Swift (2 page)

Then there was the landscape, just visible beyond the patches of waving bracken and bristling tufts of gorse that walled her in. It had no walls to contain it, only a few tangled hedges interspersed with the occasional tree. And those white, square shapes away to her right…could they be human dwellings? Even at piskey size – about the height of a grown human’s knee, or so the droll-teller claimed – Ivy could have walked to one of those houses.

‘Come,’ said Marigold, taking Ivy’s arm as the piskey men led the way up the slope. ‘We mustn’t keep the others waiting.’

The old Engine House stood at the top of the ridge, its broken chimney jutting into the sky. Even after a century of neglect its walls held strong, but their tops ended in nothing but air; the roof had crumbled away long ago. Two of its windows still gaped like empty sockets, but the others were long smothered in a mass of the same plant that had given Ivy her name. From a distance the ruined mine building looked desolate, even haunted.

But that was an illusion, meant to keep intruders away. In reality the place was anything but neglected, for the piskeys of the Delve had been using it as their feasting and dancing ground for decades. They’d piled rocks and soil beneath the lone doorway to make it easy for their people to climb in and out, and smoothed out the precipitous drop in the floor. Now the Engine House was filled with light and festivity, as the piskeys of the Delve bustled about setting up chairs and laying the tables. On the far side of the dancing green her father Flint was tuning his fiddle, while Mica and the other piskey-boys played a game of chase-the-spriggan around the pile of wood that would soon become their wakefire.

‘I’m going to talk to Nettle,’ said Marigold, drawing her shawl closer around her shoulders. ‘Jenny’s over there; why don’t you go and see her?’

‘I will in a minute,’ said Ivy, surprised. Lately Marigold had been staying close to Ivy whenever there was a crowd, in case she felt sick or needed anything. But perhaps her mother had finally understood what Ivy had been telling her for months – that she could manage perfectly well on her own, and there was no need to fuss over her.

She watched her mother make her way to the bench along the far wall where most of the older piskeys were sitting, chatting comfortably to one another. What would Marigold want with Nettle? The old woman had attended the previous Joan and managed to outlive her, and since then she’d been serving Betony as well. But other than that, Ivy knew little about her.

‘Boo!’ yelled a voice, and Ivy let out a shriek as Keeve leaped in front of her. ‘Got you!’ he said, grinning.

Disgusted, Ivy pushed him away and headed towards Jenny. But Keeve affected a wounded expression and fell into step beside her.

‘I just wanted you to notice me, that’s all,’ he said. ‘Pretty Ivy, won’t you dance with me tonight?’

Ivy faltered. The wicked glint in Keeve’s eye had vanished, and his expression was earnest as she’d ever seen it. ‘Do you…you don’t really mean that, do you?’ she asked.

Keeve chortled. ‘Got you again!’ he said, and scampered off.

Ivy ground her teeth. Most piskeys loved pranking, especially the younger ones – and especially on nights like this, when the one who played the most successful pranks would win a prize. But she’d never liked being tricked, or trying to trick others either, and she wished her fellow piskeys would leave her out of it.

‘There you are,’ said Mica, jogging up to her. He was growing broad and strong like their father, his black hair thick over his forehead and his eyes dark as cassiterite. ‘Did you see the giant?’ He pulled Ivy over to the doorway and pointed into the distance, where a pair of baleful lights swept the landscape. ‘See his eyes glowing? He’s looking for piskeys to eat…’

This time, Ivy was prepared. ‘Oh, no!’ she exclaimed. ‘And let me guess – those flashing lights I just saw overhead? They must be wicked faeries spying on us!’

Mica scowled. ‘Jenny told you.’

‘Well,’ said Ivy, ‘it’s not my fault you play the same trick every year.’

Her older brother sighed. ‘Fair enough. You know what those lights are, then?’

‘Human things,’ she replied. Not that she’d ever seen a
car
or an
aeroplane
, or had any clear idea how they worked. But everyone knew that there was nothing to fear from the Big People; most of them didn’t even believe in piskeys any more.

‘Keeve and I have a bet on,’ said Mica. ‘He says as soon as he becomes a hunter, he’s going to disguise himself as a human and get a ride in one of those cars. I told him they’ll never stop for him, but he thinks all he has to do is—’

‘All gather for the Lighting!’ bellowed a voice, and the rest of the conversation was forgotten as Ivy and Mica hurried to find a seat. Mica wriggled his way in between Keeve and Mattock, while Jenny patted the bench beside her and leaned closer as Ivy sat down.

‘Wait until you see this,’ she whispered, nodding at the far side of the circle where the Joan stood with her consort by her side. ‘I can’t believe she’s your
aunt
.’

Betony was a strongly built woman with hair as black as Ivy’s, though longer and not so curly, and their kinship was evident in the angles of her cheekbones, her pointed chin. With grave dignity she extended her arms over the woodpile…

And flames exploded from her hands.

Ivy jerked back, nearly upsetting the bench in her shock. She’d known that the Joan would light the wakefire, but she’d never expected her to do it like this. Jenny patted her shoulder, reassuring, while Betony lowered her blazing palms to touch the kindling. The twigs glowed bright as molten copper, and soon the whole heap of wood was alight.

‘All hail!’ shouted the piskeys together. ‘Hail Joan the Wad!’

Wad
was the old Cornish word for
torch
, and until now Ivy had thought it just a ceremonial title. But no, her aunt could literally conjure fire from the air. How had Betony learned to wield such amazing power? ‘You never told me,’ she said, turning reproachful eyes to Jenny.

‘Of course not,’ replied the older girl, smiling. ‘Surely you didn’t want me to ruin
all
the surprises for you?’

Around them, the other piskeys were getting up and moving closer to the fire – not for warmth, but for light. This was their opportunity to replenish the natural luminescence of their bodies, which would serve them better than any lamp in the dark tunnels underground. As Ivy stood to join them a tingle ran over her skin, and her lips curved in a proud smile. Now she too would glow when she returned to the Delve, and she could go anywhere she wanted.

Where was her mother? She should be here, sharing this special moment. On the other side of the wakefire, her father Flint nodded and returned Ivy’s smile – but Marigold was nowhere to be seen. Was she still talking to Nettle? No, Nettle was with the Joan, pouring piskey-wine into a bowl for the next part of the ceremony.

Probably Ivy’s mother had just forgotten something underground, and gone to fetch it. Or maybe she just wanted to make sure Cicely was safely asleep. After all, she’d seen the Lighting many times before, and the fire would burn all night. Telling herself it was childish to feel hurt about it, Ivy returned to her seat.

The rest of the evening passed in a blur, one magical moment dissolving into another. Ivy ate and drank and laughed with Jenny and the others, watched the dancers whirl and leap to the music of her father’s fiddle, and basked in the light of the wakefire until her skin could hold no more. Finally, tired and happy, she tumbled down by the old droll-teller’s feet with the other children, and lay half-drowsing while he told stories.

As usual, all the tales revolved around a single theme: how clever piskeys of the past had outwitted their enemies. The first story was about a foolish human miner who tried to trick the knockers out of their treasure and ended up with nothing but a sore knee – all the children laughed at that. Then came the tale of a faery who met a wandering piskey-lad and tried to allure him into marrying her, a dark and sinister tale that made Ivy hold her breath. But fortunately, the boy saw past the faery’s pretty face to her cold heart and escaped.

‘Yet wickedest and most deadly of all,’ said the droll-teller, bending close to his audience as though telling them a secret, ‘are the spriggans.’

The younger children squirmed and cast uneasy glances at the doorway as the droll-teller went on, ‘Like us, spriggans can change their size at will, and they love to play magical tricks. But they’re the ugliest, skinniest, most maggoty-pale creatures you can imagine, and all their pranks are cruel.’

It wasn’t the first time Ivy had heard about spriggans, but still the description made her shudder. She could picture them lurking in the darkness all around the Engine House, rag-wrapped monsters with glittering eyes and long bony fingers, waiting for the first careless piskey to pass by. And not only to frighten them, either. Her father had told her that spriggans were hungry all the time and would eat anything – or any
one
– they could catch.

‘Spriggans love treasure,’ the droll-teller continued, ‘but they’re too lazy to dig for it. So in the old days when we piskeys lived in villages on the surface, the spriggans would wait until the knockers went off to work in the mine – and then they’d attack.’ His voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. ‘They’d kill the guards and the old uncles and even the youngest boy-children, and cast a spell over all the women that would make them think the spriggans were their own menfolk. Then they’d settle in to feast and gloat over their treasure.’

Ivy’s nose wrinkled in revulsion. It was horrible to think of being caught and eaten, but to be tricked into living with a spriggan as your husband was even worse. She was wondering how such a dreadful tale could end happily when Mattock spoke up from the back of the crowd:

‘But then the knockers would come home and find the spriggans there. Wouldn’t they?’

‘They would, indeed,’ said the droll-teller. ‘Tired as they were, they’d pick up their hammers and their thunder-axes and fight. Sometimes they lost the battle, though more often they won, because a good knocker is braver and stronger than three spriggans put together. But even once all the spriggans had been killed, their evil spells were so strong that the knockers’ wives and daughters didn’t recognise their own menfolk any more. Instead they’d weep and wail over the ugly spriggans – and they’d accuse the knockers of being spriggans instead!’

The girl beside Ivy whimpered and buried her face in her hands. Ivy didn’t feel like crying, but she did feel a little queasy. She was glad when Mattock raised his voice again: ‘But the spell would wear off in a few days, isn’t that right?’

By then the droll-teller seemed to realise he’d gone too far. He patted the weeping child and said, ‘Yes, surely it would. No magic lasts forever, after all. But it wasn’t long before some of the piskeys decided they’d had enough, and that it was time to make a new home for themselves deep in the rock and earth, where their enemies were too cowardly to follow. And that’s how the Delve came to be.’

He smiled and sat back, as though this was the happy ending. But Ivy wasn’t satisfied yet. ‘What about the other piskeys?’ she asked. ‘The ones who didn’t go to the Delve?’

‘The spriggans went on attacking them,’ said the droll-teller, ‘just as before. But now those other piskeys only won the battle sometimes, and before long they hardly won at all. They were too proud to ask the folk in the Delve for help, you see. So they fought alone, and most of them died. But once our people heard of a piskey village coming to grief, we sent our bravest fighters to rescue the women and children and offer them a safe home with us. So the Delve grew and the other clans of piskeys became smaller, until we were the only piskeys left.’

On the far side of the circle Mica sat up eagerly, as though he could hardly wait to become a hunter and fight spriggans. Mattock looked solemn and a little troubled. Keeve, meanwhile, appeared to have fallen asleep – but that was no great surprise, since the droll-teller was his grandfather and he must have heard all these tales a hundred times.

The droll-teller launched into another tale, but by now Ivy was too tired to enjoy it. She searched the crowd for her mother, but there was no sign of her. And now her father had gone missing as well, for his chair was empty and his fiddle propped idle against the wall.

‘Mica,’ she whispered, leaning across to her brother. ‘I’m going back to the cavern.’

‘What for? It’s not nearly daybreak yet.’

‘I want to make sure Cicely’s all right.’ And their mother too, though Ivy didn’t say it. Surely something unusual must have happened, to keep Marigold away from the Lighting so long.

‘Well, you can’t go now,’ said Mica. ‘Not by yourself. You’ll just have to wait for the rest of us.’

Much as it galled Ivy, he was right. The closest entrance to the Earthenbore was well down the slope, too far for any woman or child to go alone. And it was no use asking Mica or Mattock to go with her; they hadn’t even got their hunter’s knives yet, let alone learned to use them. Sighing, Ivy leaned her elbow on a jutting stone and dropped her head against it. She was slipping into a doze when a cry from the other side of the Engine House shocked her awake. Was that her
father
shouting?

Mica was on his feet and running, pushing through the crowd. The music had stopped and all the dancers stood frozen, staring at the doorway. There stood Flint, his hair dishevelled and his face a mask of anguish, cradling a bundle of fabric against his chest. He stumbled forward and dropped to his knees.