The Thirteen Treasures Part 25

Take me instead.

And the vines and branches crawling towards Tanya and those that already ensnared her paused for the briefest of moments before slowly withdrawing, releasing her from their clutches and continuing on their way . . . to Red. Inch by inch they crept over her like leafy tentacles, pulling her away from Tanya . . . away from the mortal world.

Red did not resist.

In moments, she was surrendered completely; swallowed by the forest.

Fabian's hand closed around the hair, along with a fistful of earth.

'I've got it!'

Warwick struck another match, the yellow flame hissing to life. He seized the hair and held the match to it. It flared up instantly and he dropped it to the ground. They watched in silence as it burned away to nothing, until all that remained was the charred remnants of fallen twigs and leaves where Morwenna's hair had been.

Fabian's watch finally went silent.

'I never realised,' Warwick said softly. 'All this time . . . I thought the hair was my mother's. She was dark too . . . I never saw the significance until tonight. All the time he was trying to find a replacement for Morwenna. He never got over her. The truth was right there in front of me and I chose not to see it.'

'How long have you known?'

Even in the darkness, Fabian could read the regret in his father's eyes.

'Ever since Tanya was born.'

'What will happen to Morwenna now the pact is broken?' Fabian whispered.

'She'll feel it, instantly,' said Warwick. 'It should be enough to deter her from wanting to go ahead with the exchange.' He began to run deeper into the woods, calling over his shoulder.

'We have to find Tanya!'

Fabian followed his father, neither of them aware that an alternative exchange had already taken place.

The edge of the forest was in sight, the moon just visible through the trees. Barely lucid, Tanya staggered towards it. Only Oberon, tugging at the other end of his leash, was supporting her. Her eyes were swollen and sticky with tears, and her head felt woollen.

Red was gone; vanished into the fairy realm like a footprint in sand. In trading herself instead of Tanya, she had saved them both.

Tanya was almost at the wood's edge when she realised she was not alone.

Just paces in front of her, on the path ahead, Morwenna Bloom was moving towards the opening in the trees. And as Tanya watched, an initial surge of anger dispersed as it became apparent that something was very wrong.

Morwenna pushed herself onwards but her movements were slowing. Tanya heard her breathing change, becoming ragged and laboured. She keeled over suddenly, her back hunched, feet moving slowly now, hobbling and shuffling. She looked like she was in pain, Tanya realised. Aching . . . or very, very tired.

'What's happening to me?' she murmured.

The voice that emerged from her lips was not that of a fourteen-year-old girl.

Not tired . . . but old.

With mounting horror, Tanya now knew what had happened. Fabian had not left her in an act of cowardice. Fabian had gone to destroy the lock of hair the link to Morwenna's youth. And he had succeeded.

The horrified whimper that reached Tanya's ears then was her own. At the sound of it, Morwenna turned to face her.

'You?' she rasped, in an old woman's voice. A strange new voice that Tanya could see was even more terrifying to Morwenna than it was to her. 'How . . .? It's not possible that you're here . . .'

The confusion and malice on her face shrivelled with her flesh. It wrinkled, withered and puckered, sagging and hanging loosely over the contours of her skull as every one of the fifty years Morwenna had cheated caught up with her all of them at once. The effect of it was like poison and truly terrible to witness.

Tanya was powerless to do anything except scream. And scream.

Morwenna looked down at her hands and cried out. No longer were they smooth and soft; they were growing withered and twisted before her eyes.

'No!'

She grabbed a strand of her long hair, but it was now coa.r.s.e and white like wool. Slowly, she lifted her hands to her face and felt the hollows of her cheeks and the lines of her skin. She reached her twisted hands towards Tanya. Her lips were drawn back in a hideous grimace over teeth that were blackening and loosening, then crumbling and dropping out.

Tanya turned on her heel and fled. Back into the woods, back the way she had come; sobbing and desperate and more willing to face whatever the woods held rather than stand before the grotesque figure of Morwenna Bloom.

She never saw Morwenna trying to follow her along the path. For in the time it took for the old woman to take but a few steps, Tanya was long gone. And so Morwenna was utterly alone when the combination of the ageing process and the subsequent shock of it took their final toll on her body.

A crippling pain seared through her chest and upper left arm. Gasping, she sank to the ground. With fading eyesight, she looked to the edge of the forest.

It was so near . . . yet she would never reach it.

Tanya was huddled on the ground, cowering into Oberon when they found her.

A calloused hand brushed her hair back from her face, and then came a voice, familiar . . . and yet not.

'She's in shock.' Warwick's voice. Still gruff and clipped, but now edged with concern.

'Will she be all right?' This from Fabian.

Tanya stirred, comforted by his voice. Fabian's face came into focus, his eyes clamped shut. His expression was carved from guilt and misery.

'I left her,' he said in a small voice. 'I left her, Dad. But I had to . . .'

'Fabian?' Tanya croaked.

Fabian's eyes flew open. He took her hand and gripped it tightly. 'I'm sorry,' he whispered. 'I'm so sorry I had to let you think . . .' he gulped. 'The lock of hair. Amos had it all the time.'

'I know,' she told him, managing a weak smile. 'You were brave to do what you did.' She gazed at Warwick. 'You were protecting me,' she realised. 'You and my grandmother. That's why you didn't want me at the manor because of what could happen.'

'Florence wanted to tell you,' Warwick said softly. 'But she was too afraid. And ashamed. When she made that pact with Morwenna she was young and naive. She's been paying for it ever since.'

'Not any more,' Tanya whispered. For she alone knew that Morwenna had paid the ultimate price. But for now, she would not could not speak of what she had seen.

There were no more words after that. Just Tanya's own thoughts inside her head as Warwick wrapped his coat around her shoulders and lifted her exhausted body into his arms, ready to go back to the manor.

It was still early the following morning when Morag locked up the caravan and shooed the protesting cat outside. It was not often she ventured into Tickey End mid-week, and she wanted to go about her business and get back before it got busy. She was almost at the edge of the forest when she saw what lay ahead, just awry of the path and partially hidden in the undergrowth.

The woman was dead and had been for several hours. Morag could tell that much before she had even knelt down by her side. Her puckered mouth was open in a silent scream, her claw of a hand clasped around her upper left arm.

'Heart failure,' Morag murmured, reaching out to close the woman's lifeless eyes. But as she looked into those dead black pits, her hand froze and she withdrew it sharply before making contact. For even in death, there was something altogether malevolent about her.

Morag heard her own knees creak as she stood up and took a step backwards. As she did, she saw an apple settled next to the body, resting in the folds of the tattered green dress. It had fallen from the branches above. Something rippled under the shrivelled surface of the skin. Moments later, a plump maggot burst through the apple's sagging flesh.

'Yes,' Morag whispered. 'I see now. Rotten. Rotten to the core.'

Without further ado she set off along the path to Tickey End, her pace a little quicker than usual now she knew she would be making a detour to report the grisly find. She did hope it wouldn't hold her up too long.

Epilogue.

Like most of the graves in the little churchyard, Elizabeth Elvesden's had been neglected. And like the nearby manor that had been her home for a brief time in her short life, it was now covered in ivy, with just a hint of grey stone visible between the evergreen leaves. Yet despite its forlorn appearance, the grave had never been forgotten.

Tanya watched as her grandmother knelt to pull out another handful of weeds, then gazed across the fields, past the forest towards where the manor stood in the dappled sunlight. Her mother was due to arrive shortly to take her home. This time, Tanya knew with a gladdened heart, things would be different. The fairies, her fairies, would come again, but in their own time. She no longer feared them.

Almost a week earlier she had awoken in her bed, fully clothed and groggy, as though she had slept for a hundred years. As she came out of her slumber, she became aware that someone was holding her hand and looked up into the grey eyes of her grandmother. It had taken Tanya a moment to recognise her, for the hardness about her had gone, as though a great weight had been lifted. For a long time, her grandmother had talked. And Tanya had listened, learned, and forgiven.

The newspaper articles concerning the whereabouts of Rowan Fox continued for a short while after the night of the exchange, though they were given less and less precedence as it became clear that the trail on her had gone cold. But in scouring the papers, another story caught Tanya's attention: the discovery of a body in Hangman's Wood. The dead woman, estimated to be in her mid- to late-sixties, had suffered a fatal heart attack. Her ident.i.ty, though, and how she came to be in the forest at the time of her death were to remain a mystery except to those involved. For it was then that Tanya finally spoke of Red to Fabian, Warwick and her grandmother, revealing the true horror of what had happened that night in the woods and the girl who had saved her.

They cleared the last of the weeds from the grave and replaced them with fresh flowers.

As they pa.s.sed by the forest on the way back to the manor, Tanya stared into the trees, a question on her lips that she feared the answer to.

'What will become of Amos?'

Florence shook her head unhappily. 'There's nothing that can be done. We may know the truth about Morwenna Bloom, but few would believe us. They'll carry on thinking what they want to think. All we can do for him now is make his last days comfortable, but with his state of mind even that won't be easy. He's constantly tormented by her memory. She's the root of his madness.'

A soft breeze stirred in the trees above, carrying with it a scent of wild herbs. One of the scents seemed to overpower the rest, sharp and distinctive. A sudden memory was evoked in Tanya's mind; the memory of words spoken by Gredin one night. At the time, those words had instilled fear into her. Today, they filled her with hope. The forest had been listening.

'We can't change what happened,' Tanya said slowly. 'And we can't change what the people think. But maybe there is something we can do for Amos.'

There is a place where rosemary grows freely by a stream that flows uphill. The domain of the piskies. Heathen creatures. Unpredictable, dangerous some say. The rosemary, renowned for its aid to memory, grows tainted. The properties are reversed.

Yet even piskie-tainted rosemary has its uses. In the correct quant.i.ties it has the power to extract a memory from a mortal head forever.

Such as the memory of an old sweetheart.

THANKS TO:.

My family, friends and loved ones my first readers especially: Darren, Mum, Theresa, Janet, Tanya, Rachel and Lucy. Also to Lauren for all the fairy dust.

My former colleagues at Ottakar's / Waterstone's Stafford (Greengate Street) and Kate Hanc.o.c.k at the head office, and the children's team at OUP for their support.

Davinia Andrew-Lynch for her time and advice.

A big thank you to Julia Churchill and everyone at the Darley Anderson Agency, and to Venetia, Maurice, Jenny, Elisa, Ingrid, Phil, Nick and the entire children's team at Simon & Schuster UK.

Mich.e.l.le Harrison is 28 years old, and an editorial a.s.sistant in children's publis.h.i.+ng. She is a former bookseller at Ottakars/Waterstones in Stafford. Originally from Grays in Ess.e.x, she is a keen ill.u.s.trator as well as writer and now lives in Oxfords.h.i.+re with her partner. The Thirteen Treasures is her first novel and a sequel is to be published in 2010.

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