The Girl and the Guardian

  Far away in the green hills of Silverwood on Earth, Shelley’s mother was searching. She had separated from Mr Arkle after the dreadful morning when Shelley disappeared; for her too, the lies had become unbearable. She wanted to find out the truth of her past, and who the real father of her first child was. The marriage, she now thought bitterly, had been a mistake, a desperate elopement by a lonely girl afraid to raise her child alone in a hostile world, and an older man afraid of growing old alone. A man who recognised and desired the Faery in her, but could not nurture it, but only draw from it. So now Ellen searched for clues to her past in the hills of Silverwood, all the while hoping that her daughter would return, or better yet, that she herself would be let through to that other world. Sometimes it came into her dreams, and she saw the white unicorn flying above a blue lake, and a tall tree on a high peak.

  The locals muttered about her and called her crazy, but she did not care. Every day she could spare she had gone there, sometimes taking Mark along too, on weekends. But he had scowled and grumbled. This time he announced, ‘This is the last time I’m coming with you. I’m going to live with dad in the South Island, and that’s final!’

  ‘Don’t you want to help find Shelley, Mark?’

  ‘You’ve got to be crazy! I’m glad she’s gone.’

  They were in the Fairyhill Reserve now, criss-crossing an area Ellen felt instinctively drawn to. She had heard talk of strange happenings there, and was determined to check it out thoroughly, though she also felt fearful of its dark woods.

  The sun went behind a cloudbank and it grew cold. A silver mist rolled over the valley and spread until all that was free of the fog was the Fairyhill Reserve. Ellen felt they were on an enchanted island, cut off from the ordinary world below. She turned to comment on it to Mark. He was not there.

  Mark had intended to teach his mother a lesson by hiding in the woods to scare her. He blundered through the undergrowth until he came to a clearing with a moss-covered rock in the middle. He wandered over to look at it. Next minute he heard an eerie chant. A group of young children were singing somewhere nearby. But they sounded oddly faint, as if they were underground or behind a wall. He stepped forwards hesitantly. There were several children in foreign clothing holding hands in a ring by the rock. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed them before. They smiled at Mark, and he found himself walking towards them. Two of the children let go of each other’s hands and pulled him into the ring. They began circling and singing again. He felt uneasy, but couldn’t help joining in. They were holding his hands very tightly. Then a blackness opened up in front of his feet like a deep pool of nothingness. He felt himself sliding into it and falling, falling. His screams were unheard in the forest or indeed in our world. He had found what his mother had sought for so long: the portal into Aeden, and been drawn there by the children who had been converted to the worship of the Void. The portal was no longer open only to the pure of heart.

  Before long Mark was bowing low before Hithrax, and eating the Apples of Peace. Then Hithrax merged his mind with Mark’s, and poured all the words of Aedenese he would need – but none of beauty, of love or goodness – into his young, pliable memory.

  ‘Gareth, my son,’ said Hithrax.

  ‘My father,’ said Mark in perfect Aedenese, smiling up at the tall Thornman as he had never smiled at his own father.

  And soon his old life was but a dream to him, and as surely as Hithrax was his father, so his Mother was the Void. And Shelley was no longer his sister, but the accursed Guardian traitor’s apprentice, deserving only of a lingering death. He was going to enjoy his new life very much, he thought.