Hidden Among Us (21 page)

That was it. Underneath, David had just scribbled “2.19 for Birmingham”, which must have been a train time. There was no more – the rest of the diary was empty, except for a tissue-thin dried flower that fell from between the pages, leaving a tea-coloured stain on the paper. I sat staring at the white walls, at the still black water I’d climbed out of, impossibly, just a few minutes before.

There was no way out.

33

“We’ll have to run.” Tippy smoothed the blue dress out around her legs. “No one cares what I do but they’ll all be watching you. If the King finds out we’ve gone to find Larkspur—”

I reached out and grabbed her hand: her warm, human hand – still so smooth and young after hundreds of years. “Listen. I don’t want to put you in danger. Just tell me where Larkspur is and I’ll find him.”

Tippy shook her head. “You’ll get lost. I wandered for years.”

I pushed away a nightmarish image of drifting alone down those tunnels for centuries, desperate for water. I wondered if she knew. I hoped not. “No,” I said, “I’ll be all right if you tell me where he is. It’s too dangerous for you.”

“You don’t understand how much I hate them,” Tippy whispered, fiercely. “All except Larkspur. Rose stole me from my mother and they all just
left
me to rot down here as soon as they realized how long it would take me to grow big enough to bear a Hidden child. I want to help you. If you must see Larkspur then come now, while the others are gone.”

We both stood up, Tippy’s new plaits shining in the firelight. She looked almost like a normal little girl now, wearing someone’s old evening gown from a dressing-up box. I was starting to panic, heart pounding, burning nausea forcing up my throat. What if somebody caught us?
Rose?
She was the King’s sister. My aunt. I took a long, steady breath. Tippy might have been hundreds of years old, but really she was just a child. I had to show her I wasn’t scared.

“Take my hand,” Tippy whispered, and we ran.

I followed her down endless twisting corridors. The light changed as we got further away from the White Hall and that huge central cavern: the silvery glow was replaced by smokey flaming torches; the air grew thick and I couldn’t stop coughing.

Tippy didn’t seem to notice; when a fit of coughing had me leaning against the dank earthen wall, trying to drag some air into my lungs, she grabbed at my hand, hissing, “Come on, they could be back any moment. No one is meant to talk to Larkspur – he’s an outcast because he took you home. If the Swan King finds out I’m taking you to him there’s no knowing what he’ll do.”

The only thing he couldn’t do was kill me. I pushed the thought away.
I’m not human
.

At last, Tippy stopped. “Come.” And I followed her into a side tunnel that wasn’t lit at all. I felt the weight of the earth above pressing down on the tunnel. I’d never known such complete darkness; I had to swallow my panic.

Tippy’s voice sounded louder away from the smokey torchlight. “Count your steps,” she said. “Don’t think about the shadows.”

“I’m all right,” I said. Her bravery made me want to cry. “Don’t worry.”

And at last, at long last, I sensed the tunnel opening out into a wider space. The air grew warmer, thick with the warm harsh scent of wet dog.

“The King’s hounds. They steal them from above to please him,” Tippy said, just a voice ahead of me now; she had melted completely into the black and so had I. “The finest hunters from a royal pack, a lord’s prize gazehound. They never seem to die unless they get hurt in the chase.”

Like me
, I thought, and remembered that night in the woods, running terrified from Larkspur, listening to the wild call of the dogs. Fairy hounds. I half wanted to laugh, because how could it be true? I still felt the chill of Larkspur’s touch, his cold fingers entwined with mine, and knew I’d feel it till the day I died, like a tattoo that never healed. I’d danced with the Hidden. How could I not have seen that I was
like
them?

The day you die? You’re not
going
to die
.

I pushed the thought from my mind. Tippy reached back to take my hand again and there was no time; I had to follow her.

“Why is he down here with his father’s hounds?” I asked. The smell and the heat grew thicker, more intense, and I could hear them now, too, the occasional high-pitched whimper of a dreaming dog.

“The King’s hounds aren’t bound by his rules. If Larkspur hunts in the world above, they share his kill. No one else will.”

Her voice grew faint as we turned a corner, and then I could feel the dogs: warm slinky bodies pressing against my legs, I heard the soft rhythm of their breath.

“Larkspur,”
whispered Tippy in the darkness.

And then, bright like a winter snowdrop breaking from its bud, pure silver light began to glow. Larkspur sat slumped against a dark earthen wall, knotted hair hanging in his face. Cupped in his hands was a globe of light, a miniature moon.

Magic.
No, sky-in-her-eyes, just the way of the world, should you live long enough to really know it
.

If the Swan King could make trees grow in a cave, and I heard Larkspur’s voice inside my mind, and he plucked silver bubbles of light from nothing, what else could the Hidden do?

What could I do?

Tippy had lived down here for hundreds of years, frozen in time as a child, never to grow up. Even the dogs never died. The Hidden could work miracles.

Maybe they had the power to save Connie. If she was still alive.

“You came.” Larkspur’s voice was so quiet, as if he could hardly summon the strength to speak. He blew, and the glowing silver moon rose up, floating like a bubble. He sat alone among the dogs, face and hands smeared with something dark.
Blood
. “You should not have. If my father knew—”

“You know I don’t care,” Tippy said. “He can do no worse to me. Anyhow, what fault is it of mine if I come to the hounds and she follows?” I felt her fingers brush mine, reaching out in the shadowy silver gloom.

“Thank you, Tippy,” I whispered.

“It’s too dangerous for you here, Lissy. Go. Don’t become an outcast for my sake.” Larkspur blew gently on the ball of light. It spun, hovering just above his blood-stained fingers, sending wobbly shadows around the cave. “Mine is not the life you want.”

He was here because Mum had wanted me back so much, because he’d shown mercy. It wasn’t fair.

I crouched down in front of him, trying not to retch at the thought of hot raw meat, crunching bone, fur or feathers in his teeth. “Listen. Please. Why does the King want me?”

Larkspur looked up; his black eyebrows were like flicks of ink. “To save the Hidden, before we are all gone for ever.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mortals can never have enough, Lissy. They poison the earth; they breed into every crack and corner. They learned how to render metal, even questioned the existence of their own gods, and they killed one another in tens of thousands and discovered how to crack the very fabric of the universe itself. Mortals grew in learning but not in wisdom. Everything they touch, they destroy. We grew afraid that the Hidden would finally be flushed out like rats, and killed like rats, too.”

They. Not you.
They
.

“It’s not just that though, is it?” I whispered, watching the silver light flicker in Larkspur’s hands. “The Swan King can’t stand humans. He really hates mortals, doesn’t he? He’s not just afraid you’ll be outnumbered like, like – red squirrels being killed off by all the grey ones.” I’d seen it in the Swan King’s eyes – a terrifying, slow-burning rage. “There’s something else, isn’t there? Some other reason.”

Larkspur looked away; when he spoke again his voice was hard. “They hunted us through the woods, my mother and I, nine hundred years ago when I was a child and could do nothing to help – a pack of men and women with filthy faces and ragged clothes, crazed by fear and longing for blood. They cut her throat with an iron knife. I couldn’t save her. She bled to death in my arms.”

“I’m sorry.” My voice shook. “That’s terrible. But nine hundred years is such a long time. Why has your father waited so long to get revenge? And I still don’t understand what it’s got to do with me. Why did he want a half-mortal child if he hates them so much?”

“Nine hundred years is nothing to my father.” Larkspur gave me a beautiful, tormented smile. “I’m just a little older than that, and he still considers me young and foolish.” He shrugged. “The mortals closed the Gateway, Lissy. They
trapped
us.”

“Because the Swan King kept stealing girls and letting them just wither away and die down here. Using them to
breed
, or trying to. It’s cruel and disgusting. You deserved to be trapped.”

“You don’t know the truth of it,” Larkspur said, and I flinched at the anger in his voice. “At Fontevrault, mortals and the Hidden swore an oath to live in peace, side by side, but always apart. The mortals cheated. They killed my mother. After that they spread too far, too fast, laying waste to all they found, driving us into our secret halls. There was a bargain, Lissy, but the mortals broke it first. We had to fight back or dwindle to nothing, driven underground like hunted rats.”

“That still doesn’t justify stealing girls away from their homes, using them like animals. That’s not fighting back. It’s just evil.”

Larkspur stared at me. “Maybe so. But it was necessary. Either way, it did not work. They all died except Tippy, and her body is still too young. My father always plays a long game, Lissy, and the mortals had their chance. He’s going to kill them all – every last one.”

“What?” I said, disbelieving. “
How?
There aren’t enough of you to kill us, you don’t understand the weapons we’ve got, and you can’t touch iron—”

Larkspur shook his head. “We do understand; we have seen how you murder thousands of your own kind. No, my sister, our father has made his own weapon. For centuries, he searched for a mortal girl strong enough, with enough spirit. He took living girls the right age, but down here they all died before they could be of any use. He even took young children, hoping they might more easily forget what they’d left behind. They died, too – all except Tippy. We sang our immortality into her blood, into her bones, but she’s still just a human child with Hidden powers. She can’t breed, not yet. It might be another five hundred years before she is ready, and the mortals will have poisoned every ocean and burned every forest to dead ash by then.”

“She’s just a little girl,” I said, fiercely. “You had no right to steal her.”

Larkspur frowned. “Taking Tippy was Rose’s greatest mistake. Tippy was the Gateward’s daughter, and when he died down here in search of her the Gateway was shut by his grandson, prayer-bound in iron by the village priest so no one could pass through it, human or Hidden, for centuries.” Larkspur passed his silver light from one hand to the other, just watching me. “And then,” he said, “the Gateway was opened again. We hunted in the night air as we had not done for three hundred years. The right girl came to Hopesay Reach, almost as if she had heard us calling. Her name was Miriam. Lissy, you are the weapon.”

I could only stare at him.

Larkspur blew on the silver ball once more; it spun in his hands, lighting up the dark stains. I could smell the blood smeared on his fingers, across his face: a faint metallic tang.

“Your
blood
, Lissy,” he said. “With just one drop, my father will make a plague that will spread through the waters of the earth before the moon has risen even twice. He has that power – you must see it. He will spread a plague born out of human blood from a girl who will never die. A sickness with no end till every last man, woman and child is dead, and the earth can breathe again.” He shrugged. “They should have known better, those mortal leaders, than to break a bargain with my father. They should have known better than to kill my mother.”

I stared at him, disbelieving. “Why now?” I demanded. “Why didn’t he just take my blood when I was a baby if he wants it that much, if it’s that special?”

“He did,” Larkspur replied, simply. “He tried to brew the plague then, but it didn’t work. You were too young. The quality of your blood wasn’t rich enough until you began to bleed with each moon. Now you’re ready.”

I felt my face burn even though it was dark. “That’s disgusting.”

“It’s the truth.”

“No,” I said, “I won’t let him do this. There must be a way out. Show me. We could go, we could
all
go, Larkspur, please—”

And, as I watched, his black eyes stretched wide in horror and the whole cavern filled with piercing white light. The air split with the howling of dogs, I could see their swarming bodies: white, golden and black.

Beside me, Tippy screamed and grabbed onto my arm. “Oh, God save us!”

I turned and there was Rose standing in the cavern entrance, smiling, reaching out to stroke the nearest hound; it cowered away from her outstretched fingers.

“Oh, Larkspur, my dear child,” she said. “Now you will learn what it is to suffer.”

Larkspur just stared at her with such an intense look of hatred that even I was shocked by it. He didn’t say a word.

Rose only laughed.

34

“What are you doing here, Rafe?” Dad shot a cold glance up and down the conference table. “Would someone care to explain?” Everyone sat back a little in their seats but I stood my ground. He was the one with no right to be here.

He should have been with Connie.

“How is she?” I said. “How’s Connie?”

Dad shook his head, very slightly – a silent signal that this was not the time or the place. I ignored it. I had to know. How could he even
be
here when she was lying in the intensive care unit of some hospital? Waves of pure hot anger washed through me watching him just sit there, too big and too important to bother with his own kid. She was only eight years old.

“She’s alive.” Dad’s voice was clipped and furious. “We’ll discuss it later.”

Relief washed through me, and I felt so weak I had to grab onto the table.