Beneath (5 page)

She slowed as she neared the pool, alert for the sound of hooves, scanning the ground for prints, but there was nothing. Still, she waited in the trees for almost ten minutes before she could bring herself to approach the brambles where the horse had been. She’d thought, setting out, that she knew exactly where to look, but now she wasn’t so sure.

Fifteen minutes later she was close to giving up. It seemed increasingly unlikely that any hairs would have stayed among the brambles until now. She didn’t know whether she was devastated or relieved.

Jess took out her knife half-heartedly and cut a clutch of spindly bramble trailers, reaching in among the stems to get as much length as possible. The whirr of a duck’s wings made her turn to see a Goldeneye scuffing to a halt on the water. The pool looked as though nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened.

With a sigh, Jess pushed the brambles into the bag and the knife back into its sheath and turned to go, watching where she placed her feet among the thorny stems. Half a dozen steps and she’d be clear of them.

Something caught her eye: there was a tiny scrap of colour at about shoulder height, only a few paces from where she was. Jess made her way to where it was, suddenly tense.

A fragment of red cloth, the size of a fingernail.

It must be from Freya’s dress. If this was where Freya had been, Jess had been searching in the wrong place. She peered with new interest at the arching stems and only a few seconds later drew in her breath sharply and reached forward to unwind two long black hairs from a bramble spur.

She had it.
Hair of the Kelpie.

She could scarcely believe it. Holding tight to the hairs with one hand, she reached into her bodice with the other and pulled out the kerchief she’d brought just in case. She wrapped the hairs up carefully and tucked the little bundle back into her bodice where there was no danger it could fall out. Appalled and elated in equal measure, she started for home.

Jess looked at the collection of objects spread on the bed before her: two combs, a tiny cloth bundle, half a dozen bramble stems and a selection of the longest, thinnest birch twigs she’d been able to find.

“Right then,” she said to herself under her breath. “You’ve got all these things; it would be stupid not to use them.”

She untangled two or three of Freya’s long golden hairs and a few of her own from the combs, then unwrapped the two precious hairs from the horse’s mane and tied them all together at one end with a piece of thread. She worked the hairs into a tiny braid and tied thread around the other end. Next she twisted the braid round a birch twig and tied it in place.

The rest was easy. Three stems of bramble, three of birch – including the one with the hairs – and soon she had a prickly braid. Was it long enough? She looked at it critically, decided it was. Any longer and it would just be unwieldy. She turned one end back on itself to form a loop, threaded the other end through and checked to see if it would run freely.

It didn’t, of course, but considering it was covered in thorns, that was hardly surprising.

Now for the blood.

She’d pricked herself on thorns several times as she made the halter, but she wasn’t convinced that the tiny droplets that had oozed from her fingers were enough, so she got the knife and made a little cut in one fingertip.

As Jess stood there watching the crimson blood drip on to the green stems and lie there like berries, her bedroom door opened and she looked up, startled.

“I’m sorry. I just came up to see if you were still slee…”

Ellen’s voice froze, her gaze on the halter.

“What are you doing?” Ellen said in a deadly whisper, coming in and pushing the door shut behind her.

“Just… I’m making a halter,” Jess replied, unable to think of a convincing lie.

“You surely don’t mean…” Ellen’s face was so papery white that Jess feared she was about to faint. “You can’t. You mustn’t. Not you.”

“Why not me? There’s no one else. You know that.” Jess wrapped her kerchief tightly round her bleeding finger.

Ellen sank heavily into the chair.

“When I told you all these things… It was for Arnor to do, not you.”

“But I told you what happened when I went to see him.”

“It doesn’t matter. I would never forgive myself if you did this and something happened to you.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” Jess said with a confidence she was far from feeling.

“Your parents would never forgive me – and they’d be right,” her grandmother went on. “The Kelpies have brought nothing but trouble to this family. Your father spent his childhood listening to people tell him his mother was mad, or that maybe she was a murderess. How will he feel if he finds you’ve gone off to do this?”

Ellen looked at Jess as she spoke.

“I found the Kelpie’s hair,” Jess said slowly. “What were the chances of that, do you suppose? I
have
to do this. I’m
meant
to do this. The only way you’ll stop me is by telling my parents everything and helping them keep me locked up. I don’t suppose they’ll be very happy to find you put this idea in my head though, do you?” Jess knew how despicable the words were as she said them, and what a terrible gamble she
was taking that Ellen would remain silent.

She forced herself to look her grandmother in the eye, saw her lips tighten.

Ellen got to her feet. “Very well,” she said, admitting defeat. “But at least have the decency to tell me when you mean to go, so that I know when to worry.”

Jess nodded and watched her gran leave. She didn’t feel as though she had won; she felt as though she had broken something fragile and irreplaceable.

“You haven’t eaten anything, Jess.”

Martha came across the kitchen, peered at her daughter’s face and put a hand to her forehead. “Do you feel all right? You don’t have a fever. You’re very pale – are you cold? Did you sleep any better last night?”

Jess could almost feel the questions bouncing off her skin. She looked at her untouched porridge. There was no way she could force down even a mouthful, she was so nervous.

Now Ashe was staring at her too.

“I’m fine,” she said to her mother. “I’m just not hungry.”

“You have to eat something,” Ashe said unexpectedly. “I bet you’re just trying to get out of your chores again.” He scowled at her.

“No, I’m not. I’ll go and start them now to prove it.”

Jess got up, her chair scraping on the flags as she pushed it back, glad to have an excuse to get away from her mother’s scrutiny.

“I’m going to the dairy to skim the cream. I’ll just say good morning to Gran first.”

Martha nodded absently, her mind somewhere else.

Jess ran back upstairs, collected her jacket and the old satchel with the halter in it. She hesitated for a second before she knocked on Ellen’s door, then went in.

Her gran looked at her.

“There’s nothing I can say that will change your mind, is
there?”

Jess shook her head.

“How long will you wait at the pool?”

“All day if I have to. But not past dark. I’ll be home in time for supper.”

“And if you’re not?”

“I will be,” Jess said firmly. “I’ll see you later,” she said with a queasy smile, and left before she had time to think better of it.

After that, it was easy. Jess waited until there was no one else in the farmyard, then slipped out and headed for the woods.

It seemed oddly quiet as the trees closed in around her.
Watchful
, you might say.

Stop it!
she thought. She tried hard to keep her mind on everyday things until she was close to the pool, then stood for several minutes, listening for any hint that there was a horse nearby.

When nothing revealed itself, she began to walk towards the pool again, more slowly this time. Twenty paces, stop and listen again, nothing. Move on.

She wanted to find a spot from which she could watch the pool unseen. Surely the horse would come out of the water when it appeared? She paused again, scanning the trees and bramble thicket and the pool itself, in case the horse was already there somewhere, and when she saw nothing, she turned her attention to finding a good place to keep watch.

It only took her a few minutes to find three spindly pine trees growing so close together that their trunks almost touched, with a tangle of autumn-crisped ferns in front of them. With the solidity of the trunks at her back and the ferns screening her, she still had a good view of the pond. Jess made herself as comfortable as possible, and settled down to wait.

It was difficult not to daydream when you’d been sitting against a
tree for… however long she’d been here. It felt like months, but the light told her it couldn’t yet be much past noon. Jess had let her mind stray to Magnus for a while. Not that there was much to think about if she considered it properly: a couple of dances, some smiles, a few visits to Westgarth. Not a word, much less an arm round her waist, or a kiss. It was probably all imagination; it was her gran’s fault really, she’d put the idea in Jess’s head.

Jess got stiffly to her feet, more than ready for a break. In fact, as she eased her cramped legs and shifted the satchel strap on her shoulder, she wondered if she should just go home. The whole thing seemed faintly ridiculous now; she was nearly ready to believe it was no more than an old wives’ tale.

And then…

There was no sound. No splash of water or crack of twig, no sign at all. And yet, Jess knew, though her back was to the pool, that the horse was there.

As she turned, she tried to convince herself that it was her imagination at work, but she already knew somewhere deep in her heart that it wasn’t.

The horse stood at the edge of the pool, watching her.

Jess froze, poised for flight, balanced on the edge of fate, as the horse studied her with those too-blue eyes, and she studied it in turn.

She could run. She could probably lose the water horse where the trees crowded together. She could run.

But she didn’t. She stood quite still, her heart beating painfully hard, as the horse’s gaze settled on her face.

Jess moved forward slowly, almost without thought, one hand sliding into the satchel to check the halter. A few paces from the water horse she stopped, and time ran slow as they stared at each other.

The horse shook its head gently and moved slowly towards her. Almost against her will, Jess stretched out a hand and the horse nuzzled her palm. She felt its warm breath, the impossible softness of its muzzle.

Jess slid her hand up over its cheek and down to the strong neck. Her mind was a blank. Why was she here? There had been some reason, something important, but she couldn’t remember what it had been. It didn’t matter now anyway.

Her body leaned in towards the horse’s flank of its own volition, and then she was no longer on the ground at all, but on the horse’s broad back.

Jess took a gasping breath and came out of whatever trance she had been in. Terrified now, she tried to slide down from the horse’s back, but her legs were clamped to its flanks and she couldn’t budge them, however she tried.

“No!” she yelled, panic stricken. “Let me down. Stop!” But the horse was turning now, towards the water.

Her arms were still her own to move. Shouting all the time, Jess hit the horse on the neck as hard as she could, tried to reach forward to its head, but couldn’t.

Water rose around the black hooves as the horse picked its way with an odd delicacy into the pond.

Jess flailed wildly, trying to pull herself free, not thinking at all now, blind with panic. Her right hand closed on something. Thorns bit into her flesh. She gasped with pain, and with the pain came clarity.

The halter.

That was what she had to do. It came back to her as water touched her legs, began to climb up her skirts.

Desperately she pulled the halter from the satchel, kept tight hold of one end with her right hand as she let the other end dangle and reached under the horse’s neck to catch it with her left.

The water had risen to her thighs now. The Kelpie was almost in the centre of the pond. Jess scrabbled frantically, caught the trailing end of the halter and brought both ends up. She felt the horse tense beneath her and prepare to dive. Jess somehow fumbled the free end through the loop and pulled as
hard as she could as the horse’s muscles bunched beneath her and it leapt forward.

In mid-leap the horse seemed to stiffen as it became aware of the thing round its neck, but its plunge into the pool continued.

Jess screamed once, felt blood running through her fingers as the thorns gouged deep.

Water closed over them. She held her breath, hands clamped on the halter, hauling on it so hard that it must surely break.

The water boiled around them. They were tossed over and over, insubstantial and powerless as bubbles.

Jess couldn’t hold her breath any longer. She was going to drown. She was going to die.

Jess opened her eyes to utter darkness.
I’m dead,
she thought.
I’m drowned and dead, floating in Roseroot Pool. What happens now? Can I feel? Can I move? What do I do?

She moved a hand experimentally and felt what seemed to be grass under her fingers. As she lay looking up, the darkness resolved itself into different shades, and she found she was looking at a night sky through a lacing of branches, black on black; no moon or stars in the land of the dead.

It was cold, being dead. The cold had crept through her flesh and into her bones, slowing her blood.

My heart’s still beating, even though I’m dead,
she thought.
And I still need to breathe. And I’m cold
.

She sat up, hoping that the land of the dead wasn’t going to be dark all the time. As if in answer to the thought, a light flickered and caught through the trees, a little way off to her right. It looked for all the world as though someone had just lit a fire.

Jess got to her feet, a bit unsteadily, and walked between massive trunks towards the light. There was a man crouched by the fire with his back to her, breathing on twigs and fragments of tinder to encourage the flames, adding bits and pieces to feed it. He didn’t seem to have heard her approaching, so she stopped and simply watched him.

In the shivering firelight, she couldn’t see much: dark clothes, longish dark hair. He half turned to reach for a branch as a resinous twig caught and spat flame, and she had a glimpse of his face in profile.

He was young. She hadn’t expected that. The flame died and he was lost in shadow again, still now, and listening. He knew she was there.

Jess stepped forward into the light and heard him catch his breath, then let it out slowly.

He was staring at her, his expression unreadable.

“Hello,” she said, for want of something better.

He didn’t answer, but his hand went to his neck, pulling at something.

Shivering, Jess moved closer to the fire, still looking at him. Above his tunic, his fingers tugged at something twined green and gold, black and brown, barbed with thorns, tight about his neck.

She felt as if all her blood had drained away through the soles of her boots.

“I’m not dead,” she said in wonder.

He stared at her, perplexed.

“No.”

“It worked.” She was talking to herself as much as him. “It worked.”

Suddenly fearful, she looked around.

“This is the Kelpie world?”

He started to nod, then stopped suddenly, hand going to his throat. “Yes. To you it is.”

“And you…” She pointed at his neck. “That… You… You were the horse?”

“Was… am…”

Jess’s mouth went dry as just what she had done hit her properly.

It worked. I’m in the Kelpie world. Oh no. What do I do now?

“Are there more of you?” she asked. Ellen had said the halter gave power over
one
Kelpie; this forest could be full of them, preparing to overpower her and free the horse-boy.

“Of course. But not here. Not just now.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” She took a couple of steps towards the fire.

The boy pulled again at the thing round his neck. Why did he keep staring at her?

“Don’t you know what you’ve done to me with this? I have to do what you tell me. I can’t lie to you. How did you know how to make this if you don’t understand what it does?”

When she didn’t answer, he put another branch on the fire.

Jess sidled towards the flames and sat down, out of reach.

“I’ve come for my friend. You have to give her back to me,” she said, amazed at her own daring.

Again his fingers went to his throat, and now she was close enough to see him wince in pain. He went back to feeding the flames. There wasn’t enough light to see the colour of his eyes. Were they the same blue as the horse’s?

“What’s your name?” Jess asked impulsively.

“Finn,” said the boy.

“I’m…”

“Jess,” he finished for her.

She caught her breath. “How do you know my name? Did Freya talk about me?”

Finn shook his head.

He remembered the first time he’d seen her, when his mother had given in to his nagging at last and taken him to the Upper World to show him his father’s people.

“Your father used to live in the Upper World,” his mother had said. She had carried on speaking to him, but he’d not heard another word, staring transfixed at the small, brown-haired girl who stood hands on hips in the middle of the farmyard, scolding her tiny, mud-covered brother.

“Jess?” A woman’s voice had come from the house.

“Coming.” And Jess had pulled her brother to his feet and marched him off, still scolding.

“How do you know my name?” she demanded again, but Finn raised a hand to quiet her, looking round, listening now to something she couldn’t hear.

“What? What is it?”

He ignored her, getting to his feet in one smooth movement,
a burning branch in one hand.

“Stay close to the fire and keep quiet,” he said softly. As he spoke, he was moving slowly away.

“What is it? Where are you going?” she hissed. “Stop!”

To her surprise, Finn stopped abruptly. He looked angrily at Jess.

“Let me go,” he said in a venomous whisper. “Unless you want to get yourself killed. We’re not the only creatures in this forest.”

Jess gulped. She didn’t know what to do. He could be trying to trick her, but…

“All right, you can go. But you have to come back. Alone.”

He gave her an exasperated look and slid into the darkness between the trees. Jess watched the flame bob up and down, then disappear.

Silence surrounded her. She shivered, but not with cold this time. She got to her feet. What else was in the forest? If there was danger nearby, she wanted to be ready to run.

Jess moved slowly round the fire, straining her senses for any hint that someone – or something – was nearby, watching her.

Trees stretched away beyond the firelight. Here and there between the trunks grew huge briars with dark red flowers. Even in the firelight Jess could see the thorns. As she looked at a bush, she thought she saw a flicker of movement among the twisting branches: an eye, a suggestion of teeth.

She took a step back towards the fire, peering into the darkness. There! The gleam of long, curved claws made her gasp, before she realised they weren’t claws, but thorns. Fool. She was seeing things that weren’t there at all.

How long had the Kelpie boy been gone? If this was some sort of trick, it had succeeded. And if it wasn’t… There was no point in running. She had no idea where to run
to
.

Come on, Jess,
she told herself as she circled the flames warily.
This is no time for imagination. Things are strange enough
as it is.

She gave a squeak of terror as a figure appeared, seemingly from nowhere, on the other side of the fire.

It was Finn, now without the burning branch.

“Don’t creep up like that,” she said, trying to mask her fear with anger.

She was still here. He had half-expected her to have disappeared, like one of his mother’s illusions. Only the bite of the metal at his throat convinced him this wasn’t a dream. He’d imagined her in his world so often, but never like this. Not with power over him.

“I can’t help it if I’m quiet,” he said. “You can sit down again, it’s all right.”

Jess folded her shaking legs under her.

“What was it?” she regretted asking as soon as she said the words.

“A wolf. But it’s all right; it can’t get through to your world and it won’t hurt you with me here, not one on its own.”

His answer didn’t quite make sense, but she told herself it didn’t matter.

“I want Freya back. Where is she?” A terrible thought occurred. “Is she all right?”

“Yes.”

“Then take me to her.”

“It’s not safe to go too far from the fire while it’s dark. There are wolves, remember? And they’re a lot fiercer than the ones in your world. You’ll have to wait until daybreak.” A sudden gust of wind stirred his hair and sent sparks flying as he spoke. Jess reached to push a toppling log back into the fire while she thought about that.

“All right, we’ll wait until morning,” she agreed.

There was another gust of wind and, as though a curtain had been pulled, the sky was suddenly burning with stars as the clouds above the forest frayed into rags.

Jess looked up, open-mouthed. If she had needed any
proof that she was no longer in her own world, here it was; stars flared coldly above her in numbers that she had never imagined. She searched in vain for a familiar constellation, but there was none.

She felt Finn’s eyes on her, and brought her gaze back to his face.

“It’s not the same sky,” she said.

“It’s not the same world.” He glanced up. “We have more stars, but you have the moon.”

“There’s no moon here?”

Finn shook his head.

“But how… I don’t understand.” Jess was baffled.

“You don’t have to,” Finn said, and she turned to look at him properly as she heard the edge to his voice. “Why would you want to know about this world? You’ve come for your friend, that’s all. Isn’t that right? You’re not interested in us.”

“I’m… You’re right. I’ve come for my friend. That’s all I want,” Jess said, but it wasn’t true any more.

“Go to sleep,” said Finn, in a voice that was far from friendly. “You’ll get your friend in the morning.” His fingers were at his throat again, trying to ease the thing round his neck.

Jess didn’t know what else to do, so she curled up in the lee of the fire and pretended to sleep, Finn’s face caught behind her eyelids, half seen and undecipherable.

Finn watched as she fell properly asleep.

He felt he knew her, even though he’d never spoken to her. He’d spent so much time watching her that he sometimes felt he knew what she was about to do before she did.

The snatched glimpses weren’t enough. He’d wanted her here, with him.

And now she
was
here, in his world. But she was only here because of her friend. That wasn’t what was meant to happen. And when his family found out she was here… What had he done?

Jess slept fitfully. Fragments of dreams chased her to morning and she opened her eyes to find that the fire had died to a bed of grey ash, and the Kelpie boy was watching her.

She blinked several times, for the air between them seemed to shimmer and shift, then she sat up, pushing hair out of her face, aware, to her consternation, that she had flushed to her fingertips. Finn continued to watch her.

“Did no one ever tell you it’s rude to stare?” she asked.

He frowned. “Why? How else are you supposed to learn what something really looks like?”

“It’s… you’re…” Jess was determined not to be lost for words. “You’re not supposed to make it obvious that you’re that interested in anyone. Anything.”

He mulled it over.

“That makes no sense.”

She blinked a few times, trying to force everything to stay still.

Embarrassingly, she found herself drawn to stare at him in turn. It was the first time she’d had enough light to see him properly.

The hair that came almost to his shoulders was black, his face fine-boned and sharply angled. His eyes were the blue of the iris flowers round Roseroot Pool, the blue of the horse’s eyes, extraordinarily vivid. He was, Jess found herself thinking, very good looking.

“Now
you’re
staring,” he said, to her horror.

“I’m not,” she blurted untruthfully. “I mean… Look, you were a horse, now you’re a person. Of course I’m staring.”

To cover her discomfort, she got to her feet.

“Take me to Freya. I came here to get her back. “Tell me what I’ll have to do to get her out of here.” Jess felt the colour sliding away from her face as the reality of her situation hit her again.

“Sit down again, and I’ll tell you.”

She came round the bed of ashes and sat down, closer to
him than she had been before, close enough now to see the thing round his neck. It was no longer the halter she had made. In Finn’s world it had become a torque of coloured metals, twisted together and bristling with tiny spines. Jess could see the red weal it had raised around his neck.

“Why did you take her?” she asked before he had a chance to speak. “You took the boys as well, didn’t you? Why did you take them?”

“I took your friend. The boys were taken by other Kelpies.” He gave her a searching look. “Do you care? Does it matter to you so long as you get your friend back?”

“Of course it matters,” Jess said angrily. “Why do you take them? I’m trying to understand. Tell me.”

He sighed, running his hands through his hair.

“You call us Kelpies in the Upper World, but we call ourselves the Nykur. Long ago, this land used to be full of Nykur. The herds were everywhere on the plains. The horses made a sound like thunder as they galloped, there were so many of us. In those days, we hardly ever took human form here, only when we visited your world, so that we could speak to you.

But now the Nykur are a failing race. We are long lived, but we don’t have many children – fewer still as the years pass. Some of them are sickly, some are taken by wolves when they are foals. There aren’t many of us left now. And so we take children from your world to bolster our numbers, to breed fresh blood into our families. They forget your world, and live among us instead. We spend more time in human shape now that most of us have people from the Upper World in our families. Children of mixed Nykur and human blood survive childhood more often than pure-bloods do. Half-bloods like me are hardier than they are. We are the only ones who risk going between the worlds regularly now.”

“One of your parents is human?”

“My father. My mother, Gudrun, is pure blood Nykur.”

“And your father doesn’t try to stop other human children being taken?”

“No. He is Nykur now. He has forgotten there was a time when he lived in the Upper World. He understands the need. He knows they will be happy here.”