The Immortal Realm (13 page)

“Does nothing in this benighted world function without hideous din?” complained Rathina.

“Not if you want to get somewhere fast,” said Tania. “And we do. We're on a really tight deadline, Rathina.”

“Aye, indeed, but it will take much effort to accustom myself to the noise, sister.”

They had found themselves a double seat in a crowded car near the front of the train. Opposite them sat a young man plugged into an iPod and a woman talking on a cell phone.

The train was speeding through an open countryside of fields and woodlands under a blue sky bubbling with clouds.

“This train will get us to London in an hour and a half,” said Tania. “How long would it take you to travel from Veraglad to the Royal Palace?”

“On a mettlesome charger such as Maddalena and
at the gallop, mayhap I could make the journey in half a day.”

“There you go, then,” said Tania. “Trains are good. How's your sandwich?”

She had bought them some sandwiches and snacks from the cart. She had also quite fancied some soda, but since that came in a can, she had to make do with a carton of black currant juice. There had been a tricky moment when the attendant had tried to give her some change and Tania had only just managed to snatch her hand away. The coins had gone clattering and rolling over the floor.

Rathina chewed a mouthful of sandwich. “It will suffice.” She looked around and shook her head. “I do not know how it was that Edric Chanticleer was able to live in this world for half a year.” She looked at Tania. “Did he not find it strange and harsh?”

Tania pursed her lips. “I don't know,” she said sharply. “Maybe. I never got around to asking him.” Her fingers moved up to fondle the teardrop of black onyx at her throat. She had considered throwing it in his face or perhaps just hurling it from her balcony in the Sunset Tower. But she hadn't been able to bring herself to part with it. Not just yet.

She was nowhere near ready to talk about Edric. She was surviving their break-up only by not thinking about it. But locked away in a miserable cellar in her mind a small voice was crying,
It's not real. It can't be real. I love him. How could this have happened?

Change the subject. Now!

“Did you know our mother wasn't from Faerie?” Tania asked. “I found out about it only yesterday.”

“The tale of our mother's coming to Faerie is known by all,” said Rathina.

“Except that no one told
me
about it.”

“I thought you would have remembered.”

“Rathina, how many more times…? I can hardly remember anything. You
know
that.”

“Then listen and remember now, for it is a story we all know by heart,” said Rathina, glancing around the car to make sure no one was listening. “Some fifty years before the coming of the uneasy slumber of the Great Twilight, a small ship made landfall at the coastal town of Hymnal in the Earldom of Weir. It had but one passenger: a Mortal woman who was almost dead from hunger and thirst. She was taken to Caer Liel and questioned by Lord Aldritch.” Rathina's eyes shone. “She told a remarkable tale. She said that her name was Titania and that she was the daughter of the House of Fenodree in the land of Alba, which lies across the Western Ocean. She revealed that it was foretold at her birth that when she came to her twentieth birthday, she should take a ship alone and seek out the Realm of Faerie. And this was a thing that none of her race had done for a thousand years. And furthermore it was prophesied that if she came to Faerie, she would be blessed with the gift of Immortality—for the people of Alba are but Mortals and live little over five score years. It was foretold also that she would never be able to return to Alba to share the secret of life everlasting
but would live out her days forever in Faerie.”

Tania gazed spellbound as Rathina told the tale. These were things of which she knew nothing.

“So remarkable was Titania's story that Lord Aldritch sent her south with his only son, that she might tell her tale to the King himself. But when our father first set his eyes upon her, he was consumed with such a love that he would brook no other outcome of their meeting but that they should wed.” Rathina smiled. “And such was the love that swelled for the King in Titania's heart that she full gladly accepted his hand. They were married upon Midsummer's Eve, not two moons later than her ship had first made landfall. And with the Hand-Fasting Ceremony so the doom of mortality sloughed from our dear mother's soul and thus was the prophecy fulfilled.”

“So she was born Mortal?” murmured Tania.

“Aye, and for twenty summers did she bear that burden.” Rathina frowned thoughtfully. “Mayhap that is how she was able to endure with such fortitude her five-hundred-year exile among Mortal folk.”

Tania let out a breath and sat back, gazing blankly out of the window at the rushing blur of the countryside, hardly knowing what to make of Rathina's tale. All she knew was that she felt a new closeness to her Faerie mother. She, too, had been forced to choose between the place where she was brought up and a strange new world of which she knew almost nothing.

 

Rathina had trouble coping with the crowds that flooded the platform at London Victoria Station. Life as a princess in Faerie had not prepared her for rush hour at a major London terminal.

“Keep up and keep with me,” Tania warned her. “It's easy to get lost otherwise.”

“To what manner of place have you brought me, sister?” asked Rathina, staring around her. “Is all of London thus?”

“No, this is especially bad,” said Tania, linking her arm with Rathina's to keep her by her side. “It's crazy, I know, but we'll soon be out of it. Trust me, this world isn't as bad as you think. There are things here you'd really like.”

“I will have to take your word on that,” Rathina said doubtfully.

As the crowds surged toward the exit, Tania realized she would not be able to go through the metal ticket barriers. She pulled Rathina to one side, letting the main rush of people sweep by them. Fortunately there was a man at the swing door who allowed them through.

The forecourt was as packed as the platform but more chaotic, with people hurrying or standing around watching the departure screen that stretched above the entrance to the platforms.

“Are you hungry at all?” Tania asked her sister.

“I think not. The sandcakes you bartered for on the train sated my appetite for the present.”

Tania squeezed her sister's arm. “Sand
wiches
,” she
said. “And it wasn't bartering; I paid cash.”

Rathina looked confused. “Yes, you must explain this
cash
to me.”

“I will but not now. We have to find a phone.” She tried to head for the main exit from the station—she was pretty sure that was where the pay phones were—but Rathina wouldn't budge.

“What's wrong?” Tania asked.

“What is a ‘phone'?”

“I told you. It's a thing we use to talk to people a long way away.”

“Ah. Like the water-mirrors from which our mother conjures distant faces and voices, yes?”

“Kind of.”

“And do all Mortals have the skills to use this
phone
?”

“Rathina, it's not a mystical thing. It's a machine. Come with me and I'll show you how it works. You'll have to help me, anyway: The keypad and receiver will be metal, so you'll have to dial.”

Rathina allowed herself to be led across the forecourt, but Tania could hear her muttering to herself, “Keypad! Dial! Phone! Cash! Forsooth I shall need a tutor and an almanac if I am to understand the ways of this new world.”

 

The sisters were on another train. Tania had managed to get Connor's cell phone number from his mum, and she had called him and arranged to meet at his student digs. It was a much shorter journey this
time, but the train was considerably more crowded.

They couldn't even find seats, which proved a real problem for Tania. Everything she could have held on to was made of metal. In the end she stood Rathina in a corner by a door and leaned against her for support as the train went rattling over the River Thames and away into the southeast of London.

The train finally clattered to a halt at their stop and the doors hissed open. A number of people got off with them, and Tania went with the flow along the platform. She had never been here before. She didn't really know this part of London; everything south of the Thames was a bit of a mystery to her.

Connor Estabrook had sounded really pleased to hear from her when she had called him from Victoria Station. After some general chat about their families, she had told him that she was in need of some expert medical info for a school project she had to research and write up over the summer break. He'd been only too happy to oblige, although he had been a bit surprised that she needed to see him
immediately.

“Yeah, why not,” he'd said after a moment's pause. “I've got nothing on this evening. I'm on workplace training at King's College Hospital in Camberwell. If I can get away early, I'll meet you at Denmark Hill station. If not, my address is Top Flat, thirteen Garner Road, Peckham. Ask for directions. My flatmate Peter will be there; he'll keep you entertained till I arrive.”

Now here they were, coming out of the station along with several dozen commuters. The other people
peeled off in different directions, leaving Tania and Rathina standing alone on the pavement outside the brick railway station.

“Is this still London?” asked Rathina, gazing around. “It has a more wholesome air, Tania. I can breathe here, and there is much that lives and grows!”

“Yes, it's still London,” Tania said. “London is a big place.”

But Rathina was right. It was as if all the grime and bustle and cramped oppression of the city had been left north of the river. They were on a wide street lined with trees. A short way off Tania saw huge rhododendron bushes pressing against park railings, their deep pink flowers hanging into the street. There were still tarmac and large buildings and passing traffic, but there was also a sense of space.

Tania looked around, hoping to see Connor waiting for them.

He wasn't there.

Rathina pointed into the branches of the overhanging trees. “Birds sing,” she said. “Hark!”

Tania listened. Above the drone of the traffic she could hear starlings, their shrill voices crackling like electricity in the sycamores.

“Doubtless Cordelia would know what they speak of,” Rathina said. “It heartens me, Tania, to hear them. If birds live merrily in this place, then belike I shall grow accustomed to it, also…in time.”

“I expect you're right,” said Tania. “Except that we haven't
got
much time right now, not if we're going to
get the medicine and get back into Faerie by dawn.”

“Your friend is not here,” Rathina remarked. “What now?”

“He said he might not be able to get away to meet us,” said Tania. “I'll ask for directions to his flat.”

She went back into the station, but the ticket office was shuttered up and there was no one about. She noticed a pay phone.

She walked over to it, thinking of her Mortal parents.
I could give Mum and Dad a call.

And tell them what, exactly?
Hi, Mum and Dad. I'm back. How are you? Yeah? Great! How's Faerie? Hey, funny you should ask. You know that sniffle Dad had? Well, they're calling it The Plague now; about fifty people have come down with it so far and the only thing that's keeping them alive is…No! No! No!

It was a stupid idea. They'd want to know what was going on. She'd either have to lie to them or let them know the truth—and who would benefit from that? They'd want to see her, and she had no time to travel right across London to Camden. They'd want to try and help, and what in the world could they do? Nothing!

No. Calling her Mum and Dad wasn't an option. It was heartbreaking to know they were so close but to be unable to go to them for advice. And if Oberon closed the ways between Faerie and the Mortal World, she might never see them again.

That was too terrible even to think about!

She turned away from the phone, fighting to control
her emotions. A woman had come into the station and was buying a ticket at the machine. Tania went up to her. “Excuse me, sorry to bother you….”

She came out to where Rathina was still standing, doing her best to keep the woman's directions in her head.
Follow the road to the left. At the end take another left and carry on till you come to a right turn: It's just an alley. There's an estate at the far end. Make your way through it. At the end of the estate make another left, then it's the third turn on your right.

“Look, I don't think there's any point in waiting for Connor,” she told her sister. “Let's go straight to his place.” They headed along the road, Rathina keeping to the inside of the pavement, her shoulders hunching when a bus or a truck went past.

They turned left into a quiet street of detached mock Tudor houses set back behind wide front yards. The curbs were lined with cars, but there was far less traffic. They walked under the shade of dark-leaved rowan trees, the air filled with the scents of honeysuckle and purple-tipped buddleia.

Tania heard children's voices. Ahead of them balloons floated on the ends of ribbons tied to a garden gate set between clipped privet.

“What are those colored spheres?” asked Rathina, her voice filled with wonder. She looked at Tania. “See how they dance in the air! Is it Mortal magic?”

Tania smiled. “No, it's only helium,” she said. “They're balloons. I think there's some kind of kids' party going on.”

An odd swishing, rattling sound came up quickly behind them. Tania turned in time to see a girl of maybe six or seven years old racing along the pavement toward them on inline skates. She was wearing a short, wide-skirted lilac dress that frothed with white lace and netting. She had a very intent look on her freckled face, and her arms were spread for balance.