Force Majeure (25 page)

‘So, you’re never coming back?’ he’d asked.

‘Well,’ she’d said, throwing him a cheeky smile that he’d not seen from her before, ‘never’s a long time.’

She’d showered before she’d left, taking the opportunity to change from her holiday clothes into the tabard, vest and tights that were the uniform of the house of dragons.

It was drizzling on the featureless landscape as she left the cottage, and there was no sky, just smooth, invisible white above the horizon. The road was obscured by rain, but she saw and recognised the figure waiting for her halfway down the hill. It was tiny and twisted and stood on four legs – two of them rigid and sturdy like wings, the others tapering weakly to the ground. Kay ran to her, her pack thumping hard against her back as she went.

Azure was precariously balanced on her crutches and almost fell backward as Kay slammed into her. The older woman caught her in a hug before they both toppled. Kay pressed her face into the bird-girl’s shoulder, and though her mouth moved, no sense and no sound came out of it. Azure finally freed a hand and brushed contentedly at Kay’s damp hair.

‘Luis told me where you’d gone,’ she explained. ‘I had to come after you. I’ve got a good sense of direction, and I was worried you wouldn’t find your way back without help. I thought you’d need me.’

Kay, crying dryly into her friend’s shoulder, listened and understood and couldn’t speak.

Azure’s face pushed closed to hers: ‘He couldn’t take
anything
away from me.’

‘Candida,’ Azure said at last, ‘I want to go home.’

Further down the road, concealed in a ditch behind a thicket, was a concrete drain outlet driven through the side of the hill. Kay had played in its mouth when she was young, once the woods became too dangerous, and there was a story among the local kids that it was a secret passage to the other side of the world, to unknown lands that had yet to appear on any map. The black tunnel was dank and stank of sewage, and even curious children didn’t care to venture too far into its promising emptiness. Whatever lay at the end was blank and unwritten.

The two women of Candida stood at its mouth, their hands twined inseparably tight. Then they went down into it together and Disappeared.

Also Available from Andrews UK and Telos Publishing