First Aid for Fairies and Other Fabled Beasts (6 page)

Yann filled the glimmering cave with his voice. “I will tell you what has happened since we took the Book two nights ago. The Book flew from us in fear, but Catesby and Sapphire fly faster than pages can, so they followed the Book under the clouds and over the hills to its first refuge.

“The Book flew into an old walled garden, at the base of a tall tower with no door. Young
centaurs
are told that long ago the garden belonged to a witch who imprisoned a human girl in the tower, but the girl escaped using her long golden pleat.”

“Rapunzel!” exclaimed Helen.

“Yes, that’s her name in our tales too. The witch, the girl and the prince are all gone now, but the witch’s enchantments live on, and no one can enter the garden without permission. The Book knows all the answers, so it flew in easily. But none of us could follow.

“However, even her aunts admit that Lavender is a clever fairy. She spent all of the next day
working
on a spell, and last night she soothed the herbs in the garden and sent the enchantment to sleep.

“Last night, we thought that all we had to do was to find the Book, say we were sorry and
take it back home. We didn’t know that the dark creatures were trying to get the Book, so once Lavender had spoken to the herbs and checked the spell had worked, she went home, leaving me on my own.”

Lavender swooped down to his right ear. “I’m so sorry. I wish I hadn’t left you, Yann, but I did have to be back for a rehearsal of the Solstice dance. I would have been missed by my aunts if I had been late.”

Yann held out his hand for the fairy and smiled at her. “You did your best, my friend. You let me in, that was all I asked you to do.”

Yann spoke to Helen again. “Once she had gone, I leapt the wall myself.

“I started to look amongst the herbs and flowerbeds and bushes, and amongst the stones fallen over the years from the tower, hoping to find the Book. Then I saw a stone with words carved into it. But before I could read them, I heard hissing and growling, and a gang of creatures leapt on me from behind.

“To my shame, I did not wait to read the clue or try to lift the stone. I just fled. And as I leapt over the wall, I was bitten and ripped my own flesh by kicking the creature off.

“That is when I came to you, healer’s child. I came for your help because I could not admit to my own healers how I had been injured, and I could not face my friends with my failure.” His voice was quiet, not ringing round the cave as it was when he laughed or told the brave parts of tales.

Rona stroked Yann’s side. “It was not a failure.
You found out lots we did not know. You discovered that the Master was also hunting the Book, that the Book had left us a riddle on a stone and that the stone was at the base of the tower. And if you hadn’t been injured, we would never have met the healer’s child.” Rona turned to Helen.

“So tonight, we sent the largest and strongest amongst us, Sapphire, to pick up the stone riddle. But the Master must have sent more creatures, ones with more sense than teeth, and they waited until she was below the old tower, then knocked the loose stones and slates from the roof.

“But Sapphire carried the clue back with her, even when she could hardly see to fly. And now we shall read the riddle. Go and get your greatest treasure, Sapphire.”

Sapphire went to her trove of glitter and sparkle, and picked up a brick-shaped grey stone. Helen saw that it had rough edges, and was about the size of a cat basket. On one of its largest sides, there were words chipped out in elegant straight lines. Sapphire brought the stone to Helen, and laid it at her feet.

Helen looked round at her companions, all waiting anxiously beside her. Then she read:

She looked back up. “What on earth does that mean?”

“It must be the clue from the Book. Can you help us unriddle it?” Rona pleaded.

“I haven’t ever really done riddles. Is it another place you have to look?”

“It must be a clue leading to the place where the Book is now.”

“But it seems to be about where it came from.” Helen thought for a moment. “Did the Book come from the ground? From something that is like a grin in the ground?”

Rona said, “No, I don’t think so. The Book has been with the fabled beasts since before humans moved from castles and farms to towns and cities. We learn from our elders that once upon a time, a wizard boasted that he knew everything in the world, and a tiny fairy challenged him to a duel, where they threw unanswerable questions at each other.”

“Questions like what?” asked Helen.

“Questions like: Why is the sea salty when the rivers that fill it are sweet? How does a dragon brought up by eagles learn to breathe fire? Why is there no pink or brown in a rainbow? Where do midgies go when it rains? Why can you never be who your parents want you to be? What are wasps for? And, of course, why can’t you tickle yourself?

“Soon the wizard and fairy were having so much fun that instead of fighting, they made it their life’s work to collect all the questions in the world. They wrote them in shining gold ink in their Book; a Book bound in the bark from the very first silver birch tree and closed with a clasp made of pearls from the mermaids’ gardens. They travelled the world, getting questions from every
people: werewolves and sea serpents; naiads and dryads; babies in cradles and hermits on poles … Then they wrote down the answers from their vast store of knowledge.

“Soon they had collected all the lore that helped our peoples survive and thrive. All the wisdom that kept us safe. They realized that the Book could be a tool to bind us together, but it could also be a weapon to destroy us.

“So when the wizard and fairy reached the end of their Book and the end of their lives, they gave the Book to all the fabled beasts together to keep safe. But they said that no one being was ever to be allowed to read the whole Book. That is why our ancestors drew up the rules of questioning. And that is why we should not have broken the rules.”

Rona turned suddenly pale and sat down, her head in her hands.

Helen moved over to her and asked gently, “What kind of questions do you normally ask it?”

Rona lifted her smooth head. “We may ask about the balance of good and evil, or how to solve disputes between tribes and peoples, or how to survive in this new world. It contains much knowledge that would otherwise be lost as our tribes grow smaller.”

Yann explained, “Long ago, when cities started to grow and railways started to cut up our world and humans seemed to be everywhere, the Book told us where we could live hidden and how we could travel concealed.

“And only in my grandfather’s time, when the last of the bronze generation of phoenixes died
his last death too early after a lightning strike, the Book told us how to hatch the nest of copper phoenixes.” He held his arm out to Catesby, who swooped down in a blaze of copper feathers and perched on his wrist. They grinned at each other.

Lavender added, “But the fabled beasts of this land do not keep the Book to themselves. Our brothers and sisters journey from all over our world to seek the Book’s advice.

“Like when the sphinx sent a delegation from the desert, after she lost the answers to her
riddles
in a sandstorm. The Book advised her to close her eyes and let travellers through until she had woven new riddles.

“Or those English fairies whose nieces were turning their backs on the old magic and wishing to work only with rainbows. The Book said they would grow out of it, eventually.”

Yann broke in, “But the Master has never sent to ask just one question at a Solstice Gathering. He does not want one answer, he wants many.”

Helen frowned. “But what questions could he ask, that would have such terrible answers?”

Yann bent and stretched his bandaged leg. “He could ask for the potions to grow weasels the size of wolves and rats the size of cattle.”

Rona added, “He could ask for charms to force the elders of the tribes to do his bidding rather than the best for their people.”

Lavender whispered, “He could ask for the words to break through the magic protecting our sacred places.”

Catesby squawked a comment that caused Rona to gasp and Sapphire to send out a sudden hiccup of orange flame. Helen didn’t ask for a translation.

Yann continued, “If the Master of the Maze has all the answers and follows none of the rules, and if no one else can ask the Book for help, he will soon have unlimited power over the fabled beasts. And he will not stop there.” Yann came closer to Helen, and spoke quietly. “Soon he will look at your world and start using questions and answers to get round your magic too.”

Helen shook her head. “We don’t have magic.”

“Yes, you do, you just call it science.” Yann turned away and spoke into the emptiness of the cave. “The one question to which the Master craves the answer is: how can I rule this world?”

There was a cold dark silence.

Helen put her arm round Rona. She felt so warm and real. Helen had only just started truly believing in these people and their world, and now it might be destroyed.

“Alright then,” Helen said firmly, “We’d better solve the riddle as fast as possible. Let’s have another look.

“But the Book didn’t come from a gap-toothed grin in the ground, did it?” she asked again.

“No,” agreed Rona, “It is made of thick paper, ancient bark and sea pearls. From woods and water, not earth.”

“So who is saying, ‘I came from a gap-toothed grin in the ground’ then?”

They all thought. Yann tapped a hoof. Catesby preened his tail. Rona hummed a short melody over and over. Lavender went round the cave brightening up some balls of light. Sapphire rocked the stone back and forth with her clawed foot.

Helen watched them all. She watched the words on the stone, and the moving shadows the stone cast on the bumpy floor.

“The stone!” she cried out. “The stone is saying: ‘I came from a gap-toothed grin in the ground.’ It’s a place where stones make a shape without beginning or end!”

She closed her eyes, seeing shapes and
patterns
made out of stones in her head. Towers and cliffs, sheepfolds and cairns, harbours and mazes. But they all had beginnings and ends. They all had tops, bottoms, doors and corners. None of them seemed to answer the riddle. Suddenly, she thought of a shape that had no beginning nor end, that just kept going round and round and round …

“A circle! A stone circle! That’s a shape
without
end. And standing stones in a circle … you know, those huge ancient stones poking up out of the earth … they look just like teeth in an open mouth. They could be a gap-toothed grin. It must be an old stone circle!”

Yann was looking at her with surprise on his face. Lavender blew her a kiss. Rona smiled at her confidently and said, “I knew you were the
one to help. A human bard with books in her blood! Which stone circle could it be?”

Yann grunted. “Sapphire, you’re the expert on stones. Where does this rock come from?”

Sapphire sat back on her hind legs and picked the stone up between her front legs. She turned it over and looked at each of its six sides. Then she sighed a breath of pale smoke and snuffed a small dragon laugh. She laid the stone on the rough floor, with the writing downwards, and tapped her tiniest silver claw on a mark on the top surface.

Helen brushed shoulders with Rona as they all leaned forward to look.

Scratched on to the stone was a shape like a tree with three short branches pointing up on one side, and four on the other.

“A rune!” exclaimed Yann. “Well done. Can you read it?”

Sapphire snorted again, and rumbled briefly.

Yann said disapprovingly, “It’s a joke! It says ‘ouch!’ Sapphire says she thinks someone dropped the stone on his foot and scratched an ‘ouch’ rune. The Book wouldn’t tell jokes. It must have been on the stone before the Book carved its clue.”

“But that’s great,” said Helen, “We want to know where the stone came from, so if the rune is earlier than the Book’s visit to the garden then it’s a really good clue. I can look for a book about stone circles at school tomorrow if you want, see if any circles near here have runes carved on the stones.

“Then we can meet tomorrow night, and I might be able to tell you which circle this stone came from. And if you think it would be helpful, maybe I could come with you again, just in case you need my first aid kit.”

Sapphire mumbled something warmly, which Rona explained was an offer to carry the human who had restored her sight anywhere, anytime. Helen grinned. Her Dad always said the first song she’d ever written, when she was six, was about a ride on a dragon. “Thank you so much, I would love that.”

“But not tonight,” said Yann. “Sapphire, you need to recover and regain your strength for tomorrow. I will take the healer’s child home safely, and we will all meet again in her garden tomorrow after the sun goes down. We have only three days before the Winter Solstice, when our elders will notice the loss of the Book.”

Suddenly the group broke up. Lavender’s lights dimmed and everyone said goodbye. Yann took Helen home through the wider front entrance to Sapphire’s cave. He cantered rather than galloped, but he did not say one word to her the whole way home.

When he let her down in front of the garage, she asked him politely to step back in so she could check his wound. She unwound the bandages, and tried not to sound too surprised when she said, “It seems to be healing perfectly, no pus or swelling at all.” She put a clean pad on and bound it up again.

He barely seemed to hear her, or notice the new bandage. But just as he left, he turned to her.

“Human girl. I hope you find the answer to our riddle soon, because the Master’s creatures have been in the walled garden since last night and they will have read the clue long before we did. We have to puzzle out the answer, then reach the stone circle and the Book before they do, or the Master will gain answers to all the questions he burns with, and we fabled beasts will have no answers at all.”