Lily and the Prisoner of Magic (2 page)

‘Perhaps we could have a campfire,’ Georgie said hopefully. ‘It was cold, flying. And we’ve only got our nightclothes on.’

Lily shook her head. ‘What if someone saw the smoke?’ She glanced around the wood, suddenly realising that it wasn’t very big, and was extremely full of dragons. Tails were stretching out between the trees, and she was quite sure they’d flown over a village not far away. A village full of people who were probably awake, and maybe even setting out to gather firewood, or hunt rabbits, or just walk through the woods on their way somewhere. ‘We need to hide,’ she said anxiously to Georgie and Henrietta and the dragon. ‘I hadn’t thought!’

The dragon turned his head rather wearily. ‘Can we hide here or must we fly on and find somewhere else? I can hardly fit behind a tree… And there are all the others too.’

Lily looked at him closely, hearing the cracks in his deep, velvety growl of a voice. He hadn’t flown for hundreds of years, she realised. He hadn’t done
anything
for hundreds of years. All the dragons had been sleeping for centuries, deep in the limestone caves under Fell Hall, until the growing tide of fallow magic in the country had woken them again.

She shook her head, and let herself slip down his side so that she could stand in front of him and look into his eyes. A dry membrane kept slipping over them as they talked, and she was sure his scales were dimmer. He had worn himself out rescuing them all.

‘No, we’ll stay here. None of us wants to move.’ Several of the smaller dragons had curled themselves up like cats now, with their tails wrapped round their paws. She could even hear them purring. The children were huddled in little piles, leaning up against the tree trunks, or against dragon backs. They were casting anxious glances around – as though they still thought Miss Merganser and the others might be coming after them.

Lily reached up to lift Henrietta down, and held out a hand for the princess, who was wrapped round in layers of petticoats and a dress that had been grand, once. Then she looked hopefully at Georgie, who was shivering in her skimpy cotton nightgown, staring out between the trees. ‘We can hide everybody… Don’t you think? Couldn’t we do a spell?’

Georgie shuddered. It was cold in the early-morning gloom of the wood, but Lily knew it was the thought of using her magic that chilled her, not only the wind. ‘We could try,’ Georgie muttered. ‘But the spells are still inside me, Lily. The dragon unwound all that choking magic from Fell Hall, but the spells Mama planted haven’t gone. I can feel them. They’re awfully keen to be used. If I try any magic of my own, I’m scared they’ll slip out too.’

Lily nodded, sighing. Georgie was probably right to be cautious. Their mother had been training her in magic, before they’d run away from their old home. She had filled Georgie with strange, dark spells, ones that the girls didn’t understand, and that Georgie couldn’t control.

‘I think they’re getting stronger,’ Georgie murmured. She sounded guilty. She knew Henrietta thought she was weak, not being able to control the magic inside her.

In her worst moments, Lily agreed with the little black pug. She sometimes wondered if when she’d brought Henrietta out of that painting in their old house with her first real magic, she’d put the rudest, grumpiest bits of herself into the dog.

‘As though they know it’s almost their time…’ Georgie rubbed her hands up and down her arms anxiously.

‘We’ve got Princess Jane with us now,’ Lily reminded her sister, trying to sound confident. ‘She’ll show us how to break into Archgate, and rescue Father.’ She smiled at the little old lady, who was seated decorously on one of the dragon’s forelegs. The princess glanced up from the little basket on her lap, and Lily bit her lip to stop herself smiling. Who else but a princess would carry on with their embroidery when sitting on a dragon in the middle of a damp and misty wood?

‘I shall certainly do my best, my dears.’

‘He’ll know how to get rid of Mama’s spells, Georgie. He must do.’ Lily nodded firmly. She was trying to convince herself as much as Georgie. What if their father couldn’t rescue her? Or wouldn’t?

The girls hadn’t seen him since Lily was tiny, since he’d refused to give up his magic, as every magician had been obliged to by the Queen’s Decree. Lily had read a couple of his letters to her mother, but that was all she knew of him. That he sounded pleasant, and weary, and that he would rather be shut away in a magicians’ prison than deny his birthright. They didn’t know whether he had ever supported their mother in her plot against the queen. Maybe he wouldn’t want to help them undo those strange spells. He might even send them straight back to Mama, so that she could keep working on Georgie. Lily bit her lip. They couldn’t know – but at the same time, they had to do something, before the buried spells dug their claws deeper into Georgie.

‘Use the rest of them,’ Henrietta muttered, as she padded happily around the tree roots, sneezing and snuffling. She always said she was really a town dog, and preferred paving slabs under her paws, but she enjoyed the occasional country walk. Especially if it was followed by afternoon tea, with hot buttered toast.

Lily gazed blankly at her curly tail, bobbing about in the leaves, and Henrietta turned round, looking irritated. ‘The others, Lily! Forty little magician children: use them! Well – say twenty, bearing in mind that half of them don’t feel to me as if they’ve got a smidgen of magic blood. They probably just looked wrong, and some idiot packed them off to Fell Hall to be cleansed of a magic taint that wasn’t there in the first place.’

Georgie stared at the other children, camped wearily around the little clearing. ‘I never thought of that…’

Henrietta sniffed meaningfully, but didn’t say anything. She was trying hard to be nicer to Georgie, but she slipped occasionally.

‘It’s a very good idea.’ Lily nodded. ‘Although… None of them has ever been trained in magic.’

‘Neither have you!’ Henrietta snapped back. ‘It comes naturally, to those who have it. Let them try. The worst that happens is a tree falls on our heads.’

Lily swallowed, and looked around at the children from Fell Hall. They seemed to be recovering from their sudden dragonflight now. Some of the boys were pelting each other with dry leaves, and Lottie was still dancing about all over the place.

The dragon coughed solemnly, and the boys froze, as though they thought he might be about to crisp them with a blast of flame. ‘The young lady wishes to speak to you.’

Lily felt suddenly tongue-tied. This was far more frightening than performing to an audience at the theatre. There she only had to scamper about, smiling foolishly, and be shut into cabinets. No one was expecting her to come up with a plan. The others gathered closer, and even the dozing dragons flickered their eyes open, in case she was going to say anything interesting.

‘Um, we need to hide, in case anyone from the village sees us.’

‘Will they be chasing us? From Fell Hall?’ Elizabeth pulled Lottie close to her worriedly.

Lily shook her head. ‘We’ve come quite a long way already. And last we saw of it, Fell Hall was collapsing, after the dragons came up out of the caverns. But we don’t want to be seen anyway. We’re still – well, outlaws, I suppose. And there aren’t places to hide, here in the wood, so we’ll have to do it by magic.’

Everyone stared back at her.

‘What, a spell?’ one of the boys said doubtfully at last.

Lily nodded. ‘Why not? Lottie managed a spell early this morning.’

Lottie nodded importantly. ‘Little birds flew round me! It was lovely. I want to do a spell, Lily!’

Lily looked around hopefully at the rest of the children. ‘Does it feel like you shouldn’t?’

While the children had been shut up at Fell Hall, the staff had fed them old, half-dead spells, designed to keep their own magic squashed deep down. Everyone had been taught that magic was wrong and shameful. When Lily and Georgie had first been taken there, they’d hoped to find other children like themselves, but instead the pupils had been bewitched into hating their own magical blood.

The boy wrinkled his nose and flexed his fingers. His feet twitched, and then he looked up at Lily, smiling hopefully. ‘Actually, I’d like to,’ he admitted. ‘I never understood what they’d been doing to us. It feels like we’ve been set free. Not just from that place. Inside me as well, somehow.’

Mary raised a hand shyly. She was one of the children who’d been abandoned at Fell Hall as a baby, put into a strange stone cradle in the wall and left, because someone thought she was a witch baby.

‘I don’t feel that much different,’ she said, sounding sorry. ‘Less, um, misty. But I don’t think I could do a spell. I never did think I could.’

Henrietta padded over to her and rubbed her soft, wrinkly face against Mary’s bare leg. ‘I don’t think you’ve got any magic in you,’ she told Mary regretfully. ‘Do you mind very much?’

Mary swallowed in a gulp, and sat down on the twig-scattered earth next to the dog. ‘Not all that much… But what do I do now?’

Lily crouched next to her. ‘None of us knows what we’re going to do. The dragon says he’ll carry us to the theatre, but after that – we don’t know. But it’s better to be anywhere else than at Fell Hall, isn’t it?’

‘You won’t leave me behind because I can’t do it?’ Mary whispered.

The dragon snorted furiously, and Mary shrank back against Lily, trembling.

‘I didn’t mean to frighten you, dear one. I am angry, but not with you.’ His tail thrashed from side to side among the trees, shaking leaves down on their heads. ‘How has everything gone so wrong, since we slept?’ He lowered his massive head towards Lily and Mary. ‘You will
never
be left behind.’ Then he drew himself up, curling his forelegs protectively around Princess Jane and nudging Peter, who was huddled on his back still. ‘Those of you who feel you do not have the magic in you, come and sit with me.’ The growl had softened back to a velvety purr. ‘We shall watch. Delicious magic; it will be a treat.’

About fifteen of the children hurriedly separated themselves from the rest, mostly looking relieved. The dragon purred at them in welcome, wrapping his tail around his forelegs like a bench, and murmuring, ‘Sit, dear ones. Sit.’

‘Are we going to make a spell now? A proper spell?’ Lottie asked eagerly, dancing up and down and pulling on Lily’s arm. ‘Please tell me how!’

‘I don’t really know how,’ Lily said, glancing anxiously at Georgie and Henrietta. ‘It just happens. Um. I suppose if we’re doing a spell together, we all ought to think about the same things.’

‘Hold hands,’ Henrietta pointed out, scurrying busily around between their feet.

‘Oh! Yes.’ Lily caught Lottie’s fat little hand, and held out her other hand to one of the boys, who took it rather gingerly. The boys and girls had been separated at Fell Hall, and he probably hadn’t held a girl’s hand in years. His hand was dry, and hot, and it was shaking.

‘We need to hide ourselves,’ Lily murmured, looking around at the nervous, excited faces. They were all gathered in a circle now, with Henrietta still weaving herself in and out as though she were playing some strange party game. Lily could feel more than just Lottie eagerly squeezing her fingers, and the shy boy’s tentative grasp. Magic was humming round the circle already. Years of pent-up power were sparking from fingertip to fingertip, and the boy holding her hand gasped excitedly as a sheen of silver washed itself over his arms.

‘What’s happening?’ he whispered to her. ‘I didn’t do anything; I thought we’d have to say some words.’

‘Sometimes you do,’ Lily whispered back. ‘But sometimes things happen without you really knowing why.’ Henrietta nudged her leg, and peered up at her smugly. The glistening magic was coating her dark fur too.

‘Think about hiding,’ Lily said, raising her voice to speak to all of them.

All around the circle, children were gripping hands more tightly, half frightened, half gleeful, as their magic shone and sparkled among them. Lily saw that Lottie’s gingery curls were glittering, as magic shone along every strand of hair. Elizabeth, her sister, squeaked as her own red hair unbound itself from its tight plait, twisting and swirling and growing almost to her toes.

‘Hiding,’ Lily said again, almost hating to call everyone back from this first joy of magic rushing through them. ‘We have to be safe. Think of a wall that closes us in.’

‘No!’ the boy next to her hissed, almost pulling his hand away. ‘Not after Fell Hall! No more walls.’

Lily nodded. ‘A hedge then!’ Magical stories had grown unpopular since the queen had banished magicians, but she’d had an ancient book of fairytales at home in Merrythought House. She remembered a rose hedge, thorny and impenetrable. ‘We’ll make the trees seem thicker, and darker, and if people come past, they’ll want to go round the wood, instead of through it.’ She closed her eyes, thinking of vines and ivy and roses trailing in between the outer trees as a flowery barrier.

‘Look…’ Georgie whispered, and Lily’s eyes flickered open again.

Elizabeth’s red hair was twined with vines and tiny white wild roses, their thorny stems winding in and out. Her always worried, greenish eyes were sparkling now, and her grey-pale cheeks were pink. And beyond the trees a shadowy fence of flowers and leaves had grown up, not quite there…but Lily was fairly certain that anyone who tried to walk through it would find it was very real indeed.

‘Oh…that was so exciting…’ Elizabeth breathed, as the others broke out of the spell and stared at her.

‘You’ve got a proper dress on,’ one of the girls said admiringly. ‘Look, she was in her nightgown before!’

It was true that Elizabeth was now wearing a long, trailing white dress, with sprays of silken flowers embroidered up and down the skirt.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Georgie murmured, stroking it. ‘Look at the stitching! That spell must have seen it inside you somehow. I’d never thought of doing embroidery by magic.’

Lily rolled her eyes at Henrietta. Georgie loved clothes, and would have liked nothing better than to work in the wardrobe at the theatre they’d lived in, making costumes for the ballet dancers. Lily couldn’t think why anyone would sew for pleasure, and Georgie seethed about her little sister’s torn, stained dresses. Magical embroidery didn’t sound much more exciting than the normal kind to Lily.