Swift (5 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She padded to the water-channel and washed her face and hands, then opened the clothespress she shared with Cicely and took out a sleeveless blouse and skirt. Closer to the surface the Delve could be cool, but not here, and where Ivy was going it would be warmer still. Once dressed, she studied herself critically in the mirror. Should she leave her shoulder-length curls down, as she usually did? Or would she look older and more serious with her hair up?

‘You look nice,’ said Cicely sleepily from her alcove. ‘Where are you going?’

Ivy put the mirror aside. ‘To talk to the Joan,’ she said.

‘What about?’

She didn’t like to frighten Cicely, especially since Mica hadn’t even had a chance to talk to her yet. But she couldn’t lie to her, either. ‘I saw a spriggan last night, outside the Engine House,’ she said in an offhand tone, hoping Cicely would assume she’d only glimpsed it from a distance. ‘It ran away before I could point it out to anyone, and Mica thinks it was only Keeve playing a prank. But I thought the Joan and Jack ought to know.’

‘Oh,’ Cicely said in a small voice, and Ivy could tell the news had troubled her. Well, maybe that was for the best – it would make it all the easier for Mica to talk to her when the time came. Ivy slid a copper arm-ring up above each elbow and pinched it tight, then stooped to kiss her sister’s forehead.

‘I’ll be back soon,’ she said. ‘Wish me luck.’

‘You’ll need that and a hammer to get Aunt Betony to listen to you,’ said Mica from his alcove. He swept the curtains aside and clambered out of bed, scratching his bare chest. ‘What’s for dinner?’

‘There’s plenty of adder in the cold-hole,’ said Ivy sweetly, and walked out.

As Ivy headed down the stairs to the next level, she was struck by how quiet the Delve was. Usually at this time of day there’d be children chasing each other through the corridors, matrons carrying baskets of laundry up from the wash-cistern, knockers returning from the diggings with their thunder-axes over their shoulders. But right now most of her fellow piskeys were still sleeping, and Ivy walked the passages alone.

Soon another set of stairs took her down to Silverlode Passage, where threads of the precious metal still shone bright against the granite. The tunnel was wider here, as it was one of the main thoroughfares of the Delve, and the most direct route to the cavern where the piskeys held their market. Yet even this passage was empty, which made Ivy feel lonely and strangely liberated at the same time. She appreciated the close-knit community of the Delve, where everyone looked out not only for their own interests but also for everyone else’s. But there were times when her fellow piskeys’ company became stifling, and it was a relief to be by herself for a while.

The Joan’s stateroom was at the far end of the Silverlode, the entrance marked by lit torches on either side – a sign that Betony was inside and ready to hear her people’s petitions. But the door was closed, and Ivy had to knock three times before anyone answered.

‘All right, all right,’ said Nettle’s gravelly tones from within, ‘I’m a-coming.’ The door opened with a creak, and her thin, wizened face appeared. ‘Right then, what’s your business?’

‘I need to talk to the Joan. I think…’ No, she didn’t just think. She’d looked into those cold eyes, and she
knew
. Ivy stood a little taller and said, ‘I saw a spriggan last night.’

For an instant Nettle seemed taken aback, but then her expression softened. She leaned closer and murmured, ‘Ah, Ivy-lass, your mother was a good woman, and what happened to her was a terrible shame. But you can’t go about—’

‘Let her in, Nettle.’ Betony’s voice carried across the cavern. ‘I’ll deal with this.’

Nettle shut her mouth so hard her teeth clicked, and opened the door at once. Ivy walked through into a broad, firelit chamber, its daunting size made cosy by copper panels, a patterned rug, and draperies in rich, earthy hues. The far end of the room was dominated by a table of carved granite, and Ivy’s aunt was seated in the chair behind it.

‘So you think you saw a spriggan,’ said the Joan. ‘Where?’

There was something about Betony that always made Ivy feel small. Her aunt’s strong bones and striking features, the smooth waves of hair falling over her shoulders, made Ivy keenly aware of her own unruly curls and slight, unpiskeylike figure. And then there were those creamy wings with their shimmering patterns of bronze, so much like Cicely’s that Ivy could never look at them without being reminded of what her own wings might have –
should
have – been.

‘In the valley below the Engine House,’ she said, subdued.

‘And what were you doing there?’

This was the awkward part. Exasperating as Mica could be at times, he was still Ivy’s brother, and she didn’t want to make trouble for him. But she wasn’t about to take the blame for his carelessness, either. ‘Mica and I needed to talk in private,’ she said at last. ‘He said I’d be safe as long as he was with me.’

‘So he was with you when you saw the spriggan?’

Ivy winced. ‘No.’

‘I see,’ said the Joan. ‘Go on.’

‘He didn’t mean to leave me,’ Ivy said. ‘He thought I was right behind him when he ran up the hill. But the spriggan arrived before I could catch up, and then…’

‘Arrived how? From which direction?’

All these pointed questions were making Ivy feel defensive. ‘I don’t know. He turned up behind me, all of a sudden. It was like he was just…there.’

‘And yet he didn’t touch you, or put a spell on you, or harm you in any way?’

‘No,’ Ivy said, ‘but I’m sure he would have if Mattock hadn’t come looking for me.’

‘So Mattock saw the spriggan, then?’

‘No. It ran off before he arrived. I tried to point it out to him, but—’ She spread her hands, feeling more foolish than ever. ‘It was already gone.’

The Joan leaned back in her chair, fingers tapping the edge of the table. ‘And when you told Mattock and your brother about this spriggan, what did they say?’

‘They said it was Keeve playing a prank. Only I know it wasn’t, because—’

She was about to say
he talked to me
, but Betony cut her off. ‘Clearly you feel that wasn’t the case. But for a spriggan to appear the moment you happened to be alone, frighten you without doing you any harm, and vanish before anyone else could see him… It does seem unlikely, don’t you think?’

‘But I felt him watching me, when I was sitting by the wakefire,’ Ivy said in desperation. ‘He could have singled me out then, and waited until I was alone to—’

‘But how could he know that you would go outside the Engine House, much less that your brother would leave you alone? And when he had his opportunity, why didn’t he take it?’ She paused, then went on in a gentler tone, ‘No one could blame you for hating the spriggans, or wanting to see your mother avenged. But you were not yourself last night, and the mind can play tricks sometimes.’

What was
that
supposed to mean? Just because she’d showed up late to the Lighting with old clothes and dirt on her face, the Joan thought she was losing her wits? Ivy gripped her arm-rings, calling on their cold strength. ‘I didn’t imagine it! Why doesn’t anyone believe me?’

But her aunt only looked at her, a faint pity in her gaze. And all at once Ivy remembered Cicely’s words:
Have you ever seen a spriggan? Has anybody?

She drew in her breath. ‘You don’t believe in spriggans.’ And neither did Mica or Mattock, judging by their reactions. How could she have been so naïve?

‘You mistake me, Ivy. I would never deny that spriggans exist.’

‘Oh, really?’ Ivy was angry enough for sarcasm, though she knew she might regret it. ‘When was the last time anyone saw one?’

‘Must be thirty years ago,’ came the rasping answer, and Ivy started; she’d forgotten Nettle was there. ‘A thin, miserable bit of a thing it was too, all by its lonesome. But it fought like a demon till young Hew smashed its head in, or so he and the other lads said.’

Thirty years…
Could it be true? She’d spent her whole life terrified of spriggans, and all the while they’d been practically extinct?

‘Then why are we still hiding underground?’ Ivy asked, rounding on her aunt. ‘If I only imagined what I saw, and my mother wasn’t taken by the spriggans after all—’

‘There are more dangers in the world than spriggans,’ said Betony, with a hard look at Nettle. ‘And good reason for our people to stay underground, even now. As for your mother… I would let that be, Ivy, if I were you.’

‘You think she left us,’ Ivy said, struggling to breathe. ‘Don’t you. You think my mother went away on
purpose
.’

‘I don’t know what became of Marigold when she left the Engine House that night,’ the Joan replied, unruffled. ‘She may indeed have been caught by the spriggans, for all I know.’ She rose and walked around the table. ‘But you will not bring her back by making yourself miserable – as I have told your father many times.’ She put her fingers under Ivy’s chin and tipped her face up. ‘You have been working too hard. It would do you good to get more rest. Let Mica and Cicely look after you for a change.’

I’m not sick
, Ivy wanted to protest, but she’d heard the warning in her aunt’s tone: the discussion was over. And Nettle was holding the door open, in case she hadn’t taken the hint. Hiding her resentment, Ivy bowed her head. ‘Yes, my Joan.’