‘So where—?’ Tanya began.
Don cut her off. ‘All in good time, my dear. First things first. We have to break this wretched spell. And to do that we need to pay a little visit.’ His expression was devoid of smugness now. In fact, Tanya thought he looked rather worried.
‘Who are we visiting?’ she asked.
‘Two people,’ said Don, glancing sideways at Turpin. ‘Sisters actually. They happen to be fey and rather powerful.’
‘Oh, yikes,’ Turpin breathed. ‘Not that loony pair!’
‘Loony?’ Tanya echoed.
‘They are somewhat, um . . . eccentric,’ Don said. ‘As you’ll come to see.’
‘And where exactly do we need to get to?’ Tanya asked. ‘Only my mother—’
‘Not far,’ said Don. ‘Well, as far as travelling goes anyway.’
‘You’re talking in riddles,’ said Tanya. ‘Is it a long way or not?’
‘It’s difficult to explain,’ said Don. ‘But in our world, no, it’s not far at all. We simply need to go to the seafront.’
‘Glad we cleared that up,’ Tanya muttered, as confused as ever.
‘Is an in-between place,’ said Turpin. ‘A mixed-up, magicky place most humans don’t notice, unless they know what they are looking for. There are lots of them. You just need to know where to look.’
‘A mixed-up, magicky place,’ Tanya repeated. Even though she was afraid for Ratty, she could not help but feel a thrill of excitement. What was on the seafront that she had never noticed? And who exactly was it that Don was planning to visit?
‘We’ll need those coins that I left for Henry,’ Don said. ‘The four-leaf clovers, too.’
‘What for?’ Tanya asked.
‘You’ll see when we get there,’ Don said infuriatingly. ‘So, when can we go?’
‘Well, I think—’ she began, then stopped as something long, sticky and pink lashed past her foot into the space under the bed. She felt her toes curl in revulsion. The long, pink something had been Don’s tongue.
‘Spider,’ he muttered apologetically. ‘So, when?’
‘As soon as possible,’ Tanya answered with a shudder.
It wasn’t difficult to get out of her mother’s way for the morning. After clearing away the breakfast things and offering to replace the spilled cornflakes and sugar, Tanya left the cottage, with Turpin and Oberon trotting along beside her and Don tucked out of sight in the pocket of her rucksack.
It was an overcast day, but still warm and muggy and, with it being the holidays, it made little difference to the number of visitors on the seafront.
‘Good,’ Don croaked over the cacophony of voices. ‘It’s busy. That’s very good. We don’t want to stand out.’
‘Where exactly are we going?’ Tanya asked, as they neared the pier.
‘Keep going,’ Don replied. ‘Turpin knows where it is. Just follow her.’
They passed the bustling pier, arriving at the funfair. As they squeezed through the throng of people on to the promenade, Tanya eyed the carousel, recalling how sinister the motionless wooden horses had seemed when she had passed them in the darkness the night before. Now, as they galloped to the cheerful music with squealing children on their backs, it felt like a different place entirely.
Turpin led her past various rides. They blurred into a mix of colour and whirring noise; the dodgems, the waltzers and a helter-skelter, and even a big wheel. At the very edge, overlooking the sea, was a roller coaster and, next to it, a brightly painted ride that looked a little like a ghost train.
‘This one,’ Turpin announced.
Tanya stared up at the rickety-looking cars that were rattling along the track, bursting out of one set of wooden doors and whizzing down a slope before vanishing into another. On a wooden board that arched across the width of the ride, the words ‘THE RIFT’ flickered in silver lights. Surrounding it was a painted ring of bright red, spotted toadstools with small, winged figures dancing around them and playing strange instruments. At the centre of the fairy ring, two children danced, too. Though their mouths were smiling, their painted eyes were glazed over, as though they were each in a dream.
‘The Rift?’ Tanya murmured. ‘What is this?’
‘Something that isn’t what it seems,’ said Don’s muffled voice. ‘Get in the queue. We’re going to buy a ticket. Only our ticket won’t be quite the same as everyone else’s.’
‘And why is that?’ Tanya asked.
‘Because we’re going to pay using one of the coins I left for Henry.’
Tanya took a step towards the ticket booth, where a surly-looking man sat hunched over a till. He was very old, with a face as wrinkled as an elephant skin and fuzzy white hair. He also happened to be a dwarf, for as Tanya got closer she saw that he had a large head and hands that seemed out of proportion to the rest of his body.
‘No dogs,’ he said flatly, motioning to a gap in the side of the booth. ‘Leave him here, with me.’
Tanya nodded mutely, coaxing Oberon into the tiny booth where the little man sat high up on a stool, his feet dangling in the air. She gave Oberon a pat, then moved round to the front of the booth, reaching into the rucksack. Her hand brushed against clammy toad fingers offering her a cold, silver coin. She took it, enfolding it in her palm. There were people behind them in the queue now, impatient to get on. She quickly slid the coin through the gap in the glass window, not meeting the little man’s eyes.
There was a slight pause before his crinkled, brown hand closed over it. Wordlessly, he pressed a button on the till and the drawer sprang open, but Tanya noticed that he did not put the coin into the tray. Instead, he slipped it slyly into his shirt pocket and slid a green ticket back through the narrow gap. Tanya took it, daring to look up at the last minute. The little man’s eyes were trained upon her intently, far more alert than they had been moments before. For the briefest of moments, Tanya thought she saw the tips of two pointed ears protruding from the white hair on either side of his face. She blinked and they were gone.
She pushed through the barrier to the entrance, waiting for a cart to become free. From behind the painted doors, she could hear screams, laughter and music, and she wondered what else lay behind them. A moment later, a cart burst through the lower set of doors and came to a juddering halt before her. She stepped aside to allow the passengers off, noticing as they exited the cart that there was a purse on the seat.
Turpin squeaked in delight, but Tanya pounced first, snatching it out of her grasp.
‘You just can’t help yourself, can you?’ she scolded, after handing it back to the lady who had dropped it.
Turpin hopped into the cart, huffing bad-temperedly.
Tanya clambered in beside her, resting the rucksack on the seat between them. There was a click and a safety bar lowered into place across her lap. Then the cart jerked forward, rattling towards a set of painted wooden doors with the sun on one side and the moon on the other. The doors flew open, plunging Tanya into the darkness beyond.
17
Gretchen and Griselda
TANYA’S EYES HAD BARELY BEGUN TO adjust to the darkness when a cloud of blue smoke puffed out from above, enveloping the cart as it rattled over the tracks. It emerged on the other side of the cloud in a dimly-lit tunnel, where a huge, silver moon and twinkling stars glowed above her head.
‘Welcome to The Rift,’ said a deep voice. ‘A wondrous interstice where a glimpse of magic is possible! Hold tight on your journey through the inbetween of night and day, of land and sea, of life and death, and prepare yourself for sights you only ever imagined . . .’
As the stars faded to black, the moon changed into a giant, luminous clock face, its hands fixed on midnight. It began to strike in deep booms that echoed around the tunnel. The cart swept past it and turned a corner. The lights overhead changed to green and, ahead, a large, black cauldron rose out of a swirling mist. Three waxwork figures in pointed hats surrounded it, stirring, chanting and cackling. As the cart drew nearer, a frog popped up out of th
e cauldron, followed by a skeleton hand, before sinking slowly back in.
The cart took another turn and Tanya felt her weight shift back as it began to climb higher on a slope. The witches’ cackling subsided, and she felt her hair ruffle as a growling, glittering trio of dragons billowing smoke swooped above their heads.
‘Nothing like real dragons,’ said Turpin, sounding bored. ‘Real ones are much uglier.’
Tanya leaned over the rucksack. ‘Are you sure we’ve come to the right place? This just seems like a typical fairground ride.’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ Don replied. ‘Be patient. We’re nearly there.’
They were on some upper level of the ride now. The tunnel turned to blue, with silvery lights playing across every surface to give the impression they were underwater. Melodic singing had begun somewhere nearby, but underneath it Tanya could hear the rattles and clanks of another cart behind them.
‘I don’t understand,’ she began. ‘How . . .?’
Something moved in the shadows up ahead. Not a waxwork this time, but a real figure, not quite the size of a child nor an adult. A dwarf, Tanya realised. Though she could not see its face, the straggly outline of the hair was very familiar. Could it be the same little man she had given the fairy coin to?
Before she had a chance to wonder further, the figure reached out and pulled on a lever. There was a loud creak and suddenly a section of the track ahead lifted up and swung to the left, taking the cart with it straight towards a brick wall. Instinctively, Tanya clenched her eyes shut and threw up her hands in front of herself, waiting for the collision . . . but it never came. She opened her eyes in time to see the section of wall still bafflingly close before they took another abrupt turn and she realised that the entire thing was a cleverly painted illusion which masked another secret part of the track. Behind them there was a grinding clank as the track slotted back into its original place.
They were rolling down now, gathering speed and whipping through another thick fog, only this was not the artificial stuff they had experienced on the other parts of the ride. Instead, it was dense and grey with a salty taste, leaving a damp stickiness on Tanya’s cheeks and lips. Bubbles flew through the air around them and the singing grew louder, the lone voice merging into several. Still they plunged down, down, down, and the thought struck her that this was impossible, for they must surely be way below the promenade by now, if not below sea level.
Glass cases loomed through the mist either side of the cart and, as Tanya peered closer, she saw scaled limbs, fins and long, flowing hair swirling in sea-green water.
‘Mermaids,’ she breathed, watching as the figures flipped and pressed their webbed fingers up against the glass.
‘The merfolk are another inbetween,’ said Turpin. ‘Not for us.’ She huddled closer to Tanya. ‘Careful. Do not listen too closely to their song. It can bewitch, even if they do not mean to.’
The cart hurtled on and the glass cases receded into the sea mist. The scent of the air changed to something that Tanya recognised well: the earthy, damp smell that had invaded her room so many times. As if on cue, her eyelids began to twitch.
Greenery sprang up around them and whispering filled Tanya’s head. A ring of red toadstools, much like the one painted on the ride’s sign, rose slowly up through the grass. Figures danced within it to a strange melody, most of them fey and playing instruments that Tanya had never seen before, but one of them – a small boy – was human. Round and round he danced, smiling at first and dancing the jig with enthusiasm, but as he passed her for the third time Tanya noticed that he was changing, becoming taller. Older. His shoes and socks became worn and full of holes, and a saddened, hungry look overtook his face, yet still he danced, gripped by whatever spell the music held over him.
‘A fairy ring,’ Turpin whispered. ‘Most magical traps for unsuspecting humans. They are lured by the music, but, once they step in, is very hard to get out again. Only way is to throw something inside out into the circle to break the dance, or to be pulled out by someone with one foot firmly outside the ring. Otherwise, the dance can go on for many years, even a century, though it may only seem to last a night.’
The fairy ring faded, but the greenery remained, thickening and growing denser. Winged creatures buzzed in the air, some of them swooping low over the cart to inspect its passengers curiously. Tanya felt a couple of spiteful tugs to her hair and a pinch on her arm, and gritted her teeth through the fairies’ tittering laughter.
The cart continued to gather speed, whipping her hair up around her face and snatching the fairies away on the wind. She gripped the sides tighter, squeezing her eyes shut until, with a scrape and a bang, they jerked to a stop. Tentatively, she opened her eyes and blinked. They appeared to be in some kind of potting shed. Various garden tools surrounded them, and the only source of light was from a broken, cobwebbed window.
‘I believe we have arrived,’ Don announced. ‘Could someone please get me out?’
Turpin lifted the toad out of the rucksack and placed him on the ground, where he stretched out one slimy leg, then the other.
‘Where are we?’ Tanya asked.
‘I told you,’ Don said impatiently. ‘We’re in an inbetween. It’s a sort of . . . pocket, if you like. Not quite our world and not quite the fairy realm, either, but somewhere, well . . . in between the two. Discreet and tucked away, for those who don’t want to be easily found. They can only be reached by certain portals which are also inbetweens.’
‘So the ride is a portal,’ said Tanya. ‘Because it’s built right between the land and the sea?’
‘Correct,’ said Don. ‘Of course, there are lots of in-between places like that. But not everybody knows how to use them, so they are wasted.’
‘You still haven’t told me who it is we’re here to see,’ said Tanya.
At this, Turpin tittered with laughter. Don scowled.
‘Two sisters,’ he said at last. ‘And fey, although they grew up in our world, along with their older brother.’
‘Why did they grow up in our world?’ Tanya asked.
‘It happens more often than you think,’ said Don. ‘Most commonly with changelings—’
‘What are changelings?’
‘Fairy children that are exchanged with human children,’ said Don. ‘If fairy children are born sick, or even if they are very ugly, the fairies will often choose to switch them with a healthy or pretty human child.’
‘That’s terrible!’ Tanya burst out.
‘We don’t like ugly ones,’ Turpin muttered.
Don nodded. ‘Sometimes it’s even done out of mischief or revenge. But these children were not changelings. The entire family was fey, though they used glamour to disguise their fairy traits. Whether they were banished from the fairy realm as a punishment, or came here of their own accord, I never found out. But all three of them, the brother especially, were brilliant.’
‘You knew them as children?’ Tanya asked.
‘I lived next door to them,’ Don replied. ‘We played together and went to the same school. And, although I couldn’t see through the glamour that made them look human, they couldn’t disguise the fact that they were magical. When they were around, animals developed the ability to talk, sweets grew on trees, toys would come to life.’ He paused, smiling. ‘Best of all, our enemies never went unpunished. Whether they were made to bark like a dog, or plagued by a stench no one else could smell, they always got their comeuppance.’
‘So what went wrong?’ Tanya asked. ‘I know something must have, because you don’t look very happy at having to come here.’
Don sighed. ‘Everything was fine until we grew up. And then the sisters had a falling-out.’
‘About what?’
Don looked uncomfortable now. ‘They both fell in love with the same man. After that, everything changed. They grew very . . . competitive, each casting spells on the other to make them less appealing to this man. The more outrageous these spells became, the more di
fficult it was for them to hide their true natures. Things got very . . . ugly, shall we say. And that’s how they ended up here, out of the way where they can curse each other to their heart’s content.’
‘But surely, if they hate each other, they’d want to live apart?’ said Tanya.
‘Oh, no,’ said Don. ‘They might hate each other, but they can’t live without each other. Living together is the only way they can keep an eye on each other – to make sure neither of them tries to pursue the man in question.’
‘Sounds very odd,’ said Tanya. ‘What are these spells they cast on each other?’
‘You’ll see,’ said Don. ‘Just . . . try not to stare too much. Oh, and don’t eat or drink anything they offer you. They don’t get many visitors, so when they do they try not to let them leave.’
‘Great,’ Tanya muttered. ‘So where are they?’
‘This way.’ Don hopped towards the shed door. It was not locked or even closed properly. Tanya clambered out of the cart and followed, with Turpin at her side. She pushed the door and it opened silently, into a very ordinary little yard with high walls and a gate a short distance away.
Don took the lead, hopping quickly to the gate. This led out into a narrow alleyway much like the ones at home, only there was an air of something that didn’t feel entirely normal. Looking up, Tanya saw a strange sight. The sky was the colour of a pale, purple bruise. It was impossible to tell whether it was dawn or twilight, for both a sun and a crescent moon floated overhead. But it was more than that. It was the silence of the place. It felt like they were in a bubble, cushioned from all the sounds of real life.
‘I don’t think it’s too far,’ said Don.
‘You don’t think?’ said Tanya. ‘You mean you don’t know?’
‘I do know,’ Don snapped. ‘But it’s been a while since I last came here, and it doesn’t help that the blasted portal brings you out somewhere different every time. I just need to get my bearings.’
He hopped off ahead at a surprising speed, turning into another little side alley that opened on to what at first appeared to be an ordinary-looking street. Rows upon rows of terraced houses stretched as far as the eye could see, all lit by the strange, purple dawn-twilight. It looked very much like an average street in London, Tanya thought . . . but, as she looked closer, she saw things were slightly askew and didn’t make sense.