Hidden Among Us (16 page)

Cold air rushed past my face as the guards stepped away, bowing low.

My eyes adjusted to the brightness. There was no daylight; I couldn’t bear to ask myself how I was even able to see. We were in another cave, but here the walls were not hard-packed earth but white, glittering quartz. Flowers glowed like bright coals in shining bowls: dandelions, clambering roses tangled among ivy, daisies with middles like bright yellow buttons. Trees grew up through solid rock – silver birches with pale trunks and tiny bright leaves. It was an impossible place.

In the middle of the cave, a dark pool of water glittered. Lily-pads floated on the surface.

“The White Hall of the Hidden, Lissy,” Larkspur said.

I turned to stare at him. “Look, what did those guards mean by a covenant? Isn’t that some kind of bargain? I shouldn’t be here. My sister’s in hospital, and if my mum comes back to find me gone—”

But there was such desperate sadness on Larkspur’s face I was glad when he walked away from me, moving fast as if I’d stung him.

And the air was thick with white feathers, feathers everywhere I looked, tumbling down from the soaring heights of the cave above.

By the dark water, Larkspur dropped to his knees and I was left standing alone in a raging swirl of soft whiteness. When I reached out, pearl-white petals fell into my hands and the feathers were gone.

It was beyond nature. “Magic,” I said.

And Larkspur turned to face me. “No, sky-in-her-eyes, just the way of the world, if you live long enough to really know it.”

He turned away, kneeling again, bowing his head so low it touched the chilly quartz beneath our feet. Petals settled on his back, bright against the darkness of his cloak, tangled in his red hair. They touched the floor and melted into nothing like snowflakes. When the still, flower-scented air was clear again at last, I saw a white swan waiting on the water, watching us.

Larkspur stayed utterly still.

Who comes to the Hall of the Swan King?
A voice filled the cave, so furious and terrible my stomach lurched and I had to shut my eyes because I couldn’t bear it, knowing that burning voice came from the swan on the water, which hadn’t moved or made a sound.

The voice was inside my head.

Still Larkspur knelt, a hunched figure on the cold white floor.

The swan lifted its wings as if to fly, raising them higher and higher. A giant crack of thunder tore the air; once again the cave was full of twisting falling feathers and my face was wet with rain; hammering rain
here
below ground. Feathers kissed my skin, tangled in my hair.

When I looked up, the swan had gone. A young man stood with the pool at his back, wrapped in a cloak of white feathers. Black hair tangled around his shoulders, shining like the dark waters of the pool – but it was clear straight away he was closely related to Larkspur; one face echoed the other. A gold band glowed against his white throat. He was impossibly tall and, even I could see, in a fierce rage.

He spoke: “I ask again.
Who comes to the Hall of the Swan King?
”

“You
know
who I am.” I was terrified but so angry at being in this horrible place when I should have been waiting for Mum, waiting to hear if Connie was alive or dead. I forced out the words: “Why am I here? I want to go home.”

The Swan King raised one hand and I flew backwards, hurled through the air till I hit the wall, cracking my head against the quartz. A sharp ache jolted through my skull, down the back of my neck, shooting up my elbow as I landed. Instinctively, I curled up into a ball, arms clinging around my knees, watching in horror as the King waited, so pale and cold, for Larkspur to speak. My whole body sang a bright note of shock and pain; all I could do was watch as Larkspur sprang up, a cloud of petals bursting away from his cloak.

He ran forwards, stopping just inches from the King himself. “I did not bring her back to be thrown aside like Tippy’s discarded hoop.”

“You forget yourself.” The Swan King spoke so softly I could hardly hear. “You disobeyed me. You took my daughter back to her human mother. You acted against my word, and I see that fourteen years of punishment have not been enough to correct your faults, child. Seven years and seven again, walking alone through these halls, shunned by all. So much silence. So alone. How many more will it take?”

Larkspur flinched, as if he had just been pinched or hit. “For ever,” he said. “It will take for ever. It was right to return her. How can I help it if age has not yet made me cruel? You were just angry Miriam wouldn’t leave her mortal lover, her mortal son.”

Oh, my
God
. He was talking about my mother. He was talking about Dad, about Rafe. I sat watching them, unable to move or speak. My hands shook with the shock of it.
Mum—

“Miriam wouldn’t come here to be with you!” Larkspur’s voice was rising. “That’s the true reason you were so angry. She wanted her child back but she didn’t want
you
– Oh, Father, her sorrow was everywhere, in my dreams; I heard her voice on the rain—”

“How dare you call me that name after such a betrayal?” The Swan King’s voice was cold and furious.

A look of anguish passed across Larkspur’s face. “Forgive me. Please. I did what I thought was good.”

“When you came into the world,” the Swan King said to him, “I held you red and bloody in my arms, and I burned with joy I had never known, not in all the ages I have lived. The only one born to our kind for more than two thousand years. That delight is now ash in my mouth. What use to me is a disobedient child?”

“Then what use to me is a heartless parent?” Larkspur looked straight at his father, and I thought the King would hurl him through the air, smash him against the cold hard wall, but instead he just said, “She would be ashamed of you.”

Larkspur looked away, then back up at the King with such misery and rage I knew his mother must be dead. “I have brought my sister to you now,” he said. “Don’t you remember what it was like to be young and feel compassion?”

“I may well remember,” said the King, “but you must learn what it is to see across the ages, and only then will you have the wisdom to make these choices you presume to understand. You had orders; it was not for you to act against them.”

“No,” said Larkspur. “It is
you
who does not understand. Miriam wept so much when Lissy had gone I couldn’t bear it; her sorrow leaked into my dreams. It was everywhere, bigger than the earth itself. You ignored it; I could not. Tippy cries out for her mother as she sleeps and not one of us has the courage to admit that everyone she knew is long since dust, that her father came looking and starved to death, lost in our halls, never to find her. Mortals feel so deeply, their hearts burn. We can’t just
play
with them like this, but I cannot bear to be alone any longer, either. So I have brought her back, as I promised I would, and now I beg you to forgive me.”

Everyone she knew is long since dust?
Tippy’s father had come looking for her and
died
down here without ever finding her?

How long had Tippy been in this place? I thought of her strange accent, that odd little curtsey. A hundred years? Two hundred? A prisoner for all time, kept alive among these immortal creatures.
How?

“Let me go!” I cried out, still too afraid to move. “Please let me go.” I turned to Larkspur. “How could you do this to me? What have I ever done to you?”

I would be like Tippy, ragged and forgotten, aching to see daylight and the faces of my long-dead family. Tears burned my face. I couldn’t stand it.
I’ll have to escape or kill myself
.

But both Larkspur and the Swan King completely ignored me. I was just a weapon in some battle between them that I had no way of understanding.

“So you do not repent, but only ask me to forgive?”

Larkspur shook his head. “I don’t repent. I gave Miriam fourteen years with her daughter. She and I agreed it, and it was right.”

“Fourteen years?” said the Swan King. “You foolish child! It would have been kinder if the girl remembered nothing. Now you have condemned her to the same fate as Tippy, always remembering, yet never able to go back.”

“She can go back!” Larkspur shouted. “She has our blood. She
can
move between our world and theirs, even once she has lived many years more than a mortal lifespan. She won’t crumble to dust beneath the sun after three hundred years, even a thousand years down here in our halls. She is one of us. Wasn’t that the whole point of Miriam? Do you know nothing?”

Even I could see Larkspur had gone too far, even though it was my life they were arguing about and my head was ringing with terrified questions. Was I immortal? Never to die, but never to see my family again?

The Swan King took one single, sharp step forwards.

Quickly, Larkspur looked down, then up into his father’s face. “I should not have said such a thing. Of course, your wisdom is beyond anyone else’s.”

“No,” said the Swan King, “it was foolish. You have learned nothing, so you will not sit by me, always away. Should I come near, you will go into the shadows. No one will speak with you beyond what is essential. No one will share your cup or dance with you. I condemn you to be alone among the Hidden. Always.”

“Please no,” Larkspur said, quietly. “It has gone on so long already. My desolation knows no end. I know you must punish me but do it another way.” His voice cracked. “Don’t send me away from you again.”

“You made the choice with those words,” the Swan King said. “It is as it is, and shall not change.”

Larkspur got up and walked out without speaking another word. All I could hear was the heavy swish of the hangings as he went, but I actually felt his despair, a cold and relentless anguish that swept up in me as he passed, overwhelming, fading a little when he had gone, replaced by my own fear.

I crouched against the wall, hugging my knees against my chest.

And slowly, slowly, the Swan King turned and he held out his hand to me.

I shook my head, still hardly able to believe what I’d seen. “I don’t want anything to do with you. That was so – so cruel. He’s so unhappy, and he’s your son. How could you do that?”

He smiled.
So young
. But thousands and thousands of years old.

My father.

Even though I didn’t want to, I found myself taking his hand, gasping as the coldness of his touch shot through me.

He shrugged, raising me to my feet as if I were lighter than air. “My blood is in your body.” The Swan King smiled again. “And, my darling, we are so very, very few.” He leaned closer, so close his breath chilled my face. “But now you are here, my lovely one, the world is mine again.”

What was that supposed to mean?

The words he spoke were gentle and caressing, but his inhuman eyes blazed with hatred and fury. What had I ever done to him?

I got up and ran, but as I shoved past the guards and tumbled out into the darkness beyond the White Hall, all I could hear was the Swan King laughing.

27

The consultant has just left. I’m trying not to think about what she said. I’m writing this to escape from it, watching Connie all the time. Her fringe still hasn’t quite grown out, and it hangs in her eyes no matter how many packets of hair clips we buy. I’ve still got one in my pocket, pink and glittery with a plastic cherry. Her favourite. Her skin feels warm when I touch her. She’s still alive, for now. She’s in there somewhere.

I can’t help it: the consultant’s words are going round and round in my head. When I close my eyes I can still see her kindly eyes, with those red-rimmed spectacles, her curly greying hair. Does this kind of thing ever get easier for people like her?

“Well, I’m afraid there’s good news and bad news,” she had said. “Connie still isn’t responding to the antibiotics, but her condition doesn’t seem to be deteriorating, either.”

I tried to ask what this meant, but could no longer seem to speak. I couldn’t force out the words.

The consultant carried on talking, but nothing she said made sense to me. I felt as if the room was spinning, with me and Connie in the centre of it. Waiting.

I watched her walk out of the room, moving on to the rest of the ward.
Come back,
I wanted to shout.
Help me, help her – you can’t just leave us here like this. There must be something you can do
.

But there wasn’t. She’d just told me.

Miles left the Gateway open. I’m cursed. By midnight, the Hidden will have Lissy – or Rafe and Connie will both be dead.

Virgie Creed used to say the Reach was built on tainted ground. It was certainly foolish and arrogant to have built a Christian priory actually over a stone circle – the church trying to steal the power of the old religion. The Reach is completely deconsecrated now. It’s totally unsafe, like a hole dug in the pavement for anyone to fall into. Going back to Hopesay will be dangerous for ever: the temptation is always going to be too great. It’s hard to resist immortality. It’s hard to pretend it isn’t an option, when it is. At a price.

I remember the last time Adam and I went back to the Reach together, a year after Larkspur brought Lissy home. Adam knew everything by then, of course. He knew that I’d been unfaithful since before Lissy was born, that he wasn’t really her father. It would have been impossible to hide that from him. I didn’t want to go, and Adam would rather have jumped off a bridge – he was so terrified I’d leave him for ever if I saw the Swan King again. We owed it to Miles, though – despite everything, he was still the closest thing I had to a brother, and Adam’s oldest friend. Lissy was protected by the covenant then, but taking her there still felt like such a risk.

Even so, of course I couldn’t resist. The archetypal bad mother.

I’d left Adam and Miles inside, Adam trying to persuade Miles he was wasting his life pining after Rose, drawing far too much attention to himself and, by association, to us.

Never mind the Hidden – if the Fontevrault ever found out about Lissy, I knew I’d never see her again.