her steady hazel eyes seemed to glimmer in the warm glow of the lamps, keeping her secrets.

Frida sighed. Georgiana was next, painted in front of the huge serpentine lake in the grounds of Forge House, where the sisters’ seven rescued kelpies – gifts from Sir Joshua – had lived. Georgina wore a deep copper dress, her red locks stirring artfully in a painterly breeze. Georgiana was the wildest sister. She’d married three times, each husband richer and more handsome than the last. She’d even gone on a few expeditions, discovering a new species of dragon in Romania with her brother, which they’d named the Great Crested Georgiest.

‘Help me!’ Frida repeated.

But Georgiana, like Hannah, stayed silent.

Dahlia, Charlotte, Eleanor, Arabella. Frida repeated the same plea to each of them. Finally, she came to Jane. The youngest, the only one with dark hair, collected in a simple coif at the back of her head; her beauty seeming more delicate than the rest. She’d been painted in the sisters’ drawing room, her eyes the pale washed-out blue of forget-me-nots, fixed on some unseen point out of the window. In a footnote in The History of the Famous Beaufort Family, Wildlife Conservationists and 19th Century Heroes, it mentioned that Jane had spent some time in a ‘private facility’, and the assumption, Frida guessed, was that she’d been a little mad. But there was no other reference to it, not that Frida could find, and she supposed, as she stood there looking up at Jane, that if Frida herself had lived in the 1800s, she might have been deemed mad too. Jane was the only one of the sisters who’d never married, and her kelpie had been called Sappho. Of all the sisters, Jane had been the only one to release her kelpie after they’d moved to Melody.

While Frida loved Georgiana as a figure of great romance, she suspected that it would have been Jane who might have been her friend. The silence from the portraits however, today of all days, was devastating. Not that she’d expected them to come alive in their frames, but . . . Frida wrapped her arms around herself, her headache worsening. Lana’s nasal breathing and the heavy ticking of the clock indicated that time was moving. Through the reinforced double-warded floor to ceiling windows she could see the black stretch of the water twinkling. The stars of spotlights seemed to go on forever. She could almost forget that out there, her world was hanging on by a thread.

Almost.

She prayed the Jellies weren’t at the bottom of a shrimp’s belly.

With renewed haste, she started scanning the shelves, searching for anything relating to fairy sleep and fairy trees. It didn’t take long before she’d amassed a promising pile: Forest Fairies Laid Bare; A Mythology of All Things Quickthorn; The Dryads and Drus of Ancient Britain, A Compendium; How to Tame a Tree Fairy in 101 Curious Ways; Infamous Nymphs and their Wicked Deeds Revealed; The Dark and Devious Fairies of the Green Woods of Ye Olde England; Enchanted Sleep Spells for Beginners. She was feeling almost optimistic as she sank down at one of the desks, the pile of books in a neat, alphabetised stack in front of her and a full mug of Lana’s coffee at her side. And then she began to read.

Chapter Seventeen

‘Disabuse thyself of fancy, dear Reader! The creatures known as Fairies, though oft adorned in the trappings of Myth and Wonder, were in truth mindless beasts void of Feeling and incapable of Woe, all of them strangers to Affection, Love, or any bright stirrings of Soul. That such beings have passed from this World is neither Tragedy nor Marvel, but the natural Consequence of their own brutish simplicity.’

Frida shut the book with a disgusted snap, sending a cloud of dust into the air. She coughed, waving it away, and put the tome into her steadily growing pile that deserved to be burned on the altar of a storm monkey. In the last hour, she’d read a lot about sage, crystals and dancing topless under a new moon.

‘What crap,’ she muttered, taking another gulp of cold coffee as she opened the next with a burgeoning sense of dread. Within a few pages of Forest Fairies and Their Ungodly Ways, she’d learnt that the majority of fairies shrivelled up in the sun. They only ate bones and every single one of them had voices as beguiling as ‘the tender touch of moonlight on daisies’. Dozy’s voice, she remembered all too well, had been like old dead leaves. She found herself thinking desperately about Plan B, where she somehow grew the strength of ten Olympic athletes and managed to drag a warded fence up to the Hawthorn. Maybe the storm monkeys would help. Sixteen Jellies could probably re-wire a few fences, right?

She shoved Forest Fairies and Their Ungodly Ways away. She’d done the mandatory training on how to rig wards in an emergency, but that had been five years ago at the very start of her tenure, when she’d been more interested in figuring out when it was ok to polish the stone giants. Dumbly, she started flicking through The Dark and Devious Fairies of the Green Woods of Ye Olde England, wishing that Antony and Hamish were with her. Antony had always been the best at research, and Hamish best at choosing the playlists, making the coffee, coordinating the snacks and being generally helpful in the most distracting way possible.

Should she circle the walls to see if she could find a hidden tunnel? Should she go back to the Hawthorn and threaten it with an axe? Should she be constructing some impossible radio tower out of toothpicks and griffin feathers that would somehow give her phone the ability to function again?!

Words and useless diagrams about how to prepare a shelter to protect against woodland fairies skittered before her eyes. It might have been helpful, if the author’s advice wasn’t to hang a siren’s vocal cords from the rafters and sprinkle ground-up giant’s teeth across the door. This book, like so many of the others she’d picked up, had been written in the 1700s by a pompous man with a surplus of adjectives and an unhealthy fascination with destroying as many ‘heathen beasts of the woods’ as he could. Mr H. Botherington was this one’s name. Along with the normal rubbish about fairies appearing to be as doting as new mothers with their newborn babes, whilst simultaneously crawling with enough malice to rival the devil himself, Mr Bother claimed that:

‘When thou dost venture into the deep Woods, thou must turn thy garments inside out and refrain from uttering thy true Christian name in a Fairy’s sly hearing. For to speak thy name is to yield thyself unto their Power, and to summon a Peril from which no mortal craft may deliver thee.’

Well, Frida thought with a sigh, Dozy already knew her name. There wasn’t much she could do about that now.

‘Their Hearts,’ Mr Bother went on, relentless, ‘are black as the very Night, and within their beating marrow lieth the very Fountain and Root of their Magics. Should you, by Providence or by Artifice, find thyself in a Position to sever one from its Breast and preserve it from Corruption, thou wouldst count thyself most fortunate indeed.’

Frida spent a few moments considering whether she’d have the guts to go back up the hill and carve Dozy’s heart out as Mr Bother seemed to be suggesting, but the thought made her nauseous. Zookeeper she was, fairy-killer she was not. She prayed it wouldn’t come to that. She was about to stop reading when she caught the words, ‘The manifold and diverse Gifts of lustful Pleasure bestowed by a Forest-Fairy are as freely given as a Druid upon the Winter Solstice.’ She snorted but read on. ‘A Fairy’s locks – long, leafy, and untamed as the Woods themselves – do cascade with deliberate Artlessness down their Backs, as they engage in wanton Dalliance beneath the silvery Eye of the full Moon.’ Apparently, witnessing such an event would lead to one’s imminent doom.

She sighed again, closing the book. The coil of panic inside her tightened with each resonant tick of the clock. If Rule Number One of zookeeping was DO NOT RUN, and DO NOT STEAL THE CHOCOLATE CROISSANTS was Rule Number Two, then DO NOT PANIC was a firm Number Three. She took off her misshapen cap and placed it carefully on the table. She stared for a while at the weather-beaten khaki and the faded pink logo she’d been so proud to receive. Her heart ached as she drew the cap back towards her and held it tightly against her chest. The front cover of Mr Bother’s book was red leather, with an embossed illustration of a knight riding fearlessly through a dark wood. A hero, obviously. In his hands he held a long sword which may as well, let’s be honest, have been a penis. The metal glimmered by the light of a sickle moon, its edge a clarion call against heathen beasts.

If she closed her eyes, she could make out the silhouette of her mum sitting at the corner desk by the window, her dark hair curtaining her face, poring over some random book about centipedes or tidal anomalies caused by merpeople. Your fairy isn’t a beast, Friduska, and you don’t need a knight to save you. The only heathen in this place is Mr Bother.

Frida attempted a smile. She knew her mum was right, but right now, she’d be ecstatic if some knight with a pointy sword strode through that door. In a burst of rage, she picked up the book and flung it across the room. It landed with a crash, and she dragged her hands through her hair, ripping tendrils out of her braid.

‘What am I meant to do, Mum?’ A desperate cry lodged in her throat as total silence filled the vaulted room. Her voice broke. ‘Somehow, this is my fault. I know it is.’ Although she didn’t know how it could be, something in her heart told her it unequivocally was. She stared at the empty table where her mum had always sat. There were no books on it now and the chair was neatly tucked in. She tried, desperately, to come up with some pearl of wisdom, some Ada Rose silver lining, but there was nothing. She glared at Mr Bother’s book, lying splayed and bent in the corner, with the knight on the cover staring up at the ceiling. Her head fell onto her arms. There had been no hero to save her when her mum had died, and there was no hero to save her now. She looked at her tattooed arms, pinching the curve of Fireheart’s tail, the edges of the yellow rose on her wrist. ‘I’m totally alone,’ she whispered.

The only answer was the infernal ticking of the grandfather clock.

It was six o’clock. Past closing time. How many hours had her friends been asleep? Four hours, five? Too many. A sleep of a hundred years stretched before her as she shoved her cap back on, everything swirling in her pounding head. The pain when the lightning had struck. The glow when her body had been violet. The sickly grey of Raz’s fear. The sweet, childish sound of Lucky’s chirps. The glittery escaped tidal wave. The churn of the forest, the rumble of the earth. The anguish in Dozy’s eyes. How they’d looked at her, really looked at her, like they’d known her.

A trick, it had been nothing but a trick.

Frida rammed back her chair. Her heart felt as if it was going to burst. Desperately, she stared through the windows, silvery spotlights seeming to move over the inky waves. The LEZ was her sanctuary. She loved watching the gentle-hearted water horse, Helion, causing accidental tidal waves with a flick of his seafoam tail. Seeing guests turn red-faced as the Lagarfljót Worm licked their own penis. Appreciating the zebra stripes of the inkanyamba flowing like black and white ribbons, or sitting in Grass as the hoop snakes spiralled, eating their own tails and being chased by Millie von Sunshine the jackalope.

These creatures had all lost their families. They’d lost their homes. None of them had anywhere else to go apart from here.

Did Dozy even know that Higgleton Common had been destroyed?

She left the books in a pile and headed for the door, her thoughts in a whirl, but there was one thing that shone clearer and brighter than the rest. If no knight was coming, then she would have to be the knight. She may not have a sword but she sure as hell could find a machete. If this was like the wood from Sleeping Beauty, then she would cut a way out of it if it was the last thing she did, and she’d get the help she needed, the help her friends needed. She pushed open the doors and felt the bite of sea air on her cheeks, her headache spiking yet again, but she was too focused to care – already taking the steps at a run. Firearms training had been next year’s plan, but she sure as hell could wield a blade. And if she had to turn what was left of the Hawthorn into sawdust to fix this, she’d do it. It would break her heart, but she’d do it.

‘Come on Jellies,’ she exclaimed when she reached the bottom of the steps, the monkeys napping in a sticky heap in one of the larger pots Fritz used to make the sauce. A chocolate-covered moustached monster of yellow eyes and coloured sprinkles. It should have made her laugh. Instead, it just made her more determined.

This was their home too.

‘Let’s go,’ she said briskly, already getting behind Grace’s wheel and starting the engine. With a bit of grumbling, the chocolate monster split into sixteen pieces and flooded back onto Grace. As before, Jellybean took pride of place on the front seat, aggressively licking the remnants of Fritz’s wares off his furry tail. The others spread themselves over the roof and in the back amongst Hamish’s books. The thought of Antony’s and Hamish’s meltdowns when they saw those tedious books covered in chocolate only gave her an extra boost, for her two friends’ faces, leached of life and entombed for a hundred years in ivy haunted her.

Unacceptable.

She put her foot down and sped down the causeway, focused so much on getting back as quickly as she could to Ground Control where there was a supply of weapons in a locked box in the Head Keepers’ office, that she didn’t notice when outside the steady beam of Grace’s headlights, the silvery spotlights started to flicker off slowly, one by one, like falling stars.

Chapter Eighteen

Frida had been driving for about five minutes, and was about halfway back down the causeway, when she pulled Grace to a stop, not quite knowing at first what she was doing. Jellybean trilled anxiously at her, but she waved him off, squinting at the road in front of her. The windshield was covered with ocean spray, and it was hard to see much outside the sharp beam of Grace’s headlamps. Was it her imagination or was the white concrete shimmering in a strange way? Jellybean tried to grab her sleeve with his tiny fingers, but she brushed him off gently.

‘It’s ok. I just want to see what that is.’

Jellybean cheeped wildly in the back of his throats, but Frida ignored him. A thin band of puddles stretched from one side of the five-metre-wide causeway to the other, just in front of Grace’s wheels. As she walked over, Grace’s headlights bled a pool of yellow into the standing water, making the surface look almost mother-of-pearl. She tilted her head this way and that, watching the colours swirl.

‘Beautiful,’ she said softly. ‘Look at this, Jelly.’

Jelly glared wide-eyed through the windshield, shaking both his heads emphatically.

‘Suit yourself.’ Kneeling down, she examined the glistening water. She initially thought it could be the splash from one of Karen’s tentacles, but the way the colours seemed to move was too strange, churning and splitting like spilled petrol. A faint scent of spaces between the stars fluttered around her, and her brain was suddenly swimming. She leaned closer as the colours melded together, black and indigo, cerulean blue and moonrise grey, mixing before her eyes into the scuttling shapes of crabs and molluscs, tidal sprays and jagged caves.

Somewhere, Jellybean and the other monkeys were trilling in alarm.

‘Ree.Ree.Ree.Ree!’

She tilted closer, her nose inches from the water. She heard the rush of waves hitting a beach, the sting of sea air on her cheeks. In her cupped hands was the feeling of sand pouring through her fingers, thick and golden.

She was jolted by a sharp pinch on her neck and snapped her head up, tumbling away from the puddle and falling on the concrete with a painful thud.

‘Jelly!’ she exclaimed, rubbing her neck. Jellybean had bitten her!

The little monkey leapt up and down and his white fur bristled. Sparks of electricity flared from his ears. His four pupils were night-swollen, his two heads twisting in agitation. ‘Rida!’ His other head chirped in agreement. ‘Ree!’

Her mind cleared, all in a rush. She peered in sudden dread towards the shrimps’ territory, realising this might be some new trick of Dame Judi Drench’s. She could see all eleven of them shining at the edges of Grace’s headlights now, swimming in lazy circles, their hungry eyes on stalks bobbing in the waves.

She could also see that the silver spotlights had gone out. This realisation came at her in a rush, a heady oh fuck oh fuck oh fuuuuuuck of understanding.

‘Jelly,’ she gasped, scrambling back towards Grace. ‘Where have the lights gone?’

‘Gone!’ he squealed. ‘Gone!’ With a rumble of thunder, he started jumping on the seat and pointing at the steering wheel while the other monkeys cheeped urgently from the back. She only spared a second to glance over her shoulder to where the New Library should have been sitting in a pool of golden light. But the library, like the whole of Ocean, had gone dark.

She strained to hear any hint of the wards, but the noise was overwhelming – the crash of waves against the causeway, the magnified sounds of the groaning wood. After a few seconds though, she thought she felt it: the low hum that had always been her touchstone. The whirring wards lapped at her skin, then vanished. Lapped, then vanished. Her headache flared, a sudden sharp pressure behind her temples. Flared, then died. Flared, then died. As if in sync with the coming apocalypse.

‘Bad water!’ Jellybean screeched.

Quickly she set Grace in motion, but as they sped down the causeway, Frida couldn’t help glancing left, fully expecting to see a shrimp’s tongue whip over the edge. She was reminding herself, not for the first time, that full-body boils was not a good way to die when suddenly the kraken surged upwards, her dark blue octopus-like head appearing on her right, massive fishy eyeballs floating in the gloom. Tentacles swirled, sending mini tsunamis against the causeway.

‘Oh my GOD!’ Frida cried.

But the massive coral-encrusted arches that signalled the end of Ocean had appeared in the distance, and the monkeys’ triumphant trills resounded through the buggy. All apart from Jellybean, who maintained a vigil staring through the flimsy back plastic window, his little claws digging in where he clung onto her shoulder.

‘Jelly, look! We’re almost at the end.’

Jelly cheeped an ominously sceptical ‘Ree,’ along with a number of pops and crackles that were too fast for her brain to sort through. The lights had come back on though, and she was focusing on their salvation. For the next few minutes, they drove from one silver pool of lamplight to another, the hum of the wards blissfully steady. Maybe she’d imagined the whole thing, or maybe whatever tree root had thrust its way through the mainframe had decided to retract itself.

‘Nearly there, Grace,’ she said determinedly. ‘Nearly there, Jelly!’ She could almost taste the old chocolate bar that had been in Hamish’s locker since 2017 that she was going to treat herself to as those coral arches drew closer. She was about to point them out to Jellybean again, when the sparks in his fur erupted, and suddenly a mini lightning storm the size of a golf ball was churning between his two heads. The faux leather beneath his paws smouldered.

‘No good!’ he shrieked, racing back and forth along the seats. ‘Bad water! Ree, Reee, Ree! Angry water!’

Frida’s muscles went rigid, her guts flipping end over end. The other monkeys were shrieking too, and Ocean’s lamps were suddenly flaming like a disco ball. Frida swerved, almost crashing Grace into the glass barrier that separated the causeway from the ocean below. She slammed her foot on the brake just in time and panted in horror at the glass, barely inches away from Grace’s front wheels.

The lights went out entirely.

Grace’s headlights were a lone blade, spearing through the gloom. Frida put Grace into reverse, Jellybean gesticulating passionately in the direction of the arches, which suddenly seemed much further away than they had two seconds ago. She couldn’t see anything out there, but she’d watched enough Jurassic Park films to know that there’s always nothing there until a velociraptor explodes out of the bushes.

There were sixteen urgent backflips telling her they were all going to die.

She’d just been about to put her foot on the accelerator when the stench of old salt and seaweed ripped the breath from her lungs and Grace, with immaculate timing, stalled.

The monkeys, as one, went deathly silent.

Chapter Nineteen

Clip clop.

She seemed to hear the noise in her guts before it registered in her brain. She’d heard noises like this before, in her nightmares. All extraordinary zookeepers had.

Clip clop.

Somewhere, she knew Jellybean was trying to send sparks of lightning down the ignition, his shrieking now loud enough to wake the deepest sleeping shrimp. She inhaled the sea and the tang of iron. She urgently scanned the causeway, but the lights were spasming like a strobe disco, her eyelids flashing imprints of storm monkeys. She couldn’t see anything.

Clip clop, clip clop.

She tried to think. Neither a shrimp nor a kraken had hooves. That was good. Baby unicorns had hooves. Maybe this was just Princess Issy, coming to nuzzle her to death?

The hoofbeats grew louder.

This definitely wasn’t Issy.

In less than a heartbeat she searched her inner map of the LEZ. A kelpie, perhaps? Lu-Lu, Skeletor and Darth Vader were menaces, sure, but she’d stand a chance. Or the hippocamp? He was a Level 6 but went to sleep the moment you sang him a lullaby.

She turned around in the seat as a huge shape finally came into view, dragging his back leg slowly along the causeway after them.

This wasn’t Issy, Skeletor or Helion.

This was so much worse.

Her mouth opened in a wordless scream.

Frida, Antony and Hamish had once made a game of Extraordinary Zoo Top Trumps for Cliff’s birthday. The pack was still in the Watering Hole, and they played it every now and then when Hamish’s bottle of whiskey was doing the rounds after an evening’s shift. The categories were mostly silly. Your ability to make Cliff cry; how dumb your zoo name is; how much you love messing with your keepers. But there were others, too. How much of Melody you can destroy. How many nightmares you feature in. How many ways you can commit homicide. The Nuckelavee was a top trump for this. It was said the Nuckelavee could kill someone in 10,000 different ways. Like God, Madonna or Prince, he was so iconic, he didn’t even have a zoo name. He was just The Nuckelavee.

Oh, go to Ocean, Frida. Just take a little harmless jaunt to the library.

She watched helplessly: the impossible sight of the Nuckelavee coming towards her down the causeway, the library looming behind him. He’d come, originally, from the dark underwater caves of Orkney. Amongst the typical arrays of nastiness such as killing crops, causing famine and sickness, floods and earthquakes, the Nuckelavee could also debone a person in a matter of seconds and swallow babies whole. Whether he’d always been on his own, no one knew. Perhaps there had once been more nuckelavees. He must have had one or more parents presumably, although Orcadian legends claimed he was spawned from the womb of hell itself. Now however, experts agreed there was just this one – a true endling. Unlike creatures like the Lagarfljót Worm, he was incapable of impregnating himself. When the Nuckelavee died, hell wouldn’t spawn more baby nuckelavees.

Clip clop, clip clop.

Frida was frozen in fear as she took in every inch of him. Ten metres high. More. His right back leg dragging behind him, an injury he’d sustained when he’d been captured. A hiss, the sound of a hot sword plunged into water, emerging from his nose.

Clip clop, hiss, clip clop, hiss.

Suddenly, the idea of being full-body-boiled to death by a shrimp didn’t seem so bad.

The Nuckelavee was mostly horse, except there was a lumpy bloody protrusion on his back that looked like a rider but was actually a second head made out of bright red bone and sinew. Unlike the hippocamp who was water itself, or the kelpies who were corporeal, the Nuckelavee was neither and both at the same time. He was sea and foam and spray. A tidal wave big enough to drown a city, or a tidal pool that swirled in the summer sun, full of crabs and molluscs waiting for you to step in.

Crabs and molluscs.

‘Those puddles!’ she gasped with a hoarse moan.

Jellybean was about to have an aneurism. He finally managed to get Grace started, and when he squeaked affirmation, she slammed her foot so hard on the accelerator, the rest of the monkeys took flight. Sweet god and poisonous shrimps, she’d had the Nuckelavee’s poster on her wall as a child. She even had a tattoo of him on her damned leg! She glanced behind her, her whole body glued to Grace’s seat as the engine roared, and she took in his two long dangling arms, ending in scaled claws that scraped the ground with a resounding screech. His mouth opened vertically with two sheets of needle-point fangs.

‘Grace! Grace! Grace!’ The monkeys were cheering.

Clop, hiss, clop, hiss.

Why couldn’t it have been Karen who’d escaped? They’d have had a great time, discussing how to ballet dance underwater! She was pressing her foot down so hard, she thought she might break the accelerator as Jellybean tumbled into the footwell. He shrieked indignantly, a roiling ball of thunder. But they were finally off the causeway, and onto the huge wide-open plaza that marked the end of Ocean. She barely registered which of the arches was ahead, or which section of the zoo it would lead her to. She didn’t care where they went, just that it was away from here. Praying that the habitat of another section would deter the Nuckelavee, she heard his booming voice, ‘HUMAN!’

Oh great. He could talk to her. Now she could enjoy a poetic description of how he planned to kill her.

‘HUAMMAAAANN!’ It was briny seaweed and freezing limestone caves, the crash of waves and the sinking of a bloody sun. It made her brain weep.

She leaned forwards over the steering wheel, Jellybean, Cream Pie and Shirley Temple and all the others shouting rousing challenges from the top of the buggy as Grace miraculously gained speed. The sound of the waves diminished as the nearest arch blazed before her. Sky. They were going to Sky. That was fine. She loved Sky!

The Nuckelavee gave a shriek, close enough for sea foam to hit Frida’s neck. She could see the rocks of Sky rearing up, great stacks of limestone and slate, artfully designed to look as if they’d fallen millennia ago. Fifty feet . . . twenty feet . . . ten feet. All the monkeys trilling, Jellybean doing backflips, the sea air in his mohawks as the arch passed above them, and she felt the sudden but inexplicable switch from ocean waves to the wonder of Himalayan mountains. Cool, crisp wind. A sense of Gloria. Sky smelled of her, or she smelled of Sky, who knew which came first. It didn’t matter – both were fabulous.

Grace wobbled over the yellow cobbles. Frida had never been so relieved to be surrounded by tall, sheer cliffs. She kept driving, vibrating with the pump of her heart and the screams of the monkeys, tiny storms charring Grace’s seats. When she dared look over her shoulder, she saw, incredulous as it was, that the Nuckelavee had paused on the other side of the arch, eying the tall coral spires, taking in the looming rocks with whatever hell-senses he possessed. She held her breath as his ears flicked back. His eye sockets smouldered. Steam hissed from his nostrils. The mountain wind whipped Frida’s hair as she craned her neck to watch him move a single hoof towards the archway.

‘Just stay there, buddy,’ she implored him.

Thirty-two sets of moon yellow eyes waited, uncertain.

Then the Nuckelavee let out an ear-splitting roar. The next second he was tossing his massive head with delight and galloping straight for them. Jellybean leapt up on the dash, pointing urgently through the windshield.

‘Ree!’ Jellybean squealed. ‘Go!’

With a curse, Frida veered the way he pointed, and they thundered beneath the granite stacks. The banshees passed by on the right, Madame and Sir Shrieksalot’s not quite solid veils of shadows fluttering. She didn’t know where they were going, only that they were GOING. They zoomed past the silent habitat of Ignatius Emberwing, the solitary, mysterious phoenix. Past the mountain groots, past Sherlock, Watson and Moriarty, the three-horned mares who were holding claws as they slept, levitating half a foot in the air.

The monkeys shot tiny bolts of lightning from their paws that disappeared with an excited poof. Jellybean backflipped and front-flipped and did all the flips. Blindly, Frida followed his eagerly pointed directions, swinging around the end of the mares’ enclosure, rounding a familiar sandy limestone habitat that she knew by heart. Grace was starting to flag, and the Nuckelavee sensed it, barely yards behind them now, but suddenly, hot black smoke blazed through her mind: desert heat, windstorms and baked volcanic rock, and she could almost see the shapes of talons, curling out of the smoke. Talons and wings.

Oh dragons.

But the Nuckelavee was bursting around the corner too, hot on their heels.

‘Oh my fucking dragons!’ she screamed.

The Nuckelavee reared, blood-red flesh and needle point fangs, coal-flaming eyes rolling, sprays of spittle exploding. She, Grace and the monkeys plunged down into the valley where sand and honeyed rock rippled for as far as she could see, but whatever hope she’d felt died as she gathered the monkeys to her and Grace gave a final devastating splutter.

Behind them, the Nuckelavee howled in victory.

.

Chapter Twenty

Frida heard a smoky voice cutting through the certainty of imminent death.

‘Alright, that’s enough now coral eater. You’ve had your fun.’

A couple of heartbeats more and the Nuckelavee’s teeth would have been around Frida’s neck. But at the sound of that throaty voice, he froze. They all froze. As one, Frida, the Jellies, and the Nuckelavee turned to look to their left, mouths hanging open in what might have been farcical, if anyone else had been there to witness it.

Anyone, that is, apart from the wrinkled terracotta miracle, waiting quite impatiently on the other side of the gigantic fence.

Frida had spent her entire life, all two and a bit decades of it, dreaming about that miracle. ‘Fireheart?’ she whispered.

‘What did I tell you?’ the old dragon snapped at the Nuckelavee, ignoring Frida entirely. Her voice was that of someone who’d spent their whole long life smoking twenty packets a day. ‘Find the silly girl, bring her here. Don’t eat her, I said. Don’t.’

The demonic sea creature gave a low repentant whine.

Frida choked in disbelief. Fireheart swung her great head around, her inky indigo eyes half blind with cataracts, yet sharp enough to feel like a wire wool brush was scouring Frida’s soul. ‘You!’ the dragon snapped. ‘Stop swaying, azizam, dear. It would be most tiresome if you fainted. It would waste so much time.’ Her smoker’s cough rattled. ‘And our supply is woefully limited. So come now, hmm, extract yourself from that contraption. Let’s go.’

Frida’s jaw dropped. ‘Me?’ she squeaked.

Fireheart’s scales rippled as she swung her wrinkled snout back to pierce the Nuckelavee with a devastating scowl. ‘You – move back, give her some room.’

He’d deflated to the size of a pony. Frida blinked incredulously at the once colossal beast. To be fair, Frida wanted to shrink too. The storm monkeys in her lap trembled like plucked strings as the Nuckelavee beat a hasty retreat, almost tripping over his clip-clopping hooves in his haste. His protrusion trembled as he hissed a string of incoherent grievances miserably to himself. But as he disappeared into the shadows, Frida gave a yelp.

‘Where’s he going?’

Fireheart leaned back on her haunches, whipping her tail. ‘The coral eater?’

‘Yes!’ Frida suddenly thought of her friends spread out around the zoo like anchovies on a pizza, ready to be picked off one by one. ‘The Nuckelavee,’ she said under her breath, his very name filling her with fear.

Fireheart huffed out a puff of irritable steam. ‘That’s not his name.’

Frida blinked in surprise.

‘You speak a human name,’ she elaborated, her bark as sharp as her red talons. ‘It is not his, and all he wants is to go home! You fear him? Admittedly, he was a bit overzealous.’ Fireheart’s belly seemed to sizzle, as if this was greatly amusing to her. ‘I asked him to bring you here, because he’s a good tracker when he’s not in a mood, and you have to admit it was rather funny.’ She chuckled, but seeing Frida’s face, leached entirely of colour, the old dragon gave a sigh which sounded exactly like an eyeroll. ‘Don’t look at me like that, girl. He will just go and pool somewhere quietly now until it’s time.’

‘Time for . . . what?’ Frida managed to ask.

Fireheart didn’t answer. She just gave Frida a look, scathing and indecipherable, her eyes glowing red. Unlike Lucky, who was more of an overgrown London bus, Fireheart was a sinuous cat-shaped beast the size of a Lamborghini. She had a frail whiskered snout, slender tail and sharp bony paws. It was said she’d come originally from the Ottoman Empire – now Syria. Her scales were a network of scars, and her wings had been half-sawn off by hunters before being rescued by the LEZ. She carried them tucked into her body as if they still pained her, the angular lines marring what must have once been a flowing silhouette. Her wrinkled, weather-beaten body was the colour of baked bricks, except in her belly, where the fire burned scarlet.

‘Come,’ Fireheart said dourly.

Then the old dragon whipped around with a speed Frida didn’t think she possessed. In one sharp burst, a lance of flame belted out of the dragon’s throat and seared into the fence. Frida screamed, her hands flying to protect the monkeys, and they squealed, half of them almost squashed between her chest and Grace’s wheel.

When she lifted her head, there was a gigantic, smouldering hole in the fence.

‘It is best you come to terms with this: the world as you know it is gone,’ Fireheart said shortly, coughing up a blob of smoky charred phlegm and spitting it between her claws.

Frida felt herself blanch.

‘The wards,’ she whispered, blinking up at the gleamingly metallic, impenetrable fencing that Fireheart had just combusted like it was butter and she was a blow torch. Frida had known the infrastructure was failing in Ocean, but to see it here, now, terrifyingly real . . .

‘Yes, azizam.’

Frida’s remaining composure fractured. All the questions and desperation of the last hours tumbled out of her in an inarticulate mess. She almost swooned at the relief of finally having someone to ask who didn’t speak in snores or monkey poetry or blood-drenched sea spray. And not just anyone. But Fireheart. One of the oldest dragons alive. ‘Do you know what’s happening?’ she gasped out franticly. ‘Are you going to kill me?’

Fireheart eyed her with filmy distaste. ‘Well, that would be predictable, wouldn’t it?’ She inspected one of her red claws. ‘I would hate to be predictable. I just want to talk to you, that’s all, dear.’

‘To me?’ Frida whispered. ‘Why?’ I wanted to see you. Dozy had said that, and Lucky too. Why the fuck did all these creatures want to talk to her, let alone the greatest creature in the history of greatness.

A burst of aggravated inky smoke plumed from Fireheart’s nostrils. Despite this, all the monkeys, even loyal Jellybean, launched themselves as one out of Grace and tumbled, squeaking happily, through the hole in the fence. Seemingly unconcerned about the dragon’s irascible temper, they began skittering over Fireheart, covering her like a blanket of electric fluffballs. Frida watched, as Keanu started doing a slip ‘n’ slide down her tail.

‘As I said,’ Fireheart muttered, eyeing Keanu with stalwart disinterest. ‘We do not have time. You must come with me now. I need to show you something.’

Frida did not move, however, from Grace’s front seat.

She wasn’t sure if she could move.

She had to know, her body trembling with the memory of purple lightning. Suddenly, it was all she could see. ‘What did Lucky do to me?’ she whispered.

Fireheart made a noise, a wheeze so heavy it seemed to come from the very bones of the rock beneath her. ‘I forget how tiresome humans can be. Me, me, me. Always me.’

Frida swung back, stung. But Fireheart was already moving towards the dark craggy mountains that loomed in the depths of her enclosure. ‘We don’t have time. Hurry, azizam. Let us get this over with.’ She swished her long tail and sent sand and smoke up in clouds.

‘Ree!’ Jellybean peeped, beckoning to her.

Frida watched, helpless, as he did a backflip, and then started to scurry after Fireheart, leaping like a spinning firework. All she could see was the reassuring gleam of his yellow eyes and the flash of his tiny storms, until he was lost amongst the others.

Behind Frida lay her friends, asleep on the ground. A fairy too unconscious to answer any of her questions. The Nuckelavee, creeping through the shadows. She closed her eyes, her mind a tangle of dragon smoke, monkey thunder, briny sea spray, trees coming alive, and Apocalypse Scenarios 12 through 99. Maybe this was the end of the world. Maybe Fireheart did want to bring her to her cave and eat her but as Frida gazed at the smouldering hole in the fence, she realised that if she stayed here, she’d never know.

An invitation.

I want to talk to you.

Frida could wait here for the Nuckelavee or some other horror to claim her, or she could walk through this fence, to see what Fireheart had to say.

In the end, it wasn’t really a choice at all.

Chapter Twenty-One

Frida ducked under the devasted fence and set off at a sprint after the others. Chasing after Fireheart’s fiery belly, she couldn’t help feeling as if what Fireheart had said was true. Whatever happened now, the world as she knew it was gone. She could never go back to the Frida that hadn’t walked into a dragon’s enclosure.

As she climbed, it seemed that every time she glanced upwards, Dozy’s uncanny cavern of leaves grew closer, the emerald darkness blurring where the stars should have been. Not wanting to look, she focused simply on keeping up. Soon, the slope was near vertical, and Frida didn’t know how Fireheart managed it, or how long it took before they reached the top.

Finally, she hauled herself onto the ledge where Fireheart was waiting for her and collapsed in a rain of loose pebbles and dust.

‘Ree, Ree!’ Jellybean leapt around her in encouragement, his white mohawks kindling.

Fireheart was inspecting the minute details of the cracked edges of her sharp red claws with imperious nonchalance, her terracotta scales perfectly camouflaged against the shelf of sandstone. The air was thick with the smoky scent of sulphur and, as pinkish-brown fumes coiled around her, Frida somehow managed to haul herself up to sitting, laughing desperately as she dropped her head on her knees, spent.

‘How did you do that?’ she panted. She was fit – she could hike all day in sturdy boots. But Fireheart might have considered entering an Iron Man. Although Frida supposed Fireheart was used to it. She’d been under the LEZ’s care since 1835 and had even spent a few years at Forge House before they’d moved her to Melody. But she’d been in this enclosure since 1952, when it had been built especially for her. She must know these cliffs like the back of her own paw. This thought sobered Frida.

But then Fireheart gave a chesty chuckle. ‘Impressed, hmm? Didn’t expect someone as ancient as I to move so fast?’

Frida flushed and gave a shy what-are-you-going-to-do shrug as Jellybean plopped into her lap. She gathered him to her, pressing her face into his mohawks.

Fireheart waited, kind enough to let her catch her breath, before she lifted herself back up and Frida heard the audible groan of her arthritic bones.

‘Azizam.’ The word was a rusty hiss. ‘Come. That was the easy part.’

Frida gazed at the dark opening in the cliff face behind her. And gulped.

On the Swan’s group chat, there was an emoji they used when something particularly amazing happened. Like if some biologist discovered a new type of fairy mushroom, or Hamish managed to feed the root lizards without getting bitten. It was the pink flamingo emoji. Antony had once gone to Brazil with his family, a few years ago, and he’d not been able to stop talking about pink flamingos for weeks afterwards. It had become a joke between them, and now anything wonderful was synonymous with the flamingo.

She’d only ever felt so simultaneously happy and heartbroken at the same time once before: the day she’d cried tears of joy when Cliff had told them about the baby dragon, then tears of grief for her mum who would never know that Frida was going to be a dragon keeper.

And now, she was on top of Fireheart’s cliff, about to go inside Fireheart’s cave. This was where Fireheart was pictured on all the posters. This was where Frida had sat in her daydreams as her imaginary friend – the old terracotta miracle the size of a Lamborghini – taught Frida to fly, to breathe fire, how to find her dad, the faceless man who’d gotten her mum pregnant. It was up here that Fireheart had given her the confidence to apply to be a zookeeper. This place was the holy grail of dragon nerdology.

She wanted more than anything to send Antony and Hamish a flamingo emoji – their group-chat shorthand for anything too incredible for words. But then she imagined them, lost in the weeds, their faces covered with ivy and mushrooms and thistledown. And she knew it was entirely possible she’d never get to send them a flamingo emoji again.

With difficulty, she managed to stand.

They were high up here, high enough that the endless canopy seemed so close, she had the dizzying sensation that if she rose up on her toes, she might feel the brush of leaves across her face, the jumbled branches made of a thousand different rust-reds, ochres, golds and greens. When she did lift her hand, she shuddered, drawing back quickly as she touched empty air. She knew that the trees were still a long, long way off. Shoving away vertigo, she made herself look down, taking in the view to the south. The LEZ still blazed in patches, countless moon-white silver spotlights like inverted galaxies illuminating familiar networks of roads and yew hedges. She saw the shimmer of Ocean, the flat shine of Lake, the fields of Grass. The deep colours of Forest shifting as habitats moved from jungle to Mediterranean to boreal. But amongst the silvery brightness, huge swathes of darkness bled out, where she knew the electricity must have failed. The consequences too catastrophic to countenance. Lights, climate controls, wards . . .

‘He gave you a gift.’

Frida whirled.

Fireheart was wreathed in smoke.

‘You asked what the hatchling did to you. I am telling you. He gave you a gift. You would not be here now if he hadn’t done such a thing.’

Frida felt the burn of the old dragon’s caustic judgement. She wanted to shield herself from it but forced herself, using every ounce of her will, to meet Fireheart’s gaze head-on. She’d asked, so she would hear the answer. The dragon’s charred nostrils flared in something like approval as she growled,

‘Dragons are the only creatures able to speak as many languages as there are worlds. We are hatched with them on our blue tongues.’

Frida could almost feel the talons of smoke tightening around her roaring heart.

‘We are now speaking High-Winged Dragon. You have not learned it, or earned it, but there you have it. No other human in millennia has spoken High-Winged Dragon. If I didn’t know better, I’d be shocked you’re alive. Your head should have exploded. But there is no undoing it now, I’m afraid.’

Her words crashed into Frida like molten rocks.

And then Fireheart just turned and crawled into the darkness, as if she hadn’t just altered Frida’s entire reality.

What could Frida do, but follow?

High-Winged Dragon.

As many languages as there are worlds.

No undoing it.

She stepped inside the cave. As the air seemed to change from gas to liquid, a scalding heat burrowed deep inside her lungs. Coarse rock walls closed around her, and she could just make out the faint shapes of the monkeys, hovering up ahead. Thick tendrils of ochre-tinted smoke coiled like living beasts. Suddenly, she remembered that tornado of fire she’d first seen when she’d been six years old, bursting from Fireheart’s charred throat, and might have run straight back out of the cave, screaming for her life, if Jellybean hadn’t scurried back for her and slipped inside her shirt, snuggling up right next to her heart with a determined squeak.

The soft feeling of his fur against her skin helped her to breathe and she focused on the layout of the cave, the schematics of which she’d studied a thousand times. They weren’t in the cave proper yet, but the winding entrance tunnel, which was just large enough for Fireheart to crawl through. After about thirty yards though, it would open up to become a dark cavern about the size of a squash court, built right out of the sandstone. With a rugged floor and a dry, honey-coloured ceiling, it was where Fireheart came to get away from the eyes of the guests. But that was the limit of Frida’s knowledge. Somehow the LEZ cameras never worked properly in here, the feed always on the blink, driving Management up the wall.

Sulphur seemed to infuse every grain of sand, every atom of the darkness. Time seemed to slow down as shadow and smoke entwined, strands of gloom and ash wrapping like limbs around the walls of the rock, around Fireheart, around her. Frida lifted her shirt over her nose, trying not to choke on the stench. Her uniform was less of a uniform now, more a smorgasbord of sweat, old meat, rotten eggs, monkey fur, Nuckelavee spit. She took off her cap and tried to wipe her hair, but the thick tendrils were plastered to her scalp. She could just see the scaly bulk of Fireheart, haloed by monkey-fireworks.

‘Anytime now, azizam dear,’ the dragon’s voice sliced through the smoke. Frida could positively hear the creak of her bones, reverberating through the sandy rock.

‘Yeah,’ she choked out, hurrying to catch up, her boots slipping over the stones, sanded down by Fireheart’s belly. ‘Sorry, sorry!’

Jellybean had climbed up her collar and was hanging off her neck, trying to use his little hands to fan her face. Fireheart gave them both a scathing look, before lumbering onwards around a sharp corner with an iridescent puff of steam. A metallic tang filled Frida’s nose as she took one tentative step after her, the feeling of the rocky walls receding.

Then the world lit up.

The cavern was suddenly a glittering symphony of tiny floating embers, all the colours of a desert under the stars. The monkeys zoomed around with delight, trying to catch the dancing lights. Ochre, quartz, terracotta, apricot, coral, copper, dusty yellow, sapphire . . . Frida drew in an awed breath.

‘What in the world . . .’

Fireheart was at the centre of it. Her time worn body, so scarred and mutilated, sparkled as the lights reflected off her scales with the shimmering of endless sand dunes. In that moment, it seemed to Frida that Fireheart was the desert, the night, the entire world. She stood transfixed, wonder washing through her so strongly it made her knees buckle. Then the lights dimmed, and Frida couldn’t help but let out a cry of dismay. Fireheart’s snout dipped, exhaustion ingrained in every wrinkle, every scar, every tattered edge of her broken wings.

‘Zookeeper, I want to show you something.’

For the first time, her voice lacked that crotchety tone Frida had started to become familiar with. Though dark had returned, a faint persistent light lingered in the far corner of the cavern. Frida stepped towards it wordlessly. Fireheart fell in beside her, the dragon’s chest labouring at Frida’s shoulder, and before she knew it, the two of them were looking down at that light, gleaming in a nook of the rock. Half-hidden in a pile of sand, smooth dusty pebbles and a few pitch-black feathers. A nest.

Frida leaned forwards. Then she pulled back, her breath rushing out of her lungs so fast, her head seemed to fizz. She gaped at the dragon, but Fireheart wasn’t looking at her, she was busy nudging a little speckled pebble back into place with one long, red talon.

‘Fireheart,’ Frida stammered, taking a few quick steps backwards, holding out her hands as if to ward herself. ‘No. That’s not— You can’t . . . I . . .’

Fireheart didn’t answer her. She nudged the pebble gently one more time, made sure one of the feathers was sitting just right, before she swung her head and fixed one inky eye on Frida, the lines of fire in her narrowed iris smouldering.

‘Azizam. It is not for you to tell me what to do, dear.’

Frida stood there, shock rippling through her in waves.

The monkeys had crowded in, arrayed around the nest wide-eyed. Maybe they too had similar legends, or maybe they just felt its power.

Dragons were hoarders. Like crows, they’d been collecting treasures long before humans had even been a thing. Precious gems, sparkling metals: a dragon’s hoard was legendary. But some didn’t have a hoard. Some – the most powerful of dragons – had just one treasure, which when they found, they kept unto death. Their Jewel.

The most popular theory, published in 1958 by Dr Bernard Panning OBE, stated that these dragons needed a Jewel, required it, like an extra limb. Panning theorised that they split a portion of their power into this Jewel, siphoning it off to be used as and when needed. Needless to say, once this theory was publicised, dragon hunting increased a hundred-fold, and the worth of a dragon’s Jewel became incalculable. People sold their bodies and souls to get their hands on them. It was a kind of mercy, then, that Jewels were so vanishingly rare, for not one had been successfully stolen. Not that had been recorded, anyway. Thieves had tried of course, but more often than not those thieves ended up barbequed.

Fireheart was thought to have a Jewel. A diamond. Throughout history, it had been given lots of names. In Arabic, it was Nur al-Sama – Light of the Sky. In Persian, Ghalb-e Sahra – Heart of the Desert – or Ateshnur – Firelight. The name used at the LEZ was Star’s Bane, coined by Oxford scholars in the 1700s. It was said that Star’s Bane was the size of a goose’s egg and worth more than the entirety of good old England. Yet no living soul had seen it, and most thought it was pure myth. After all, dragons were meant to die without their Jewel, and Fireheart was very much alive. Once some determined thieves had decided to find out for sure, and their ashes – like so many thieves before them – were probably still blowing somewhere on the wind. That was when the first zoo guards had been employed.

As the years slipped by, the memory of Star’s Bane faded into legend. Soon its name was only spoken by aged scholars and occasional conspiracy theorists on the dark web. Once in a while it surfaced as an answer in a pub quiz at the Crown, but that was about the extent of it. Most sensible people thought Star’s Bane did not, and had never, existed.

Fireheart flicked her tongue, her belly’s fire deepening to blood-red.

‘That’s your Jewel,’ Frida whispered.

‘Yes.’

‘Everyone said it was lost!’

‘And do you believe what everyone says?’

Frida ran her hands over her face. ‘No, I suppose not.’

‘Well then.’

Frida couldn’t take her eyes off it. It sparkled. The scholars had been wrong; it was smaller than a goose’s egg. A lot smaller. A tiny sliver of starlight that had dropped to earth.

‘It’s so . . .’ she began, and meant to say beautiful, world-changing, god-kissed, spectacular, magnificent, resplendent, but – it wasn’t. It was wrong. Something was missing. She didn’t understand what she was looking at.

‘What happened to it?’ she asked stupidly.

‘Broken,’ Jellybean trilled, his monkey poetry soft with sorrow. ‘Pink crackles broken.’

Frida hadn’t realised she’d fallen to her knees.

He was right.

It was merely a shard, a fragment. Somehow, the rest had been sheared away, but what force in the world could break such a thing? And where had the rest gone? Feeling sick to her stomach, she took in the web of hairline fractures, the universe of cracks breaching its translucent surface. They were endless. Frida shook her head, trying to deny it. Dr Bernard Panning would have sold all his children to be where she was now. But he’d been wrong. The Jewel hadn’t just been a piece of Fireheart’s power. Whether it was her new dragon brain that told her, she didn’t know, but Frida could feel the magnetic pulse between the dragon and the broken stone, unalterable as gravity. She could see where the desert sands should have twinkled, the places where Fireheart had once flown, living, breathing, loving, dreaming. The scathing dust storms and the basalt flats, the volcanic hills and the dry arid cliffs. Gone.

The broken heart of a dragon.

That’s what lay in this nest before her. That’s what Fireheart was showing her. She could almost feel Fireheart’s pain as if it were her own – a raw endless ache of shame and sorrow. ‘Who did this to you?’ she bit out, tears running unchecked down her cheeks.

It was long time before Fireheart answered. ‘Sit down zookeeper, and I’ll tell you.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

Fireheart’s story was, on the surface, something Frida already knew. The LEZ was well versed in such tales, translated into colourful pamphlets written by highly paid communications experts. It was grace, wonder and happiness followed by great and terrible losses. By humans with new weapons, roaring guns, chainsaws, concrete and diggers, flames and screaming. Ending, of course, in the safety of Melody-Upon-Sea. However, it was different to hear it from Fireheart’s own lips. In her voice, it was like a scalding wound, and it burned Frida, bone deep.

‘I wasn’t young, but I was arrogant,’ Fireheart told her. She had hunched up against the wall as she spoke, her voice emptied of all of its fire. Her spine arched tensely, her wings locked. She positioned herself between Frida and the Jewel, blocking the Jewel’s fragile glow.

‘I thought I couldn’t be bested,’ Fireheart sighed. ‘I was wrong.’

Frida sat with her knees against her chest, the monkeys arrayed around her in a loose circle. She wondered whether Fireheart had ever told anyone this story before.

‘What did they do to you?’

Fireheart was silent for a long time. Twiglet crept over, extending a small paw to the dragon’s heaving chest, before slinking back to her place next to Cream Pie. ‘It was some kind of weapon that stunned me first,’ Fireheart started haltingly. Her wheeze seemed to be greater now, whether from extended speech or emotion. She looked down at the rocks, dragging her claws along their surface with a painful, elongated screech. ‘I didn’t understand. I’d never seen anything of that ilk before. None of us had, although there had been rumours, rippling through the worlds. Of wrongness. Can’t you feel it, zookeeper? Can’t you feel the way your magic shrinks from it, whimpering in pain?’

Frida slowly lifted a hand to touch her temples, where the burn of a headache still lingered. She didn’t have time to consider what Fireheart meant though, before the old dragon went on brokenly,

‘When I woke up, they’d sawn off my wings.’

There were no words for such a thing. The pain was so raw, so visceral, Frida felt the ghost of greedy hands, sliding knives down her own back, cutting tendons, slicing bone. The crack of sinew, the blinding grief.

‘My home was taken.’

The lights of desert stars, winking out one by one by one.

‘My mate was murdered.’

A silhouette against a rock face, the dark shape of another cat-like dragon covered in blue blood, teeming with the tiny shapes of humans using those same knives to carve pieces out of dead flesh. Frida wanted to beg Fireheart to stop, it was too much, too painful, too private, but there was no pause, no mercy in the telling. Fireheart continued, low and unyielding, as though she were a storm, a roiling tornado of flame.

‘The world that I was part of, and that was part of me. They took everything from me. They shattered me in every possible way. From then on, I didn’t have the energy to fight. You will ask why I have stayed.’ Her eyes were ancient and weary. ‘But where would I go?’

Frida felt a deep and helpless sorrow etched into her chest. Fireheart was right. There was nowhere for her to go, not with her wings like that.

‘But that’s why the LEZ is so precious,’ Frida said emotionally.

Fireheart just looked at her, the ink in her milky eyes scarred with fire.

‘Please,’ Frida beseeched. ‘You have to help me save it.’

‘I will help you,’ Fireheart answered, her voice a deep puff of smoke.

Frida was so surprised, she reeled backwards. She hadn’t expected it. ‘Truly?’

The small, ragged frill around Fireheart’s neck shivered, and she raised her snout imperiously. ‘Yes, I will help you, but there is a cost. You must help me first.’ She glanced behind her, at where the broken Jewel smouldered. ‘Find the rest of my Jewel, the rest of my soul,’ her voice broke, causing Frida to sway, ‘and I will help you put your world back together. Find my Jewel,’ she said roughly, ‘and I will do what you ask, azizam.’

Frida’s head rang, a high hollow hum that deafened her. Like the beat of distant wings. Find Fireheart’s Jewel. She rose up to her feet, her hands in fists. ‘I will do it!’ she exclaimed. Although, as the wingbeats faded, she realised she had no idea where to start. As if reading this on her face, Fireheart gave a low chuckle, like rocks shifting, and for once, there was a shadow of sympathy on her lined face. Frida almost heard her maligning the small brains of humans.

‘Go back to the beginning,’ Fireheart said, her filmy eyes surprisingly kind. ‘Only there will you find the knowledge you need.’

‘The beginning?’ Frida asked, furrowing her brows. The beginning of what? Her first thought was to go back to the Hawthorn, for that was where this whole nightmare began, but she wouldn’t find the Jewel at the tree. This had to be something different. Fireheart’s beginning, then? The Jewel’s? The beginning of the very world? ‘Please, I need more–’

‘The hatchling,’ Fireheart cut her off, her moment of patience evaporated. ‘He knows where. Go and bother him. It’s his turn now.’

Frida was shaking her head though. ‘No, he’s asleep! I already tried–’

‘Oh, azizam. Dragons do not succumb to mere sleep spells. If he’s napping, give him a sharp poke in the belly. Now go away.’ Fireheart punctuated this with a massive, jaw-cracking yawn. ‘I’ve done my part. You can figure out the rest. This plot has so many twists and turns it makes my head ring, and I grow tired of you.’ A sulphurous wind rushed through the cavern, making Frida choke. When it cleared, Fireheart’s scales were ablaze, like ribbons of lava pouring over her bones. ‘Come, little-storms,’ she muttered to the monkeys. ‘There is much to do, and we do not want to distract the zookeeper.’

Jellybean gave a little peep of complaint, but when Fireheart levelled a scathing look at him, he hung his head, marble-storms frothing. He looked at Frida with his round yellow eyes.

‘Pink crackles,’ he trilled desperately. ‘Free, pink crackles.’

Then he leapt away with a shriek.

Frida didn’t have time to call after him in dismay before the dragon roared.

The power in the cavern flared, and Fireheart and all sixteen of the storm monkeys disappeared with a smoky pop.

The cavern was plunged into darkness, and Frida was all alone again. It might have crushed her, and for a moment it did. A moment, however, was all she allowed, before she straightened her shoulders and pulled out her phone to switch on the torch. She only had 4 per cent battery, but she hoped it would be enough to get her back down the cliff. As she ran, it seemed desert stars still twinkled every time she blinked.

‘Just give him a poke!’ she repeated, laughing in despair as she passed under the fence, the red-hot metal cool now. How much time had passed? She didn’t know. It was night, probably. She didn’t dare think about how much time she’d lost, here, at the library, being chased by the Nuckelavee.

Silly Friduska. Why didn’t you think of just poking the sleeping baby dragon?

Grace was well and truly deceased, but Frida had expected as much. There was only so much Nuckelavee any one buggy could cope with. With an apologetic pat on her dash, Frida pocketed the last energy bar and drained Antony’s water bottle, before continuing on foot. She refused to allow herself to miss the electric peels of the monkeys. The quickest route back to Forest, and Dragon’s Deep, was a thirty-minute walk. With Fireheart’s mission lit like a fire in her bones, she did it in fifteen. As she’d seen from up on the cliff, the electricity was patchy, many of the spotlights within the enclosures, and the warm Narnia-style lamps along the roads, out of action. Thankfully, the last remaining juice of her phone held out and although she twitched at every shadow, the sense of sleep hung heavily in the musky loam-filled air. She saw no more sign of hellish sea demons, nor homicidal box trees. Even the wood seemed to have settled, as if it had finally decided that it had done enough work for the day, and it, too, was ready for a well-deserved nap.

It was . . . eerie.

Taking barely a second to catch her breath, the beep sounding on the security panel (thankfully this area of the LEZ seemed to still be online), she was just stepping into the rabbit-warren of corridors leading to Dragon’s Deep when she heard a deep muffled roar that set her teeth on edge. Goosebumps rose, all along her arms. Maybe she wouldn’t have to poke him, after all. Gathering herself, she lunged into a sprint.

‘Lucky,’ she breathed. ‘I’m coming.’

He was pacing back and forth when she burst onto the brightly lit tarmac of his management area. His belly was like a blazing hot forge. The wards were a discordant hum coming from the glass between them, drowning out his cries. She was already pressing a thumb to the security panel, the one that would get her inside the glass, when Lucky reared up on his hind legs, golden eyes rolling in his head. He chirped and roared, chirped and roared. The uptilted spotlights gilded the sides of his violet scales, which seemed to ripple like flames.

‘I’m coming, love!’ she cried, terrified. Had something happened to him?

Finally, the panel gave a beep and she was through, pulling open the first heavy gate and then the second. The moment she passed beneath, the now familiar vice-like pain tightened around her skull. She tried to shake it off, that brutal maul-like pressure stabbing behind her eyes, as the muggy green jungle enveloped her.

He howled, in pure misery, ‘I’M SO HUNGRY! SO HUNGRY! SO, SO HUUUUUUNGRY!’

She only had a moment to feel blinding relief before he went on.

‘You said you’d come back, you said you wouldn’t leave. You promised.’

Mortification slammed into her.

His molten irises swirled with a thousand different hot, accusing yellows.

‘I am so, so sorry. I thought you were asleep!’ But then she put her head in her hands. She couldn’t imagine how he must have felt. Abandoned. ‘I bet you’ve been really lonely.’

For a second, Lucky seemed to waver between wanting to tear her limb from limb and wanting to burst into tears. Pretty much all the foliage had been crushed beneath the rapid flaring of his wings, and a number of the palm trees were starting to smoulder dangerously. Baby dragons had about as much ability to emotionally regulate as a teakettle, and Frida didn’t have a team of firefighters on hand. But as if he’d heard her, a look of alarm came over his face, and he started blowing gusts of icy steam over the palm leaves. When everything had stopped smoking, he sat down with a ground-shaking thud and sank into a position of utter dejection.

‘I’m so sad. I don’t have any friends,’ he whimpered, followed by a litany of chirps that ended with little hiccups of dismay. ‘I . . .’ He hiccupped again. ‘I thought you were my friend.’

‘I am!’ she cried, distraught. Then she did the only thing she could think of. ‘Look, I’ll get you some food, ok? Right now.’

He gazed at her under long, golden eyelashes. ‘You will?’

‘Dragon butler to the rescue!’ she cried, already rushing away through the tunnel. Any zookeeper worth their salt knew they’d never be able to get a baby dragon to do anything on an empty stomach. The frill around his neck fluttered, all the purples of the rainbow, and his forked tail began to jiggle.

In no time at all, she’d lugged almost an entire cow, frozen appendage by gory appendage, back inside. Lucky watched her, askance. Only when the meat lay in a pile in the centre of the crater that he’d made a nest out of, did he deign to sniff the nearest piece.

She nodded, gesturing enthusiastically. ‘Go on, it’s for you.’

Although he looked distressed at first, when she picked up a bone and mimed gnawing on it, he soon got the knack. As he ate, Frida retreated to a far corner and sat in a pile of gladioli petals, trying not to think about the blood of the cow seeping into her uniform. She’d once helped Sora conduct a study on how well the zoo’s cows, crickets, earwigs and other edible critters were cared for. Ultimately, they were not cared for all that well at all. And as she sat there in the mud, covered in blood, the symphony of cracking bones in her ears, she couldn’t help but feel like one of those bones was lodged in her own throat.

It was hard to stay there, silent.

‘Lucky?’ she asked tentatively, when she could wait no longer.

Lucky startled. He dropped the final leg bone and tried to cover it with one oversized paw, as if ashamed to have been caught eating.

‘No, it’s ok, Lucky.’ She tried to smile. ‘It’s yours. You can finish it.’

‘I am full,’ he pronounced plainly.

Then he frowned, a shadow crossing his face. Alarmingly slowly, he craned his neck bit by bit until he was so close to her, she was almost knocked out by the sweaty, meaty stench. Blood dripped in long, malodourous strands from his gigantic yellow teeth. As she trembled, doubting whether he wasn’t so full after all and maybe they weren’t quite as good friends as she’d thought, he sniffed her, streaks of lava rupturing around his pupils. He let out a globular cloud of purple smoke, right into her face, and she was wondering if she hadn’t made a terrible, bone-crunching miscalculation when he growled,

‘What is a Lucky?’

Chapter Twenty-Three

Frida almost swooned with relief. ‘It’s your name,’ she cried out.

But then his belly turned pale and his eyes dimmed. ‘But I have a name!’

His meaning registered. And when it did, Fireheart’s haunting voice washed over her.

You use a human name, and it is not his.

Fireheart had been talking about the Nuckelavee, but suddenly Frida realised she could have been talking about any of them. Fireheart could have been talking about herself. Frida hadn’t even thought to ask if Fireheart had another name. Shame gripped her as she gazed up into Lucky’s tremulous ore-filled eyes.

‘My dada gave me my name himself!’ he chirped, a quiver in his canary song of a voice. ‘It is lovely. Do you – do you want to hear it?’

Tenderness, guilt and compassion filled her aching chest. ‘I’d love that,’ she managed, sagging a bit as he beamed down at her.

‘My name is fire-spoken-and-soaring-on-exalted-sky-and-deep-notched-trees-with-great-hope-in-many-veined-hearts!’

She gave a shocked laugh. She could smell the flames, dancing across the bottoms of white clouds. She could hear rivers rushing past the gigantic rainbowed trunks of bronze-ridged trees. And she could feel the darkness of the shade, cool beneath a jungle canopy.

‘Your name is lovely,’ she said softly.

His eyelashes lowered. ‘Yes, because my dada gave it to me.’ Then he eyed her with serious concern. ‘But maybe your little brain won’t be able to handle it. It is a dragon name, and you are only a little bit dragon. I don’t want you to say it wrong.’

‘Oh no, I wouldn’t want that either! That would be terrible.’

His face fell even more. ‘But what will you call me?’ Wrinkling his snout, he ran his blue tongue over his lips. ‘L-u-c-k-y. Lucky.’ He perked up. ‘Yes, you may call me a Lucky, I think! I do not mind it, and I will wait until I see my dada to use my true name again.’ Although, his face cycled through emotions so quickly, it was impossible for Frida to keep up. ‘You don’t think he’d mind, do you?’

She had no idea. It was quite possible that his father would indeed mind, and the lump in her throat that seemed to appear every time she thought of his dada made it painful to swallow. In the end, she just told him that she thought his father would be really proud of him. And if it was really ok, she had become rather fond of the name Lucky.

Soon, the dragon was beaming again, that warm mauve colour like being wrapped in clouds at dawn. And then Frida told him her name, and said, ‘My muma gave it to me.’ She smiled sadly, remembering. ‘She liked flowers a lot. And art. The last bit, Rose, was my mum’s favourite flower. She changed our surnames; she had to go to the courthouse and everything.’ Frida felt a tightening in her chest, along with a swell of pride. ‘She said it meant you could do or be anything you wanted. And that I should always remember that.’

Lucky examined her incredulously. Then he snorted, a chirpy hot laugh. ‘Well, that is a very short name, little stink. Dada always said humans weren’t very smart, but I never realised quite how small-brained you really are.’

Frida laughed, properly this time, topped by a true Frida Rose nasal snort. His frill trembled and he looked delighted, rising up again on his back paws and towering above her.

‘Is it time for our adventure now?’

Frida nodded. His scales were luminous, and his raggedy beard shivered as he thrashed his tail. When he poked his long snout up close again, his whiskers tickled her cheek, and she could see every tiny grain in the scales around his eyelids, every golden eyelash. It couldn’t be that easy, could it?

‘I know what to do,’ he stage-whispered. ‘Dada told me, so you do not need to worry. I will be so good, and I will take you exactly where you need to go!’ He snuffled the top of her head proudly with his dribbly beard.

Maybe it was that easy, after all!

‘But you need to get rid of those first, ok?’

He’d twisted to look with narrowed eyes at the glass.

Frida gulped, drool oozing down her cheek. ‘The wards?’

‘The un-magics!’ The words fell like stones in a lake, echoing outwards. ‘We can’t go anywhere until they are gone. Horrible, horrible things.’

Frida gazed, frozen, at the impenetrable glass. ‘The un-magics,’ she whispered. Then she stepped back. Lucky was looking at her patiently with big liquid eyes. She tried to swallow but her throat was dry as she eyed the security cameras. It was entirely possible that this was being livestreamed on YouTube, like some kind of extraordinary Truman Show. Releasing a dragon was not only a fireable offence, but a criminal one too. She tried to think what Antony and Hamish would do in this situation, but all she could see were their slack faces wrapped in thorns for eternity. And Fireheart’s broken Jewel, the single shard lying in its little nest.

Find my Jewel, and I will do what you ask. I will help you put your world back together.

She was already heading for the tunnel. Now was not the time for caution.

‘Just give me a second, Lucky!’

He bobbed his head. She anxiously scanned the dimly lit tarmac, imagining someone from Management bursting out of the woodwork to seize her sacred zookeepers cap. But nothing happened as she started typing the numbers into the keypad by the gates, no Management lackeys with handcuffs and clipboards appeared. Her fingers were sweaty, and with each number she punched in, another brick in the foundations of the ground on which she stood crumbled. She didn’t stop though. If this was the way to save the zoo – if this was the way to save her friends – she’d do it. The last twenty-digit code was in a locked folder on her phone, something they all had to keep on them at all times, in case of some dire emergency. Well, this was it. The dire emergency was here. There was just enough juice left in her phone for her to access it, before it went dead.

‘Get ready,’ she whispered, casting the phone aside. Whether she was talking to herself or Lucky, she didn’t know. Lucky can’t have heard, but his whole gigantic body was shaking anyway. Around her, the wood seemed to hold its breath as she pressed the final numbers into the keypad. With the last digit, her hand dropped.

The wards went dead.

Lucky’s howl was so loud that even though she’d braced herself, she ducked out of sheer instinct. The glass shattered with the force of his cry, entire galaxies exploding in her cerebral cortex. Clarity and flame. Wonder and triumph. Delight, delight, delight! Lucky spread his wings, slamming into whatever glass remained – now free of electricity, free of anything but bog-standard glass. It reminded her, in that moment, of the shattered Coffin.

‘Come on, little stink!’

She raised her arms, spreading her own wings. ‘I’m coming,’ she called, already running back towards him, her soul soaring. The pain in her head that had plagued her was gone. She didn’t have time to think about why this was. She just took a flying leap over the jagged wreckage, as if there was a wind lifting her up. As she landed on the other side, Lucky let out another deafening roar. No wards, and without them, it was like a wet blanket had been lifted. Lucky’s emotions slammed into her as if he could see clearly, feel clearly, think clearly for the first time since being captured, shot through with sedatives and shoved onto a plane, flown halfway across the world, and sealed behind glass.

She wanted to laugh and weep and scream all at once.

He was up on his hind legs, making the ground tremble.

‘What do I do?’ she cried.

‘Climb up!’

Frida took a running leap for his forepaw. She grappled with the edges of his scales, cold and hard like polished stone: the size of dinner plates. Unable to find purchase, the edges of them too smooth and slick, Lucky chirped with impatience, and then with a great puff of purple smoke, he pressed his whole bulk down into the mud. Flat, like a pancake crocodile. Just enough for Frida to crawl up, letting out a gigantic, ‘Whoop!’

When she’d reached the crux of his forepaw, things got easier. His scales started to have thicker ridges, and she was able to haul herself over them, panting and shivering, because he was cold, so cold. It was like bouldering on a sheet of sub-zero ice. Which moved.

‘Sorry,’ she called, wincing as her boot dug in when he lifted himself back up, almost toppling her. However, he just giggled and puffed out a few more smoke rings. His body warmed, and her muscles relaxed, a soft heat filling her. She let out a moan of gratitude.

Lucky huffed a fond sigh. ‘Little-special-stinky-Frida-Rose. Are you ready?’

She was almost at the base of his massive, scaly neck now. She could feel his muscles trembling around her legs, see the way the thousand and one purples danced under her muddy hands, a galaxy of violet. Murmuring about pink flamingos and magic and miracles with more than a few curses and prayers thrown in for luck, she swung one leg over the crest of his spine and slipped into the dip between his shoulder blades: she’d made it! The spot was gently rounded like a bowl, soft and leathery. There wasn’t much to hold onto, just a few spikes that were a bit less ferocious than the others, and she wrapped herself around one of them, gripping the ridged muscle with her thighs and thought about what her mum would say.

You’ve been ready for this your whole life, Friduska.

She tried to imagine her mum sitting behind her, helping her to hold on.

‘I’m ready!’ she called down.

Lucky gave a howl of acknowledgment and spread his wings. His wings! She would bet that one day, when she explained it to them, Hamish would write poetry about this. She watched Lucky’s unbalanced leathery sails start to lift and it seemed the whole jungle howled in answer. Her hand brushed the edges of one of Lucky’s scales, smooth as glass. She was going to fly with a dragon. Laughing wildly, she gazed towards the open roof of the enclosure, the far distant canopy, and waited for lift off. She expected them to shoot off at any moment and burst into the dazzling skies, doing loop-the-loops as Lucky blazed a hole through the fairy’s forest, just as Fireheart had blazed a hole through the fence.

And what lay on the other side was anyone’s guess.

But after a few seconds, when nothing happened, she squinted down at him. Lucky’s forepaws were moving, fast and frenzied, the noise of the thud and rip of earth deafening. It was all she could do not to go flying headfirst off his back. But he wasn’t flying. In the confusion, she couldn’t make sense of what was happening. Why was Lucky digging? He was already a foot deep, and his wings had shifted; he’d tucked the big one back in, but the one that was divided into three, he was tilting it, using those three parts to dig like spades.

All the breath left Frida’s lungs. Everyone had thought it was a redundancy of evolution. But that strange wing was for digging?

Why was Lucky digging?

They were going down, the feeling of the cold, damp earth starting to press in from all sides. Five, ten feet deep, descending into a wet dirt grave. Lucky roared, knocking her senseless with the foul stench of mould and dirt and fungus and something ancient. For a second, everything dimmed to a haze of dark smoke, and she gave a shriek as her cap flew off. The tang of metal was in her throat as Lucky’s body heaved, branches and ferns cascading. She tried to find her cap, but then she was just trying to hold on, gripping whatever she could because that smooth feel of his scales was like water flowing downstream.

He was going to drag her into the earth. Maybe he didn’t know she couldn’t breathe dirt. Did he know that? Oh, Lucky, just a quick heads up, I can’t breathe dirt, you know. Could he breathe dirt? What was he planning to do, tunnel to the place where the Jewel was? Travel to the very beginning of time?!

Suddenly, Jellybean’s words came back to her, forgotten amongst the other reams of unintelligible monkey poetry. Ree go into the dirt, down and down. Oh god.

‘I want to get off,’ she screamed. ‘Let me off!’

But Lucky didn’t hear. He was singing, the high-pitched glee of a titanic canary. She tried to take gulping gasps of oxygen, but the ground was folding in above her head, plunging her down, down, down, and all she could hear was Lucky’s singing. They were falling into the bowels where dead things were. Worms would eat her eyes, beetles would crawl in her brain, mushrooms would grow in her flesh. All her terrible decisions that day, had they all just led to this? She’d trusted Fireheart, she’d turned off the wards, she’d released a dragon! She’d let herself be gaslit by a pierced green-haired fairy.

She was about to be crushed. Crushed, into a million pieces. This was the last thought she had before the air ran out, darkness swallowed her up and there was nothing but shattering, gasping, drowning, gulping, fighting, crying. It might have been an eternity, and it might have been a flash of candlelight in the darkness. There was earth. Dirt and root and mycelium, stars upon stars upon stars, a roar that went on and on, up and down, outwards, inwards. Agony and breaking, squeezed, fragile and broken, nothing but galaxies.

Then: a pinprick of light far, far above.

It rushed into being, fused amongst mud and mulch, as if it had been grabbed by a swimmer, grasping for a life belt. A song roared, and then swam, dug, flew . . . through colours that didn’t have names, through an infinity of purples. . . Up, up, UP! Then with a cry of release, the darkness burst. The ecstasy was like taking a first breath. Light flooded, slicing, clean and pure, sharp and hot, cerulean and sapphire.

Then, again: nothing.

PART THREE

Chapter Twenty-Four

When Frida woke up, she thought it had all been a dream. But as she lay in something soft, which she soon realised was grass, everything felt tender, from her hair to her bones. Her lungs burned and her throat was sore. Maybe from screaming, or maybe from swallowing more worms, twigs, roots and soil than any human ever should. Slowly returning to consciousness, she managed to roll over with a groan. Was that what it felt like to be buried alive?

She cracked one eye open and winced.

The light was the warm hue of high summer. Strangely reassuring. And there was a sound coming from nearby that couldn’t help but make her smile. It was like a baby canary being tickled. A few yards away, a massive purple dragon was rolling around on his back, giggling, sunlight streaming off his amethyst scales. Around him, huge golden insects the size of bats fluttered in an excited cloud, and she had to blink a few times before she realised they were dragonflies. Though unlike any dragonfly she’d ever seen.

Suddenly, sitting up too fast, she choked out a cry. Lucky immediately swung his massive snout around and gave a howl of delight. ‘LITTLE STINK! YOU’RE ALIVE!’

She clutched her head at the volume as she got up on wobbly legs. ‘Lucky, where are we?’

His belly was exultant. ‘Exactly where we should be!’ His lips widened in a grin, and then he went back to rolling around in the grass. In a daze, Frida lifted her gaze past him. Her nostrils flared as the scent of salt and sea air wrapped around her.

The sea. They were by the sea.

Before her stretched a vast expanse of blue that seemed to go on forever, melting at last into a white misty haze on the horizon. Letting out a whimper, she stumbled across the grassy hillside. She walked over to the edge where she saw undulating white chalk cliffs extending left and right as far as she could see. Below her, a rocky beach was speckled with pebbles. Above a great searing sky, the sun a knife-sharp white hole.

For a long moment, she just stood there.

She’d stood on this exact spot before. Many times, in fact.

To her left, she should have been able to see a long metallic pier jutting into the dark blue water, crowned by the infamous red and white rollercoaster, the Kraken’s Rift. She should have been able to see busy tarmacked roads sandwiched against winding old, cobbled streets. She should have seen the seaside promenade, the jaunty seafront cafes, the striped deckchairs, tourist coaches gridlocked in traffic jams, the Italian restaurant where her mum had worked, the wind farm in the bay . . .

Beyond all that, she should have seen the sprawl of Liberty Park creeping up the hillside, and the massive twinkling golden walls of the LEZ. The ornate gilded entrance, the colourful roofs of the plaza, the network of thoroughfares leading towards the seven sections of the LEZ like a sunburst.

She stood there, not quite able to process what she was seeing.

Or, more accurately, what she wasn’t seeing.

This was Melody-Upon-Sea. Except – it wasn’t.

She didn’t know how long she stood there before Lucky eventually lumbered over, a warm cloud of smoke heating her back as he came to stand next to her.

‘Where’s the LEZ?’ she whispered.

Lucky emitted a self-satisfied chirp from the back of his throat. Around his head, those ethereal dragonflies still hovered. They flittered between sunbeams. Or . . . did they?

‘Big-dragon-big-dragon,’ they purred. Their quivering voices filled her head with sunlight. ‘Fire-light-burn-heat-hot-bright-fly-fly-fly.’

She swayed, disbelieving.

There was a poster on the back of her kitchen door, yellowed and peeling at the edges. It had been there since she’d been a child. She looked at it every time she put on the oven. The Best British Extraordinary Insects Throughout History.

‘Galin’s greater golden dragonfly,’ she murmured.

As big as two handspans. They didn’t move between sunbeams. They were made of sunbeams. Found in two types of habitat: forest meadows, with lots of standing water, and big open cliff faces where they could catch sunlight reflecting off the waves below. She looked around at the cliff, with the water below, and felt her heart flip-flop. It had been almost two centuries since they’d been hunted to extinction, victims of a Regency fad for dragonfly lamps. She watched, captivated, as their wings whirled, dancing across Lucky’s scales as if skimming a giant purple pond. They were sunshine incarnate, splaying shards of diamond light across the backs of her eyelids.

It wasn’t possible.

And yet, her eyes dropped to where Melody should have been. Instead, what she saw was a small village nestled in a nook between two rolling hillsides, a sparkling river meandering down to meet the sea. There was a long dirt track, and she could just make out a horsedrawn cart trundling towards the ocean.

‘Lucky,’ she said, her voice dangerously low.

He’d cocked his head and was watching her with eagerness. Those blasted dragonflies twinkling around his face. ‘Do you understand, little stink?’

She sagged, her knees turning to jelly. Either this was a parallel universe, or . . .

‘Did you actually burrow through time?’ she whispered. Saying it out loud, oh sweet shrimps. But they were definitely not in the LEZ, and there below was vintage Melody-Upon-Sea: a sleepy seaside town with no tourist coaches, no blinding multi-coloured arcades, no wind farm, no Italian restaurant with legendary ice-cream. No LEZ. Just cobbled streets and horsedrawn carts.

Desperately, she fumbled for her phone, but then she realised she’d left it behind, discarded it right before they’d swan-dived through the earth. Swan-dived through time!

‘Yes, little stink!’ Lucky wagged his tail encouragingly. ‘I knew you’d understand. It really is an adventure, isn’t it?’ He looked around, his eyes wide with exhilaration. ‘Dada told me what to do, and he promised you’d be ok, but I wasn’t sure. I’ve never done such a thing, and I don’t know if any human has either. It is very very dangerous for you to travel the dragon paths.’

Frida could only gawp at him.

You need to go back to the beginning.

Suddenly, the little postcard pinned to her bedroom wall of Forge House came back to her, and her head swum. She’d had no idea what Fireheart had meant, but . . . She gazed up at Lucky, comprehension and excitement dawning. If those were truly GGG dragonflies, flitting around his head, then they must be at least two hundred years in the past. That would fit with the horse drawn carts – it all looked very Jane Austen.

She gazed across the sea.

Where had Fireheart been in the 1800s? Somewhere out there?

Or . . . slowly, Frida turned to look back in the other direction, across the rolling hills, peopled with the occasional little coils of chimney smoke, green swathes of woodland, patchworks of fields, and a blue-grey blur of mist on the far distant horizon. Her mind seemed to blaze with sunbeams.

You need to go back to the beginning.

What beginning?

She was standing where the LEZ should have been. But the LEZ wasn’t here. It was far over that horizon, in a mansion house made of creamy stone. Forge House. Fireheart had been brought there in 1835, which fit the horsedrawn carts perfectly. Maybe the Jewel had been broken during her capture, but if the old dragon had managed to keep it with her, it might have ended up there somewhere, hidden, at Forge House. It was a beginning, anyway.

If she was wrong . . .

She didn’t want to be wrong.

‘There.’ Frida pointed inland, towards that distant, smoky horizon.

Lucky’s reaction made her want to leap for joy. ‘Clever little stink!’ he crowed as he bounced on his front legs, the impossible dragonflies zipping around him. When he flapped his wings, a sulphurous wind lifted the braid from Frida’s neck. ‘Get on my back, little stink! We’ll go right now!’

He was already wriggling backwards to get more distance between him and the edge of the cliff. Seagulls wheeled above, squawking in alarm. And . . . were those bloobodecks she could see, swooping through the air currents? Bloobodecks had survived a bit longer than the dragonflies, and it was still possible to find them in the wildest of places, if you were lucky. But she’d never seen one. Local historians said they used to nest in the cliffs around Melody. The unmistakable translucent sheen of their bodies rippled as they shrieked their indignation at being disturbed. Part water, part air, and a great deal of feathers, the tiny creatures swooped in and out of the holes they’d made in the cliffs. Frida didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

‘Lucky,’ she gasped, ‘are you going to fly?’

‘OH YES!’ His shout of exultation sent even more animals scattering and Frida’s head swam with the squeals of the bloobodecks, the droning purr of the dragonflies, and the cloying scent of sulphur as Lucky beat his wings harder.

‘Have you done this before?!’

He was propelling himself in lopsided circles.

He panted, ‘Yes!’ Then he amended, ‘A few times. Only once. But it’s not hard! Dada said I was very, very good.’

Frida paled, but before she could do anything, Lucky unceremoniously scooped her up by the back of her shirt, grabbing on with his teeth, and dumped her between his shoulders with an ungainly thud. Drool dribbling down her back, she was too shocked to squeal. She just clung on as he took a running leap towards the cliff edge.

Bloobodecks, dragonflies and seagulls scattered in their wake.

When he began to plummet, she finally found her voice, but the wind whipped the screams from her lips as they dropped like a stone towards the pebbly beach below.

Chapter Twenty-Five

‘WEEEEEEEEEE!!!’ Lucky’s bellow filled the world.

When he banked with inches to spare, Frida could pretty much feel her bones being shattered into a thousand pieces. Her stomach lurched into her mouth, down into her toes, up into the clouds. She tasted sea spray, and then they were flying.

Up, up, up.

At first, she just squeezed her eyes shut, gripping onto the trusty spike, the one that she could now confidently say had saved her life. But after a few terrifying moments, she managed to crack her eyes open and squint through the lashing wind. Sunlight bounced off the frothy waves, now many metres below, and she gaped as Lucky’s wings astoundingly kept them aloft.

‘Lucky,’ she breathed, hunching over his glimmering scales. ‘You’re a miracle.’

He giggled, panting hard. ‘Flying is fun!’ he shouted, before executing a full loop-the-loop. Frida screamed, but when he righted himself, she was laughing too. Laughing like she hadn’t laughed in a really, really long time. She threw back her head and howled, gulping the cold air into her lungs. They were in the clouds now, so high. Her face stung, but Lucky’s scales warmed, emitting a toasty heat, and she pressed in close.

Below, through the mist, she could just make out flashes of green. Lucky craned his neck to peer fondly at her, his golden eye resplendent as the clouds reflected in his fiery pupil.

‘You know where we’re going?’ she asked, not quite able to believe the impossibility of it as the wind whipped her words away.

It didn’t matter. He heard. ‘Oh yes!’ he exclaimed, before catastrophically losing his balance. Within a split second, they were plunging downwards again. Frida almost lost her grip, howling at him to look where he was going. He quickly righted himself, apologising, his wings pumping desperately. Then he let out another delirious shriek, and she watched, dumbstruck, as his scales seemed to melt into the palest of purples, leaching their colour as if becoming the clouds themselves.

He seemed to disappear within the very sky.

The English countryside was devoid of motorways, cars, high-rises or concrete. Lucky sang to himself, a soaring canary’s warble, as they zoomed along, and Frida caught snatches of woodland, a sparkle of an estuary, a meandering canal. It was almost like being in a plane, except without walls, seat belts or stewards offering G&Ts. For a time, a murmuration of starlings flew with them, forming their own black dragon that swooped and contracted, so close that there were times when Frida could almost reach out and touch them. Blazing with collective magnitude, they sung of cloud currents and earth fields.

It was so beautiful, it brought tears to her eyes.

It was too soon, and not soon enough, that she realised Lucky was starting to slow, the heavy white mist beginning to thin. Below them a forest stretched for miles, thick, green and dark. On the horizon a smudge of smoky darkness grew larger, the landscape dotted with majestic spires and chimneys puffing out black fog. A thin glint of a river snaked through its heart. She rubbed her eyes, catching her breath. London.

London in the 1830s.

They weren’t headed for London though, she didn’t think. Not quite.

As if on call, the trees below them cleared to reveal the first sight of a winding serpentine lake in the distance. She caught her breath, a ribbon of excitement rising in her chest, bright and fragile as a golden dragonfly. It seemed inconceivable. And yet . . . The water of the lake held the deep inky hue of a lochan. In the middle of the lake was a small island, its gothic folly designed by the famous architect William Dryfus – she remembered studying him in school. Her eyes widened as they passed the island’s notorious crumbling tower and then, there on the lake’s northern shore, stood the elegant Elizabethan house that had featured in so many of her dreams. Its grand façade might as well have been stamped on the inner flap of her brain. She remembered all of it. The crunch of the long gravel pathway over the grounds, the network of perfectly landscaped yew hedges, the dazzling scents of the flower gardens.

‘Forge House.’ She gripped Lucky’s mist-damp scales, her knuckles white. Ten years ago, and two centuries in the future, her class had taken a coach here and eaten cardboard egg sandwiches. Her schoolmates had whined the whole way that Wembley, or Birmingham, or the beach, would have been so much cooler. There aren’t even any animals here anymore, they’d complained, driving the teachers mad. But just sensing the creatures who’d once lived here had been enough for her, and she’d been unable to think of anything else for months afterwards: the cast iron dragons woven into the fence posts, the unicorns sculpted into the walls, the rusted horseshoes hung over the stables, which had once belonged to the sisters’ kelpies.

‘They saved over two thousand species from extinction,’ she said softly, the frozen air biting her lungs. ‘Sir Joshua and his sisters, Henry Gladstone, Laurence Harding, Edward Caval, James Gaunt, William Cliff.’ She recited the names of all the LEZites, the zoo’s founding board, like it was a prayer. She could see people down below, little dots on the grass, and she almost shouted to them in excitement, until she realised that if they could see her, they’d be the ones screaming. Even two hundred years ago, dragons wouldn’t have been flying willy-nilly through the skies. She lightly touched the leached misty colour of Lucky’s scales, wondering. Maybe he truly had become the same colour as the sky.

She’d have a lot to tell Cliff, when this was over.

The thought helped clear her head. Lucky had to be getting tired, and they couldn’t just drop into the middle of the lake and say, Oh, hi Sir Josh, we’re looking for the Jewel, any ideas? Sir Joshua probably wasn’t even here, she reminded herself, refusing to get her hopes up. In reality, he’d not spent much time at Forge House, as he was mostly away on research expeditions. He’d founded rescue centres all over the world, many of which later became the first Extraordinary Zoos. Besides, he can’t have known about the Jewel. A discovery that big would have entered the history books. Then looking down at herself, she winced. She was head-to-toe khaki, with enough tattoos to make her look like a dock worker. She may know everything about the Beaufort family, may have spent her whole life fantasising about them – but they had no idea who she was. And she most certainly did not look like she could just wander unchecked through their grounds. She had to be smart about this.

‘Lucky,’ she began. ‘Maybe we should head back into . . .’

But he was already banking. ‘This way, little stink! I know where to go.’

She relaxed, keeping her eyes peeled, searching for any signs of the enclosures, but the estate passed too quickly. She was just beginning to make sense of the hedges and fences when they shot back over the woods, leaving the house and its valley behind.

‘The King’s Wood,’ she murmured, the dark swathe of trees pooling below her. Young Frida had stood down there, eyes searching, imagining silver stags in the beech groves and goomews in the burrows. In her time, there’d only been a tiny remnant of the wood left, but here, now, if she’d wanted, she might have walked to Cambridge under its canopy.

‘Let’s not go too far,’ she cautioned.

But Lucky just continued, pumping his wings in determination. She could feel his lungs labouring under the exertion. She gave a yelp when a great grey cloud heavy with the scent of rain started to grow. It was approaching fast.

‘Lucky!’ she squawked in warning, praying that he’d bank around it.

He did no such thing.

‘Weeeeeeeeeee!’ he cried.

Frida braced when they sped into the cloud. The rain hit cold and furious. As if they’d been slammed into a waterfall. Within a split second they were out the other side, but she was soaked, the biting rainwater drenching her. She caught her breath as she looked around. They were inside the cloud, but she knew instinctively this wasn’t like the others they’d flown through. This cloud smelled of the spaces between the stars.

She could hear nothing except the ragged beating of Lucky’s wings and her own heartbeat. A mist of raindrops drifted in the hoary darkness as if weightless, colours shifting like steel blue diamonds.

‘Lucky,’ she breathed the uncanny fog into her lungs. ‘What is this?’

He craned his neck to look back at her, his golden iris shining within the grey.

‘Raindrops,’ he whispered, awed.

Then, without warning, he crash-landed in the most spectacular and gruesome fashion, which – Frida suspected – only a baby dragon was really capable of.

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was a miracle nobody was hurt.

‘ARE YOU ALIVE, LITTLE STINK?’ Lucky cried, dusting himself off. His booming chirp echoed off the claggy wetness.

‘I think so!’ Frida exclaimed breathlessly, picking damp pine needles out of her hair. Somehow, she’d managed to keep her seat. All around them, primordial boughs swayed, clattering and storm-tossed, an emerald so bright amongst grey coils of vapour. By some luck, they’d come down right into a clearing. But the next moment, power flooded her vision, and as if they materialised out of the very fog itself, a wall of flesh, wings, horns, fur and teeth suddenly appeared before her.

‘Fuck,’ she cried.

It was not an empty clearing.

All around them, there were creatures. It was the small ones she saw first, because there were just so many of them. The foxes, rabbits and wild cats, mice and rats, a boar, deer and more birds than she could number, all staring at her and Lucky in a way that was most unsettling. Then the others came in focus. The grey shapes of elves, the globular forms of brownies, the tawny hue of a pack of chimeras. Holy hell, were those two and three necked grunkles?! Gnomes with owls on their shoulders. Goblins sitting on the backs of gigantic spiders. Woodland sprites. A pack of black wolves the size of cars! The only time she’d seen so many ECs together was when she’d watched An Extraordinary Planet on the BBC with David Attenborough. And that hadn’t even begun to prepare her for the sheer weight of such a sight, as if starlight flared every time she turned her head. Magic, this was truly magic.

She couldn’t take it in fast enough – the roving will-o’-the-wisps, the loping form of a Davidson’s slope-backed hare, and was that a snow-white angel stag in the shadows? In the oak tree above them, a group of one-eyed pixies leered. Her hand flew to her unprotected throat. Blue skinned with jagged teeth, they leapt from bough to bough, rabid celestine shapes no bigger than her fist.

‘So many friends!’ Lucky chirped gaily.

Frida whimpered. Firstly because, well – pixies! But secondly, there were so many voices, she couldn’t identify whose was whose. The spiders ticked, then there was someone who sounded like nails on a chalkboard (the pixies?) Another was like a waft of wild garlic (the goblins?), another like booming thunder (the wolves?) Someone cantankerous sounded like twigs snapping. A group of elves vibrated with the tinkle of a timbale, and there was a blaze of scarlet that reminded her of Raz. It was all there, around her, words that she shouldn’t have been able to understand. But she could. She could understand all of them.

Lucky, clearly recognising the cataclysmic expression on her face, nudged her companionably with the edge of his left wing. ‘You’re a linguist, remember?’

She might have hugged him, since he looked so adorably earnest, but then one of the pixies squealed violently, and swooped in close enough that Frida could smell the fetid odour of the creature’s breath. She was big, one of the biggest of the pack. The matriarch, biggest of the pack.

‘What a disgusting lizard!’ she crowed, swinging from her demon-pointed tail. ‘You almost squashed us! You weren’t invited to this meeting, no lizards, and no humans!’

Lucky reeled back, shocked. Hurt flared over his face as he dipped his head, golden eyes very round. ‘I’m sorry,’ he sniffled through a shine of tears.

The pixie bared her needlepoint teeth and went to snap at him.

‘Hey! He didn’t mean to. Back off,’ Frida shouted, lunging forwards to try to protect him.

The shock that reverberated around the clearing was almost physical. Every single one of the creatures descended into stunned silence.

The pixie recovered first. ‘What did you say?’ Her single red eye was wide with fear.

Frida looked embarrassed. ‘I – uh . . . I just said—’

‘She speaks,’ the pixie breathed.

‘The human speaks,’ another growled.

Lucky shifted nervously beneath her, and she pressed against him for reassurance. Then everyone started talking at once, the clearing exploding with the noise. God, she thought, pressing a hand to her head, how did dragons handle this?

‘I can understand her!’ someone screeched.

‘Me too!’

‘And me!’

‘How—’ cried another.

‘The human speaks!’

‘It’s not possible!’

Suddenly, there was a great crack from between the trees, sharp as bone shattering. It made Frida jump, but the endless chatter ceased immediately. Then the scent of damp earth and petrichor wafted out of the mist and bloomed through her lungs.

‘Fairies,’ Lucky puffed in marked relief.

But Frida didn’t feel relieved at all when, out of the raindrops, seven fairies materialized, large hulking bodies glittering in the eerie fog.

To Frida’s chagrin, she didn’t even realise she’d moved. But she’d already slithered down Lucky’s back and was about to set off at a dead sprint through the trees in the opposite direction when one of them said,

‘Stop.’

She stopped so quickly, she hit the top of her head on Lucky’s wing and tripped. Lucky squinted down at her, his cavernous mouth hanging open, as though embarrassed on her behalf.

‘What are you doing on the ground?’ he whispered.

She gave a little whimper. She could feel countless eyes on her, countless extraordinary eyes that should have been extinct. Unsteadily, she pushed herself upright, before shrinking back into the safety of Lucky’s ample girth.

When the same fairy spoke again, in a voice as sharp as barbs, she recoiled even more.

‘You speak,’ they rasped. It was the fairy in the middle, a tall creature – exceptionally tall even, she suspected, for fairies. Not that she had much knowledge in the matter, but they were at least two Cliffs. They had the bearing of royalty, with hair made of oak leaves and a filmy mist that wafted around their body, carpeted in pale mycelium threads from crown to heel. In a sharp, angular face, the fairy’s eyes were white and cold.

On their shoulder, Frida realised with a sinking feeling, was the blue-skinned matriarch of the pixies, sticking her tongue out gleefully. Frida considered giving that blue demon the middle finger, but a quick assessment of the situation made her decide against anything of the sort. The fairies were all terrifying. Different, and yet, similarly tree-ish, if trees might whip out a branch and decide to decapitate you with it. She searched their faces for anything she recognised from Dozy. But none of them were Dozy. The one on the far left had six eyes spread across their high brown forehead, each the colour of rowan berries. Next to them was a fairy that looked so old, as if a thousand-year-old yew had sprouted feet and walked here. Another was clearly sourced from an apple tree, for they were covered in so many deliciously scented apple blossoms, all Frida could see of their face were two razor sharp woody horns, above a single eye the glossy colour of green apple skin.

‘Are you listening, creature?’ the oak-fairy snapped.

Frida’s head whipped back. ‘Yes,’ she said, flushing. She was trembling all over. This oak-royal-fairy had a touch of Gloria about them. Aware she must have looked as if she’d just been pulled out of an overflowing ditch, dragged through a wind tunnel, then soundly drenched, she self-consciously tried to brush the worst of the dirt from her face and tuck her bedraggled hair behind her ears. Then she forced a semblance of composure and hoped they could all just agree to forget the last few minutes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘And yes, I can talk.’

The fairy hissed so loudly at this that Frida recoiled, even more so when they slid towards her, their wide white eyes narrowing to slits. Their shadow was a knife slicing down the grass, and it took every fibre of Frida’s being not to squeak. She was reassured by Lucky’s bulk, but her skin still turned to gooseflesh when the fairy said,

‘You speak like a dragon.’ Their words cracked through the rain-dusted air. ‘You speak like that dragon. With ease. As if you have stolen our words, and our minds.’

Her hackles rose at Lucky’s chirp of dismay.

‘Dragons don’t steal!’ he exclaimed, indignant.

The fairy lifted a six-fingered mycelium thread-covered hand and pointed at Frida, ignoring Lucky completely. ‘I have encountered other humans, and speak some of their languages, and you are not like them. I do not know what you are.’ Their gaze burned into her coldly. ‘Mayhap you are a dragon in disguise. They are the only ones who speak with such blue, slippery tongues. Mayhap you are something else entirely. I have spent my life learning the languages of these worlds, but somehow you speak as if they are yours to claim. I think you are a thief,’ they spat.

Behind her, Lucky shrunk backwards, whimpering.

Her hands fisting at her sides, Frida glared at the fairy. ‘No!’ she cried, her ire rising. ‘I am not a dragon or anything else. I am a human. I was just given a gift. This dragon gave me a gift.’ She glanced back at Lucky and wrapped a reassuring hand around the hard icy edge of his foreleg. Turning back to the fairy, her eyes flashed. ‘This is the only reason I can speak to you and be understood – by his grace. I stole nothing.’

‘I have never heard of such a thing,’ another fairy – the yew – creaked out, like old roots cracking in the earth. ‘Dragons do not give such gifts. It is likely she stole it.’

‘I didn’t!’

‘Don’t listen!’ The pixie rose on her tiny, clawed toes from her perch on the royal-oak-supreme’s craggy shoulder. Clearly unable to contain herself, she clutched a strand of oak leaf hair as her pointed tail whipped back and forth. ‘They’re liars. Human or dragon, they’re a liar and a thief! It steals, all of them steals! We know. This is whys we are here.’

‘I don’t steal!’ Frida exclaimed for the third time. But as she swung her gaze around the clearing, she realized she was on trial. A thousand and more eyes, a thousand and more terrifying beings, fixed on her in deadly silence. Then what the pixie said struck her.

‘Why are you here?’ she whispered.

The wolves and the spiders, the sprites, the elves, the gnomes, the grunkles, the slope-backed hare, the snow-white angel stag. In the dark boughs, beady-eyed vampire bats zipped like shards of velvet night. An Oakley’s owl glowed scarlet, haloed by charcoaled moths. All of them, out of myth and legend. If her understanding of Lucky’s timing was right, then this had to be in the middle of the Great Disappearing, perhaps barely fifty years after the krakens had invaded London. What would all these creatures be doing here like this, gathered in one spot? None of the history books claimed that such disparate creatures had ever gathered together without killing each other. So, for what? Some kind of meeting?

The oak-fairy cocked their head, readying to reply, when there was a great big crashing in the primordial trees behind them and everyone, as one, turned towards the noise. A few seconds later, half a dozen musk boar burst out of the undergrowth, followed by a giant yellow adder snake, a bedraggled-looking elf, and an extremely harried and very beautiful fairy.

‘Sorry, sorry!’ the fairy exclaimed, scrubbing their hand over their dirt-streaked face, showing flashes of rosy cheekbones and long lashes. ‘Just collecting the stragglers!’ They gave a nervous laugh, trying to wipe away some of the filth as their dark eyes darted towards the royal-oak-supreme, before pushing back a few curly tendrils of green hair.

Emerald City-green, to be precise.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Every atom in Frida’s body seemed to liquify. The fairy with the green hair’s eyes grew wide at the sight of Frida and Lucky in the middle of the clearing.

‘By all the seas,’ the rowan-fairy muttered audibly with a scowl. ‘Late again? Do they do it on purpose, do you think?’

The yew-fairy next to them gave a mean cackle. Then another of their comrades, a devilishly handsome fairy with the reddish-brown skin of a pine tree, joined in with a laugh so wintery, it felt like icy needles raking Frida’s eardrums.

The fairy with the green hair flushed the devastating colour of overripe plums.

‘I would have come earlier if I could,’ they exclaimed. The royal-oak-supreme shot them a look of such contempt, in any normal situation Frida would have felt sorry for them. But she had more pressing concerns. Like the fact she was about to have a minor aneurism.

This was Dozy.

They had the same hair, the same oval dappled face, the same hooded bistre irises, the same emerald lashes. Yet her Dozy had been like a broken tree, with enough grief in their ravaged expression to make anyone’s heart bleed. But this Dozy? They looked quick to laugh, their mottled lips tilted upwards, their cheeks bright.

‘Young,’ she whispered, the word resounding through her. Young. About two hundred years younger to be exact. But there was no mistaking them. Their face was imprinted forever in her memory. She couldn’t stop staring. Wow.

They moved with ease, a person completely comfortable in their skin. She took in the voluptuous curve of breasts and statuesque, muscular thighs, the strong line of their neck and supple curve of their shoulders, like an awesome figure from a Pre-Raphaelite painting. This was someone who spent their days sleeping happily in meadows, bedecked in flowers, drinking homemade wine, riding wild horses at sunrise and dancing at sunset. Their face was luminous, despite the chastened blush that coloured their cheeks. Their hair, which in the LEZ had been a matted clump, was now all wild curls flowing to their shoulders, and shaved at the sides, perhaps to keep it off their face. The cut highlighted the chiselled line of their jaw and the healthy curve of their cheekbones. She saw no greys in their hair, no tilted crown of hawthorn leaves, no lip piercing. Just the same uncanny lace clinging to their body as if it had been woven by a team of glamorous spiders for the catwalk. No holes or tatters. Only a few rogue brambles caught in their sleeves, which they were surreptitiously attempting to remove.

They looked, quite frankly, spectacular.

Lucky nuzzled in behind her, all wagging tail and lolling blue tongue, and chirped in her ear, ‘Look, little stink! I did it. I know you wanted to go to that house, but Dada said I should follow my instincts. And when I felt the fairy pathways – very different from dragon pathways you know, they are made of raindrops – I just knew it was the right thing to do. And look! Now everything is turning out just as it’s supposed to. Just like Dada said it would.’

Frida sagged against him.

Just as the oak-fairy snapped, ‘What did that dragon just say?’

Frida looked up.

The oak-fairy’s features had gone dangerously still. ‘What did he say about the house?’

Frida looked to Lucky for help, but he was trying to catch falling leaves in his mouth now, squealing as they fluttered harmlessly out of his reach. When she turned back unenthusiastically, she saw with a sinking heart that Dozy had joined the other fairies, slipping seamlessly into their ranks.

With an effort, she drew herself up. ‘Well, yes. We were going to Forge House, the one that’s through these woods. Do you, uh, know of it?’

There was a long, weighted silence, broken only by the rustle of someone’s wings, the scrape of a sharp claw.

When the oak fairy finally spoke, their glacial tone set Frida’s teeth chattering. ‘We know of that house.’

Frida didn’t think this was a good thing.

She looked hopefully at Dozy, but the way they were glowering at her, with such a furious scowl, made her pale. Before she could figure out what to say, the rowan-fairy had shoved their way through the crowd and was whispering in the royal-oak-supreme’s ear. Whatever they were saying, the pixie on their shoulder was delighted by it, a sight that made Frida’s stomach sink like a stone. That pixie was bad news. Soon, all the fairies were in a heated huddle, along with a few of the others – three wolves, a singular elf, a handful of sprites, a ginormous spider. That damned pixie. They sure took their time too, filled with animated gesticulation, clumsy translations she couldn’t make out.

As she watched, she felt as if she was unravelling, thread by thread. Some elves started passing around loaves of a nutty bread, wrapped in fat oak leaves, and the smell of it made her swoon. Behind her, Lucky had become distracted by a stick and was chewing on it happily.

‘No!’ Dozy shouted.

Frida startled, just as Dozy began to storm up and down the line of fairies, gesticulating wildly. Their eyes flamed. ‘I won’t do it! I won’t.’

Frida did not like the sound of this. She had the very distinct feeling of a pattern she didn’t understand closing in around her. And the other fairies had smug expressions on their too sharp, too cruel faces.

‘Surely, you are not all in agreement?’ Dozy exclaimed. ‘You cannot really think I will do it.’ But as Dozy desperately looked around at the group, there were whispers as someone translated, and then the unanimous bobbing of heads.

‘What’s going on?’ Frida called, trying to catch someone’s attention.

Dozy just let out a howl and came to a halt before the oak-supreme. ‘I won’t do it!’ they repeated with a brutal hiss. ‘This was not what we agreed when this meeting was proposed. We haven’t even started the debate yet.’

‘Yet it is a fitting solution,’ the oak-supreme answered, their eyes sliding towards Frida. There was enough frost in their voice to make Frida wonder if they had an ice fairy somewhere in their family tree. ‘The human is here. We adapt, cousin.’ They said the final word, cousin, with enough disdain to make Frida shiver.

Dozy went wan, their jaw clenched tighter than Cliff’s. Their ethereal beauty seemed to fade as they stood there, and Frida could have sworn she heard a tremble in their voice as they said, barely audible, ‘Please?’

The oak-supreme did not even flinch. ‘It is decided.’

For a few seconds, Frida thought Dozy would continue to argue. But then their head dipped, and all the strength seemed to go out of them in a whoosh. The hairs on the back of Frida’s neck lifted. Tentatively, she inched closer.

‘Uh,’ she said a bit too loudly. ‘Hello? Hi?’

The whole unpleasant group turned their faces towards her.

She held her ground. Just. ‘Can I ask what you’re talking about?’ She smiled obligingly, trying to channel Antony’s unfathomable ability to make every person in the room want to be his friend.

It was not successful. No one would look at her apart from the pixie, who was doing some kind of evil pixie-dance on the oak-supreme’s shoulder, single red eye gleaming.

Finally, the oak-supreme stepped out of the crowd with a creaking, suffering sigh, wet crystalline droplets sparkling in their hair. The trees around them seemed to lift in symphony, as if the entire world did nothing without their permission. They uttered, almost as if it pained them, ‘We have decided not to kill you, human-not-a-human.’

‘Oh,’ Frida said, blinking. ‘Right. Well. That’s kind of you.’

The oak-supreme nodded, as if they really believed it was. ‘But we do not trust you.’

She thought to argue, then saw the hatred ingrained on Dozy’s face, directed squarely at her. The way their soft, upturned lips had firmed into a sneer, the twist to their jaw as if they were chewing on something distasteful.

‘I understand,’ she said.

The oak-supreme’s lip curled. ‘Do you? We are looking for our families.’ They spread their arms, indicating the whole incongruent group. ‘And there is a place, near here, where some of them are being held. The house of which you speak. You say you are going there. But why would a human and a dragon be going to such a place?’

Her ears suddenly felt a bit muffled, like she was listening through a long tunnel. One of the wolves tilted his mammoth shaggy head, training his huge yellow eye on her. All she could hear was the determined crunch of Lucky’s oblivious chewing, and the oak fairy’s words echoing. What did they think, that she was taking Lucky to Forge House to be captured? It was just a giant misunderstanding then! She might have laughed, except it wasn’t funny, not in the least. Not if they thought that Forge House had taken their families.

She was already shaking her head to refute it. ‘If your families are in that house, they’re there because they were in danger, and there was nowhere else safe left for them to go. I know the people who live there. I can vouch for their intentions.’

Someone, one of the elves, scoffed.

She swung around. ‘It’s true!’ But a feather of fear ran down her spine. She could see, from their perspective, how it might look. And the oak-fairy’s white eyes seemed to grow frostier with every second.

‘It is a fortunate thing you have such assurance,’ they said, their lips lifting with studied cruelty. ‘Because you and my cousin will be going together to make certain of it.’

Frida stopped dead. ‘What?’

Dozy snapped their teeth at her, their hair rippling like many-coloured leaves, and Frida stumbled backwards with a yelp.

‘If you wish to go in that house,’ the oak-supreme barked, ‘you will not go alone. My cousin will go with you, and you will show us these intentions of which you speak.’

She quailed as she and Dozy stared at each other across the rain-dusted grass, her brain whirring at the strangeness of it. At the impossibility of this coincidence. It had to mean something, and yet – how on earth was she going to find the Jewel, if Dozy was going to be her minder?

Lucky, who must have fallen asleep, suddenly emitted a loud snore.

‘Fine, but he is coming with me,’ she said, crossing her arms furiously over her chest.

The oak-supreme simply looked at her and uttered one irrefutable word. ‘No.’

Frida lurched forwards, but the oak-supreme just raised a gnarled hand. ‘He is one of us, and we will look after him.’

Like hell you will! She was quite ready to see how easily an oak-fairy’s neck might snap, when someone said softly, from near her right leg,

‘Do not worry.’

She glanced down, startling.

It was one of the sprites. There was a painting of a sprite in the Watering Hole, done by some long-ago zookeeper with a penchant for whimsy. They hadn’t, in fact, gotten it too wrong, even though no one of her generation had actually seen a sprite. Green and squat, roughly the size of a traffic cone. A seedpod-shaped head, hooved goatish legs and muscular arms long enough to touch the ground and/or cause significant bodily harm. This one was a male, for he had two horns rather than five, and they looked so heavy she was surprised he didn’t topple over. His eyes (three of them, with goatish pupils) were the colour of burned cabbages, and they seemed impossibly gentle. Which went against all the data, for it was said that sprites – like fairies, she thought with a gut-twist – had been vicious to the core.

‘Do not worry,’ he repeated, moving his needle fingers so fast it was a blur. Click, click, click. He had no mouth (not on his face anyway), so she wondered if the words came from his fingers. The sound in her brain was like apples dropping in an orchard. ‘Your friend will be safe with us.’

She wanted to cry, tears welling up unstoppably. She didn’t want to question this sprite’s babysitting credentials, especially since this was the first person since they’d arrived in this hellish fairy-mist to actually be nice to her, but Lucky could eat him in one gulp. She was about to resist, when a flash of copper burst out from behind the sprite’s flanks.

‘Papa Ru!’ the flash yipped. ‘Papa Ru, did she say yes?’

It was a baby sprite. Round and fuzzy as a peach, with five short stumpy horns the speckled colour of blackberries and cream.

‘Oh!’ Lucky exclaimed, his eyes flying open at the sound of the sprite’s giggles. He wagged his tail, almost taking out a disgruntled wolf in his excitement. ‘Hello!’

The young sprite squealed, moving her hands so fast, the movements fell into Frida’s brain, plop, plop, plop. ‘Papa Ru! He’s awake. And he’s really BIG!’

The older sprite sighed with long suffering despair. ‘Magie, calm down please.’

Magie caught Papa Ru’s furry green fingers. She darted looks at Frida, before whizzing through Frida’s legs, almost toppling her before beginning to tug on the edge of Lucky’s spade-like wing. Papa Ru paled beneath his fur, but Lucky only giggled.

‘Are you one of my new friends?’ he chirruped.

At this Magie became so excited, Frida worried she might forget how to breathe. ‘He speaks!’ Magie crowed. ‘Papa Ru, he’s speaking to me!’ She jumped up and down. ‘Hello!’ she cried. ‘I’m Magie.’ Her fur, all around her eyes, was trembling rapidly.

Papa Ru gave Frida a resigned look – Do you see what I have to deal with? I think a baby dragon will be a piece of cake, don’t you? – and Frida couldn’t help but smile back.

‘All the adults are always busy doing important things,’ Maggie was intoning seriously, now sitting between Lucky’s paws. ‘It’s so dull, but Papa Ru says that you can stay here and play with me.’ She shot Papa Ru an accusing look. ‘He wanted to leave me behind, but imagine if I’d let him? Who would you have been able to play with then?’ She puffed out her chest, a universal gesture seen in playgrounds across the world. ‘I’m the best at organising the games, you know. Everyone says it.’

Frida looked down when Papa Ru brushed his furry fingers against her hand.

‘He will be safe,’ Papa Ru said again, then glancing over his shoulder towards the fairies. ‘They will never let you take him to that place, so it is best you do not fight them.’

Frida digested this. So, they did think she was planning on selling Lucky to the Beauforts.

‘Ok,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you.’

Papa Ru blinked at her in acknowledgement as Lucky gave a squeal.

‘Do not worry, little stink!’ he chirped. ‘Everything is as it is meant to be. We will find each other again when we are meant to.’ He gave her one last nuzzle, shoving his sulphurous snout into her face, before setting off at a thundering sprint after Magie.

‘Be careful!’ Frida shouted, but Lucky was already disappearing, hot on Magie’s tail, the creak of the boughs eerily quiet as they lifted to let him though. Papa Ru and a stream of other sprites hurried after them, hooves flailing.

When she’d collected herself, she turned back reluctantly to find Dozy’s hooded gaze upon her. The tips of the fairy’s ears flushed that off-plum colour as they locked eyes. Dozy’s eyebrows jerked downwards, and they emitted a low growl. The next second, they’d flung the mist aside and crossed the distance between them. They were suddenly, somehow, very close to her, their presence sending her heart ratcheting. They weren’t nearly as tall as the oak-supreme, but they still towered over her. She was used to tall people though and drew up her full five foot five inches with all the indomitable strength she possessed.

‘Come on,’ they bit out through clenched teeth. ‘Let’s go.’

Their voice flooded her brain like deep leaves, hauntingly similar to what she remembered and yet – different. Back at the LEZ, their words had sounded like the crunch of dried end-of-season foliage. The memory of their scent of crumbling wood and fetid loam washed over her. But here it was green, oh so green. The wet of growing things and the lush afterglow of summer rain. Fairy, but something special too. Something unique to them. Like the sweet, spicy taste of almonds.

She couldn’t help but shiver.

Without ceremony, they shot out their hand towards her, an invitation for her to take it.

The eyes of the others burned into her and Dozy let out a snarl of impatience. Presumably, she was meant to take their hand so they could – what? Drown her? Drag her into another earthen grave? And yet she couldn’t help but notice how shapely their hand was. They had elegantly tapered fingers, six of them on each hand, each moving with the graceful precision of a piano player. Their palm was mottled like ancient tree bark, swirling with the deep colours of a hawthorn in full bloom. Not the pale Coffin-bound thing from the LEZ, but a true force of the woods, streaked with dappled fawn, bistre, brown and silver, fading in places to a twilit blue. The delicate spidery lace trailed over the strong line of their wrist, and up the softly rounded curve of their arm.

They began tapping their foot – a quick staccato rhythm on the grass.

Frida felt somewhat needled.

Just give her a moment!

‘Ok,’ she managed. Keep your cobwebs on. With a poise that would have made her friends applaud, she reached for Dozy’s hand. The instant her fingers closed around theirs though, she saw the fairy recoil. Just for a heartbeat, before they steeled themselves, schooling their face to rigid blankness. Then they tugged her half a step towards the trees.

Only this was no ordinary hand she was holding, and half a step was never going to be just half a step. A flash of heat coursed up her arm, followed by a wash of misty raindrops, and the next thing she knew, she was gripping Dozy’s hand for dear life, emerging into steaming, stinking darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The smell hit her first. A thick overpowering stench of horse dung even Dozy’s petrichored splendour could not mask. Frida was well acquainted with such things – she’d spent most of her life shovelling similar. But Dozy’s schooled composure contorted immediately into rabid horror, and within seconds they’d hunched over and were coughing in strangled bursts like they’d just ingested toxic fumes.

‘By cursed and bloody storms!’ they cried, round black eyes aghast, dropping her hand as if she – too – was toxic. ‘What is that smell?’

Frida rolled her eyes. ‘It’s just horse dung,’ she muttered, collapsing with an exhausted sigh onto the hard packed earth, her body already pummelled with dragon travel, the nauseating lurch of fairy travel just another notch on her belt. One glance at their surroundings was enough for Frida to ascertain that she wasn’t a fan. Damp darkness surrounded them, the only light radiating from the faint bioluminescent shimmer of Dozy’s cobwebbed jumpsuit, and a few chinks of weak daylight filtering through the ceiling. Floorboards, she thought with a sinking feeling. The motionless air, the earthen walls and absence of doors or windows pointed to one thing: they were underground. A cellar perhaps. Judging by the stench, and the muffled clip-clopping of what sounded like hooves above their heads, Frida guessed Dozy had magicked them under some stables.

Whether it was the stables of Forge House, she had no idea. She hoped so.

With a soft thud, Dozy sat down on the other side of the room, perching miserably on a rotten crate. They hung their head, which didn’t inspire confidence, fiddling nervously with the downy, shaved hair around their ears. She had a strong suspicion an underground cellar hadn’t been their goal. She could just see a fine sheen of sweat glistening across their temples. How much had it cost them to travel here, to bring her along with them? They looked hollowed out and Frida felt a twinge of guilt. Now she was sitting down, and her brain wasn’t full of the cacophony of a thousand disparate creatures, she could think more clearly.

This Dozy did not know who she was.

This Dozy didn’t know what was going to happen in two hundred years.

She stared at the fairy’s trembling profile.

Maybe she was meant to win them over with witty jokes and her party trick of making a realistic impression of the Lagarfljót Worm out of balloons. Would that save the LEZ?

‘Are you ok?’ she asked softly.

Slowly, they lifted their head. Their eyes were stretched so wide, yet there were no whites, just endless obsidian. She looked away quickly, pushing herself upright and busily brushing off the dust from her still-wet uniform to distract herself from the mistrust she saw there, so profound it felt like a brand.

First things first. She spun around, trying to make sense of where they were. The room – barely deserving of the word – was about twenty feet square. As her eyes adjusted, she could make out fraying feed bags, a jumble of old tack, a pile of broken shovels in one corner. Above them, the relentless stamp of hooves, the hollow thuds of bodies against stall walls, the musky huff of breath. It was a large stable from the sound of it.

Noticing what looked like a hatch in the ceiling, she considered the pros and cons of trying to force it open. If there was someone on the other side, they might not take too kindly to a fairy and a zookeeper being trapped in their cellar. She was too short to reach it properly, but she gave a half-hearted jump and managed to give it a tentative push. It didn’t budge. Locked, she concluded.

She could just make out voices on the other side, a soft murmuring like a radio turned down low. It took her a moment to realise it must be the horses. Low whiskery conversations dealing with all things equine. Horses aren’t extraordinary though, she thought, pressing her fingers to her temples. Dragons and fairies were one thing – almost starting to make a strange sort of sense. But horses? Then she remembered the sparrows in the sky and she wondered if she’d be able to understand Flipflop now, the stray cat who broke into her flat every morning, or whether she’d be able to ask Peter, Antony’s mum’s poodle, not to eat socks anymore.

She promptly decided to dissect this later over a pitcher of margaritas at the Crown and Anchor. Right now, she was trapped in a cellar with a fairy who hated her.

‘Do you know where we are?’ she asked, keeping her voice low.

Dozy shot her an irritated look, hooded eyes narrowed. ‘Me?’

Frida exhaled slowly. ‘Well, yes. You brought us here. I thought you might have an idea–’

They snorted in a very unfairylike way. ‘I might have brought us but you’re the cause of it.’

Her face heated. Helplessly, she sank onto her own crate in the corner and dropped her head into her hands. God, it was hot in here. Her particular smorgasbord of stenches was becoming almost as pungent as the horse dung. She imagined her ruined uniform steaming like a cartoon cow-pat, and her face grew even hotter. She wished this cellar wasn’t so damn small. ‘I never asked to be trapped underground with you,’ she muttered.

Dozy dragged a hand through their forest-curls, hissing angrily, ‘I aimed as close as I could. Seas and skies, what more do you want?’

From the shadows another voice, like a plucked harp string, said cheerfully, ‘It’s not her fault, you know. There’s no need to be so rude.’

Frida jerked, her eyebrows shooting up. ‘Who said that?’

Dozy looked stricken. ‘Nobody.’ But their gaze flicked to their shoulder involuntarily.

‘Really, that’s not very civil,’ the speaker groused, like a strange silken ribbon vibrating over Frida’s eardrums. It made her skin tickle deliciously.

Dozy made a strangled sound. ‘Hush,’ they hissed, darting another appalled look down at their shoulder. ‘We agreed.’

The voice gave a splutter. ‘You agreed. I want to meet the strange-shaped dragon!’

‘She’s not a dragon. The reason we’re here is because she’s human!’

‘And she can’t be both, you endless clodpoll of an arse?’

Frida snorted out a laugh, then covered her mouth with a hand when Dozy glowered furiously at her. She didn’t have time to recoil however as seconds later, a tiny spider launched themselves from the folds of Dozy’s jumpsuit. In the faint bioluminescent light of the webs, she could see the shine of the spider’s tiny eyes as they lunged across the room and landed soundlessly on the back of her left hand. She bit back a squeak, trying to hold perfectly still.

‘Hello,’ she whispered.

Hamish’s foster brother had a pet jumping spider named Jonas. Like Jonas, this spider was no bigger than her thumbnail. A male, she guessed, from the size of him. Pedipalps like boxing gloves. But his whispery, glittery voice vibrated through her like taut threads being plucked. ‘Hello, not quite a dragon, not quite a human.’

She grinned. She couldn’t help it.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, tilting his black and white speckled head.

Dozy rolled their eyes from the corner.

‘Frida Rose,’ she answered. Somewhere, far in the distance, she had the sense of a web tightening around her. Frida Rose? Is it you? A long way away, words like crunching leaves. She felt a shudder run through her.

‘Oh, that is a lovely name,’ the spider cried, pulling her attention back as he scuttled back and forth across her hand. ‘My name,’ he said with pride, ‘is Behemoth Artilius Twirel Night Weaver the Tenth.’

‘He answers to Moth,’ Dozy cut in with another scathing eye roll.

Moth tsked. ‘Only because you’re uncultured, Dian.’

Frida burst out laughing. It earned her another withering look from the fairy, but it was worth it as Moth scampered away, vaulting the high jump from crate to crate until he landed with a squeak back on Dozy’s shoulder. Even across the room, she could hear them bickering. Then, she blinked. Dian. The spider had called the fairy Dian.

‘Is that your name?’ she whispered. ‘Dian?’ Even as she said it out loud, it seemed to slot into place in her mind, like it had always been there.

Dozy – Dian – closed their eyes, long green eyelashes, so dark to be almost black, falling over their cheeks. Moth chuckled, like a ticking clock on speed. Then, making Frida’s head soar, he took a flying leap back across the room, onto Frida’s shirt collar.

‘Pay them no heed,’ he stage-whispered, darting up her neck until he was nestled in the shell of her ear, and she had to concentrate very hard on not squealing. ‘Dian takes a long time to be nice to new people. It’s nothing against you, Frida Rose.’ He gave a forbearing sigh. ‘People born from the roots of trees can be like that, sometimes.’

The roots of trees? Frida snuck an awed look at Dian, despite herself, and for a split second, they caught each other’s eye. Frida could hear the tap-tap of their piano-playing hands against their knees, their forest-mottled skin blending with the pooling shadows. Dian flushed and quickly looked away, back at the floor.

The spider continued conspiratorially, ‘Also, Dian isn’t their true name. Fairies keep their true names secret, like squirrels hoarding shiny nuts. Their names hold immeasurable power. I’m their dearest companion in all the world, but even I do not know their true name.’

Dian made a disgusted noise in the back of their throat. ‘You’re my worst companion in all the world at this particular moment.’

Frida couldn’t help smiling. It was exactly the kind of thing she said to her best friends. The thought of Antony and Hamish pinched – but for a moment the familiar banter made her feel less alone. And Moth’s pit-like, front-facing eyes were oddly kind.

‘Dian is short for guardian,’ the spider whispered. ‘For however much it pains them, they are the guardian of the hawthorn tree, from which they were born, and me and my ancestors are the guardians of them. It is poetic, I think.’

Dian was staring despairingly at the ceiling, looking as if they were considering how bad it would be, really, if they squashed the spider by mistake. ‘You wouldn’t know poetry if you jumped on it, Moth.’

Moth sniffed. ‘That’s rude.’

But Frida wasn’t listening. The hawthorn tree. The familiar name sent dread spider-walking down her spine. In her mind’s eye, she saw the LEZ’s Hawthorn of Higgleton Common, hulking out of the meadow like a shipwreck. Burnt from Lucky’s lightning. Surrounded by the shards of a Coffin. Did she not need to wonder anymore how the fairy had become trapped inside? Was the LEZ’s Hawthorn the tree from which they’d been born? She felt she knew the answer, as surely as she knew her own name, and she didn’t like it one bit. But Dian and Moth had no idea. No idea that in the future, a commuter trainline worth sixty billion pounds was spearing straight for them. Suddenly, it felt as if there wasn’t enough air, and it had nothing to do with being trapped in a cellar.

What was she was supposed to do? She opened her mouth to tell them everything, but even as she did so, the world seemed to twist. It felt as if she was standing before a younger version of herself, unaware that in her future, her mum was going to die in a terrible, painful way. Her mouth snapped shut.

‘Are all fairies born from trees?’ It was something to say, anything other than the truth clawing up her throat. The moment she said it though, she flushed, for it felt too intimate a question, but Moth answered immediately.

‘Of course,’ he said fondly. ‘It’s in their nature.’ He bounded up and down her arm. ‘Take heart, for Dian is not as knotty as some of the others. They may prickle sometimes, but their heart is soft.’ The spider cocked his head and gazed up at her, unblinking and solemn. ‘Like a berry. Squishable. You’ll find out, I think.’

‘Oh, by the rain and sky . . .’ Dian swore under their breath.

‘Anyway,’ said Moth, escalating into a spider shout. ‘We’ve got no time for your sulking.’

Dian glared. ‘I’m not sulking.’

Moth chuckled. ‘See? Prickly.’ Then he launched himself up Dian’s leg and Frida watched, open-mouthed, as he began to affectionately mend a small rip in the woven threads across Dian’s chest. Dian, after a beat, leaned their head back and their eyelids fluttered closed. Frida had to admit; it did look soothing. Then she gave a low laugh, imagining how jealous Hamish would be, having an on-call seamstress who lived on your shoulder.

‘Look,’ the spider went on softly, this time to Dian, his legs working a mile a minute. ‘There is nothing you can do about those crotchety thorns you call cousins, but why let them bully you about? I cannot fathom. And I think you should start being nice to this little-bit-dragon-little-bit-human. She might be able to help us. Leastways, she might get us out of this underground hole you’ve conjured us into. Since you’re too busy sulking to try.’

Dian’s eyes flew open, and they flushed a deep purple that would have impressed even Lucky.

Frida hid a smile.

Moth, now projecting for Frida’s benefit, continued relentlessly, ‘We need to get out of here, do we not? You don’t have to trust each other yet, but you can work together.’ Moth clicked his fangs with audible despair. ‘We’ve got friends out there! Don’t forget.’

‘You think I could forget them?’ Dian hissed. Their shoulders had hunched around their ears, streaks of emerald and teal, apple and sage flaring in the low light. Their cheeks suddenly leaching of all colour as they snarled passionately, ‘I don’t forget, Moth.’

Frida ached to know more. She wanted to know who these friends were, and how they’d ended up at Forge House.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said cautiously, when it became clear that their conversation had stalled. ‘About your friends.’

The look on Dian’s face was a frigid warning.

Frida rubbed the yellow rose on her wrist. ‘Look, we do need to get out of here. Moth’s right.’

‘Finally,’ Moth cried. ‘Someone with sense!’

But Frida didn’t laugh. She glanced at the earthen walls, the very solid ceiling, the locked hatch. ‘Look, is there anything you can do? Can you . . .’ She dipped her voice, still not quite believing that she could say such a thing out loud. ‘Magic us out?’ But they had destroyed the whole LEZ. Surely, they could get them out of the cellar. She waved her hands in emphasis.

Dian shot her a look of pure disgust. ‘Like this?’ They waved their own hands with enough sarcasm to make Frida wince. Clearly not then.

Moth gave a disapproving tut, then crept towards her over the ceiling. Frida watched as he artfully tied a web around one of the floorboards and descended from it, spinning in rapid, dizzying circles in front of her nose.

‘Listen,’ he said solemnly. ‘I will tell you, if they will not. They cannot do what you ask. The magic here is too distant and strange. They didn’t mean to conjure us under the earth, and it might take them a bit of time to get their bearings. Fairies are not all powerful, although they might like you to think it.’

Frida gave a disbelieving snort.

Just as the tension in Dian’s shoulders bristled into a living thing, and they scrambled to their feet. ‘Do not talk about me as if I’m not here, Moth! You know I hate it.’ Fury etched into their face, they started pacing, the swish of their hair and soft stroke of their bare heels on the earthen floor the only sound. A few minutes went by where no one said anything. Moth, clicking his acid-green fangs with concern, returned contritely to Dian’s shoulder, and Frida watched the fairy pace, considering what Moth had said whilst distractedly tracing the shapes of her other tattoos. The head of the grootneck. The orange slug across her thumb. The fairy mushroom. Issy’s horn.

Finally, the silence grew too much. She let out a growl and leapt to her feet too, startling Dian so much they shrank away from her, sitting back down quickly in a far corner. Swallowing the awful feeling of unease this gave her, Frida gritted her teeth and set to dragging one of the less rotten crates along the floor. Dian watched cautiously. Hauling the crate into place, Frida hoisted herself onto it and gave the hatch another – slightly less tentative – push. Although it didn’t open, it did rattle a bit. If Dian wasn’t going to get them out of here, then she would have to do it herself. She tried to dig her fingers under the heavy wooden boards. As she worked, she imagined that instead of being in this cellar, they were sitting in the Beaufort sisters’ drawing room, in comfortable armchairs by the fire, drinking expensive champagne and discussing the correct ways to care for rescued kelpies.

She was so deep in this fantasy, rolling delicious champagne bubbles across her tongue, that she almost didn’t hear Dian’s question.

‘What are those?’

She startled. ‘What?’

Dian had gone preternaturally still. ‘Those. What are they?’

She glanced down at where they were pointing. ‘My tattoos?’ Quickly, she dropped her arms and flexed her hands self-consciously. She’d rolled her sleeves up because it was so damn hot. Fireheart’s terracotta tail wrapped around her right arm, Raziel flew over her left. Oh, she definitely needed a disguise if she was going to go flouncing around Forge House. She didn’t think the sisters would serve champagne to tattooed trousered women, however liberated they were. And Dian? A fairy just emerged from a cobwebbed waterfall. They’d both be hauled off to a travelling circus.

‘Yes,’ Dian said, still looking at where her tattoos curved over the muscles of her forearms. ‘Are they magic?’

Frida burst out laughing. ‘No, they’re definitely not.’ But her laughter died at Dian’s guarded expression. And suddenly she felt inexplicably sad. She realised that when they’d burst out of that undergrowth, all glowing skin and upturned lips, something that she hadn’t known had been aching inside her had, all of a sudden, unknotted. But now . . .

‘No,’ she repeated quietly, shaking her head. She fought the urge to put her arms behind her back. ‘They’re just pictures.’

‘Pictures?’ Dian replied, their voice like gravel. ‘Nothing is just a picture.’

Frida stared at them. There was misgiving ingrained in every strong line of their resplendent limbs. Feeling awkward, she shrugged and went back to her fight with the hatch, telling herself she hadn’t lied. They were just pictures. With an effort, she managed to dig her fingers in and set to pressing up with her fists to try and shift whatever was stopping the hatch from opening. But even with the boost from the crate, she was too short – she couldn’t quite get the full force of her weight behind it. And Dian’s words crawled over her skin, sinking into the ink. Her tattoos were hers, a bright rainbowed armour. Dian’s scrutiny had made them feel like something wicked, had made them something else, something not hers. She didn’t know why, but the words of the oak-supreme came back to her, its claws in her flesh. Thief.

‘Anyway,’ she said, abruptly changing the subject. ‘When we get out of here, we’ll need a disguise or something.’

A knot of confusion furrowed Dian’s elegant brows. The bright threads of their cobwebs making uncanny shadows pool over their face. ‘Why?’ they asked, seeming genuinely perplexed. ‘You’re human.’

She shoved a bit harder, dirt and sand raining down on her. ‘Not all humans are the same,’ she said, beating her elbow in frustration against the ceiling and yelping when she hit her funny bone. ‘You’ve met humans before, right?’

‘Of course,’ they spat.

She turned, rubbing her elbow. It didn’t sound like it. ‘Really?’

The darkness of their eyes flashed.

‘Liar,’ Moth muttered.

Colour stained Dian’s cheekbones. ‘Ok, well, I’ve seen them. And I know what they do. That’s enough.’ The hatred in their expression was enough to send all the breath rushing out of Frida in a great whoosh. She ran her sleeve over her face and, in an attempt to steady herself, placed her palms flat against the bottom of the hatch.

‘You don’t have to trust me,’ she said finally, her shaky voice barely audible. ‘And I’m sorry you were lumbered with me.’

Dian’s nostrils flared.

She gave a throaty, restrained laugh. ‘I don’t really trust you either! Fairies haven’t exactly done much to inspire my trust.’ She couldn’t quite look at them as she said this, although she snuck a glance at where Moth was spinning below Dian’s delicately pointed left ear and the corners of her lips twitched. ‘Still, knowing a jumping spider is your very best friend in the world, I like you a little more than I did, I guess.’

Dian choked out a surprised sound – a rough rusty thing that might have been the long distant cousin of a laugh. It gave Frida the distinct unexpected feeling of tumbling into a pile of summer leaves.

Moth bayed gleefully.

Frida resumed her fight with the hatch but could feel Dian watching her, making the skin between her shoulder blades itch. When she risked another glance at them, her mouth went dry. If she was in any way poetic, she would have said their eyes, round and uncertain now, were like twin midnight pools reflecting a sky of swaying hawthorn blossoms. She shivered and cleared her throat. It was a good thing she didn’t have a poetic bone in her body.

‘You know, I’m not trying to trick you, I just want to find what I need to find, and if I can help you and your friends too, then that would make me really happy. But we can’t do that looking like this.’ She looked in despair down at her filthy uniform, and at Dian, their cobwebs clinging to their voracious curves in a way that was mouth-wateringly inappropriate for Victorian audiences. ‘We’ll need dresses, bonnets, petticoats . . . I don’t know!’

Dian made a disgusted face. ‘I will not wear human clothes.’

‘Well,’ she sighed. Thud, thud, thud. Her fist on the hatch. ‘Unless you can turn us invisible,’ she said between thumps, ‘we’re going to have a problem.’ She stopped to catch her breath, and because she was trying her very best not to look at Dian, she was acutely aware of everything they did. Therefore, she did not miss the way their lips curled into the beginnings of a self-satisfied grin. The next second, they’d disappeared.

The scent of rain washed over her. Frida gave a cry and without thinking, she leapt off the crate, but when she stumbled into silky, warm skin and heard a dangerous growl, she lurched back, her ears pink. Moth’s laughter pealed around the cellar.

Dian reappeared, that self-satisfied curl to their lips crinkling the edges of their eyes.

Frida stumbled backwards. ‘What the hell?’ she spluttered.

Dian crossed their softly rounded arms over their chest and flicked a leafy wave of emerald curls over one shoulder. ‘I do not need a disguise.’

Frida was gawping. ‘You can turn invisible.’

Moth sighed from somewhere on the other side of the room. ‘Don’t tell them it’s impressive. They’ll grow unbearable.’

But Dian was looking tart. ‘I cannot turn invisible. I can simply melt into the fabric of the worlds for a time.’

Frida’s mouth was still agape. ‘But if you can do that, why can’t you get us out of here?’

Dian looked nonplussed. ‘It is different.’

‘Melting away for a time is easy. It is harder to move through places,’ Moth explained in a sage tone. ‘Particularly if those places do not have magic in their bones to begin with.’ He jumped around a bit, indicating the muffling very non-magic walls of the cellar.

Dian pinched their nose, and she could have sworn they were trying not to laugh, although when they spoke, there was a dangerous thread to the leafy undertone. ‘Moth,’ they murmured. ‘Please. The human does not need to know—’

‘I’m helping,’ Moth shouted excitedly, his webs twinkling. ‘And it is harder still to change the fabric of the very worlds, although it can be done. It is terribly unpleasant though.’

Frida stared at Moth, before slowly shifting her attention to Dian. ‘You can do that.’

Dian shrugged noncommittally.

Frida was remembering though. Was it just two nights ago that she’d woken after a storm and seen a towering glass dome, the unbroken, un-lightning-struck Hawthorn. Things that couldn’t have been true. She hadn’t let herself think of it but finally, it felt as if something that had been niggling at her eased. Dian had changed the fabric of the world. And that wasn’t to mention the bloody huge wood that had followed. She let out a heavy breath. ‘Fuck,’ she murmured. Then, shooting a look of awe towards Dian, ‘Can you make me invisible as well?’

They snorted a decisive, ‘No.’

At the same time as Moth chimed, ‘Yes, of course.’

A vein in Dian’s forehead throbbed. ‘It’s not invisibility. And why in all the seas would I want to extend it to you, Frida Rose?’

The sound of her name on their lips was like silken roots wrapping around her chest.

‘Dian,’ Moth cut in, saving her from having to answer. Which was good since her tongue seemed to have temporary cemented itself to the roof of her mouth. ‘Stop. The world doesn’t revolve around you and your phenomenal ability to pout. We need her.’

‘Fine,’ Dian snapped, eyeing Frida as if the very sight of her pained them. Like zoo guests looked at the gut-eating slugs or the twelve-headed snakes. It was like a scalding burn that made her feel dirty. ‘But I won’t be able to do it for very long.’

Frida nodded quickly, her throat bobbing as she looked away. ‘That’s fine. Thank you. I’ll take what I can get. I – I promise I won’t ask unless it’s really necessary.’

Dian opened their mouth, presumably to shoot back something devastating, but when her words registered, their mouth snapped closed in surprise. ‘Oh,’ they muttered. ‘Ok.’

‘I’ve never known anyone to melt into the fabric of the worlds before,’ she said haltingly, her voice quiet. ‘It’s . . . remarkable.’

Dian’s lips flattened, as if they thought for some unfathomable reason that she was mocking them. Then they just shut their eyes and leaned one pale cheek tiredly against the wall. Conversation over. Frida couldn’t help her eyes from trailing up the length of their throat, mottled patches of silvery brown melting into fawn, bronze, twilight. When she blinked, she saw the image of them slumped in the grass, lightning-struck and tree-bound, as if it was burned into her. For all she knew, this – here in this cellar – was the first time they’d ever been confined. And she was in it. A human.

Suddenly, she started hammering on the hatch, no longer caring about the racket she was making. Pounding as hard as she could. Because if they looked like this, pale and drawn, after twenty minutes in a cellar, what would twenty years inside a glass Coffin do? She didn’t need to wonder. She knew exactly what it would do to them. She’d been there. Bang, bang, bang, she slammed her fists against the splintered wood. Suddenly, she couldn’t be in this cellar another second. She couldn’t be here another heartbeat. Not with them. Not with this knowledge lodged in her throat like a sharp thorn. The memory of the zoo rose up – of being encircled by trees, their branches knitting above like a cage.

They’d made a cage for her.

But they’d been inside a cage for years.

And she’d been their jailor.

She felt sick and slippery, like it was going to burst out of her at any minute, the darkness and trees and roses and thorns all pressing in on her from all sides, and she could smell hay and animals and fear. She tried to shove it in her rosewood box, all of it, because that’s where she put things that she couldn’t deal with, couldn’t handle, but it wasn’t working, for once it wasn’t fucking working, and her chest was caving in.

Her mother’s face in the hospital was ashen, the wires wrapping her like thorns, around and around her arms, into her veins, down her throat like parasites. The moment her mother had received her diagnosis, life had leached out of her, second by second, and however hard Frida had tried to scoop all that life and hope back up, the holes in her skin kept growing, until there was eventually nothing left to scoop up.

She couldn’t breathe. If she stayed down here another second, she was going to die too. She felt Dian’s sudden presence appear at her side, solid and very real. She’d been so busy hammering on the boards, she hadn’t noticed them dragging another crate over and climbing up next to her. Frida stilled, her lungs heaving as their shoulder pressed in close to hers beneath the hatch and pushed.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

With a yell of victory, they forced the thing open.

‘Yes!’ Frida shouted.

‘Sweet hairy webs!’ Moth howled.

Dian’s face shone. Their green hair curled in sweaty tangles around their forehead, and for a second Frida thought about hugging them.

Thankfully, she restrained herself.

Pale slanting light and the stench of manure pooled down from above and she quickly stood up on her toes, trying to peek her head through. She guessed that if any axe-wielding stable hands were up there, they would have already made themselves known. She could see the sack of grain that had fallen on its side, the simple stupid cause for their entrapment.

‘Give me a lift up,’ she called over her shoulder, gesturing quickly towards the hatch. There was no way she had the strength to pull herself up.

They looked at her askance. Any camaraderie of the last moments fading in the stench of horse dung. Reluctantly, they obliged, carefully though, as if unsure where to put their hands. Their fingers strong but tentative, a brief pressure, more awkward than successful, for in seconds Frida’s face was burning, and she realised what a terrible idea this was, the places where Dian’s fingers pressed through her uniform and into her skin were alive, as if on fire. Their mossy scent as dizzying as a heady night at the Crown.

Hastily, she wriggled away. ‘Ah, um – it’s ok, I – don’t think that’s working,’ she stammered, breathless.

Dian dropped her and jumped back to the ground, looking nonplussed again as they cleared their throat, their face almost as flushed as Frida’s. ‘I’ll just get another of these boxes, shall I?’

Frida nodded rapidly. ‘Yes, good idea! More boxes. Smart! We can stack them.’ Because even if she had to dislocate her own shoulders, she wasn’t going through that again. Dian, it seemed, agreed and it wasn’t long before they had a promising Jenga situation going on. Precariously, Frida managed to balance on top as Moth scuttled in circles shouting half-helpful suggestions and Dian’s jaw locked, eyes glued on her every wobble. Finally, she succeeded in pulling herself up, and lay there for a moment, panting amongst the hay and the manure, listening to the whispering horses. When she finally looked back down, Dian’s face shimmered up at her.

‘Well, help me up!’ they snapped.

She sighed. Once she got her breath back, she hauled herself up to her feet. A central walkway stretched towards a double-breasted stable door, the air thick with claustrophobic edges: the low ceiling, the restive pressure of the horses too accustomed to the dark. It made her uneasy, and she was someone used to enclosed spaces, who understood the press and tang of bodies, musk and heat. Someone brushed a whiskery huff against a stall door, of apple-tinged memories and sugar-dust. Another spoke with the echo of pounding hooves, thundering over an open field. She caught the outline of a window behind one of the stalls and walked over to peer through the glass, glimpsing the rough stone wall of an alley.

She saw a ladder then, propped in a corner, and hurried to drag it back to the cellar. When she lowered it down, Dian climbed out with far more poise than she had done, only to flinch when their feet touched the straw-covered floorboards, a flash of fear crossing their dappled cheeks.

‘It’s ok,’ Frida tried to smile reassuringly.

‘I know,’ they snarled, and the raw expression on their face evaporated. She may as well have been watching a door slamming shut.

She inched back, clearing her throat, just as a few yards away, a rust-red stallion hung his handsome head over his stall.

Frida watched as Dian spun.

‘Hello,’ the fairy murmured, their voice immediately melting into something soft, with no barbs in sight. What would it feel like, Frida wondered, if Dian spoke to her like that? She had about as much chance of that as turning into a fairy herself, she thought with a rueful grin as Dian walked over to stroke the horse’s velvety muzzle. He gave a neigh of pleasure when Dian leaned in to blow gently into his nostrils.

Frida’s guts twisted. Dian liked horses. Of course Dian liked horses.

Her eyes flicked towards where she could see the big stable doors, looming down the line of stalls. Darkness was already seeming to leak in through the cracks. How long had they been down in that cellar? Would someone come soon? It was a miracle no one had discovered them yet as it was.

‘Come on,’ she said, her heart sinking at having to break the tender moment between Dian and the stallion. ‘We have to hurry. We can’t stay here, we’re too exposed.’

Dian ignored her. ‘I have spoken one or two words with the horses in the groves, but this one does not speak the dialect I’ve learnt.’ They turned their head to Frida urgently. ‘Does he wish to be freed?’

Frida gaped at Dian. They could not free the horses. But before she could answer, the stallion blinked his liquid eyes at her, and Frida’s horse radio blazed on, vivid and whiskery. He sounded like hay and the stamp of hooves.

Dian continued stroking his nose. ‘What does he say?’ they asked quietly.

The stallion gazed at Frida. ‘Tell this creature of moss and rain I am content.’ Frida couldn’t help the relief that spiralled through her. If he’d said he was miserable, well, she’d have had difficulty explaining that to Dian. ‘Only,’ the stallion went on, ‘if you see the other two-leggers, tell them that I wish for more apples.’

Frida relayed the message with alacrity. But Dian was unsatisfied, insisting Frida ask more questions about his health and his comfort. They made Frida find the food store and give out a supply of fresh grain. Each second that passed made Frida more anxious. Even though she had no real plan, other than to find Forge House, and maybe Fireheart after that, she couldn’t shift the feeling of urgency. She had no idea how time travel worked. Even as they stood there, talking merrily to a horse, was Dian’s hawthorn forest continuing to twist its claws through the LEZ, cage by cage?

‘Ask the others if they are hungry,’ Dian said doggedly. Their face was set, mulish in a way Frida recognised. She could be similarly intractable.

Frantically, she glanced around the stable. ‘I can’t! We don’t have time to do this for all of them. There must be over thirty horses in here.’ Just dealing with the stallion had taken ten minutes, maybe more. And the others were getting significantly more vocal, neighing and snorting, kicking their stalls as if they sensed the coming of anarchy.

Dian’s nostrils flared, hammering their foot. ‘Do it!’

‘No. I can’t. Someone will hear! I’m sorry.’

Dian gave Frida a look of absolute disgust, which withered her soul to the core. ‘I won’t leave these people,’ they ground out through clenched teeth.

Frida wanted to cry. ‘Dian. We’ll come back if we can, we’ll come back afterwards and ask each one of them personally if they need anything. But right now, we have to get moving. We’ve wasted enough time—’

‘Wasted time–’ Dian’s loathing however froze on their face as their head jerked, and their pointed ears swivelled dramatically. ‘Sea and skies,’ they hissed, the colour draining from their face.

Frida felt no sense of righteous justification though as she heard the sound of human voices on the other side of the door. Dian grabbed Frida’s hand before she could do anything. They’d pulled her down the walkway so quickly she didn’t even know what was happening. The next second, the stable door opened, and two boys entered wearing woollen jerkins and caps, but Frida didn’t have time to gawp over the Pride-and-Prejudice-esque getup. She was stumbling behind Dian, who had slipped them out of the door behind the boys just before the heavy wood creaked shut behind them.

The world blinked – and when she looked again, she and Dian were drenched in shimmering water as if encased in the very skin of a raindrop. The curved wall blending with the outside world, like a veil of beaded silver. She looked about herself, her eyes very round.

‘Awful, isn’t it?’ Moth muttered dryly in her ear.

Frida let out a disbelieving laugh. ‘Awful?’ she whispered, shaking her head and lifting her free hand. The world was silver – silver like the glittery rushes of magic that had torn through the LEZ and ruined her life. But here . . . no, not awful. Beautiful. Tiny raindrops slipped and spun over her hand, refracting prisms of light, kaleidoscopic.

Since she’d left the LEZ and ridden through the skies with Lucky, her headache had slipped away. Now she felt as if her mind was bursting with fireworks, her brain igniting with infinite galaxies. Magic. This was magic, in its realest, truest sense. In the raindrops, Dian’s body seemed to dance. Droplets whirling around them in an aura of mist and stars. Their head tilted back, tiny diamonds studding their damp face. Their lips parted in unguarded pleasure. She caught her breath, caught the wild, damp scent of moss, along with the faint sweetness of almonds. This silver world was the loveliest thing she’d ever seen, but she didn’t have a chance to tell Dian this before their eyes flew open and they caught her watching.

A shadow crossed their face. With a growl, they started dragging her away from the stable. They were holding onto her so hard, she could feel the small bones in her wrist grinding together. It was the kind of grip where you really really want to let go but have to hold on tighter just to force yourself not to. She knew the ilk – it was the way she held onto a bucket of rotten meat, when it had been left uneaten for too long and turned into something greenish, a home for maggots.

They hated her, then. Truly. She stumbled behind them, her entire body flushed. It felt as if she was naked or something. Or Dian was. She could hear her own heartbeat, she could hear Moth’s, and she could also feel Dian’s, as if that’s what powered this watery place. Ba-dum, ba-dum. It was like they were swimming, their bodies inches apart in a rainstorm that was endless. Somewhere, the rest of the world was just on the other side of this raindrop, but they were veiled and melted into the worlds. Just the three of them.

Ba-dum, ba-dum.

Too close. They were too close.

When Dian finally dropped her hand, it was almost a relief. She came back to herself, panting, as the glittering veil collapsed and the colours muted, the sounds of the wind and the trees and the crunch of gravel beneath her boots jarring painfully. She tried to remind herself that Dian was Dian, and the last thing she wanted was to be any closer to their unearthly magic. But she couldn’t help feeling completely lost at the same time, as if she’d just seen the world as it was meant to be, and this harsh real thing was a hard substitute.

‘Oh, thank goodness,’ Moth’s silken thready voice jerked her back, and Frida could have hugged him. She realised the spider was perched on her left shoulder, rubbing his glittering pedipalps as if to shake off the rain from his fur. ‘I don’t know why fairy magic has to be so showy,’ he groused into Frida’s ear, finishing with a knowing purr, ‘It’s damned hard to think through all that glitter, don’t you agree?’

Frida’s ears went pink. ‘Uh huh.’ Quickly, she focused on looking around and gathering her wits. Miraculously, her clothes were dry.

Moth chuckled.

They were under the boughs of a small grove of ash trees. They couldn’t have come too far, she thought, for it hadn’t been like the first time when Dian had seemed to whip them from A to B with a blink. Turning, she saw some sprawling wooden buildings not too far away and guessed those were the stables. Behind them, in the gloaming – for it was dusk now, the air grainy with the dying sunlight – she felt a raw feeling in her chest as she saw the creamy shape of a big unmistakable house lower down in the valley.

‘Forge House,’ she whispered, awed. ‘You did it, Dian.’

Dian, however, wasn’t listening. They were angled away, their body arched as if their limbs had locked, their head turned towards something through the trees that Frida couldn’t see. Dian’s ears swivelled rapidly as Frida tried to catch a glimpse through the foliage too, but all she could see was green, opaque in the fading light.

‘What is it?’ she asked, suddenly queasy.

Dian ignored her, instead pushing past and hurrying down a small winding path.

‘Hurry Frida Rose,’ Moth called, bobbing on Dian’s shoulder.

With no other choice, she chased after them, her heart sounding in her throat, even though she didn’t know why. Within moments, the air started to feel wrong, and it wasn’t just the transition from sparkling raindrops back to reality. She should have been able to hear birdsong, the sound of rodents rustling, bees buzzing in the heavily laden summer trees. But there was nothing. Only silence.

Then, as if the trees suddenly remembered their own power, the boughs pulled back and sound rushed in all at once.

That’s when she heard a low terrible keening, recognisable in any language.

Chapter Thirty

‘Oh no,’ she heard Moth exclaim, his beautiful tiny voice mirthless for the first time, simply repeating over and over. ‘Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.’

Frida stumbled after them, out into the dusk on the other side of the grove.

She wished she’d stayed in the ash trees.

She wished she’d turned in the other direction and run as fast as she could.

They stood at the edge of a big, manicured lawn, enclosed by tall yew hedges which looked ridiculously familiar, and elegantly arranged flower beds. Splashes of colour, still visible in the vanishing sun: marigolds, blue and pink hydrangeas, the sharp flare of roses.

Filling up about half the garden was a cage, made of tightly woven iron bars, probably no bigger than forty metres across and thirty long. Far too small to hold any creature that might have once sheltered in the wooden structure collapsing within it. The cage was a wasteland: the splintered edges of the shelter, the blackened stumps of dead trees, the earth churned up, the air drifting with sooty flakes of ash. The smoke was so thick it was hard to see anything, as if a fire had raged through mere moments before, and all of it saturated with that continuous, metallic keening, like pain personified, coming from somewhere amidst the smoke.

Ten years ago, her tour guide at Forge House had recounted how each habitat had been designed with perfect care, collaborations between the creative Beaufort sisters and the architect William Dryfus. She felt sick. A familiar rancid smell wafted towards her that she knew in her DNA: sulphur, rotten eggs. She was just a few yards from the fence now. The odour stuck in her nostrils, clouding her brain. She took another dizzying step closer and suddenly it felt as if a vice had wrapped around her skull.

She let out a cry as her vision blurred. She grabbed her head with both hands, pain howling through her. It felt so similar to how her headaches had materialised at the LEZ that she swayed, memories of the remembered pain slamming into her until she couldn’t distinguish past from present. Desperately, she struggled to look around, searching for Dian. She found them a few feet away, fallen on their hands and knees, moaning into the grass. Frida gasped, her pain receding at the sight of theirs.

‘Dian!’ she cried, stumbling over. ‘Are you ok?’

‘It hurts,’ they whispered.

For a moment, Frida was confused. Not able to understand why Dian was also in pain. But then Fireheart’s words came back to her, all of a sudden. Can’t you feel it, zookeeper? Can’t you feel the way your magic shrinks from it, whimpers in pain.

Frida hadn’t known what Fireheart had been talking about. But as she stared at Dian’s ashen face, and saw the swirling terror in their eyes as they looked at the fence. . .

Oh god.

And then Frida heard it, threaded amongst the inescapable keening coming from within the smoke. She would have recognised it anywhere. Not the keening – she’d never heard anything like that in her life before – but the low hum in the air. She’d heard and felt it on every enclosure she’d ever entered. There was nothing good about that hum now though, nothing reassuring about that miraculous feeling of safety as her headache spasmed again. Helplessly, she tried to recall what had happened in the LEZ. When she’d first registered this pain.

‘The Noz’s enclosure,’ she whispered. That’s when she’d felt it first. Then Raziel’s, Lucky’s – even the library which, because of its proximity to Level 8s, was one of the most warded places in the LEZ. She remembered the wards flickering on and off in Ocean, her headache flickering with them.

Can’t you feel it, zookeeper?

Shakily, Dian had managed to get to their feet. Their harrowed eyes had shifted beyond the fence now, to where the misty smoke was beginning to clear. Frida made a little noise, an inarticulate whimper as the keening in the back of her mind grew louder. Like sheets of hot metal being rubbed against each other. Deep down she already knew who was in this cage, with growing horror she didn’t want to admit to herself. It was hard to think beyond the clawing at her skull.

Frida forced herself to take another step towards the fence, the hurt immediately spiking higher. But as the smoke shifted, on the other side of the burnt structure, she could see a dark heap emerging, sounding a tormented, never-ending, gut-wrenching cry.

A dragon with terracotta scales.

She sank to her knees. In her peripheral vision, Dian was racing up and down the fence, trying to get closer. ‘Do something!’ Moth was yelling. ‘We have to do something.’

She’d come here to find Fireheart. Now she’d found her.

‘Oh god,’ Frida whimpered.

Fireheart’s terracotta scales were streaked with soot, and blood. Frida could see the rich wine-dark stains, could smell the unmistakable metallic tang. It coated Fireheart’s emaciated frame, her heaving sides, her – her wings. Frida swayed. The wounds were raw. She’d always been told that it happened far, far away – in some distant inconceivable desert. But these wounds looked as if they’d been done yesterday. Bile rushed up the back of her throat, and she vomited violently all over the grass. Dian had located the cage door and was frantically lunging to open it, but the moment their fingers made contact, they whipped their hand back as if they’d been burned. They hissed, cradling their hand to their chest.

‘It’s the wards,’ Frida said hoarsely, pulling herself back up. She wiped her mouth, too horrified to be ashamed.

‘Wards?’ Dian snapped.

She felt another surge of bile. ‘I don’t think you can touch them. They’re meant to protect us.’

Dian’s onyx eyes blazed. ‘Protect us?’

Frida swallowed hard.

‘You open it then,’ they hissed.

Frida nodded and obediently reached out a hand towards the door. But a fresh dart of agony shot through her before she’d even got close, and she wrenched her fingers back. She gazed at the fence, the pain almost incandescent.

‘I –’ she stammered. ‘I – can’t.’ She shook her head blankly as the disbelief roiled through her. What good was a zookeeper who couldn’t even touch a fence? But she tried to keep the thought to herself as a snarl curled in Dian’s throat.

Frida took an involuntary step backwards.

‘But you’re human,’ they growled. ‘This is your magic.’

Frida could see the sparkle of a spider skittering by Dian’s left ear, and she stood there helplessly. She could feel her boots sinking into the chalky soil, as if it was quicksand. It had been late summer in 1835, she remembered with an ache in her chest, when Sir Joshua and another member of the LEZites, Edward Caval, had brought Fireheart from the North Arabian Desert – the vast arid steppes of the Badiya – with her wings in shreds.

Now Frida had gotten over her initial shock, she reasoned that Fireheart’s injuries couldn’t have just happened. But the dragon couldn’t have been here long for her to look like this either. Days? A week or two at most. Frida couldn’t see the house from here, but she felt it. Despite everything, she couldn’t help the unbidden thrill. Sir Joshua might still be here! She couldn’t imagine him leaving if he had a dragon in his care, not in a state like this. It had been Sir Joshua who’d given Fireheart her name.

‘Talk to her.’

Frida startled.

Dian was half hidden in the grainy light, but she could see the pallid hue to their skin. ‘Talk to her,’ they said again. ‘Ask her, how is she here? What can we do for her?’

Frida nodded dumbly. Although she tried her best to focus, the pain was blinding when she drew closer to the fence. She rubbed her face, trying to force back the terrible realisation. If it hurt her this much, how much more must it be hurting Fireheart? How much must it have been hurting all the animals in the LEZ, every day? Animals, as a rule, didn’t really like going too close to the fences, but she’d always been told it was because they were electrified. Not because of the wards. Un-magics, Lucky had called them. Guilt wrapped steely fingers around her heart. She had to tell someone. She had to get help. She had to go to Forge House.

Dian grabbed her arm, wild with urgency. ‘Ask her!’

‘Ok!’ she cried, wincing. ‘Yes.’

Dian dropped her arm.

Frida crouched shakily, quietly hyperventilating. Thinking she might be sick again, she closed her eyes and tried to draw in a long breath. She could feel Dian’s raging, ferocious energy vibrating off their heated skin. If she’d wanted to convince them of the LEZ’s good intentions, this was not a good place to start. Their emotions were so sharp, she was finding it difficult to identify what was hers and what was Dian’s. Whoever had been caring for Fireheart must have no idea what to do with her – of course they didn’t know dragons could speak every language in the universe. And from the other side, Fireheart – maybe she had no idea what had happened to her either. Maybe all she needed was for someone to explain.

Maybe it was all one horrible, tragic misunderstanding.

Frida had no clue where to begin, so she tried the simplest option. ‘Uh, hello?’

The keening went on, jagged and paralyzing.

‘Um. Fireheart . . .’ Frida stopped. ‘No. I’m sorry. That’s not your name,’ she realised. That is not my name. She ran her hands through her sweaty, filthy hair, stammering again, ‘I’m sorry, but we’re here to help you. Or to try, at least. Will you talk to me?’

The dragon didn’t lift her head from where it was twisted awkwardly, she didn’t open her eyes. Only that sound that kept pouring out of her, that metallic shriek like claws on a tin roof sharp enough to cut through space and time. Frida’s gaze darted towards Dian helplessly.

‘Try again,’ they insisted.

Frida bit her lip. ‘Please,’ she lifted her voice, pleading. ‘We just want to talk to you. If you tell us what happened, we can help.’

Nothing. And then, it hit her. The magic wasn’t working. Quickly, she rose from her crouch and wrapped her fingers around Dian’s wrist, blankly feeling the edges of their strong bones. ‘She can’t hear me,’ she said, dumbstruck.

‘Well, try shouting louder!’ Dian exclaimed, their eyebrows at their hairline. They shot a disbelieving look down at where Frida gripped their arm.

‘No,’ she said, shaking them, heedless of what she was doing. ‘She can’t hear me. She can’t hear my words. It’s the wards.’ Helplessly, she dropped their silken wrist and started chewing on her thumbnail. If Fireheart had had anything to do with the wards being down in the LEZ, it was clear that this dragon wasn’t able to do anything like that now. ‘However loudly I yell,’ she said as she paced back and forth, ‘that dragon in there is not going to hear what I’m saying. Not in any way she’d understand. The wards are stopping the magic. My voice can’t get through.’

Dian’s eyes grew rounder. She watched the devastation pool over their face. She had to find a way to talk to Fireheart. But to talk to Fireheart, she needed to turn off the wards. To turn off the wards she had to find out how they were powered. She’d always thought it was electricity so, effectively, she just had to turn off the electricity, but as she gazed again in the direction of Forge House, she shifted uncertainly. Not least because she wasn’t certain if electricity was even a thing in 1835, but more importantly – could she simply go in there and ask? If she did, would they believe her? Could she find some early version of keepers and explain? But if she was them, and a tattooed woman burst in, claiming that she was from the future, and could talk to animals, and that they had to turn off all the wards right now because they were hurting the creatures . . .

She gnawed again on her thumbnail, hard enough to draw blood. She remembered her mum, pointing reverently to the ornate portraits in the New Library, telling Frida the names of the Beaufort sisters: Hannah, Georgiana, Dahlia, Charlotte, Eleanor, Arabella, Jane. The sisters would listen to her! But when she looked at Dian, her heart sank. Would they if she had a fairy in tow? Fairies were just as dreaded in this century as they were in her own. Lest she forget, Dian had put magical Miracle-Gro on the LEZ. What they might do to Forge House if they felt threatened gave her a full-on panic attack.

Briefly, she thought about trying to slip away to go into the house on her own, but even if she could manage it, Dian’s mistrust would only spiral.

In silence, Dian watched, stiff-limbed, as she started looking around.

‘What are you doing?’ Moth asked, dancing around her feet.

‘I’m looking for . . . a ha!’ With a skip of satisfaction, she pointed towards some primitive-looking insulated wires leading up to the fence.

Moth zigzagged over the grass in morbid curiosity. ‘What is it?’

‘Wires. They’re powering the cage I think,’ Frida told him, hunkering down on her heels. During their training, she’d had to sit through the same induction films as everyone else: What to do in a Code Red; Why Guests are ALWAYS RIGHT; The History of the LEZ. She remembered the time and place of the wards invention: the late 1820s, and here at Forge House. She knew all about how they’d revolutionised zoos across the world, but what she did not know was how they were made. She realised, too late, that she’d never really thought to ask.

She reached for one of the wires, thinking that she might be able to cut it somehow (forgetting for a second that she was not, by any means, a qualified electrician), but the moment she drew close, she felt the same blinding pain in her head which had floored her by the doors.

She stumbled back, panicked. ‘Fuck,’ she hissed.

She couldn’t see where the wires led to, since they just disappeared under the ground. But she had an idea. The laboratory where Henry Gladstone had worked was in Forge House’s gardens. It couldn’t be that far from here, and standing by this cage helplessly was torture.

‘Come on,’ she said, starting to angle away, already sifting through her memories of the grounds. ‘I think I know what we can try.’

‘What?’ Dian said weakly. They didn’t move.

She gazed back at them, opening her arms in desperation. Make this pain go away, that was all she could think. ‘I think if we can find the source, the building where these wards are coming from, we might be able to turn them off from there. Then we’ll be able to help her.’

Dian still didn’t budge. Their eyes darted between Frida and the cage. ‘How could someone do this, to anyone?’

Frida swallowed hard. It felt as if the whole world had dimmed, and it was just her and Dian standing there in the smoke and ash, with the question hovering between them. ‘I don’t know,’ she rasped. ‘I truly don’t.’

Disbelief filled the obsidian core of their eyes. ‘Humans left her here, like this.’

She nodded. It was true. She let out a shuddering breath. ‘I expect the people here just didn’t know what to do. They’ve brought her here to help her. I know it might not look like that to you, but her home is . . .’ Frida glanced towards the dragon’s shape, motionless, recalling Fireheart’s agonised story back in the cave of the LEZ. ‘Her home is gone. There’s nowhere else for her to go. These people aren’t the ones who took her wings. Humans aren’t all the same,’ she repeated finally, her voice breaking.

Dian still looked uncertain. Their gaze darted between the keening dragon, oblivious of their presence, and back in the direction where, far away, the rest of the creatures might be waiting in the raindrop mist. ‘Maybe we should call the others?’ Their gaze snagged on the fence again. There was a shadow of anguish on their face, which was much too familiar. ‘I don’t think any of us thought it would be like this. These – wards?’ They shuddered. ‘Maybe if we come back together, we’ll be able to free this dragon!’

Frida suddenly saw all those creatures from the woods storming down here, an avenging army of teeth and horns and claws and magic. Lucky too. Would Lucky insist on going with them? Would he be hurt? Captured? How many humans would die in the process?

‘No!’ she exclaimed. No, that wasn’t how it was meant to happen. ‘Please. Just let me try my way first. Give me a chance.’

Their brow knotted. ‘I don’t know.’ Suddenly, they looked so young, no older than she was, and without thinking, she lifted her trembling hand towards them. Not touching – not daring – but hovering in the space between them, close enough to sense the heat off their chest, to imagine she could feel the staccato pounding of their heart. The light that caught in their cobwebs made her hand look blue, her tattoos shining starkly.

‘If you get the others now, how many of them will end up in these cages?’

‘Frida Rose is right,’ Moth whispered, the complicated pattern he’d been weaving in the dip of Dian’s collarbone glinting.

Dian’s eyes flared so wide, she would have seen the whites if there’d been any. They looked raw and cornered. A muscle in their jaw ticked, fingers flexing at their sides, indecision written all over the taut lines of their face.

‘I know you think you can’t trust humans,’ Frida rushed on, ‘and I can’t expect you to trust me, but I truly think if we try it my way, we might be able to get inside this cage without anyone else getting hurt. I know that’s the most important thing right now, right?’

‘You know?’ Dian snarled, wind-swept locks trembling with their sudden fury. ‘I don’t know anything! I think humans always think they know everything.’

The violence in it struck her like a storm.

‘Dian,’ Moth soothed, hovering under their left earlobe.

But Dian had screwed up their face, scrunching up their aquiline nose. It was so un-fairy-like, it made Frida feel as if she was slipping, although the ground was solid. For a few heartbeats, Dian stared down at her like they wished to peel off her very skin, to see the contents of her bones. She didn’t know what they saw in her expression. Desperation, probably. But finally, their shoulders sagged and they turned away with a growl. Then they just set off without another word down the grass in the direction Frida had indicated, their curls streaming behind them in a river of emerald-green.

Chapter Thirty-One

It took Frida a moment to mentally catch up. For a few seconds, she just stared after them, the terracotta dragon’s keening creeping into the gaps between her atoms and making a home there. She wondered if she’d ever unhear it.

Moth let out a dramatic sigh.

Frida startled, not having realised the spider had lit upon her collar.

Dian slipped through the darkness.

‘I believe,’ Moth mused, his tiny paws tickling her neck, ‘Dian meant to say: Oh, yes, Frida Rose, I appreciate your suggestion. Thank you for your help. I agree that it might be a good idea to try what you propose. Shall we go, then? After you.’ He paused drily, before finishing with, ‘Alas, the tree-born aren’t really a please-and-thank-you kind of species.’

Frida laughed; a wheezy noise that was half laugh half sob.

‘But I expect you have friends you want to throttle sometimes too.’

Frida fixed on the memory of Antony and Hamish like a lodestone, holding them close as she set off after Dian. ‘I do have friends like that, Moth,’ she said shakily, under her breath.

Moth skittered up a strand of her hair, bouncing merrily. He hummed and after a few beats began to weave a little web. Her hair was just one big knot now; the tie of her braid probably lost in deep time. As he wove, she didn’t know why the oh so delicate strands of silver in her filthy fringe made her feel better. They did though. Until, that is, they caught up with Dian, and the fairy took in what Moth was doing. She watched their dark eyebrows knot, first in confusion, then fury.

Dian baulked, looking from Frida to Moth and back again, and then, without another word, they flared spectacularly into nothing.

Frida gave a cry, spinning on the spot.

Moth sighed, vibrating into the shell of her ear, ‘Pay them no heed. They are still here, whether they wish you to think it or not.’

Frida exhaled sharply. She suddenly realised she’d been expecting them to leave her ever since the stables. But as each second had passed and they’d stayed solid, and real, she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge how relieved she’d been. But now, they’d done it. They’d left.

‘Where are you, Dian?’ she exclaimed.

There was no reply though.

‘Come on,’ Moth urged. ‘We shouldn’t linger.’

With a curse, Frida set off helplessly down the pathway. She tried not to think about where Dian was or wasn’t. As she wove between the yew hedges, she saw no one else – human or fairy. Whether Forge House was open to visitors, she didn’t know, but it was night now anyway. Above her, the sky was all black and she took a moment to marvel over the spilled glitter of the Milky Way. There was no moon, just a billion unblinking stars, and she couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen stars quite so fierce, or so close. For a split second, she wondered what they might look like to Dian in the raindrops, then she pushed that thought away, for she knew Dian would never tell her.

Instead, she concentrated on her inner map. Even though she’d only been here once, she remembered it like it was yesterday: the curve of the drystone walls, the spectacular layout of the rose gardens, the perfectly manicured hedges.

What she didn’t remember were the cages.

She sensed the first from the way her head started to pound even before she’d rounded the corner. When the iron bars appeared, she stopped sharply. This was a zoo, after all, so she shouldn’t have been surprised. This was her zoo. But the sight of the two broonies, their eery moon-like heads bobbing in a pile of golden hay, twisted Frida’s gut. When she’d last been here, she could have sworn this had been a croquet pitch.

‘Are these—’ Her breath caught, and she swung her head around helplessly, looking again for Dian. But they were nowhere to be seen. She almost couldn’t bring herself to voice what she wanted, and dreaded, to know. ‘Are these your friends, Moth? Are these who you came to find?’

‘No,’ the little spider murmured from somewhere in her hair.

Frida was about to move on, her throat very dry, when Moth amended, ‘They are someone’s friends though.’

Frida had no way to answer that.

Around the next turn, they found a blue-blond hippogriff, and a carbuncle and a jackalope after that. In the hippogriff’s cage, a tall leafy oak filled the space, and that was where he sat perched in the boughs watching the stars. The carbuncle’s cage brimmed with exotic ferns, plant life and winding earthen tunnels perfect for the South American rodent. The jackalope – part hare, part antelope – looked relatively content in a huge nest of wild grasses.

But at each cage that terrible ocean of pain enveloped her, and she couldn’t stop the memory of the dragon’s desolation. She tried to console herself with the fact that these animals didn’t seem to be in pain, but many of the animals at the LEZ hadn’t either. The truth was that wild animals were great at masking pain. It was a survival mechanism. This notion, one she’d learnt early on as a zookeeper, now made her stomach roil.

It seemed impossible to her that anyone couldn’t feel the wrongness oozing off these places. She had to remind herself that for the last five years, she’d been swanning in and out of cages just like these, blind to the agony that lay buried within what she’d thought was a miracle.

Three pure golden stags.

An elephump.

Twelve sapphire friperits.

At each cage, Frida knew she should be trying to point out all the good things to Moth. The fresh hay and flowers, the clean feeding troughs, the toys made of sticks, the hanging boughs of fruit, the buckets of grain. But at the thought of Dian watching her from the raindrops – she could only imagine their awful expression – she couldn’t bring herself to do it. All she asked was the same question, over and over again, and Moth gave her the same answer.

No, I do not know them. But someone does.

She could hear the echo of her boots on the path, the faint rustle of the hedgerows, the occasional whinny or caw or bark of an animal. When Forge House came into view again, this time from the other side, curving out of the darkness unexpectedly, she caught her breath. The light of warm oil lamps poured across the grass, and she heard the distant sound of laughter, the clatter of wheels on the driveway, and the soft neigh of horses. Her heart gave a leap as she drunk it all in. These were human things, and she almost leapt out across the grass towards them, throwing caution to the wind, when an invisible hand curved urgently around her elbow.

‘Not that way!’

Frida jerked, feeling like a ghost had just touched her. She peered through the darkness but could see no sign of Dian. Heat rising in her cheeks, she turned away from the house.

‘Sorry, yes,’ she murmured dumbly. ‘Not that way.’

Maybe she caught a flash of the edge of Dian’s sleeve, but that was it as she headed away again, feeling breathless. Turning left, she went through a little coppice of trees, over an artful bridge, past a Grecian temple. She thought Henry Gladstone’s laboratory must be only just round the next corner when Dian flickered back into existence, lurching out of the darkness like a very sparkly phantom.

‘Shit, Dian!’ Frida gasped, her hand at her throat. This fairy was going to give her a damned heart attack.

Moth, hidden in the folds of one of Frida’s shirt pockets, purred, ‘oh, hello Dian. How nice to see you again.’

But Dian only growled, ignoring them both, and swung left, through a gate into what Frida thought was yet another stone-walled rose garden, common to ancient houses like these.

‘That’s not the way!’ she cried after them.

But when there was no reply, she let out a resigned sigh. The walls enveloped her as she followed. There was no hint of candlelight here, no sound of carriages or laughter. It felt like they were in another world entirely, heavy with creeping vines and the aroma of lavender.

Like the other cages, she didn’t expect these ones either.

Two of them. They rose up before her, silvery starlight reflecting off the bars. Her skin turned to gooseflesh as she took in the basilisk in the closest cage.

A basilisk! Could this be the basilisk, the one who’d been responsible for so thoroughly terrifying Queen Victoria? She wouldn’t have been surprised – this serpentine monster was enormous. So much bigger than the two male basilisks they had in Melody. Scales the bright blue of a spring morning, thick tail wrapped in elegant coils as she slept. Frida was so busy staring – as if she’d just encountered a celebrity and might, in all seriousness, ask for an autograph – that she almost missed the flash of white at the back of the garden.

Dian didn’t, though.

Suddenly, ice crawled up Frida’s neck as she realised Dian had drifted over to the other cage and was standing before the bars, their spine ramrod straight in a way that belied the fact that their entire body was trembling. As if her feet weren’t quite her own, Frida moved too, until she was standing next to Dian, and then her mouth dropped open.

There was a unicorn in this cage.

Frida was so accustomed to thinking of Issy as the very last unicorn, that it took her a while to convince herself of what she was seeing. Of course, there had still been unicorns in the world at this time. Not many, but some. But Frida had never, not once, not in all the histories of the LEZ, heard that there’d been a unicorn at Forge House. Not only a unicorn, but—

‘A male,’ she breathed.

Dian made no sign that they’d heard, taut as a harp string where they stood beside her. The unicorn didn’t stir either, asleep as he was in a far pile of tawny hay, his face buried under a foreleg, his back hooves slung out across the grass. Unicorns had always been rare, as long as there’d been human records to say so. One of the most elusive of creatures, they didn’t adapt well to captivity and often died in ways their keepers couldn’t understand. Before Issy, the last unicorn who’d survived longer than a few years had been Francie, at the San Francisco Extraordinary Zoo. She’d lived an astonishing twenty years before dying in 1944, just weeks after her beloved keeper was sent off to fight in the war. The keeper had died in the Battle of the Bulge, and Francie of a lung infection. This was the official reason, anyway. Unofficially, the keepers said it was heartbreak.

Males though? There’d never been a male who’d been kept in captivity, not for over two hundred years. Frida remembered her mum telling her about a paper by a professor she admired, Nuala Andrews, who’d been trying to theorise why this was. For centuries, it had been the same: the moment a male unicorn was put into confinement, they just – died. Usually within days, sometimes within hours, or in worst cases, minutes. Andrews had hypothesized that the females were more resilient, but the truth was, no one knew.

All Frida could hear was her own pounding heart as she traced her eyes over the graceful curve of the unicorn’s long neck from where he lay asleep. The pure white of his tail, the pale lavender of his hooves. It had been documented that only the males had that distinctive lavender tinge to their hooves. There was no glow from his unicorn horn, not like Issy when she dreamed, but maybe he’d only just fallen asleep, not yet dreaming. Or maybe male unicorn horns didn’t glow.

Pink flamingos blazed through her mind.

She tiptoed forwards, ignoring the persistent pain from being so close to the fence. She didn’t want to wake him, but when would she get this chance again? He might have been the last male unicorn ever seen by humans. She could write her own paper, she thought with a shock of delight, as the only person alive who could say they’d seen a male unicorn. She’d call it: The Dreaming Habits of Unicorns, by Frida Rose, and it would be published in over fifty languages. And her mum, wherever she was, would be so proud. Frida may have dreamed of being a zookeeper, but Ada Rose had dreamed of being a writer.

Frida had just edged around the corner of the fence, and seen the unicorn’s face pooled in shadow, nestled under that long, muscular foreleg, when she drew in a gasp so sharp, the unicorn must have heard, for the creature startled, his long eyelashes fluttering rapidly.

A hand closed on her arm. The touch painfully gentle.

Frida barely registered the fact that it was Dian though, barely acknowledged the heartbreaking nature of their touch. She was just staring at the unicorn’s face.

‘Let’s go,’ Dian croaked.

But Frida couldn’t move. Her heavy boots were stuck to the ground. She thought she might be sick again, but with an iron will, managed to stop herself. ‘Do you see—’

‘I see,’ they said, and their breath chilled her already freezing neck.

Frida was shaking all over. ‘His horn.’

Their urgent fingers tightened. ‘I see.’

‘It’s – it’s gone. Where’s it gone?’ she said stupidly.

There was a jagged, badly healed wound where his horn should have risen in a majestic, powerful line from his forehead. The wound wasn’t old either. Done in the last weeks, perhaps. No fresh blood, just an ugly rusty-brown scab that sealed the vulnerable spot on his forehead. A hollow pit opened up inside her as Dian started to urge her away. Could a unicorn still dream without his horn? Unicorn horns were valued more than gold, as precious as a basilisk’s eye or a phoenix’s tail feathers. But to take a horn from a living unicorn? What kind of person would do such a thing?

Sir Joshua had rescued animals in the very worst states. Elephumps without their tusks, wyvern without their tongues, manticores with their tails shorn off. She’d known that, that there were terrible people out there, who did terrible things. But as she stumbled after Dian, pulling her down another twisting pathway and away from that dreadful sight, her mind spun, and righteous anger boiled inside her. She’d happily go and rip those hunters’ hearts from their chests, disembowel their corpses, and leave their eyes and tongues to be pecked out by crows. Her anger was a living thing inside her, and it seemed as if her skin sizzled with it.

‘Wait!’ she cried, tugging back on Dian’s arm.

They stopped, their face pale, something fragile and infinitely breakable in their expression.

Frida was shaking. ‘Is that . . . Is he . . .’ She gazed sickeningly back beyond the walls of the garden. She couldn’t say it.

Dian knew what she was asking though. Their breathing hitched and she could see the emotions battering them, raw and terrible, and the effort it took to get a handle on themselves. She, who was a pro at such things, who had her rosewood box to lock all these things away in, knew what that felt like. As she watched every dire emotion cross their face, she understood that they were nowhere near as good at hiding their feelings as she was. This knowledge came with shocking clarity, making her feel like she’d lost gravity for a moment.

‘No . . .’ they eventually managed to say, their voice frayed with sorrow and exhaustion. As they trailed off, Frida heard the unspoken words anyway. But they are someone’s friend.

Helplessly, she squinted up at the stars and wanted to scream. How could those stars witness such horrors and do nothing? How could anyone, without shattering?

‘I wonder what happened to him,’ she moaned. ‘I wonder who did that to him.’

Dian held her in a long gaze, the curve of their cheekbones illuminated by the blazing starlight. They were, all of a sudden it seemed, standing so close to her, she could see the soft strands of lighter green in their lashes, the incredulity in their expression. Frida shifted, her boots crunching awkwardly on the pebbles. That familiar thorn bloomed in her throat, threatening to choke her. Quickly, she looked away, for she could no longer look at them. She realised for the first time that a full moon had started to rise, ochre-yellow light peeking over the wall to their left.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dian’s delicate ears swivel and when she glanced back, they’d turned to look away down the path. Something crossed over their face, something that looked like fear. Then without another word, they set off at a trot, away from the cages, without waiting to see if she would follow.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Frida didn’t know where Dian was going, but she trailed after them blindly. Behind her, she could still feel the unicorn, and she felt upside down like a compass without its magnitude: wrong. She tried desperately to shake off the feeling, but after the next turn, a squat stone building appeared out of the shadows, its tiled roof just visible through the snarled branches of a forbidding wych elm. Dark toothed leaves towered over the path, clusters of winged seeds dusting the ground. Frida stared up at the building, suddenly remembering this was where she’d been going all along.

‘We have to get in there,’ Dian barked.

She darted a surprised look at them. ‘Uh, yeah.’ But suddenly, she wasn’t so sure. Wards positively oozed off this place. Dian’s tall silhouette was already slipping beneath the elm though. Within seconds, they were urgently running their shaking hands over the heavy wooden door, trying to find a way to get in. Not warded itself then, Frida thought with a frown, shuddering as she drew closer. She could feel the upside-down power, the un-magics, in the atoms around her, clawing and jagged. Darkness pooled coldly, the heavy toothy branches of the elm blocking her view of the stars. An ornate sign in wrought iron lettering gleamed in the arched doorway. She peered at it, although she already knew what it would say.

The Old Forge.

She recited under her breath, from memory, ‘Between the 1820s and 1830s, the Oxford-educated scientist Sir Henry Gladstone, under the patronage of Joshua Beaufort, 3rd Earl of Marlow, set up his laboratory in the Old Forge, in the grounds of Forge House and became the first person in the world to start testing warding technology.’ There had been a plaque here, there would be a plaque here, in two hundred years. In a trance, she traced the empty space on the stone where it would be installed by the National Trust and felt a ghostly tingle between her shoulder blades. The Old Forge was made of the same large blocks of limestone that had been used to build the main house, though it was a much smaller, older building. She hadn’t gone inside on her tour. It had been shut for maintenance.

She scanned the stonework, the surrounding trees, and the dark pathway around her feet for any signs of those insulated wires she’d seen at the dragon’s cage, but whatever linked this building with the other cages was probably buried. She sighed, wishing she’d paid more attention in physics class. In the LEZ, she’d assumed the wards were pumped under the ground, brought to the fences in a system that looked about as intelligible as a doodle drawn by an over-sugared toddler. The wires she’d seen at the terracotta dragon’s enclosure suggested as much, but the actual mechanics were a mystery. Some part of her really hoped to find large, polished switches inside, one of which would kindly be labelled, ‘Dragon’s Enclosure’. She’d flip it off, they’d head back to the dragon, and the terracotta creature would promptly tell her exactly where to find her Jewel, then she could go back to the future and save the LEZ and her friends.

But it didn’t seem so simple anymore.

Even if she could turn off the wards and talk to the terracotta dragon, how could she disable the dragon’s wards, and not the unicorn’s? She needed to talk to the unicorn too, to discover what had happened to him. If he knew any information about his attackers, she could tell the sisters, and they’d be able to track them down. And after that, why stop there? If she was going to talk to the unicorn, she could talk to the basilisk, and the broonies, the golden stags, the elephump and the twelve sapphire friperits. But turning off all the wards wasn’t as simple as just flipping a switch. She was still a zookeeper, despite appearances. The wards, flawed or not, were there for a reason: to keep everyone safe. The sisters, Sir Joshua and any keepers around here – they wouldn’t understand. They’d be angry, she was sure, at first, and scared. If she acted without consulting them, they might just brand her a criminal, in league with a fairy. And they hadn’t even located Dian’s friends yet! Although the moon was hidden, she could feel the brightness rising, time ticking along, inexorable.

‘It won’t open,’ Dian cursed, the voluptuous line of their body braced against the door snapping her out of her trance. They slammed again against the heavy wood, the bunch of their muscles quivering, and Frida quickly stepped in to add her own strength. She knew it was hopeless though. Soon they were both wrung out, the door stubbornly refusing to budge, the oak scarred with age as though it had survived at least a few armoured sieges.

There were tiny windows, but although she tried to peek through the panes, it was too dark to see anything inside. Her hands lifted in defeat.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said uselessly, although a part of her felt relieved. If they couldn’t get inside, maybe their only option was to try Forge House, with its warm oil-lamp glow and the soft chatter of people within. Maybe if she could get one of the sisters on their own . . . Just as she was about to suggest this though, she felt Dian’s hand slipping through hers, the heat of their fingertips entwining with her own.

In a weird sort of slow motion, she heard Moth swearing and saw the bright leap of him spring off Dian’s shoulder and onto the edge of the nearest windowsill, slipping into a crack between the stones. She saw Dian’s jaw clench, the light catching the strong, arched line of their neck as their eyes flashed resolutely.

Then, like before, she was pulled into the raindrops.

It was not like before though. Not at all. This time, it felt like she was being shoved unceremoniously underwater. The world tilted as it does when a wave knocks you sideways, slamming you into a raging torrent of surf. For a second, everything stopped. The world dimmed to an ocean of dark twinkling lights, and it felt as if her atoms had been undone. Then she was pushed back up like a cork, and she came to the surface, gasping for air.

She burst out the other side spluttering, her chest on fire as she leaned over and choked up what felt like half a lungful of water. ‘Dian!’ she cried, eyes stinging. ‘What did you do?’ When Dian didn’t reply, she lifted her streaming face. ‘Dian?’ she repeated, this time in terror.

Dian was on the floor next to her, choking, their body racking in pain. Frida lunged for them, lifting their head as they gasped for air. Their cheeks ashen and drained of all the dappled colours. Their lips leached of their luminosity, their eyes empty. They shivered uncontrollably.

‘Fuck,’ she gasped.

From somewhere high up on the wall, Moth clicked, ‘I told them this was a bad idea.’

Dian had magicked them through the door.

They were in a long hallway. The floor was stone, the walls hung with muffling tapestries. It was chilly as hell, and dark. The only light came from Dian’s jumpsuit, and a kind of fluttering golden glow that leaked around a far corner. Behind them was the same wooden door which, a split second ago, they’d been on the other side of.

Frida put her head in her hands. They really needed to work on their communication. ‘I could have tried to pick the lock first, at least,’ she said, feeling frayed.

Dian, turning over onto their back, gazed up at her helplessly. Their cheeks were wet with tears. ‘Could you have done that?’ they rasped.

Frida gave a short shaky laugh. ‘I could have tried!’ It wasn’t funny though. She sank back against the wall, panic bubbling inside her as she scrubbed at her face. Behind them, the door loomed. She could see no latch, just a great black iron keyhole. Of course, no key. And whatever she’d said about picking the lock, she had no actual idea how to do such a thing.

Trapped again. So much worse than the cellar. Here there was a nauseous feeling that seemed to infect every brick, every corner, every speck of dust. It seemed to waft down the hallway towards them. It felt grimy. This place made her feel dirty, in a way rolling around in horse shit never would. She wanted to run as fast as she could, right back to Lucky, back to her real life and the bright lights of Melody. But the cliff it felt as if she was walking towards kept drawing closer. Her real life? The longer she sat there, the more she wondered what that even meant anymore. Even if she did by some miracle manage to save the LEZ, how could she be a zookeeper now?

‘I’m sorry,’ Dian whispered unexpectedly.

Frida jerked, surprised. ‘What?’

They tilted their head, as if that was the only body part they could bear to move. ‘I should have told you I was going to do that. Moth hates it when I alter the fabric of reality without warning.’

‘And yet, here we are,’ Moth quipped from somewhere high up in the sconces.

The corner of Frida’s mouth twitched, despite herself. ‘Yes, I can see why.’

She watched the strong line of Dian’s throat work. ‘Are you not angry?’

Frida cocked an eyebrow. ‘Oh,’ she sighed. ‘It feels prudent not to be angry with someone who can adjust reality at whim.’ She flashed them a grin then and struggled up to her feet. Anything to avoid having to look at Dian’s vulnerable expression. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘You got us in here, didn’t you? That’s good. Ten points to you. An extra ten if you manage to stand up, ten more if you survive, twenty if you can get us out again.’

She could have sworn she saw the ghost of a smile. In response, she felt a secret giddy warmth blossoming, a tentative, fragile thing in her chest, as she tiptoed down the corridor. She couldn’t hear anything, but that wasn’t to say there was no one else here. Although the commotion they’d made a few moments ago would have done a good job of alerting anyone of their presence, she supposed. Behind her, she listened as Dian tried to steady their breathing. She turned, eying them cautiously.

‘Can you move?’

They lifted their chin stubbornly but barely made it to their knees before they swayed, their colour seeping to an even paler ashen grey. When they let out an awful groan, Frida moved without thought and, slipping beneath their arm, wrapped hers around their waist. She felt the silk of their cobwebs sliding under her fingers, the bruised heat of their skin beneath.

‘Take your time,’ she whispered hoarsely.

A flicker of panic crossed their face.

‘We don’t really have time,’ Moth chipped in helpfully.

Frida looked up at where Moth was sat in the grouting. ‘What do you mean?’

Dian, pressed against her side, tried to answer, but they started coughing instead. She steadied them, trying not to panic, but Dian’s answer, when the fit had finally subsided, was almost worse. ‘The others will come,’ they gasped, their chest heaving. ‘Sooner or later, I don’t know how long we have.’

Dread solidified in her gut, becoming a heavy-oak-supreme-sized lump. ‘What?’

They shook their head helplessly. With Frida’s help, they inched forwards down the corridor, step by painful step. ‘They won’t wait forever,’ they said with a weak shudder.

Frida’s hand tightened on their waist. ‘How long do we have then?’

Dian lifted a shoulder, and bit out, ‘I do not know.’

It was Moth who extrapolated, trying to sound cheerful, ‘Your time is different to ours. Also, it is impossible for anyone to predict what Dian’s cousins will do, and when they will grow bored of waiting.’

Frida heard this with a sinking heart.

Dian chuckled bitterly. ‘And they will be most amused to find I have trapped myself twice inside places that I needed your help to get out of.’

Frida rolled her eyes. No. ‘Without you, I’d still be hammering on that cellar roof.’

‘Without me, you would never have been in that cellar in the first place.’

Frida fell silent. She felt every place where their bodies touched, unnaturally hot.

‘Without you,’ she said, clearing her throat, ‘I might have still been trying to find Forge House, aimlessly lost in the woods. Or worse. Come on Dian, let’s not play this game.’

Dian lifted a shoulder in a miserable shrug. They took a few more shuffling steps before saying, ‘They only sent me in here to punish me.’

‘Punish you for what?’

But their lips tightened, and when Frida snuck a look up at them, she saw shame ingrained in the hard knot between their soft brows. She drew in a shaky breath, and although she had no idea what Dian could possibly have done to warrant such a punishment, anger at those fucking tree fairies roiled through her like fire.

‘Those pricks!’

A spark of disbelief crossed Dian’s face, and then they gave a fragile, surprised laugh as Moth hooted in delight.

‘Yes!’ the spider shouted, and she caught a flicker of him rolling around with his legs in the air. ‘Yes! You are correct, Frida Rose. Many of them are indeed terrible pricks!’

‘Well, screw them,’ Frida muttered forcibly. ‘What do they know? We might be having a great time, drinking wine, telling jokes about what happens when a yew fairy and an oak fairy walk into a bar, getting on like a house on fire.’

At Dian’s baffled expression, she lifted her chin, eyes flashing. ‘Well,’ she insisted. ‘We might! They don’t know. Let them fucking come,’ she ground out. ‘I’ll deal with them.’

Dian’s bafflement turned to awe.

But she didn’t have time to appreciate it, for the next second, another bout of coughing racked them, rattling their chest in a way that made Frida flinch. She and Moth, who’d sobered quickly, exchanged a concerned look as Moth took a flying leap onto Dian’s head. She strongly suspected that if she let go of them, Dian would sink back down to the stone slabs.

‘Come on,’ Frida urged, swallowing a jagged lump in her throat as she half-lugged them down the hall. ‘Let’s see if they’ve got any wine in the fridge, hmm?’

They mumbled something roughly.

‘What?’ She dipped her head to catch their words. From up ahead, she thought she heard a faint sound, like many butterfly wings, but she ignored it.

‘I said,’ Dian breathed, ‘you do not have to carry me, Frida Rose. You are much too short to do it with ease, anyway.’

Frida snorted. Trying to ignore the way they were shivering so fiercely she was struggling to hold them. She was about to make a crack about them not weighing half as much as most of the things she had to carry about on a daily basis. Instead, she found herself saying, ‘But I want to.’

They glanced at her in surprise. Just as they stumbled, reaching the end of the corridor, and a fluttering light pooled around them. It had a vaguely familiar quality about it, which she couldn’t put her finger on. Sickness oozed from the cold stones though, and Frida and Dian exchanged a look. With an urgent motion, Dian gestured for Frida to let go. Reluctantly, she loosened her hold, and they both waited, uncertain whether Dian was just going to topple back over. But they held their ground despite the hurt ingrained in every line of their body.

‘I’m ok,’ they flashed her a strained grin.

Frida face twisted in disbelief, but she watched as, with a fixed, dogged look, they limped around the corner, through an open door into the main room. She was barely a split second behind, at first so busy worrying about whether Dian was going to collapse, she didn’t really take in what she saw. Golden light fluttered in her peripheral vision, casting shadows that looked like strange, skeletal birds. There was a low wood panelled ceiling, and there were rich red tapestries covering the stone walls. The room smelled clean, like disinfectant, but a deeper aftertaste coiled underneath. A wrongness. She blinked, tearing her eyes away from Dian as she fought a wave of nausea. But it was everywhere. As if the very air was polluted.

Then she heard Dian’s anguished cry, and everything else went clean out of her head.

‘No,’ they gasped. ‘No, no, no!’

Dian had stumbled into the room and was lurching towards one of the lamps on the nearest table. But it wasn’t a normal lamp, not like she might have found back home. Frida’s vision swam. Not a normal lamp. She watched powerless, her feet frozen in place, as Dian gave another wild and terrifying cry. They fell to their knees, hitting the flagstones with a muffled thud. On the low wooden table before them stood four hexagonal glass jars. Each was about the size of a large modern Mason jar, but they were sealed with cork, wax and wire.

Frida couldn’t hear past the hammering in her ears.

Each jar was just big enough to contain a single golden dragonfly.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Sunbeams blazed across the room, lighting up the corners. Dian reached out with a shaking hand to touch the nearest jar.

‘I felt you,’ Dian whispered. ‘But I couldn’t, at the same time. It made no sense to me.’ They turned to look at Frida, stricken. ‘Now I understand.’

These were Dian’s friends, the ones they’d come looking for. Frida understood, and it ripped the breath from her lungs. The dragonflies were just like the ones she’d seen on the clifftops of Melody, skimming delightedly along the glossy sheen of Lucky’s scales. They were the source, she realised, of the endless fluttering on the edges of her senses. It was their wings, brushing against the glass. Quickly, she scanned the room. She counted fifteen dragonflies in total, that she could see at least. Fifteen trapped dragonflies.

Tears streamed down Dian’s cheeks as they ran their fingers over the jars, trying to figure out a way to free them. ‘Aneo,’ they said helplessly, identifying them one by one. ‘Lifith. Prea. Dawe. Allix . . .’

Frida could hear the dragonflies’ high buzz of panic, like captive bees. Not words, just terror. That’s what she heard, spilling out of those lamps, out of the tiny holes someone had made in the glass to ensure the dragonflies lived long enough to be of use. How long could they live inside those jars? She didn’t understand, the picture before her not computing. If these dragonflies had just been rescued, why hadn’t the keepers here released them yet?

‘Help me!’ Dian was begging, choking on their tears. ‘Help.’

Frida was frozen, taking in the room. There were long antique wooden tables, lined up in rows. On every table, there was evidence of experiments in various stages of completion. But if this was a laboratory, why would they keep rescued animals here? As she stood there, it was hard not to acknowledge that the dragonflies had been spread around the room, strategically positioned so that the experiments might be lit by the blessing of their sunlight. She had a terrible thought. Did someone put them outside during the day, to charge up their wings, like a living solar panel? But no! Why would Henry Gladstone have dragonfly lamps, if not to release them? Sir Joshua would never have allowed them to be kept trapped and tortured like this, unless they had literally just been rescued. They must only be waiting for the go-ahead to let them go, or at least to move them to a bigger enclosure. She knew, from bitter experience, how much bureaucracy went along with wild animal releases.

In a trance, she took in the piles of neatly coiled wires. The copper tubing, the rows of stoppered glass jars. The air pumps and microscopes, the huge contraption in one corner she couldn’t even begin to guess at. Jars wrapped in metal foil, tongs, pestle and mortars, scalpels. Everything a well-resourced scientist could want.

‘Help them, Frida!’ Moth’s threads vibrated like taut fabric. The shout brought her back to herself with a thud. The spider was bristling on the wall before her, staring at her with his eight pitch-black eyes, righteous in his fury.

‘Yes,’ she said, not quite hearing herself. ‘Yes, of course.’

She hurried over to where Dian was already struggling with the first jar. With the two of them working together, it wasn’t long before they’d unwound the wires. Grabbing a scalpel, she cut into the wax and levered off the cork with a satisfying pop. Dian gave a shaky exhalation, their whole body sinking back as the trapped dragonfly gave a weeeeee of delight and rushed for freedom. The grateful hum of their wings brushed her mind, blazing like golden ink poured into her brain.

It was quick work to do the others, and soon the room was alight with the buzzing of wings, and the swooping, plunging, sweeping flight of fifteen overjoyed Jurassic insects.

‘YesyesyesYESYESYES!’

Frida sighted a small window, high in the wall. Lunging for it, she scaled a table, sending bottles and wires clattering to the floor, and thrust it open. The summer night drifted in with the full moon, and the dragonflies sailed out, one by one, with shouts of buzzing glee.

‘Fly quickly, my dear friends!’ Dian called, their voice rough with emotion, raw and vulnerable. ‘The world is yours again.’

For a second, the dragonflies blazed across the sky in answer, the whizzing golden fire of shooting stars. Then they were gone, zipping into the trees. When Frida turned back to the room, now almost wholly dark apart from a faint steely light coming from a row of glass bottles in one corner, she could still hear the dragonflies’ ecstasy, ringing through her ears, and the imprint of their freedom against the backs of her eyelids. It was an antidote to the terrible backwards hum that inhabited this place.

‘Dian!’ she said, slipping down off the table. ‘We did it. They’re free!’

Dian was standing very still on the other side of the room. They turned towards her, very slowly, spine ramrod straight. The expression they wore was unlike any she’d seen before; not when the fairies had forced Dian to come with her, not at the sight of the dragon without her wings, not even at the LEZ, when they’d seemed to have a storm raging in their very bones, had they looked like this. It sent an arrow of fear, spearing straight into her heart.

Their eyes had scrunched up; their cheeks leached the sickly shade of a dead tree. They looked as if they’d shrunk in on themselves, several sizes smaller, and may never regrow. Their trembling, which had lifted briefly in the rush to help the dragonflies, was back now, running through the elegant curves of their body.

‘What is it?’ Frida whispered, taking a faltering step towards them. The sickening feeling coming back in a rush, making her stomach revolt.

Dian didn’t answer. They just stared at her, devastation etched across their forehead, the flare of their fine-boned nostrils, the pale curve of their lips. Even their dark irises had dulled to something chalky. When they stepped aside, Frida saw what it was that had made them look like they’d taken two steps out of this world never to come back again.

Her entire world narrowed to that line of glass jars behind Dian. There were six of them in total. Smaller than the jars that had been used to contain the dragonflies, but not dissimilar in shape. They were connected by coils of wire to another bigger jar, which stood on a shelf behind. Empty, except for the fact that it shone with a steely silver light: raw and cold. As soon as Frida looked, it seemed to burrow into her.

She knew immediately that the light coming from this jar was the wards. This is how they looked. This was what they were made of. Not an invisible electric current, but this strange light. She knew because just a glance made her want to be sick all over the floor, driving stabbing pains through her heart so sharp she had to blink back tears.

And each of the warded jars in front contained a single object.

She took them in, one by one. Her brain locked into a frozen surreal panic, because it felt as though she was looking at the scene from above, as if it were happening to someone else. The first jar contained an eyeball, which she knew instantly belonged to a thunderbird, the pupil made of mist and lightning, shifting and twinkling in the gloom. The second: a phoenix tail feather, turquoise as the sky. The third, a great, fleshy lump – red as the tapestries on the walls. A lung, she realised with a jolt of horror. It still pumped. Her hand found her throat. Could it be the lung of a sooweel? Old tales claimed that a giant sooweel’s breath was one of the most powerful substances on earth.

The fourth item was a grey stump which made her shudder, all veiny and withered. A siren’s vocal cord perhaps, or a manticore’s tongue? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know. The fifth was a hoof, pure white and covered in delicate ridges. She presumed, at some point, it had been attached to a pegasus.

And the sixth, the one at the very end?

That was the one that turned her world upside down.

Chapter Thirty-Four

The sixth jar contained the glittering silver horn of a unicorn. About the length of her forearm. To call such an object it seemed wrong, for if a Jewel was a dragon’s heart, then this horn was soul and heart and core of the wounded unicorn sleeping a hundred or so metres away. She knew, in her own heart, that this was the truth. The horn leaned on a tilt against the side of the jar. The tip seemed sharp enough to tear the universe, and the severed edge was like looking at an inverted black hole. The power pulled at her, sucking at her very essence, and the longer she looked, the more of herself it consumed. Everything about this was an abomination. Wrong, wrong, wrong! How could the Beauforts countenance this? They were good – they rescued creatures. They didn’t do things like this.

Dian’s fingers clamped around her elbow. ‘Why are these here?’ Their voice was a thorn pricking the matter of Frida’s brain and scoring a length. Moth had found his way into the hollow of Dian’s throat, the sensitive spot where their heartbeat pulsed, and curled himself into a ball, pressed up against Dian’s ashen skin. She, ridiculously, suddenly wanted nothing more than to do the same. To curl up around Dian’s warm flesh, to beg them to take her back into the raindrops. To get them all far, far away from here.

Instead, she just stared, stomach dropping, at the broken spire of the horn that had been ripped from the unicorn’s body.

‘I don’t know.’ She felt herself teetering on the edge of that spiralling black hole. What kind of people would hold objects like this? Collectors. Hunters. Poachers. Creature haters. Self-obsessed scumbag fuck-ups. Somewhere, she felt her carefully built scaffold start to waver, but she shook herself, telling herself to focus. There was an explanation. There had to be an explanation. Her gaze darted again and again across the objects. Looking closer now, she saw how fragile they all were. The glossy turquoise of the phoenix feather, which had seemed to ripple with the memory of flames – each blue strand as if it might turn to cinders at any moment. The etched map of the ridged hoof was ancient, white keratin crumbling. The eyeball’s lightning ready to wink out, and the lung? It was bloated. Swollen as if it might burst. Ba-boom, ba-boom. She couldn’t actually hear the weak rhythmic pumping through the glass, yet the sound pounded in every corner of her brain.

‘They’re looking after them, keeping them safe,’ she tried hoarsely, but even as she said the words, they sounded brittle, washed in the afterglow of the dragonflies’ caged sunlight. Aware that her hands were shaking, she shoved them deep in her pockets. Dian’s face clouded, the light of the wards giving everything an otherworldly shine, and she bit her lip hard.

‘If it’s not that,’ she stammered, talking as much to herself as to Dian, ‘if it’s something . . . different . . .’ She couldn’t bear to say worse, but she wasn’t naïve, she had to admit that the worst might be true. ‘The people who look after this place, they can’t all know about this,’ she said fiercely. ‘This has to be Henry Gladstone’s doing.’

She’d always been suspicious of the scientist, she told herself. In his portrait, hanging above the cappuccino machine in the Extraordinary Café, he was pictured in an ornate godly tower, a golden manticore in the background, a globe in his pale hands. His slick blond hair was smoothed over his high forehead, like the kind of person who’d have an oily sort of voice. Hamish had always called him the least-likeable of the LEZites.

She shuddered. This wasn’t how you cared for objects that had been rescued. If they’d simply been in jars, perhaps, but the way they were hooked up? As if they weren’t being protected at all, but their magic was being sucked out, causing them to wither. Her eyes darted again, over the set-up. As if . . . their magic was being converted into creating the wards themselves? She was shaking so hard, her mind at once considering all the very worst. Could this be what the wards were? Magic that had been stolen, and twisted and – stored? She wouldn’t have believed it, if she hadn’t felt it for herself; if she hadn’t seen these jars.

Suddenly, she remembered something she’d read in the library. Something about hanging a siren’s vocal cords from the rafters and sprinkling ground-up giant’s teeth across your threshold if you wanted to protect against a fairy. What if this was a version of that? Taking powerful objects and using them in your own protection.

She backed away from the jars. Dian was watching her, their eyes like black coals, as if they could sense her world collapsing.

‘We have to fix this,’ was all she could say, looking to Dian for help.

Something complicated crossed their face, something like pity, just before their pointed ears pricked, swivelling towards the door. The sickly grey staining their cheeks turned positively ivory as they rasped urgently, ‘Someone’s coming.’

Chapter Thirty-Five

They all panicked. Frida’s entire body seized up, and it was a good thing Dian had more wherewithal than she did, because if it was left up to her, she might have just never been able to move again. By the time she heard the sound of a door being unlocked, and the heavy creak of ancient hinges, Dian was already dragging her behind one of the tables, the icy flagstones bruising her knees in their hurry.

A dour male voice muttered something, then they heard slow, measured footsteps approaching down the corridor. Frida and Dian squeezed as far back as they could, finding shelter against the cold stone of the back wall. Frida didn’t need to ask if Dian could conjure the raindrops. The sickly cast to their face and blank fear in their eyes told her the answer. Not in this corrupt place, and not while still recovering from magicking them through the door. In the steel-white wash of the warded jars, Dian’s eyes looked vast and unreal, their pupils darker than the shadows themselves.

Without knowing what she was doing, she reached out a finger to graze the edge of their sleeve, as if she might reassure them.

‘It’s going to be ok,’ she mouthed.

But the faint light that clung to their cobwebs outlined them in earthy blue, and looking down at where she’d touched their sleeve, their expression turned stark. When they lifted their gaze back up, lines of terror radiated from the knot between their brows. Their throat bobbed, and Frida could almost read their thoughts. He will see us. He will find us.

Frida shook her head vehemently. ‘No,’ she breathed.

Moth, at Dian’s left collarbone, was not much more than a blur now. Moving so fast, as if the very act of weaving might tie the threads of Dian back together. Frida inched over a bit, as if she might shield Dian’s light. And then there was the crisp tread of footsteps entering the room and Dian squeezed their eyes shut, letting their head fall back against the wall, their slack face white as death.

Frida turned away, a haze of rage turning her vision unexpectedly violet. What had humans done to Dian, to fill them with such fear? She could hear the footsteps coming closer, the faint clink of glassware, as if the man was inspecting the now empty dragonfly jars. At the noise, Dian went entirely rigid and Frida, after a split-second hesitation, slipped her hand through theirs, hoping her warmth might help. She was braced for them to rip away from her, but when the moment stretched and they kept holding on, she dared to hold tighter. She could feel their panicked gasping slow, though their eyes remined closed, and although their fingers felt brittle as glass, their chest seemed to ease.

Holding her breath, Frida peeked out from beneath their hiding place. Thankfully, it seemed the light from the warded jars hid Dian’s cobwebs, for the moment at least. The person she saw was not Henry Gladstone, nor anyone she recognised from the other portraits. She understood this with intense relief, however whoever this man was, he was assessing the damage that she and Dian had wrought with narrowed eyes. She didn’t think he looked like a servant. He wore no uniform, and his clothes seemed smart and well made. Dark breeches, a tailored coat. Practical. In the half-light, she took in the thick blond hair, the wiry, muscular pitch to his shoulders, the haughty plains of his thin face. Despite his size, he moved with surprising quiet. As her nostrils flared, she smelled tobacco smoke and sweat.

She stared, wide-eyed and hollow chested, as he stepped back, and she was able to see that he’d put something down on the far table. She had a sudden, awful thought that he might have just added the Jewel to the collection of treasures. However, although it was a new jar, the inhabitant was not a dragon’s heart. Instead, it was a slippery kind of fern, pea-green frilly creepers licking the sides of the glass. Some kind of oceanic mandrake root, she guessed, or perhaps the fabled ruffle of a lake-dwelling pondfrussle. Was this man Henry Gladstone’s accomplice? She tensed as he turned to survey the room. His eyes were still narrowed, calculating as he took in the open window and the breeze blowing in.

Quickly, she pulled herself back as his gaze roamed in their direction.

‘Shit,’ she breathed reflexively.

Dian’s eyes flew open and she shook her head, mouthing an apology. Dian’s fear wafted off them, an almost tangible thing. She could no longer hear the fairy’s breath, as if they’d stopped entirely, and their lips were so tightly pressed together, she wondered if they could breathe. They were still holding her hand, but so hard now, she could feel her small bones creaking. Even Moth had stopped, frozen mid-web.

They listened to his soft boots pad over the flagstones, coming closer.

There’s no one here, Frida screamed in her head. If Dian couldn’t dissolve them both into the raindrops, then by sheer force of will, she would do it herself. Go away, she yelled silently. There’s no one here! GO AWAY!

What this man would do if he found them, she had no idea. Judging from the jars it wasn’t pretty. He hovered above them, and she could see the polished leather of his boots, the thick trunks of his calves wrapped in dark breeches. She could smell the tangy stench of his sweat, his breathing, slow and calm. Neither Frida nor Dian moved an inch. They’d missed the chance to introduce themselves politely. She didn’t imagine people in the nineteenth century reacted to intruders any better than in the twenty-first, and hiding under a table was a clear expression of guilt in any time period. Menace seemed to waft off the man, freezing the breath in Frida’s lungs. This is not what she thought a visit to Forge House would feel like.

No one’s here. She vibed the words into the universe. NO ONE’S HERE.

And then, out of nowhere, the man just moved on, muttering angrily to himself, his voice harsh, like sandpaper. She hadn’t conjured a raindrop like Dian, but her muscles were trembling just the same. It wasn’t until she was sure the man had headed down the corridor, and she heard the heavy creak of the door’s hinges, the thud of it closing behind him, that she let herself suck in a massive, life-giving breath. A few seconds later, the unmistakable click of a large metal key turning in the lock.

Dian let out a frantic moan. When they turned to her, their eyes were bloodshot – dark pools, shot through with veins of molten metal, clammy heat radiating off them.

‘Oh, great skies above,’ Moth murmured, looking as if he was about to wilt out of existence.

Frida was already hauling herself out of the shadows, Dian scrambling after her.

‘Let’s go, let’s go!’ Moth squeaked.

Although Frida wholeheartedly agreed, her hand clenched around her tattoo of the terracotta dragon’s tail. ‘I have to look around first.’ She couldn’t leave without looking for clues. For all she knew, Henry Gladstone had stolen the Jewel.

Dian nodded. They didn’t ask her any questions, seeming instead just to sense her urgency. She was grateful for that. For the fact that she and Dian might be . . . maybe not understanding each other but perhaps understanding-adjacent. She set off at a run, rummaging through drawers, hunting through stacks of instruments, scanning reams of paper. There was a back room, with sharp metal hooks hanging from the ceiling and knives with such keen edges she could have wept. If she found the Jewel, she didn’t know what she’d do. The very thought that it could be amongst this catalogue of horrors was world-ending.

It wasn’t, though. And although she tried to read Henry Gladstone’s notes, they were all written in a dense, unintelligible shorthand. The most useful thing she found was a crate of bruised apples, next to a huge cast iron sink in the back. She used the sink to wash some of the dirt from her face. Then finding a ceramic mug on the side, she drunk deeply, before offering it to Dian. She wasn’t sure if they’d touch it, but after a moment’s pause, they took it gratefully. And when she handed them half the apples, they didn’t hesitate.

For a few minutes, the two of them just stood next to each other, the sounds of munching echoing through the humming silence. The apples were a crisp shock of sweetness. Frida had to admit they were delicious. Afterwards, she felt a thousand times better and Dian had regained a measure of colour to their cheeks. Whether it had to do with the apples, or the brand-new cobwebs Moth had been diligently weaving across Dian’s heart, Frida didn’t know. But she smiled, remembering Antony’s old collie-cross who’d preceded Peter the Poodle. Marvin had always needed to wear a soft, tight jacket they’d called his ‘support sweater’, a kind of full-body hug. Frida had often wished they made them for humans. Looking at Moth’s delicate woven threads, she wondered if they had a similar vibe. Whatever the case, seeing Dian start to recover eased a tight private knot deep within her.

As if they’d heard her, Dian cocked their head at her, asking a silent question. Frida shook her head, sinking back against the nearest table.

‘What I’m looking for isn’t here,’ she whispered, finding that if she kept her eyes on the new layers of silver in Dian’s clothes, it gave her a measure of balance. Moth’s webs were like starlight woven into filament, stitched with care, a dappled leaf threaded in here or there, a particularly handsome twig, a tuft of hay from the stables. But as she looked at these things fondly, her vision seemed to twist and blur, and suddenly the silver of the LEZ’s spotlights flashed before her eyes. The sharp silver of the unicorn’s horn. The terrible pale silver that pulsed off the jars, like steel turning inside out.

Suddenly, she grabbed the nearest thing, a heavy glass paperweight, and threw it with all her might at the jar containing the horn. Within an instant, blinding agony sent her to her knees, but she forced her head up, biting back a scream as the paperweight veered off course, landing harmlessly with a shattering crash in a far corner. Frida had impeccable aim. She hadn’t missed, she knew she hadn’t. And yet, the jar was still intact.

Breathing through the pain, she got back shakily to her feet. Her next attempt to get inside the jar, to open it by hand, was thwarted just as seamlessly – the pain flooring her before she got within a foot of the jar.

‘Fuck!’ she shouted, kicking one of the tables. And then she put her head in her hands, and confessed, ‘I don’t know what to do.’

For a long moment, Dian – who hadn’t moved an inch through all this – just stared at her. She almost wished Dian would ask her those questions now, about what she was doing here, what she’d been looking for, who the hell she was. Because if they’d asked, she would have told them. The truth bubbled up on her tongue, desperate to get out. But after a few moments, Dian’s gaze just slipped away. As if they couldn’t bear to bring themselves to ask anything, terrified of what horrors she might admit to.

Frida’s shoulders slumped.

‘We came here to help the desert-sky dragon,’ Dian said, straightening one of the frayed edges of their sleeve with deliberate grace. ‘Can we still do that?’

‘I don’t know!’ Frida rubbed her stinging eyes until it felt as if they’d come clean out of their sockets. It was clear that there were no user-friendly switches on the walls, no simple modern solutions. Gladstone’s accomplice would be back soon no doubt, maybe with Gladstone himself. Her eyes landed, for the hundredth time, on the sharp edge of the unicorn’s horn. ‘A few days ago,’ she admitted, ‘I could have reached into that jar and taken that horn out no problem. Now I can’t get within a foot of it without feeling like the horn is stabbing me through my cerebral cortex.’

Dian’s eyebrows shot up.

Moth scuttled closer. ‘A few days ago, you were different?’

‘Yeah,’ she muttered, fiddling with a piece of dirt on her shirt, embarrassed. ‘A few days ago, I was just human, I guess.’

Dian wrinkled their nose so abruptly Frida was reminded of Zuzka when she ate anchovies. A sigh ached out of her, exhaustion rolling from her toes right up to her aching heart. She moved dumbly towards the open window. Dian watched her uncertainly. Frida climbed up onto the table to assess the window. It was small, but with a squeeze, they might fit.

‘You know, I don’t blame you for hating us.’ Her gaze fell again on the horn, trapped in the jar. Whoever had cut it off demanded a place in the worst circle of hell. ‘But did someone–’ She drew in an unsteady breath, unable to look at them. ‘Did someone hurt you? Did someone do something to you. Other than locking your friends in here. I mean, that’s reason enough. I just . . . You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, I only . . .’ she trailed off, sitting on her heels. ‘I wondered.’

Dian had gone deadly still. They were looking very hard at a blank spot on the floor, as if the flagstones were suddenly the most interesting things in this room.

Frida wished she hadn’t asked. ‘Look, forget I said anything.’ She tried to sound chipper as she quickly changed the subject, gesturing to the window. ‘I think we might be able to fit through here! Then we’ll be outside at least, and not . . . in here.’

Dian shifted their gaze incredulously to the tiny window, backing away a step. ‘Uh – no. I do not think that is possible.’

Moth gave a dubious squeak too, looking with concern at Dian, who had gone very wan indeed. Perhaps from the prospect of the window, but Frida suspected it was the result of her prying.

‘I’m really sorry,’ she said, swallowing down her panic as she did some tests, trying to squeeze her torso through the gap. ‘But unless you want to try that door-trick again, I think this might be the only way.’ Her tone was flippant, belying her fear. She wanted nothing more than to get out of here. The wards were poison made from the hearts and horns of extraordinary creatures. Henry Gladstone was an arch villain, the early LEZ was a sickly nightmare, and her whole world view needed a massive overhaul. What was she meant to do with that? She’d read that Sir Joshua had given Henry a lot of leeway for his experiments, and of course Joshua was away most of the time. But could he really not have known?

And now, to top it off, she’d been thoughtless, hurting Dian unwittingly.

Moth appeared beside her, a thankful distraction. ‘Frida Rose, dear,’ he vibrated with studious politeness. ‘I do not think Dian can fit through this window.’ Then for a moment he seemed to shiver, and steady himself. Finally, with a pointed glance back at the fairy, he said loudly, ‘I’m not even sure if their ego would get through, let alone all the rest!’

It was a joke, but it was harsh and Frida looked at Moth in surprise.

But Moth was leaping back and forth along the sill now, a blur of black and white. ‘It serves you right!’ he shouted down at Dian. ‘Magicking you and Frida Rose in here without considering how you were going to get out again. You never listen to me!’

Dian flinched, for a moment looking as if they might burst into tears. But then they gathered themselves, and colour flew back into their face, along with righteous fury. ‘If I hadn’t done so, we’d still be stuck outside!’

She could have sworn she felt something like relief vibrating off Moth’s furry body, but she thought she must have been mistaken as he howled, sounding just as furious as his fairy, ‘Frida Rose could have unlocked the door. She said so!’

‘Well why hasn’t Frida Rose done that then? Instead of trying to squeeze us through this ridiculous window!’

Frida grimaced. When Moth looked at her, waiting expectantly, she had to reluctantly admit that she had no idea how to pick locks, much to his chagrin.

‘If we hadn’t come in here,’ Dian said softly, dangerously, although they couldn’t hide the tremble. ‘We wouldn’t have found them.’ Their eyes turned inexorably to the empty dragonfly jars.

Moth stilled. He gave a pulsating long sigh. Then he scuttled back down the wall and across the room, scooting quickly up Dian’s leg. ‘I know,’ he murmured, purring as he landed back on their shoulder. ‘It’s just, I’ve spent an age weaving you new webs, and now you’re going to have to spend them on getting yourself out of here?’

Dian’s shoulders sank. ‘I know,’ they breathed. ‘I’m sorry.’

Moth rubbed their cheek. Then his tone lifted. ‘Maybe Frida Rose can pop you out of that window like a cork from a bottle of that strawberry wine you love so much!’

Maybe it was pure panic, but the image of having to push Dian through the window was too much. Frida began to laugh, and that set Moth off, flipping over onto his back on Dian’s shoulder, all eight legs waggling in the air. He laughed so hard, he fell right off, catching himself mid-air with a squeak.

Dian put their head in their hands.

But the sound of Moth’s giggles was like silk brushing over her eardrums, sending a delicious tickly feeling all down her spine, making her wriggle and soon Frida couldn’t stop – she was snort-laughing, tears streaming down her face.

‘Maybe . . . maybe,’ Moth gasped, his fuzzy body spinning in circles. ‘Maybe there’s grease somewhere in this revolting place. Maybe Frida Rose could oil you up and you can slide through, like one of those slippery hangferns that grow in the groves!’

Dian looked entirely unamused by the idea of being lubricated like a hangfern. Frida stalled on the idea however, and her cheeks were suddenly a feverish purple, all laughter dissolving in the pit of heat blossoming in her belly.

Dian, however, was incandescent. ‘You think I need you to cast magic, Moth? I can do it all on my own!’ With a snarl of rage, they took a single and impressive leap onto the table, sending Moth flying through the air. Dian’s face may have been a similar colour to Frida’s, but she could have sworn she saw a defiant smile grace their uptilted lips. One moment, Dian was facing the much too small window, and the next their aura sparkled, the rush of petrichor and rain flooded time and space, and they were climbing imperiously out into thin air, their forest of emerald curls flying. For a split second, Frida saw the whisper of a grand staircase. When she blinked, it was gone, and Dian was looking back up at them smugly from the moonlit grass.

Wow.

‘Oh well done, Dian.’ Moth pumped his furry pedipalps in the air, giving a little hop and a leap. ‘I knew you could do it.’

Dian raised a solitary victorious middle finger. Apparently that gesture was both time-insensitive and cross-cultural.

‘Go on, Frida Rose. Your turn.’ Moth hurdled onto her shoulder and was about to launch away in Dian’s wake, but then he leaned in, his voice a thread of repentant silk, and whispered, ‘Sometimes when they’re stuck, it helps to make them laugh. If you can’t think of a joke, you have to try to make them angry. Either way. Otherwise, it can be hard for them to unstick themselves. They need the help, although they will never ask for it.’ He stared at her with his big, black eyes. ‘You might want to remember that, Frida Rose.’

Whatever joy she’d felt at Dian’s performance drained away, as if Moth had just pulled the plug. Stuck. They were stuck, stuck, stuck. Lucky’s chirps echoed through her head. Maybe there was no Moth in the future to help unstick them.

‘I won’t wait here all night,’ Dian called from outside.

Moth scuttled out of the window, clicking his paws with delight. Frida followed behind more slowly, trying to shake off the unease Moth’s words had stirred in her. In the end, she was the one who could have done with some lubrication, and when she finally landed with a thud, knees scraped and her shirt torn on a rusty nail, Dian was beneath the elm tree, looking high and mighty.

‘All ok down there, dragon-who’s-not-a-dragon?’ Their voice rustled with laughter.

Frida scowled up at them from where she sat nursing her dignity on the ground, but when Dian beamed back, she caught her breath. A full-double-eye-twinkle, as if they’d surprised even themselves. Maybe they hadn’t been sure if they could magic themselves out of there. For a moment, she forgot how to breathe. It was the first time Dian had smiled at her. It looked easy, as if their face had simply forgotten for a while, and now they were back, lips wide, white teeth gleaming, skin crinkling around the edges of their luscious eyes, eyelashes glittering. Dian reached out a hand, and she grabbed it without thinking.

She hadn’t noticed before, in the throes of being pulled in and out of their magic, but now when her fingers scaped against their calloused palm, her breathing hitched. She’d just assumed their palms were silken. A fairy who could do magic didn’t need to get their hands dirty, did they? But when their callouses met hers, she couldn’t help the warmth that flooded her, as if they’d let her learn a secret. For a moment, they both just stood there, surrounded by buttery moonlight, the fallen fruits of the elm tree, and the heady scent of freedom.

‘What do we do now?’ Frida whispered. The green darkness around them smelling of freshly cut grass and flowers.

Dian looked so young and joyful, their face totally luminous, that she wished the two of them could stay just like this, forever. She wished she could freeze this moment in time. But then their ears pricked up, and their head snapped around. The moment died as she watched the familiar bite of fear flood back in as the dappled patterns on their cheeks flared, then paled under the toothy leaves, their pupils swelling, swirling with dread.

‘Someone’s coming,’ they hissed, the two broken words falling from their tongue.

She bit back a whimper. ‘Humans?’

Dian’s chin dipped, a muscle in their jaw feathering. A question brimmed in their burning gaze, in the urgent rapid tilt of their brows. She looked up at them, understanding without them having to speak. They were asking her permission this time.

‘Yes.’ Then she nodded wildly, her voice almost disbelieving. ‘Yes! If you can.’

Relief touched the corners of their lips, and their fingers curled around hers.

Moth, wherever he was, let out a tinkling, long-suffering sigh. ‘Here we go again.’

Then Frida heard the voices, male and loud as the gravel crunched, but the raindrops had already started to descend, and they all – even Moth – breathed a blessed sigh of relief as Dian’s calm waters enveloped them.

Chapter Thirty-Six

It was darkness that they emerged in, the raindrops dropping away in a soft sparkle that smelled of ancient fields of moss. Frida’s ears were ringing, the closeness of Dian’s heartbeat making her feel dizzy. She wondered how it felt for Dian, but then they’d slipped their fingers out of her grip.

She wiped the light mist from her forehead with the back of one stale sleeve and focused on getting her bearings. It was hard to see much. Just the unearthly hue of Dian’s cobwebs a half step away. She felt the heaviness of trees. It might have been a cave, if she hadn’t been able to hear the unmistakable swish of leaves.

‘Where are we?’ she asked, her voice hushed. She had the feeling that they were in some kind of church, but not like anything human-built.

Dian’s face tilted up into the darkness above, thicker than ordinary night, woven from deeper stuff. A tingle ran down Frida’s spine, despite the warm air, as Dian shot her an unreadable look and then, without saying anything, strode away into the dark.

She was getting used to Dian’s mercurial personality now. She quickly hurried after them, thinking it felt a bit like being caught in the wake of a glitzy tornado. A few steps ahead, their lace glittered like evening dew. A profound silence surrounded them, as if there was no one else here at all, just them, and the dark. A part of her seized, realising that Dian was taking her away from Forge House. Away from the keens of the terracotta dragon, away from the Jewel she had to find, away from Lucky, away from everything she had to do, with time trickling through her fingers. She wanted it, she wanted to be away, she wanted to go with Dian, but then the faces of Antony and Hamish – and, oddly, Dian – flooded her vision, all of them entombed in vines and thorns.

‘Please,’ she gasped. ‘Where are we—’

Just as Dian stopped abruptly, and she slammed into them, jumping back with embarrassment. She was about to apologise, when she saw what lay beyond them.

She drew in a gasp.

It was a forest pool.

Even without moon or starlight filtering through the non-existent gaps in the trees, the water emanated a strange, powdery glow. Mist curled off the surface, and heat seemed to pulse in the air, along with the awesome sense of the spaces between the stars, the earthy scents of thyme, wild garlic, and mint coiling around her feet. She watched, her mouth open, as Dian hunkered down and trailed long, graceful fingers through the steaming water. Her heartbeat was in her ears, the sound an echoing boom. The golden green gleam off Dian’s skin through the mist was mesmerising. She felt reckless and hot, beneath her sternum.

‘What is this place?’

They glanced aside, not quite meeting her eyes. ‘I thought you might want to dip your toes in the water. Those don’t look comfortable.’ With a shy smile, they gestured towards her feet.

Frida didn’t know what to say. The moment their words washed over her, a level of exhaustion hit that she’d never experienced before. They were a fairy, and she was a human. The problems of cross-cultural miscommunication were endless. For an odd moment, she thought of her mum, a white immigrant from Russia, a cleaner, waitress and single parent, and Antony’s mum, a Black neuroscientist from Hounslow with five children and a Jamaican husband of thirty years. Walking Peter the Poodle, talking about the extortionate price of coffee at the LEZ, the latest episodes of their favourite soaps, and the fact that the man on the commercial for frozen fish fingers was the sexiest person alive.

Dian was a fairy, so how on earth did they know that in her boots, her toes had been cramping for hours now, and what she would like more than anything was to take them off and dip them in a fairy pool? ‘Thank you,’ she whispered carefully, for she was afraid her voice might fail her. Then she hesitated, her hands stilling on her laces. ‘My toenails won’t turn silver, will they?’

Dian’s upturned lips twitched. ‘Would that be so bad?’

Frida grinned, her head emptying. ‘No, I guess not.’ Within seconds, she’d tugged off her boots and scooched to the edge of the pool. The damp moss sagged around her as she sat with a moan and slipped her poor, wrinkled, pinched feet into the water, any thoughts of time and urgency tumbling away with the steam. It was warm, like a hot spring. She gasped, ‘I didn’t know there were hot springs in this country.’

Dian chuckled, her pleasure reflected on their flushed face. ‘There aren’t.’

Frida blinked. ‘We aren’t in England anymore?’

Dian’s smile broadened. ‘We are . . . somewhere in between.’

Frida let out a low, impressed moan. ‘Cool!’ She leaned her head back, breathing the delicious heat into her lungs. ‘How long can we stay?’ she whispered.

Dian lifted a shoulder, continuing to smile as the steam billowed through their hair.

It was Moth who answered softly, ‘As long as we need. Here, there is time.’

Frida had more questions, so many more, but as the water eased her aching limbs, it all drifted away. They sat in companionable silence, framed in that thyme-scented steam. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Moth, lazily weaving a hoary pattern across Dian’s left elbow, catching little curls of moss from the floor and placing them in tasteful arrangements. Frida was finally working out some of the stains on her uniform and thinking dreamily about asking Dian if they would mind if she ditched the disgusting garment altogether and went full on swimming, when Dian’s voice cut through the calm.

‘They were my blood-kin. Born from the same root. Gia, we called them.’

Frida froze, her fingers bunched against a stiff wine-coloured stain along her right thigh – probably from Lucky’s unfortunate cow. How long ago that seemed now. Dian cast a hooded look in her direction. She blinked when she saw tracks of silver tears running off the tip of their aquiline nose. Her hands stilled.

‘They got taken by a human.’ Dian’s voice was unsteady, hollow as winter fog. ‘At first, they thought the human wanted to be their friend. They were curious. But then one day, Gia disappeared. It was Gia who was meant to be the hawthorn’s guardian. Gia who was born first. This was meant to be their legacy. They would never have gone by choice.’

A tremble ran through her bones.

‘The human took them,’ Dian repeated, harsher, like a tree cracking. The darkness made their eyes look sunken. The mist spun through their hair. Not just Emerald City green, but all the greens there were possible to be. ‘Gia . . .’ Their throat worked as they tried to speak. ‘They were meant to be the guardian! It was never meant to be me. I’m too young. Too flippant. Too weak.’ They said the words bitterly, as if someone had said these same things to them before. The unloving face of the oak-supreme filled her vision, and Frida’s anger roared.

‘Oh Dian,’ Moth chimed sadly. ‘There was nothing you could do, nothing anyone could have done.’

But Dian surged up from the pool, spraying droplets of water like crystals. ‘No. It’s the truth. I let my blood-kin get taken.’ Their voice cracked. ‘I am worthless, and I am weak. That is why they punish me. That is why they are so cruel. They blame me.’

Frida thought about what this fairy would become in two hundred years. Glitter unspooling from them in great tsunamis. Her hand lifted, then hovered there, unable to cross the distance between them. Her heart broke quietly in her chest. ‘You’re the opposite of weak, Dian.’

The shake of their head was so imperceptible, it almost wasn’t there. The shadows of a grief laid bare on their face, as raw and sharp as the bloody stumps of the terracotta dragon’s wings. She wondered if they might have hoped to find Gia at the house too. She had mistaken this Dian as unmarked by heartbreak, fooled because they seemed so much younger than the other Dian, who had been so visibly shattered. But she, of all people, should have known better.

‘We’re dying, Frida Rose. That – in there . . .’ They waved a trembling hand, indicating somewhere past the darkness. Back to Forge House. ‘That is our end.’

Frida opened and closed her mouth as the image of Dian’s future blazed over the backs of her eyelids. There was more truth in their words than they could have known. She knew that, and yet she still hadn’t told them. She’d been lying to them since the first. But after what they’d just shared – how vulnerable they’d made themselves to her – the idea of telling them now and seeing that truth twist into hatred . . .

Quickly, she struggled to her feet, warm water dripping off her. ‘It doesn’t have to be,’ she said, squaring her shoulders. ‘We can stop it.’

Melancholy seemed to wrap around them. ‘We?’ they breathed helplessly. ‘What are we going to do? I could barely survive walking through that human doorway. I do not have enough strength – I do not have the power of the others. We should go back to them and seek help, before they come unbidden.’

Frida’s eyes flashed. ‘Dian, your strength takes my fucking breath away.’

They jerked their head up, shocked.

‘But,’ she said as she lurched towards them across the velvet moss. ‘Maybe you’re right. You and Moth should find the others. I’m the human. It’s me who needs to go back there. I have to find out who knew about these wards.’ She almost quailed at the thought of leaving Dian behind, but she clenched her fists doggedly. ‘Maybe I’m wrong, but I think there’ll be someone in there, at least one person, who isn’t aware of what’s being done in that laboratory. Someone who will be able to help us.’ The faces of the people she’d admired flashed before her eyes. The wild curls of Georgiana’s red locks, the tilt of Sir Joshua’s wide chestnut eyes. She angled her head towards the shadows, finding strength there. She refused to believe that she was wrong. ‘All I need from you is a ride back to the grounds. Then you can go and tell the others what we discovered. Just like you wanted to do originally. Maybe you could check on Lucky, too, to see if he’s ok. But Dian, honestly. You’ve done all you need to.’

Dian was staring at her with astonishment. ‘What?’ they spluttered.

Frida was already struggling back into her boots. The longer she stayed here, the harder it would be to leave. ‘It’s true, Dian. You know it. I’d never ask you to go into that house yourself. It’ll be full of humans. It’ll be torture for you.’

Dian flinched. The fawn and bronze of their cheeks had blanched.

Frida’s teeth were so tightly clenched, it hurt. She didn’t dare say anything else though, for fear that she’d lose her nerve. That she’d beg them to come with her. But as much as she didn’t want them to leave, the idea of going into Forge House with them – somehow the fear of that was a thousand times worse. Not because of what they’d do anymore, but because of what the house might do to them.

‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Go back to the others. Tell them what you know.’

Moth had paused on Dian’s elbow, and Frida could just see his black eyes shining. Waiting to see what Dian would say.

‘They’ll want to attack that place,’ Dian said finally, with enough uncertainty to make her want to take them in her arms.

She didn’t though. She just thought about what they’d said. If an army of fairies were going to attack Forge House, she’d know about it, surely. It would have made the history books. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen, she supposed. Not when she’d slipped through time, not when they currently stood in a place between. She’d been secretly hoping she could change the future: hoping to convince Dian not to destroy the LEZ. Now, she found herself thinking whether it might be possible to uproot the entire past.

There was only one thing she knew for certain. She did not want Dian anywhere near that house. ‘I just need a bit of time,’ she managed, shifting on her tight boots. After dipping her feet in the pool, they felt horribly claustrophobic. She didn’t know what Dian saw in her expression, but when their shoulders slumped in assent, she couldn’t help the breath of relief that tumbled out of her.

In weary surrender, they held out their hand to her – curls of steam wreathing them like a shroud. ‘Ok,’ they said quietly. ‘Let’s go then.’

She cast one last look at the fairy pool.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

Suddenly she felt as if she was saying goodbye. Even though this was what she wanted, she hadn’t meant for it to happen this quickly. Surely there must be more to say. But Dian’s face was set now, so she dragged her eyes away from the misty water and told herself to be brave. Told herself that Dian would be pleased to get rid of her and that, at the very least, Dian would be safe. It was this thought that gave her the courage to slip her hand through theirs.

The next time she blinked, the magical pool was gone and golden candlelight bled across the grass before her.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

‘Dian!’ she cried.

Without a word, they’d set off, striding down the gravel path away from her. Towards the looming white limestone of Forge House.

‘Dian! What are you doing?’

As their shadow bled in and out of a row of tall poplar trees, she set off at a run after them. Fuck! Their legs may have been longer, but Frida could run when she wanted. It wasn’t long before she’d caught up to them and grabbed their sleeve. They spun, the shadows of the poplars holding them firmly in their grasp.

‘You think I’m going to let you go in there on your own?’ they hissed. ‘How can you not trust me yet?’ They bared their teeth as they jerked their chin towards the white shape of the house. The distant yellow light of the candles flooded out of the windows across the front lawn, coating the edge of their face, their strong jaw, their soft rounded cheeks, in gold.

Frida reeled back, shocked. She told herself she refused to cry. ‘You’re the one who doesn’t trust me,’ she shot back.

Dian’s eyes widened immeasurably, suddenly furious. ‘Me? Are you aware of how much you don’t look like a human, Frida Rose? Are you aware of how dangerous it would be for you to go alone into that house?’

It took her a moment for what they’d said to sink in. She furrowed her brows in confusion. ‘What?’

Dian barked out a laugh. ‘You glow.’

‘I don’t glow,’ Frida exclaimed.

Dian raised an eyebrow and crossed their arms over their chest, waiting.

Frida looked down at herself. She’d thought the light had been coming from Dian, from Moth’s gently woven cobwebs. But it was, ever so faintly, coming from her, too. She drew in a gasp and lifted her hands before her. They were, indeed, glowing. Suddenly, she had a memory of lying under a broken hawthorn tree. Hit by lightning. Her body had glowed then too. Purple. This, now she’d noticed it, also had a faint violet-y sheen.

‘How long have I been like this?’ she stammered, waving her hands in dismay.

Dian laughed in disbelief, a rough, leafy sound. ‘You didn’t know, truly?’

‘No, I didn’t know!’ Frida retorted. ‘When you’re with a glowing fairy made of raindrops and spider silk, it’s hard to see much else if I’m honest.’

The way that Dian’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, made Frida instantly feel as if she’d shared much too much. ‘I mean, you know.’ She glared down at her hands, clearing her throat. ‘You glow too.’

Moth, from wherever he’d hidden himself, chuckled gleefully.

Frida’s ears went pink. She asked again, in desperation, ‘How long have I looked like this?’

Dian cocked their head, chewing their lip as if trying not to laugh too. ‘It’s been getting stronger. I think the pool emphasised it.’

‘The pool!’ Frida closed her eyes in panic. ‘I told you it would turn me silver!’

‘Oh, you’re not silver, dragon-not-a-dragon.’ Dian’s lips twitched. ‘You’re more mauve.’

Frida groaned.

‘Your eyes though, the pool had nothing to do with that. Your eyes have always been violet. And in the depths, there is fire.’

‘Fire?’ she whispered, aghast.

‘Fire,’ they said firmly.

Well, Frida didn’t know what to do with that, at all. Rosewood box, meet too much information. She scrubbed her hands over her face, aching for a mirror, and then she peeked up at them. ‘You do trust me then? You didn’t think I was going to betray you? You’re staying because you want to . . . help me?’

They snorted. But she saw the way they’d flushed slightly as well, across the tops of their cheekbones. She couldn’t help the way her heart soared in answer. They trusted her! And then she glared at them and crossed her arms stubbornly over her chest.

‘Well, that makes no difference. You’re not coming with me.’

‘I am,’ they snapped, crossing their own arms just as fiercely.

‘No!’

‘Yes, Frida Rose. I am.’

‘But you’re a fairy! You were born in a tree root,’ she wailed.

‘And you’re a human-not-a-human, dragon-not-a-dragon. It does not matter. I am not going to let you go in there on your own. Can you alter the structures of space, slip through the fabric of reality if you need to?’

Grasping at straws, she lashed out, ‘But what if you’re in the house and you decide in a panic to go through a door? How do I know it won’t almost kill you like it did last time?’

Dian’s eyes blazed, wounded. ‘It won’t,’ they hissed.

‘How do you know?’

‘That place!’ Dian scowled down at the ground, scuffing their big toe through a bit of loose dirt. ‘That room. It was. . . those things you call wards. I don’t understand them still, but pushing my way in was like pushing through a solid wall of malice.’ They glowered at her. ‘It didn’t help that I had to bring you with me, too.’

Frida flushed. ‘Oh.’

Then Dian’s face turned anguished. ‘Let me come. I don’t want to feel . . .’

Frida heard the unspoken word. Worthless.

She closed her eyes again.

When she reopened them, Dian was watching her. And then they grinned.

Moth let out a resigned silken groan.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The full moon was high, the yellow shifting to white cream, licking the imposing stones of Forge House. Listening hard, Frida could hear laughter unspooling through the countless windows, all the panes flung open on the summer heat. She had no idea what time it was, but she could just hear, if she strained her ears, the faint clink of cutlery and the tinkle of wine glasses. As if they were having a party in there or something. She and Dian shared a nervous glance. The fairy definitely looked less confident now but at Frida’s questioning expression, they raised their chin determinedly. The mottled patterns over the strong bones of their face seemed to swim before her.

Somewhere inside her, she knew this whole thing was a terrible idea. She knew that Dian was wrong. Dian shouldn’t trust her, not at all, because she’d been lying to them since the beginning. But the closer they drew to the house, she had to admit that a great sense of warmth was overtaking her, strengthened each time her arm brushed theirs. Because whatever was going to happen, Dian hadn’t wanted to leave her. And besides that, the truth was – she was afraid. Whatever brave words she’d spoken at the pool, she didn’t want to go in this house alone.

Sir Joshua had fought for the rights of extraordinary creatures all his life. She was struggling to conceive of him as someone who would support the corruption and entrapment of magical objects. But she couldn’t help her mind turning over the other LEZites.

There’d been Lord Denver, Sir Joshua’s infamous childhood friend. When it had become common knowledge that he’d made a large portion of his money from plantations in the Caribbean and had been actively involved in the transatlantic slave trade, Management had quickly removed his portrait from his place next to Gladstone in the café. The portrait hadn’t been there when Frida, Antony and Hamish had started as keepers, but when they’d learnt of it, they’d gone on a deep dive to see if there were any other dire secrets in the LEZ’s past.

They’d been phenomenally relieved to learn that Sir Joshua had argued furiously with Denver in parliament, clashing over the bill to abolish slavery. And whilst most of the other LEZites had been blindingly rich, they hadn’t found any other true red flags, not like Lord Denver. Or had they? Perhaps, as bright-eyed keepers fresh out of the training program, dazzled by Izzy and drunk on the fumes of manure, they hadn’t looked all that hard.

She remembered that there’d been an article about William Cliff, a newspaper editor, claiming that he’d been a spy for the East India Company, the notorious British colonising machine that had dominated trade routes and controlled huge parts of the Indian subcontinent. Edward Caval, who’d travelled with Sir Joshua on the expedition to rescue the terracotta dragon, had been a renowned collector of pornographic drawings – high end, but still. Laurence Harding, a poet, and Sir Joshua’s alleged secret lover, had written countless books extolling the sublime power of the extraordinary, including sonnets to Fireheart that were believed to be some of the greatest in British history. However, Antony had found one poem Harding had written that described his dream to kill the last white rhino in Africa. And the sisters. Frida glanced at the serpentine lake, glittering in the distance. None of the sisters had tried to release their kelpies. Only Jane. Why hadn’t she questioned that?

The truth was, what did she really know about any of them, beyond their elaborate portraits? She pushed away the sense that reality was suddenly no more than a piece of weak glass, and steeled herself with the knowledge that nothing was simple, least of all history. The only real answers lay inside these stone walls to her left.

‘This way,’ she managed to whisper.

Dian looked as if they were afraid a horde of bloodthirsty humans might burst through the open windows at any moment. Frida almost couldn’t believe their courage when they held out their hand to her. Giving them a brave smile, she reached down to lace her fingers through theirs just as the scent of growing things and summer rain surrounded her, and they submerged, suspended and weightless in a cool, calming rainstorm. Dian’s hand an anchor, stopping her from floating away. She marvelled at the intimacy of it, gooseflesh on her arms, as she let out a choking, awed laugh. Her heartbeat rubbed against Dian’s like a caress on a watery evening. The world was just there, just beyond the edge of the raindrop. She could see it. But here they were, safe.

Moth, somewhere, moaned dryly.

‘No one can see us?’ Frida asked, still not quite believing.

Dian bobbed their chin. Then they hesitated, the tips of their pointed ears heating, ‘I haven’t shared pathways like these with anyone but Moth for a long time. I want you to know that is why I found it – difficult – at first.’

Frida blinked up at them, raindrops dancing in her peripheral vision. She didn’t know what to say. ‘But you did it, for me?’

They glanced down at her, grousing, ‘Well, I didn’t have much choice.’

But what Frida heard was somewhat else altogether. Their tone was tender, and the way their fingers entwined with hers, so different to how it had been at the start, it made her heart hammer. For a moment, Dian seemed to be made of water, translucent in the twinkling of reflected droplets. She wondered if she looked like that too. Then Dian looked away, and the moment slipped like smoke, leaving her breathless, as their eyes landed on Forge House.

With wordless agreement, together they headed out from beneath the shelter of the shadows. Unseen by prying eyes, they approached the back of the house. The memory of an ornate banister under her hand, the click of her lace-up school shoes on the paving stones, the scent of dust and wood polish in her nose . . . it all came flooding back, even through the unreality of the raindrops.

Antony and Hamish had always found it baffling that she had a photographic memory for the feeding habits of some obscure race of dragons from the upper highlands of Mongolia and yet couldn’t remember to pay her rent on time. The layout of Forge House fell well within the sacred circle of things Frida Gave A Shit About, and she nodded with satisfaction when she found a small outdoor staircase, heading down to a door on basement level. If she was right, this would bring them out behind the kitchens, to the pantries and such like. What they’d do after that she wasn’t quite sure, but maybe they’d have a chance to do some reconnaissance.

She stood for a moment with her hand on the doorknob, listening to the vague crash of pans, and an occasional muffled shout, coming from behind the thick walls.

‘You’re sure?’ she whispered, glancing up at Dian. She could feel their entire body trembling, startling at each crash. Their expression flickered with emotion, the colours two tone – an eery blue, melting through the silver of the water. Stripped of all thorns, bleak terror was written in every beautiful line of their face. And yet their eyes met hers unyielding, giving her their answer.

She gave a helpless laugh and wrapped her fingers tighter through theirs. ‘Right then.’

‘Are we doing this or what?’ Moth complained. ‘Deathly adventures are no fun if we have to keep talking about them all the time.’

She didn’t miss the look of gratitude on Dian’s face when they touched a gentle finger to Moth’s furry legs and the spider scuttled across their shoulders. Her heart gave a twinge, thinking about how history had been so wrong about fairies. How she had been so wrong about fairies.

Then she opened the door, and together they stepped inside Forge House.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Straight into chaos.

She’d been right – they were in the servant’s quarters. She’d been wrong about the door leading to some quiet untended storeroom, however. They walked right into a huge bustling room, filled with hordes of sweaty, red-faced people cleaning, slicing, chopping, prepping, cursing, bellowing; the clattering of massive pots, the thunder of someone screaming, the deafening roar of a fireplace. In her shock, Frida forgot to stop the door from slamming. It made both of them jump out of their skins and Dian completely lost their grip on their magic, the light and bustle and boom of a house below stairs coming crashing down on them.

The next second, Dian had got the magic back, and the three of them sank behind a row of shelves, safe again within the raindrops.

‘Fuck, shit, devil’s arse,’ Frida muttered as Moth’s legs skittered, moving a thousand miles a minute, webs flying.

‘Fluff-for-brains cursed webless spinners!’ he shrieked in reply.

Frida might have laughed if she hadn’t been so horrified as she peeked out from behind the shelves. Thankfully everyone was so busy, it might be possible they’d all just missed two people and a spider emerging out of thin air.

‘Did they see us?’ Dian hissed.

She pulled back, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘I think we’re ok.’ Then she did a double take. Dian was not, in fact, ok. Not at all. They looked like they’d just been thrown into a nuckelavee nest. Leaning so hard against the wall, it seemed as if they wanted to sink inside the very stones. Frida, knowing that might be entirely possible, winced. Anxiously, she peered again around the corner of the shelves, just in time too. A maid in a prim brown dress and dirty apron was beelining straight for them. She cursed and, flipping round, pushed Dian a few feet to the right, even further into the dusty corner. In sheer panic, she pressed the full length of her body against theirs in a desperate attempt to shield them.

Dian stared down at her, shock quivering over their face. She froze as the maid started rummaging for something, right where Frida had just been standing, before hoisting a sack of flour over her shoulder, humming to herself as she headed back into the fray. Frida went limp as she leaned her head against Dian’s collarbone. For a few moments, she could only close her eyes and breathe in their earthy scent. Their chest was heaving, but soon they both started breathing easier, and Frida thought that if she stayed like that forever, pressed against their warm body, she wouldn’t mind one bit. In the raindrops, there was that miraculous feeling of their heartbeats touching. When Frida opened her eyes again, Dian’s were already on her, vast, dark and endless as galaxies.

Suddenly, awareness crashed back, and she remembered herself and where they were. Stumbling backwards, her face burned. But she’d forgotten they were holding hands.

‘Shit, sorry,’ she exclaimed, too loudly, as they jerked her back. Dian’s pupils seemed even darker now, and the way they were looking at her, their breathing shallow, as if they were suddenly wondering what a not-quite-a-human looked like without their clothes on. Her face went even redder. Even her freckles were blushing.

Moth made a disgusted squeak. ‘Lest I remind you both, we are in a deeply perilous situation and now isn’t the time for casual flirtation!’ The silken threads of his voice betrayed him though, positively dripping with glee. ‘There’s enough moisture in these raindrops to send a young spider into a frenzy.’

A sharp involuntary sound escaped Frida’s lips as her traitorous mind recalled that terrible book in the library, with its woodcuts of the fairies orgying under a full moon. She saw Mr Botherington in her mind’s eye too, shaking his finger and proclaiming doom. DOOM! Desperately brushing some loose tendrils of hair off her face with the back of her sleeve, she cleared her throat to speak. What she might have said however, she had no clue. There was another shout from somewhere near the fireplace, and a bone-jarring clatter as a pot was dropped. Dian’s face quickly folded back into terror.

Frida willed her freckles to return to their normal colour. ‘Are you ok?’

Dian shuddered. ‘Yes,’ they squeaked.

‘Can you move?’

‘I can,’ shooting her a look that was beyond brave.

Frida didn’t want to think about the fresh wave of feelings this evoked. About the way it made her core throb, and her breasts feel heavy. Sea and skies, she thought despairingly. She needed Mr Botherington here to give her a stern talking to. Telling herself this was not the time, she braced herself.

‘So, we go on three?’

Dian bared their teeth. ‘We go on three.’

‘One,’ Frida said with a thundering heart.

‘Two,’ Dian whispered.

‘Three!’

Chapter Forty

They slipped out from behind the shelves and into the bustle of the kitchens. So many humans, so many creatures, so much of everything! If Dian hadn’t been having a much worse time of it, Frida would have put her hands over her ears and wept. There were cooks yelling at each other, kitchen maids yelling at scullery maids, butlers yelling at footmen. There were the dogs, all scent and memory and past and future, the deadpan wit of cats, making jokes about the dogs, the poetic rats in the walls, the highly-strung mice underfoot, the flies buzzing, moths circling, beetles scuttling, countless voices speaking of moonlight, arousal, death, hunger, apathy, passion, pain. Frida nearly got decapitated when a man brandished a meat cleaver too close to her neck. It was only Dian who saved her ears from ending up in the soup.

It was impossible to concentrate. Everything was so dreamy, and somehow so much sharper. Whether it was Dian’s magic, the stress, the effects of the fairy pool – she didn’t know, but she could positively feel, with each new furred, clawed, winged voice she encountered, the exhilarating, shocking sense of her brain expanding. It was like a fantasy, thinking that she could dare to listen to such things, to such languages, such worlds. She couldn’t, shouldn’t, be allowed to hear these things.

It felt like they were moving at a snail’s pace and she tried to ground herself, but her brain was skittering over the calm stillness of the fairy pool, the feeling of flying through the air with Lucky, the wind in her ears. She kept seeing out of the corner of her eye the way Dian sparkled like a flame, and the way her own skin seemed to light up in answer. She kept re-hearing the radio hum of the horses, remembering the violet fire that Dian had sworn burned in her eyes.

It wasn’t until they’d had to drop to the ground and crawl, inch by desperate inch, beneath one of the tables and a disgruntled cat gave her such a hard swipe, he almost took out her right eye, that she began to pull it together. Finally remembering her rosewood box, she scrunched up her face and – as she crawled – tried to imagine the magic blazing through her, taking it strand by strand, and slipping it inside the box. Although it screamed at her in protest, and something in her heart faltered at what she was doing, it went, bit by bit. And miraculously, after that, although she was wrung out and panting, the voices and the panic quietened.

Dian gazed down at her, hidden in the shadow of the long table, their eyes swollen. As if they knew she’d done something, as if they could feel the difference, but didn’t know what. They opened their mouth as if to ask, slowly reaching out a finger and wiping a drop of blood from her cheek where the cat had swiped. In the end, they just mouthed, ‘Are you ok?’

Frida nodded, shuddering. Although she wasn’t sure about the answer.

They continued.

They hugged walls. They crawled under more tables. They picked their way painfully slowly over the languorous bodies of flea-ridden dogs. She guessed from Moth’s silence, he was somewhere on Dian’s person, weaving tirelessly, doing his part to keep the magic going. When they eventually emerged into a relatively empty corridor on what Frida thought was the north side of the kitchens, they both sagged with relief against the white-washed wall, the curved edges of the raindrops refracting off the lights of the candles. Sweat beaded at Dian’s temples, wisps of ivy-coloured curls sticking to their forehead.

‘Seas, Frida. Is this human life?’

Frida felt shell shocked. ‘No, not usually!’ Then she screwed up her nose, thinking about the morning rush at the LEZ’s Extraordinary Pancake Booth, and she finished ruefully, ‘Well, maybe sometimes.’

Dian looked flummoxed.

Frida might have tried to defend all the wonderous things about being human, but the words stuck in her throat. All that came out was, ‘We should keep going.’

So they picked up their pace, hurrying on as the noise of the people faded. They passed a sewing room, a few storerooms, a room with nothing but rows and rows of boots in it. Frida was re-finding her bearings. Apart from the clothing, the conspicuous lack of plastic, and the overpowering stench of cooked meat, soot and something bitter like burnt oil – the National Trust had done a pretty good restoration job. She’d have to send someone a congratulatory letter when she got home.

If she got home.

Each glance at Dian reminded her why they were here. They looked like a rookie keeper who’d just had their first introduction to the meat freezers. She squeezed their hand.

‘You’re doing amazing,’ she whispered.

Dian shuddered dramatically but managed a ghost of a smile in her direction as they squeezed her hand in answer. They’d just slipped past another storeroom, and it was getting busier again. From a nook behind the service stairs, they watched the throng of footmen and butlers wordlessly. Oak-green livery, powdered wigs and white gloves, polished shoes and sleek gold buttons. A parade of wines, champagnes, silver platters of steaming food conjured from the kitchens. It seemed endless and Frida’s mouth watered. She’d survived on a handful of apples across what amounted to two centuries, and the longing for what was beneath those silver cloches made her feel faint. Even though she hadn’t eaten meat since she’d seen her first LEZ freezer, if someone offered her a full roast partridge right now, she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to say no. Although, the idea of the partridge lifting his or her head and speaking to her . . . suddenly, she thought she would, actually, be able to say no quite easily, thank you.

Moth, from the safety of Dian’s throat, was still watching the footmen. ‘We do not have to go that way, do we? That is many, many humans.’

Dian just turned to Frida, their eyes holding hers. It’s your call, they seemed to say.

Their faith in her blew her away.

She chewed hard on her thumbnail, knowing she couldn’t fuck this up. They had to get upstairs, but . . .

‘I think you’re right, Moth. It’s too busy here.’ She didn’t know how long Dian could hold their magic for. She didn’t dare ask, but scaring fifty footmen half to death if they lost their grip on it would not be ideal. She beckoned for them to follow her back the way they’d come. It was the right choice, for soon they found a set of darkened stairs, blissfully free of people. Frida hurried up, the others hot on her heels. At the top they found a heavy white panelled door. Frida cast Dian a wordless question, and when Dian nodded, she carefully cracked it open. The room on the other side was small, and blissfully empty. She tugged Dian inside with relief. As the door swung shut behind them, it sealed out the raging inferno below, the heat from the ovens, the tornado of voices, the knots of stench and sweat, the bustle of unending activity.

For the moment, there was just quiet.

Apart from a dark side table, presumably for servants to set down heavy trays, the room was bare. The floor was oiled wood and a gas lamp hummed inside a frosted glass globe mounted on the wall, its light a brighter, steadier thing than the amber of the candles. They had gas lighting? Frida stared at it. If they had gas lighting, why did they need dragonfly lamps? She had to shove away the implications of this before she was able to move. Quickly, she indicated for Dian to follow her through the next doorway. She just wanted to find somewhere safe to wait until dinner was over now. Whatever thrill she might have felt at seeing Forge House in its heyday was a guttering candle in the hollow cave of her chest.

Moving as if in a dream she led them down a long corridor, listening to the faint sound of string instruments wafting towards them. Dian’s hand was damp in hers. At fourteen, she’d been overawed by the gold beading on the panelled walls, the thick Persian carpets, the monumental oil paintings – things utterly unfamiliar for a girl who’d grown up on a council estate. Now though, fresh out of the heat and noise of downstairs, and distorted by Dian’s wild magic, she stroked her free hand over the golden panels and felt sick. She loved Sir Joshua, not because he was twelve times removed from Henry VIII, but for what he’d given the world. Now, the starkness of the opulence made her ill.

‘I don’t like this at all,’ Moth said, muffled from within the webs.

Dian let out a relieved gasp to finally voice it, ‘Oh, it’s truly awful!’

Frida almost laughed, licking her dry lips. It was awful. It should have been easier to breath up here, but there was a cloying flowery perfume in the air, an attempt to cover the stench drifting through the floorboards perhaps. Golden framed pictures blurred into one, a parade of nymphs and centaurs, stiff-necked generals, soft-limbed ladies, children in bonnets, fluffy wide-eyed puppies. She was almost pleased to see the trail of mud she’d tracked across the carpet, until she realised a servant might be sacked for it, and she set about frantically rubbing the remaining dirt from her boots. Her eyes snagged on Dian’s bare feet, mottled with all the shades of hawthorn bark, looking even more out of place than she did. What were they doing here?!

Dian’s hand tightened on hers. Across their left cheek, there was a patch of silvery brown, like a birth mark in the shape of a thornapple, and it caught the light, making her falter. She wondered ridiculously what it would feel like to run her thumb across it. Then, from the end of the corridor, the sound of music grew louder, the soft lilting notes of a piano.

‘Let’s leave,’ she hissed. ‘Let’s go back.’

There were no windows here, and she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. But as she and Dian gazed at each other, her words hanging between them, the memory of the terracotta dragon in the gardens loomed before her. She couldn’t hear the keening from here, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. And in the swirling dark of Dian’s eyes, she saw the shape of the horn, the swollen lung, the fire-singed phoenix feather. The unicorn, the dragonflies who were Dian’s friends, caught in the jars.

Moth’s many eyes gleamed at Dian’s neck.

‘No,’ Frida choked, sagging. They couldn’t leave, of course they couldn’t.

Dian made a low noise in the back of their throat, a sort of half desperate laugh, half curse, and half something else entirely. ‘No,’ they affirmed helplessly.

So they continued, down another corridor, their entwined hands so slippery Frida was scared she’d lose her grip. Thankfully it was quieter on this side of the house. There were servants though, here and there, and every time they passed one, walking with their head down to stoke a fire, or check on the lamps, Frida thought she’d have a coronary. But somehow, Dian kept them safe. Without Dian, Frida wasn’t sure what she would have done. She could still hear the piano music floating down the corridors and the faint sound of laughter, the tinkle of glassware, but it was distant, rising in and out like a tide.

Finally, they stood outside a large, opulent room, which Frida remembered in her bones, and she felt everything inside her go silent.

Chapter Forty-One

Frida remembered the embroidered chairs, the drawing table along the western wall. The marble fireplace, now crackling with a warm fire despite the summer heat. The shelves of leather books. The pianoforte. Even down to the easel propped in one corner.

She’d dreamed of this room.

‘The sisters’ drawing room,’ she said softly, under her breath.

Dian jerked their head towards her.

But she was already moving in a daze, forcing Dian to follow her. The curtains on the tall windows hadn’t been closed yet. The servant’s wing below them, they were on the ground floor here, and through the windows she could just make out the sheen of the serpentine lake, the water glimmering in the stark moonlight. Were the kelpies swimming in that lake, at this very moment?

‘Look,’ Dian said hoarsely, lifting their conjoined hands to point.

She thought for a moment they were gesturing towards the lake, towards perhaps the sudden splash of a kelpie’s tail. But no. Dian had turned towards the left-hand wall. Frida dragged her eyes away from the windows and followed their gaze, landing on a ginormous floor to ceiling tapestry. She cocked her head, frowning. She didn’t remember seeing this last time she’d been here. It was an opulent work of art, and she wondered if the sisters had made it themselves. Across the entire wall, embroidered kelpies rose out of cerulean waters. They had coppery manes made of seaweed and hooves of snowy white spindrift. But as she looked, and the details became clearer, bile began to rise. Each of the exquisitely detailed water horses were not free, as they should have been. They had harnesses around their necks, and bits in their seafoam mouths. Frida didn’t realise her free hand was over her mouth as she let out a gasp. The largest kelpie, a roan stallion at the centre of the design, had a spear protruding from his speckled side, dripping rusty blood in a pool on the embroidered waves.

How could the sisters, who she knew so intimately and brightly in her imagination, and who’d loved kelpies so much, have looked at a tapestry like this every day?

‘It’s horrible,’ Moth tinkled, in revolted fascination.

Frida agreed. It was horrible. She’d been planning to wait in here, hoping that this was where one or more of the sisters might come when dinner was over. That’s what women did, right, whilst the men played cards and drank port in the smoking room. But at the sight of that tapestry, suddenly it felt as if her head was ringing, and the idea of waiting in this beloved room made her knees quake. Barely waiting for Dian, she fled, tugging them out of the room and back down the corridor. The raindrops tumbled around them as they went left, right. Left again, another right. The sound of the piano rose and fell. Somewhere, she heard Moth and Dian speaking in lowered voices, whispering in concern, but she couldn’t hear what they said through the ringing in her ears.

Finally, she came to another doorway, this one closed, a great towering wall of dark ebony looming before her. She could barely hear for the pounding in her chest. Dian reached out and touched the wood with one finger, before drawing back.

‘What is this room?’

She let out a shaky breath. ‘It’s Sir Joshua’s study.’

When they furrowed their brow, she clarified, ‘The person who owns this house.’

Dian’s face twisted. ‘The person responsible for that laboratory.’

‘No!’ Frida exclaimed. ‘No. I don’t think – that is . . . That is a different person.’

Dian looked sceptical.

‘Sir Joshua would never . . .’ Then she bit her lip, closing her eyes. ‘At least,’ she said weakly. ‘I don’t think so. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.’

She was certain Dian could hear her heart thundering. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she quickly looked down the length of the hallway. It was quiet, for now. She knew a servant could appear at any moment, but her need to see this door, outside of Dian’s magic, was greater than caution. She wanted to touch it, to feel the sturdy woodgrain under her fingertips.

Trying to keep her voice steady, she said, ‘I think you can let the raindrops go.’

Dian looked aghast. ‘What?’

‘I – yeah. I think it’s ok.’ She shrugged, trying to keep it light. ‘I’m sure you’d like a break, anyway.’ Pointedly, she raised their conjoined hands and gave an embarrassed laugh. She was very aware that her palm was clammy with sweat, and theirs was ice cold. Dian’s gaze jumped between her face, their hands, and back down the way they’d come. They were on their own here, no other rooms on this small stretch of corridor.

Dian still hesitated. Their eyes were clouded when they eventually slipped their hand from hers. Frida braced herself for it, but the loss was even sharper than she’d expected. When the raindrops left her, it was like stepping out of a cool shower, the colours of the real world coming back like a gut punch. Every line was harsher, the corners crueller, the air infinitely thicker and muggier. If she’d felt claustrophobic before, this was a hundred times worse. She stumbled a bit, no longer able to feel Dian’s heartbeat snuggled safely alongside her own. She flexed her hand, feeling the ghost of their palm, the press of their calluses no longer. The carpet beneath her boots, which she’d previously thought had been burgundy like aged wine, was blood red.

But the door.

The door, Frida.

With wide eyes, she gazed before her.

It was the door to the New Library. Exactly as she remembered. She caught her breath to see those familiar dancing unicorns carved into the gleaming ebony. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but somehow, as she pressed a desperate hand to the very real, very solid wood, she felt her own solidity coming back. Within this absolute clusterfuck, here was something she knew, something from her own past, her own home. Here was something her mum had touched. Forgetting Dian was there for a moment, she traced the unicorns with trembling fingertips. In the Forge House of the twenty-first century, this door was a cheap copy, the unicorns’ dance flat. She remembered the plaque next to it, like it was yesterday: The door to the study of Joshua Beaufort, 3rd Earl of Marlow, is one of the most important artifacts from Forge House. In 1924, it was relocated to the new location of the London Extraordinary Zoo, and now adorns the building of the New Library, the renowned home of many of the Beaufort family’s extensive scholarship on extraordinary creatures. The unicorns engraved on this door were the inspiration for the London Extraordinary Zoo’s famous logo, the Leaping Unicorn.

How many times had she pushed open this self-same door, pressed her fingers against these same unicorns, with the sound of the kraken’s whistling in her ears and heady salt spray in her nose? She closed her eyes. Scouring the wood, she reached reflexively for her mum’s favourite unicorn. The one in the bottom right corner who, by a casual flick of the carver’s tool, might have been grimacing or might have been laughing. Finding it with her fingertips, she sucked in a helpless sob. Then her hand moved over her chest, where the Leaping Unicorn was emblazoned, to where – on her forearm – her mum’s unicorn was tattooed.

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, and she was all at once very aware of Dian again, barely a few steps behind her. She pulled away from the door quickly, but perhaps it was too quick, for she didn’t miss the wary expression on their face, the way their jaw had tightened immeasurably. She tried to cover the logo on her chest, to double check that there was still enough dried mud slathered over her that they couldn’t see it, or at least, not enough to make the connection. She was relieved too for her long sleeves, which covered That Tattoo.

She flushed and all of a sudden, couldn’t bring herself to look at Dian.

‘Let’s go inside,’ she said abruptly.

At her tone, they frowned.

They know, she thought as she eased open the study door as quietly as possible. They know. This should have been a pink flamingo moment, going inside Sir Joshua’s actual study, but instead all she could think was: did they know? Had Dian, by miracle of deduction, just figured out that she’d been lying to them? Or at the very least, not telling them the truth. Her boots felt slippery, as if she might lose her footing at any moment and tentacles seemed to crawl up her throat. She flexed her hand, empty, at her side, reaching out helplessly to touch the ornate green and gold panelling on the walls. As much time as she’d spent imagining herself sketching with Hannah, reading books with Jane, and gossiping with Georgiana, she’d spent more time imagining herself here, as Sir Joshua’s trusted confidant, planning rescue missions to Papua New Guinea, Kenya, China, Argentina. The study was just as she’d pictured it, but now a roasting fire crackled in the grate, making her tug nervously at her collar, and there was a fairy in the room with her, rather than the magnetic auburn-haired Sir Joshua.

She watched Dian, turned away from her, staring at the tall rows of bookshelves, the oil paintings in their ornate frames. George Stubbs’ Unicorn in the Woods was particularly famous. Frida knew it was worth a fortune, not that the others would have fetched less. Turner, Holbein, Poussin, Blake, Reynolds, Fuseli . . . most were personally commissioned, and all were of extraordinary creatures of some ilk. Shadows flickered across Dian’s statuesque form, their hoary cobwebs limned with gold from the fire, and their green hair looked almost autumnal. A painting incarnate. For some reason, she stiffened at the thought.

She moved across the room, running her fingers across the ancient leather top of the desk and staring at the windows behind. They looked east, towards the gardens where many of the ECs had been housed, but floor-to-ceiling curtains were pulled against the night, a lush oak-green velvet which matched the livery of the servants, and the colours of the Beaufort coat of arms. Beneath her boots, wooden floorboards were polished within an inch of their lives, covered with thick carpets. She hadn’t been able to stand on them a decade ago, they’d been roped off. She’d thought they were beautiful when she’d been fourteen. Now she didn’t want to tread on them, and she wondered if they’d been shipped here by the East India Company. She wished, in her time, the National Trust would send them back to wherever they’d come from.

She glanced again at Dian, their cobwebs flickering softly, highlighting the dips and curves of their body in the blazing light of the fire. Against their thousand greens, the oak-green of the curtains looked washed out and plain. They were moving along the wall of bookshelves, absently touching the soft, downy hair around their ears where it had been shaved. She wondered how many of these books had ended up in her version of the library. She wondered if Botherington’s awful book with the knight on the cover was here. She prayed it wasn’t. It was all she could do to watch Dian trail their fingers over the books, her heart aching with the sense that, in less than a few minutes, she’d ruined everything. She’d told them to drop their magic, and they’d done it. Now the intimacy between them had evaporated, and she didn’t know how to call it back. She looked down uncomprehendingly at the hand Dian had been holding and wondered if they’d been counting the seconds until they could let her go, after all.

On a side table next to her, there was an open leatherbound book, as if someone had left it there to come back to. She ran her eyes over the other items placed neatly along the mantle. A silver engraved box, a carved jade statue of a voluptuous woman. A mounted stone spearhead, a ceremonial clay pot. On one wall, she stopped short at the sight of a cloak made of bird feathers, scarlet, sky blue and the green of sunlight through trees. Like Dian’s bright hair, the colours looked out of place here. As a child, Sir Joshua had gone to Brazil with his father. She wondered if this cloak was a remembrance of that trip.

When she snuck a look back at Dian, she found them seated on the edge of a velvet armchair. A fairy in Sir Joshua’s armchair. She might have cracked a joke about it, if she’d known how. Dian was staring into the crackling fire, their eyes liquid black. Unreadable. She gazed up at the wall again. Next to the feathered cloak, above the desk, there was an illustrated map. She didn’t look at it though. She was too tired. Hesitating just for a moment, she pulled out the chair behind the desk and sat down with a thud. This, too, had been roped off. Now it wasn’t, and she ran her hands over the carved armrests, the same dark ebony, imagining that Sir Joshua might have sat in this very seat, mere hours ago. She stared at the well-scuffed leather on the desktop. Deep oak-green of course, to match everything else. Sir Joshua had style. A neat stack of papers sat on the left-hand side of the desk.

‘Is there magic in that?’

Frida’s head snapped up as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t, but Dian wasn’t looking at her. Their face was tilted upwards, the graceful line of their throat exposed as they stared at George Stubb’s painting above the fire.

‘Magic?’ Frida asked nervously.

Dian inclined their chin.

She, also, gazed at The Unicorn in the Woods.

George Stubb’s unicorn was alone in a willow grove. A male with a lavender sheen across his hooves stood amongst the trees with his head down, as if he’d galloped himself to exhaustion to get there. Whether chasing something, or being chased, it was unclear since there was no one else in the painting with him. Just the unicorn and the willows. In the LEZ, Issy had willow trees in her enclosure and Frida suddenly wondered if this was the reason why. She’d always thought it was because they looked pretty, but that was silly, wasn’t it? Everything Management did was for a reason. Maybe they’d wanted people to connect Issy with this painting. For some reason, this filled her with disquiet.

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘There’s no magic. Just art.’

Dian nodded, but it was clear they didn’t believe her.

She sank down deeper into Sir Joshua’s chair and wondered where he was. America. Japan. Sumatra. Downstairs. She didn’t know which she hoped for, anymore. The flicking firelight cast eery shadows over the painting. What was the definition of magic, anyway? In her time, people didn’t even say the word. Why though? Because they were jealous of it? Because they were ashamed that they’d wiped it all out? Because they were afraid?

‘It’s a painting of the unicorn from the garden, isn’t it?’ Her voice was flat from holding everything inside, her emotions and magic on lockdown. ‘Before . . .’ She trailed off. Before his horn was stolen. Dian gave another nod, and she ran her fingers through her hair, her rosewood box scarily close to cracking. Everyone had always wondered how Stubbs had managed to make his stallion so realistic. The tour guide had said he’d just used a male horse.

Why hadn’t anyone known there’d been a male unicorn here? Particularly as this painting was heralded as a masterpiece, the unicorn representing the very spirit of freedom. Maybe there was magic in it, she thought, with a sudden raging fury. It certainly seemed like a spell to capture someone’s soul so thoroughly in paint and leave it trapped forever in a golden frame. ‘I could never understand why he looked so sad,’ she finally bit out, choking on the words. This painting was the biggest lie of all. ‘I get it now.’

‘He is heartbroken.’ Dian’s voice cracked.

Suddenly she wanted to throw the painting in the fire. Instead, she hastily leafed through the stack of papers in front of her to distract herself. They were in here to try and find some answers to the wards, some answers to the Jewel, anyway. What better place to start? It gave her something to do with her hands, too, which were trembling traitorously, and her head wouldn’t stop spinning. There was a grandfather clock in the corner, and the slow ticking of the hands was hypnotic, a terrible reminder of the ticking clock in her own library. Moth was so quiet, she wondered if he was asleep, or hiding.

She focused on the words written on the ivory paper. Picking one up, she ran her fingers over the surface. It felt so different to modern paper. More like cloth, the weight infinitely heavier. Black pen strokes, a measured, neat hand flowing in tight lines. Sir Joshua’s, she realised, a spark of her old excitement rearing back up. Pulling the sheet closer, her eyes moved back and forth over the words. Although each letter looked as if it had been placed with infinite care, she struggled to make sense of any of it. As if the letters danced before her, taunting her.

She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms and tried again. She could smell the faint scent of sandalwood, hear the popping of the fire.

The 25th day of July, 1837.

She stared.

The date, the top line of a letter.

Suddenly, the fog in her head cleared. It wasn’t 1837. It couldn’t be. Her grip on her magic slipped a bit in her shock. Somewhere, a moth was circling one of the oil lamps in a gleeful spellbinding panic, a mouse instructing another mouse where to find food, and in the fire, an insect gave a shriek and then died.

She stared at the date. If this was right, and she hadn’t misremembered the history, then the terracotta dragon hadn’t been here for a day or two. Not a week, not even a month. She’d been here two years. Unable to believe it, thinking she must have made a mistake, she scoured the rest of the desk, finding other papers bearing dates from the summer of 1837.

She sounded out a single word, low at the back of her throat. ‘Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.’

Her eyes returned to the first paper.

Dearest Horatio,

Her breath caught as she dropped the page, guiltily shoving it back on top of the pile. Horatio Denver. Joshua’s childhood friend. Renowned trader, disgraced portrait-holder, and slave owner. Most of Lord Denver’s money had been made from sugar plantations in Jamaica. Antony’s great-great-great grandparents had been enslaved in Jamaica.

She’d asked him once what he would have done if Denver’s portrait had still been up in the Extraordinary Café. Whether he would have still wanted to work at the LEZ. He’d just looked at her and asked what she would have done. It had taken her a few beats before Hamish had cut in, and answered solemnly, We’d have drawn a penis on Denver’s face and covered him in Extra Strange Sauce, before throwing him in the bin, obviously. She wished she hadn’t taken those few beats. Especially now, sitting at this desk.

Dearest Horatio.

Suddenly she couldn’t hear the grandfather clock, or the crackling of the fire.

I write in haste for I have much to update you on, but the Board, our dear friends, are on their way here for dinner.

She stifled a gasp and couldn’t stop her eyes from darting to the heavy door, knowing that just on the other side, there were still the faint sounds of laughter and the soft notes of piano keys and violins. Was it possible he’d written this today, barely a few hours ago? If this was 1837, this was after Sir Joshua and Lord Denver had argued famously in parliament. How could Sir Joshua still be friends with this arsehole?!

You enquired after my sisters, and I am pleased to report they are all in fine fettle. Dahlia, as ever, sends her most ardent affections and asks after you tenderly. Jane devotes herself to the pianoforte, and Hannah continues to paint. Sadly, she still shows little inclination for subjects beyond peonies, despite my gentle urgings, but what more can one reasonably expect?

Frida bristled. What the hell did he mean by that? Because she was a woman?

She begs that, upon your next return, you might bring with you some specimens of exotic fauna as yet unseen on these shores. I fear, despite all I endeavour to provide for my sisters, they are dreadfully bored. ‘How appalling!’ I hear you cry. Yes – what terribly spoiled creatures they are.

Frida blinked. Reading that sentence again.

You smile – I know you do. Nothing so enlivens you as the plight of my long-suffering family. But now, to business Sir. I must apprise you of our latest discovery here within the walls of Forge House. You will recall, I trust, my many trials with that cursed dragon we brought here – what, nigh on two years past?

Frida found the words starting to swim before her.

It still whimpers day and night, driving us all to distraction. I truly know not what I shall do with it if there is no improvement soon. I cannot keep the house shuttered much longer – the Ton are positively clamouring at my gates, all but begging to part with their coin.

Her heart now, it was all she could hear.

A cavern was opening below her feet.

The paper shook in her hand.

‘Frida?’ she heard from somewhere across the room.

She didn’t respond, the letter now in a death grip in her fingers.

I believe I have it at last, though! Henry – that scruffy old genius – has come through at the final hour, just as I was considering throwing him to Jane’s cursed seahorse. We have found a new method of containing our beasts, dearest Horatio, and I daresay it shall leave you astonished. As for those blasted artifacts – well, if fortune favours us, we will have no need of them at all in a few years’ time.

I shall tell you more when next we meet, and I must say, I enjoy imagining your expression of wonder, and hope I have stoked the fires of your curiosity.

God keep you safe.

Your devoted friend,

Joshua.

Frida stood up all in a rush. The letter dropped to the floor, and she shook out her hand as if the words had burned the skin off her fingers. Then she thrust back the chair, not even hearing when it fell with a mighty crash. Her brain was working a mile a minute, trying to catch up. The words seemed stamped in her mind, and she wanted to scrub them out, but she didn’t know how. Fury. Betrayal. Guilt. All these things raged through her, on Antony’s behalf, on her own, on her mum’s, on everyone’s who’d ever put their lives and faith in the hands of these men. She felt her bile rising and clamped her lips shut.

‘Frida?’ Dian repeated, standing up now from their chair. This time, she heard them clearly. They’d come closer without her noticing and were almost at the desk. ‘What’s wrong?’

She swayed. Suddenly she was peering at the map on the wall, the one she hadn’t even bothered to look at. It was a map of Brazil. The country Sir Joshua had visited as a child, and where he’d fallen in love with extraordinary creatures. But now as she looked at the map, all she saw were marked lines – divisions showing different territories. Gold mining, railways, engineering, water and gas pipelines.

‘I was wrong,’ she said hoarsely. ‘We have to leave.’

She’d been so blinded by all the ‘good’ Sir Joshua had done, by the fact that she’d wanted – so deeply – for him to be good. For the LEZ to be good.

Dian frowned. Their eyes flicked to the map. ‘Why? What’s happened? I thought—’

‘I was wrong! I . . . I thought it was just Henry, but it’s not. We have to – I don’t know!’ She was pacing back and forth, pulling at her ragged hair. She must have looked a state. ‘We have to go. Maybe we should go back to the Old Forge and look again to find a way to turn off the wards from in there. Or maybe we should go back to the fairies! Maybe they’ll be able to help. Or maybe we should try and speak to the sisters. I don’t know!’

Her brain was pounding as if it was being stabbed by Sir Joshua’s silver letter opener. Suddenly, everything was spiralling. Everything she’d believed, everything they’d all believed, everything they’d built their lives on. Frantically, she pulled at the curtains, dragging them open. They were still on the ground floor, and the dark night loomed before her, warm light spilling out over the grass. The gardens stretched away, a line of trees just visible in the distance behind the panes. Desperately, she started fumbling with the catches on the windows. Dian, wordless, came to stand next to her. Just as she’d managed to get the closest window open, the summer breeze washed over her, smelling of cut grass and the faint tang of tobacco smoke. Dian placed a hand on hers, and Frida winced.

‘Don’t,’ she cried, hating herself.

Dian flinched back, their eyes shuttering, but Moth had already jumped onto the window, and his row of dark eyes looked back at her like jewels, dancing with tongues of flame. ‘What did you learn? Tell us, please!’

She didn’t have a chance.

Suddenly, a face appeared at the window. Pale, with a shock of blond hair over a thin face, attached to a thick neck, and a body that was a wall of wiry muscle. She sucked in a terrified breath, and saw his eyes, reflected like Moth’s in the firelight. Small and grey, as if they’d been stripped of all colour.

‘There you are,’ the man said companionably. As if they were old friends.

His dour voice skated over her bones, and before she really even knew what had happened, he’d leant through the open window, grabbed the back of her head, and smashed her skull into the leaded pane. She didn’t hear the glass shattering. She didn’t have time to scream at Dian to flee, before the pain burst through her head, blooming like white stars, and she collapsed senseless to the floor.

Chapter Forty-Two

‘Move over, Charles, let me see it.’

Frida moaned.

‘Come come, hurry. What does the meter say?’

‘High, Sir. There’s extraordinary in it, I’m certain of it.’

She fought the darkness.

Someone was close to her. Their breath smelled of champagne and cigars. Something perfumed. Sandalwood and citrus. Their salty skin was warm as they touched her face. She tried to fight them, but they held her head like a vice. She couldn’t open her eyes. Panic rose and broke, waves against the rocks. Somewhere she heard the low concerned voice of someone else, a cat perhaps, a dry whiskery whisper, and she wanted to cry out to them, beg them to help her. But then they faded again, smoke on the breeze, and she could have wept.

‘Would you hazard a guess as to what species it is?’ The voice was deep, smooth and melodic, pouring out like aged whiskey.

‘I couldn’t say.’ Tobacco and sweat. She knew that smell, registering with visceral fear. Knew the voice too, dry as sandpaper. But even though she flinched away, she was more afraid of the other voice. With its melodic sureness, it made her skin crawl.

‘Some kind of demon, I would hazard.’

‘Oh yes. On the surface it looks like a girl, but that’s a trick, I think. See the way it glows?’

‘Yes, Charles. Yes indeed. We must be careful.’

The man who’d cracked her skull open, the wiry muscular man from the Forge, was called Charles then. She didn’t know who the other person was though.

‘Look at these inkings.’ Somewhere, at a great distance, she felt her left arm being lifted. She wanted to howl. ‘Never seen anything like it. It looks like one of those savages.’

‘It does. A real barbarian.’ The melodic voice paused. There was a steady tapping, like fingers drumming on wood. ‘I wonder if there’s power in those tattoos, if that’s what they are. I must look it up, mayhap someone has written about such a phenomenon. I’ve never heard of it myself though. In time, we might want to take some of these off to give to Henry to study. Then we’d be able to see how much extraordinary they contain.’

‘No!’ Frida managed to cry, forcing the word through her gummy lips. ‘No,’ she mumbled desperately. ‘No.’

‘It speaks, Charles!’

‘Yes, I did warn you.’

‘Most fascinating!’ The musical voice turned serious. ‘A demon indeed. What more has it said?’

‘Not much. I thought it could be another fairy in disguise at first, but I’ve never heard of a fairy speaking in plain English. Have you, Sir?’

Another fairy. Oh god. Another fairy. Had they found Dian?

‘No, indeed I have not heard of such a thing.’

‘Gives me the fear. Not like one of those other dumb beasts . . .’

She writhed at her invisible binds, but the darkness was sweeping her away again, and although she tried to fight it, screaming over and over in her head for them to let her go, when she woke up again, they were gone.

Everything was silent and for a long while she just lay curled in a ball, the ground cold beneath her. Everything hurt, not just her head. Her head was the worst. This made the headache she’d had back in the LEZ look like a walk in the park. Spikes were drilling into her skull, over and over, and for a time she just whimpered, her head cradled in her hands.

Breathe, Friduska, her mum’s voice seemed to say, from a long distance. Breathe.

She breathed.

Eventually, she was able to open her eyes and raise her head enough to look around.

She was in a cage.

Dian and Moth weren’t here and everything had a faint shine to it, a steely sheen that she recognised. The shine came from the metal bars, and from her. Just like those jars in the Old Forge. When she put her hand out, experimentally reaching towards the iron, she hissed and pulled back sharply. It felt like she’d just put her hand in flames.

She was in a warded cage.

And then the memory of those voices came back to her, and in a fog of panic, she started touching her arms, her legs, checking that they hadn’t taken her tattoos from her. Then – Dian. Dian and Moth. When she started to think about them, possibly also in a cage somewhere, she began to hyperventilate. The panic grew and grew like a kettle whistling on the hob, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

‘No,’ she hissed out through gritted teeth.

With a colossal effort, she wrestled her breathing under control.

Lowered her quaking hands from her ears.

No. Dian must have escaped. That was the only outcome she could consider. Dian and Moth escaped, and they’d gone back to the woods. Anything else was too awful. They had to have gone back to the woods, to find the others.

And left her.

A voice in her head laughed bitterly.

Well, she thought, swallowing the hollow hole inside her. That was well and good. She deserved nothing less. Dian should have left her. Maybe they were talking to Lucky and the other fairies. Or maybe they’d gone back home to their hawthorn tree, in the groves of hangferns, never to spare her another thought.

She clutched her head. Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up! She twisted to sit up, but the moment her head came too near to the bars, she keened through her teeth, the pain flooring her. Unable to do anything else, she rolled herself into as small a ball as possible, her head against her knees, her arms around her legs. A metal mug had been placed beside her. Glancing inside, she saw it contained water. Suddenly, her throat roared with thirst, and she’d drained it in two gulps before she considered that it might be poisoned. With a cry, she threw the mug clattering aside and lay, shivering and dazed, in the centre of the small cage, careful to keep every part of herself from brushing against the bars. It wasn’t easy: the cage was tiny. She might have been able to stand up, but barely. She had about six feet grace, she guessed, and no more.

She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to think. She knew she hadn’t used the toilet in far too long and that glass of water was now at risk of unbalancing a carefully poised situation. Trying to cool the panic spiralling up and up and up, she touched her head gently. When she looked at her hand, she was surprised that it came back clean. She’d thought that the man must have smashed her skull open. Maybe he had done, but they’d cleaned her up while she’d been unconscious. She shuddered at the thought of their hands on her; at what they’d threatened to do to her. At what they’d called her.

Demon.

Anything to avoid her thoughts spiralling, she studied the cage. There was a warded gate in front of her, but it was locked. Even if she knew how to jimmy it open, she couldn’t touch the bars, let alone sustain enough contact to fumble at the no-nonsense padlock. Beyond the bars, everything was dark and muffled, like they’d covered the cage with a cloth. Within, that cold steely light seemed to ooze off the bars, and off her own skin, making her want to claw at her own body parts to get rid of it. The hue brought to mind the LEZ’s fake moonlight. The colour just designed to look like the very essence of extraordinary.

Breathing felt difficult. The low background hum she’d become so expert at tuning out – gone. When she tentatively reached her magic out, there were no eager dogs hunting for scraps, no droll cantankerous cats under chairs, no adventuring earwigs in the floorboards. No rats composing poetry. No mice with electric tingles in their whiskers. No owls speaking to the moon. No worms burrowing for darkness. Nothing. And though she had tried so hard not to listen to them, now their silence felt like the loss of a limb.

If Dian and Moth were on the other side of these bars, she realised she wouldn’t be able to hear them either. Just like the terracotta dragon had not been able to hear her. Her mouth went dry. This was it, then. This was the reality of all these animals that she’d called her friends, that she’d had tattooed all over her body, without even asking them if they minded.

The crushing silence of a magicless world.

But – as if through a long dull tunnel – she heard human voices.

She realised this with dawning fear as she strained her ears.

Quiet, but not too far away. The cold steely light made everything disorientating, but as her eyes adjusted, she saw something flickering through the cloth, like nearby candlelight. She pulled her knees in tighter.

‘ . . . Getting tired of this performance, my dear. Come now. Show us what you have.’

Frida fought down a whimper. A male voice. Booming and slurred.

A woman’s voice replied, tinkling with merriment. ‘Yes, dear brother. Come along! Arabella is keen to go to sleep already. It is late and we are all tired. You have fed us half to bursting, now stop being so dramatic and show us your prize.’ A burst of laughter followed, making Frida shrink back so far, she almost hit the bars. But when the next voice cut through, her breath squeezed out of her chest as if she’d been kicked.

‘Ah, dearest.’ The voice pooled like aged whisky. Melodic and smooth. ‘You say you are fit to bursting, sister, but you seem perfectly content to continue eating these little cakes, do you not?’

There was another hearty round of laughter.

Frida started to shake. This couldn’t be real. But she pictured him sitting at ease at his desk chair, writing letters to his childhood friend. Smoothing a stray auburn lock back from his high forehead, studying the map on the wall, twirling the jade statue of the woman in his sure hands. And her scaffold of reality as she knew it, which had been hanging by a thread as it was, came down at last, and the pieces broke into smithereens.

‘You are quite right, brother, however you mock me.’ Whichever of Joshua’s sisters this was, her voice sounded amused, as if she never quite stopped laughing. ‘These cakes are a delight. I shall congratulate Mrs Evans myself in the morning. But come now! We are on the edge of our seats. Will you tell us what it is you are hiding? Lest we wither away, and you find yourself speaking to a room full of corpses.’

‘Ah, my dear Georgiana, I hardly think there is any risk of you withering away.’

Frida swayed. This was a waking nightmare. Designed especially for her.

‘But I suppose you are correct.’ Sir Joshua’s whiskey voice – she knew it was him now, knew it was him who’d threatened to take her tattoos – dripped though her skull. The famous, auburn-haired animal-rights activist, whose portrait she’d kowtowed to every day of her tenure as a zookeeper. He’d put her in a cage. An actual cage! There was a clink, perhaps of a glass being put down, and the muffled sound of deliberate footsteps coming closer. Frida shook so violently, her teeth were chattering.

Sir Joshua said softly, too close for comfort, ‘You are all well aware of how tirelessly some amongst us have laboured in pursuit of the grand ambitions of Forge House.’

She wanted to cover her ears, and yet she couldn’t help tilting her head, compelled to listen.

‘Well, the rumours are true. With the diligent work of our dear friend – and I daresay, our very saviour – Mr Henry Gladstone. A round of applause, if you please.’ There was a pause for hearty clapping, and a few amiable hear hears and huzzahs.

‘Now I charge you to recall how seized we were with excitement two summers past, when at last we laid our hands on the most extraordinary prize – the holy grail of magical law, the famed dragon’s Jewel. It took a lot of work, and blood, and tears, and Mr Caval and I travelled long distances to find the dragon in its lair, but eventually, the endeavour was a success, despite all the odds against us.’

It was quite possible Frida’s heart stopped beating. Sir Joshua. It had been Sir Joshua who’d found the terracotta dragon. Sir Joshua who’d taken her. Not rescued. Taken.

‘And though we have succeeded in powering our cages with this Jewel for over a year – thanks be to God – it remains, I confess, a far from perfect system.’

Frida didn’t dare breathe lest she miss a single word. Her brain felt like it was fracturing.

‘You’ve all heard me speak on this at length, so I shan’t weary you with it now. But truth be told, I dislike relying so heavily upon a thing we scarcely comprehend. I know you are all of the same mind.’

Mutters of agreement rose from behind the cloth. Frida ached for them to tear it away and was simultaneously paralysed by fear that they might do that very thing. She pressed her hand to her heart, her fingers digging into her chest bone. Not rescued, taken. The words went over and over in her mind. The steely light clung to her like molasses. She could barely feel her magic inside her, and yet at the same time, she could feel it raging. They had the Jewel. These people had the terracotta dragon’s Jewel. And they were using it, like . . . like . . . coal. A power source. She’d figured that out in the laboratory, but what about the other objects? What were their purposes?

She didn’t have to wait long. Within seconds, Sir Joshua had answered her.

‘The day may come when the power of this gemstone fails, just as it did with the weaker artifacts. As you know, they are withering daily. They are useless to us now and soon won’t have the strength to power anything larger than an apple! So, pray, what will we do when this happens to the Jewel? What would become of this wondrous place should our dragon perish?’

Gasps rippled, Frida’s amongst them. She smothered it with her hand.

‘I know such a thought is shocking, dears, but the truth is plain: in this matter, we are in the dark. We have relied too heavily on power we do not understand. Moreover, we remain cloaked in secrecy, for there are those, as you well know, who would seek to undo our work, or steal these rare prizes from beneath our noses.

‘But now, friends, sisters, esteemed colleagues, it is my singular pride and honour to declare that we have moved beyond such perils. This day, we step boldly into a new world. Through our experiments upon the artifacts, we have arrived at a moment of true revelation – a marvel of science, of ingenuity, of perseverance! We have accomplished what, but five years past, would have been thought madness: a method to house these most extraordinary and excellent of creatures – so dear to all our hearts –’

‘And purses,’ someone bellowed.

Sir Joshua chuckled amiably, and Frida thought she would vomit, ‘Yes, Mr Caval . . .’

Mr Caval. He was here then, too. All the LEZites. They were all witnessing this.

‘And purses too, by God,’ Sir Joshua continued. ‘Tonight, we celebrate. Mr Gladstone and I have found a way to house all our interests, in a manner befitting the wealth of our human intelligence. These new cages are secure, cost-effective, and – of the utmost importance – sparing of resources. They will change the world. Indeed, when the beasts and demons threaten to overrun us, they might be the very thing to save us.’

He paused to collect the awed hush that rippled around the room.

Then Sir Joshua said, so softly that his voice poured through her like the very finest whiskey, ‘Will you see, dear ones?’

Chapter Forty-Three

As much as she braced herself for it, when the cloth was ripped off her prison, she still wasn’t expecting it. Maybe she could never have fully been braced for such a thing.

The world spiralled back in, blinding her for a stricken heartbeat. Golden light flared at the corners of her vision. There were gasps and cries of astonishment.

‘But that’s a human, Joshua!’

‘Is it . . . is that . . .’

‘What is it?’

Frida lifted her eyes and found herself staring at Sir Joshua Beaufort, the 3rd Earl of Marlow. His smiling, handsome face, just like in the portraits. Not only in the Ground Control kitchen, but in the Extraordinary Café, in the New Library, at the entrance gates. There was that auburn hair, curling in waves around his tanned face, the spattering of freckles across his straight, well-defined nose. Eyes the colour of deep chestnut.

There were others too that she knew she’d recognise if she dared look. Women in silken gowns, glittering and bejewelled. Men with moustaches, fine black coats and starched cravats. Green liveried servants whisking away the heavy piece of cloth that had kept her hidden. She’d imagined the servants would have been banished for such an event. But no, they saw it too. Frida felt her heart shattering into a thousand pieces, crushed beneath her hero’s immaculate boot. It was as if all her life, everything that she’d ever believed, flared before her in bright HD technicolour. All the infinite ways she’d loved the LEZ. Her church. Her safe place. Her home.

‘How can you do this?’ she whispered.

This, of course, drew more gasps.

‘It speaks!’

One of the sisters touched Sir Joshua’s arm, her dark ringlets framing her delicate, intelligent face. Her dress was blue as forget-me-nots, a match to her eyes. It was Jane. Jane. Jane who’d called her kelpie Sappho. Jane who would have been Frida’s friend. ‘You think it is a demon?’ she asked curiously.

‘Yes!’ Sir Joshua cried, picking Jane up and spinning her around in his delight. ‘Yes, you are quite correct, dearest. Always the smart one. A demon indeed.’ When Joshua set Jane down, the sister Frida had idolised gave a low, wondering laugh.

Frida’s body sagged.

Another of the sisters drew closer, her dress green as oak groves. Eleanor, Frida knew by her button nose and light gold streaks in her reddish hair. ‘Are you not mistaken, dear brother?’ she asked, furrowing her burnished brows. ‘It looks very human, if not for the way it glows and those . . .’ She shuddered. ‘Those tattoos.’

‘And its eyes,’ Jane added shrewdly.

Joshua nodded. He patted Eleanor’s hand. ‘Jane is right. It is not human. Power consumes it. See how it shrinks from the bars, which a human may touch with no effect?’ To demonstrate, he wrapped a strong hand around the gate, his proximity making Frida flinch. He smiled. ‘You see?’

In the corner, another of the sisters had collapsed into an armchair and was in the process of being fanned by one of the servants. But at Sir Joshua’s words, she pushed the servant away with a squeal and skipped forwards. Wild red curls. Famous rosebud lips. Frida almost laughed out loud. However much she willed herself to stop shaking, her teeth would not stop rattling in her skull. Georgiana pushed past her sisters and the circle of leering men. She had a cake clasped in one hand, and with the other she brushed a fingertip along the bars, making an affected oohing sound. Without thinking, Frida lurched forwards and gnashed her teeth, coming as close as she dared to Georgiana’s pale fingers.

The woman shrieked with delight.

Someone else, Hannah – Frida guessed by the soft hazel of her eyes – also squealed, but with fear. ‘Step back, dear, please!’ Hannah begged her younger sister.

Joshua’s smile stretched wider. Frida regretted her display, but she longed to wrap her fingers around his smiling neck. The men had crowded back around and were pointing at her like she was a circus tiger. Even in her despair, she could acknowledge the irony.

‘It is time, Mr Gladstone!’ Joshua cried. ‘You must explain your genius!’

Frida’s head jerked, frantically twisting to try and see the man to whom she owed this nightmare. The slippery, oily genius. She scanned all the faces of the LEZites, recognising each one. Laurence Harding, notebook in hand, sandy blond hair swept back to reveal striking blue eyes, passionately scribbling. God – if she ended up in one of his poems . . . Edward Caval, near popping out of his waistcoat, face red as a tomato as he quaffed from a crystal-cut glass of what looked like brandy. James Gaunt, tall and spindly as a rake. William Cliff, the spy, with floppy jowls and a receding hairline.

No Charles, she noted. But then, she’d never heard of a Charles on the LEZ’s board. Clearly his talents pertained to other things.

She couldn’t see Henry Gladstone either. That is until William Cliff stepped aside, and then there he was, unfolding himself from a chair by the fireplace. Ink-stained fingers smoothing down his scruffy black jacket.

‘Yes, of course Mr Beaufort,’ the man said meekly. His voice was barely audible. A thin croaky thing. As he moved towards the cage, Frida did a double take. This was not the Henry Gladstone that she’d imagined, the charismatic, slick, royalty-adjacent genius. This man had a food stain on his shirt that he was awkwardly trying to remove. In his portrait, he had sharp eagle-like features and strong hands that gripped the world. But as he drew closer, she caught a faint unwashed smell about him. The other men recoiled slightly, stepping back to make room.

Sir Joshua leaned against the mantle, crossing his arms patiently over his chest. If Frida had still been harbouring hopes that Sir Joshua was just a puppet for the scientific genius that was Henry Gladstone . . . well, those hopes died a certain death as Gladstone nervously pushed a greasy wisp of pale blond hair off his forehead. If Frida had to find one word to describe him, it would be wrinkled. From his jacket to his trousers to the deep lines carved into his sallow face. His clothes hung off him, as if he might prefer to just fade away, lost forever in the folds of his dinner jacket.

‘Ah – um . . .’ he stammered. ‘As you know, before now, we have relied on power extracted from the artifacts. The horn, the tongue . . . most latterly, the Jewel.’ He waved a shaking hand. ‘All . . . all useful, but all inevitably finite.’

‘Get on with it, man,’ Edward Caval muttered.

William Cliff, with the floppy jowls, chuckled.

Sir Joshua looked irritated.

Henry flushed crimson. ‘Yes, yes, my apologies.’ He waved a hand desperately, almost knocking Georgiana’s cake from her fist. She squealed. ‘Oh dear, I’m sorry. Oh dear. I, uh, well with these new advancements, we go right to the source.’ As if to demonstrate, Henry rapped his fist soundly on the bars. Frida shrank away instinctively. Henry jumped too, startled by his own boldness. ‘The creature – witness the light around it! I have . . . uh . . . found a way to pull the power from its very own body.’

This, it seemed, was Sir Joshua’s cue. He swept forwards, draping an arm companionly over Henry’s shoulders and looking to the others for confirmation. ‘Isn’t he a genius?’

Georgiana frowned, her pretty brows knitting. ‘I’m afraid I do not understand, brother.’

Joshua patted Henry on the shoulder and nudged him unequivocably back towards his chair by the fireplace. ‘Thank you, Henry, you’ve done a fine job. Have one of the servants get you a brandy, hmm?’

Henry fled, relief vibrating off his rumpled dinner jacket as Sir Joshua’s melodic voice carried into every corner of that hateful room.

‘Listen well, my friends. What Mr Gladstone has done surpasses all other scientific advancements.’ Like a boom of portent, Frida imagined his words seeping into every corner of the world. He paused to look at each of the LEZites in turn. ‘I believe the consequences of that which we see here tonight will reverberate down the centuries.’

‘Yes, I understand that, but what exactly is it?’ Edward Caval boomed.

Sir Joshua’s chestnut eyes blazed. ‘Henry has found a way to harness the magic of these monsters, directly from their souls, Edward! We will have no more need for horns, messy body parts, scavenged accoutrements. We may now use the power of their very being to power the fences that hold them.’

There was a long moment of stunned silence.

‘They are the ones who fire their own entrapment?’ Jane gasped finally.

Frida let the words register.

‘It is poetic,’ Laurence Harding said under his breath.

Frida gaped at the poet. Then she stared in horror at the bars, and down at her own skin, sickly light seeping off them both. Poetic? She was powering this cage. Not the Jewel, not the horn or anything else, but her own magic. Lucky’s gift to her. This was what they were using to hold her, to torture her. She thought of the LEZ, and the terrible pain in her head, that felt so similar to this pain. Was this how the wards worked in the LEZ?

Un-magics, Lucky had called them.

It will reverberate down the centuries.

She gazed up at Sir Joshua, and his broad smile of affirmation was world-ending.

Chapter Forty-Four

Edward Caval raised his brandy in salute, the smell of the alcohol making Frida’s bile rise.

‘This is devilishly clever. By Jove!’

She touched the magic inside her. A tiny, tentative prod. It flared, purple flames licking along the inside of her mind. Appalled, raging at its confinement. She couldn’t think through it. One of the sisters giggled, and Frida wanted to cave in on herself. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. She had to tell them she was human, that they’d got it wrong, that they’d made a mistake, but all she could hear was that terrible hum in her head.

Dahlia peered at her, cat-like eyes lined in kohl, plum silks shimmering in the odd lights. ‘Is it male or female, do you suppose?’ The woman furrowed her eyebrows and pouted theatrically. ‘I cannot tell.’

Their eyes on her, their words – they felt like sharp stones chipping at her skin.

‘We are as yet uncertain,’ Joshua admitted.

‘Shall we ask it?’ Georgiana giggled.

‘What are its markings? They look like the type of tattoos favoured by sailors, and savages.’ William Cliff strode around the cage, studying her from all angles. When Frida tried to cover her face with her hands, they all laughed, as if her shame was an amusement.

Her magic seemed to whimper inside her.

‘And what kind of clothing does it wear?’ William Cliff continued, oblivious. ‘This is all curious! You say it is a demon, but could it be a fairy or pooka in disguise?’ The tall man stroked his moustache thoughtfully, jowls wobbling. ‘And its eyes. I’ve never seen a colour quite like that before. Wherever did you find it?’

Sir Joshua raised his hands in admission. ‘I’m afraid I cannot take the credit. It was all Charles, as usual.’

William Cliff nodded shrewdly. ‘That man is an asset.’

There was a murmur of agreement as Sir Joshua beckoned to one of the servants, who stepped forward with a silver tray of crystal champagne flutes. ‘But I daresay you’ve landed on one of the most likely hypotheses for its provenance, William. I am quite certain it may be a fairy or a pooka. Perhaps even a copy-cat, as with those parrots being discovered by our friend Denver. It is likely it does not understand what it is saying, or what we are saying to it.’

The hum in her mind went still then. Lowering her trembling hands, Frida finally snarled, ‘I understand perfectly. You fucking arseholes.’

There was a collective gasp. Hannah shrieked. Georgiana was so shocked, she dropped her cake. ‘Ladies!’ Edward Caval exclaimed. ‘Cover your ears. It is savage indeed.’

Frida was staring at the fallen cake, lying on the polished wooden floorboards beside the cage. ‘What is that?’ she whispered thickly.

Georgiana laughed, snatching the cake back up nervously in her pale white fingers. ‘I think it is hungry, brother. Have you not fed it?’

But Frida wasn’t listening. Slowly, she struggled up to her knees, bracing herself as she came closer to the bars. It was like a weight pressed down on her, catching her head in a vice. With a shaking finger, she managed to point towards the cake.

‘Are those grootneck eggs?’

Grootnecks lived in swampy dens beneath old tree roots. Although they weren’t aquatic, they were one of the only land-dwelling creatures alive that lay their eggs underwater. Once, these eggs had been a great delicacy. They were said to look like caviar but taste like strawberries. Frida knew them instantly, even though she’d never seen them in real life. The LEZ’s grootnecks had never spawned. Cliff counted it as one of his greatest personal failures, because he’d never been able to figure out why.

Georgiana held out the cake on her palm. It was a soft yellow sponge, frosted with white cream and the tiny shiny black spheres of the eggs. So delicate. A hundred baby grootnecks perhaps, on that one cake. Garnished with a single gold-leafed sprig of lavender.

‘They are grootneck eggs,’ Georgiana said with a wide smile, flouncing her skirts happily. ‘You are a smart little creature, are you not? Your eyes are such a gorgeous colour, like those violets you always insist on painting, Hannah.’ She glanced over her shoulder at her older sister. Then, back to Frida, she asked curiously, ‘Do you like eggs? These ones are quite rare, but I’m sure we can spare some. If you don’t care for them though, our cook, Mrs Evans, is quite the genius.’ Georgiana started ticking options off on her fingers, her fiery-red curls shining in the golden light. ‘Tonight, she’s made delicacies with cockatrice eggs and carbuncle claws. You’ve missed the roast peryton, and the dragon-blood stew I’m afraid, but we can always see if there’s any left. You do look half starved.’

Dragon-blood stew. Is that what they’d been cooking in the kitchens? All those pungent meaty smells. Georgiana’s careless words punched through her. She tried to get a grip on her magic, but it slipped through her mental talons, evading her. She had to wake up. This was just a dreadful nightmare. In desperation, she gazed around the room hoping that someone might tell her she was imagining this. In that moment, she’d have given anything to be back in the LEZ, trapped by the wood, being chased by the Nuckelavee. She’d choose the Nuckelavee over this, any day. All of a sudden, none of that seemed as awful as this exquisite parlour, where these people sipped brandy and champagne, smoked cigars and ate grootneck babies for dessert. Platters of cakes, cut glass pitchers, the ornate furnishings – they all fluttered at the edge of her vision.

Fluttered. She’d thought it was candlelight. But for the first time, she really looked, and understood with a sort of hollowed out, demolished feeling, that there were more dragonfly lamps in this room. She couldn’t hear the dragonflies panicked calls, but the blaze of their wings seemed to reach out to her in sympathy, just as another colour burned behind her eyelids, disorientating and confusing. Pink.

Pink as a flamingo’s wing. As rose petals.

Her heart started to pound.

She didn’t want to look but she couldn’t stop herself. Her eyes moved towards the high wooden mantle above the fireplace, on the far side of the room. And there, as if in pride of place, stood an elegant glass jar just like the ones they’d found in the Old Forge. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before. Surrounded by a nest of enough wires and complicated antique electronics that she couldn’t even begin to understand what it all meant. But as the lights of the dragonflies clashed against their cages, a strange, whirring silence filled her brain. Inside the glass jar was a gleaming pink diamond, the size of a goose’s egg, with the power of an entire world inside.

It was the Jewel, and it was whole.

This was what was powering the rest of the cages. Her cage, Sir Joshua had said, was different. But the others – it hadn’t been the objects in the laboratory, it was this – this was what was being used to torture the dragon, the unicorn, the basilisk, the carbuncle.

It was almost poetic, she thought, as she barked out a wild, violent laugh.

Very slowly, she turned back to Georgiana.

Her brain was on fire.

Her lungs burned.

Her magic coiled, the individual threads, one by one, blazing in fury as she took hold of them. She looked at Henry Gladstone, shrinking in his chair. At Edward Caval popping out of his waistcoat, clutching his brandy glass and leering at the sisters. At Laurence Harding, the poet, drinking champagne and laughing with Sir Joshua. At the servants, standing along the walls, their faces schooled to blankness. At Dahlia, at Jane. At Hannah, who painted peonies, and at the other sisters, Charlotte, Arabella, Eleanor, seated stiffly on prim upright seats, fanning themselves and looking tired. Most of all, she looked at Sir Joshua.

She’d forgotten about the pain. She’d forgotten about everything. Her world narrowed to just him. ‘We trusted you,’ she whispered.

He wasn’t listening, he was leaning towards Laurence, a victorious flush on his cheeks.

Without thinking, she suddenly lashed out, screaming and hitting the bars so hard with her fists, pain burgeoned through her until it was all she knew. But her anger was exploding out of her. ‘People think you’re good!’ she bellowed. ‘I thought you were good!’ The shape of the Jewel blazed in her mind. That pink. God, it was pink. The most incredible pink she’d ever seen. Fuchsias and cherry blossoms, rubies and coral reefs. ‘I thought you were risking your life every day to save us. And here you are, eating grootnecks! I don’t understand.’ Her voice cracked. She was weeping now, feeling the tears streaming down her cheeks as her magic whipped around inside her mind, fighting against its bonds. ‘Please, explain this all to me because I don’t understand.’

All the people in the room had gone deadly silent.

‘I’m from the future,’ she gasped. ‘You won’t believe me, I know, you think I’m a demon, but it’s true. You’re a hero in the future. You were my hero.’ She grabbed her shirt and thrust it towards him. On the edge of her vision, something seemed to twinkle over by the mantle, but she shook her head, ignoring it, focusing on Sir Joshua, who was listening now. Whether he believed her or not, he was listening. They all were. Quickly, she scrubbed off as much mud as she could, and as soon as the pink of the Leaping Unicorn showed through, she held it out to them again.

Hannah gasped.

‘That’s our unicorn,’ Jane snapped.

‘See,’ Frida exclaimed. ‘I work at the zoo. At your zoo. This zoo. In two hundred years’ time. I thought . . . we do good work. We don’t love zoos, of course we don’t, not really, but in a world where there’s no other options, I thought we kept hope alive.’ Helplessly, she wiped the snot from her nose. As she looked around at them all, it seemed like the rotten stench of meat filled her nostrils. She slumped down onto the metal ground. Her magic whipped and howled, and she pleaded with it, begged it to listen to her. The floor wasn’t warded, but it was metal, and it sang with a faint reflected hum that made her feel as if she was drowning, that took her soul and twisted it into something steely, something not hers, something sick and cruel. This was why the grootnecks hadn’t spawned. This was why the terracotta dragon wasn’t healing, even though she’d arrived two years ago. Two years! What would it do to someone to be trapped in a place like this for so long? What had it done to the dragon she’d known as Fireheart, to the Nuckelavee, to all of them? Can’t you feel it, zookeeper? Can’t you feel the way your magic shrinks from it, whimpers in pain.

Was this why Dian had made the giant forest then? Why they’d enchanted all her friends? Dian, who thought they were weak and worthless. Something glittered, over by the door this time. She blinked it away, concentrating as if her life depended on it. History had got it so wrong. She’d thought that the LEZ was a decent compromise. For animals that had no homes, what they gave them was good enough. But ‘good enough’ wasn’t enough and it wasn’t what they deserved. Not if some people were on one side of the fence, and the rest were on the other. She saw this now as she pulled her knees tighter into her chest and said, in a shaky voice,

‘You’re going to be remembered as a hero. I don’t know how you pulled it off, how you managed to fool everyone, but when I get home, I’m going to tell everyone the truth.’

Sir Joshua’s expression hardened. He’d been curious before, but now something dangerous surfaced on his face that should have given her pause. But she didn’t care. She turned to look at Laurence, his blue poet’s eyes confused as he looked at Sir Joshua for confirmation of what she was saying. Suddenly she felt so sad. Was it true that Laurence and Joshua were in love? They’d have to hide it from everyone, including Joshua’s wife. Patterns of repression seemed to swell in her mind, building over centuries of violence. ‘It’s so cruel,’ she whispered.

Joshua took his champagne flute and placed it with a menacing click back on the ornate sideboard. ‘This is over now.’ He gestured to the servants. ‘Cover it up.’

She gazed at him. ‘Your wife.’

Joshua’s lips went thin as paper, and she could have sworn she saw Laurence, at his side, flinch ever so slightly.

‘Does your wife know what you’re doing here? Someone has to disagree with all this.’ She gestured around the room, to the cage, the cakes, the Jewel on the mantle, the pathetic figure of Henry in the corner. ‘Is that one of the reasons she was sent away? She’s technically imprisoned too, isn’t she, in her family’s castle? Banished from London.’

The curdled look on Sir Joshua’s face was priceless.

‘That’s it? She couldn’t tolerate the fact that her husband is a bloodthirsty liar?’ Frida closed her eyes briefly, her moment of sympathy for him gone. ‘It’s to your benefit, isn’t it? The benefit of your purses!’ She glared at Edward Caval. ‘You come across as the all-omnipotent saviours, all the while collecting the benefits. That map on your study wall. God! How was I so stupid?’ She turned to the servants, their eyes shifting between each other fearfully, and to the sisters – now repulsive to her in every way. Maybe some of what she’d said here would make a difference to them. Maybe it wouldn’t. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and concentrated on trying to stop her brain from detaching and floating off into the sky. She felt unhinged, like she was coming apart. That’s what happened though, she supposed, in cages like these.

‘Two hundred years from now,’ she whispered, ‘a magnificent fairy is going to destroy everything that you’ve ever built, and you know what? I’m going to do everything in my power to help them.’ Out of the corner of her eye, she saw another faint glimmer stir the air, a hint of silver glitter. She stared at it for a long moment, then smiled. Her magic had gone quiet now, only a few fiery threads left raging untethered through her skull. She thought of her mum, of the terrible grief that she’d thought had made her weak. The way the death of her mum had bored holes into her soul.

She watched, as if from outside herself, as Sir Joshua shouted at the servants. His face was a roiling blotchy mess. Not so composed anymore. ‘I’m going to tell my friends that we would never, ever want to waltz with you,’ she told him softly. ‘I’ll tell Hamish that you’re not a HDILF, and we’re going to burn your portrait. We’ll cover it in Extra Strange Sauce, and then we’ll build a bonfire, and we’ll roast marshmallows and drink hot chocolate and dance while you go up in flames! I’ll make sure no one ever has to look at your faces ever again.’

Sir Joshua wasn’t listening though. He was shoving at the footmen as they hurried to unfurl the cloth, trying at the same time to usher his sisters out of the room, but it didn’t matter. Frida could feel her magic, thin now, almost gone. Just one thread left, a fiery strand that danced just out of her reach. All it needed was another tiny push. Her mind seemed to tremble.

She breathed through her nose.

She clenched her fists.

Then she shoved that last thread of magic inside her rosewood box.

She hadn’t been sure if it would work but bit by bit, as she’d coaxed and cajoled her magic inside, she’d felt the wards beginning to ease. She was good at shoving things away. She was the queen of it, in fact. She’d been doing it for one year, seven months, twenty-something days and two hundred years. The LEZ’s therapist, the Necromancer, had told her that little good would come of her small rosewood box. Such things had power, he’d said, and one day it might burst out and bite her in the proverbial arse.

Well, the box did have power, but so did she. She wasn’t weak. She’d thought her mum’s death had made her weak, but if it had done anything, it had taught her how to be strong. Her mum, every day of her life, and even in her death, had shown her daughter how to be strong. And Frida would be damned if she was going to let these people use her – use this holy gift Lucky had given her – for their own twisted ends. If it was her magic they needed, if it was everything that made her her, if it was her love of her friends, her ridiculous laugh-snort, her stubbornness, if it was her grief . . . if it was her very soul? Well, she’d be damned if she was going to give any of that to these people. For the first time, she realised the things in her rosewood box weren’t the most awful parts of her. They were the best, the most important. They were the things that made her who she was.

She smiled at Sir Joshua, a gorgeous, full cat-that’s-got-the-cream smile, and what the hell? A little wave. Then she looked towards the glimmer in the far corner, inclined her chin in an imperceptible nod, and the cage door exploded.

Chapter Forty-Five

She hadn’t been expecting Dian to do something quite so dramatic, but as the fairy made the bars fly across the room, and one of them almost impaled Georgiana in her satin-ruffled chest, Frida gave a whoop. Before she even staggered onto the carpet, she felt an invisible hand wrap around hers, and then the raindrops surged. Relief flooded her, along with the wondrous silver of Dian’s magic.

‘What a mess!’ Moth tinkled with glee.

She could have danced. ‘Hi Moth.’

The little spider leapt onto her shoulder and crawled up her neck, rubbing his furry paws against her damp skin. She looked up into Dian’s water-dusted face, the patch of silvery brown across their left cheek glimmering.

‘Hello Dian,’ she whispered. She’d hoped. She’d really hoped when she’d seen those sparkles hovering in the air, but she hadn’t dared believe until they’d altered space and time to blow the doors off her cage the moment she’d managed to dissolve the wards. ‘You came back for me.’

‘Don’t think they did it all on their own,’ Moth groused. ‘I was there too.’

Frida barked out a laugh. ‘I don’t doubt it.’

Dian looked as if they were torn between laughing too, shouting at her in resplendent fury and – sea and skies – kissing her. In the end, they just raised the hand that wasn’t holding hers and, ever so gently, brushed one of the tears running down Frida’s face. The feeling of their calloused thumb jolted through Frida’s body like a lightning strike. She remembered it, in her bones. The feeling of their hand on her cheek, a thousand worlds away.

‘I came back for you, Frida Rose,’ they breathed.

The next moment, their hand fell, and the world snapped back into chaos. Moth was right, it really was a mess. Outside the veil of raindrops, the sisters were screaming. Georgiana howling, Dahlia in a dead faint. Freed golden dragonflies were zooming this way and that for, Frida realised, Dian must have exploded their jars, too, along with her cage, and that – like in the laboratory – their jars hadn’t been deemed important enough to be warded. The men were yelling; Sir Joshua was brandishing a poker, trying to strike at the gleeful dragonflies. Henry, she saw out of the corner of her eye, was trying to slip out of the room unmarked. The servants were either cowering in a corner or trying to help Sir Joshua. She was certain Charles was going to appear at any moment.

She didn’t want to know how much energy, how much courage, how many of Moth’s cobwebs it had taken for Dian to follow her into this room and blow everything to bits. She let them half drag, half carry her towards the open windows, until her head cleared a bit, and she cried out.

‘What is it?’ Dian exclaimed.

‘I forgot something!’ She was already twisting free. Before they could stop her, she’d slipped out of their grip and was racing out of the raindrops. Without thinking, she lunged across the room, grabbing another of those vicious pokers as she went. The screaming, which had begun to ebb, burst back in full force. Someone tried to tackle her, dimly she felt it – but she was the wind itself. Swinging the poker around her head, she spun, tearing it right through the bell jar at full speed. She felt strong enough to carry an army of grootnecks across the world. This bell jar was no match for her, and since her magic was still locked in her rosewood box, the wards couldn’t touch her. Glass shattered over the room.

‘STOP THAT CREATURE!’ Sir Joshua bellowed.

Magic pounded its claws on the lid of her mind, but she gritted her teeth and held on, swerving this way and that. ‘Just a moment more,’ she whispered to the glittery swirls of violet inside her, and then she plunged her hand through the ruins of the glass jar – like a coffin, she thought suddenly, and at that moment, she wished more than anything that she’d been the one to shatter the Hawthorn’s Coffin, rather than waiting for Lucky to do it. As she wrapped her hand around the Jewel, she made a promise to herself. She wouldn’t stand by anymore; she wouldn’t be weak. She’d wouldn’t wait those extra few beats. She held the terracotta dragon’s heart in her hand, and it pulsed as if in witness.

The next heartbeat, she’d slipped the Jewel in her pocket, and she was running again. Past the slippery figure of James Gaunt, over the plum-satin body of Dahlia. Past the fumbling servants, the other weeping sisters.

‘On your left, Frida Rose!’ Dian cried.

Frida swerved just in time to avoid a poker in the face from Edward Caval. She skidded, just catching herself from ending up in the fireplace, and then she was moving again, running full pelt for the window.

‘Go!’ she cried. ‘Go, you ridiculous fairy!’

Dian waited though, holding the window open for her, one dark eyebrow arched. Frida grinned wildly. The Jewel pulsed in her pocket, fuelling her speed. Sir Joshua’s disbelieving face passed in a blur, as if he couldn’t fathom how these demons had outsmarted him.

She leapt out of the window into the night, never more pleased to feel the fresh air on her face, Dian’s raindrops tumbling back around her. Together, they raced across the moon-drenched grass, and she opened her rosewood box, the sounds of the world flooding back in as her emotions exploded. Like the layers of the earth, the dust at the top going first, her grief over the discovery of Sir Joshua’s machinations, her panic at being caged, her anguish believing that Dian had left her, her joy at learning their quirks: the twinkle in their eye when they smiled at her, the way they played with the soft downy hair around their ears when they were nervous, the rough scrape of their calluses against her own. Then down, to deeper places. The way Dian’s voice could sound like summer leaves if they willed it. The way Lucky’s beard felt when it pressed against her cheek, the chirp of his giggles, the devastating loss of his dada. Antony’s compassion, Hamish’s wit which hid so much hurt, their beloved faces lost and buried in the vines. How Dian had looked in the LEZ, wounded and terrified, the icy touch of their hand against her cheek. Her mum’s face when she’d told Frida she was dying.

All of it flew out into the sky, the joy and the hurt, the pain and love, her magic raging through her. Fiery, and her own. She couldn’t stop her moan of relief to hear an owl’s choral chants. A mouse, hiding under a bush and boasting about his pretty new nest. A rat, composing mindful poetry as his babies slithered and squeaked through their dreams. A cat, muttering about all this noise as he tried to sleep. She beamed, her smile stretching from ear to ear. She may be a demon, but her magic was the colour of violets, and she was extraordinary.

Chapter Forty-Six

They raced towards the yew trees with Moth shouting directions on Dian’s shoulder, but it wasn’t until they were fully encased in the safety of the dark needles that Dian dropped their magic with a jagged, exhausted gasp.

Suddenly, Frida felt ridiculously shy. Dian had just saved her. Dian, who’d doubled over to catch their breath, tilted their head to look back up at her, and shot her a wide, beaming grin that dissolved the raging fury in their eyes, and turned her knees to water.

‘Thank you,’ Frida whispered.

‘Well,’ they said dryly, trying to hide the flush in their cheeks as they straightened. ‘I did think about leaving you.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ Moth said with a snort. ‘Not for one second.’

Frida giggled, lightheaded. Every bone in her body felt like jelly. But when she glanced down at the LEZ logo on her shirt, it felt like being doused in cold water. She wanted to burn the cursed thing.

‘Dian.’

‘Yes?’ they replied, leaning against the nearest trunk. It might have looked casual, if it hadn’t been for the taut line of their muscles, and the way they almost seemed to dissolve into the shadows. She had to squint to keep hold of them. They touched the edge of their downy hair, and she thought she saw a faint tremble in their throat when they swallowed.

‘Back there, in the house. I . . . Did you . . . Could you hear . . .’ They couldn’t have heard, she told herself. She’d been speaking English, untranslatable through the wards.

But she watched their throat work as they wound their fingers through their curls.

‘I understood,’ they whispered. ‘I heard what you said. Some of it, anyway.’

‘But I was in the cage, and the wards, and . . .’ But at their face, she trailed off. ‘You did?’

‘I – speak a little of your language.’

Frida blinked, then she realised they were speaking halting English. Normally, their voice sounded soft and crackly, slipping right into her head like summer leaves on a breeze, autumn foliage underfoot. She’d grown so used to it that hearing them speak in a human tongue felt bizarre.

‘I thought you’d never met a human,’ she said in confusion.

Dian wrinkled their nose. ‘No, no I haven’t.’ They slipped back into whatever their own language was, Raindrops on Hawthorn Boughs, perhaps. Frida relished the sound of it swishing through her again, but they were staring at the ground, continuing to wind their curls around one long finger fretfully. ‘After my . . . After Gia was taken . . .’ Their shoulders heaved a heavy sigh. ‘After that, my other root-kin insisted. We travelled far and found a fairy who had some knowledge of the languages of this land.’

‘Someone who was somewhat less nasty than the others,’ Moth added helpfully.

A small smile tugged at Dian’s lips. ‘Somewhat.’ Then their eyes caught and held Frida’s, and the darkness was full of memories. ‘I spent a year with them. My kin thought it might be useful, someday.’ Their brows knit. ‘I wonder if they knew,’ they said softly.

A shiver ran down Frida’s spine.

Far away, she could hear shouting through the open windows, signs of the house mobilizing. Someone would come looking for them soon, but she couldn’t go another second without Dian knowing the full truth. She imagined she could hear Dian’s heart. Or maybe it was her own. Before her, the cliff yawned. She could make the leap, or retreat. But then she realised, maybe she’d already jumped.

‘I have to tell you. I –’

‘Do we know each other in the future, then?’ Dian interrupted.

Frida startled at the abrupt question. Trembling, she inclined her chin.

‘And it’s bad?’

She paled.

They angled their face up to the yew boughs and sighed. ‘I thought so.’

The huge trees were like caves. She wished they could crawl into one together. Better still, go back to that enchanted pool. Forget everything. Forget that house, forget the shouts that seemed to be getting closer. Forget the alarm bells that were now ringing. Forget the future.

Moth crawled up one of Dian’s curls, the colour of spun grass, and asked, ‘How bad, exactly, are we talking?’

Grief swelled up inside her chest. The whole story was there, from a hawthorn ending in the zoo, to the lightning, to Lucky digging her into the earth. She was about to answer, ready for all of it to tumble out of her, when Dian took a quick step backwards and shook their head, raising their hands as if to protect themselves. ‘No, I don’t want to know.’

‘What?’ Moth exclaimed. ‘Why not?’

‘I can’t,’ they said shakily, their voice a thin reed of a thing. They were gazing at Frida as if she was the only thing keeping them standing.

‘But you’re the guardian of the smallest fairy territory on this island!’ Moth glanced at Frida, then back to Dian in disbelief. ‘Frida Rose is offering us a chance to know what might come. To have an advantage! Are you certain no is your answer?’

Dian’s nostrils flared. ‘You think we could change the outcome, even so? I do not. There are some fates that cannot be changed. I know those wards in there will rip through the worlds, no matter what we do. I know terrible things are going to come to pass!’

Moth paused for a long moment, as if trying to collect himself, before he cocked his tiny head and said slowly, ‘I thought it was only humans who claimed to know too much. Anything can be changed, Dian.’

Anguish ravaged their face. ‘No, they can’t. And I do not wish to know how our worlds will perish.’

Frida raised her hand as if to reach for them, but Moth gave a warning squeak, Dian already taking a shaky step back. Frida froze as they gestured towards the grounds where the caged animals slept, their lower lip trembling. ‘If this is my future, do not tell me about it. I have seen that there is no fighting such a thing.’

Frida was already shaking her head as Moth cried, ‘But we did fight it. We did! You saw how Frida Rose denied their power? We watched, and she was able to—’

‘I’m not her!’ Dian exploded. ‘That was strange magic, dragon and human, and I do not know if anyone in this existence has such powers, other than her. If we’d been inside that cage, I—’ They turned to Frida. ‘I don’t even know how you did it!’

In her mind, Frida traced the sharp edges of her rosewood box and closed her eyes. It took her a while to gather herself, before she managed to say, ‘When my mum died, I did a really good job of hiding everything away inside. Hiding myself away.’ She couldn’t stop the shudder that ran through her. ‘I learnt how to do it. But in that cage? I realised that everything I’d hidden – all the things that make me me – I realised that was what they needed.’ She opened her eyes again and felt the fire inside her blazing. ‘So, I took it from them.’

Something like understanding danced over Dian’s face. ‘That is powerful magic,’ they said, awed and more than a little afraid, and Frida wasn’t sure what to do with that. In the end, all she could do was reach into her pocket to pull out the terracotta dragon’s Jewel.

Silence fell over them.

‘We still have time,’ she whispered to Dian. ‘We can change the future.’

The Jewel balanced on her palm. Whole.

Moth spun in rapid circles from a strand of Dian’s hair. ‘What is that?’

Frida held the Jewel up. The smooth edges shone. Round and smooth as a goose’s egg, the Jewel’s power was vast, at once deafening and utterly silent. Smoke curled beneath the surface like ringlets around a fire, and Frida could feel the desert, the rippling twilit sand that stretched for miles. She could smell the heat of earth, feel the rustle of palm leaves on her cheeks, see the twinkle of an oasis, the whirl of dust storms. The cacophony of thousands of insects and plants and peoples, millennia stretching forwards, backwards, wrapping around her in bright ribbons. And then she heard the passionate beating of the fiery heart, a rasping, smokers cough. A drumbeat in her ears.

Her tattooed fingers curled around the rounded edges of a desert, a whole world.

‘Where I come from,’ she said, her violet eyes alight. ‘This–’ She raised the Jewel before her, ‘is broken. But it doesn’t have to be. That’s why I was brought here, I think. To understand that.’ She looked up into Dian’s face, and their haunted expression made Frida feel as if every one of her limbs were floating away. She’d give anything to ease that expression, to change what would come to pass for them, and now she could. Now she had the power to do so, resting in her palm. ‘I know you think futures can’t change,’ she said, willing them to believe, ‘but I think you’re wrong.’

Was that a flicker of hope flaring in those eternal pools of their eyes? If it was, Dian quenched it quickly, but she could have sworn she’d seen it. Suddenly, her head was fizzing with pink. The little rosewood box in her mind was empty, all her love and light and brightness and power and grief bursting from her in a firework display. And it was ok. It was ok to let Dian see it. She reached between them, taking their hand. Their eyes widened, but she stepped closer, willing them to hear her.

‘I believe,’ she said fiercely. ‘I believe Moth, I believe my mum. She used to say we could do anything. She said even amongst all the shit, we could make our own worlds. And I . . .’ Her throat swelled but she pressed on despite it. ‘I do still believe that.’ Although Dian’s forehead knotted, Frida didn’t stop. ‘In my world, this dragon,’ she raised the Jewel again, pink light flaring across the bottoms of the trees, ‘is called Fireheart, but that isn’t her name. I don’t know what her name is. In the zoo, we call all these creatures by our own names, we take them from their homes, their . . .’ Her voice broke. ‘Their hearts.’ She was begging Dian to understand. ‘This dragon told me to come back here to find her heart. I thought she wanted me to bring it back to her, but maybe she didn’t mean that. Maybe we just need to give this to her now; give it to the version of her that’s here. Maybe that will change everything.

‘They’ve been using this Jewel to power their wards. That’s what Joshua said. So, I’m going to guess that the wards on the cages are broken. What we saw in the laboratory, those awful jars – he said they couldn’t use them anymore. They’ve been depending on this Jewel.’

Suddenly, that thread of hope was back. It rose across the twilit hue of Dian’s cheeks. ‘You think we can free the prisoners?’

Frida nodded. ‘Yes.’ She squeezed Dian’s hand. ‘I do. All of them.’

Moth gave a delighted squeak, racing up and down his webs. She thought she heard the animals on the edge of her hearing quiver too, just a little bit. Maybe the very worlds themselves quivered as she wrapped her fingers around the Jewel and felt the blazing, sulphurous, dry desert heat of it. Beneath the shelter of the yew trees, Frida looked up at Dian, and said tentatively, suddenly unsure if her plan was a terrible one, and Dian would send it crashing down around her with one scathing, fairy remark.

‘What do you think?’

Dian didn’t say anything for a long time. They just gazed down at her, their rosy lips slightly parted, their breath coming in shallow starts, their eyes night-swollen and unreadable. Then, finally, a broad smile began to stretch over their lips.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Suddenly droplets surged into being, lighting the underside of the trees like silver tinsel. Then they just wrapped their arms around her and lifted her off her feet, spinning her round and around in a jubilant circle, smelling of moss and petrichor, and behind that, something that was entirely their own. Almonds, rich and spicy. Frida let out a shocked, breathless laugh, and when they put her down, grinning from ear to ear, she swayed, feeling dizzy.

‘God, Dian,’ she gasped, flushed. ‘What will the other fairies think?’

Dian chuckled and then set off at a run across the grass, tugging her after them. ‘I don’t care!’ they cried, wild, victorious laughter tumbling out of them. Their callouses scraped against hers, and she could still feel the imprint of their arms around her body, delicious blasts of heat that sent rapturous shivers down her spine. Antony may have been awarded best hugger four years in a row, and he was good, but Dian? As Frida ran through the rain all the tension left her, all the fear roiling through her, even the feeling of those steely bars melted into the memory of that hug. She breathed it in, and breathed it out.

All the while, the Jewel pulsed warm in her pocket and Moth did a triumphant spider dance, leaping between Frida and Dian’s shoulders. When they angled for the eastern gardens, Frida didn’t notice at first when a few rats began to keep pace with them. When the rabbits joined in, with a scarred one-eared hare in the lead, Frida gawped. Dian gave her a wondering look, the silvered storm of their magic twinkling like shards of glass. It was the owl above her head, swooping down so close she felt the air tremble, who said,

‘We hear! We hear!’

The rats – a horde of them now, streaming over the grass – squeaked in confirmation.

The owl banked, moonlight rippling over pale wings. ‘Dragon-human, violet as the light-lit stars at dawn! Raindrop wanderer, glitter-caller! We hear the battle-cry of the desert-sky!’

Frida gaped up at the owl. But even as she did so, she too plucked up her ears and listened. And there it was, tasting of a thousand rainbowed dreams. The morse code SOS echoing through the woods, threading through the roots and the boughs. The Jewel pushing out a call on pink flamingo feathers and wings of fire, crying of revolution, of flame, of rebellion. To every furry, slippery, sticky, winged, many-legged creature.

Arrow-tailed birds shot across the sky.

Claws padded through the grass.

A thousand jaws gnashed.

She and Dian and Moth were just a tiny part of it. They were an army pouring towards Forge House, like a gushing river engulfing the world. When the panicked human screams began, Dian’s smile was electric. Frida couldn’t help smiling too as she imagined wires being gnawed, carpets defecated on, saucepans upturned, lamps shattered, papers destroyed.

‘Dragon magic,’ Moth whispered, awed.

‘Dragon magic,’ Frida repeated. She felt the wildness of it wrap around her, lifting her hair. For a moment, she laughed, thinking of the little girl she’d been, freckles across her nose, overwhelmed to even be within a mile of a dragon. Now look at her.

Now look at me, Mum.

She paused to drink in the sight for another minute, watching the writhing bodies of voles, the families of foxes, the hulking badgers, the crows, big dark shapes hopping down the tree-lined paths, a wolfhound with a robin on his back, white hares and one particularly ancient buck who stopped to rub a nose against her leg.

It was then that the words of a National Trust pamphlet came back to her, and she felt the memory of the yellowed paper like a ghost under her fingertips. She’d read it so many times, and like the others, she could recall it almost word for word.

In 1837, in the wake of the basilisk’s escape, Sir Joshua Beaufort decided to temporarily relocate his entire household to another of his estates, Havisford Manor, on the east coast of England. From there, the LEZ board planned the relocation of the animals to the all-new London Extraordinary Zoo in the nearby village of Melody-Upon-Sea, and Forge House was closed for refurbishment. It was the footnote that came back to her now though, the words rising in her mind with a frisson of unease. *The reason given for this relocation in the household accounts was a brief influx in rodents, due to the high temperatures of that summer, and outdated refrigeration methods.

Frida listened, feeling dizzy as the screaming from the house continued to echo, and the tolling of alarm bells grew. As they headed back towards the cages, they heard running booted footsteps, crunching over the gravel, but Dian’s raindrops kept them hidden, the shadows of cedars and pines, young monkey puzzle trees, the late white-pink blooms of magnolia passing overhead. Frida, trembling all over with what they were doing, could almost feel the roots of these trees, their minds still caught in the memories of their ancestors, far distant across stormy seas and mountain passes, as the Jewel blazed steadily in her pocket, a clarion call.

When they finally reached the little walled garden where the basilisk and the unicorn should have been, they were just in time to see the blue spring-morning coils of a huge serpent’s tail slipping away triumphantly, over the high stone wall. The basilisk’s cage door was already broken. The creature was gone, slithering to freedom. Frida sent a whispered prayer in the basilisk’s wake, wishing the monster luck, even as another stab of uncertainty rose inside her. The sense that far away in Buckingham Palace, a fancy dinner for Queen Victoria was already being planned . . . It was too much to encompass, but –

‘He’s gone too.’

Frida startled, pushing away the web that seemed to tighten abruptly. She turned to look towards where Dian had pointed. Indeed, although the unicorn’s cage was undamaged, the unicorn was no longer there. As if the stallion had slipped through the metal itself.

‘How?’ she gasped.

Dian’s lips twitched. When they stooped to tell her, their warm breath brushed the shell of her ear. ‘Unicorns can move through worlds, even easier than fairies can.’

With those words, Frida forgot everything else as the great oceanic breadth of the universe opened before her. She imagined the flash of a white mane as the unicorn cantered away, leaving this garden and this place far behind. Closing her eyes, she swayed a bit. She wished she and Dian had been able to give him back what he’d lost here, but there hadn’t been time.

When Dian touched the small of her back, ever so gently, she came back to herself with a start. ‘Right,’ she said, grinning up at them sheepishly. The heat of their touch made her mouth water, and she ached to sink into them, ached for more.

Instead, she put that thought away for later and cleared her throat, determining to focus on what was important right now: smashing things. Finding a good-sized rock, she started bashing the padlocks off the doors of the remaining cages with great satisfaction. Soon, three pure golden stags were galloping away into the night. The elephump, no bigger than a chihuahua, disappeared with a whoop into the grass, along with the broonies. Twelve sapphire friperits and the blue-blond hippogriff spread their wings and soared in the direction of the moon. It was wondrous, and it was terrifying, for she had no idea what might happen to them, or whether they would be safe. Hopefully some would find their families, back in the clearing, amongst the creatures waiting for them. As she watched the jackalope’s tiny stag’s horns bob through the undergrowth, she called after him, begging him to be careful.

Finally, there was only the carbuncle left. Tiny armadillo claws clacking on the earth. She could hear them speaking of a far-off jungle made of charms and crystals, sunny lagoons and stones of peachy gold. In South American lore, carbuncles were the guardians of untold riches, but listening to their soft clicks, she wondered if those riches weren’t simply the jungle itself. Misunderstood by Western interlopers.

Embedded between the carbuncle’s beady eyes was the deep red mirror-like gemstone that made their species such a prize. She lowered herself down on her heels before them.

The carbuncle’s bucket ears swivelled.

‘This isn’t your home,’ she whispered.

‘No,’ they padded their paws. ‘No, no, no it is not my home.’

The cage loomed between them.

‘When you leave here, there will be no human to feed you, and no one will protect you from predators, but you will be free, whatever that entails. Do you wish that?’

‘Yes,’ the creature clicked, the carbuncle’s armadillo shell hard as the gem between their eyes. Dian had already set their fingers to the cage’s padlock and thrust a blaze of dark magic into the metal. When Dian lifted their hands, the padlock fell to the grass with a thud.

Together they watched as the carbuncle scurried away, the gleam of their red stone following them through the darkness. Frida leaned against Dian, knocking her shoulder tentatively against theirs. She offered them a lopsided smile, not sure what to say, just dizzy with what they’d just done. She waved her hand at the broken lock.

‘Is that a learned skill?’ she asked with a low laugh. ‘Breaking metal with one’s interminably graceful hands?’

Dian looked delighted. ‘Oh well, as an interminably graceful fairy,’ they said with an exaggerated preen that Hamish would have deeply envied, ‘you should know I was born with many gifts.’ Their voice lowered to a deep purr, and Frida’s beaming smile fixed on her face, as she imagined the full scope of what they meant. She cleared her throat hoarsely and in her free hand, the Jewel blazed with renewed life, a beacon to guide the way.

‘Yes,’ the Jewel sang. ‘Yes, oh yes! This way. Yes, this way!’

‘Can you hear it?’ Frida asked as they moved away from the carbuncle’s cage and back through the woods.

Dian gave a wondering laugh. ‘Don’t you think the whole world can hear the song of that dragon’s heart, Frida Rose?’

They smiled stupidly at each other, but it wasn’t until they drew closer to the darkened patch of grounds that held the dragon’s prison that Frida noticed an unsettling and resounding silence. Muting the noises from the house, the battle cry of the creatures, the Jewel itself. The absence swallowed the joy that had been raging through Frida. It swallowed everything.

With uneasy agreement, Frida and Dian inched out from behind a row of trees, lining yet another gravel pathway, and Frida’s heart sank. She felt Dian’s magic waver, and she smelled the stench of fear blooming over their skin.

‘Oh no,’ Moth cried bleakly.

Frida could have kicked herself. Between them and the smoky darkness of the cage, where she couldn’t even hear the dragon’s anguished keening anymore, sat the very solid, very real, very undeniable shape of Charles. She should have known he’d be here. The man who’d wanted to carve her tattoos off her living flesh. He sat calmly on a little bench with a shotgun over his knees, about fifty yards away. His thin face turned up to the stars. She almost saluted his nerve, to ignore the unwarded dragon at his back. Frida clenched her jaw. Good, she thought. Let him watch the stars. Let him burn.

She turned towards the terracotta dragon. When she’d first seen her, she’d vomited all over her boots, unable to hold back the waves of bile at seeing the dragon’s blood. Frida had thought nothing could be worse than that. But now, the knowledge Frida held burned even hotter. The jagged ruins of her wings looked as if they’d been cracked with hammers, stamped into the dirt, shorn off with a hacksaw.

Sir Joshua had said they’d searched her out, found her in her lair. Had he been the one to take her wings? They’d probably needed her incapacitated in order to steal the Jewel. Frida didn’t think Sir Joshua was the type to get his hands dirty, but she imagined money passing hands in a far away, sandy desert, Edward Caval orchestrating the transaction with his red, sweaty face. They wouldn’t have wanted her too injured, not if they’d already arranged to bring her back here, to be exhibited. But maybe it had gone wrong, or maybe they’d just assumed she would heal quicker.

Above, the moon had come, and the buttery light stroked the dragon’s bloody scales. Frida couldn’t give the terracotta dragon her wings back. But if she didn’t do anything, this dragon would spend the next two hundred years of her life in cages just like this, having her magic sucked out of her, bit by tortuous bit.

When Sir Joshua’s father had taken him to Brazil as a child, braving the risk of transatlantic travel, she’d assumed that bright-eyed auburn-haired boy had come back with an understanding of the sacredness of life – of other creatures, other places, other cultures, other worlds. Of the way they were all inextricably linked. And maybe he did. But he’d also come back with an understanding that he was better than everyone else.

She thought of the map she’d seen in the study, marked only for money. The souvenirs arrayed over the shelves. The jade woman. The spearheads, the ceremonial pots. The cloak of feathers. She shuddered when she thought about how Joshua might have come to possess them too. And then she thought about the way the LEZ managed the animals, the way enclosures were designed to mimic their homes, and yet how nobody spoke about the fact the animals were only there because the LEZ had enough money to buy them from their countries in the first place.

Joshua didn’t do what he did out of love, he did it because he knew he could gain from it. And the world was arranged to let him get away with it. She’d known this truth about other people. So why had she convinced herself that he was any different? History had tricked them, yes. Sir Joshua had played his game well. But she’d seen what she’d wanted to see. She’d seen what suited her, and only that.

About fifty yards away, Charles continued to look at the stars.

Around Frida, Dian and Moth, the raindrops refracted and twinkled. Ever so quietly, Frida whispered low enough so that Charles wouldn’t hear,

‘Dragon?’

Dian held their breath; Moth curled at their throat.

The dragon lay unmoving, moonlight dancing in the pools of her blood.

Frida whispered a bit louder. ‘Ma’am. Can you hear me?’

The dragon didn’t move. Frida tried a few more times, before eventually sinking back into the shadows.

‘Do you think she cannot answer, or will not?’ Moth asked desperately.

Frida studied the distance between them, chewing on her lip. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted finally. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the Jewel, turning the crystal helplessly over in her palm, taking care to shield its glow with her shirt. The glass-smooth surface warmed her skin. She’d expected the dragon to sense the Jewel immediately, to hear the sound of the desert song. But the crystal lay silent in her hand. She needed to get closer so the dragon could hear her. But it would mean Charles would hear her too, and then they’d all be in trouble. There must be a way, she thought.

Dian, too, was studying the problem, their head bowed.

‘Dian?’ Frida asked, suspicious. When they lifted their head, there was a bold grin on their uptilted lips which Frida didn’t like the look of one bit. It looked very much like they were thinking about doing something fairy-like, heroic and entirely stupid. But Dian was already gently trying to extract their hand from hers. She clung on in stubborn determination. ‘No. Nope. I’m not letting go.’

‘Frida, come on. I’m not—’

‘Moth,’ she cried. ‘Tell me what they’re going to do.’

Moth said dourly, ‘Oh, just something extremely stupid.’

‘Dian—’

But Dian’s eyes sparkled violently. ‘Listen, Frida. I only have a few more raindrops left, but it is enough for a distraction.’

‘No!’ Frida cried. ‘We could smash him over the head with my rock!’ Only to remember that she’d left the rock somewhere near the carbuncle. Oh well, they could find another rock.

But Dian had got their hand loose now, the raindrops slipping away in a rush. They stepped away from her across the grass. Their bare feet left no trace as they flashed her a beaming smile, all white teeth and canines, and Frida’s insides turned to water.

‘No!’ she breathed. ‘You don’t need to—’

‘Frida Rose, let me do this,’ they said, cutting her off, and there was a blurriness to the way they were looking at her now, an ocean-breath intensity.

Frida opened her mouth to argue, but suddenly Dian leaned down, a soft, wistful look in their eyes, and their breath was warm, smelling of moss. ‘I am glad I met you, Frida.’

Then Dian was gone.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Frida cried out as Dian slipped out of her sight, flickering in and out faster than she could follow. She swore under her breath. They were going to get captured! They were going to get killed. Their cobwebs were going to end up in a jar in the Old Forge. They were going to have their lungs carved out, their tongue stolen, their magic ripped away.

Flicker, gone. Flicker, gone. Like a firefly.

Suddenly, Dian appeared in the middle of a shaft of moonlight. ‘You!’ they yelled, in clear English, barely twenty yards from Charles’s bench.

Charles’s chin jerked towards the fairy.

Tumbling hair, green as a forest canopy at night. Bioluminescent cobwebs. Curling sensual lips. Hooded dark eyes, nearly all black. Wood-mottled skin. Total Pink Flamingos.

Charles gave a low chuckle that Frida heard in her somersaulting guts. He stood up in a leisurely fashion, as if he was used to people waiting on his pleasure. Frida wanted to beat him over the head with his own shotgun. ‘It’s about time,’ he said quietly.

Dian’s eyes flashed. Frida saw it even from where she was hiding. Charles began to advance, his long shadow arcing ominously across the grass.

‘Run, Dian,’ Frida hissed, sinking deeper into the sheltering trunks of the yews.

Dian didn’t move. In that suspended second, they didn’t look afraid. They looked exhilarated, the ghost of a hawthorn leaf crown framing their rosy, flushed face. A current of electricity shot through Frida, and she didn’t know if she wanted to hug them, throttle them, kiss them, or just stare forever at their blindingly perfect jawline.

Charles took a step, then another. He hefted his shotgun in capable hands. ‘Are you going to cause me problems?’

Dian gave a high, pealing laugh. ‘Oh yes.’

Charles’s mouth twisted into an ugly smile, and he charged.

Fuck, he was quick!

Dian was quicker.

The fairy disappeared. Charles roared, his blond hair near white in the moonlight. A split second later, Dian flickered back into existence, a few metres away. When Charles lunged again, Dian dissolved, reappeared on the other side of the cage.

‘Over here!’ Dian taunted.

Charles threw himself after them. ‘You can’t do that forever!’

Dian paused, just for a moment, and gave Charles a slow sad smile. ‘You think?’ Dian whispered, and then they turned on their heel and sprinted away down one of the gravel paths, their silvery webs shifting to water, blurring in and out of space. Charles, pale with rage, set off after them at full tilt. But Dian was faster. Of course they were. They were a fairy. A stubborn, brave, infuriating, interminably graceful fairy.

Frida knew she didn’t have a lot of time. She shot out from underneath the yew needles. There was a padlock on the cage, but she made short work of it after finding another weighty stone. A few thwacks and it was off. Without hesitation, she pushed open the metal door, wincing at the squeak of its hinges. Inside, the ground was pure ash. Only when she was close enough to the dragon to see the thin rise and fall of her frail chest did Frida stop, her boots sinking in the burned ground. Before, she’d just seen the mess of her wings. But as the moon played over her scales, Frida took in the long sinuous shape of her.

‘Terracotta dragon, of the desert and the sky, can you hear me?’ she cried, marshalling her courage. ‘My name is Frida. I have something that belongs to you.’ She was gripping the Jewel so tightly, she could feel what she thought was her own blood pounding through it, but it might have been the dragon’s heartbeat too. The two of them syncopated – two rapid, excited hearts. Ba-dum, ba-dum. Ba-dum, ba-dum. She inched closer. The dragon’s scaled face remained hidden beneath her bony paws, but Frida could have sworn she saw the slender curve of her tail twitch just a tiny bit – more muscular than at the LEZ, but just as scarred. In a few moments it would all be over. In a few moments, the pain of the next two hundred years would be wiped away.

‘I have your Jewel.’ Her voice gained strength. ‘I was sent to give it back to you.’

Nothing. A heavy silence stretched between them. The dragon’s breathing was ragged, rising and falling, the network of welts like a blue map over the terracotta hue of her back, the colour of baked bricks. No fire blazed in her belly, no hot forge. Frida moved closer, confused and afraid. Why wasn’t she responding? Was she too hurt to do so?

‘I have your Jewel,’ she said, louder.

Suddenly, she felt the rumbling of dry earth bursting up from the ground. And then the dragon erupted upwards, a mountain lifting, her scales blazing into fire.

‘I DO NOT WANT IT!’ the dragon roared.

So loud, so unexpected, it almost blew Frida’s head off. The dragon’s breath was rotten and hot, burning Frida’s cheeks. Frida stumbled back, tripping over herself and falling, almost dropping the precious cargo she held. The Jewel pulsed, pink light slipping from between her fingers, and she couldn’t hear the song.

‘But I have your jewel!’ she cried. ‘I just want to give it back to you.’

‘I DO NOT WANT IT!’

‘But it’s your Jewel,’ Frida stammered, her words thinned with panic. ‘Of course you . . . you must want it. You told me. You said you wanted it back!’

The dragon swung her head around, a red blaze in her inky eyes. No cataracts, no milky sheen obscured the ink. Instead, the reptilian slits were molten lava, split and fractured. Her sides heaved and her broken wings shook. Her tail lashed, and the air was a maelstrom of ash and dirt and earth and smoke. ‘I. DO. NOT. WANT. IT!’

But Frida could be stubborn too. Although she knew this noise had to be alerting the whole county, she dug in her heels. Let them come. She would not leave. Not without giving back this dragon’s heart, this dragon’s soul. She placed the Jewel on the ground before her, her eyes blazing as fiercely as any dragon’s, a swirl of violet and amethyst. ‘They were using it to do awful things. To operate an awful kind of power. But you can leave this place now. You can be free.’

You will ask why I have stayed. But where would I go? Long-ago words, uttered in a cavern under a woody sky came back to her, but they were barely a whisper as the dragon stared at her, scouring Frida’s very soul. It felt like a lifetime that they were caught like that together, in that bloody, smoky stillness. Finally, the dragon slumped her shoulders as if in defeat, and Frida thought it was all going to be ok.

But the next moment, the Jewel gave a weak little splutter. Then the dragon lunged forwards in a flying leap, her paw coming down on top of the Jewel in a thundering CRASH. The Jewel, or maybe the terracotta dragon herself, or maybe the very world, broke.

Frida screamed. ‘No!’

The dragon bellowed.

‘You broke it. You broke your own heart.’ Frida fell to her knees, sobbing helplessly.

The dragon’s face crumpled. ‘It’s already broken. I am already broken.’

Frida watched as something she understood in her DNA settled over the dragon’s shoulders. Suddenly, she was back on those cold hospital tiles, and she couldn’t find a way to peel herself off them. The molten fire in the dragon’s eyes died, and the light inside her went out. She hunched her broken wings around herself and sank back down into the ash, covering her face again, her eyes disappeared beneath the wrinkled map of her skin.

Six pieces of pink diamond lay scattered across the earth, the colour leaching out quicker than Frida thought possible. She watched them become grey and lifeless. She watched them cease to beat. As Frida stared into the ragged shards, an impossible grief swelled up inside her too. The vision of a starlit desert was gone from the facets of the diamond. Now all it held was the echo of boots stamping victoriously over the earth. She heard the booming crack of the ground being ripped apart. She could feel the profound loss as sacred caves were mined, the howl of rivers as they were diverted and sucked dry, the weeping of seas as they were polluted and deadened. She could feel the crying of tree roots as they were wrenched out of the soil. The anguish of wings being slashed off. Hearts broken. Souls stolen.

Frida didn’t know how much time passed.

At some point, she felt a hand on her arm but barely registered it.

A leafy voice. ‘Come on! Sea and skies, say something! We have to go!’

She twisted to see Dian hovering over her; their face shrouded in a rainstorm. She felt the world around them starting to crack too. She felt like a ghost. Like she might leach away as well, just like the pink light from the stones.

‘Get up, Frida Rose!’ Moth bellowed.

Somewhere she heard shouting.

The pounding of feet.

The renewed ringing of alarms.

The raindrops enveloped her. Some distant part of her registered Dian gathering up the shards of the Jewel. There were human scents in the air, sweat and tobacco smoke, sandalwood perfume, the crack of a whip, horses, grease and brandy. Dian was pulling her up, and Frida knew tears were falling down her cheeks, but she didn’t wipe them away. She’d forgotten how. Dian gave a cry of fear, before picking Frida up as if she weighed no more than Moth.

‘No, I . . . don’t—’ Frida moaned.

But Dian was running now.

The air whipped past her.

Smoke and sky and rain and starlight.

The earth shook.

Frida pressed her face to Dian’s neck and wept.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Dian didn’t let her go until they were far away from the house. Frida moaned, wanting to stay buried in the safety of their chest. Then there was a faint brush against the top of her head, as if Dian had placed the gentlest of kisses to her hair, and they were putting her down carefully, placing her shaking feet to the earth as if she was precious.

Around her, she saw tall arrow-like trees. A moon sinking with a red tinge to it, and a sickly blood-lit treeline high on the horizon. Disorientated, it seemed to her that something was fizzing in the earth, something alien, faint pops rumbling under her feet. But she couldn’t bring herself to care. Brushing the tears off her face, she asked the only thing she could think of.

‘Do you have them?’

Dian opened their palm, and there were the shards of the Jewel. Frida stared down at the miserable grey pieces nestled in their callused hand, a cloak of lead settling over her shoulders. Slowly, she counted the shards. She knew the answer before she’d finished. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. There were only five pieces.

‘Where is the sixth?’ she asked, her voice barely audible.

Dian’s eyes widened. ‘What?’

‘There were six.’ She stared into their impossibly compassionate expression. She didn’t deserve their compassion. She’d failed them. She could have fallen into the charcoal pools of their irises and never come up for air. Instead, she managed to bite out again, ‘There were six pieces. Where is the last piece?’

Below her feet, that strange popping grew louder.

‘What do you mean?’ Dian’s voice was a hoarse despairing whisper as horror dawned on them. ‘Oh no Frida. I’m so sorry. I’ll go back . . .’ Their body turning as if they might run all the way back to find it, but Frida just touched the fragile webs that laced over their strong forearm and shook her head.

‘It is too late.’

They’d left the unicorn’s horn too. The lung and the phoenix feather, the thunderbird’s eye. The stump of the tongue or vocal cord, and the pegasus’s hoof. They’d left all of it. They hadn’t even gone back for the horses, like she’d promised.

‘It is as it is meant to be,’ she said with a bitter laugh.

The earth cracked and she stumbled. Hysteria wrapped its claws around her ravaged heart, and she laughed again. Pop, pop, pop. Somewhere, a basilisk was slithering towards Buckingham Palace, and Sir Joshua was maybe, even now, making plans to move his household to the seaside.

‘Is she ok?’ Moth twirled nervously.

Dian furiously took her shoulders in their hands. ‘You said it, Frida,’ they exclaimed, trying to shake her out of it. ‘You said the words. We can change the future. And I believed you. I still believe you! Moth was right, you surprised everyone when you denied them your magic in that cage. You did something nobody expected, including me.’ With righteous flames in their eyes, they lifted the pieces of the Jewel. ‘I was afraid before. But I’m not anymore. I’m going back and I will find the last piece. We can’t let those people have it!’

The touch of their fingers against her collarbone turned soft, their thumb running so cautiously over her shirt, as if they almost didn’t dare hope. Frida felt it in every part of herself. She almost moaned.

Instead, she stepped away.

Their hands fell and hurt flickered behind their eyes.

Frida stared up at them, all the tenderness that she felt swirling behind a wall of pain and confusion. ‘It’s done,’ she whispered. ‘Nothing will change. They won’t find the last piece, but neither will you.’ And then the awful words rushed out of her before she could stop them. ‘Dian, I know what’s going to happen. Whatever you do, you’re going to end up in a place just like this. You and your hawthorn. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I couldn’t change any of it.’

Dian went rigid.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Frida exclaimed again, pulling her hands through her matted hair. ‘I know you don’t want to know. But if I don’t tell you . . .’ She remembered their desolated face, their eyes closing in a world far from here. Suddenly she stepped back towards them and lifted her fingers to touch the vulnerable place over their heart. They looked down, eyes wide, as she felt their rapid heartbeat. ‘Dian. Listen to me. You’re going to be captured.’

Dian recoiled as if they wanted to run, but she grabbed their sleeve so tightly, some of the webs ripped. They shrank away but the words plummeted out of her. ‘Listen to me,’ she cried. ‘You have to know. Your home will be destroyed. We’re going to meet in the zoo. This zoo. Not here, but in the future. You’ll be trapped for years, inside wards just like these ones, but then a dragon will set you free! Lucky. The purple one. The one I came with. He’ll set you free, but there’ll be something wrong. I don’t know,’ she cried. ‘I don’t know where Moth is, I’m sorry. I wanted to change it all, but I don’t think I can. Your tree . . .’ Her voice cracked, the memory of the charred branches scattered across the meadow seared through her brain. ‘Your tree will die.’ She wanted to stop but she couldn’t.

‘If the hawthorn dies, I die,’ they said hoarsely.

‘Then you have to help me save you, save everyone! When I left, you’d cast a spell that put hundreds of people to sleep, and you’d made a wood that consumed the world. I thought finding the Jewel would stop you from doing that, but I know I can’t stop it. I don’t want to stop it. I’m glad you did it! I was so wrong about everything.’ Her nails dug into their wrist. She pressed on, dread making her dizzy despite their horrified expression. ‘You’re unconscious. Wounded. I need to help you. You have to tell me how to help you.’

Dian’s jaw dropped. ‘I don’t know!’

But she shook her head, denying it. ‘You must. Tell me!’

‘I don’t know,’ they repeated with a hiss.

‘You have to! Please,’ she begged. ‘Think.’

‘Your name,’ Moth said suddenly. He’d been quiet for so long, the sound was like the tolling of a tiny bell. Dian froze, drawing in a sharp breath like a snare.

But Frida stared at the little spider, curled at Dian’s throat. ‘Your name? Dian?’

Moth was silent, a creature of woven threads.

Dian’s voice was like a dead leaf, covered in frost, when they finally answered, ‘He means my real name.’

Frida didn’t hear the warning in their tone. ‘Your real name! Oh god. Of course. Ok. Tell me your name! Tell me what it is.’ She was so excited, so dazzled by the prospect of salvation, she didn’t see their expression had shuttered, slamming like a vault door. Slowly, they untangled their sleeve from her grasp, the sound of cobwebs tearing.

‘My name is mine. It belongs to the hawthorn, and the groves which we guard.’

Frida gaped at them, hurt. ‘But you can trust me! In the future you do trust me.’

They shook their head vehemently. ‘No. It is too much to ask.’

‘But I have to save you!’

They stared at her, incredulous. ‘You have to save me?’ They scoffed harshly, all the tenderness between them dissolving. And then they repeated that single word. ‘No.’

It wrecked her. No to their name, no to trusting her, no to her saving them. Just no. Somewhere, a resounding crack reverberated through the earth, and she heard a howl that she recognised, far off in the distance. Lucky. That sounded like Lucky. Fear shot through her, but she couldn’t look away from Dian.

‘No Frida,’ they said again, and perhaps seeing her devastation, their tone softened a touch, although the answer was the same. ‘No. I can’t tell you my name, just as much as I can’t make an entire wood swallow a world. I’m sorry, but I do not believe you. I cannot put hundreds of people to sleep. What you say isn’t true. Have you not been listening to me at all?’ Their voice seemed to crack apart, anguish and self-loathing settling over them. ‘I am the weakest of the fairies of this island. I cannot do what you say. Those wards will kill me.’

Another howl lit the sky from the far-off tree line.

Helplessly, Frida pressed a shaking hand to her heart. ‘Please. I’ve only just found you. I – I can’t lose you. Help me.’

A fresh wave of pain filled them. ‘Maybe it is for the best,’ they said, with a croak.

Moth let out a squeak of dismay, and Frida gave a strangled sob. The dreadful, unstoppable coils of time wrapped around her throat, choking her.

Dian just looked towards the trees. ‘Our kind is dying.’ They glanced down into their palm at the broken shards of the Jewel, the dragon’s grieving heart. ‘You tried,’ they whispered. ‘We tried.’ For a moment, it seemed they were drowning. Frida ached to reach for them, to drown with them, but as if they sensed this, they took a pained step back, their bare feet leaving no mark on the grass, fingers curling over the useless, shattered fragments. They looked once back over their shoulder at Forge House. It was blood-red, the creamy stone deadly in the light of the dying moon. Behind it, the sky was turning sapphire. Dawn was coming.

‘I think I must go home, Frida Rose. Moth and I. We will go back to the groves, and our beloved hawthorn, and we will enjoy what time we have left together. Maybe you should do the same.’

And then, just like that, they were gone.

Frida stared at the empty space where they’d been.

She couldn’t believe they’d gone.

An empty space yawned open in her chest, bigger than she’d imagined possible. And as silent tears spilled over her cheeks, the pops and cracks grew to a deafening height. She watched as fault lines started to appear beneath her feet and pieces of the ground began to crumble. Falling into some invisible pit. It made no sense and yet, it made perfect sense.

Dian had left her.

Moth hadn’t even said goodbye.

The earth itself should shatter.

Her eyes burned from staring at the space Dian had occupied, but she knew they weren’t coming back. They were stubborn, just like she was. She started moving as if on autopilot up towards the distant woods. She didn’t think about where she was going. It was like an invisible thread was tightening around her waist, pulling her towards the purple dragon, who’d by some impossible grace made her part of him, him part of her, who had turned her eyes violet. ‘I’m coming, Lucky,’ she whispered.

The earth moved under her. The emptiness grew with every step. She could no longer smell the growing things or the rain. She didn’t know it was possible to miss someone as much as she missed her mother, but as the ground cracked, she understood that she missed Dian, just like that. The same, and not. Less, and more. Occasionally she saw a creature scurrying for safety. A raven barrelling through the last pale stars. A fox fleeing to their den. For a little while, a young brown hare with amber eyes loped beside her, and when they went their separate ways, Frida somehow felt even worse. Around her, cracks became fissures, faults became crevasses. A darkness that seemed to swallow light opened within, and she paled to look, as if reality itself was pulling apart. There was a far-off crack of thunder and not too long after that, a thwack of lightning. Frida whimpered and covered her head with her hands.

Then she heard someone howl her name.

‘LITTLE STINK!’

Slowly, unbelievably, she lifted her head.

‘LITTLE STINK!’ She heard Lucky cry.

Gasping for breath, with her heart in her ears and thunder ricochetting around the valley and the earth breaking into galactic, impossible crevasses, she began to run.

‘I’m coming!’ she shouted. The wind whipped away the words, but she shouted until her voice was hoarse. ‘I’m coming, Lucky!’

The trees swished and whooshed. Another crack of lightning lit up the sky, and she caught sight of him in the midst of the roiling branches. A huge purple mountain, appearing like a miracle. Her heart surged. Lucky, with his forked tail and oversized paws, fire-bright wings and raggedy half-grown beard. Even as new chasms to nothing split open, she realised that he was digging, sending dirt and soil and rock in dramatic rainbows over his massive shoulders. She faltered. No. She wasn’t ready. She had to find Dian and Moth.

‘Lucky,’ she gasped.

‘Hurry!’ He called to her, chest deep in mud, and his eyes were stretched wide like pools of distressed gold. ‘Hurry, little stink. I cannot stop it!’

‘What is happening?’ she cried, racing for him.

‘I don’t know!’ he bellowed, although he didn’t stop digging. ‘Oh dear, oh dear! I do not know what is happening! Only that time has run out.’ She could hear the fear in his voice and that struck fear through her too, greater than any she’d felt before. Was this what happened when a dragon’s heart shattered?

That’s when she remembered.

Dian still had the Jewel.

She hadn’t taken it back.

She couldn’t even return to the terracotta dragon with the broken pieces.

She’d failed, in every possible way.

Suddenly she saw a sparkle at the edge of her vision, and her heart convulsed.

‘Dian!’ she cried.

At the edge of the trees, the unearthly faces of fairies materialised. She spun and leapt towards them, vaulting yawning crevasses as hope made her see stars within the depths.

‘Dian!’ she cried again, scanning their faces: oak-supreme, rowan-berry, ancient-yew, handsome-pine, apple tree, and no . . . Her heart sank. Dian was not amongst them.

‘Do you know where Dian is?’ she called to them. ‘I have to find them!’

The oak-supreme just looked down at her, their face more wan than she remembered. She gasped, shocked by their dishevelled oak leaf hair, the chaotic mist that wafted around them, fast and swirling. Still their eyes were pure white and deathly cold as they peered down their long, immaculate nose.

‘Dian,’ they said their name as if it tasted rotten, ‘is not here.’

Frida’s ire flared. ‘Yes, but do you know where they are?’

‘Little stink . . .’ Lucky cried urgently.

She ignored him, hurrying forward, every inch of her will used to hold the gaze of the oak fairy. She’d faced worse by now. ‘In the house, I have to tell you—’

‘Dian has already told us,’ the rowan-berry fairy snapped, peering over the oak-supreme’s shoulder.

Frida whipped her head around. ‘They’ve been here?’

‘Of course.’ The rowan-berry’s six eyes were masked with boredom, but Frida saw the ashen tinge to their skin, the fear hidden in their clenched teeth.

She sank back, the air leaving her lungs in a whoosh. ‘So, you know. About the wards, about what’s happening in the house? About what’s coming?’

The oak-supreme’s bearing shifted, and it was a shock to see her grief reflected in their own primeval face. Slowly, her gaze travelled across the other fairies. The ancient bitter yew. The one decked in apple blossoms, and the one with pine needles for fingers. Her body slackened as she looked beyond them, into the dark patches between the trees where she found the terrified eyes of the giant wolves. The boar and the wild cats. The elves and brownies, the chimeras with their tawny furred beards, and the many necked grunkles. Gnomes and sprites, a cloud of sapphire friperits. The gleaming white face of the angel stag. The tiny horns of a family of jackalopes. The gigantic hairy eight-eyed spiders, distant relatives of Moth’s perhaps.

They were here. They were all here.

And in each she saw the same grief lining their faces. Ever since Antony had peeled her gently off those bathroom tiles, she’d been acting as if she was the only one ever to experience something so terrible. The only person ever to have lost their grip on the light. She closed her eyes as the company of their grief filled her. This wasn’t her sorrow alone. It belonged to all of them.

‘For what it’s worth,’ she said, her voice rough with emotion. ‘I am sorry.’

The congregation of creatures gazed back at her. It seemed the collapse of the world paused, just for a moment, and then the oak-supreme inclined their chin. The collective weight of the creatures began to subside, and she realised that they were starting to slip away. The pad of a wolf’s paw, the tick of a spider’s legs. The flutter of a robin’s wings. The gentle prose of the angel stag.

The urgent thud, thud of Lucky’s mismatched wings, turning through the soil and the darkness.

The fairies were the last to fade, their edges crumbling like the earth beneath her feet. Frida reached out a hand and touched the oak-supreme’s arm, shivering as her fingers grazed the pale mycelium threads. Soft as angel hair.

‘Will you fight?’ she whispered. ‘Will you stay and fight?’

The oak-supreme tilted their head, and their lips, smooth and dark as an oak tree’s core, lifted into a sad, twisted smile. ‘Would you, Frida Rose? If you were us?’

Frida’s chest tightened. She shook her head helplessly. ‘I don’t know.’

The oak-supreme bowed their head. Was this the way the fairies would disappear from the world then, fading gracefully into mist? They were almost all washed away when Frida called after them into the ether and the roiling storm, ‘Please tell Dian . . .’

The oak-supreme hovered, on the cusp of being and not being.

She wanted to say she wished Dian had stayed, that she wished they’d had more time. She wanted to say that she ached to spend another few seconds at their side. She wanted to say thank you, to say that she was sorry, for everything that she’d done, and hadn’t done, and would do, and wouldn’t do. She wanted to say that she missed them already. That she—

Fuck.

In the end, she just smiled through her tears and said, ‘Tell them to keep the dragon’s heart safe, if they can.’

With a distant expression, the oak-supreme nodded. And then, like the rest, they were gone. In the far distance, Frida could still see the outline of the house, but it was hazy, just like everything else. There was more emptiness than not. But there were stars blooming in the darkness below her now, as if infinite galaxies twinkled just out of reach. The only sounds were the heavy thud of soil as Lucky dug, and the breathy gasp of his labours. A high-pitched chirping filled her heart, although she heard his fear too, stark as a fox’s scream. She raced for his mountainous body.

He was already beginning to sink, his golden eyes flaring with relief to see her. But in the depths beneath, she saw the broken silhouettes of trees. She saw dead and empty fields, a million streams, their water choked. She saw men in uniforms marching into the distance with guns on their backs, the explosion of bombs, the crumbling of entire cities. She saw parched and ravaged landscapes, stretching for eternity.

A billion broken roots. A billion broken hearts.

‘Little stink! Come on!’

Swirls of Lucky’s magic, the purple fire of his soul, flickered weakly as his wings trembled with exhaustion. She took short, ragged breaths that tasted of rotten, foetid earth. She just managed to stop herself from falling, wrenching herself away from that oblivion. Then she took a flying leap, landing with an oomph against his mud-slick scales.

Crawling frantically, she eventually tumbled into the dip at the base of his shoulders.

‘I missed you so much Lucky,’ she cried, pressing herself to him.

‘I missed you too, little stink,’ Lucky whispered back.

The two of them stared, marvelling, into the dark starry depths below. A single crack of silver lightning lit up the world for a split second. Then, like a frozen lake splintering, the entire ground beneath Lucky’s paws disappeared and they fell through the fabric of the earth.

PART FOUR

Chapter Fifty

The last time Frida and Lucky had plunged headfirst through time, she’d been unconscious. This time, it was reminiscent of her experience of the Kraken’s Rift on Melody’s pier. Frida almost bit half her tongue off as they spiralled. Stars whizzed by like fireballs, and in the opaque darkness, pockets of time opened up around them.

Memories. Floating like bubbles in the black soil.

The time when Frida took her first step.

The time when she and her mum had made that ice cream cake and it had melted all over the sofa.

The time when she’d first met Antony and Hamish.

All of it whooshed past and she cried out, desperately trying to reach for them, to grasp those moments which seemed to be happening all at once and all together. But they were being pulled downwards. Pocket after pocket, time after time tumbled by, as if they were being dragged deeper and deeper by some gargantuan beast. The time when Moira the manticore had tried to snap her hand off. The time when her mum had cried when she’d heard that David Bowie had died. The time when she first saw the golden LEZ Gates. There were other worlds too, worlds that weren’t hers, that she was given glimpses of. Hamish, no older than eight sitting on a doorstep alone, crying. Raziel, curled up on a teal velvet sofa being fed sugar cubes. Lucky chasing capybaras. Her mum as a teenager on the shore of a lake, with wild blue hair and piercings. A man Frida didn’t know stepping off a ten-storey roof and tumbling, end over end, onto the tarmac. She screamed when she saw that, her throat burning, as tears ran down her cheeks. And there was the terracotta dragon, bursting through the cloud on wings of scarlet.

Deep soil and water, sky and fire, everything, everything and nothing. She breathed it in with great gulping breaths, all that time and earth and life and death and love and loss and magic. And her heart ached as she stretched her fingers towards the ones she most yearned for, not quite able to reach them.

She didn’t feel the bump coming.

One moment, lost in the pockets and unspooling ribbons, clinging to Lucky.

Then – bump.

It didn’t hurt, per se, but it was a very big bump. It took her a long time to realise she was alive. For a while, she just lay there, on that spongy wet ground. One breath, two breaths, another minute, and she remembered what oxygen was. She rubbed her eyes. She blinked. She rubbed her eyes again and drew in a disbelieving gasp. Jungle everywhere, and not Dragon’s Deep jungle either. This was a green as far as she could see. This was a green that was wound through the fabric of the very atoms themselves. This was a green that contained multitudes. A cacophony of life and death, much like the spiralling galaxies they’d just plummeted through. This was real. This was not the LEZ.

All around her was the thunderous roar of insects, the cries of birds, the howls of jungle cats. The snuffling of a giant anteater, the ticking vociferous bellow of a colony of ants. The drone of mosquitos. The air was heavy, and thick steam twirled between the boughs. Sunlight blazed through the canopy of emerald that seemed to go on forever. A scarlet macaw flew overhead.

‘Little stink?’ Frida heard Lucky’s beloved chirp.

She spun, breaking into a huge smile. Lucky was lying behind her, nestled in a patch of slanting sunlight, his neck craning upwards as he, too, watched the macaw’s red wings arch across the sky. Peachy-bronze light played over his glassy scales. He had a blissful look in his saucer-like eyes, and a happy mauve blazed in his belly. She was about to throw her arms around him, so overjoyed was she to see him, when something moved in the bushes to their left. Both their heads snapped around, Frida drawing instinctively into Lucky’s chest. Quickly, he pressed his wings around her, pulling her close.

‘What’s that?’ she murmured, peering through his talons towards the undergrowth.

‘There are many scary things in forests.’ Then he paused, collecting himself. ‘But I am not afraid.’ Although he didn’t sound very sure of it.

‘Me neither,’ she said, gripping a dribble-coated strand of his beard in her fist and pressing herself even tighter into the freezing place beneath his neck, the leathery scales across his belly now a dull, terrified maroon. She could hear his heart like a booming drum. Then she heard the unmistakable padding of heavy paws coming towards them, and the massive trunks of prehistoric trees bowing backwards, as if asked to do so by a voice neither of them could hear. Then something – or someone – loomed out from behind the lianas, and for a moment, silver blazed across Frida’s eyeballs, blinding her.

‘DADA!!!!!’ Lucky shrieked.

Frida was nearly trampled as Lucky burst forward, galloping through the undergrowth, straight for a small, silver-scaled dragon. Her eyes widened in disbelief. This wasn’t a silver like Dian’s, or the corrupt silver of the LEZ. This dragon was a colour that seemed to belong in the brown soil itself, that ran in seams through the rock and earth, a molten primordial silver that coiled around her mind with talons and smoke.

The jungle seemed to go dim, and quiet.

Inches away from flattening him, Lucky pulled up short, his sides heaving. ‘Oh Dada,’ he whimpered. ‘I missed you so much.’ Great swollen tears welled in Lucky’s golden eyes.

Frida gulped down a sudden knot in her throat. ‘Your dada,’ she mouthed in wonder. How could that be possible? But even as she thought this, she looked around. They were in the Amazon. And this was Lucky’s father. Alive! She digested all of this as she marvelled at the silver dragon. He was a lot smaller than she’d expected, barely a third of the size of his son, smaller even than the terracotta dragon. Frida quaked in her boots to think how large Lucky’s muma must have been. But despite his size, a Godzilla-sized power oozed off him. She remembered the lightning above the woods, the leaden clouds, the silver stars that had seemed to drag them down, and down, and down, and she wondered.

‘My son.’ His voice was like Thor’s silver hammer, and his eyes were the same molten ore as Lucky’s.

Lucky let out a cry of joy, thrusting his adoring snout into his father’s chest, giggling like a desperate wild bird. ‘Dada!’ he chirped. ‘Oh Dada, I thought I’d never see you again.’

Lucky’s father chuckled, a deep rumble of a massive rock shifting below the earth. Gently, he nuzzled his son, as Frida tried to surreptitiously brush away her tears, but they’d been falling thick and fast. She was bone-tired. Overjoyed for Lucky, yet acutely aware of a stab of pain so sharp it felt like a broken rib. A fragment of her own loss, floating in her chest.

When the silver dragon turned his ancient, whiskered face towards her, she caught her breath. There were so many wrinkles around his scarred face, his eyes were almost wholly lost. He might have been older even than the terracotta dragon, she thought. But those golden slits weren’t marred by milk. They were sharp and fixed on Frida.

‘So,’ he murmured. ‘Here you are.’

Frida bowed clumsily. ‘Ah, hello, uh – most esteemed, venerable, dragon, sir.’

The crinkles around his eyelids deepened. He was Dragon-Gandalf.

Lucky righted himself and bounded over to Frida excitedly. ‘Little stink, this is my dada! I knew it was him all along, really. I was just pretending to be afraid!’

The silver dragon made a low growl in the back of his throat. It made the hairs on Frida’s neck rise and Lucky immediately looked mortified.

‘I’m sorry, that’s not true. I didn’t know it was you at all. And I was very afraid!’ He hung his head, peering down at them both adorably through long golden eyelashes.

The silver dragon shared a long-suffering look with Frida, making her heart swell as he dipped his snout into his big silver beard to hide his smile. ‘Babies are meant to try us, are they not?’

‘I’m not a baby, Dada!’ Lucky squealed.

His father inspected him with all seriousness. ‘Are you not? How strange. Are you sure?’ He made a big show of looking beneath Lucky’s armpits, between the cracks of his wings, within his scraggly beard. By the end, Lucky was giggling so riotously, a family of capybaras snuffling in the undergrowth had to turn and flee.

When the silver dragon stopped, Lucky lay panting in the leaves and the silver dragon turned his attention back to Frida. She tucked her hair nervously behind her ears – windswept was not the word for it now. It was more like space-and-time-swept. But when the silver dragon spoke, she forgot all about that. There was such sorrow in his golden eyes.

‘I think my son is right, he is not a baby.’

‘No,’ Frida said quietly. ‘His bravery has done you credit, sir.’

The silver dragon looked pleased. He nodded, as the capybaras returned to their snuffling. ‘Come then.’

Frida blinked at him. ‘Come where?’

She needed to get back to the LEZ. But then she remembered how fantastically she’d failed – the terracotta dragon, Dian, her friends. Would there even be a zoo to go back to? Did she even want there to be? The tiredness suddenly felt like a weight on her very soul.

‘Frida Rose,’ the silver dragon beckoned to her, gently but firmly.

Lucky, who she loved with every inch of her broken heart, wagged his forked tail, sending a troop of multicoloured parrots soaring. Next to him, his dada was still as a mountain, and as boundless, the slanting sunlight slipping off his scales.

‘For now,’ he said, ‘be soothed to know all is as it needs to be.’

She let out a choking breath. She had the too-real memory of Dian’s last words to her. I think I must go home, Frida Rose. The anguish settling over their features, the resolution of the coming destruction sank deep into their bones. The whole assembly of creatures coating the woods in a thousand kinds of tears.

But the silver dragon’s eyes were so sure, she found herself nodding. Then she gathered her freefalling heart and walked into the trees after the purple dragon and his silver father.

Chapter Fifty-One

They walked for a long, long time. She was so tired, but she didn’t want to interrupt Lucky’s delighted chirping. In the end, he lulled her into a kind of daze, the swirls of the jungle rising and falling like an ocean. The sound was immense. With her magic released, she could barely compute the vastness of it as the voices around her moved up and down, around and around, in and out, in perfect discordant harmonies. She’d never heard anything like it. It was like the very best symphony, except the instruments were the trees and the clouds and the boiling air, and the musicians had claws and filmy wings, paws, whiskers and tongues, although after a time she thought there was no instrument or musician at all. There was just music.

It spiralled, and she spiralled too, slipping into a kind of waking sleepwalk, the events of the past days drifting around her in spools of strange colours. The silvery water of Dian’s raindrops, the bioluminescent blue of Moth’s cobwebs. The auburn of Sir Joshua’s hair. The sickly pale light that had been sucked out of her, the grey iron of the cage bars. The black of the grootnecks’ eggs. The creamy white of the parchment in the study and the stark ink of those damning words. The trapped sunlight of the dragonflies. The flamingo pink of the terracotta dragon’s Jewel. The dark blood of the dragon’s wings. The warm brown of her mother’s eyes.

Frida’s hand flexed where, in another version of this world, she might have remembered to ask Dian for the pieces of the Jewel. She thought of the terracotta dragon’s face when she arrived back empty-handed, and the grief curled into her anew. Maybe in her world, Dian still had the Jewel, but with no way to wake Dian up, she may never know. Belatedly, she realised that she should have given better instructions to the oak-supreme to relay like, Hey Dian, please hide the Jewel in the Hawthorn of Higgleton Common’s fourth branch from the left or something. She was so busy spiralling that she didn’t realise that the dragons had stopped until she almost walked into Lucky’s venomous tail.

They were standing on a sheer rocky ledge. A light breeze brushed her neck, warm and sticky. Vampiric insects buzzed all around her, scenting her blood. Politely swiping them away, she gasped to see the vast sweep of a valley below. The dragons had brought her up onto a cliff edge, overlooking a great, winding brown river. There was nothing else but trees for as far as she could see. Behind her was the dark opening of a cave.

The silver dragon smiled at her. His mouth didn’t move, but it was in the tilt of his head, the warming of the lava in his eyes, the comforting blaze in his belly.

‘What do you need, little Frida Rose?’ he asked, his voice that deep silver hammer, but soothing somehow, against the haze that was pressing in around her.

Tears of exhaustion pricked at her eyes and hunger gnawed at her belly. Thirst burned her throat. ‘I need to get home as quickly as possible! But . . .’ She hesitated, putting her head in her hands. ‘I thought my home was one thing, and now it’s not that at all, it’s a mess, and I just don’t know what to do about any of it. I don’t know where I am, or why I’m here.’ Then everything burst out of her as the silver dragon listened: the LEZ, her mum, her friends, the lightning storm, Lucky’s impossible gift of magic, the wood, Dian, the Nuckelavee. The Nuckelavee was grieving too, as surely as any of them. She babbled on, speaking about the terracotta dragon, about the fairies, about Moth and the unicorn without his horn. About getting trapped in the cage. About the lies of Sir Joshua and the other LEZites, about her naïvety, about the Beaufort sisters who she’d idolised. Finally, about the Jewel, and about the way Dian had left, how much it hurt. How they hadn’t actually trusted her at all, in the end. The look of anguish on the oak-supreme’s face.

For once Lucky was quiet and, together with his dada, the two of them waited solemnly, letting her talk. It took her a long time. She only noticed she’d sat down when the cool of the earth started seeping into her bones. And that she had a bigger audience than just two dragons. A family of capybaras, brown as the soil, sat on their haunches, listening intently from underneath some nearby flower bushes. Above them, a line of bearded monkeys. Two blue macaws perched in a palm tree to Frida’s left – a sight that sent a chill through her, a direct memory of the feathered cloak pinned to Sir Joshua’s study wall. To her right, she caught the massive coils of a green snake, lying in a patch of sunshine.

When he saw her looking, silver dragon said softly, ‘it’s their story too. Isn’t it?’

She realised he was right. It was.

She’d reached the end now, and she was wrung out, her voice almost gone. Lucky carefully placed a long back talon on her leg and rested his face next to her, looking up with wide-eyed compassion. Her heart almost broke anew.

When the old dragon asked her again, the drooping branches shifting like rivulets behind his silver head, ‘What do you need?’ she didn’t answer for a long time.

Her eyes fixed on Lucky’s, watching the golden rivers dancing.

She opened her mouth to say, home.

‘Sleep,’ was what came out instead. ‘I want to sleep,’ she gasped, wiping an arm across her tear-stained, filthy face. There was a disaster of unimaginable proportions waiting for her, in one of those billions of pockets they’d passed to get here. ‘And food. I want to drink some water. Maybe bathe but most of all, I would like to sleep.’

The silver dragon smiled, without saying anything. A mercy for which she was profoundly grateful. She felt as raw as if the top layer of her skin had been scraped away. He directed her inside the cave. Lucky wanted to follow, but his dada shooed him away, and Frida was swallowed by a darkness that was warm and safe, and lit with the shining lights of fireflies.

In a corner she found a natural spring, where she drank deep and long. Next to the spring were piles of food. Many bones and cooked stacks of meat, which she was unwilling to touch, but then her eyes fell on the mountain of fresh berries. The mounds of roasted roots nestled in fragrant leaves, the rainbows of other fruits, so strange and oddly shaped she couldn’t even guess their names. They were all so juicy and plump, they sent a lilting sweetness through the air which made her moan. As she fell upon this pantry, she marvelled at the unexpected bounty. She knew, of course, that dragons occasionally sampled things that did not walk and talk, but this was something more – as if the silver dragon had known she was coming. And not only that, had known what she would need, too.

She shook her head in wonder and bit into another mango.

When her stomach was blissfully swollen, she found a pool of water not too far from the spring. Without hesitation, she unlaced her heavy boots and peeled off her filthy uniform. She hadn’t realised how desperate she’d been to get it off her until it lay in a muddy, khaki heap on the ground. Then she slipped into the pool. The water was warm – bath warm, as if it had been heated by some invisible source. She sighed as she leaned her head back against the smooth rocky edge. For a second, the memory of Dian’s enchanted pool fluttered over the backs of her eyelids, but instead of pushing it away, as she might have done yesterday, she just swallowed, and embraced it, although it hurt.

She didn’t know how long she soaked for, but by the time she got out, she was wrinkled as a prune. A few gallons of nuckelavee spit, dragon smoke, gore, earth, mud, blood, fruit juice and sweat lay at the bottom of that pool. She had no desire to put her uniform back on, but the air was warm and the insects kind enough not to bite her after she asked them not to. So, she just wrung out her hair and, with bare feet, approached another niche, where she found a pile of velvety soft, aromatic leaves for her to lie upon, along with a fur blanket to cover herself with. She touched the silken fur, markings of creamy splatters against a sea of black. She couldn’t guess what animal it had come from, but now that she knew that dragons could speak every language, she wondered: did they talk to their prey? Did they ask permission? Did they say thank you? She recalled the odd, almost shameful way Lucky had approached the cow she’d given him at the LEZ. His reaction made sense to her now.

Too exhausted to dwell on it, she just crawled into the impossible bed the silver dragon had prepared for her and whispered softly,

‘Thank you.’

Fireflies fluttered around her like tiny stars, and before her head touched the vanilla-scented leafy pillow, she was asleep.

Chapter Fifty-Two

She awoke a long time later to find a little Amazonian rodent had crawled under the covers with her. Nestled against her chest, she stroked the tiny creature’s glossy fur, listening to their hectic heartbeat. They squeaked every now and then, little paws running against her chest bone. Frida thought they must be dreaming. She gazed up at the rocky ceiling, a soft dreamy light slanting through the entrance. The roof was covered with crystalline stalactites. A sort of blueish rock, shot through with gold that danced in the queer light. She had no idea what time it was. In another life, she might have panicked, but the cave was so peaceful, the stalactites so beautiful, and her companion so deeply asleep, that she just lay there. She didn’t know how long it had been since she’d felt rested. She didn’t know how long it had been since she’d slept through the night. Not since her mother had died.

At some point, her rodent friend woke up and squeaked to find Frida looking down at them. With a shy exclamation, they scuttled away in a hurry, muttering,

‘Must get along, must get along.’

Frida sighed with pleasure, stretching out her limbs and giving her own little squeak, before crawling out from her nest. Next to her bed, she found a neatly folded tunic. She picked it up, running her fingers over the light bark-brown fabric, woven with a soft natural fibre she didn’t recognise. Unadorned, apart from a single zigzag pattern across the hem. Quickly, she slipped it on with gratitude. Feeling more relaxed and at ease with herself than she had in a long time, she had another drink of water, took a baked and gnarled sweet potato to nibble on, and padded on bare feet out of the cave.

At first, she just stood in the entrance and gazed down at the pink misty light that hovered over the carpet of trees. Dawn or dusk, she wondered. It must be evening, she deduced, as the colours deepened. She guessed the sun’s rays had already dipped below the canopy. At first, she thought the dragons must be elsewhere. The ledge was empty and all she could hear were the raucous cries of a jungle preparing for nightfall. But then faintly, she thought she heard the soft murmurs of dragon whispers, drifting from behind a brace of trees, their furry aubergine-coloured leaves the size of dustpan lids, their bark the colour of fire. Padding carefully across the ledge, she slipped between the mammoth trunks, feeling the brush of wispy cobwebs across her face, sparkling like diamonds.

Grief was there, but it didn’t floor her this time.

‘Little stink!’ Lucky cried in a stage whisper, the moment she’d emerged on the other side of the trees. A musky light casting the world in scarlet and gold. Her eyes widened when she took in the scene. Lucky lay across a wide plane of black rock, curled up with his tail around him as he nestled against his father’s side. The ledge seemed to wrap all the way around the cliff and Frida guessed they were at the back of the cave here, surrounded by tall sprigs of ferns, regal palms and those dustbin lid leaves, casting fluting shadows. The silver dragon’s scales shimmered in the dying sunlight, sharp and blinding.

Against the side of the cliff, a low depression had been filled with tree fluff and scarlet feathers, all carefully arranged to soften the hard rock beneath. It reminded Frida of the nest the terracotta dragon had made for the sixth shard of her Jewel. She could hear the layers of the jungle soaring around her, and she didn’t realise her hand was over her mouth as she took a wondering step forwards. Lucky, who’d lifted his head when she’d appeared, now lowered it back down onto his oversized paws, and gave a contented sigh.

‘That’s me,’ he told her.

The egg that rested in the nest was enormous. Of course it was. It was nearly as large as she was. The shell was thin and delicate as glass, with an inner fire that rippled across the surface – all the purples of the known world, and more.

‘Fire-spoken-and-soaring-on-exalted-sky-and-deep-notched-trees-with-great-hope-in-many-veined-hearts,’ Frida said quietly, her voice barely a breath in the twilight. She understood where they were now. When they were.

Lucky beamed at her.

The silver dragon’s long, sharp claws curled as he lifted his head. The purple reflected in the dark slits of his pupils. Reverently, she approached him, getting down on her knees next to him. For a time, they just sat there in quiet meditation, watching the flickering of Lucky’s egg as the gloaming shifted to deep sapphire, then black, a slender sickle moon rising.

When Lucky started to snore, the silver dragon finally spoke. ‘Tell me.’

Frida’s voice was hoarse. It felt like she hadn’t used it in a long time. ‘I think – this is the moment before your son hatched. A hundred years ago, a hundred years before my time, but a hundred years after the time I was just in.’ She gazed up at him, her eyes wide. ‘Is that right?’

The silver dragon inclined his gigantic beard, smiling into it. ‘Yes.’ He paused, and then he said with tenderness, ‘You were asleep for a long while.’ In the bushes, a large animal nosed through the undergrowth. ‘Three days and two nights I think, in your time.’

Somehow, what he’d said didn’t come as a shock. None of it did. She just blew out a soft laugh.

They were quiet again.

The moon rose. Soon it began to reflect in the egg’s surface.

Frida asked, ‘Will he hatch soon?’

‘In a few hours, I believe.’

Frida sucked in her breath. ‘So quickly?’

He nodded.

‘You seem remarkably calm!’ she exclaimed.

The silver dragon chuckled, a deep sound that reverberated through the rock, ‘I’ve been waiting a long time.’

But Frida’s heart sank. ‘Will we have to leave before he hatches?’

The silver dragon turned to look at her, a deep interminable sadness in the cracked slits of his pupils. She could just make out Lucky’s sleeping form, snoring on the other side of his dada. She felt his absolute joy at being here again, in the warmth of his father’s safety, and the yawning, awful emptiness of the goodbye that was to come. She choked back a guttural cry, and another rising tide of grief. Would it ever stop?!

She shook her head, swallowing bile and, after a few moments, said fiercely,

‘But Lucky can come back, right? Anytime he needs you. This is the past, and you managed to get us here, so you could do it again!’

The way the silver dragon continued to look at her, with such awesome quiet, the ore in his eyes shifting like rivers, she knew. ‘It’s a one-time deal?’

He inclined his fearsome bearded chin.

Suddenly she knew she’d been holding something so tightly to her chest, something so desperate and precious, so hopeful, that she could barely speak. It was the unspoken hope that somewhere, somehow, she could still reach her mum. Her mum was also somewhere in these pockets. She hadn’t admitted it to herself yet, but she’d been going to beg the dragon to send her to one of them. But as they stared at each other, the knowledge of his answer reflected in his ancient face, she could only choke out a single word. ‘Why?’

For a moment, even the silver dragon seemed at a loss. Finally, his voice broke the silence, clanging against her skin. ‘I am sorry. But there is a cost.’

The sound of bats whizzed through the treetops. ‘What is it?’ she gasped hoarsely. ‘I’ll pay it. I’ll pay it.’

‘It is too much.’

She was going to argue, but when she saw his expression, all hope bled out of her. She slumped. For a time, she said nothing. Then, with growing dread, she forced herself to ask, ‘Did Lucky have to pay something to bring us here? To bring me into the past?’ She stared up at him, terrified. ‘Or did you?’

He gazed at the fire-tarnished egg. He curled his tail a bit tighter around his giant snoring son, exhaustion marking every one of his wrinkles as his shoulders sagged. Then with a gnarled paw, he tapped the dark rock beneath and just said, ‘They are all down there in the earth. Remember this. All the people you love.’

She hadn’t thought it was possible for her heart to shatter any more than it had already, but she was wrong. It could. Maybe it would keep shattering forever.

But as the silver dragon looked at his son, from whom a steadily growing puddle of drool was emerging, she found herself nodding dumbly.

‘All of this is precious,’ the silver dragon told her. His silver scales stark against Lucky’s wild and wondrous purple.

Frida felt those glimpses of her mum slipping through her fingers, but she stared down at the black rock too, and breathed in the rich scent of the jungle, and the rich scent of the earth. Her mum was down there. She’d seen it. And then she managed to smile, licking salty tears off her lips. She’d had twenty-two years with her mum. It wasn’t enough, it wasn’t anywhere near enough, but she understood a bit more now. It was also endless. She and her mum would always be together down there in the dirt, long after she, too, had died.

So Antony was right after all. There was a heaven.

It went round and round.

The knowledge eased something in her bruised heart.

But she had to know. ‘Why are we here? And why did you ask Lucky to give me his magic? That’s what he said, that you told him to do it. But I don’t understand why!’

The silver dragon sighed, the sound coming from very far away, as though it rose from the deepest depths of the earth. ‘Fire-spoken-and-soaring-on-exalted-sky-and-deep-notched-trees-with-great-hope-in-many-veined-hearts did not have the strength to bring you home. I knew it. I will know it now, when I agree to do what you have asked of me.’

Frida blinked, surprised. ‘What I . . .’ Then she blinked again, the violet fiery patterns of the egg, more precious than anything, staining her eyelids. ‘What I’ve asked of you?’ The beginnings of another, deeper kind of understanding began to settle over her shoulders. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked warily.

The silver dragon just waited, solemn.

She gazed at him. Slowly, she got to her feet, unable to stay still. It was like an itch under her bones. She might have argued, might have claimed that she hadn’t asked anything of him yet. But her words on the top of the cliff came back to her, tumbling unchecked from her mouth.

‘I’ve already asked,’ she murmured.

Still, he waited.

She looked down at herself, staring at the faint purple light flickering beneath her skin. Ever-present now. ‘You will ask Lucky to give me this, in a hundred years, because I’ve already told you that’s what will happen.’ With a wild laugh, she slapped her forehead. ‘Sea and skies! When I told you about Dian in the zoo, about Lucky striking the tree, about Lucky sending us back in time . . .’ Her eyes again landed on the egg, her ears buzzing. ‘You didn’t know any of that. After Lucky hatches, you’ll only give him the instructions that you do, because I’ve told you that you will. Outside the cave when I first arrived.’ Her voice dropped, not sure if she should be terrified or awestricken. ‘The little stink who came to dinner. That’s what Lucky called me, the first time we met. You didn’t know any of this before I came here,’ she repeated. It spun and spun in her head, delicate and complex as Moth’s webs.

She remembered her mum’s words, rich as honey. I swear your eyes are purple, Friduska. You have magic in your DNA, I’m sure of it! Round and round it went. Her eyes had always been purple, even before she’d met Lucky. Because this had all already happened, was still happening, she was already magic, even before she was born.

As if the silver dragon heard her, he said in confirmation, ‘There is no beginning, or end. There is just time and dirt.’

Frida quickly snapped her mouth shut. Helplessly, she dropped to her knees before him. ‘Why?’ she asked again. ‘Why would you agree to any of it?’

A deep weariness settled over him. As he lay there, she took in the wan colour staining the delicate triangular scales around his nostrils, the fatigued slump of his wings, the frail length of his tail, slung tightly around one of Lucky’s paws. The night was velvet black, the glow of the egg winking like a campfire. She sank down on her heels. For a while, the silver dragon said nothing. Then in the stillness, he spoke,

‘There are humans not so far from here, you know.’

Frida stared at him, not comprehending. Then she looked down at her clothes. ‘This is where you got these?’ For a moment, an ominous thought crossed her mind – had he killed for them? But he just laughed, seeing her expression.

‘There are humans and there are humans, Frida Rose. The humans I speak of still embrace magic in their blood, and they have knowledge that has been lost to many. Like myself, they are stewards of the sacred places of this part of the earth. We are kin, of a kind. Not too long ago, I think, for human time is confusing to me, these people met the human that I see in your mind, the one you spoke of, the one you call Joshua. With coppery hair and smiling lips and brutality bound into his skin.’

She swayed.

‘He was a child, but they saw the things he might do. They read the patterns of the worlds changing and shifting with this boy, and they saw our paths crossing impossibly. We wept together, for joy and for grief, when they told me they’d seen the shape of my son who wasn’t yet hatched. And even though it would not stop all the harm that was to come, we agreed that when I heard him moving through the earth in a way that was beyond his strength, with a strange human on his back who spoke with a dragon’s tongue, I would answer. I would pay the cost of bringing you both here and sending you both home again.’ He gave Frida a hard look, and finished with, ‘I did not know why, and I did not know what you would ask of me. I did not know that you would ask for the gift of my son’s precious dragon fire. Now, I know.’

Lucky, on his other side, stirred. His drool patch glimmered in the light of the sickle moon. She didn’t know what to say.

Her heart was pounding so painfully, she wondered if it might burst.

‘What was the cost? What was the cost you had to pay?’

Lucky’s father watched his son settle back into sleep.

He did not answer, but she thought she knew.

‘Your life,’ she said through her tears. ‘Is that it?’

‘Yes.’ The sound of the single, crushing word was like a hammer falling.

His silver ancient life.

‘How will it happen?’ she asked, her voice breaking.

Around them, the jungle, thick and full and primeval, seemed to hush.

Achingly slowly, he turned his great head to look at her. ‘The earth will take me back when it chooses, but my energy bleeds out. The universe demands the price of what I’ve done.’

‘Will it be soon?’ she gasped, her head twisting towards the giant egg about to hatch.

The silver dragon’s slitted pupil was pure jet, floating in a sea of devastated lava. ‘That is not given to me to know. But yes, I think so. Although soon means something different to me as it does to you.’

She drew in a shaky, awful breath. She remembered what Lucky had said to her, clear as day now. It was right before the other awful little stinks came and took him. And then they took me. As if Lucky’s father would hold on as long as he was able, but she imagined she could see the holes in his scales, the bright silver fire of his life bleeding onto the rock, unable to protect himself or his son.

He rasped, ever so quietly, ‘I did not do it for you, Frida Rose.’ He stared at her for a long time, and Frida couldn’t look away from the searing, scouring flames. But if they held answers, she couldn’t decipher them. Eventually, he just lifted himself up, his bones creaking, and said simply, ‘I am old, and it is a gift to see my son grown.’

She gave a desperate sob.

‘It is time,’ he said.

It all happened so fast after that.

She still didn’t understand, but she reclaimed her boots and her uniform from the cave. She thought about leaving the latter behind, but in the end, she put it back on, feeling the weight of the dirt and the grease and the layers of mud settle back over her skin. Her dirtied history, written in unflattering cargo trousers. She left the beautiful clothes Lucky’s father had loaned her in a neat pile on the bed, and then they were standing back on the edge of the cliff face.

Lucky was bawling huge globular tears. ‘BUT I WANT TO STAY WITH YOU!’ His tail jerked back and forth so sharply, he almost took out half the line of red-barked primordial trees. ‘I don’t want to miss you again! It’s too hard! I don’t want to lose you.’

His father looked up at him tenderly, unspent tears trembling on his own argent eyelashes. ‘The earth is calling you back home, fire-spoken-and-soaring-on-exalted-sky-and-deep-notched-trees-with-great-hope-in-many-veined-hearts.’

‘THIS IS MY HOME!’ Lucky howled.

‘Yes, it always will be, little one.’ The silver dragon’s belly shone with such terrible brightness. ‘But you have another home now. And I am so proud of you. My gigantic son, remember all is as it needs to be, and no more, no less.’

Frida was weeping uncontrollably as clouds of moonlit insects hovered around her. Flocks of parrots flew through the hushed darkness. Night monkeys leapt through the lianas, and she thought she saw an Amazonian anaconda plant flicking their tongues through the shadows, hissing gently. Even through the fog of tears, she heard their words, their shapes, and reminded herself that all of this was precious.

Lucky pressed himself against his father. ‘Dada please!’ He tried tucking his face beneath his dada’s chest. ‘My heart hurts too much. I do not want to leave you.’

Frida watched, wordless, as tears began to fall down the silver dragon’s cheeks. The only thing that stopped her from begging him to let them stay was the knowledge that this, too, would go on. Down in the earth. The silver dragon would be there, just as surely as her mum would. ‘We – we have to go, Lucky,’ she said, her voice breaking. Somewhere just on the other side of that cliff, an egg was about to hatch.

But Lucky was sobbing. ‘I don’t want to go!’

‘I do not want you to go either, little one,’ his father said. ‘But sometimes there are things we must do.’ His voice was a hammer, and it was high wings and swollen skies, it was molten silver and fire-dusted clouds. It was love. It washed over Frida, washed through the jungle, soothing the tumultuous thunder that rumbled above their heads, and eventually, it soothed Lucky too. He dipped his massive boxy head, acceptance settling over him.

At the silver dragon’s nod, Frida started to crawl up Lucky’s back.

‘I know I don’t need to tell you this,’ she called with a shaky voice once she’d reached the peak of Lucky’s quivering spine, watching her friend’s scales shimmer beneath her, ‘but your son is magnificent! And I will look after him, I swear. We will look after each other.’

The silver dragon inclined his chin, and said softly, ‘I know, Frida Rose.’

His eyes flared with golden fire, the scent of furnaces rising.

An electric hum filled the air. But she wasn’t afraid, not this time.

‘Are you ready?’ she asked, wrapping her arms around Lucky’s scales.

He shook his massive head. ‘No, I’m not.’

She pressed her damp cheek into his neck. ‘Then we’ll do it together, fire-spoken-and-soaring-on-exalted-sky-and-deep-notched-trees-with-great-hope-in-many-veined-hearts.’

His dada raised his wings in parting.

The earth creaked.

The black rock split open.

Darkness and starlight beckoned.

The silver dragon roared.

The last thing she saw was the promise in his fire-bright gaze, which went something along the lines of, If you don’t keep him safe, I’ll come back from the fiery pits of molten eternity and roast you where you stand, until you have no brains left, no bones, no eyes, no skin, no feet, no little stink hands. You’ll just be a pile of dust, which will blow away in the wind, destined to be tormented for the rest of times.

Frida’s mouth quirked in a grin, and then they were gone.

Chapter Fifty-Three

Frida knew they were back in the LEZ. She came back to consciousness as Lucky whimpered softly beneath her. She’d concocted so many scenarios for what they’d find – death, destruction, despair, that for as long as she could bear, she stayed with her cheeks pressed into his frosty scales, her arms wrapped around the back of his neck, not wanting to look. It felt as if they’d been pushed back through the earth, the pockets, and the space-time continuum like they’d been lubricated like hangferns and sent through a slip ’n’ slide. She held all the pockets close to her, taking a moment to cherish the memories, and then she shelved them for later. For a pitcher of margaritas at the Crown and Anchor.

‘We’re back, my love,’ she whispered.

Lucky slowly lifted his head, his whimpering subsiding. Pearlescent light rippled under his scales, and she could smell animals, manure, hay and sweat, along with pine trees and the heady aroma of flowers. It was familiar, but also different. Smaller. Staler. The smell of plywood, rather than woodland.

She swallowed hard, listening.

The creaking of trees seemed quieter – everything did. Placing a gentle kiss to Lucky’s muddy neck, she raised herself up and looked around. All was dark and still. There was no longer the eternal presence of the Narnian lamps. The only light came from Lucky’s inner fire and an uncanny drifting glitter, that shimmered like embers from a fire. It sparked a feeling of recognition that settled deep in her bones. Everything is as it needs to be.

They were back in Forest. She would have known it anywhere.

A familiar carved wooden sign greeted her. Nailed beneath the branches of an old oak, it said: ‘Welcome and beware. All who enter this wood, prepare to be enchanted.’ The oak and sign were still standing.

‘It’s the same,’ she said to herself.

Lucky gazed back at her, his mercurial eyes guttering as he placed his head on his oversized paws. He looked exhausted. Here and there, zealous tree roots had broken out of the yellow cobbles, upturned benches, wrapped around bushes. Her gaze trailed over the sleeping bodies spooning the capsized rubbish bins. She expected to be afraid, like she’d been before. Before, the wood had felt like a horror movie alien parasite. Now, she only saw peace in her friends’ faces. Cliff starfished over the grass, Gloria curled around the vines of a white rose bush, Zuzka’s pink hair entwined with ivy, Sora, cuddling one of the exposed leathery roots. There was—

She let out a cry and slipped off Lucky’s back. Her boots hit the uneven cobbles with a slap, jarring her knees, but she was running, leaping bushes, benches and bins.

‘Antony!’ she cried, falling to her knees. ‘Hamish!’

Her two friends lay amongst the others, snuggled up together in a way that almost broke her heart. Hamish’s leg thrown over Antony’s, Antony’s arm tucked around Hamish’s willowy shoulders, Hamish’s cheek soft against Antony’s broad chest. As if they’d always been there, like that. She pressed her face to Hamish’s, breathed in Antony’s familiar scent of laundry powder and mint. She touched Hamish’s soft pale hair. Patted Antony’s neat brown beard. ‘You’re here,’ she gasped as snotty tears ran down her nose. ‘You’re here!’

They rested on a carpet of dewdrop leaves and the yellow bells of daffodils. As if the trees themselves had carried them here and laid them amongst the rest for safekeeping. She stared up at the thorny storm of branches above. She wasn’t afraid. This wood was a galaxy, brimming with every kind of brightness and darkness, and her friends as much a part of it as that oak tree over there holding up the sign. She could almost feel the power of the dreams wafting off them, wrapping around and around like the ribbons on a maypole.

‘It’s not the same,’ Lucky murmured from where she’d left him, over by the grass.

After giving Antony and Hamish a kiss on both their cheeks, she returned to Lucky.

‘What’s that, love?’

He sighed, peering at her from where his head lay on his paws. A new heaviness weighed him down, as if the grief had settled into his young bones, his paws sinking profoundly into the soil. ‘You said it was the same,’ he told her. ‘But it’s not. Because we are not the same.’

His words coiled around her.

We are not the same.

No. He was right.

All around her the wood teemed, an orchestra of snores and babbling breath. With complicated feelings, she ran a finger along the sleeve of her shirt, streaked with dirt from a thousand worlds. Then she traced the lines of her tattoos, understanding that each one was magic. Not of capture and ownership, but of love. The grootnecks, the slug, Issy. The rose on her wrist, shining brightly in the plum light of Lucky’s scales. Dian had been right: nothing was just a picture.

Then she raised her hands to her face. She couldn’t see, but she knew that her eyes were blazing violet. She gave a low, sad laugh. ‘No, we’re not the same at all.’

Lucky mumbled something about the small brains of humans, and she gave him a tight hug. When she pulled away, her eyes fell to the yellow cobbles beneath her. She’d once thought them the very essence of whimsy. She couldn’t have pictured a future without them. Now, she saw the road for what it was: staged. The thinnest illusion. But the roses that Dian had conjured? She touched one of them. The petals felt like velvet. It felt more real than anything. Somewhere, she caught the scent of a long-ago memory of moss and the afterglow of rain.

Dian.

They hadn’t told her their name. They hadn’t trusted her enough to do that. She knew that. She knew she had no way to help them. But something in her heart leapt when she saw the velvety petals of those roses. They hadn’t trusted her, but they’d still made this incredible forest of roses, just for her.

‘Lucky,’ she said, trying to steady the pounding rhythm of her blood. ‘Will you be alright staying here for a bit? I’ll try not to be too long.’

Lucky had already curled up, the oak trees lifting their branches to make room for him. Waving her away with his left wing, he snuggled down and settled in amongst the other sleepers. Those strange embers floated around him – pink, she suddenly realised – drifting on an unseen wind.

Hope blazed inside her.

Dian. Maybe, after all this, they had left her something. Some clue as to what to do. Something she’d missed before, but that they’d known she – the Frida that she was now – would be able to find. Something, like the roses, that were just for her. She approached the wood, seeing immediately that it had bedded down, an impenetrable knot over the hillside fathoms deep. She had no idea how she would get through, but as she moved towards that hallowed darkness, she was surprised when the first boughs lifted tentatively. She spun, thinking that Lucky must have come with her. But no, there he was, his snores and dragon dreams already mingling with the others. The trees gave a low swishing sound and when she looked back, they’d raised their tawny branches a bit more. Heart-shaped leaves of all colours. Frosted greys and emeralds, red summer fruits and autumn’s fiery russets.

Come on then, they seemed to say. You want in?

For a moment, she just stood there, on those liminal edges. She took in the hulking shapes of the rugged trunks, their ageless branches stretching up, up, up. The sentinels of ancient beech trees. Ash, drooping willow, birch and chestnut, trunks mingling with hues of sapphire, leaves radiating a soft luminescence. No light filtered through the canopy yet beams of iridescent colours danced on the forest floor. The air should have been alive with the purr of unseen wings. Robins, tits, and woodpeckers should have been flitting from branch to branch, butterflies and moths pirouetting. But it seemed they were asleep too.

The hairs on her arms rose. Here we go, she thought to herself. Then she slipped inside. The branches didn’t part for her as they might have done for Lucky, but they lifted enough for her to squeeze through, occasionally scratching her cheek with a thorn or catching her hair. Primroses scattered like pale yellow stars, adders and slow worms slept in patches of shadow. The little streams tinkled but the bustle of life was dimmed: no pond-skaters, no dragonflies. A blackbird should have warbled, woodpigeons cooed.

It was almost like the world of Dian’s pool.

A dreamworld.

Caps of fungi splayed out, an ocean of blues and oranges.

She followed them breathlessly, thinking of Antony, who would have loved this so much he would have been having palpitations. And Hamish, at Antony’s side with their brand-new mushroom collecting sack. For a split second, for the first time in her life, she was jealous of them. The feeling was so sharp and unexpected, she had to stop, disoriented in the darkness and still drifting embers. She wasn’t jealous of them – she wished her friends nothing but joy. But that’s when she realised that for a teeny tiny moment, she’d also looked into someone else’s gorgeous, infuriating, baffling face – a face that didn’t belong to a unicorn, or a street cat, or a ghost-lynx – and seen somewhat she might want to welcome into her life.

And then they’d left, without even saying goodbye. All around her, cobwebs laced the darkness and as the memory of raindrops sparkled whenever she closed her eyes, she had a terrible thought that maybe this wood was their goodbye.

That’s when she started to run, going as fast as she could up the slope, pushing through thorny vines and labyrinthine roots, not caring if she hurt herself. Far below her feet, she tried to imagine her mum making an ice-cream cake or reading a dense book about merpeople and, before she knew it, she started to feel the slope levelling out.

The meadow had been swallowed by a grove of brambles. For a moment she had to pull up short, her breath ripped away from her at the magnitude of it. But then the brambles started to lift, just a tiny bit, as the trees had done, and she launched into movement again, slithering forwards, determinedly brushing aside the sharp bite of the thorns. When she almost tripped over a charred branch, her brain went into hyperdrive.

‘Dian!’ she cried.

There was an ashen, faintly bitter scent on the air. The scent of decay. Dread ratcheting up, she forced her way through the final thickets and emerged into a patch of wild grasses so tall, they reached her chest. Lifting her eyes, she found herself in a cave, made from the shipwrecked carcass of the Hawthorn and wreathed in ivy. The roof blended together to create a deep, impenetrable black. The air seemed thickened with the gaps between stars and, as Frida proceeded, those embers flared. Like fireflies. Like starfire. Gathering wild and thick around the broken, devastated shape of the tree.

The hawthorn, from whose roots Dian had been born.

She fell to her knees, slamming into the earth.

Dian lay in the grass before her.

It was as if no time had passed, and at the same time, a century. An age. The plants that had crept over the fairy were like a shroud, engulfing Dian’s woodland skin, their aquiline nose, pre-Raphaelite features, their rosy cheeks. No, Frida reminded herself, letting out a low moan. Not rosy. Not anymore. Ravaged. They’d been ravaged.

‘Dian,’ she sobbed as she pulled at the roots of the plants. The ivy had almost entirely covered Dian’s face, and honeysuckle crept over their legs, up their too-narrow, angular chest. Dog roses curled around their arms and moss carpeted their piano-player’s fingers.

‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Please wake up.’

She untangled it all, piece by careful piece, and then knelt before them with her head bowed. Their face was grey. Not the emerald-green fairy who’d taunted Charles and his shotgun. Not the mercurial fairy who’d taken her to dip her feet in that ethereal pool. Not the one who’d touched the small of her back to reassure her when she was afraid. Not the one that had enchanted a window and walked out onto a fucking grand staircase in thin air. There were crow’s feet around this fairy’s eyes, and wrinkles around their chapped lips. The lines of their bones stood out starkly under their mottled skin. Their cheekbones were too harsh, their collarbones protruding painfully from beneath their damaged cobwebs.

‘Moth,’ she whispered, knowing somehow he wouldn’t answer. ‘Are you here?’

But there was no tinkling laugh, no long-suffering sigh. If Moth could have, he would have already answered. Perhaps he was asleep, but she thought it more likely that he was dead. She didn’t know how long magical spiders lived, but she guessed it wasn’t two hundred years. This settled like a chip of ice into her already frozen heart. She looked blankly at the strands of grey that ran through Dian’s hair and, with a shaking hand, touched one of the strands. It felt like ancient silk.

‘Dian.’

But Dian was not their name.

Helplessly, her gaze fell on the crumbling hawthorn. The places it had splintered oozing a pale, sappy blood. She ran her hands along the sticky ridges of the nearest branch.

‘Please,’ she gasped.

Dian did not stir. Neither did their tree.

She started searching then, looking around frantically. Desperate to find something, anything that Dian might have left for her. A clue hidden in the overgrown grass, a word etched into the hawthorn’s bark, an instruction in the patchwork webs of their clothes! Anything – even the broken pieces of the Jewel buried in the shallow dirt around the charred roots. She didn’t know how long she looked.

‘Dian, I’m sorry,’ she gasped, finally coming back to kneel at their side, knowing it was hopeless. They hadn’t moved, hadn’t stirred. Had they even breathed? Yes, she reassured herself. Yes, she could feel their shallow breath. Just.

‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed, desperately touching the frayed threads of the webs around their wrist. Their skin was so cold. She could almost feel the wood dreaming around her, unspooling in golds and silvers, reds and blues, like tiny mirrors reflecting in the dark.

‘Please, just wake up. That’s all you have to do!’

Pink embers swirled around her, as if from a disturbed campfire. Mocking her. Pink like the Jewel that wasn’t here. Desperately, she sent out prayers, to all the trees and the plants and the creatures she could name. To all that remained of the hawthorn.

‘Please, please, please, just tell me what to do.’

Silence.

Now, when she needed them most, no one answered.

Not a single damned one of them.

Crying softly, she traced the lines of Dian’s broken cobwebs. Moth was dead. There was no spider to fix the webs over Dian’s heart. They no longer shone with life. She and Dian and Moth had gambled with everything they had – and lost. It was true that nothing could change. She thought about the silver dragon’s sacrifice, the humans he’d spoken about, the ones who’d loaned her those beautiful clothes, who’d looked into the future and tried to change the dreadful pattern of it. She thought about the fairies dissolving into the air, the giant wolves and the spiders slipping into the darkness, Papa Ru and Magie . . . Had they ended up in some zoo somewhere, too? They paid the price and all of them had lost.

Tears ran down her cheeks and fell off the tip of her nose. She touched Dian’s arms gently, which seemed to have just yesterday been warm, curvy and healthy. Now, she closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against Dian’s heart. She could hear it beating, ever so faintly. Not strong enough. Nowhere near strong enough. She tucked a matted tendril back behind their ear. The piercing in their lip shone in the eerie light. She didn’t need to rely on the rosewood box in her mind to lock away her feelings now. She didn’t want it. She didn’t want to lock anything away. She wanted to feel all of it. More than that, she deserved to feel all of it.

She deserved to feel the tender touch of Dian’s fingers on her cheek. She deserved to sink into their arms and press her face to their collarbone. She deserved to see the pride and the bravery on their face when talking to Moth, she deserved to snort-laugh at their witty, preening jokes, she deserved to be infuriated by their fairy pig-headedness. She deserved to drink homemade strawberry wine with them, and damn it, if they both wanted to, she deserved to have a fucking orgy with them under the moonlight, as debauched as any druid. Most of all, she deserved to see them: not like this, but with their tree. She deserved to see the way they cared for the tree from which they were born, in a world where they didn’t have to hide.

‘I love you,’ she burst out, not caring as her tears fell freely and pooled on Dian’s chest. ‘I don’t know how that’s possible since I barely know you, but I love you. I want to love you. I want to have a chance to love you. This whole thing,’ she said, with a hysterical laugh. ‘When we met, I was a naïve terrified zookeeper, who’d fooled herself into thinking she was keeping magic safe, keeping all these creatures safe. Really though, I was just keeping myself safe. I thought it was better to lock everything up inside me, because then I wouldn’t get hurt, I would be safer then! But I don’t want to be safe, Dian. I don’t want to hide myself away!’

Unconsciously, she slipped her hand through theirs.

‘I’ve travelled two hundred years to meet you, to meet you for the first time. I think I will never deserve your love, but if you wake up, I swear I’ll try to earn your friendship. You’re the strongest, bravest, most infuriatingly mercurial person I’ve ever met, and you’ve made this forest, this galaxy of beauty, keeping all the people I love safe. But it’s time to wake up. If you don’t, none of this will have mattered. None of this will be worth it. I need you to wake up,’ she choked out, hot tears continuing to fall. The image of Lucky’s dada loomed before her, and the incomprehensible price he’d paid. ‘We need you. All of us. Me and Lucky and the terracotta dragon. Issy and Raz and Jelly and Antony and Hamish and all the rest, who I can’t wait for you to meet. But most of all, I need you, because I love you. I love you.’

From the hollow at the base of their neck came a tiny, barely audible tinkle.

‘Alright, there’s no need to drown me.’

Chapter Fifty-Four

Frida jerked back, dropping Dian’s hand with a yelp. Dian had not moved, but staring up at her from within a particularly knotty patch of cobwebs was the sleepy face of a tiny jumping spider.

‘Moth?’ Frida gasped.

The spider blinked at her. ‘No. Obviously.’

Frida’s eyes widened. The relief and joy at thinking Moth was alive quickly turned to confusion. ‘Not Moth?’ But of course, the longer they looked at each other, the more certain she was that this was indeed not Moth at all. This jumping spider had a green tinge to the fur below their eyes, and an orange spot on their back, unlike Moth, who’d been pitch black with snowy spots. Leaning closer, Frida saw that this spider was rounder too, with thin short arms instead of Moth’s boxing gloves. The higher pitch of their vibrations made Frida think that this spider was female. She cocked her head wonderingly.

‘I’m Frida,’ she said, scrubbing at her tear-stained face.

The spider rubbed her pedipalps together. ‘I know,’ she said, her tone wry.

Hope, treacherous, started to blossom inside Frida’s belly. Her heart beat a rapid tattoo. ‘Please, will you tell me who you are?’

‘Mushkila Gloficus Globe Twirler the Fourteenth, at your service,’ the spider answered, without hesitation, her delivery bone dry. Frida liked her immediately.

She sank back on her heels, a grin breaking on her face. ‘Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mushkila Gloficus Globe Twirler the Fourteenth.’

The spider sniffed. ‘You may call me Mush, I suppose. Dian does, anyway.’

Frida burst out laughing at their tone of long-suffering despair, the impossible sheer magic of it. ‘Are you related, by any chance, to Behemoth Artilius Twirel Night Weaver the Tenth?’

Mush sighed, in a tiny desperate way. ‘I suppose so, yes. Behemoth the Tenth was our ancestor. His long winding stories have been passed down through many generations,’ Mush said dispassionately, clicking her arms together and tiredly beginning to weave a little web. ‘You’ve been passed down through many generations too, Frida Rose.’

The spider knew Frida’s name.

‘Dian wished me to tell you something.’ Knit, knit, knit, went her legs. ‘At my discretion. If I thought you were worthy of it.’

Frida saw stars. The lump in her throat was so huge, she couldn’t speak. She was nodding so much, she felt like a puppy dog on a dashboard, with no idea what to say. She wiped at her tears so hard she almost took off a layer of skin.

‘I was listening to your rousing little speech,’ Mush continued. Knit, knit. ‘Until,’ she sniffed, ‘you tried to drown me.’

Frida found her voice. ‘I’m sorry! I really didn’t know you were there.’ Then her cheeks flushed. She hadn’t known anyone had been listening to her ramblings.

Mush made a non-committal snort. ‘An excuse, that sounds like.’ She surveyed her work. Her web didn’t have the light that Moth’s had done, and the threads were weak and fragile, but it was a web. It was something. Shaking her furry legs, she slowly disentangled herself and, with a huff, looked back up at Frida, her eight black eyes reflecting the floating stars of the embers. ‘Their name is Ioelwsthyithuaawn.’

Frida wasn’t quite sure if she’d heard what the spider had said. For a long moment, she stayed utterly still. Had the spider just done what she’d thought she’d done?

‘Their name . . .’

‘Is Ioelwsthyithuaawn, yes.’

‘Ioel-y-wsthtye . . .’ Frida trailed off in despair.

Mush clicked her pedipalps in irritation. ‘Exactly. I told them you’d never be able to say it, but they claimed it would work just as well if you spoke the meaning. It seems like a cheat to me, but there you have it.’

Frida waited, her heart in her mouth. Her whole future resting on this single, tiny, deadpan spider.

Mush glared at her for another few seconds, before her eyes warmed into a smile. ‘Forest,’ she whispered gently. ‘Their name, Frida Rose, is forest.’

Their name is forest.

Frida couldn’t move.

‘Well?’ Mush drawled with a sweep of a pedipalp. ‘I thought you were in a hurry.’

Frida let out a cry, which quickly entwined with a wail of joy. The spider chuckled as Frida launched herself at her ravaged fairy, still prone amidst the soil and the grass.

‘Forest,’ she breathed. ‘Ioel . . .’ She struggled with the syllables, brushing tentative kisses across their cold cheeks. Their jaw. Their eyelids, so fragile and bruised. ‘Ioelwsthyithuaawn.’

Did she imagine it, or did they stir?

She tasted her own tears, and a little bit of rain too.

‘Forest.’ She was laughing as well. ‘Forest. It’s me, it’s Frida. It’s ok to wake up now.’

A soft moan emerged from the fairy.

Frida held her breath. The warm shadows of the ivy rustled above her as the sound of raindrops seemed to blaze, like a million bells, echoing Dian’s name. Their soul.

Ioelwsthyithuaawn. Ioelwsthyithuaawn. Ioelwsthyithuaawn.

She looked upwards and stared, astounded, at the hawthorn. Not the Hawthorn of Higgleton Common, but something different, something more, something new, something quick and bright and all its own, not belonging to the zoo at all. Out of the bones, out of the corpse, new young branches sprung. Green buds started to form, leaves unfurled, and quick thorns stretched. Coils of magic wrapped up and up and up. Everything smelt of moss and petrichor and almonds, yet the pinkish embers, which seemed to catch in Frida’s throat, tasted of sulphur and smoke and fire-blasted deserts under the stars.

The tingling that had begun in Frida’s skin spread to her bones.

With the verses of a thousand different trees and plants and thorns speaking into each thundering corner of her heart, the magic climbed until she thought she might reach the very spaces between the stars themselves. But when a light touch brushed her hand, she looked back down. The tinkling song that filled her ears poured straight from the molten centre of the Hawthorn, the tree at the heart of the world.

‘Hello,’ she murmured with a smile. Ioelwsthyithuaawn, forest, Dian. Together, the words seemed to encompass all of them, every wondrous part of this magical, fairy.

They smiled back at her broadly. There was a flush to their cheekbones and she ached to smooth away the crease between their brows. Yet only moments before, they’d looked leached of life. Now vitality bloomed in the rosy curve of their cheeks, in the tantalising dark of their eyes, the plump line of their lips. Heat pooled in Frida’s belly, settling in the base of her spine as she registered their steady heartbeat. Somewhere, Mush was laughing, dry and witty. Frida felt like laughing too. She felt high as Dian slid their fingers through hers and propped their head up. At the feel of their calluses against her own, she almost moaned. Was this real?

Dian gazed at her for a few more moments, then lifted their face towards the canopy. ‘Look,’ they whispered. Their voice seemed to brim with tears.

Frida craned her neck and together, they watched as those strange pink embers fizzed like bees. The broken, thorny branches of the hawthorn continued to knit, faster and faster. And around them, all the little creatures were waking up. Eyes winked open in the undergrowth, and sleepy voices restarted their burbling conversations. Mush was at her weaving again, working to fix the gaps in Dian’s armour. The webs were luminous.

Dian hadn’t let go of Frida hand.

Frida didn’t let go of Dian’s.

And the hawthorn erupted into bloom.

Chapter Fifty-Five

As the tree showered them in petals, the scent of almonds wrapped around Frida and she couldn’t stop grinning. All around them, there was the sound of life waking up. Small rustles at first, a high-pitched bark, the coo of a bird. Then a far-distant ear-splitting shriek. A muffled rumble. A kraken-esque howl on the breeze. Wordless, Frida and Dian sat amongst the flowers with their shoulders touching. They’d developed a method of communicating that hadn’t required words. But an electric feeling zinged between them, little sparks that Frida imagined she could see dancing in the atmosphere. She craned her neck, dazzled to see the hawthorn continue to bloom, spreading white blushed with pink up into the cavern of the black forest sky.

‘Why couldn’t Mush wake you up?’ she murmured, leaning into Dian’s warmth. She still couldn’t quite believe they were warm, and they were here. ‘She was the one who really knew your name.’

Dian tilted towards her as Mush gave an amused snort. A few stray blossoms decorated Dian’s hair. The silver was still there, giving them an air of majesty, a mark of the years that had passed. ‘Well,’ Dian said as their eyes glittered. A sheepish smile played over their lips and the tips of their ears turned pink. ‘I obviously cannot tell you that. I’d have to banish you to a fairy pool for the rest of eternity if I did.’

Frida recalled the steamy warmth of that pool, the silken carpet of moss between her bare toes. Her voice was husky when she said, not quite knowing when she’d become so brave, ‘Well, that doesn’t sound so bad. Not if you’d be there too.’

Dian’s smile grew into something delicious. They looked down at where their hands were almost touching, lying adjacent across their laps. ‘I might be,’ they said hoarsely, their eyes blurring. ‘Would that make you happy?’

‘Oh, my skies,’ Mush interrupted dourly. ‘This flirtation between you is interminable. My ancestor Behemoth Night Weaver was right.’

Frida jumped, not having realised Mush was in the shell of her ear, tickling her eardrums. Then she burst out laughing, but the next moment, with a heated growl at the back of their throat that set Frida’s soul on fire, Dian purred,

‘Go away now, Mush.’

Without waiting for whatever droll reply Mush might have, Dian gently slipped their hand around the back of Frida’s neck, entwining in her loose hair. Mush gave a dramatic squeal, vaulting away. Frida barely heard it though as Dian trailed their callused thumb along her jawline, and up her lower lip. The moan that came out of Frida was pure feral. Dian’s lips curled, and then they kissed her.

Oh, sea and skies.

Their breath tasted of rain and mint and almond spice. Their piercing dug into her chin, just as sharp as she’d imagined. As her whole body tingled, they sucked her lower lip into their mouth, and grazed their soft, warm tongue over her own. When Frida whimpered, raindrops seemed to explode, and burning heat blazed through her belly, sending glitter and cascading starlight in waves up her spine. She was undone.

Dian finally pulled away with a breathless laugh, and Frida opened her eyes. Dian was watching her, the deep dark pools glittering with desire. Frida was dizzy as she rested her forehead against Dian’s and wrapped her hands around the back of their neck and into their wild curls.

‘Dian,’ she moaned.

‘Frida Rose,’ they breathed back into her mouth, catching her lower lip again in their teeth. ‘I’ve missed you.’ And then she was lost again, in the fullness of their lips, the hard pressure of their body against hers, the feeling of their strong, rough hands on her cheeks, as she kissed them again, and again, filling her soul with the heady taste of rain.

‘What should I call you?’ she finally managed, the velvet softness of the petals bringing to mind soft sheets under the moon. They pulled back just enough to see her face, plucking a rogue hawthorn blossom from her cheek, and flashing her a full, staggering smile: fairy charm turned up to a hundred. It made Frida think she was going to have to work hard to hold onto her wits. There was a wicked twinkle in their eye, full of possibilities.

‘Few people have known my name,’ they said, and the sudden vulnerability in their face almost broke Frida’s heart open anew. ‘Mush is the only one, now, I suppose. And she couldn’t wake me because, well . . . ’ Dian stared down at Frida, their eyes very round. ‘Because although Mush and I are bound together, and we love each other very much, that was not enough to call me back.’

Frida’s mouth had gone bone dry. ‘What was, then?’

Dian chewed on their lower lip, pulling the thorn of their piercing through their teeth. When they finally answered, it was the huskiest sound Frida had ever heard. ‘What do you think, Frida Rose?’

The way they said her name, as if she was the answer to everything, Frida almost melted. As it was, she flushed to the roots of her hair and, with a full, wild laugh, Dian pulled her up onto her feet. Approaching the hawthorn together, there was a look of awe on both their stunned faces. Eventually, after a few long moments, Dian placed their hands to the bark. The ribbons of brown and ebony, copper and silver, darkest blue and palest gold were so similar to the colours that stained Dian’s skin that Frida had to look hard to see where their fingers ended and the tree began.

‘Thank you, my friend,’ Dian whispered to the tree. Then, to Frida, ‘As to what name you should call me?’ they murmured, gazing up into the cascade of blossoms. ‘When we are alone, I would like it very much if you called me Ioelwsthyithuaawn.’

Their name was the sound of a warm westerly wind, rushing through the forest. It smelt of rain and the open ocean, and their smile was world changing. Frida’s heart became a gooey puddle, ice cream left out of the fridge on a sunny afternoon, and she was just trying to come up with an adequate answer – was there really any when a fairy looks at you like that? – when Dian got down on their heels and began to dig between the roots of the hawthorn tree.

Chapter Fifty-Six

Not too long later, they walked down the slope together, the wood coming alive around them. Frida sang as she walked, her strong voice mingling amongst the rest, finding its place. She realised she hadn’t sung in a long time. Dian hummed along too, tunelessly under their breath. It made Frida laugh, to think that there was at least something that Dian couldn’t do.

‘What?’ they asked, quirking an eyebrow.

Frida swung their hand, feeling ridiculously, wildly happy. ‘Oh nothing. I’m just marvelling over fairy perfection, that’s all.’

Mush snorted, eight eyeballs rolling. ‘I am concerned this human’s adoration is going to have a bad effect on your ego, Dian.’

Dian sighed. ‘Not with you around, Mushy my love.’ Then they tossed their hair, sending Mush – who’d been hanging from a thread off one of their curls – into a rapid spin, making the little spider shriek and giggle helplessly. Frida burst out laughing too. This wasn’t the time for hurrying, and although she wondered what was happening at the bottom of the hill, she let herself amble with Dian and Mush, down the slender pathways that opened up for them, marvelling at the hawthorns that had sprung up, bursting with bountiful splendour.

All is as it needs to be, the silver dragon had said, and no more, no less.

When they finally emerged though, they all fell utterly still.

Frida hadn’t known what she’d been expecting. Not this though.

Dian’s breath drew in sharply. ‘It’s her.’

Frida nodded, frantically trying to clear the flowery haze from her brain. ‘It’s her!’

Of course it was her.

The terracotta dragon stood in the middle of the greatest, weirdest, most impossible state of affairs she’d ever seen. Lucky, obviously, was right next to her. He stood oh so proudly at her side, his neck arched, unbalanced wings raised as if he’d just discovered his new status in life: Assistant to the Terracotta Dragon.

‘Look, little stink,’ he cried, bobbing his head dramatically. ‘IT’S STARTING! YOU’RE JUST IN TIME!’

Frida gave a half sob, half laugh. Indeed, it seemed that people were only just beginning to wake up, looking around themselves in wonderment. Frida’s heart overflowed as she watched Antony raise himself up onto his elbows. Next to him, Hamish lifted their face too, pale hair mussed, cheeks flushed with the memory of sleep. Antony’s gentle eyes shone. Frida pressed herself into Dian’s side, not quite able to hold herself steady, as her two best friends blinked the world into focus, before realising suddenly that their limbs were entwined. Frida held her breath, but instead of pulling away from each other, soft laughter escaped them both. Hamish sighed happily and leaned in to press their cheek against Antony’s chest.

Leaned in. Not away. Frida glanced at Dian – what love potion had they put in their spell? Cliff was sitting up too. There was a puddle of drool on the breast of his shirt, and his crystal blue eyes were brimming with astonished tears. Next to him, Gloria stretched like a languid cat in front of the fire. Sora gave a contented moan, Zuzka’s pink head swivelled, taking it all in. They were all covered in a carpet of hawthorn blossoms. And although the two dragons were barely twenty metres away, no one was screaming.

‘Why is no one screaming?’ Frida whispered to Dian, dumbfounded.

A knowing grin spread over Dian’s face as they gestured down the road, where the oaks curved away towards the rest of the zoo. ‘Look.’

Frida looked. And her jaw dropped.

Coming down the road towards them were people. Walking, wheeling, hobbling, arm in arm, hand in hand, side-by-side. Wearing LEZ uniforms of every colour, along with guests of every age and computation. A low dazed murmur of conversation purred through them as they gazed around in fear and amazement. As if they weren’t quite sure if they were still dreaming.

Slithering alongside, through the emerald shadows, were two excited-looking basilisks. A manticore, two very dignified griffins, the shimmering chimeras with their golden, tawny beards. Frida saw Raziel the ghost-lynx, and she wanted to race forwards and throw her arms around the bright Barbie-Dreamhouse-pink of her neck. There were the white wolves, bigger than elephants, yipping in greeting. Someone made up of white flowers with dark nooks for eyes where the owls nested seemed to slip, almost unmarked, through the gaps between things. And the storm monkeys. Oh skies, the storm monkeys! Zipping and front flipping and backflipping and all the flips. The Nuckelavee had to be around here somewhere too, and it might have been foolish, but this only made Frida smile wider. Somehow, the wards must have been totally dismantled. Frida didn’t even have to explain the problem to anyone: it was already done! She turned her gaze intuitively towards the awesome shape of the terracotta dragon. Whilst she’d been galivanting through time, it seemed the old dragon had been busy.

So many magical creatures like this, in such a small radius?

Sea and skies, the magic glowed.

Alive, the glitter cried. We’re alive! Like a pressure cooker behind her eyes, it had the gravity of a storm rising. The air tasted of hot metal and starlight, coating her teeth with petrichor, lilacs, snuffling things, wet sand, forest loam, wild wind, ocean spray, fire, lightning, and salty popcorn. Yes, the world seemed to howl. Yes. Yes! Perhaps it was only the canopy of the wood above that stopped all this power from bursting out, rushing to the four corners of Melody-Upon-Sea and beyond.

With a nod to each other, Frida and Dian quickly slipped out of the shadows and approached the terracotta dragon. She was waiting, ensconced in a pile of leaves that Lucky was trying to aggressively rearrange to make more comfortable. When they came to a stop before her, she eyed them down her long, cat-like nose.

‘Hmm.’ The sound seemed to reverberate through the very roots of the world.

‘I-uh-I . . .’ Frida stammered.

The dragon emitted a dour puff of steam. ‘I see time hasn’t improved your eloquence.’

A stifled snort came from Dian. Frida flushed, glaring askance at them. But they were already stepping forwards. The fairy was the picture of elegance, except for their crown of hawthorn blossoms, which was adorably askew. But when Dian gazed between Lucky and the terracotta dragon, a flood of grievous pain shone in their dark eyes. When they spoke, their voice shifted with the sound of infinite leaves rustling. ‘I do not know how to express my gratitude. You have both made such terrible sacrifices.’

The terracotta dragon eyed Dian, whilst Lucky flapped his wings. ‘As have you, tree-born,’ she murmured gently, after a long moment. Her gaze lifted to the sea of leaves high above their heads and chuckled. ‘I thought it was all a bit glitzy for my liking, at the start, but it has rather grown on me. And I cannot fault you for your work ethic.’

Dian ducked their head, looking radiant and a bit embarrassed. ‘Thank you.’

Then the terracotta dragon turned her gaze to Frida.

Frida froze, her mouth open. Dian nudged her.

She jerked. ‘Oh yes. Yes!’ Quickly, she thrust her hand into her pocket and pulled out the Jewel, the translucent pieces that Dian had hidden in a niche far below the roots of the hawthorn. Dian had told her, as they’d been digging, that without the Jewel, they wouldn’t have been able to make the wood. They’d spent centuries learning to work the latent magic inside the Jewel’s shattered pieces until, when they thought they might have been the last fairy left on the continent, they’d slipped inside the hawthorn tree to wait for what Frida had said would come to pass. But when the tree had been uprooted, they’d gotten stuck. That, they hadn’t expected. Without Lucky’s lightning, they may never have gotten free.

Round and round it went.

With shaking knees, Frida opened her palm. ‘They’re yours,’ she whispered.

The terracotta dragon stared down at them.

‘You knew.’ Frida’s voice was barely audible as understanding registered. ‘You knew they were here all along.’

A smoky laugh pealed from the dragon’s scaly throat.

‘I-I don’t . . .’ Frida stammered helplessly. ‘Sorry, what can I call you? I don’t want to call you Fireheart, and Ma’am feels—’

‘Do not call me Ma’am, by all the sacred dragon fire. I do not care for that at all.’ The dragon clicked her teeth absently. ‘I do not mind Fireheart, azizam, dear. It is not terrible. It is not embarrassing, at least, hmm. Not like some of the others.’

‘But Sir Joshua . . .’ Suddenly, Frida baulked at his very syllables. ‘That man . . . the one who brought you here, he was the one who gave you that name!’

‘Yes perhaps,’ Fireheart snapped. ‘But he does not choose what I do with it.’

Frida shook her head, baffled. Her brain was still spinning. ‘Why didn’t you just go up to the tree decades ago and dig up the pieces yourself? I don’t understand!’ But even as she spoke, she thought about it. Really thought about it. She gazed between Dian and Lucky and Fireheart. This plot has so many twists and turns it makes my head ring. She thought about the pink light that had entwined with Dian’s watery glitter. She thought about Lucky’s magic, snaking towards the tree where the Jewel hid, she thought about the fearsome storms of the Jellies, the oceanic rush of the Nuckelavee, and then all the thousands of sleepers, sending their dreams up into the sky too. Perhaps Fireheart couldn’t have done any of this on her own. Just as Dian couldn’t have done any of it without Fireheart, without Lucky . . . without her. Maybe they’d all needed each other more than a little bit, in the end.

The confirmation in Fireheart’s milky gaze was all she needed. The sigh that came out of her was very, very long, and very, very sulphurous as she said, angling one slitted eye up towards the twirling, spinning glitter, ‘It was time for a change, don’t you think, hmm? I’d been here so long, I’d almost forgotten how.’ She shot an appreciative glance at Dian, her charred nostrils flaring. ‘The dreams were a nice touch. The dreams helped me to dream too.’

‘They helped all of us.’

Frida spun to see Hamish standing only a few yards away. Wondrous tears running in rivulets down their cheeks. Suddenly, she drew in a gasp. She hadn’t realised that everyone was there. Antony, Zuzka, Cliff, Gloria. Basilisks and zookeepers and children and teenagers and ghost-lynxes and storm monkeys and manticores, all crowding in to listen. Not extraordinary creatures – just plain extraordinary, every single one of them.

‘We dreamed of you, Fri,’ Antony said, and Frida almost broke down to see him holding hands with Hamish, the white and pink hawthorn flowers dusting their hair.

‘Of me?’ she said, wonderingly.

Antony, with a dimpled smile, gestured to Dian and Fireheart and Lucky, her motley crew of co-conspirators. ‘All of you. And the trees.’ He raised his face to the woodland sky, lifting his free hand so that one of the coils of magic could twist through his scarred fingers. ‘It was beautiful.’

Hamish leaned their head on Antony’s shoulder and agreed dreamily, ‘So very beautiful.’

Frida started to cry, then. Big ugly tears, tearing through her chest. She hadn’t realised how scared she’d been about coming back. About her friends not believing her, about having to tell them the truth, and just being sent back to the Necromancer or something. As she cried, the greying pieces of the Jewel suddenly lifted off her palm and started swirling half a foot in the air. The hawthorn blossoms started to float, too, along with the combined glittery power of the creatures. Antony and Hamish raced forwards and wrapped her in their arms, wrapping Dian in too, making the fairy squeal in surprise.

‘I love you!’ Antony cried.

‘No, I love you!’ Frida burst out, as Hamish said just as enthusiastically,

‘I love both of you!’

Antony’s hug was bone crushing.

It was precious, that tangle of limbs and unconditional love. But when Frida’s tears started to abate, and Fireheart was starting to inspect her claws impatiently, Cliff gave a low-key boom,

‘Frida?’

He stood at the front of the crowd with one arm slung around Sora and Zuzka, the other around a baffled-looking Gloria, his crystal blue eyes crinkling with pride.

Frida peeked out at him from between her friends’ shoulders.

‘We dreamed,’ Cliff told her gently, ‘but I think we’d like to hear from you too, from you and your friends, about what really happened.’

At these words, Lucky gave a squeal of glee. ‘Oh yes! Oh yes. I love stories. Tell them our story, little stink!’ He was so thrilled, he almost knocked Fireheart around the face with one rogue flapping wing.

Fireheart gave an appalled squawk, but when she’d managed to collect herself, and Lucky had been gently reprimanded, Fireheart bowed her head to Cliff in approval. In her inky eyes, Frida read the same words that Lucky’s dada had said to her, so long ago, and really not that long at all, either. It is their story too.

So, as the magic and the Hawthorn blossoms curled around her, and the Jewel spun and spun in the air, she began.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

The story was what all best stories are, in the end. Funny, heartbreaking, awful and impossible. It was a patchwork of High-Winged Dragon, Raindrops on Hawthorn Boughs, Popcorned Storm Clouds, British Sign Language, plain English . . . like Mush’s weaving, it spun through the air like silver cobwebs, interrupted and enriched by hisses and snarls, howls and peeps, moans, groans, anguished barks, squeaks and curses.

Through it all, magic waited, twirling around them like glittering snakes and golden ribbons. Waiting. Smelling of hope.

Sometimes Frida spoke, sometimes Dian, sometimes an overexcited Lucky, and sometimes Fireheart, accompanied by the pops and crackles of monkey poetry. Whilst everyone had been napping in nests of flowers, Frida had been right – Fireheart had been busy, going cage to cage with the Jellies, breaking the wards one by one. A combination of dragon fire and exuberant monkey storms, it seemed, made a potent combination.

Dian groused about how they wished Frida had brought these monkey storms with her into the past. Frida grinned. She couldn’t have agreed more. She would have loved to see them setting fire to Edward Caval’s beard.

After that, the sleepers took over, one by one describing what they’d dreamed of, Frida and the dragons translating as best they could. Until they were all speaking at once, and the great collective dream spun and spun and spun. With each new dream, it seemed that another thread of magic rose higher, and the Jewel spun a little bit faster. The light intensifying, the power building. Until eventually, every face was tilted upwards, desert dragon and tree dragon and fairy and cat and mouse and bird and child and zookeeper.

‘It’s time,’ Frida whispered, although she didn’t quite know for what.

Dian smiled down at her, touching a wild lock of her hair. ‘It’s time,’ they repeated.

The Jewel gave a sharp howl of release, of declaration. A battle cry for the twenty-first century. Its spinning transforming to a blinding, lightning speed, and a flash of radiance exploded, along with a glittering cry of ecstasy.

When the spots cleared from Frida’s eyes, the Jewel was whole again, and cracks of peachy sunlight had started to pierce the canopy. There were squeals, shouts and yips, from Ocean to Ice to Grass and Desert and Sky and Forest. Finally, it all came together in a mighty, spine-tingling roar, and the canopy tore open in a creaking rush, a zoo’s worth of magic detonating into the world.

Somewhere, people of Melody-Upon-Sea watched a thorny green baked Alaska the size of Heathrow burst open in a shower of multi-coloured glitter. Frida lifted her hands as raindrops and blossoms cascaded around her. Soon a pegasus, a winged ghost-lynx, and a young purple dragon who tilted awkwardly to the left, flew out into the bright sky, and began tracing loop-the-loops against the fluffy clouds. Frida leaned back into Dian’s chest, one hand around their silken wrist, the other looped through Antony and Hamish’s conjoined arms, and together they watched their world crack open. Laughing helplessly, they clung to each other, a fresh summer storm that smelled of growing things whipping their hair from their faces.

In the earth, Frida was certain her mum was laughing too with the silver dragon, as magic unfurled, unstoppable. Somehow, new worlds were beginning. She imagined forests starting to grow in places where forests hadn’t been seen in centuries. Some humans locking themselves in their homes, while others danced in the streets as tears ran down their faces. She saw sprites hiding in pantries again, and krakens nesting in the deep once more.

Ba-dum, ba-dum. Ba-dum, ba-dum.

The Jewel spun, sending pink light in every direction.

Gloria asked in acerbic sign language that could cut through two-metre rock, ‘But what exactly do we do now? What happens to these creatures? Where do they all go?’

Everyone who heard looked to Fireheart for an answer, but it was Dian who said, under their breath so that only Frida could hear, ‘Maybe we should ask the unicorn.’

‘The unicorn?’ Frida asked, startled. ‘What unicorn?’ Immediately, she thought of the male at Forge House, who had disappeared into the ether.

Unicorns move through worlds.

Dian had told her that.

At her baffled expression, Dian just chuckled, a low purr running down her bones, and hugged her to them, placing a soft kiss to her neck. Later. Frida groaned, and all thoughts of unicorns vanished. Yet as she leaned blissfully into their warmth, something feathered against her. A possibility, and a promise. Of a great sea horse swimming north with coals for eyes and a song of caves and wave-dashed beaches in his heart. An old introvert with gaps in his face where the owls nested, and a branch that tapped against bone, finding his way home. Vampire bats, soaring and snapping their teeth, and the thundering tread of stone giants, each one shaking the foundations of car parks all across the UK. The infinite branches, spores, nuts, seeds and leaves, the fluttering wings of a lunar moth, the beetles and worms under the ground. Violet fire welled in her eyes and Frida placed one shaking hand against Dian’s extraordinary heart. She heard the thundering beat, and her own heart blazing in answer.

EPILOGUE

Frida and Dian stood amongst the soft rustling willow leaves of the unicorn’s enclosure, and watched as Fireheart tried, very hard, not to lose her temper. There were only a few pale stars left in the grey sky, a typical Melody dawn. It wasn’t really a typical dawn though, not at all. Time and earth and life and death and love and loss and magic had been released. What was typical about that?

Frida struggled to keep a straight face as Issy kicked up her hooves and galloped in circles, desperately overexcited as Cliff attempted to reason with her. It turned out that Dian had been entirely serious about asking the unicorn.

‘Issy, please! We need you to calm down, just for a second!’

‘WeeeeoohgrassleapapplesplungefreebrighthappybuzzFRIEND!’ Issy squealed, popopop, each word a chiming bubble of starlight that burst, one after the other after the other.

‘BallballballraceohDRAGONtreesmagicfunDELIGHTworldsworldsworlds!’

It was their own fault. They shouldn’t have given her those kitten treats.

Fireheart seemed likely to expire of a little-known disease: Insufferable-Baby-Unicorn-itis. Dian, at Frida’s side, looked likely to expire too, of the same condition, although their symptoms were less get me out of here lest my head explodes and more oh my skies there’s a baby unicorn and how can we think about anything else other than the fact there’s a baby unicorn.

There was a lot of squealing.

Frida grinned.

Two weeks had passed since the wood had opened and magic had tumbled into Melody-Upon-Sea, spreading like a tidal wave over fields, villages and council estates, landfills, motorways and retail parks. The portraits of Sir Joshua and all the rest had been taken down and, in tacit agreement, shoved in some storeroom at the back of Ground Control.

For the moment, the magical wood didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Easier to grow apparently than to get rid of entirely, but it turns out the trees hadn’t swallowed the whole world. Just up to the Sainsburys on the A28, which wasn’t too far really in the whole the scheme of things. House prices in the forest were already skyrocketing. The blackthorns at the entrance gates were being most obliging too, lifting their vigilance and unfurling their branches at Dian’s request. The inevitable floods of press, Management, police and tourists were being held at bay by two very stern basilisks.

Cliff and Gloria had been busy locating the other head keepers, making important phone calls, arguing with governments, feeding tired animals, wrangling somnolent beatific zookeepers and sending home the most sleepy humans still wandering around in delirious states of, Have I really not been debating with philosophical sea snakes, travelling with many-trunked elephants, and frequenting mountain spas for the last month with beautiful athletic Norwegians?

Cliff was still having at least five aneurisms a day, and according to Hamish he’d almost thrown the coffee machine across the kitchen twice. But Frida had seen him and Gloria having lunch together, and that in itself was worth fifty coffee machines. Swirling glitter couldn’t change the world overnight, but there were reports of trees popping up as far north as Glasgow, in places where trees had not been seen in a really long time. Waterways getting cleaner, eagles turning up in people’s front gardens, fairy mushrooms sprouting in the House of Commons. The world felt looser, and even the LEZ’s stalwart protestors had packed up their signs and gone home for a well-earned slice of carrot cake and a nap.

They all felt different.

Nobody, not even Fireheart, knew how long it would last. For now though, they just all seemed more like themselves. Everyone, not just the people in the zoo, but outside of it too. Management wasn’t even complaining that, under the orders of a dragon, they weren’t allowed back in. Some of them even started to take off their suits.

And as for the zoo?

The animals were feeling a lot of emotions: relief, euphoria, excitement, pain, confusion. The trauma of the last years, centuries and generations was still there – not even this amount of freed magic could wipe it away. But there was healing, too. Or the possibility of it. And that was a beginning. Fireheart, Frida and Dian (who, it turned out, had a bit of a gift for languages) acted as translators, moving around the yellow brick roads at something approaching light speed. They began with the names, of course. Some of the animals claimed back their own, like the kraken, formerly known as Karen, now SHIP-CRUSHING-SOUL-EATER (specifically all caps). The Lagarfljót Worm wanted to be called, simply, Bob.

Others, like Fireheart, chose to keep the names they’d become accustomed to. Princess Issy wouldn’t hear of another name, neither would Raziel, or any of Jellybean’s troop. The Nuckelavee was the one who surprised Frida most. Despite what Fireheart had said, he claimed to be more than a little attached to the name that struck terror into the hearts of all who heard it.

Mostly, they asked who wanted to go home. Even if there were no homes to go to. And many did. Many wanted to leave. But many wanted to stay, too. Some who wanted care and others who wanted to see what this place would become.

It wouldn’t be called the LEZ anymore. They’d find another name. There would be no wards. Specifically, no eating each other. Maybe no tourists would be allowed in, maybe when they worked it all out Fireheart would be in charge of it all, because what could anyone say against that, if that’s what the bad-tempered old dragon set her mind to? Or maybe they’d have a council, Frida half-dreamed as she, Antony and Hamish had a few moments together, trying to settle the glow-worms back into their cocoons. A council of different species to decide all their fates, from here to former Extraordinary Zoos around the world.

‘They’d have to find a way to make office chairs that were fireproof,’ Hamish had said drolly. ‘And ones that accommodated tails.’

Antony had smiled and kissed Hamish’s cheek, replying, with a wink at Frida, ‘Anything is possible, even new office chairs, right?’

Frida had nodded, but she’d wondered as she’d sung a lullaby to a particularly uncooperative glow-worm, if she’d really want to be one of those people sitting on those chairs. Because when anything was possible, why would you want to sit on an office chair anyway?

Back in Issy’s enclosure, Dian asked uncertainly, ‘Do you think we should step in?’

Frida watched as Fireheart snapped at Cliff, who was struggling not to cry as a baby unicorn ran in circles around him.

‘Probably,’ she agreed with a sigh. ‘Before Fireheart sets our only unicorn on fire.’ She gave Dian a little nudge as they started across the grass. There’d been no more spine-tingling kisses, other than a few impassioned fumbles behind obliging yew hedges, and no discussion between them about the future. There hadn’t been time. At night, Frida went back to pass out in her flat, dead tired, and Dian slept in the roots of the hawthorn tree. But it was there. Hovering in the air between them.

Some kind of future.

Anything is possible.

Dian glanced down and ran their thumb along Frida’s shirt sleeve. She wore jeans and one of her mum’s ratty old checked shirts. Dian traced the place where Issy’s horn was tattooed on her finger. A delicious shiver ran down her spine, all the way to where her toes curled in her boots. She was trying her hardest to look professional, when really all she wanted to do was meet Dian behind a bush so they could lose themselves in each other.

‘Oooohhwoooowwwgollyrunsunfunoohhhtreesmagicfun!’ Popopop.

Issy scampered over the grass.

‘Come on Is,’ Frida groaned, laughing as Issy nickered, her turquoise eyes liquid in the grey morning. She poked Frida in the fleshy part of her thigh and asked for another apple.

Hours later, the sky now a cornflower blue, Issy was lying across Dian’s muscular legs, her belly round as a barrel. Cliff and Fireheart had both taken a break and were napping companionably under the willow trees. Frida fondly combed the baby unicorn’s silken mane with her fingers. Issy was staring up at the sky, hypnotised by the colourful shapes of creatures soaring through the fluffy clouds. Every now and then, Frida saw a flash of purple that had to be Lucky, and heard his howled, ‘WEEEEEEEEE!’

He’d cheered up immeasurably in the last days, although the imprint of grief still weighed on him. Sometimes, she’d find him on his own, his snout on his oversized paws, hiding in some quiet corner of the wood. Then Frida would sit with her hand on one of his paws and sing or tell him stories. His favourite was Sleeping Beauty, but Frida’s version, the one that contained a thorny wood, a baby purple dragon who was of course the hero, and an evil fairy who started off as a witch, turned along the way into a princess, and then ended up as both and none of them, all at once.

Today though, he was stretching his wings, accompanied by a troop of delectable storm monkeys hanging onto his beard.

‘Frida,’ Dian whispered, nudging her.

Frida blinked and drew in a breath. ‘Oh!’ she murmured. Quickly, she turned to where Fireheart and Cliff were snoring. ‘Guys. Look!’

‘Huh, what?’ Cliff exclaimed, leaping up.

‘Look! Her horn.’

Fireheart slowly opened one milky eye.

Issy’s horn was glowing the brightest, most impossible silver.

Gently, Dian eased themselves up from under her, and Issy stumbled unsteadily to her feet. Frida and Cliff were immediately there, and Fireheart was speaking very quickly as she slithered towards them, claws sinking in the wet grass.

‘Ok, little one,’ the dragon crooned. Was that a tremble, Frida heard, in her voice? ‘Ok, this is it! You know what to do.’

Issy neighed, narrowing her eyes, as if she was concentrating really, really hard.

On the edge of her vision, Frida saw something sinewy and horse-like start to grow from below the darkest shadows of the willow trees. ‘Come on Is, you can do it,’ she murmured, crouching down as her heart somersaulted. ‘You can do this.’

Cliff was next to her, his tanned cheeks bursting with his grin. He’d never looked prouder. ‘You’ve got this, Is!’ he boomed. ‘We believe in you!’

Issy whinnied, tossing her head. Her sides heaved as her horn glowed a bit brighter, and Dian caught Frida’s hand, squeezing as their breath sucked in. Suddenly, Issy stubbornly thrust her head forwards, into a gap in the empty wood-scented air.

The tip of her horn blazed.

For a split second, all Frida could see was a flash of silver, like a star had burst forth. When her eyes cleared, her ears were full of the cawing sound of gulls. For a few moments, all of them took in what had appeared, Issy included, her turquoise eyes wide as if even she couldn’t believe what she’d just done. A few steps away, waves pounded on a beach. The air shimmered as sea spray dusted Frida’s face. A gap had opened before them, big enough to encompass a kraken, and small enough for a fairy glow-worm to slip through, all at once. The edges glimmered, as if bedazzled with starlight.

It turns out, a unicorn’s horn doesn’t glow for nothing. That is, if you can get her to concentrate long enough. Dian had explained to a small group of them – Frida, Antony and Hamish, Cliff and Gloria, Zuzka, Fireheart, Lucky, the storm monkeys, the Nuckelavee (who, it seemed, also liked stories), and a curious Issy – how they’d come to know about unicorns. That the illusive creatures could move between worlds was common knowledge, it seemed, in fairy realms. But a few days after Frida had fallen back through time with Lucky, and the earth had stopped fragmenting, Dian had gathered their courage and slipped back to the Old Forge. Obviously, the whole long story had had to be told again (it had been told now numerous times) and Frida had been quite happy to let Dian do it, listening to their soft, leafy voice tell of their first meeting, with surprising humour. All too quickly, she fell into their story and listened, open mouthed, to hear – this time for the first time – how they’d recovered those sacred things that had been trapped in the jars and how, over the next years, they’d searched for their owners. One by one.

If it was possible, Frida fell even more in love with them.

Dian had explained how eventually, after many adventures, they’d found the unicorn. Apparently, he’d been quite a chatty fellow.

With a happy whinny, Issy now came to lean against Frida, sagging her head tiredly against Frida’s shoulder. Hugging her tightly, Frida buried her nose in Issy’s musky fur. No one had known how she’d turned up on the side of the Thames, all alone, when no other living unicorn had been seen for over fifty years. But now they knew that unicorns could use their horns to make temporary doorways between worlds, as surely as a dragon could dig through time. Maybe her parents had sent her here, somehow. Or maybe she’d sent herself.

‘You did it, Is,’ Frida murmured, gazing at the space between worlds before them, at the waves that rushed against the slate-grey cliffs. ‘You really did it.’

Issy shone. ‘Ididitididitididit!!!!’ she neighed, racing in uncoordinated circles. ‘Seacousingohome!Ballsappleshappyflyyeeeeweees!!!!’

The sea-door shimmered, and then, out from beneath the willow trees, came the slow, tremulous clip-clop-hiss, clip-clop-hiss of the Nuckelavee. Fireheart had suggested, in a tone that brokered no argument, that he be the first. The heaving mass of sinewy muscle, bleached bone and misty sea spray lumbered towards his door. Somewhere, crabs scuttled in the backs of Frida’s ears. She had to work really hard not to run in the opposite direction, but his coal-flaming eyes didn’t turn her way. His nostrils flared, and his hooves sprayed sea water and the scent of old blood across the grass. He was trembling as he hefted his heavy head and stared through the slender gap, into a place of sea caves, salt spray and spindrift.

Frida had no idea whether the door led to another time, another universe, another Orkney entirely. All she knew was that when that door had opened, the world around them had sighed a bit more easily. Cliff had alerted the people of Orkney just in case, and promised to send someone down there to work out a treaty for Nuckelavee-human relations. He’d already asked Frida if she’d be willing to go.

She thought she would. Maybe she’d ask if Dian would go with her.

For now though, for those few seconds under those summer willow trees, they listened to the rushing of waves, crashing on a cold black sand beach. They saw golden sunlight slanting, hitting the crests of the water. Gulls, cawing. An orange flash of a puffin’s beak. Then with a howl of joy, the Nuckelavee, in all his monstrous hellishness, slipped through.

The next second, he and his doorway were gone, along with the pounding of the waves. And in that moment, it was the silver dragon Frida was thinking about, smiling into his beard. Was this what those people had seen all along, the ones who’d loaned her that beautiful woven tunic? Was this one of the possibilities they’d seen unfurling from far away and long ago amidst those primordial palm trees? She wondered as Dian rested their head on hers, Emerald-City-green hair with silver streaks tumbling around their shoulders, the warm bistre of their eyes angled towards the sky where a purple shape was doing lopsided loop-the-loops.

The Nuckelavee’s door was the first.

After Issy had had a snack, maybe she’d be willing to try another.

THE END

List of Extraordinary Creatures

Desert / Head of Desert: Omar Moyo

Total creatures: 40

  1 Allocamelus (Humphrey)

  1 Smithsonian dog-devil (Harrison)

  1 Twelve-legged giant sand tortoise (Miss Cordelia Sparkles)

  2 Basilisks (Basil, Borage)

  3 Mongolian death worms (Paul, Shai-Hulud, The Very Hungry Caterpillar)

  5 Gargoyles (Gavin, Glen, Goshawk, Grimblewink, Gwitern)

  6 Cockatrice (Doodle, Duchess, Meryl Cheep, Roo, Scrambled Egg, Trouble)

  6 Amphisbaena (Cóatl, Buddy, Gemini, Jekyll, Maquizcóatl, Turquoise)

 15 Ghouls (Anakin, Carrot, Columbus, Cunape, Einstein, Empanada, Floki, King Henry, Marge, Mr Smithers, Nero, Piglet, Pop-Eye, Pudding, Robespierre)

Forest / Head of Forest: Cliff Anderson

Total creatures: 156

  1 Broonie (Bruce the Brave)

  1 Bugul Noz (The Night Shepherd)

  1 Dragon (Lucky)

  1 Ghost-lynx (Raziel)

  1 Hawthorn tree (The Hawthorn of Higgleton Common)

  1 Magic Mycelium Thicket

  1 Manticore (Moira)

  1 Unicorn (Princess Isis)

  1 Wonderlich (Heinrich)

  2 Grunkles (Bill, Ted)

  2 Ten-toed root lizards (Big Foot, Godzilla)

  3 Grootnecks (Gorgonzola, Gouda and Gruyere)

  4 Leshies (Floaty, Lava Cake, Liquorice, Lo-Lo)

  6 Arkan sonney (Butternut, Flitternick, Kitkat, Mars, Pancake, Sausages)

  8 Slippery-nosed hangferns (Apricot, Jamie, Knots, Nelly, Peacock, Smoosh, Sniffs, Snortlenose)

  9 Stone giants (Agor, Bash, Crumble, Granite, Opal, Marble, Matilda, Slate, Tiger’s Eye)

 16 Two-headed storm monkeys (Baked Potato, Chaos ‘Jellybean’ Capone, Cream Pie, Hamlet, Jan, Jonesy, Keanu, K-Pop, Marta, Mojito, Ned, Oops, Peanut, Shirley Temple, Twiglet, Wednesday)

 29 Vampire bats (Angelica, Banoffee, Batman, Batrick, Ben Affleck, Căpcăun, Count Flapula, Donny Darko, Drusilla, Echo, El Capitan, Garlic, Giles, Idris, Jet, John Travolta, Midnight, Negroni, Pepper, Scary Spice, Spike, Tangerine, Tango, The Mighty Bat, The Flash, Uncle Fester, Robin, Vlad the Impaler, Wingston)

 68 Fairy glow-worms (refer to list in Forest Headquarters)

Grass / Head of Grass: Kara James

Total creatures: 71

  1 Carbuncle (Ruby)

  1 Golden horn (Zoja)

  1 Hell stag (Morpheus)

  1 Jackalope (Millie von Sunshine)

  1 Mavka (Moona)

  1 Mud golem (Cleopatra)

  1 Pooka (Chilli Pepper)

  3 Hill broonies (Burrow, Hexagon, Pickaxe)

  4 Werehyenas (Boris, Claw, Tooth, Churchill)

  7 Kitsune (Aki, Aya, Ginger Snap, Kiyomi, Salmon, Sushi, Wind)

 12 Hoop snakes (Apple, Beauty, Eve, Hula, Jafaar, Medusa, Mr Noodles, Pluto, Slinky, Edward Jefferson, Ubbe, Zephril)

 14 Will-o’-the-wisps (Adora, Evil Edna, Fiery Fred, Hex, Hinky Punk, Irrlicht, Jack, Mavis, Naga, Shiny, Softy, Swampy, Ursula, Witchy)

 24 Mandrakes (Alcibiades, Baby, Boo-Boo, Bubbles, Circe, Corey Taylor, Cow, Cuddles, Devil Senior, Devil Junior, Dora, Frank, Herb, Jim Root, Julius Caesar, Leafy, Metallica, Mr Boom, Patrick, Pericles, Mrs Roots, Rooster, Screamy, Thistlewink)

Ice / Head of Ice: Lubov Ibek

Total Creatures: 25

  1 Agloolik (Kallu)

  1 Pollycat (Hobknob)

  3 Ijiraq (Baffin, Ignirtoq, Ookpik)

  4 Amaroks (Fritti, Nanook, Odin, Snowplough)

  4 Dire wolves (Frostbite, Nix, Pudding, Varg)

 12 Akhlut (Amarug, Aput, Aqua, Cassiopeia, Dolly, Flapjack, Jolene, Moby Dick, Nuna, Orcalina, Pearl, Wolfie)

Lake / Head of Lake: DJ Glass

Total creatures: 255

  1 Afanc (Arthur)

  1 Bunyip (Daku)

  1 Hydra (Echidna)

  1 Inkanyamba (Ithris)

  1 Lagarfljót Worm (The Worm)

  4 Long-necked diajus (Catra, He-Man, She-Ra, Spirit)

  7 Kappa (Aki, Cucumber, Fumie, Junko, Mao, Tamari, Wasabi)

  9 Rusalka (Anastasia, Anna, Margarita, Masha, Natasha, Olga, Sonya, Polina, Tatyana)

  9 Shellycoats (Aodh, Brian, Cillian, Clodagh, Colm, Fiadh, Leonore, Nell, Róisín)

 12 Kelpies (Buddy, Chance, Darth Vader, Dick Dastardly, Lu-Lu, Misty, Doctor Octopus, Patch, Princess, Skeletor, Socks, Spindrift)

209 Thundertoads (refer to list in Lake Headquarters)

Ocean / Head of Ocean: Aarna Bhatt

Total creatures: 63

  1 Atkinson’s Brithee-coo (Coo-coo-ca-choo)

  1 Hippocamp (Helion)

  1 Kraken (Karen)

  1 Leviathan (Levi)

  1 Nuckelavee (The Nuckelavee)

  1 Umibōzu (Umi)

  2 Prifflpits (Terry, Zog)

  3 Golden flippers (Blaze, Glory, Tom)

  5 Mammoth razor sharks (Amor, Goat, Grey, Jingle Bells, Tofu)

  8 Sea serpents (Bloodreef, Bridget, Kaa, Silly, Sizzle, Sneaky, Snoop, Sssssss)

 11 Seven-tongued giant shrimp (Berk, Bon Jovi, Bonzai, Captain America, Dame Judi Drench, Kiwi, Newton, Scooby, Shrimpston, Weedy)

 12 Yuanapel (Aston Villa, Brazilia, Carlos, Cortés, Esmerelda, Fernanda, Garcia, Kahlo, Mar, Oceano, Oro, Tania Tentacles)

 16 Flying turtles (Aerosmith, Donatello, Elizabeth I, Hedgehog, High Top, Hoover, Iron Maiden, Leonardo, Maple Syrup, Michelangelo, Mumm-Ra, Raphael, Ripcurl, Shelly, Sir Snaps, Thanos)

Sky / Head of Sky: Gloria Swann

Total Creatures: 39

  1 Chimera (Calix the Toothless)

  1 Dragon (Fireheart)

  1 Hippogriff (Hippolytos)

  1 Pegasus (J-Lo)

  1 Thunderbird (Fran)

  1 Toothy fyith (Kiara Patterson)

  2 Griffins (Stewie, Brian)

  2 Pigmy wyvern (Alanna, Faithful)

  2 Phoenix (Ignatius Emberwing, Michael)

  3 Mountain Groots (Adele, Beyoncé, Rumi)

  3 Horned Mares (Moriarty, Sherlock, Watson)

  6 Banshees (Audrey Pippin, Brenda Biggs, Dorothy Harlow, Screamy, Madame Shrieksalot, Sir Shrieksalot)

 15 Peryton (Aelin, Bryce, Binti, Cloudweaver, Danger Mouse, Feyre, Flutterbug, McWizzerton, Miss Gwendolyn, Red Velvet, Strawberry Shortcake, Sriracha, Swiftwings, Tillytalon, Virelai)

Acknowledgements

There are a number of people without whom this book wouldn’t exist.

To Nelo and Wayra. You both taught me the meaning of extraordinary. I miss you every second, every day, and your hearts are in every page of this book.

My beloved mum, Eva. Champion, cheerleader, confidante, sofa-companion, and the very best editor any person could ask for. You never said no to reading another draft. You’ve probably read a thousand of them by now.

Jo. You inspire me every day. I’m so grateful to have a sister, and a best friend, who weaves fairytales so seamlessly and beautifully into our lives. This book was born in our conversations.

Samar Hammam, my agent. Thank you for pushing your boundaries for me, for working, editing, and reading tirelessly. There aren’t the words to say what this collaboration has meant, and the value of having someone like you in my corner. This is our book.

Nena Baltazar. The truth is, without you, I might not know what it means to dream of a world without cages, where everyone – from biggest to smallest – has a home. Without you, I wouldn’t have met Wayra. You both changed and inspired me in so many ways (but that’s a whole other book) so I’ll just say that Nena, without you, I’m not sure where I would find the courage to continue to hope.

Calah Singleton, because you saw something in a tangled draft that made sense to you, and you knew how to push me to make it stronger. Thank you.

Delayna Spencer, and the whole team at Hodderscape, who have worked so hard to help me make this book into a real, beautiful, powerful living thing!

To Persephone, for being my grammar co-witch and tentacular go-to. To Helen, for being a mapping queen. To Christine and Anita, for making being a writer seem like such a tangible, beautiful thing, and for giving me my very first feedback, right at the beginning. To Mayer and Sara, for your generous Arabic and Persian advice. And for generally being there for me, in all my angst: Becky, Sarah, Karen, Gill, Cleo, Saira, Jenny, Labhaoise, Jill, Amanda, Amie, Jon, Scott and Jenn. To Luke and Jack, for helping me live in other worlds for a time, and – Jack, for always reminding me that I DO believe in fairies.

I wrote a lot of this book whilst being a mature student doing an art degree, recovering from five years of Long Covid and having my mind blown in infinite ways. So, this is for everyone on my course, but most especially Ramona, Kate, Gracie and Rachele, and all our inspiring teachers and technicians. And to my extra special Ryder Road family, especially Cass.

To Eigg, for giving me a home that I love so much, and a place to write. For always welcoming me back when I’ve been absent. To the Galmisdale Bay Tea Room, with the best view a writer could ask for. I hope this book embodies a little bit of Eigg’s spirit of freedom, and I want to dedicate it to the people of Eigg, in particular those we lost in the time I was writing this book: Niamh, Eddie, John Bird and Sheena.

Thank you, always, to my dad, John, for your love, and for your constant, tireless, epic support. To Nick, Christopher, Amy, Vivienne, Eurik and Jenny for the same. To Alex, Thomas, Arun and Olivia – being an auntie is the best thing in the world. Thank you to all my family, every single one of you. And thank you to anyone who read and shared my books. Particularly my mum’s friends, who do it so wonderfully. Being able to spend my days writing about dragons is an extreme privilege, even more so to do it without fear. This shouldn’t be extraordinary. This book is for anyone who is at this moment fighting for their home, their culture, their worlds, and their identities. It is for anyone who believes that no single person should ever live in a cage.

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