Wolf Notes and Other Musical Mishaps Read online

  Helen hesitated. Sylvie said, “I will go with you if you want, fiddler girl.”

  “No! You keep Lee company here, keep an eye on … each other. I’ll walk round the edge.”

  She looked back at Lee. “Sunwise?”

  He nodded. “Be very polite and don’t say anything you don’t mean.”

  “Be polite to James?”

  “No. To those who guard him.”

  Helen’s fingers tightened on the rucksack strap.

  Lee frowned. “You didn’t think he would be alone?”

  Helen didn’t answer. Of course she had thought he would be alone!

  One wee boy and a packet of sandwiches. That hadn’t been too worrying.

  But one wee boy guarded by human-sized faeries, while she had nothing to defend herself with but jammy pieces …

  Perhaps she should have brought Yann or Sapphire rather than Lavender.

  However, she had to feed James, so she imagined a clock face arranged round the clearing. If she was standing at six o’clock, to go clockwise to seven o’clock, she had to turn … left. Lavender, perching on her shoulder, murmured, “Well done.”

  Helen walked round the clearing sunwise. At first it was easy. The new growth was higher than her waist, but it was also springy, easy to push aside. Even the brambles were armed with soft new thorns, rather than bone-hard old weapons. As she walked, she looked into the holes. They were deep and dark, denied evening sun by the high walls of roots and stones above, but even in the shadows, Helen could see they were empty.

  The circuit became more difficult when she reached the side of the clearing where the trees had crashed down. Intact branches stuck up from the slain trunks like tall fences, while broken branches and smaller trees crushed under the trunks created an unstable decking of viciously sharp wood.

  Approaching the first fallen tree, Helen told Lavender to get inside her fleece so she wouldn’t get scratched or stabbed. She clambered over the debris, then forced her way over the trunk.

  She had to balance across splintered wood from trunk to trunk, until she had struggled over half a dozen trees. Finally, safely back in the new green growth again, she realized she’d forgotten to look for James. She stared behind her at the dead trees in their creaking graveyard. If he was there, she would send Sylvie to sniff him out.

  Helen walked further round the clearing, glancing into more black entrances. No one. Nothing. No one. Nothing.

  She sighed. There was only one root cave left on her sunwise circle. He probably wouldn’t be there. She glanced briefly into the last hole.

  James yawned at her.

  He was sitting against the root wall, dim, shadowy and very far away. He had the same brown hair and freckles as the boy in the cottage, but a sleepy smile and worried eyes.

  “Hello,” Helen said gently. “Are you James?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m Helen. I know your mum and Emma, and I know you like jam sandwiches with no butter. Would you like some?”

  He nodded again.

  She slipped the rucksack off one shoulder, unzipping the side pocket as it swung round. She held the bag of jam sandwiches out to him.

  He didn’t move towards her, so she walked towards him. But her feet were terribly heavy and once she’d set them down, she couldn’t lift them again.

  James said something she couldn’t hear.

  She said to Lavender, as if the words were too big to get her mouth round, “How do I get this to him?” She felt a tickle by her ear, but she couldn’t hear anything. Not Lavender. Not the sounds of the forest. Not her own breathing.

  Nor could she move her feet. Actually she could. She could move them backwards, away from the boy. She took a short step back and heard the whisper of leaves behind her. Another step backwards and she heard Lavender say, “Don’t go any nearer!”

  But she had to. She had to get closer to James. Dreading the heaviness and silence, Helen went forward again, hearing Lavender’s voice fade, sliding her feet as close as she could to James before bumping up against a piece of clearing that just wouldn’t give. Was this window to the faery world see-through but unbreakable?

  The boy’s mouth was still moving, but she couldn’t hear him. Was he there at all? She couldn’t reach him. How was she supposed to feed him?

  She wanted to trust Lee and he had said this was a window through which she could feed James. So she lifted the packet of sandwiches through the thick air. It weighed as much as the rucksack but she threw it into the root cave.

  The picnic didn’t travel in a smooth arc, but jerked through the air as if it were bumping through a series of invisible barriers before it reached James. But finally he caught it.

  Then she threw the brick-heavy bottle of water. James didn’t let go of the sandwiches in time to catch it, so the water landed in the dark earth in front of him. He smiled and Helen saw his lips say “thank you.”

  She croaked, “Enjoy your picnic. Don’t eat anything else until I come back tomorrow.”

  She turned to leave. It should have been easier to walk in the other direction. The air wasn’t so thick. Her feet were lighter.

  But walking away was made more difficult by the spears. The half circle of a dozen spear points aimed at her chest.

  Noise crashed in around her. Lavender’s hiccupping panic. The creaking of branches round the clearing. Her own breathing, fast and hard.

  And laughter behind her. Not a child’s laughter.

  Helen didn’t look round to see who was laughing; she recognised the voice that had controlled the hounds last night.

  She looked at the troop of faeries behind the spearheads. Male and female, in flowing clothes like Lee’s, though not as richly decorated, with faces as hard and threatening as the spears.

  Helen glanced to where Lee and Sylvie had been standing. They were gone; vanished into the safety of the trees.

  She fought her own panic. Yann would never have left her. Why had she trusted these new friends? Lavender was still here, but she was the same size as the spear points. What could she do to help?

  Helen whispered, “Lavender, please do that flower fairy magic the faeries are afraid of.”

  “Em … I’m starting advanced magic next term. I’ve been studying weather this year. I could rain on them. Or try to blow the spears aside with a strong wind. I’ve been learning plant lore too. I could grow really nasty herbs under their feet.”

  “How long would that take?”

  “A season or two. That’s not fast enough, is it?”

  “No.” Helen looked round the half circle of faeries. There didn’t seem to be one more elaborately dressed, or more violently inclined, than the rest; there was no obvious leader.

  The laughter behind her was still tinkling and ringing.

  Helen met the eyes of the tallest faery warrior. “I’m turning round,” she said clearly. The warrior nodded.

  Helen turned. James was gone. So were the sandwiches. But the water bottle was still stuck in the earth.

  In his place was a laughing woman.

  No. Not exactly in his place. She seemed brighter than James had been, more clearly lit, but further away, as if the hole in the ground was deeper now.

  Helen was beginning to doubt whether anything she saw in this earthy root cave was there at all.

  Wherever the woman was, she was laughing at Helen.

  So Helen stared at her. Rucksack on her shoulder, arms folded, she just stared. She wasn’t being very polite, she knew that. But laughing at someone surrounded by spears wasn’t polite either.

  The woman’s beautiful face and elegant hands stayed pale and constant in front of Helen, while the patterns and colours on her dress kept changing, sliding and slipping into each other, like an oily rainbow film on a puddle stirred by a passing car.

  Though Helen knew the woman was laughing at her, she was drawn to her glowing face and hypnotic clothes. She shook her head, saying to herself, I bet she has more wrinkles than Lee has spots.


  She could still hear Lavender, from the depths of her collar, running through an optimistic list of scary plants and dangerous weather. She lifted her right foot, taking a tiny step towards the toppled tree. Whatever magic had stopped her reaching the boy, it wasn’t stopping her reaching the woman. The window had become a door. Helen could just jump right into the hollow.

  She knew that would be a very bad idea. So she just kept staring.

  Now Lavender was whispering insistently, “It’s the Faery Queen.”

  “I’d guessed that,” Helen murmured back.

  “Bow to her or something.”

  “Why?”

  “You have to show respect.”

  “Why? She’s not showing me any.”

  The woman’s laughter was fading.

  “Jam sandwiches?” she chuckled. “Do you think a packet of sticky sandwiches will tempt him more than our faery feasts?”

  Helen suspected she knew more about what James ate than this woman did, but she didn’t say so. Even if she wasn’t going to be polite, the best way to follow the rest of Lee’s advice, to say only what she meant, was to say very little.

  “So, human child, do you want the boy back?” asked the Faery Queen.

  Helen nodded.

  “What can you offer me in exchange that is worth more than a precious child?”

  Helen wondered how to answer that. “Tell me what you value and I’ll see if I can offer it.”

  “I want you.”

  Helen had expected that and kept her voice steady. “Just me?”

  “You … and all your friends at the music school. I want you to play your wonderful music at my midsummer revels.”

  The Queen smiled and spoke in a softer voice. “I know you’re a great fiddler, Helen Strang. I can’t wait to dance to the magical music you make.”

  Helen grinned. The Queen had heard of her! The Queen knew she was a great fiddler! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to watch a dress like that move in time to her music? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to hear a voice like that compliment her playing?

  Helen hummed the first movement of Professor Greenhill’s music. Lavender said something, but Helen just hummed louder. The Queen’s feet tapped, the hem of her dress swayed.

  Then Helen saw the bottle of water, near and not near the toes of the Queen’s perfectly polished silver pumps.

  She felt the weight of the rucksack on her back and remembered why she was here. She stopped humming and licked a bit of jam off her thumb.

  She heard Lavender say, “Watch out for her glamour! It’s in her voice, as well as her face!”

  Helen thought about wrinkles. Wrinkles and spots. Then she answered the Queen. “I can’t offer to bring all the summer school students.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m the youngest student there. Professor Greenhill is in charge. She decides where we play and what we play.”

  The Queen smiled sympathetically. “You could tell them a child’s freedom depends on doing what you say.”

  “Do you want everyone to know that you have taken a boy? People would cut down these forests to find a missing child. They might not get him back, but they would ruin your revels and your hunting ground.”

  The Queen frowned and, for just a moment, Helen saw tiny wrinkles on her forehead.

  “So ask me for something I can bring you,” suggested Helen, “and give me the boy in return, then no one else will know you’re here.”

  “I want you to play for me.”

  Lavender cried, “No!” She was almost spinning on Helen’s shoulder, her tiny stilettos digging into Helen’s collar bone.

  Helen shook her head. “I can’t promise that.”

  “I don’t want anything else. I only want music. Music and dancing are the most valuable currency in our world.”

  “There must be something else you want.”

  The Queen considered for a moment. “There is one object I desire. If you can bring it to me tomorrow night, I will give you the boy. If you cannot bring it to me, you must promise to play at my midsummer revels.”

  “Tell me what the object is.”

  “No. You must promise first to give me music if you fail, before I tell you what precious object I will accept instead.

  “If you do not promise me now, you will never see the boy again. I will make him jam sandwiches with my own fair hands, so if his family ever see him again he will be a boy-shaped pile of dust.”

  She smiled again, but her face didn’t glow, it glittered like ice; she laughed again, but her laughter didn’t tinkle, it cracked and boomed.

  Lavender bounced beside Helen’s ear. “Don’t promise her anything!”

  Helen couldn’t see what else she could do, so she considered her words very carefully. “I promise I will provide music for your midsummer revels, if I can’t bring the object you want in return for the boy. I promise.”

  She had just made a bargain with the Faery Queen. Lavender gasped. The Queen laughed.

  Helen sighed. “What do you want?”

  The Queen told her.

  Chapter 8

  “The Fairy Flag?” Helen said in surprise.

  The Queen nodded. “The Fairy Flag, which one of my sisters gave away to a MacLeod clan chief when she fell in love with him.” Helen and the Queen both gave identical snorts. “The Fairy Flag, which the MacLeods have hidden in Dunvegan Castle ever since, though they have no right to it, nor any knowledge of its real power. It’s hidden from the faeries who made it, who are its true owners; it’s hidden behind cut stones and filthy iron.

  “Faeries can’t get past iron as it weakens our magic and saps our strength, but a human girl could get past their barriers and rescue the flag. Then my people would return to this forest to touch the flag, to feel its power, to congratulate me for recapturing it.” She stroked her smooth golden hair. “Yes. A powerful treasure regained is almost as good as a dance.”

  “What power does it have?” asked Helen.

  “There is more power in one thread of that ancient banner than in all ten of your fiddling fingers, human child, and that’s all you need to know. Go to Skye, bring it back for me and you will get the boy. Fail … and you will give me music instead.”

  Helen thought for a moment, but she couldn’t see an alternative, so she nodded. “I’ll bring you your flag if you’ll give me James back, healthy, happy and not about to crumble to dust.”

  The Queen smiled. “A bargain.” She picked the water bottle up. “I will take this to him as a sign of good faith.”

  She raised her voice. “Let her past.”

  Helen turned round. The spear-carriers had vanished.

  She looked back to the root cave. The Queen had vanished too. Helen was alone, apart from the fairy on her shoulder.

  Lavender said sharply, “That was extremely foolish, Helen. A bargain with a faery never turns out well.”

  Helen walked towards the edge of the clearing. Lavender kept scolding her. “Why bother taking me if you were going to ignore my advice?”

  “Sorry. There wasn’t any other way to save the boy.”

  “There’s no point saving one human child, at the cost of another. And you’re my friend! I don’t want to lose you to her. Why didn’t you listen to me?”

  “I couldn’t hear you half the time, and the rest of the time, I was actually making my own decisions.”

  “She enchanted you.” The fairy flew around Helen’s head, throwing out angry fizzing light balls.

  “No, she didn’t!”

  “Yes, she did! You may try to bargain and play hard to get, but really you dream of performing for her, because she has enchanted you.”

  “That’s not true!” Helen said indignantly. “She didn’t enchant me! I didn’t agree to perform for her! All I want is to get James back. And all we have to do is get this flag, which isn’t even stealing because it’s the faeries’ flag anyway, then James will be safe and she won’t even expect any music. It’s all under control, Lavend
er.”

  Lavender harrumphed.

  They had reached the trees where they’d left Lee and Sylvie, but there was no sign of the faery or the wolf girl.

  “Fat lot of good they were,” muttered Helen. “At least you stayed with me.”

  “Not that you listened to a word I said!”

  “Where have they gone?”

  Lavender shrugged. “Maybe they ran off at the first sign of danger.”

  “Wouldn’t Sylvie be more likely to leap at the Faery Queen’s throat than run away?”

  “Whether they leapt or ran, they aren’t here now. I hope you remember the path home, because I didn’t see anything but your ear and your hair on the way here.”

  “I thought Lee would take us home, so I wasn’t trying to memorize it. Can’t you find our way back using a finding spell or something?”

  “I can’t find a forest path, Helen, it doesn’t belong to anyone.”

  “Search for a dragon then, or a centaur.”

  “They don’t belong to anyone either.”

  “Yes they do, they’re our friends.”

  Lavender looked sceptical. “Alright. Ask me to find something of yours.”

  Helen smiled and said in a formal voice, “Dearest Lavender, wisest fairy, please find me my friend Sapphire.” Then she whispered, “She’s bright blue and bigger than Yann. She should be easier to find.”

  Lavender frowned. “This is serious.” But she started to rotate in the air, her eyes closed and her wand searching.

  In the intense stillness surrounding the fairy’s effort, Helen heard a snarl.

  She turned away from the spinning fairy and crept into the forest. Hoping she hadn’t heard another spear-carrying faery, she pressed close to the trunk of a rough-barked tree and slid round it slowly.

  As soon as she saw what lay behind the tree, she ran forward, yelling, “Stop!”

  Helen couldn’t tell who was attacking and who was defending. Lee’s sword was aimed at the wolf’s throat. Sylvie was crouched to spring at the faery’s face.

  They didn’t take their eyes off each other, even when Helen shouted again.

  So she stepped between them, forcing Lee to move his sword to one side. She shoved him in the chest and he fell off-balance away from the wolf. The wolf tensed to leap at him but Helen took another half step and stayed between them. Sylvie snarled and sank to the ground.